Rishikesh Song Download [TOP]

In February 1968, the English rock band the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to take part in a Transcendental Meditation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The visit followed the group's denunciation of drugs in favour of TM[1] and received widespread media attention. The band's interest in the Maharishi's teachings was led by George Harrison's commitment,[2][3] and it changed Western attitudes about Indian spirituality and encouraged the study of Transcendental Meditation.[4] The visit was also the most productive period for the Beatles' songwriting.

The Beatles had intended to join the Maharishi in India soon after attending his seminar in Bangor, Wales in late August 1967. Their attendance at the seminar was cut short by the death of their manager Brian Epstein, after which they committed to making the television film Magical Mystery Tour. Harrison and John Lennon were convinced of the merits of TM and became spokesmen for the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as he gained international prominence as the guru to the Beatles. The band members arrived in India in mid-February 1968, along with their wives, girlfriends, assistants, and numerous reporters. They joined a group of 60 training to be TM teachers; among the other celebrity meditators were musicians Donovan, Mike Love and Paul Horn, and actress Mia Farrow. While there, Lennon, Paul McCartney and Harrison wrote many songs, and Ringo Starr finished writing his first. Eighteen were recorded for The Beatles ("the White Album"), two others appeared on the Abbey Road album, and others were used for various solo projects.

Rishikesh Song Download

Download 🔥 https://urluss.com/2y4Pfq 🔥

Harrison flew to Bombay in January 1968 to work on the Wonderwall Music soundtrack, expecting the rest of the group to follow shortly. When they were delayed he flew back to London.[27] The group spent a week in the studio, recording songs for a single that would be released while they were away on their spiritual retreat.[28] The B-side, Harrison's "The Inner Light", was mostly recorded in Bombay and featured Indian instrumentation[29] and lyrics espousing meditation as a means to genuine understanding of the world.[30] Although it remained unreleased until late 1969, Lennon's "Across the Universe" contained the refrain "Jai Guru Deva",[31] a standard greeting in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement.[32] Aside from the celebrity musicians who now endorsed TM, the Maharishi had gained the support of American film star Mia Farrow while in New York City. In late January, amid the publicity surrounding her separation from her husband, Frank Sinatra, Farrow accompanied the Maharishi to India in advance of the Beatles' departure from London.[15]

Also there were Donovan, songwriter and sculptor Gyp "Gypsy Dave" Mills,[46] Mike Love,[24] jazz flautist Paul Horn, actors Tom Simcox and Jerry Stovin,[47][48] and dozens of others, all Europeans or Americans.[39][49] Farrow was joined by her sister, Prudence, and their brother John.[15][49] American socialite Nancy Cooke de Herrera was also present, in her role as the Maharishi's publicist and confidant.[50][nb 2] A lifelong devotee to TM and subsequently an instructor to many celebrities,[51][53] Cooke de Herrara later wrote that the Maharishi gave "special attention" to the celebrity meditators, which she feared would feed their egos and be detrimental to the experience.[54] Although members of the press were barred from the ashram,[55] journalist Lewis Lapham was granted access to write a feature article on the retreat for The Saturday Evening Post.[41][nb 3] Paul Saltzman, a young Canadian filmmaker travelling in India, camped outside the compound until he was invited in and welcomed into the Beatles' circle.[58][59] Despite speculation, Shirley MacLaine did not attend the retreat,[10][60] and Lennon decided against bringing his artist friend Yoko Ono.[61][62]

Saltzman recalls that the Beatles were "very close and tight" during his time at the ashram.[82] According to Damodara, however, at times McCartney "talk[ed] mean with George" and appeared to want to be the Beatles' "boss".[121] Donovan taught Lennon a guitar finger-picking technique that McCartney partly mastered also.[122] The technique was subsequently implemented by Lennon on the Beatles songs "Julia" and "Dear Prudence".[123] The latter was composed by Lennon to lure Prudence Farrow out of her intense meditation.[124] Lennon later said: "She'd been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anyone else."[125]

