This is Love: The George Harrison Club for Fiendish Thingies | Page 90 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Lets close the 7th Day of Georgemas with this beautiful vocal from the 1962 Decca sessions; Take Good Care Of My Baby.

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Febrooary Day 8 is coming to a close unless you live in Hawaii. Fiendish Thingies, tomorrow I’d like to start a 5 day build up to an all Friar’s Park, deep dive day. In the meantime, Beatlebug reminded me to add some Star Wars music to my playlist tonight. That in turn brought to mind this unexpected use of My Sweet Lord in the MCU. It’s All Too Much …even on Sony Walkman!

^ OM Beatlebug

Here is Pattie’s take on Friar Park.

Chapter 8
Friar Park – edited

George and I had been together for five years, married for three, and although we still loved each other dearly, life was not idyllic. Emotionally, 1969 was an up-and-down year, and one of the activities that kept me busy was house-hunting. George had decided he wanted to move. I was always very happy at Kinfauns—and certainly our happiest years together were in Esher—but he had had a bad experience with the school next door and wanted to get away.

The school had wonderful parkland, which we were allowed to use, with beautiful old trees, lakes, and rhododendrons. George had gone there once on acid and sat under the trees with the sun shining. An old watchman had come up to him about ten minutes before closing time and said, “Get out and go away.” George said, “All I want to do is look at the trees,” but the man threw him out. George was upset, his feelings probably heightened by the drug, but his reaction was, “Okay, I’ll buy my own park.” He wanted a large garden and a house big enough for him to convert part of it into a recording studio.

I had no budget: we never discussed or thought about money. If we needed something we’d ask Brian Epstein, then Peter Brown and, latterly, Allen Klein. I just had instructions to find the right house. And it took a long time. For about a year I drove around the countryside, looking at one grand house after another. Sometimes George came with me, but most of the time it was Terry Doran, his assistant and general factotum.

Then one Sunday Perry Press, our estate agent, spotted a tiny ad in the Sunday Times, placed by some nuns, for a house called Friar Park, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. They wanted £125,000. I went to see it with Perry one day toward the end of 1969, when the clouds were low. As we went up the drive a magnificent Victorian Gothic pile appeared before us like something out of a fairy tale. Built of red brick and stone, it stood proudly on a hill and was the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life. I raced back to Esher, told George and Terry about it, and we all went to see it the next day. When he saw it George flipped, and we put in an offer straightaway for £120,000. Eventually we bought it for £140,000—but this for a house on three floors with twenty-five bedrooms, a ballroom, a drawing room, a dining room, a library, a huge kitchen and hall, intricate carvings, formal gardens of ten or twelve acres, and a further twenty acres of land. There were two lodges and a gatehouse. It was certainly big enough for George to have his recording studio—and to lie under the trees in the sunshine without being moved on.

The house had been built in 1898 on the site of an old monastery by Sir Frank Crisp, a wealthy London solicitor, microscopist, and horticulturalist. He must have been an amazing man—deeply eccentric with a strong sense of humor. There were towers, turrets, and pinnacles, large traceried windows, and gargoyles. The light switches were friars’ faces and you turned them on and off with the noses. All over the house puns about friars and little sayings, some in Latin, some in English, had been carved into the walls. Just outside the dining room there was a carving of a little boy eating, and above him the legend, “Eton boys a Harrowing sight.” Another, over the entrance to the walled garden, cautioned, “Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass; you know his faults so let his foibles pass.” How wise.

When we bought it, Friar Park was owned by the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, a Catholic teaching order that had run a school there for twenty-odd years—Jane Birkin had been a pupil. The school had closed and six nuns and a monk were living alone in the huge house. If they hadn’t sold it, the sisters said, they were planning to demolish it, which would have been a tragedy. It was very run-down but in its heyday it must have been spectacular—also the gardens, which Sir Frank had opened to the public. People used to come from far and wide to visit the Elizabethan garden, the Japanese garden, the vegetable garden, the lakes, the topiary, the maze, and the massive greenhouses where he grew peaches, nectarines, and apricots. It had taken him twenty years to create it and he delighted in showing it off. George was particularly tickled to discover that he’d had signs up saying, “Don’t keep off the grass.” We became passionate about restoring the house and garden to their former glory. We found lots of maps of the estate and booklets, printed in the 1920s and 1930s, describing how it had been, and we discovered there had been lakes in the garden. Recently they had been used as a dump for Henley’s rubbish. I suspect the nuns saw that as a way of making a bit of income. The wonderful gardens were overgrown and full of rusting iron and old bedsteads.

