Living in the Material World...

On my way to the National Media Museum to clock Martin Scorsese's biopic of George Harrison, I saw people by the War Memorial waving green black and red flags and chanting: "Gaddafi's dead! Gaddafi's dead!"

All things must pass. In the material world, the world of illusion in Krishna consciousness, tyrants are emanations of ignorance.

Splicing together talking heads, home movie clips and judiciously chosen TV and newsreel footage, Scorsese portrays Harrison's rise to fame and fortune and his subsequent struggle to reconcile his spiritual quest with his personal abundance of the material world's things.

The man who championed Eastern spirituality at a time when Indian restaurants were a comparative novelty in London suburbs and few had heard of Lysergicacid diethylamide or the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, also mortgaged his mansion to pay for the allegedly blasphemous movie The Life of Brian: the man who bought a mansion in Surrey, organised the Concert for Bangladesh - following the war with West Pakistan and a series of natural disasters: the man who wanted out of the squabbling Beatles to go solo persuaded famous musical pals to join him in the ad hoc Travelling Wilburys.

I thought Scorsese explored these dichotomies pretty seamlessly; the four hours we were in the cinema flew by, as they do when you are enjoyably focused. Apart from some of Patti Boyd's romantic reminicenses - 'Layla was all about meeee! - the film certainly struck a chord, to paraphrase what the Maharishi told an earnestly inquiring David Frost in black and white - before the 1960s evolved into colour.

My first thought was that material security afforded Harrison world enough and time to devote to meditation at sunrise and gardening at midnight. No grudge there, though. The kid from Wavertree and Speke had earned what he had; he had taken the risks and made good.

But my second thought was that The Beatles were only possible because the early 1960s were a time of low unemployment - about 300,000 when I started secondary school in 1960 - and high expectations. Within a few years of John, Paul, George and Ringo's return from Hamburg, young Brits were hitch-hiking all over the world. Some went in the hope of dope and a few easy lays in exotic places; some were prompted by the spirit of adventure; others went hoping for enlightenment.

My third thought was that the explosion of interest in the East - the sounds of the sitar and tabla, colourful kaftans, the aroma of joss sticks, Transcendental Meditation, Hare Krishna and all the rest - was not so much a rocket trip into the future but a float downstream to the past. All that Sergeant Pepper paraphenalia - the droopy moustaches, the long hair, the uniforms and Pablo Fanque's Fair - was not modern but Victorian. The Beatles unwittingly plugged the country back into the dreams of Empire and the love affair with India. The movement inward was also outward and expansive.

In backwater bookshops you could buy copies of the Bhagavad Gita and a wide range of world literature, philosophy and politics. The big book conglomerates had not rolled over these shops with their supermarket selling techniques: there was space for all and room to breathe. Conscription and capital punishment were abolished. University was still a place of self-discovery rather than a conveyer belt for the materially ambitious. With all its self-indulgence, egoism and political blundering, the Sixties was a golden time of opportunity - at least for those with the wit to cop on.

Highlights included Phil Spector in wig and make-up talking about the making of All Things Must Pass andThe Concert For Bangladesh - 'I had to go and get Dylan from his apartment'; footage of The Beatles doing their stuff and the Travelling Wilburys recording Handle With Care in Bob Dylan's garage; and Eric Clapton talking about John Lennon's suggestion that he join the Fab Four - at that time the Fab Three.

George Harrison had a lot of friends and knew many people in music, films and motor racing - Jackie Stewart, seemingly sitting in a chair with a neck support - said George's death had made the deepest impact on him. George Harrison, however, appeared to have no fear of dying or, as he put it, leaving his body. 'What would I miss? Apart from my son (Dhani) who needs a father, there's not much,' he said calmly. I supposed that his second wife Olivia was used to that. At the end she said when George died the room became suffused with light. 'You wouldn't need to turn on a light for your camera'.

As I went away from the cinema, I think I said a quiet thank you to George Harrison for the good things that he and the other three corners of the square known as The Beatles brought into being. On reflection I'd like to add another thank you very much - to Martin Scorsese.