“People take their concept of religion and put it on me. All that orthodox training, heaven and hell, black and white, fear — I’ve always been against that: when I went to church and saw people putting on their best suits, pretending to be nice, then going home and beating up their old ladies, I thought it was bullshit.” - George Harrison, Hit Parader, May 1977
“[Swami Vivekananda said] ‘If there’s a God you must see him and if there’s a soul we must perceive it - otherwise it’s better not to believe. It’s better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.’ All my early life they’d tried to bring me up as a Catholic, but I wasn’t really into that. The whole ‘Christian’ attitude (and I say ‘Christian’ in inverted commas, because there are a lot of people who represent themselves as Christians who aren’t — who don’t really, to my mind, have the franchise on Christ, and are not necessarily representative of what He was trying to say) seemed to be telling you to believe what they’re telling you and not to have the direct experience.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
Q: “Did he officially become a Hare Krishna?”
Olivia Harrison: “No. He didn’t officially become anything. And you know, many groups would claim him. He just had a nice experience with them, he really loved the idea of Lord Krishna. And I don’t just mean the idea, but actually the deity; you can relate to that. And mantras. He understood mantras; you know, that vibration encased in a syllable that has some, some power.”
Q: “That’s almost like the hook of a song, isn’t it?”
OH: “Yeah, absolutely. And it’s scientific, you know, I mean, a mantra is chanted in a certain meter. The space between the syllables is also part of that mantra. And it is a certain vibration, it has a certain effect. And he was very much into that.” - WNYC, November 4, 2011 (x)
"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views." ~ Doctor Who, The Face of Evil, January 1977
Happy 10th Anniversary to ‘Take Me To Church’ for all who celebrate it. One of the most truly iconic and eternal and enduring songs of the last decade. Thank you Mr Hozier.
“CPUs. Cayce Pollard Units. That’s what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention.
What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult.”
Audio from KPPC-FM, November 1968; photo by Barrie Wentzell.
“I noticed on a police car in Los Angeles, it says, written on the door: ‘To serve and to protect.’ And that really sort of buzzed me, I was starting to wonder, like, who are they serving and who are they protecting? I mean, that’s where it’s really at. Because maybe they do serve and protect, but you know, themselves? Or you know, like, who? But that’s the trick, you see, because they say, ‘Well it’s not me, it’s somebody up there telling me what to do.’ And you can never find who, like who is the guy up at the top. Because they shift the load, you know.” - George Harrison, KPPC-FM, November 1968