Be Here Now

"Be Here Now" is a song by English rock musician George Harrison from his 1973 album Living in the Material World. The recording features a sparse musical arrangement and recalls Harrison's work with the Beatles during 1966–1968, through its Indian-inspired mood and use of sitar drone. Part of Harrison's inspiration for the song was the popular 1971 book Be Here Now by spiritual teacher Ram Dass – specifically, a story discussing the author's change in identity from a Western academic to a guru in the Hindu faith. Some Harrison biographers interpret "Be Here Now" as a comment from him on the public's nostalgia for the past following the Beatles' break-up. Harrison wrote the song in Los Angeles in 1971, while working on the soundtrack to the Ravi Shankar documentary Raga, and shortly before organising the Concert for Bangladesh. The recording took place in late 1972 at his Friar Park home, with musical contributions from Klaus Voormann, Nicky Hopkins, Gary Wright and Jim Keltner. Contrary to the song's message, its release coincided with heightened speculation regarding a possible Beatles reunion, following Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon recording together in Los Angeles in March 1973. "Be Here Now" has received critical attention for its dreamlike sound and the quality of Harrison's acoustic guitar playing. Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone described the track as a "meltingly lovely meditation-prayer", while author Ian Inglis views it as a moving musical expression of "the spiritual, scientific, and metaphysical implications of time". Singers Robyn Hitchcock and Ian Astbury have each covered the song. Background and composition In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, George Harrison recalls coming up with the tune for "Be Here Now" while staying in Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, in the spring of 1971. At the time, Harrison was in Los Angeles producing the soundtrack to Raga, an Apple Films documentary about Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. The same visit led to Harrison staging the Concert for Bangladesh in New York that summer, following a plea from Shankar, a Bengali Hindu, that something be done to raise international awareness for refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War. In his autobiography, Harrison says of writing the song: "I was almost falling asleep. I had the guitar in bed and the melody came fast." In keeping with this description, the mood and melody of "Be Here Now" have a meditative and dreamlike quality.