George Harrison took swipe at Mick Jagger over Beatles connection | Music | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Throughout the Sixties, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had been typically portrayed as rival teams in British rock music – a seemingly pure narrative seeing as each bands achieved main success throughout the identical interval and had been on the centre of world consideration.

However, members of the 2 bands regularly crossed paths and collaborated behind the scenes – typically even once they weren’t invited.

In one account, Beatles guitarist George Harrison urged that Stones frontman Mick Jagger was often current throughout a number of the members’ bonding moments, in a humorous anecdote.

Harrison recalled a selected occasion in 1967, when The Beatles travelled to Bangor, Wales, to attend a seminar on transcendental meditation led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Harrison had turn into more and more excited about spirituality throughout this era and was desirous to introduce his bandmates to the Maharishi’s teachings. The journey occurred throughout a time of transition for the group, shortly after the dying of their supervisor Brian Epstein and amid rising exploration of Indian philosophy and music.

Ringo Starr, The Beatles’ drummer, defined that the journey got here collectively in an surprising time, writing in The Beatles Anthology: “At that time [my wife] Maureen was in hospital having Jason, and I was visiting. I came home and put on the answerphone, and there was a message from John: ‘Oh, man, we’ve seen this guy, and we’re all going to Wales. You’ve got to come.’ The next message was from George, saying, ‘Wow, man – we’ve seen him. Maharishi’s great! We’re all going to Wales on Saturday, and you’ve got to come.’”

The seminar was being held in Bangor the next day, and The Beatles determined to journey there by prepare. Harrison described it: “Maharishi happened to be having a seminar in Bangor and had said, ‘Come tomorrow and I’ll show you how to meditate.’ So, the next day we jumped on a train and went”.

“Mick Jagger was also there. He was always lurking around in the background, trying to find out what was happening. Mick never wanted to miss out on what the Fabs were doing”, he added.

In an interview with Rolling Stone journal – titled Remembering George – following Harrison’s dying in 2001, Jagger described how Harrison’s dedication to spirituality had remained fixed over time: “He very much concentrated on the spiritual side of his life, and it was more than a passing fancy. It looked like it was a sort of faddish thing at the time, but it stayed with him”.

“You got the feeling that most people were dabbling in spirituality, but for George it was perhaps the major part of his life once he discovered it. And it’s very easy to ridicule someone who does that, and he was ridiculed, there’s no doubt about that, especially in England, for being like that. But he did follow through on the courage of his convictions. He stayed with it and never rejected it.”

Despite the rivalry rumours, the connection between the artists was not a hostile one, as Paul McCartney addressed within the guide: “The idea of our being rivals with The Rolling Stones was newspaper talk. It was natural that we would seem to be rivals, but in fact George got them their recording contract. He was at a party with Dick Rowe, the man famous for having turned The Beatles down for Decca.”

Since then, The Rolling Stones and Beatles members have collaborated in numerous methods, together with songwriting, backing vocals, and even taking part in in one another’s albums – notable mentions to the Stones’ cowl of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, written by Lennon/McCartney, and the Beatles’ backing vocals on the Stones’ ‘We Love You’.