Living in the Material World

Another roc doc review...I was able to watch Scorsese's documentary on the life of my favorite Beatle, George Harrison.  As Scorsese has done with other documentaries from The Band's Last Waltz, Dylan No Direction Home, and The Stones Shine a Light, Scorsese digs feverishly deep into the background of the artist and tells a great story about their lives through pictures, interviews, and of course the music itself.  I wasn't alive when the Beatles were huge, or when they broke up, or when Lennon was shot, but I do remember when George Harrison died on November 29th of 2001.  At this time I was recently trying to figuring out my place in the world and his music was very inspirational to me during this time.  His songs always had a "love and happiness" type of vibe that allowed me to view the bigger picture of life and what is what with my small existence.  Songs about the natural progression of life, the seasons we all go through, songs like "here comes the sun" and "all things must pass" motivated me to let it be.  George was mainly my favorite because he seemed to me to be the most spiritual, most experimental, and everybody I knew either liked John or Paul.  The transcendental meditation that he talked about and I learned about was spiritually ahead of anything I had ever learned.  He was also the person besides Steve Martin in "The Jerk" that I knew about playing a Ukulele and it seems like many artists do that now.  Living in the Material World provided me with much insight and respect for this artist and the way he went about his business.  He was far from perfect but he was very insightful and disciplined in his life.  For the first 20 minutes of this doc I was bored and couldn't see the whole picture but very quickly I was captured with interviews from Paul, Ringo, Clapton, and Patti Boyd.  Amazing to me was the grace that he lived with when dealing with some very difficult troubles, no one was bigger than the Beatles, what pressure that had to be.  George Harrison was way ahead of his time intellectually, artistically, and spiritually.  We could all take a page from him.  The title of this film, like his album, fits this artist perfectly.  He was concerned with so much more than most of us but lived in this material world that is all about stuff, make it about Love, Sweet Sweet Love.  Like he said "Give me Love, Give me Love, Give me Peace on Earth"