AND: I put the video up before watching it. Now, I've seen it, and what did it mean? The lyrics of the song are clearly about looking for God. So we see a pair of investigators with scanning devices in a library/bookstore, searching, and then in a crowded movie theater, searching.
I had to presume they were looking for God. But it turned into looking at celebrities, and this was kind of a mystery too, not the profound mystery of the search for God, but a mystery nonetheless, because all the celebrities I have a shot at recognizing are old and radically changed from the version I know, and all the ones appearing in their famous form, the young ones, are not famous to me.
But perhaps that's the message: If you were looking at God, would you see Him? I really wanna see you, Lord...
In the end, the investigators tell each other that they didn't even hear what song was playing. That is, they didn't hear the lyrics about searching for God. But they turn on the car radio — streaming device? — and "My Sweet Lord" is playing there too. The song is everywhere. God is everywhere. It takes so long... it won't take long.
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It sounds like the 2020 remix, not the original track.
I don't know; I'm a Phil Spector girl.
Except for the murder part.
-Loren
Is there a point to the video plotline? I don't know because I don't have seven minutes to give to it to find out some (probably lame) conclusion. What a distraction from the song; why?
When he turns the radio on in the car it should have played “He’s So Fine”.
He’s so fine…
---AND: I put the video up before watching it.
Ah, I see! So the video meant little, apparently; what a surprise! Maybe they felt they had to add some heft to something that, albeit with a great guitar sound, is on the lightweight side. Instead of 7 minutes, it might have made a better old-fashioned 2:26 playing time record.
Isn't this the song that George stole from the Chiffons's?
"He's So Fine."
Hm, my Lord (Hallelujah)
My, my, my Lord (Hare Krishna)
My sweet Lord (Hare Krishna)
My sweet Lord (Krishna Krishna)
My Lord (Hare Hare)
Hm, hm (Guru Brahma)
Hm, hm (Guru Vishnu)
Hm, hm (Guru Devo)
Hm, hm (Maheśvaraḥ)
My sweet Lord (Guru Sākṣāt)
My sweet Lord (Para Brahma)
My, my, my Lord (Tasmai Srī)
My, my, my, my Lord (Guru Namah)
My sweet Lord (Hare Rama)
There was some controversy at the time. People may have been thinking they were listening to a Christian song until they heard the "Hare Krishna" or had it pointed out to them and they were not happy.
A lot has changed since then. 50 years ago, Westerners could see Hinduism as a path to the truth. Now it looks more like another politicized religion. Buddhism is holding up better.
Yeah, celebrity watching is getting more and more difficult for me. I don't watch TV or movies much and haven't for 20 years. And Pop music was never my bag. So, unless its somebody from th 1990s or before, I have zero idea who they are.
George Harrison seems to have had talent, but his lyrics are on the simple side? No? "Here comes the sun" "My sweet lord" come to mind. You like them, but they seem repetitive.
In the summer of 1971, I attended a Russian-language program at the University of Leningrad. On a street outside the dormitory, I became acquainted with a young Russian man (I forget his name) who was a fervent Baptist. He spoke some English and wanted to practice it with me. He took me to his church, where he sang in the choir. He took me into his home. He showed me some of Leningrad.
Many young people in Leningrad were familiar with Beatles songs. In particular, I sometimes heard people on the streets playing tape recordings of "My Sweet Lord".
My Baptist friend loved this song, which he called "a song of redemption". I had to inform him that Harrison essentially was a Hindu and that the song was about praising some Hindu song. And the final words were a repetition of "Hare Krishna".
I had brought along with me to Leningrad a bunch of records as gifts to Russians I might meet. One of those albums was Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace.
At first, my Baptist friend did not like the album, because it did not sound like religious music to him. Basically, the only religious songs he ever had heard were the hymns that he sang in his church choir.
As he listened to the album, studying its printed lyrics, he soon became ecstatic about the album. He shared it secretly with his fellow choir members. This is a fond memory of mine.
What I noticed: A very white video.
This whole trend now of re-mixing classic albums has taken off. Re-mastering is fine but re-mixing is blasphemy.
PLEASE LEAVE THE CLASSICS ALONE!
Jeebus gave Harrison cancer for making this blasphemy.
Also.....these "celebrities" are tedious.
The problem is that copyright law has sunk into destroying artistic advancement, rather than encouraging it, like such law is supposed to do.
I saw the video and looked at the credits, and recognized only about half the names which is only an indication of how alienated I've become from popular culture.
The message is incoherent. George Harrison is on the screen in the theatre. Is Harrison Big Brother? Is he the source, the light, the illumination?
It's a step up from the Gal Gadot "Imagine" video, but not by much.
I don't think Harrison would have liked this; it's too serious and the focus is more on him than on the message.
He (and the rest of the Beatles) had the sense of humor to appreciate "Let It Bye Bye Bye."
"What I noticed: A very white video."
Since you're black, that's not surprising. Its perfectly natural for non-whites to notice the lack of any non-whites in a video.
Of course, if you were a white libtard, that'd be a weird thing to say.
I'll watch the vid later.
In the meantime--Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Ludwig van! 251 years fresh.
Harrison really was seeking God and willing to go to India to find Him (sorry, girls). “My Sweet Lord” was an interesting all-inclusive view. But I can’t let go of Jesus’ words — “No one gets to the Father but by me”. One way, Jesus. And my reading of religions of all kinds reaffirms this to me every time. The Logos is the Way is the Son is God. My sweet Lord. Hallelujah, not Hare Krishna.
This story explains how the copyright fight basically destroyed Harrison's enthusiasm for music.
