Shyamasundar das’ interview with nation-wide Sirius radio Beatles channel on 1/12/22

 

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Shyamasundar dasa

SiriusXM Fab Fourum Interview

January 12, 2022

Dennis Elsas: It is the Beatles Fab Fourum. It’s Tom, it’s Dennis, and it’s Bill. And our next guest…well, I love the way that we got our next guest. It was because of one of our listeners, and specifically Jeanne Clausen. Jeanne Clausen, I don’t know exactly where you are writing to us from, but she wrote just a couple of weeks ago and said, “I listen to the Fab Fourum show when I can. I’m a lifelong fan. I saw them play twice when they came to Detroit in ’64 and ’66. I was listening to your show on December 1st talking about the new Get Back documentary, Peter Jackson’s. And on your show I heard your question, ‘What is that Hare Krishna guy doing there sitting in the corner?’ So I thought I’d send you the answer to that question.” And she not only knows him, she also has been with him and listened to the “Hare Krishna Mantra” when she was in Detroit. And the fact that she knows him, that got everybody excited, specifically, who else, our own Tom Frangione. And Tom, you have Jeanne to thank, and take it from there.

Tom Frangione: Well, Jeanne, thank you up front. And yes, for those of you who may not have caught us yet, we do a show here on the Beatles Channel called Apple Jam that I do with David Fricke once a month, and then it repeats throughout the month and, of course, on the SXM app. And one of the records we’ve spotlighted a couple times is an album that George produced for Apple by The Radha Krishna Temple. So it definitely got my attention very, very quickly. And to bring our next guest on, I want to play you a little bit of this. It’s a record that George not only produced but played the harmonium and guitar on, and this one actually became a big, big hit in England and they went on to play it on Top of the Pops. So let’s hear a little bit of the “Hare Krishna Mantra” on Apple, Jackie.

[clip of “Hare Krishna Mantra”]

Shyamasundar, Hare Krishna!

Shyamasundar: Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!

Tom: Yes, it’s a delight to have you with us here on the Fab Fourum, on the Beatles Channel SiriusXM 18. We’re delighted to have you here. A lot of our listeners, their first exposure to you in terms of the Beatles backstory may be this most recent Get Back documentary. You’re one of the very first people along with the Beatles themselves to be introduced by name on the screen. You’re there at the very start, Day 1. How do you get invited to Twickenham Studios to sit in with the Beatles?

Shyamasundar: Yeah, well, that’s a good question. I’m rather surprised I’m in there at all, what to speak of spotlighted. I guess by including me at the outset, Peter Jackson’s trying to illustrate the spiritual crossroads that this Get Back film so amazingly portrays.

Tom: Yeah.

Shyamasundar: By early 1969, the Beatles had achieved almost godlike status in the world like no four persons ever had or maybe ever will. And like millions of us youngsters in the emerging psychedelic days, these guys were searching and they were trying to understand the meaning of it all.

Tom: Yeah.

Shyamasundar: Like “Why me, Lord? Who am I? What’s the purpose of life? Where am I going?” And by chance or fate, just one year before that in February of ’68 the Beatles had gone to India, where ancient answers to these questions seemed to attract them, and it clicked. It clicked with them, yes. And ancient India has these highly evolved answers to existential questions like how to get back where I once belonged.

Tom: Wow!

Shyamasundar: So seeing myself and my name 50 years later in Peter Jackson’s film, I have to see myself as just some kind of instrument maybe. Like in the divine plan, there are no accidents. To be right there on the set with daffodils and words of wisdom, a fly on the wall really. And just maybe to plant a seed for the flowering that followed.

Tom: There you go. I’m going to want to talk to you more about the music that you created at Apple. But first, my compadre, Bill Flanagan, wants to chat with you a little bit more about your background. So I’m going to turn it over to Bill, and I’ll be back at you in just a couple minutes.

Shyamasundar: OK.

Bill Flanagan: Shyamasundar, it’s great to meet you, it’s great to have you on the show. Now, George invited you to the Let It Be sessions as kind of a spiritual advisor, and I wonder what advice did you give him about what you observed in those sessions?

Shyamasundar: Well, I had only met George just two weeks before this Twickenham thing.