Sir Frank had traveled extensively and brought back to his garden ideas from all over the world. He had built an Alpine garden with a miniature Matterhorn made from twenty thousand tons of granite he had brought from Yorkshire. He had made a network of underground caves leading from the house and in each one he had hung distorting mirrors, like the ones you see in fairgrounds, and as you walked on you came across another filled with little red gnomes and fairies, and another with glass vines and bunches of grapes. It took months to excavate the lakes and patch them up, but when we filled them with water we discovered that stepping stones led from one to the other, and beneath the top lake there were more caves, which were only accessible by boat. You had to row along a very dark passage that led to an enormous replica of the Blue Grotto at Capri, blue from the blue glass he had laid in the garden above the top of the cave. If you rowed on you came to another cave full of stalagmites and stalactites, then on to a third where the walls were covered with glistening mica.

Inside the house you went into a small vestibule with beautiful floor tiles, through two oak doors into a huge hall with a grand, sweeping staircase that had a lamp at the bottom in the shape of a magnificent copper eagle. Wooden pillars extended from the hall to a minstrels’ gallery above, and as you walked up the stairs you could see that the first pillar had, on three sides, carvings of A Day In The Life of a farmer. At 5:00 a.m., with a few rays of sunshine, he’s getting out of bed; at six, his wife’s stirring the porridge; at seven he’s off to work in the fields, and on, to the last scene of nighttime stars. The fireplace in the hall was twenty feet high with a painted panel on either side of it—one was the Tree of Life, the other the Tree of Destiny—and a beautiful stained-glass window reached to the second floor. In the dining room the walls were covered with embossed leather, depicting flowers, plants, and golden peacocks. At either end there was more stained glass, big windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones, and a huge fireplace between them. It was quite dark and I remember John and Yoko coming to see it. John said it was so dark he didn’t know how we could live in it. George suggested he take off the sunglasses he was wearing. The ballroom was pale blue, creamy white and gold, with cherubs on the ceilings. Somebody said that the nuns had plastered little skirts on the cherubs to make them decent.

The house took about four and a half years to restore. It was a lot of work and George put a huge amount of money into it. He poured more into the garden. Friar Park lifted his spirits. He and Terry spent a lot of time in the garden, discussing what needed to be done and how they were going to do it. George’s attention to detail was second to none. At Kinfauns I had felt that, although it was George’s house, I had a say in it. I felt we had had an equal partnership. At Friar Park I didn’t. I felt it was George’s house and he would make the decisions. I did a lot of the furnishing but I never felt the house was truly “ours.” He became increasingly obsessive about meditating and chanting. He would do it for hours, usually in the temple he had made in an octagonal room at the very top of the house with Persian rugs on the floor. It became his sanctuary. The other was the recording studio, which he had designed on the first floor; he converted the wine cellars into an echo chamber.

Reprinted by permission of Headline Review (2007)
All materials on the site are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported CC BY-SA 3.0 & GNU Free

On the 11th Day of Georgemas, my Wah-Wah gave to me a groovy coloring book.

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In the back of me mind, I always thought in the 80s that George was an actual Formula One race car driver. After doing a bit of research it appears he only participated in one charity race. 

George Harrison ‘s First Love
by Hannah Wigandt for More Music

George Harrison loved cars before music. He watched sports car races and the British Grand Prix at Aintree. The future Beatle even wrote to the British Racing Motors team, who sent him pictures of all the latest models. In the 1960s, George made friends with all the internationally famous race car drivers. Later, he became close friends with Jackie Stewart, who took him behind the scenes of the race car driving world. However, when George was given the chance to finally get behind the wheel and race next to his idols, he didn’t have the best experience. At least it was all for charity.

George Harrison and Jackie Stewart at Donington Park, England, 1979.

George Harrison wrote ‘Faster’ for his race car driving buddies. According to Rolling Stone, George saw Liverpool’s first British Grand Prix in Aintree when he was 12. However, rock ‘n’ roll caught George’s attention the following year. He didn’t see another race until he was in The Beatles. In the late 1970s, George got close with Jackie Stewart, the retired triple world champion Formula One driver. “It was really through him that I got backstage, and it’s much more interesting back there,” George explained. Later, George wrote “Faster” as a tribute to Stewart and all the other guys in Formula One. In his 1980 memoir, I Me Mine , George said he wrote the song as a challenge. Many people asked him if he would write a song about car racing. “I got the title first—I took it from Jackie Stewart’s book! I then wrote the chorus ‘faster than a bullet from a gun, etc.’ and later worked out the rest of the song in a way that doesn’t limit it only to motor cars. Once I put the sound effects on then obviously it is about racing but, if you took that away the only thing in the song which is anything to do with cars is the word ‘machinery.’ “The story can relate to me or you or anybody in any occupation who becomes successful and has pressure upon them caused by the usual jealousies, fears, hopes, etc. I have a lot of fun with many of the Formula One drivers and their crews—and they have enabled me to see things from a very different angle than the music business I am normally involved with.” George gave the proceeds of the single to a cancer research fund set up by Swedish driver Gunnar Nilsson. It also celebrated Ronnie Peterson, who died of injuries sustained during the 1978 Italian Grand Prix.George didn’t have the best time racing in a Formula One car

