How The Beatles fell under the spell of their yogi – and a very shifty character called ‘Magic Alex’
I FOUND myself in 2008 investigating events in the lives of The Beatles when they had fallen under the spell of a yogi called the Maharishi and had followed him to his ashram in India to learn more from his teachings.
Other worshippers had joined them – Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Donovan, Mia Farrow and a man called Alex Mardas, aka Magic Alex, one of John Lennon’s hangers-on.
I became involved because my client, the New York Times, had published an obituary of the Maharishi and Magic Alex decided to sue the newspaper for the imputation he was a ‘charlatan’ and a rumour-monger. It was not difficult to argue that Alex – by now a seedy businessman in Athens – was a charlatan.
He had come to London in the 1960s and found work as a television repairman, but with the aid of a vivid imagination and a copy of Popular Science magazine, he had convinced the Fab Four – John, in particular – that he was a genius who could produce fantastic electronic inventions.
They would include: an X-ray camera that could take photographs through walls; a force field that would surround their homes with coloured smoke; a house which would hover in the air, suspended on an invisible beam; magic paint that would make objects painted with it invisible; a flying saucer made from the V-12 engines of George Harrison’s Ferrari and John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce; a 72-track recording studio more technologically advanced than EMI could offer at Abbey Road.
The Beatles paid him a large amount to proceed with these inventions, none of which came to pass.
The 72-track recording studio at Apple headquarters was built, but when they went there to record Let It Be it did not work, and they were soon back at Abbey Road with a furious George Martin, their producer, who could not believe their gullibility.
The case was settled out of court.