Bill: Which is remarkable.

Shyamasundar: Just two weeks before at the Apple Records Christmas party on Savile Row in December 1968. Some of my San Francisco friends from the Haight-Ashbury had come over to London, guys like Ken Kesey and Peter Coyote and Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, who was my college roommate.

Bill: Really!

Shyamasundar: Sweet William from the Hell’s Angels. These guys were staying at our place in Covent Garden, and they were invited to the Apple headquarters on Savile Row for the Christmas party ’68. So I tagged along, and there I met George. And we had an incredible maybe 15 or 20-minute discussion, and we clicked. I went out to his home in Esher the next day. We spent the day talking about Krishna like ancient friends. And then lo and behold, about two weeks later George rings me up and says, “Please come down here to Twickenham Studios. I want you to explain Krishna consciousness to the boys.”

Bill: Well, this is absolutely remarkable, and you must have felt like your mission to England was blessed. The fact that as a kid coming from San Francisco in what was then very unusual garb, the Krishna movement was new in this manifestation, to suddenly make it to the Beatles. And I didn’t know you came in with Ken Kesey and Rock Scully and the Hell’s Angels because I believe George was in the process of ejecting them from Apple.

Shyamasundar: Well, there was an incident, yeah. But George saw me over there in the corner and ran over to me and ignored everyone else in the room while he found out about Krishna.

Bill: Incredible! Now, Hare Krishna is a different interpretation of Hinduism than exactly what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi practiced but, of course, it comes from and flows to the same source. And I wonder…one of the impressions I got from watching the Get Back film was that George was hurt by the other Beatles’ rejection of Maharishi. Do you think he was looking for a different iteration of the Hindu faith?

Shyamasundar: I don’t know about that so much. And there’s a lot of talk about Maharishi this and that. I don’t believe that that really played a factor. They were all searching. And George had really liked Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, as a figure, and he wanted to find out more about Krishna. All kinds of undertones and things were going on at the same time.

But basically at the studio, this happened on that set that very first day, the band broke for lunch and George grabs me and says, “Come with us. I want you to meet the boys and tell them about Krishna.” So just the five of us sat in the lunchroom, and I was kind of in the center and the other four at the corners. You can read the full discussion in Volume 1 of my books, Chasing Rhinos with the Swami. Maybe we can talk more about that later.

Bill: Oh, sure, Chasing Rhinos with the Swami.

Shyamasundar: They asked me questions like “Who is God?” and “What is the purpose of life?” and “Where do we go from here?” These essential questions of the soul got asked, these incredible questions, for about two hours. And somehow or other Krishna gave me the tongue to answer. How else do you bear the intense scrutiny from the world’s most famous men? Anyway, so the call came, “Back on the set everyone.” We went to the door and John says to me, “Me and Yoko are getting a new place out in Ascot. Plenty of room out there, but it’s a bit run down. You guys need a place to live. Do you think you guys could come out and stay with us there and help fix the place up?”

Bill: Wow!

Shyamasundar: So later in August a bunch of us, about 30 Krishna devotees and my spiritual master, Bhaktivedanta Swami, the 30 of us and Prabhupada, we did move out to John’s Tittenhurst estate, Berkshire, and we lived there with John and Yoko until late in October that year when our new temple was ready in central London. So that’s what happened on that day.

Bill: It’s fascinating that John always seemed to sway between being the believer and being the skeptic, between wanting to believe and the kind of cynical Liverpool guy who dismissed it. Did you see that, him going through those changes at the time?

Shyamasundar: Say again, did I see him going through…

Bill: Did you see him kind of going back and forth between “Imagine there’s no heaven” and wanting to believe, between God as a concept by which we measure our pain and the part of him that would invite you all to come live in his house?

Shyamasundar: Yes, he was searching desperately for solutions to where they were in the world and that rocketship they were riding. But he was also very cautious in accepting beliefs. He wanted to see us up close and see how we acted and what we did in our daily lives. That was very important to him. He observed us for several months. But, of course, other things were going on in his life at that time too. I don’t want to get into too much about that, the whole thing with instant karma and all that. It was also dragging him…John was dragged from two directions at the same time.

