Details
- Published: Mar 26, 1968
Timeline
Previous interview Feb 24, 1968 • Paul McCartney interview for Evening Standard
Article Mar 25, 1968 • Paul and Jane's short visit to Tehran
Article Mar 26, 1968 • Paul and Jane are back in London
Interview Mar 26, 1968 • Press Conference - Paul and Jane are back from India
Article Mar 29, 1968 • Derek Taylor joins Apple
Album Apr 06, 1968 • "Sher-oo! (Stereo)" by Cilla Black released in the UK
Next interview May 13, 1968 • Interview with Larry Kane
The Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Aug 24, 1967 • The Beatles meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Aug 25, 1967 • The Beatles travel to Bangor with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Aug 26, 1967 • The Beatles join a seminar with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Aug 27, 1967 • The Beatles leave Bangor and react to Brian Epstein's death
Aug 31, 1967 • The Beatles meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Kensington
October 14-15, 1967 • Paul McCartney and George Harrison visit the Maharishi in Sweden
Feb 19 to Mar 24, 1968 (Paul) • The Beatles in India
Feb 19, 1968 • Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr travel to India
Mar 24, 1968 • Paul and Jane leave Rishikesh
Mar 26, 1968 • Press Conference - Paul and Jane are back from India
This interview remains the property of the respective copyright owner, and no implication of ownership by us is intended or should be inferred. Any copyright owner who wants something removed should contact us and we will do so immediately.
In February 1968, The Beatles embarked on their visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India to take part in a Transcendental Meditation training course. The Beatles travelled in separate groups both to depart and return. Paul McCartney and his girlfriend, Jane Asher, departed from London on February 19, 1968,
On March 24, they left Rishikesh to return to London, along with Neil Aspinall. They departed India on Qantas flight QF 763 at 23:45 and arrived in Tehran at 02:10. They spent a day in Tehran and left on March 26, departing at 02:55 and arriving in London at 08:15.
Paul and Jane said a few words to the journalists present.
Q: Well you look very happy. Do you feel better after five weeks of meditation?
Paul McCartney: Yes, yes, I feel a lot better, except for the flight, you know. That’s quite long. I’m a bit shattered, but the meditation is great!
You sit down, you relax, and then you repeat a sound to yourself. It sounds daft, but it’s just a system of relaxation, and that’s all it is. There’s nothing more to it. We meditated for about five hours a day in all. Two hours in the morning and maybe three hours in the evening, and then, for the rest of the time, we slept, ate, sunbathed and had fun.
Q: One Indian MP accused the camp where you stayed as being an espionage centre, and you, in fact, as being a spy for the West.
Paul McCartney: Yes, it’s true. Yes, we are spies. The four of us are spies. Actually, I’m a reporter and I joined The Beatles for that very reason. The story is out next week in a paper which shall be nameless.
Q: Jane, did you go for a holiday or did you go to meditate as well?
Jane Asher: Oh, to meditate.
Q: And what effect did it have on you? This, I presume, is your first big meditation experience?
Jane Asher: Yes. I think it calms you down. It’s hard to tell because it was so different, you know, the life out there. It’d be easy to tell now that I’m back, or when we’re doing ordinary things, to see just what it does.
Q: We’ve heard about the extreme poverty that exists in India. Presumably you saw some of that?
Paul McCartney: Yes, oh yes. I don’t equate it, you know, because it’s nothing to do with it, you know. The idea is to stop poverty at its root. You see, if we just give handouts to people, it’ll just stop the problems for a day, or a week, you know. But, in India, there are so many people, you really need all of America’s money to pour into India to solve it, you know. So, you’ve got to get to the cause of it and persuade all the Indians to start working and, you know, start doing things. Their religions, it’s very fatalistic, and they just sit down and think, ‘God said, this is it, so it’s too bad to do anything about it.’ The Maharishi’s trying to persuade them that they can do something about it.
Meditating Beatle talks of poverty
Beatle Paul McCartney, puts an affectionate arm around his actress girlfriend Jane Asher on their arrival at Heathrow Airport from Teheran, Persia, yesterday.
BEATLE Paul McCartney and his girl friend, actress Jane Asher, flew home yesterday from their Indian meditation feeling “great.” They said that their stay with the Maharishi was so successful that they plan to go on meditating for an hour each day -half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening.
Asked how he could equate the academy with all the poverty in India, Paul McCartney said: “Of course, you have a conscience when you see beggars in the street, but there are so many of them that if you give them a few rupees they have one meal and have to start begging again. The Maharishi is trying to get to the root of the trouble.”
Paul said he paid for his stay before leaving for India but could not remember how much it was. He and the Beatles had written ten songs while they were there.
About a proposed peace festival for London this summer, he said: “It is the idea of one of the Beach Boys, Mike Love. We have merely said that, if it gets off the ground, it would be a good idea. There are no details worked out so far.”
John Lennon and George Harrison are due home in three weeks. Paul said that Ringo Starr had come home not because the place had got him down— “There were a couple of reasons — mainly the kids, I think.”
From The Guardian – March 27, 1968
‘CARRY ON THINKING’ IS BEATLE PAUL’S PLAN
BEATLE Paul McCartney and his girlfriend Jane Asher flew home yesterday from their Indian meditations.
Paul said about their stay with the Maharishi: “It wasn’t exactly like the Hilton Hotel.” Jane added: ”It was just like being at school.“When Ringo Starr came back at the beginning of the month he said: “It was more like a nice sort of holiday camp.” Paul said Ringo did not come home because the place got him down. He added: “There were a couple of reasons — mainly the kids, I think.”
The two Beatles still in India, John Lennon and George Harrison, are due home in three weeks. Paul and Jane said they were feeling “great.” And that life with the Maharishi had been so successful that they planned to go on meditating for an hour each day.
Paul said that to meditate they had to think of a sound or a word and keep repeating it to themselves. He said: “It seems a bit daft at first, but then you find that it really helps you to relax completely. We meditated for about five hours a day and we ate, slept and sunbathed.”
He added that he and the Beatles had written 10 songs while they were in India. Asked if the Maharishi was too commercially minded, Paul replied: “He must have money to keep the academies going. Let’s face it, the Pope is far richer.“
As he puffed at a cigarette, he went on: “We are not suddenly going to become crusaders. We are going on making records and will just try to do what we can to help peace. If we started crusading, people would only say we were doing it for the money.”
Paul denied a report he was going to marry soon. He said: “If there’s any girl I will marry it’s Jane. But I’m not going to name a day.”
From Daily Record – March 27, 1968
