The Radha Krsna Temple (album)
The Radha Krsna Temple is a 1971 album of Hindu devotional songs recorded by the UK branch of the Hare Krishna movement – more formally, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness – who received the artist credit of "Radha Krishna Temple ". The album was produced by George Harrison and released on the Beatles' Apple record label. It compiles two hit singles, "Hare Krishna Mantra" and "Govinda", with other Sanskrit-worded mantras and prayers that the Temple devotees recorded with Harrison from July 1969 onwards.
The recordings reflected Harrison's commitment to the Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings of the movement's leader, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who had sent devotees from San Francisco to London in 1968. The success of the Temple's first single, "Hare Krishna Mantra", helped popularise the Hare Krishna movement in the West, and inspired Harrison's more overtly religious songs on his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass. Among the Temple members, former jazz musician and future ISKCON leader Mukunda Goswami provided the musical arrangements on the recordings.
After its initial release, the album was reissued on the Spiritual Sky label and by Prabhupada's Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. For these releases, the album was retitled Goddess of Fortune and then, with added dialogue from a conversation between Prabhupada, Harrison and John Lennon in 1969, Chant and Be Happy! Apple officially reissued The Radha Krsna Temple on CD in 1993, and again in 2010, with the addition of two bonus tracks.
Background
In 1968, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder and acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, sent six of his devotees to London to establish a new centre there, the Radha Krishna Temple, and so expand on the success of ISKCON's temples in New York and San Francisco. The group was led by Mukunda Das, formerly a pianist with jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and Shyamsundar Das. With the acharya's blessing, they decided to seek out George Harrison of the Beatles, whose interest in Hindu philosophy, meditation and Indian classical music had done much to promote these causes among Western youth. In December 1968, Shyamsundar met Harrison at the Beatles' Apple Corps headquarters in central London, after which Harrison began visiting the devotees at their warehouse accommodation in Covent Garden.Harrison had first experienced kirtan, or communal chanting, while in the Indian city of Vrindavan with Ravi Shankar, in 1966. Harrison was inspired by the devotees' music-making, whereby mantras were sung accompanied by instrumentation such as harmonium and percussion. He and John Lennon had similarly enjoyed Prabhupada's album of chants, Krishna Consciousness. In addition, Harrison had come to appreciate the positive properties of the Maha or Hare Krishna mantra, after he had chanted it when his plane lost control during a flight back from San Francisco in August 1967.
From his first visit to the devotees' warehouse, Harrison regularly played harmonium during kirtan with Shyamsundar and others. On occasions, the ensemble included synthesizer accompaniment from Billy Preston, whom Harrison was producing for the Beatles' Apple record label. According to author Joshua Greene, the decision to release recordings by the Radha Krishna Temple came about after one such session of kirtan, held at Harrison's Surrey home, Kinfauns. Harrison telephoned the devotees the following morning, saying, "You're going to make a record", and told them to come to EMI Studios that same evening.
"Hare Krishna Mantra" single
Via his disciples, Prabhupada had recommended that the Beatles record the Hare Krishna mantra, in order to spread the message of Krishna Consciousness to the group's wide fan base. Instead, Harrison chose to produce a version by the London-based ISKCON devotees and issue it as a single on Apple Records. As a song, "Hare Krishna Mantra" consists of the sixteen-word Sanskrit Maha Mantra sung over both verse and chorus:Recording
The recording for "Hare Krishna Mantra" took place at EMI Studios in July 1969, shortly before a session for the Beatles' Abbey Road album. Harrison worked through a musical arrangement for the piece on guitar, with Mukunda playing piano. For the recording, Harrison decided on joint vocalists over the verses, Yamuna and Shyamsundar, with the other devotees joining in on the choruses. The engineer on the recording was Ken Scott.Harrison played harmonium during the initial taping, which required three takes to perfect. He then added Leslie-effected electric guitar at the start of the track, and also overdubbed a bass guitar part. Harrison later recalled that he "had someone beat time with a pair of kartals and Indian drums", and that the other devotees were brought in afterwards to overdub the chorus singing and other contributions.
In addition to various Temple members on mridangam and kartal, a recent American recruit played trumpet. Malati sounded the closing gong, after the track had built to what author Simon Leng describes as a "dervishlike climax". Apple employees Mal Evans and Chris O'Dell attended this session also. The latter, along with her mother, joined the backing chorus, at Shyamsundar's invitation. In her 2009 autobiography, O'Dell writes of the experience of feeling "physically and spiritually changed" after singing the mantra, adding: "Chanting the words over and over again was almost hypnotic … there was a point of freedom where there was no effort at all, no criticism or judgment, just the sound generated from deep inside, like a flame that warmed us from the inside out."
For the B-side, Harrison recorded the devotees singing "Prayer to the Spiritual Masters". According to Prabhupada biographer Satsvarupa dasa Goswami, the lyrics offer praise to "Śrīla Prabhupāda, Lord Caitanya and His associates, and the six Gosvāmīs" – Lord Caitanya being Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the sixteenth-century avatar of the Hare Krishna movement. The song again features group vocals, accompanied by harmonium, percussion and an Indian bowed string instrument known as the esraj, which Shyamsundar regularly played during kirtan. As for "Hare Krishna Mantra", the arrangement on "Prayer to the Spiritual Masters" was credited to Mukunda Das.