Bill: Yeah, that’s for sure. It made it tough for him to get through life, but he certainly created some brilliant art out of it. I do have to ask as someone who was kind of with George at the Let It Be sessions, I assume you were also with George during the days when he walked out. Could you talk to us a little bit about what you might have said to him then or what he might have been looking for?

Shyamasundar: OK. He had some songs he wanted to play the boys like the “I, Me, Mine” song that did wind up, I think, on the final album. And the others were kind of making fun of him. I don’t know. I had only known George for about two weeks. There were all kinds of undercurrents going on that I couldn’t read. But yes, George did walk out and then reconciled again, which I think was an important lesson for the whole world to see, that we can resolve everything.

Bill: Yeah. Of course, you remained friends with George for the rest of his life. I know in 1996 you made a pilgrimage together to India to the holy cities. What in George stayed the same from the time you met him in 1968 until the end of his life, and what had changed in him?

Shyamasundar: Well, George…

Bill: It’s an essay question, I know.

Shyamasundar: Well…

Bill: You know, Shyamasundar, I don’t want to put you on the spot. That’s a big question about someone who you were very close with for a very long time. Let me throw it back to Tom, and we can talk about some music.

Tom: Yeah. So, Shyamasundar, you embrace Krishna here in America, you take the trip to London to try and get the message spread, and you and your wife form a band when you get to London, The Radha Krishna Temple, and started performing around London. Now, you guys originally submitted a demo tape to Apple and it wasn’t accepted, right? What happened there, because we’re going to get to the good part of the story where then George offers you the good chance and great fortune to record there. But originally you guys submitted a demo tape to Peter Asher, right?

Shyamasundar: Yeah. I guess I should backtrack just a bit there. I was in jail in late 1967 on an old drug dealing charge, and I got the idea in my head, “Krishna, if you get me out of here, I am going to London to tell the Beatles about You.”

Tom: Wow, that’s huge!

Shyamasundar: So a month later I was out and I proposed to the Swami, Bhaktivedanta Swami, my spiritual master, and to my best Krishna friends that we go to England. And we got the green light from the Swami, and by the first of September 1968 we were in London. There were six of us and my little 3-month-old daughter, Saraswati. We didn’t have any money and we didn’t know anyone in the UK, but we were kind of riding Krishna’s inconceivable plan. And three months later we were friends with the Beatles.

We knew that the only way we could attract the Beatles’ attention was if we were fellow musicians. So luckily Mike Grant, now Mukunda dasa, and Joanie, you just heard her voice on the “Hare Krishna Mantra,” Yamuna dasi, they were both accomplished musicians. So Yamuna had the sweetest voice you ever heard. Yes, our demo tape was rejected by Apple. But we were chanting and performing at the Roundhouse and other gigs around London, and there was lots of publicity about us in the underground press. News traveled fast in the underground London in 1968. So by the time I did meet George at that Christmas party at Apple, he walked across this crowded room past dozens of celebrities and held his hand out to me and said, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting to meet you.” And then fast forward to Twickenham Studios two weeks later.

Tom: Wow. Now, they were embracing the idea of a mantra, and we actually want to play a little bit of a tape. This is George speaking with Swami Prabhupada in Savile Row offices in 1969. Jackie, can you cue up George discussing the mantra concept for us?

George Harrison: Isn’t it like flowers? If somebody may prefer roses and somebody may like carnations better, isn’t it really a matter for the devotee? One person may find Hare Krishna is more beneficial to his spiritual progress, and yet somebody else some other mantra may be more beneficial. Isn’t it like just a matter of taste like judging a flower? They’re all flowers, but some people may like one better than the other.

Tom: So he’s kind of giving the mantra concept, which they had learned in India, kind of giving it a second chance. They were discussing the Hare Krishna mantra where Swami was basically proclaiming it to be the mantra of all mantras, and they were embracing that as early as 1969.

So under the heading of second chances, even though initially rejected by Apple, George offers to record you. Tell us how that comes to be.

