Life of George

You helped popularize Eastern religion for a generation. Do you think the hunger for that is more or less strong now?

I think everybody really must get to a point in their life where they think, ''What is this? Is this life? Driving up and down the San Diego Freeway? Pollution? Going to hassle my way through some office,'' or whatever their work is?... How do you say it so you don't offend half the planet? You've got to be either just totally not interested in any spirit, or totally blind to the fact that we're not having fun.

You see, people accept a certain condition in life: ''Okay, well, I have to do this, I have to do that, and there's no hope, and I'm not going to see Christ because he's dead.'' And they accept that. But the soul, or whatever you want to call that thing inside, is looking -- it's perfect. Everybody is potentially divine, and there's this perfection in everybody, and it's that thing that is crying out to say, ''Well, this isn't it. This isn't good enough for me. I want more money. I've got more money? I want more fame. Well, I've got more fame? Now that still isn't it. I still want to be happy. This isn't real happiness. Where do I find it?'' It's that questioning and that searching within yourself, that you either give it up, or you find it.

Is it easier to talk about the Beatles after so many years?
Yeah... If you've just gone through a row or something, the last thing you want to do is talk about it... I put it in ''When We Was Fab'': ''The microscopes that magnified the tears/Studied warts and all.'' Well, it's like that, now I'm able to remember all the good things as well, and we really had a laugh when we were really good friends... We got through all that by giving each other strength and support and all that.

So all that time that's gone between means we remember the good things as well as the bad, and even the bad things we can see [more calmly] in retrospect. It's like, everybody thinks the Beatles were this really big thing, and maybe they were in one way. But having been one, I can say, ''Well, not really.'' I mean, John was very clever in many ways, but he wasn't exactly what everybody thinks, and neither were Ringo or Paul or myself. We weren't all as clever or stupid as we've all been made out to appear.