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"Wonderwall Music"

 (by George Harrison, January 11th 1968,
Abbey Road Studios, London)



While the world still was seesawing to the Beatles' hymns "Hey Jude" and "Revolution",  Master Harrison already was actively engaged in bringing its new world-music works into position for posterity. The album built wondrous sounds from Indian everyday life with rockabilly instrumentals. His two friends, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton, can be heard under the pseudonyms Roy Dyke and Eddie Clayton, just like Ali Akbar's son, Ashish Khan, on the sarod. Ashish Khan was a nephew of Ravi Shankar, and Sir George gave the son of Ali Akbar Khan some support for his own album "Young Master of Sarod" for which he wrote some liner notes.


(Wonderwall, at YouTube)



The Wonderwall Music Cover Art was a true intriguing commentary on the subject of East meets West, or Ying & Yang. On the cover photo, a high wall separates skinnydipping maidens who keep their sari clothing in the branches of the tree that shade-givingly bends  its branches over the water. A scene that also exists in the popular Indian Bhagavata Purana, where the young hero Krishna pilfers the clothes of the Gopis from the tree.

On the other side of the wall, a typical Englishman, not in New York, in "suit and bowler"m representing a person that has prescribed herself to the standard. The hole in the wall, symbolized by the lack of a brick, only allows very limitedly to take a look at the other side - to throw a glimpse into transzendence.


(Wonderwall Music "Singing Om" at YouTube)


George Harrison, as so often, had understood well to integrate the two sides of his own life - gently blending the two worlds very smoothly in his Beatles music in the Wonderwall Music, which, to mention it again, was the first solo work of a Beatle at all, and which shows to which all the other Indian-inspired Beatles songs by George would be culminating.

Unfortunately, no one has yet created a CD with all the Indian-inspired songs by George Harrison in the order of their release date. So to speak, with a starting accord from "Norwegian Wood", then "Love You To", "Within You Without You",  "The Inner Light" up to the end of the Wonderwall album with "Singing Om", and later singing Hare Krishna with the Radha Krishna Temple album, and of course the mantra gospel song "My Sweet Lord". Too bad actually, Sir George would have loved it for sure.
Wonderwall To Be Here would be wonderful.



("To Be Here" & "Cowboy Song" at YouTube)


The song I actually can remember best is the  cowboy song that had more of wide prairie of freedom in the Woodstock Mountains, where George was riding with his friend Bob Dylan on horseback through the landscape, accompanying his thoughts on the guitar. At that time, as a seventeen year old, I thought it was just amazing,  a sound  experience of very special kind, which ecstatically collapsed onto me and my friend Ron in our room of the inner light. It was like a kind of modern Harisong Orchestra for us guys, who until then only had heard rock and pop, so to speak, World Music the First.!
Hari George, Son Of Krishna!




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