Shyamasundar: Well, fast forward a little bit more and in early July 1969 George rings me up from Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles were recording their Abbey Road album, and he says, “John’s been in a bit of a car smash-up and can’t make it tonight. There’s some studio time. Come on down and we’ll make a record.” Then in a few hours time we had the “Hare Krishna Mantra” in the can.

Tom: Tell us about…you play an instrument called, if I’m pronouncing this right, an esraj, is that right?

Shyamasundar: Yeah, it’s like a violin, a bowed Indian instrument with about 32 strings.

Tom: That single, which we heard a bit of before, the “Hare Krishna Mantra,” comes out in August of ’69 just as the Beatles are recording Abbey Road. It goes to number 12 on the UK charts, and you guys go on Top of the Pops. Did you in your wildest dreams see that coming?

Shyamasundar: Suddenly we’re pop stars!

Tom Right.

Shyamasundar: We did a concert tour of Britain and Europe and appeared on the TV shows like Top of the Pops and Top Pop in Amsterdam. George often said later that one of the happiest moments in his life was sitting at home watching us do the Hare Krishna mantra on the telly.

Tom: I have to ask. Who else was on Top of the Pops that week? Who did you meet in the green room?

Shyamasundar: Oh, there was a lot of famous people. I’ve listed them in my book, I don’t remember offhand.

Tom: Before the full album takes shape, there’s yet another single which Apple cited in all of its marketing materials and the trade ads that they did, they called it “the best record ever made.” Now, this is coming from the company that runs the Beatles. The song is called “Govinda,” and it really says a lot about how the movement was gaining momentum through the power of music. Tell us about “Govinda.”

Shyamasundar: Well, if the Beatles liked the Hare Krishna and their music, so did the whole world. For us, this fame in popular music was a preaching tool for higher knowledge, to tell the whole world about Krishna consciousness. Our music is embedded with information about ancient philosophy and the practice of God consciousness. Stuff like “I am not my body. I am a tiny spark of spirit soul longing to be reunited in love with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who likes to be called Krishna.”

Tom: Yeah!

Shyamasundar: So with the Beatles’ seal of approval, so to speak, Krishna consciousness spread around the world like lightning.

Tom: Well, it did it both through your music, and George is now starting to make his own records in 1970—of course, the famous All Things Must Pass record—and by ’71 is producing Ringo’s record. What we want to play here are a couple of excerpts of very well-known big hit records by George and Ringo where listeners can hear the Hare Krishna mantra built into these Western songs. So Jackie, please first cue up George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord.”

[clip of “My Sweet Lord”]

So we hear the Hare Krishna mantra built as the backing vocals in a worldwide number one hit single. So they’re helping you guys get that message out there. Whether listeners are actively or passively embracing it, one way or the other it’s getting through.

Shyamasundar: Yeah, well, George always felt that his whole life purpose was to inform the world about God. In the spring of 1970, several Hare Krishna householder couples including myself, my wife, and several others, we went out to live with George and Pattie at Friar Park, George’s new estate out there in Oxfordshire. And over the next four or five months while we lived there, George wrote and recorded his first solo album, All Things Must Pass, which includes the song which you just played. But if I look back, by now George was pretty much on his own.

Tom: Oh, yeah.

Shyamasundar: He was inspired somewhat by us living under the same roof, but he was already there. He already knew the Krishna philosophy and way of life. OK, sometimes he’d ask me for what rhymes with this word or play a few lines and ask me, “What do you think of this?” But by now George was complete unto himself with a full wind in his sails, and we were just simply fellow travelers.

Tom: Yeah, and that full wind brings him to producing Ringo’s hit single, “It Don’t Come Easy.” Now, this mention of Hare Krishna is buried a bit in the mix, and through the magic of radio our engineer and ace producer, Carl Kranz, has lifted the vocal out from the mix and we’re going to hear this. And once you hear this in this Ringo song, you’ll never be able to unhear it. Jackie, please cue up that excerpt of “It Don’t Come Easy.”

[clip of “It Don’t Come Easy” with “Hare Krishna” in background]

So we got the Hare Krishna even in “It Don’t Come Easy.” So he was getting that message out whether it was subliminally or out front or however it was being done.

