The 50 Greatest Musical Places by Sarah Woods

Author:Sarah Woods [Sarah Woods]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785781902
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2017-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

The Beatles’ Ashram, as it has come to be called, was abandoned in the 1970s before being taken over by the local forestry commission in 2003. It has continued to remain a big draw for Beatles fans around the world – a much less obvious choice than, say, Liverpool or London and you can spot where pilgrims have scaled the walls or bribed the guard to allow them to spend time walking in the footsteps of their musical heroes. In and around the retreat, there are steady streams of loincloth-clad travellers slowly plodding the town’s hot, dusty streets to reach the banks of the sacred Ganges, which sweeps majestically through the town and out onto the great Indian plains. Here, on the steps that lead down to the water, gurus and yogic followers participate in daily prayers and fire worship. These rituals, combined with the classical music and philosophy of India, had a career-changing effect on the Beatles, who became fascinated by Indian culture and its traditional music and instruments. Though they first met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in London in 1967, when the group attended one of his lectures, at the time, nobody guessed that the association would lead to the Beatles’ highest-selling and arguably most polarising album to date: a body of work so incredibly different from anything the Fab Four had done before.

The Beatles’ Ashram is set at the end of a loose-stone track behind a set of huge iron gates overlooking the Ganges River. Daily rituals create magical moods: first the cymbals, then the drums and then finally the singing begins, echoing the rhythm of the river. Days start early with yoga and meditation and learning how to pursue a simple, clean, healthy way of life – this silent time is important as it allows you to stretch, breathe and contemplate. The diet is vegetarian, the living arrangements communal, and at night candles are lit and sent down the river in leaf baskets as an after-dark ritual. It is also customary for devotees to take a dip in the Ganges, bobbing up and down under the water three times before cupping the water and imbibing it.

Most foreign visitors do like the Beatles and fly into New Delhi before transferring to Rishikesh the next day. The Fab Four stayed at the Oberoi Hotel and enjoyed a day of full-on shopping Indian-style, buying artefacts from antique shops and Indian instruments from Rikhi Ram & Sons on New Delhi’s Connaught Circle. By the time the Beatles had left India, the influence of the country was highly visible – in their facial hair, their clothes, their vocabulary and their music. Numerous songs by the band have a telltale Indian influence, including the sound of the instruments the band purchased in Delhi. Forty years on and The White Album still prompts great debate and divided opinion. In 2001, the TV network VH1 named it ‘the 11th greatest album ever’ and in 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number ten in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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