George Harrison Said Indian Music Sounded Familiar When He First Heard It, Like It Was ‘Calling Him Back to a Place He Already Knew’
George Harrison preferred Indian music to any other form of music, even rock ‘n’ roll. Of course, George had a profound experience hearing Elvis Presley and Fats Domino for the first time. However, hearing the sounds of Indian music for the first time had an even more significant effect on him.
George felt strange about his first encounter with the music. He felt like it was “calling him back to a place he already knew.”
George Harrison first heard Indian music on the set of The Beatles’ ‘Help!’
In 1965, George first heard Indian music on the set of The Beatles’ second film, Help! In a scene, The Beatles go to an Indian restaurant, and a band plays.
According to Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, George came across a sitar on set and “couldn’t stop staring at it.”
“He picked it up and was intrigued by its unusual shape and dozens of strings. He strummed it, taken by its unusual sound,” Greene wrote.
In 1992, George told Timothy White (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), “When we were waiting to shoot the scene, I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, ‘Wow, this is a funny sound.’ But in a way that was just a kind of incidental thing.
“It wasn’t a very memorable thing; it was just something during one day of shooting, it didn’t stick in my mind until the thing that happened next, which had something to do with smoking reefer or taking LSD, and … I’d hate to say it.”
Days later, in London, George couldn’t get his mind off the funny sound of the sitar so he bought one. The band had been looking to vamp up their new song, “Norwegian Wood.” So, George improvised some sitar into the song, and it worked.
George felt he’d heard Indian music before
George’s friend, David Crosby, from The Byrds, and later Crosby, Stills & Nash, recommended Ravi Shankar’s music. So, the Beatle bought some of Shankar’s albums. Shankar’s music amazed George and made him a little curious. He felt as if he’d heard the music before.
“One of Shankar’s most popular albums in 1965 was Raga, which featured duets with childhood friend and sarod master Ali Akbar Khan,” Greene wrote. “The opening track, ‘Raga Palas Kafi,’ began with a tambura’s drone. Five long stainless steel strings, plucked in slow, hypnotic repetition, sent solitary notes resonating deep within the instrument’s hollow base.
“Against this neutral, contemplative background, Shankar played a yearning, bending, dreamlike series of notes, more suggestions than statements of sound. Edges of music ebbed and flowed like waves lapping a beach, tempting listeners to wade into deeper waters. Describing the moment years later, George said the music felt familiar, not intellectually but emotionally, as though calling him back to a place he already knew.”
George explained how he felt hearing Indian music for the first time to White.
He said, “Somewhere down the line there was a point where I heard Ravi Shankar’s name, and then I heard it again, and then the third time I heard it I thought, ‘Wow, this is like a funny coincidence, this name Ravi Shankar.’
“And I talked about him with Dave Crosby from the Byrds. And he mentioned the name… I went and bought a record; I put it on, and it just seemed to me like it hit a certain spot in me that I can’t explain. My intellect didn’t really know what was going on, but it just hit a spot where it seemed very familiar to me.
“The only way I could describe it was my intellect didn’t know what was going on musically, and yet this other part of me identified with it. I mean, I’m not sure, maybe I’d heard it. We used to have shortwave radios, you know, when I was growing up, and all evening the radio would be on, and my mother was always tuning it into all kinds of weird–whatever you could pick up on it.
“So maybe I’d heard it from Algeria or somewhere, or maybe I heard it in some other lifetime! [Laughs.] Who knows? It was something that was like it just called on me, and I just heard it, and I felt very familiar with it.”
The former Beatle’s mother played him Indian music in utero, according to Greene
George’s guesses on where he might have heard Indian music before 1965 are somewhat accurate, at least according to Greene.
Technically, George first heard Indian music while his mother was pregnant with him. Greene wrote that she used to play the radio station, Radio India, hoping the mystical sounds of the Eastern music would calm her rambunctious unborn baby.
The former Beatle’s guess that he might have heard the music in a former lifetime is also interesting. After hearing Indian music, George met Shankar, and the sitar legend gave him the tools to succeed on the instrument and in spiritual matters. He gave the rock star religious texts and took him to the Himalayas. Soon, George learned about reincarnation.
Maybe George did remember Indian music from a former lifetime and then reconnected with it briefly while in the womb and later on the set of Help! Of course, it would seem strange hearing the sitar on set, like getting a severe case of Deja Vu.
One thing’s for sure; it’s eerie that Indian music seemed so familiar to George, like he’d always known about it. Is it a creepy coincidence, or was George destined to hear the music? Only George knows now.