During a 1992 interview with Goldmine, George said he drove a Formula One car in a demonstration for charity. “I never raced seriously myself, but I had a go in a Formula One car, with quite an old 3-liter-engine car,” George explained. “I’d drive ’round Brand’s Hatch in one. And I drove in a charity for Gunnar Nilsson, a Swedish driver who died of cancer, because I gave the money from the ‘Faster’ single off ‘George Harrison ’ to Gunnar’s cancer fund. “Anyhow, they had this day for the Gunnar Nilsson campaign at the track in England and they asked me to drive this 1960 Lotus, which had won a race in Monte Carlo when driven by the great English driver Sterling Moss. This car had no seatbelts, and because it had been in a museum for 20 years the tires were hard with no grip on them, yet the car was still pretty quick! “But they assured me it was just a demonstration run, ‘around for five laps in formation and then five laps at your own pace. So, I said I’d do it. I got there, and it’s Jackie Stewart in the Tyrrell he won in his ’73 world championship in; James Hunt in the McLaren; Phil Hill in his famous Ferrari. “I’m walking to my car while chatting with driver John Watson about the pleasure of the run we’re about to take, and he says, ‘You are joking. There’s no racing driver that goes in formation! As soon as they drop that flag, they’ll all be gone like crazy!’ “Sure enough, as soon as the checkered flag fell, the other cars went whoosh as mine putted along in a haze of smoke! By the time I got to my first lap they were already coming behind me for their second lap, screaming away! Scared me stiff! But at least I did better than James Hunt, who broke down on the first pass.”

George Harrison in Formula One car 1979

The former Beatle and Stewart bonded over their shared love of heightened experiences. There are similarities between racing cars and playing in a rock band. They’re both fast living and can give one a heightened experience. Stewart says his friendship with George was based on their love of the heightened experience of driving fast cars. “When you’re driving a racing car to the absolute limit of its ability, and that of your own ability, it’s a very unique emotion and experience,” Stewart explained in Martin Scorsese’s documentary George Harrison : Living in the Material World. “When that happens, your senses are so strong. That’s what I think George saw in racing. We talked about things like that a lot: heightened sense, of your feel and your touch and your feet… If you listen to a really top guitarist, or any top musician, and how they can make that guitar talk, or that keyboard talk, or the skins talk, that’s another heightening of senses that is beyond the ken, the knowledge of any normal man or woman.”

George didn’t have the best time racing a Formula One car. However, he never fell out of love with his first hobby.

Well said BB, I get the analogy too. I realized pretty early in life that I didn’t like that feeling (but I do admire those that – DO). In an odd bit of synchronicity, one event that led me to that conclusion was when I played Oberon in the play you illustrated.

Spent the day with family enjoying  the Super Bowl. Watching the half time show, I could not stop thinking of Tom Petty. I don’t hate big productions but I love the “mechanics” of rock music.

Pretty sure he was wearing Dark Horse gear before he knew the creator.

George and Ringo appear in this video, although I’m not sure how much music they actually contributed.

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George Harrison ‘s India: a pocket travel guide

Sam Kemp for Far Out UK

India was undoubtedly one of the most important influences on The Beatles, both in terms of its musical traditions and its various philosophical teachings. People tend to assume that the hippie generation’s fascination with the Indian subcontinent began with The Beatles, but they were in fact following in the footsteps of beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, who were in turn inspired by the transcendentalists of the late Victorian era. All of them viewed India as a land of enlightenment, a nation which, with its dizzying variety of religious practices, stood in stark contrast to the stale monoculturalism that had defined the Western Christian world for centuries.

Harrison first discovered India through its music. During the filming of The Beatles’ second film Help !, the guitarist became transfixed by a group of Indian musicians performing in the background of a shot. As Lennon recalls in Anthology, Harrison soon developed an interest in classical Indian music and yogic practices: “Then, about two years later, George had started getting into hatha yoga. He’d got involved in Indian music from looking at the instruments in the set. All from that crazy movie. All of the Indian involvement came out of the film Help !“. The first sitar George ever held is in the center of this still.

This led Harrison to start using classical Indian instruments on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul , most memorably on ‘Norwegian Wood ’, in which Harrison can be heard tentatively plucking at his brand new sitar. “I went and bought a sitar from a little shop at the top of Oxford Street called Indiacraft – it stocked little carvings, and incense,” he remembered. “It was a real crummy-quality one, actually, but I bought it and mucked about with it a bit”.

