page_title: I Me Mine
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: I Me Mine / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: George Harrison, Shyamasundara Dasa and Mukunda Goswami in Vrindavan in front of Jiva Goswami Samadhi
context_page_description: "I Me Mine" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. Written by George Harrison, it was the last new track recorded by the band before their break-up in April 1970. The song originated from their January 1969 rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios when they were considering making a return to live performance. Written at a time of acrimony within the group, the lyrics lament humankind's propensity for self-centredness and serve as a comment on the discord that led to Harrison temporarily leaving the Beatles. The musical arrangement alternates between waltz-time verses and choruses played in the hard rock style.
  The song reflects Harrison's absorption in Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and their denouncement of ego in favour of universal consciousness. When Harrison presented "I Me Mine" at Twickenham, John Lennon showed little interest and instead waltzed with Yoko Ono while the other Beatles rehearsed the song. Footage of the couple dancing was included in the Let It Be documentary film.
context_section_description: Although a session on 20 August 1969, to oversee the creation of the master tape of their Abbey Road album, marked the last time that all four Beatles were present in the recording studio, "I Me Mine" was the last new song recorded by the Beatles. In his book Revolution in the Head, MacDonald writes that this was a "poetic stroke of fate", given the song's subject matter. Harrison titled his 1980 autobiography after the song. It was the first autobiography by a former Beatle and originally published by Genesis Publications as a luxury leather-bound edition in the style of the same company's Log of HMS Bounty. The title was intended as an ironic comment on the falseness of adhering to a self-focused perspective. According to Harrison's foreword, he titled the book I, Me, Mine to acknowledge that it "could also be seen as 'a little ego detour'" of his own.
  "I Me Mine" came to symbolise Harrison's perspective on an ego-less and depersonalised existence. According to Christian historian and theologian Dale Allison, this theme is one of three ways in which Harrison's body of work represents a "religious scheme of salvation", the first of which he identifies as: "Our problem is that our individual egos attach themselves to the material world ... Engrossed with things that don't really matter, we become preoccupied with the visible, with the transient instead of the transcendent ..." In an article coinciding with the release of Martin Scorsese's 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Steve Rabey of the Religion News Service cited "I Me Mine" among the Beatles songs that contributed to Harrison's standing as "perhaps the most explicitly and consistently theological rock star of the last half-century". Rabey added: "he nudged his bandmates – and his listener fans – a bit further to the East, encouraging audiences to open themselves to new (or very old) spiritual influences."
  Author and academic Jeffery D. Long, an advocate for religious pluralism, credited Harrison, followed by the 1982 film Gandhi and the work of writer Fritjof Capra, as the influences that led him to study the Bhagavad Gita and embrace Hindu Dharma. In a 2015 interview, Long quoted "I Me Mine" when outlining how the concepts of self and consciousness differ in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. Speaking at a TED Conference in June 2007, Tibetan Buddhist Robert Thurman referenced the song when he discussed the power of true empathy that accompanies the realisation that "you are the other being", adding:
  Somehow by that opening, you can see the deeper nature of life. And you can get away from this terrible iron circle of I, me-me, mine. Like the Beatles used to sing. You know, they really learned everything in the '60s. Too bad nobody ever woke up to it, and they're trying to suppress it since then. I, me-me, mine. It's like a perfect song, that song. A perfect teaching.
  In March 2015, the NME listed the track at number 94 in its list "100 Greatest Beatles Songs As Chosen By Music's A-Listers". One of the members of the indie rock band Gengahr commented that "When exploring music at a young age I remember this song's weird change of time signatures and rhythm between sections confusing me as to how it was able to exist as one song, but it just does", and he recognised the drum sound and rhythm as a precursor to early hip hop.
  Marc Ford recorded a version of "I Me Mine" for the album Songs from the Material World: A Tribute to George Harrison, released in February 2003 to coincide with what would have been Harrison's 60th birthday. Beth Orton recorded the song as a medley with "Dig It" for Let It Be Revisited, a CD included with the October 2010 issue of Mojo. At the George Fest tribute to Harrison in 2014, "I Me Mine" was performed by Britt Daniel of the band Spoon, who said that it was his favourite song by Harrison. Elliott Smith and Laibach have each covered the song.
caption: Harrison (left) with friends from the Hare Krishna movement in 1996. The song helped establish his legacy as one of rock music's most overtly spiritual songwriters.
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