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Introduction
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As a 23 year-old, in the mid-1960s, I lacked a sense of peace, of self-confidence, even a sense of meaning for my life.  Late in 1967, I stuffed my backpack with clothes, chocolate bars, notebooks, and a stainless-steel water bottle and set out on a journey to "find myself."
 On December 4, 1967, with two hundred dollars and a round-trip ticket to New Delhi in my pocket, I boarded a plane for my first trip abroadóa journey that would change my life. India was mind-blowing. It was my first conscious step on the journey within, which George Harrison wrote about so beautifully in "Within You, Without You" and "The Inner Light." It would be only a few weeks later and a few city blocks from where I was staying that George would first record "The Inner Light"óon January 12, 1968, at EMI's studios in Bombayóand I couldn't have imagined that 4 weeks later my path would unexpectedly cross his, and that of the other Beatles, in Rishikesh. |
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Meeting the Beatles at the Maharishi's ashram was wonderful. I took some pictures of them and when I eventually returned home I put them away in a cardboard box.
It was a case of 'out-of-sight, out-of-mind' and I forgot about them. |
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Thirty years later, my 18 year-old daughter fell in love with the Beatles' music. One afternoon late in 1998, she walked into my study while I was e-mailing and asked, "Dad, didn't you once tell me that you met the Beatles in India in the sixties and took some pictures of them?" I said "Yes" and she said she would love to see them. |
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For three weeks I searched for them, worried they were lost. Thankfully, they finally showed up-in the last corner of the basement, behind a couch, at the bottom of the last pile of stuff. |
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I am delighted with the opportunity The Beatles in Rishikesh-my book, the accompanying photographic gallery show and this website-have given me to recall my long-ago journey to India and my spending time with John, Paul, George and Ringo, and to revisit Rishikesh itself earlier this year. And, not least, to share with you these photographs and the anecdotes that unfolded with them. |
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The publication of Paul Saltzman's photographs is to be welcomed by both fans and historians of the Beatles alike, for these images provide a significant addition to the detail of what is a relatively little-recorded episode in the career of the most important rock group the world has known. |
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