Given the intense tensions between East and West today, it is little wonder that in mourning George Harrison, we are also mourning a lost era. In his 1960s heyday, Harrison embraced the East. Elements of the counterculture extolled it as a font of wisdom, peace and spirituality in contrast to the West's aggressive, destructive and material way of life. Now the East is daily condemned as the font of war against our peaceful, constructive, material way of life. Ironic that, but then again, as Harrison observed: all things must pass.
Certainly his passing, like the passing of all famous contemporaries, reminds us not only of a lost era but of the ominous ticking of our own clocks. This sense is deepened by the fact that George Harrison and the Beatles will, in the public imagination, always be recalled as twentysomethings - exemplars of an original youth culture flourishing in a changing world. Indeed, when the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Harrison was still just 27, a multimillionaire whose significance would forever be as part of a greater whole.
By all accounts, George Harrison, unlike Ringo Starr, resented his support role to Lennon and McCartney. That's neither greatly surprising nor damning.
Yet in being one of the Beatles, one of only four (successful ones) who were ever made or will ever be made, he will forever be a 1960s cultural icon.
His popularising of an East characterised by gurus, yogis and maharishis certainly is at odds with current characterisations of the region as a ruthless hell-hole of Islamic fundamentalists, intent on destroying Western values.
Sure, it was Hinduism, not Islam, which attracted Harrison, and it was Buddhism, especially that of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which centrally informed (or misinformed) the 1960s counterculture view of the East.
In the public imagination, however, so influenced by political and media agendas, such distinctions become blurred. Kabul, after all, was a noted stopover on the so-called "hippie trail" to Kathmandu. It was exotic, of course, but it was also considered civilised and cosmopolitan, exuding an ancient calmness lost in a Western world addicted to the notion of progress.
No doubt there was a suspicious sentimentalising of the East in much of the 1960s counterculture propaganda. Extolling spirituality, a quality considered bruised and broken by Western secularism and economic preoccupation, was not unreasonable but neither was it the whole story. In a region of theocracies, there were always questions of power too. Meanwhile, in Western cities, Afghan coats were never the most aesthetic garments but they certainly cast Afghanistan in a different light to that in which it is viewed these days.
Of course, long before the murderous attacks on the US and the murderous revenge at Mazar-i-Sharif, the 1960s could arouse strong emotions. For some, it remains a golden age of liberation and political progress; for others it was an era in which depravity was celebrated and the secure moral and social framework was subverted. As such, the decade of the Beatles is routinely considered fit only for nostalgia or contempt. The truth, like the truth of Afghanistan, is surely more complex than either caricature suggests.
Viewed from the present, the 1960s is accelerating into history, a sense magnified each time one of its icons passes away. There was, undoubtedly, much political claptrap enunciated during the decade. Yet it's important to remember that the easily derided sloganeering of the counterculture was no more claptrapish than the ranting in response. If Timothy Leary's "tune in, turn on and drop out" sounds ridiculous (which it does), what of the pronouncements of his hawkish enemies demanding intensification of the war in Vietnam? The decades since have shown that neither a tab of LSD (Leary's prescription for furthering human consciousness) nor a policy of carpet-bombing (the hawks' prescription for furthering human civilisation) are even remotely reasonable recommendations. But back then, much of the cultural conflict of the times was presented in those terms. There was, of course, a range of more reasonable and articulate analyses to be had, but generally the popular media opted, as ever, for the drama of maximised opposition.
Certainly, the 1960s evidenced political and cultural drama on a scale seen only periodically since. The assassination of John Kennedy, violence on the streets of US black ghettos, Paris and Belfast, men walking on the moon - it was an astonishing time. Fair enough, perhaps even the drama of each of these has arguably been diminished by the televising in 1989 of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and this year's September attack on the World Trade Centre. But in the 1960s, there were so many astonishing events that the decade continues to glow as a time of unprecedented change.
It was also a time which coincided with the wondrous, novelty age of television. Indeed, copious moving footage guarantees that generations to come will continue to remember the Beatles and the period with a sense of realism largely denied to the events of earlier decades. In that regard, technology significantly made and has sustained the 1960s. Likewise, the technology which meant that dances did not require live bands ushered out the showband era that was thriving when the Beatles came to Dublin.
Though it seems bizarre now, when the Beatles visited Ireland, showbands dominated the local scene. Playing cover versions of international chart hits and even medleys of hymns, the showbands clearly attempted to link traditional Ireland with popular music. Few wrote their own songs, and, though the showbands survived the 1960s, once the Beatles had redefined pop, the demise of Ireland's indigenous dance bands was inevitable. Now disc jockeys can even present themselves as stars and, indeed, "creative artists". What price progress?
'In the end, the phenomenal success of the Beatles was due to psychological compatibility [with the mood of the times]. They came from an Irish working-class background in Liverpool, whose irreverence towards all established authority, an especially towards national and military authority, is endemic," wrote Godfrey Hodgson in his fascinating, if uneven, book America in Our Time, first published in 1976.
"They grew up knowing some of the things that young Americans were discovering with pained surprise in the 1960s: that industrial society uses people as well as makes them more affluent, that there is a good deal of hypocrisy about politicians' patriotism, that a lot of middle-class virtue is a sham. When a generation of young Americans emerged from Birmingham and Dallas, Mississippi and Vietnam, into disillusionment and cynicism, the Beatles were waiting there with a grin on their faces. They were as disillusioned and cynical as anyone but they were cheerful about it; they had never expected that life would be any different."
Hodgson's analysis is perceptive. Not being Irish, his description of the Beatles as coming "from an Irish working-class background in Liverpool" is telling. Obviously, if an Irish person were to describe the Beatles in such terms, a charge of appropriation might convincingly be made. Certainly, Irish people resent British appropriation of Irish successes and, no doubt, the feeling works in reverse. There are Irish threads to the Beatles backgrounds, none more than to George Harrison's, but just how defining of their attitudes these might be is arguable.
Anyway, it is not for stereotypical Irishness or Britishness that Harrison or the Beatles will be remembered. Instead, they will be recalled as the first globalised pop group, international stars at the centre of an international cultural revolution.
Harrison's openness to the East, in particular to meditation and sitar music, appears desperately dated now (although "world music" continues to incorporate Eastern elements). In fact, with the current tensions between East and West, it appears not only dated but almost inconceivable.
Perhaps the 1960s were all just froth and empty spectacle, in which so-called countercultural practices were manipulated by the usual commercial interests. Yet that seems an excessively dismissive judgment. The transformations in personal relationships and in attitudes towards power and authority did cause a dramatic break with hitherto prevailing customs.
Naturally, positive and negative consequences resulted, and we continue to live with those today while we debate their meanings.
Still, now that half of the Beatles are dead, emphasising the point that the only possible Beatle reunion must take place on the other side, those who remember the group hear more loudly the ticking of our own clocks. Meanwhile, the bombs continue to pound Afghanistan, and we have no idea of how many people - innocent as well as otherwise - have been killed there since the offensive began on October 7th. Funny how technology can change the world, yet there's such an information vacuum at the heart of this alleged information age.