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The Beatles and India

  • Magical Mystery TourMagical Mystery Tour arrived in British record shops on the 8th of December 1967, packaged in a format that had never existed before in the UK: a double EP…
  • Revolver (Beatles album)Revolver, the Beatles’ seventh studio album, arrived on the 5th of August 1966 with a record cover unlike anything pop music had seen: a tangle of hair…
  • Love You To"Love You To" arrived on the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver as something rock audiences had simply never heard before. Tabla drums, a droning tambura, a sitar…
  • Maharishi Mahesh YogiMaharishi Mahesh Yogi arrived in Hawaii in the spring of 1959 carrying nothing. The Honolulu Star Bulletin described him this way: "He has no money, he asks…
  • The Beatles (album)The Beatles, released on the 22nd of November 1968, arrived in a plain white sleeve with no artwork, no colour, no decoration beyond the band's name pressed…
  • The Beatles in IndiaIn February 1968, four young men from Liverpool crossed the River Ganges on foot, walked up a jungle hill, and disappeared behind the locked gates of a…
  • Help!The Beatles appeared in their first feature film, A Hard Day's Night, during 1964. Reviews were near universal in their acclaim and elevated the band's…
  • Help! (film)An eastern cult gathers on a beach to sacrifice a woman to their goddess, Kaili. They notice she is not wearing the sacrificial ring.
  • Strawberry Fields Forever"Strawberry Fields Forever" arrived on the 13th of February 1967, and almost nobody knew what to make of it. Derek Johnson of the NME confessed in print that…
  • Tomorrow Never Knows"Tomorrow Never Knows" arrived on the 5th of August 1966 as the final track on Revolver, closing a Beatles album like nothing the band had ever recorded…
  • Within You Without You"Within You Without You" was written by George Harrison in early 1967 on a harmonium at the north London home of musician Klaus Voormann.
  • Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar was "horrified." At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, he watched Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage.
  • Baby, You're a Rich Man"Baby, You're a Rich Man" was born at midnight in May 1967, when the Beatles spent six hours at an independent studio in Barnes, south-west London, stitching…
  • Dear Prudence"Dear Prudence" was written in early 1968 in the foothills of the Himalayas, far from any recording studio. John Lennon was sitting beneath a jacaranda tree…
  • Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) opens with one of rock music's most carefully evasive lines: "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." John…
  • Rain (Beatles song)"Rain" by the Beatles arrived on the 30th of May 1966 as the B-side to "Paperback Writer", and it carried something listeners had never quite encountered…
  • Sexy Sadie"Sexy Sadie" began as something far more blunt: a song called "Maharishi." John Lennon wrote it in India in 1968, bags already packed, ready to leave the…
  • The Inner Light (song)"The Inner Light" arrived in record shops on the 15th of March 1968, tucked away as the B-side to "Lady Madonna", and most listeners probably flipped the…