So by that point it’s 1971, and now The Radha Krsna Temple album appears. You’ve been on Top of the Pops twice with your two hit singles, and by now George has really blended the mantra into Western music and involved people like not only Ringo but Billy Preston and Klaus Voorman and all the other guys at Apple. Tell us about how George worked with the members of the temple to get that very precise desired blend of East and Western influences to co-exist.

Shyamasundar: I think George…he didn’t work with us all that much. I think he already had all of this in him. If you can try to wrap your mind around this that there’s no doubt in my mind looking back that George and the other Beatles, but especially George, were highly developed yogis in their past lives, and they were born into this incredible opportunity to finish the job and get out of this material plane and take as many with them as will listen. So we didn’t really have that much influence on George other than just the philosophy. The sound and the music came from him, from his ear, through his ears and his brain and his soul.

Tom: Wow, this has been just so enlightening, Shyamasundar. I have one last question, and it’s kind of my version of what Bill did before, the essay question, the big jackpot one. As you mentioned, years later it was I think in the 1980s, George looked back on that record, The Radha Krsna Temple, calling that appearance on the Top of the Pops one of the greatest thrills of his life and said it was so much more than making a hit pop record. It was the feeling of utilizing your own talents to do some spiritual service for Krishna. How do you think the record holds up today in its place in Beatles and Krishna legacies?

Shyamasundar: Well, George really got it. Action means service for God. The Sanskrit word for this is bhakti or activity performed in the mood of love for God. And just as devotees will be listening to our Radha Krsna Temple records forever, you can also say that “Get Back,” “My Sweet Lord,” all these songs will be playing in supermarkets and elevators forever and ever. The Beatles were and they always will be the most vivid examples of musicians striving for transcendence, for going beyond and getting to the heart of our brief and rather comical existence in this material world. I would say in answer to your question that the Beatles and Krishna consciousness are both forever ideas, and they are somehow inextricably linked in this eternal dance of time.

Tom: Yeah, and that’s a great answer, by the way, you aced the essay portion of our test. Actually, if people want to hear that, The Radha Krsna Temple album is back in print on Apple but also on the Best of Apple, that great sampler that’s out there with songs from Badfinger and Mary Hopkin and Billy Preston and James Taylor. There is it, “Govinda,” which Apple had called in 1969 “the greatest record ever made.”

Shyamasundar, you have been an absolute delight to talk with. Hare Krishna.

Shyamasundar: Do I have a second to…

Bill: Yes, we want to hear about your book. We want to hear where we can get Chasing Rhinos with the Swami.

Shyamasundar: OK. Well, you might want to read my books. They’re called Chasing Rhinos with the Swami. You can check them out at www.chasingrhinos.com, and there are dozens of stories in these books, never heard before stories about all the Beatles, but especially about George and his love for Krishna and Prabhupada and the Krishna devotees. So George fans especially will like the recent Volume 3 of Chasing Rhinos, and these are tales from our later post-Beatles years together, our wild adventures in India and other places through the ’80s and ’90s. And that’s, again, www.chasingrhinos.com.

Bill: I’m ordering that as soon as this show is done.

Dennis: Hi, it’s Dennis, and I did want to…I also was looking through all the information and I read this quote because I wondered, “Gee, why is it called Chasing Rhinos with the Swami?” And there is in here…now, I don’t know if this is something that you have said or this is a traditional saying, you can explain. Why call it Chasing Rhinos with the Swami? And this is the quote:

We should always be enthusiastic to try for capturing the rhinoceros. That way, if we fail, everyone will say, “Never mind, nobody can catch a rhinoceros anyway,” and if we succeed, then everyone will say, “Just see what a wonderful thing they have done!”

Shyamasundar: Well, this was Prabhupada’s, Bhaktivedanta Swami’s formula for action. He always said… If you’ve ever read Bhagavad-gita, on the battlefield where Arjuna is asking Krishna, the Supreme Person, “What should I do?” Krishna gives him the blueprint for action, that our actions should be for God and to aim for the highest thing, the best thing, the most powerful thing you can do for Him in your service. So that’s the theme.

Dennis: Well, then, we thank you for spending time with us, and I think everyone will appreciate and perhaps better understand this next song.

[“My Sweet Lord”] [END]