The Beatles’ Dynamic Changed for the Worse When They Were in India, Said a Band Associate
In 1968, The Beatles traveled to India to take part in a Transcendental Meditation course. While there, the band members were prolifically creative. They wrote dozens of songs that ended up on their White Album. While they had planned to stay at the ashram for three months, some cut their visit short. The band’s sound engineer said he noticed a marked difference in their dynamic after the trip.
The Beatles traveled to India in 1968
The Beatles traveled to India with the purpose of learning about Transcendental Meditation so they could later spread word of its benefits. George Harrison had grown interested in the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the band attended one of his seminars in 1966.
“We’re all going to India for a couple of months to study Transcendental Meditation properly,” John Lennon said, per The Beatles Anthology. “We want to learn properly so we can propagate it and sell the whole idea to everyone. This is how we plan to use our power now — they’ve always called us leaders of youth, and we believe that this is a good way to give a lead.”
The groups and their wives traveled there for a lengthy stay, but McCartney and Starr cut their trips short. By the end of his time there, Lennon had turned on the Maharishi, becoming convinced he’d engaged in sexual activity with some of the women.
The Beatles’ dynamics were different after India, said their sound engineer
When The Beatles returned to the studio, sound engineer Geoff Emerick said Lennon seemed venomous, while McCartney was “expressionless and weary.” The dynamic between the group seemed to have shifted while they were away.
“I sensed at that moment that something fundamental in them had changed,” Emerick wrote in his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “They were searching for something, but they didn’t know quite what it was; they had journeyed to India looking for answers, and they were disappointed that they hadn’t found them there…but it seemed to me that they didn’t even know the questions. Certainly they seemed more defensive than they had been, more on their guard.”
He said Lennon seemed the most changed by the experience, but the dynamics between all of them seemed strained.
“The rage that was bubbling inside John was the most obvious sign that something was seriously wrong,” Emerick wrote. “There was new tension between John and Paul, and even between John and Ringo, in addition to the often strained relationship that Paul had with George, and the resentment that Ringo sometimes exhibited when Paul coached him too much on drum parts.”
Emerick noted that only Lennon and Harrison seemed to get along. He wondered if this was because they stayed the longest.
John Lennon had a particularly bad time
The other residents at the ashram noticed a change in Lennon as well. He began pushing the group to leave at the end of the trip.
“[S]omebody, whether they made up a rumor or it was true about Maharishi, that he tried to have sex with one of the girls, sort of shocked us, in particular John, who wanted a reason to get away,” Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, said in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “That’s why he left.”
As they drove away, Lennon grew visibly distressed.
“We drove for miles, miles, hundreds of miles,” Boyd’s sister Jenny said. “I remember at one point, all the cars stopped and suddenly John screamed! Suddenly just screamed. He was desperate to leave.”
She believed the frustration hit Lennon so hard because he had developed a firm belief in meditation.
“I think it affected him the worst,” she said. “Because he was suspicious originally, then he started to believe. I think he got the spiritual belief cut off, which is far more dangerous than any other belief [to lose].”
