Modern era

George Harrison and the Hare Krishna movement

Modern era · By the Bhakti Atlas editorial team · Published 2026-11-06

No individual did more to make the Hare Krishna chant familiar in the West than George Harrison. This article sets out the documented facts of his involvement. It replaces an older page at this address that reproduced a tabloid newspaper story about his death; we do not repeat that story's unverified claims.

An interest in India

George Harrison, born in Liverpool on 25 February 1943, became interested in Indian music and religion in the mid-1960s, studying the sitar with Ravi Shankar and travelling to India. He heard an American recording of the Hare Krishna mantra by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and his New York followers, and in 1968 met members of the small group who had come to London to open a temple.

The 1969 single

In 1969 Harrison produced a recording of the mantra by the London devotees, credited to the Radha Krishna Temple, and released it on the Beatles' Apple label. The single reached the top 20 in Britain, and the devotees appeared on the BBC's Top of the Pops. A follow-up and an album, The Radha Krsna Temple (1971), followed. Harrison's own hit "My Sweet Lord" (1970) mixes the refrain "Hare Krishna" with "Hallelujah", a deliberate juxtaposition he later explained in interviews.

Support for the movement

Harrison met A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in 1969, during the swami's first stay in England, and remained in contact with him until the latter's death in 1977. He paid for the printing of the first volume of Krsna, a summary of the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana, for which he wrote a foreword. In 1973 he bought a mock-Tudor manor house at Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire and gave it to the movement; renamed Bhaktivedanta Manor, it became ISKCON's main centre in Britain and the subject of a long planning dispute over public worship, resolved in the 1990s.

He never formally joined the movement or took initiation, and his religious interests ranged more widely, but he chanted regularly and spoke about the influence of Indian devotional practice in interviews and in songs such as "Living in the Material World" and "Awaiting on You All".

His death

Harrison died of cancer in Los Angeles on 29 November 2001, aged 58. In a statement, his family said that he had died at peace, surrounded by family and friends. Newspapers reported that his ashes were taken to India and scattered in sacred rivers in a private ceremony. Beyond these public statements, many accounts of his final days have circulated in the press; several were disputed and are not repeated here.

Legacy

Historians of new religious movements regard Harrison's patronage as a major factor in ISKCON's early visibility in Britain and Europe. The manor he donated draws large crowds at festivals such as Janmashtami, and his recordings remain among the most familiar renditions of the mantra in Western popular culture.

Music and devotion in Harrison's work

Religious themes run through Harrison's solo career. All Things Must Pass (1970), his first major album after the Beatles, includes "My Sweet Lord" and "Awaiting on You All", which names chanting as a path to freedom. Living in the Material World (1973) is permeated by the vocabulary of Indian devotional philosophy, from the title track to songs about detachment and grace; Harrison assigned royalties from most of its songs to a charitable foundation he created. Critics at the time were divided over the explicitly spiritual tone of these records, which nonetheless sold well.

In 1971 Harrison organised the Concert for Bangladesh in New York with Ravi Shankar, a benefit for refugees of the war in East Pakistan that set a model for later charity concerts. Though not connected with the Hare Krishna movement, it showed the depth of his engagement with South Asia.

The "My Sweet Lord" lawsuit

"My Sweet Lord" was the subject of a well-known copyright case. In 1976 a US court found that the song had unconsciously copied the melody of "He's So Fine", a 1963 hit by the Chiffons, and the dispute over damages lasted years. The case is often cited in discussions of musical plagiarism. It did not concern the song's religious content, but it kept the song, and its "Hare Krishna" refrain, in the public eye.

Bhaktivedanta Manor

The house Harrison donated, near the village of Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire, became one of the most visited Hindu places of worship in Britain on major festivals. From the 1980s, local residents objected to the crowds, and the planning authorities sought to restrict public worship there. A long campaign by the temple's supporters, with petitions and demonstrations, ended in the 1990s with permission for a new access road. Sociologist Malory Nye has analysed the dispute as a case study of minority religions and the planning system in Britain.

A note on sources

Harrison gave many interviews about his beliefs, some collected in books, and his widow Olivia Harrison and his friends have spoken about his spiritual life in documentaries such as Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011). These are better sources than the tabloid stories that appeared after his death, which this site does not repeat.

Beyond the Hare Krishna movement

Harrison's spiritual interests were broad. He studied the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, admired Indian classical music and maintained friendships with teachers of several traditions. His involvement with ISKCON was therefore one strand in a lifelong search rather than an exclusive commitment, a point stressed by biographers and by Harrison himself in interviews.

Sources and further reading