In her new book, Susan Shumsky finds an ingeniously simple and appropriate way to collate these various ideas: by using The Beatles' songs as a road map. The Inner Light: How India Influenced The Beatles is structured like a selective Revolution in the Head, with entries on songs leading into discussions of George's relationship with Ravi Shankar ("Norwegian Wood"), universal love philosophy ("The Word"), transcendental consciousness ("There's a Place"), and so on. Her discussions also involve details about composition and recording, including descriptions of the Indian instruments that may be unfamiliar to western fans used on their sessions.
An extended focus on "The White Album" leads into a very detailed account of The Beatles, Mia and Prudence Farrow, Donovan, and Mike Love's time in Rishikesh with the Maharishi. Because Shumsky worked for the Maharishi and continues to promote TM, I wondered if she might gloss over "Sexy Sadie" and all the baggage that comes with that song in which Lennon vents his anger over accusations that his spiritual leader was also a sex pest. She does not. In fact, "Sexy Sadie" gets its own chapter and an incredibly detailed account of the Maharishi's behavior, the accusations against him, and The Beatles' reactions to those accusations. For someone who was in the Maharishi's employ and still seeks to spread the word about the man's more positive teachings, I thought it was brave of her to shine such an unflinching and extended light on his shortcomings without any apparent agenda other than getting to the truth, which does suggest that he could be manipulative, childish, and disrespectful of others' boundaries. Shumsky is similarly non-judgmental when discussing The Beatles' drug use, which her old boss was very much against, and frank when discussing the musicians' own personal shortcomings.
I also liked how expansive her study is, as she discusses the inadvertent emergence of Indian philosophy in songs The Beatles wrote before they'd ever even heard of the Maharishi, the Indian musicians who played on The Beatles' sessions, the specific classical pieces that influenced their pop songs, the negative (the casually racist Help!) and positive (Yellow Submarine) references to Indian culture and philosophy in their films, and the ways that culture and philosophy continued to influence The Beatles' work and lives beyond the sixties. With all the Beatles books out there, it's extremely rare for anyone to find a genuinely worthwhile angle to re-examine the Fabs anymore, but Shumsky has found one and handles it honestly and thoroughly.
