Elvis Presley’s Stylist Called George Harrison an ‘Ascetic’
George Harrison and The Beatles met Elvis Presley in 1965. The lead guitarist was just as excited to meet his idol as his bandmates were. However, when he saw them fawning over Elvis like he was some God, George decided to take a step back. According to Elvis’ stylist, Larry Geller, he retreated to The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s backyard.
George and Geller talked about spirituality, something the Beatle wanted to know more about.
Elvis Presley’s stylist said George Harrison went outside during The Beatles’ meeting with The King
In 1965, The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, and Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, arranged for their acts to meet. The Beatles smoked herbal cigarettes before arriving at Elvis’ mansion. They found The King in his living room playing bass when they entered.
In Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, Elvis’ stylist, Larry Geller, told Joshua M. Greene that John Lennon gave his best Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau impression when he entered the room. “Ah, zere you are,” he said. “Sit down,” Elvis said. “We’ll talk.”
George and the rest of The Beatles sat cross-legged and drooling in front of Elvis. They jammed, but George soon lost interest.
Geller said that after The Beatles jammed with Elvis, “banter flowed,” and everyone started conversing and jamming. However, eventually, Geller noticed that George was missing and found him outside.
Geller and George talked about spirituality
According to Geller, he and George began talking about spirituality. George had taken LSD with John for the first time that spring. The lead guitarist later explained that the hallucinogen opened a door to the spiritual world. He just didn’t know what to do next.
Greene wrote, “Geller told George that he had been studying the teachings of kriya-yoga master Paramahansa Yogananda since 1960 and often discussed them with Elvis. ‘That really surprised George,’ Geller said. ‘He wasn’t expecting that from Elvis. You need to remember the times.
“‘When the Beatles came on the scene in 1964, it was the middle of a cultural explosion, not a spiritual one. Nobody was talking about yoga. Elvis was getting into it, but he didn’t talk about it publicly because whenever I’d take him to Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship center, his guys would laugh and make remarks. ‘Uh-oh, here comes Geller. He’s going to tear Elvis’s head open again.””
Geller then realized something while talking with George. The Beatle was interested in spirituality. It would show him greater things than fame ever could. He’d already begun his journey while his bandmates went backward, talking Elvis’ ear off.
“Geller’s impression then was that George knew very little about gurus and teachers,” Greene wrote. The stylist also realized that George was “a man who did his own thing. Everybody else was in the house with Elvis and when the conversation first started, they were telling him, ‘Oh, Elvis, we’re here because of you. You started the whole thing, man. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t even be in music.'”
Geller continued, “George stayed in the room for maybe twenty minutes—then he left. Why did he leave? It seemed to me he was distancing himself from the fame and the adulation. This was in 1965, just as his career was spiking, and I remember thinking, ‘Interesting. This guy’s an ascetic.'”
The former Beatle realized Elvis didn’t impress him anymore
George soon discovered that meeting Elvis and any other idol, celebrity, or dignitary wasn’t important. None of them impressed him anymore, and he began to crave someone who did.
“George had wanted to meet the king because there was no greater material frame of reference for understanding his own situation,” Greene wrote. “No one came near Elvis in music or renown. His name transcended cultural barriers. Seeing firsthand how he looked, hearing how he sounded—maybe something would reveal a clue about what one found on reaching the mountaintop.
“Then the moment arrived, and when George came face-to-face with the summit, it turned out to be a costlier, more garish version of the same peak he lived on: a mansion with its own casino, a wife in a jeweled tiara, an audience outside his gates.
“Nothing happened, no flash of insight or even a hint that arriving at the top of the world had anything to do with knowing where one was. An estate in Beverly Hills—was that the end of the road? So he separated himself from the display and took a breather in the backyard. The others might enjoy rubbing elbows with the king; George preferred a moment of quiet under the night sky.”
In 1997, George told VH1’s John Fugelsang (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), “I’d experienced so many things and met so many people, but I realized there was nothing actually that was giving me a buzz anymore. I wanted something better. I remember thinking, ‘I’d love to meet somebody who will really impress me.'”
Thankfully, he met sitar legend Ravi Shankar, who taught him Indian music and spirituality.
According to Quartz India, George said, “Ravi was my link into the Vedic world. Ravi plugged me into the whole of reality. I mean, I met Elvis—Elvis impressed me when I was a kid, and impressed me when I met him because of the buzz of meeting Elvis, but you couldn’t later on go round to him and say, ‘Elvis, what’s happening in the universe?'”
At least Elvis seemed to want to be spiritual, thanks to Geller. George’s conversation with the stylist might have given him just another sign to be spiritual.