Then, in 1966, Harrison decided to take the plunge and made arrangements to stop off in Dehli during The Beatles’ trip from the Philippines to London. While the others were desperate to head home, Harrison thought that India would be the perfect place to get a bit of air time from Beatlemania. “I was feeling a little bit like that myself; I could have gone home. But I was in Delhi, and as I had made the decision to get off there I thought, ‘Well, it will be OK. At least in India, they don’t know The Beatles. We’ll slip into this nice ancient country, and have a bit of peace and quiet.’ And so his journey began.

Harrison first travelled to India in September 1966, between the Beatle’s third and final US tour. Harrison spent six weeks in India at the tail end of the nation’s monsoon season. His first destination was Mumbai (then known as Bombay). Although he hoped his time in India would serve as an escape from Beatlemania, Harrison’s young fans soon found out he was there and went looking for him.

During that initial period in Mumbai, Harrison stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace, a luxuriant hotel built in 1903 and designed in the Saracenic Revival style, which offers sweeping panoramas of the vibrant city below. “I stayed in a Victorian hotel, the Taj Mahal, and was starting to learn the sitar,” Harrison recalled in Anthology. Ravi would give me lessons, and he’d also have one of his students sit with me. My hips were killing me from sitting on the floor, and so Ravi brought a yoga teacher to start showing me the physical yoga exercises.

After leaving India’s capital, Harrison travelled to Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir. Located in the verdant heart of the Kashmir Valley, Srinagar lies 1,730m above sea level, meaning that in the winter months the hills are caked with snow. The city itself is nestled around the river Jhelum and boasts the famous Dal Lake, where Harrison once rented one of the historic Clermont houseboats moored on its northern bank.

“It was a fantastic time,” Harrison began. “We travelled all over and eventually went up to Kashmir and stayed on a houseboat in the middle of the Himalayas. It was incredible. I’d wake up in the morning and a little Kashmiri fellow, Mr Butt, would bring us tea and biscuits and I could hear Ravi in the next room, practising”.

One of the most important locations on Harrison’s itinerary was the holy city of Varanasi, which lies on the river Ganges. This, the most sacred city in India, is quite mind-boggling. Home to as many astronomers as it is sacred pools and technicolour tantric temples, there is barely an inch of Varanasi that isn’t painted a vivid shade or shrouded in plumes of incense smoke.

Harrison’s experiences in Varanasi completely altered his view of the West. The guitarist visited the city while a religious festival was going on, the Ramila: “It was out on a site of 300 to 500 acres, and there were thousands of holy men there for a month-long festival. During this festival the Maharajah feeds everybody and there are camps of different people, including the sadhus – renunciates. In England, in Europe or the West, these holy men would be called vagrants and be arrested, but in a place like India, they roam around. They don’t have a job, they don’t have a Social Security number, they don’t even have a name other than collectively – they’re called sannyasis, and some of them look like Christ.”

In October 1966, Harrison begrudgingly returned to England. However, his experiences in India stayed with him, influencing his songwriting as well as his philosophical outlook. Two years later, he returned, this time with John Lennon in tow and Paul and Ringo trailing behind. The Beatles had originally planned to travel to India in the summer of ’67, but the trip had to be postponed following the death of Brian Epstein. With Magical Mystery Tour behind them and the grim late-winter British weather battering them at all sides, Harrison and Lennon took their first steps towards Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in at Rishikesh, where the pair planned to study a course of transcendental mediation until the 12th of April.

As Harrison recounted: “After alighting from the taxis, we were shown to our living quarters. They consisted of a number of stone-built bungalows, set in groups along a rough road. Flowers and shrubs surrounded them and were carefully tended by an Indian gardener whose work speed was dead slow, and stop.” The Ashram, although now abandoned, lies in the foothills of the Himilayas, 150 feet above the Ganges. Surrounded by mountainous jungle at either side, the only access to the compound is via a suspension bridge on which a sign reading ‘No camels or elephants’ has sensibly been slung.

George returned to India many times throughout his life, playing benefit concerts in the nation on numerous occasions. In 1996, Harrison made his last pilgrimage to the holy land of Vrindavan, the mythic birthplace of Krishna and an important location for the Hare Krishnas, with whom Harrison had a long history. Harrison and Lennon bought the first Hare Krishna mantra record in 1968, and, in 1970, Harrison produced the Radha Krishna Temple album. Many of his songs throughout the 1970s included devotional references to the Hare Krishna, including ‘My Sweet Lord ’.

It was also in Vrindavan, years earlier, in 1974, that Harrison received his first lessons in Hindi by Natalya Sazanova, a Russian Indologist. After listening to Sazanova and Ravi Shankar speaking in Hindi, Harrison convinced the professor to take him on as a pupil. As Sazanova later recalled, Harrison mastered the language almost as quickly as he had mastered the sitar: “He had an absolute talent,” Sazonova said. While most of her students took about six years to master conversational Hindi, the Beatle managed to learn well in just four months of “irregular” classes. “George grasped the spoken language on the fly. He particularly learnt bhajans fast and sang them.”