The Story of the Govinda prayers

by Harivilasa Dasa

Harivilasa Dasa shares his memories of the recording of the Govinda prayers, which later became the song for greeting the Deities.

THAT WAS in 1969. I was a new devotee, just arrived in London from Paris. This was basically my first contact with Krsna consciousness. I had met the devotees in Paris, but this was the first temple I had ever come to. Srila Prabhupada had just left, after installing Sri-Sri Radha-London-Isvara. I went to the temple, and Yamunadevi was the first devotee I met. The atmosphere in the temple was saturated with the presence of Srila Prabhupada. The first and second day of my stay there I was given the privilege of cleaning his vyasasana. My whole body was vibrating the presence of Prabhupada, and one could also see it in the devoteesthey were all really elevated and inspired. I could feel the amazing presence of the pure devotee in the words, actions and dedication of those devotees. I was a musician. I played the Arabic lute, and I brought it with me. The devotees were saying they were going to make a record with George Harrison. They had already made a record in America and they were going to make another one. One day George Harrison showed up at the temple for lunch, and the devotees asked me to be present. About one or two days after I am in the temple, I meet George Harrison from the Beatles, who at that time was a famous person with a music career.

In fact, my first meeting with the devotees in Paris was somewhat connected with George Harrison. I was managing a little macrobiotic cafe in the American center in Paris. One day I received a little note and the jacket of the first Hare Krsna 45 RPM record. On the jacket was an explanation by Srila Prabhupada of the transcendental nature of the Hare Krsna mahd-mantra, which basically he took, almost word for word from his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. So someone handed me this paper and said, "These people want to rent your cabaret on Sunday night." I read the paper, and it blew me away completely. I said, "O my God, what are the Beatles doing?" I thought George Harrison wrote that; I didn't know anything about Prabhupada. I thought the Beatles wrote this explanation, and I couldn't believe it. I thought this was the most esoteric thing I'd ever read in my life. They were talking about some transcendental mantra, etc. I thought they had taken some amazingly potent LSD and now were leading us on this trip. Later, I found out it was Srila Prabhupada who had written the text and that there was a movement called the Hare Krsna movement and that George Harrison was connected to.

Anyway, I meet George Harrison. This to me was a sign from God that I was on the right track. How could I, a really insignificant person, meet George Harrison, an international star? In my mind it was not still clear; I had some idea that maybe he is the guru of this whole thing.

So George came to the Bury Place temple. He brought his guitar, too. Yamunadevi, Mukunda, Gurudasa, Syamasundara, Malati, me-we were all sitting down in a small room with a humble setting. We were taking prasadam, having a gentle type of discussion. I was really flashing, "This is unbelievable!"

All of a sudden George finished and picked up his guitar, sat next to Yamunadevi and started going through his chord progressions. He said, "I was thinking about your song Govinda." And he came up with the chord progressions, asking, "What do you think of this?" The devotees were giving their opinion. This is the way he began to construct the Govinda song, the first step in the creation of the commercial presentation of this transcendental song.

The next day a group of ten or eleven devotees went to Apple Studios. There was Yoge§vara Prabhu, me, Mukunda, Yamuna, a few other devotees. We spent the whole day there. That's when we really saw the genius of George Harrison in the way he worked in a recording studio. He was constructing a song from bits and pieces. He was asking Yamuna to sing it over and over again; and he kept recording it. "Govindamadipurusath "-that was Yogesvara, me, Jayahari. There were also others singing; I cannot remember everybody. If I am not mistaken, it was about six people standing and singing.

George Harrison brought in an orchestra of six or eight people to play string instruments, and he played the guitar. He was mixing it and balancing it. He had thirtythree tracks to mix it together. It was very, very exciting. We saw he was a creative man, an artist. His paintbrush was his creative mind, and the canvas was his thirty-three tracks and the actual mixing. I remember he had hired musicians.

At one point he looked at me and said, "Come over here; bring your instrument." We sat down next to each other. He picked up my lute, looked at it a little bit and gave it back. Then he picked up his guitar and started fingering something.

Then he asked, "Can you do this?" I did it. He played another motif and asked me, "Can you do that?" It worked really well because the instrument was made for doing sounds like that. He saw that was like a piece of cake on this instrument. Then he decided to record me playing. They had previously recorded Syamasundara playing the esraj, the Indian violin. Then he had me play the lute. I did it two or three times.

I was blown over by the whole thing-George Harrison sitting down and asking me to do this. What really impressed me was that he was really a gentleman. Very polite in the way he talked to people. He didn't have to draw things out from people or make them feel in any way imposed upon.

At one point we all sat down and had some lunch, with vegetarian sandwiches. Then his wife came in. It was a really pleasant day. The next day we came back again to hear what he had done. We were all very impressed by his work. Then he refined it more and more before he released it.

The recording of the Govinda prayers was a sincere effort of the devotees to glorify Krsna and Prabhupada. It was a very transcendental experience. It convinced me that Krsna consciousness was definitely taking over the world. George Harrison had such an impact on the young people in the world, at least the young people I knew.

Srila Prabhupada heard this recording for the first time a little later, when he was in Los Angeles. Devotees say that he actually cried and said, "Play that every time for the greeting." 13