Back in 1970, at age twenty, I left the Sorbonne University in Paris where I had been studying literature and began studying the Bhagavad Gita at the Krishna temple in London. It was also the year George’s single, “My Sweet Lord,” became the most successful solo release by any of the Beatles. The recording reflected his growing interest in mantras and meditation, and the week I arrived he was producing an album of Indian devotional songs with the London Krishna devotees. I had the good karma to be invited to play harmonium during recording sessions at Apple Studios. The harmonium was a small hand-pumped keyboard instrument, and it felt close enough to playing an organ that I was able to pick up the notes and jump in.

During sessions, George’s pure perception of the devotional spirit beneath India’s traditional music affected us all. I, on the other hand, was stuck in rock-n-roll cliches. At one point during an introductory solo to the song “Govinda Jaya Jaya,” I let loose with an embellished riff. George calmly raised an eyebrow and gave me a look that silently said, “Really?”

It took me a minute, but his meaning became painfully clear. We were recording a prayer. This wasn’t the time for showmanship. We were there to serve the sacredness of the mantra. That was a clarifying moment for me, in which George conveyed, with just a look, that less is often more, that simplicity can be more eloquent than elaborate display, and that a good thought is best communicated through refined expression, particularly if one is recording sacred music.

That was more than fifty years ago, and I’m still learning those important lessons. For George, humility in service to Govinda, Krishna, was inseparable from who he was and woven into the very fabric of his being.