The stay at the ashram turned out to be the group's most productive period for songwriting.[83] According to Lennon, he wrote some of the "most miserable"[126] and some of his "best" songs while he was in Rishikesh.[103] Starr completed his first solo composition, "Don't Pass Me By", which he had begun writing in 1963.[127] In his 2005 autobiography, Donovan recalls that while the other three Beatles played acoustic guitars, Starr sometimes played a set of tabla hand drums, which Harrison had bought for him in Delhi.[128] The retreat was also a productive one for Donovan as a songwriter.[129] He recalls having "many a great little jam" with McCartney and says that, with Harrison demonstrating on sitar the knowledge he had gained through his teacher, Ravi Shankar, he and Harrison were "soon chording a new song or two", including the Indian-styled "Hurdy Gurdy Man".[130][nb 7]

Plans were discussed for a possible concert in Delhi to feature the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Donovan, and Paul Horn.[132] While he also wrote several new songs in Rishikesh, Harrison complained that more time should be spent on meditating.[108] When McCartney discussed his vision for an album containing the songs they had amassed so far, Harrison replied: "We're not fucking here to do the next album. We're here to meditate!"[133] In Donovan's recollection, when not meditating, McCartney was rarely without his guitar and kept the Beatles party "entertained" with parody songs such as "Rocky Raccoon" and "Back in the U.S.S.R.", but he was not "totally convinced" about TM.[134] Many of the Beatles' new songs were inspired by nature and reflected the simplicity of their surroundings.[135] In this way, they contrasted markedly with the band's psychedelic work over the previous year, although few of them were overtly reflective of the TM experience.[136] An exception was "Sour Milk Sea", in which Harrison exhorts his listeners to embrace meditation and "illumination",[137] while Lennon's "Child of Nature" and McCartney's "Mother Nature's Son" were both inspired by one of the Maharishi's lectures.[138][139][nb 8]

On 25 February, the Maharishi held a party to celebrate Harrison's 25th birthday. The event included communal chanting,[145] a sitar performance by Harrison,[103] and a firework display.[158][159] The Maharishi gave Harrison an upside-down plastic globe of the world and said: "George, the globe I am giving you symbolizes the world today. I hope you will help us all in the task of putting it right."[160] Harrison turned the globe over and said "I've done it!", and the other students applauded.[161] For Love's birthday, on 15 March, members of the Beatles and Donovan performed "Spiritual Regeneration/Happy Birthday Mike Love", a song based on the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun". Lennon presented Love with a round handmade card containing a self-portrait of him naked, and Harrison gave him a painting of Guru Dev.[162] A dual celebration was held on 17 March for the birthdays of Boyd and Horn.[158] On 8 April, the Maharishi gave an Indian prince's outfit to the Lennons for their son in England on his birthday.[163][164]

In early March,[158] an Italian newsreel company filmed the Maharishi and many students, including the Beatles and other musicians, going down to the river while the musicians sang standards such as "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "You Are My Sunshine".[167][nb 11] One evening when the moon was full, the Maharishi arranged for everyone to cruise on the Ganges in two barges. The trip started with the chanting of Vedas by two pandits, after which the musicians brought out their instruments. The Beatles sang Donovan songs, while Love and Donovan sang Beatles songs, and Horn played flute.[168][169]

Writing for Mojo magazine in 2003, author and journalist Mark Paytress said that, for many observers, the Beatles' falling out with the Maharishi engendered a long-lasting suspicion that "they'd become faddists tipped into eccentric habits by unfathomable fame".[8] Having given up touring in 1966, the trip to India was the last time all four Beatles travelled together.[275] Their self-exploration through meditation and before that, LSD, led to each of them adopting a more individual focus, at the expense of band unity, through to the group's break-up in 1970.[8] The acrimony within the band was evident during the recording of their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the "White Album"), when they recorded many of the songs written in Rishikesh.[276] Adding to the tense atmosphere, after Lennon had left his wife, Ono became a constant presence from the start of the sessions and was viewed by the other Beatles as an unwelcome intrusion into the group dynamic.[277][278]

The Beats had promoted Buddhism since the 1950s, but it was George Harrison's songs espousing Hindu philosophy and featuring Indian musicians, and the Beatles' study of Transcendental Meditation, that truly kick-started the human potential movement of the 1970s (rebranded New Age in the 1980s). In this way, the musicians helped expand the freedom of religion the United States was founded on to encompass options outside the Judeo-Christian tradition.[284]

It was also the place where The Beatles, every single member of the band, found their songwriting knack. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and even Ringo Starr all created songs while out in India. In fact, many of the songs would end up on the following albums The White Album and Abbey Road, with some even making it to the bandmates solo records. e24fc04721