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/george-harrison/my-sweet-lord
'Jeebus gave Harrison cancer for making this blasphemy.'
Bigot.
"In the meantime--Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Ludwig van! 251 years fresh."
Yes, I always notice this day, because it is my mother's birthday.
Lots of people talking about the copyright case. I considered noting in the post that I didn't want comments on that subject, but I decided not to fight it.
I was clerking in the Southern District of New York court when the case was there and I remember reading the opinion. Harrison lost because there were 3 or 4 of 5 different things about the 2 songs that matched up. That was too much to be a coincidence. Keep in mind that it's not just the similarity of the music in the phrases "He's so fine" and "My sweet Lord." But there's no proof that it was a conscious rip-off. And I feel sorry for people who try to write songs and have no way to know whether something they've heard is coming back as something they feel they invented.
In the documentary "Get Back," there are a few places where you see that The Beatles knew something they had was like something else they knew and they might do something to vary it a little.
"But it turned into looking at celebrities, and this was kind of a mystery too, not the profound mystery of the search for God, but a mystery nonetheless, because all the celebrities I have a shot at recognizing are old and radically changed from the version I know, and all the ones appearing in their famous form, the young ones, are not famous to me."
I agree. The only celebrity that I recognized was Weird Al and the only other names listed at the end that I knew were Mark Hamill and Ringo Starr.
I also assumed that you had misspelled your "celebritney" tag until I googled the word.
It's George's Bittersweet Symphony
In 1968, a fifty year old pop song to remember might have been "Over There," one of the top 10 pop songs of 1918. As a kid in 1968 I recognized it from old movies rerun on rainy Saturday afternoon TV. Looking at the 1918 top 40 list, only a few more from 1918 lasted in the public consciousness for 50 years. Many of the old songs were about World War I, like Over There.
I recall with loathing having to sing My Sweet Lord in church choir in parochial elementary school, led by Sister Mary Camilla (nicknamed Camilla the Gorilla) on guitar.
If you were looking at God, would you see Him? I really wanna see you, Lord..
This is answered in Exodus. Even Moses could not see God straight on. There's a beautiful passage where he asks to see God's face. The response:
"...I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:19–23)
Of course the anthropomorphisms aren't to be taken literally. I take it to mean "You can't see my plan in the moment, only in hindsight. And that was Moses. For us, we don't even get that much insight.
If you were looking at God, would you see Him? I really wanna see you, Lord.
Jesus' neighbors looked at Him every day for 30 years and didn't see God. Throughout His ministry people saw and heard and didn't see God.
Today, God's presence is all around us. He speaks to our hearts. But we are so caught up in worldly things that we do not see or hear Him.
Like being at a loud club with the music blasting, He could be next to us and shouting and we wouldn't hear Him even if we knew who He was.
But perhaps that's the message: If you were looking at God, would you see Him? I really wanna see you, Lord
At the songfacts link above, it explains that growing up and being dissatisfied with the Catholicism he was raised he, Harrison searched and searched because he really did want to "see the Lord."
Harrison means what he says.
George Harrison:
The Catholic vision of faith - believing in God without seeing Him - didn't sit well with Harrison. He found a more compelling case in Eastern philosophy; his gateway was Ravi Shankar, a top Indian musician who taught Harrison how to play sitar. Shankar taught him about swamis and yogis, and gave him a book by Swami Vivekananda, the first Indian swami to come to America.
Speaking with Timothy White in 1992, Harrison explained: "In his book he said, 'If there's a God we must see him. If there's a soul we must perceive it. Otherwise, it's better not to believe. It's better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.'
And when I read that after all that stuff I'd been through with the Church, with 'You just believe what we tell you. And don't ask questions.' Whereas the Swami's saying, 'If there's a God we must see him.' I thought, 'Right on, that's the one for me!' If there's a God, I want to see him."
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/george-harrison/my-sweet-lord
Not my favorite GH tune by any means, and even as a callow youth I wasn't impressed by educated Westerners who sought spiritual wisdom in Hinduism. "Journeys to the East" generally end up in nowhere land.
I recognized some faces and voices in the video, but many of them were new and unknown to me.
I'm old enough to remember when airports were full of Krishna-ites. Their disappearance is one instance of the world getting better.
Filmed in Southern California and yet not a single mask on anyone. Nor did they check the dude’s vaccine passport when he want into the crowded, massless theater.
I love the song but it is very grounded in the early 1970s for me. This video doesn’t reflect the song. You end up distracted with all the “Where’s Waldo?” celebrity hunting.
Good thing the song stands up to endless re-listening. And the video is shot on location in LA, always fun for me. And there's Ringo!
a Video about finding god made by people who don't want him found....
Saw this snippet from a National Review Online article at Instapundit:
As the Who suit up for what I suppose will be their final tour (“Who’s Left”?), Chuck Klosterman points out in his book But What If We’re Wrong? that whole forms die out. He compares rock to 19th-century marching music: nothing left of the latter except John Philip Sousa. That’s it. And Sousa himself is barely remembered. In 100 years rock might be gone too, Klosterman guesses.
Mike Sylwester, great great story. That is one of the things that makes comments on the Althouse blog so special. Nice job of bringing that record to Russia in the first place. Very touching tale.
Howard said...
Jeebus gave Harrison cancer for making this blasphemy.
**************
Howard's continual gibberish leads us to think Jesus has already given him brain cancer.
Not for blasphemy, but for his weapons-grade malice.
The video was cute enough ("Weird Al" and Ringo are always worth watching), but had nothing to do with the song, of course.
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