Volume 5: Too Much, Too Soon

I recently read Lewis Lapham's sometimes intriguing but altogether unsatisfying[1. Seriously? You went to India to see the Beatles and the Maharishi and you barely came up with enough for a coffee table book? Greil Marcus wrote 283 pages about ONE Bob Dylan song. One song. There's so much between the pages here that Lapham could have been expounded upon that it's a tragedy and makes reading the book sad, in a way.] book With The Beatles, where he chronicles his experience as a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post trying to gain access to meet the Beatles in India. Spending most of his time narrating the experience from his point of view (with venomous disdain for those in attendance at Rishikesh), Lapham does allow for a few compelling moments.[2. The story about Prudence Farrow, Mia's sister, is an oft-told one, but hearing a first-hand perspective is still interesting. Prudence, of course, is the inspiration for this song.]

While most of the book is spent ignoring the Beatles (kind of amazing...considering they were the basis for his assignment and are in the title of the book), Lapham's few notes about the Beatles are eye-opening. My favorite is this passage (emphasis mine):

George referred to the Maharishi as "The Big M," and of all the Beatles he was the most purposefully engaged with the theory and practice of transcendence...In conversation one evening with Geoffrey he said that if he could turn everyone on to [transcendental meditation] and Indian music, then he could go.

"Go where?" Geoffrey said.

"Out," Harrison said, "You know, like on a road tour when you leave for the next town."

Somebody else at the table suggested that the same result could be achieved with drugs. Harrison didn't think so. Drugs filled a void, he said, and they had shown him some wonderful sights, but death remained what he called "a bit of a hang-up," which was where religion and philosophy "began to get useful."[2. pp. 107-08]

While many in their twenties spend that time wrestling with big questions like, I don't know, what am I going to do with the rest of my life, Harrison had obviously moved past that. His success, at age 25(!), put him in a place where he thought that he had seen and done most everything that would be good in his life. The rest, as they say, was downhill from there. So what could top that, how could he fill that next void,[3. Maintaining the successes of the Beatles was not enough, as they broke up soon after. Although, this is kind of amazing when you think about it. What could be more difficult than maintaining your status as the greatest band of all time? There likely could have been no greater challenge. Did they shy away from this? Or was it the thing that cause all of the tensions leading to the inevitable split?] what did he have to live for? It seems as if he had settled on transendence, on the afterlife, on achieving even after death. What a strange place to be at age 25.