Release
Apple Records issued the single, which was credited to "Radha Krishna Temple ", on 22 August 1969 in the United States and on 29 August in the United Kingdom. On 28 August, Harrison joined the devotees at Apple's press launch, held in the gardens of a large property in Sydenham, south London. Straight after the launch, Harrison drove down to the Isle of Wight to rejoin Bob Dylan, who was due to make his highly publicised return to live performance at the island's music festival. On 31 August, just before Dylan took to the stage, "Hare Krishna Mantra" was played over the venue's PA. Mukunda later identified this exposure, together with the song's airing during halftime at a Manchester United football game, as being indicative of how the ancient Maha Mantra "penetrated British society" via the Harrison-produced recording.File:Chaitanya sankirtan.jpg|thumb|250px|right|A painting showing Krishna avatar Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his disciple Nityananda Prabhu engaged in public chanting in Bengal
In the UK, the single's picture sleeve featured a photograph of the devotees taken by Ethan Russell. Harrison biographer Alan Clayson writes of the public's amusement at the appearance of the Temple devotees, dressed in orange robes and with shaved heads; speaking in 2011, Mukunda recalled hearing "Hare Krishna Mantra" played on a London radio station, followed by the announcer's description: "That was a song by a group of bald-headed Americans!" Clayson continues: "but thanks to George the irrepressible 'Hare Krishna Mantra' had encroached on public consciousness to a degree that Prabhupada could never have imagined in 1966." In his review of the single for the NME, Derek Johnson said that Harrison had created "an Eastern Ono band", referring to Lennon's side project with Yoko Ono, the Plastic Ono Band. Johnson described the sound as "Indian gospel" and said that the track's "insistent repetition" gave it "the same insidious hypnotism as 'Give Peace A Chance'".
The single was an unexpected commercial success, peaking at number 12 in the UK and number 15 in West Germany.
The single failed to chart in America, however. Shyamsundar has suggested that "some politics were involved" regarding religious groups there, and the song received little airplay as a result.
The Radha Krishna Temple appeared on BBC-TV's Top of the Pops to promote the song and filmed a video clip. They also made many concert and festival appearances in response to the song's popularity. Clayson writes of other benefits to ISKCON's cause: "there were many new converts and an even bigger increase of sympathisers who no longer regarded a line of Hare Krishna chanters down Oxford Street with sidelong scepticism …" Author Peter Lavezzoli has described the success of "Hare Krishna Mantra" as "an astonishing feat" and an indication of the extent of the Beatles' cultural influence. In the Gaudiya Vaishnava faith, the international acceptance of the mantra fulfilled a prediction by Lord Chaitanya, who had written: "One day, the chanting of the holy names of God will be heard in every town and village of the world."
Album recording
In an interview to promote the Beatles' Abbey Road, Harrison told music journalist Ritchie Yorke that he believed fate had intervened to introduce him to Ravi Shankar, and thereby to Indian classical music and Vedic philosophy. He added that, while he was "pretending" to be a Beatle, his mission in life was to promote Indian music and Hindu spirituality in the West. Harrison provided the Radha Krishna Temple with financial assistance and acted as a co-signee of their more permanent accommodation – at Bury Place, close to the British Museum in Bloomsbury. He met Prabhupada in September 1969, at Lennon's Tittenhurst Park estate, as the new premises was being renovated. While also producing Apple acts such as Preston and Doris Troy, Harrison was keen to record further with the Temple devotees and release a full album of their songs. In December, he suggested they come up with further material. Scott was again credited as the engineer at these later Radha Krishna Temple sessions. He has spoken of the challenges of recording the participants, many of whom would not remain stationary during a take, and described the project as "absolutely fascinating".The musicians on these recordings included Harrison on guitars and bass; Temple members such as Yamuna on lead vocals; and other devotees on backing vocals, mridanga, harmonium, tambura and kartal. Harrison was much impressed with Yamuna's voice and suggested she could become "a famous rock star". In a 1982 discussion with Mukunda, Harrison said: "I liked the way sang with conviction, and she sang like she'd been singing it a lot before. It didn't sound like the first tune she'd ever sung." Discussing Harrison's role in the studio, Gurudas, Yamuna's husband, has compared him with the Hare Krishna movement's leader, saying: "George was like Prabhupada, he could be a ringmaster – he could just pull everything together."
"Sri Guruvastakam" and one other track on the album include Harrison playing dobro, an instrument that he went on to use increasingly during the early 1970s. Arrangements for all the songs on The Radha Krsna Temple were again credited to Mukunda. A student in Paris at the time, and a keyboard player in his university band, Joshua Greene joined the Radha Krishna Temple over the 1969–70 holiday season, taking the devotee name Yogesvara. He recalls participating in sessions held at EMI and Apple Studio, during which he played harmonium on "Govinda Jai Jai". Whereas Harrison had limited the length of the earlier recordings to no more than four minutes, to attract maximum radio play, album tracks such as "Bhaja Bhakata/Arati" and "Bhaja Hunre Mana" extended to over eight minutes.