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ubernoxa · 4 years

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The Token: A Guns an’ Roses Fanfiction

Chapter 13: Halion

Story Summary: Story inspired by the movie She’s the Man. A female Duff is tired of dealing with the bullshit of trying to make it on the strip as a female bassist. In a desperate attempt to make it big doing what she does, she cuts her hair and mascardes as Duff. What’s the wors that could happen?

Chapter Summary: Michelle/Duff realizes how fragile her lie is.

(Masterlist)

Taglist: @viralwolf02 @littlemisscare-all @smokeandmirrorz @aratbaby @slashscowboyboots @queen-crue @achiweyow @bitter-13-suite @white-lightning-625

I wouldn’t be lying when I said that I thoroughly enjoyed the limo ride that Walter’s father had paid for to drive us to dinner. I almost felt like a rockstar. ALMOST.

As I sat in one of the bright red leather seats drinking a glass of champagne, I could still feel the silk fabric of my periwinkle A-line dress slowly tightening around me. It was almost snakelik. I was it’s prey, and it was getting ready to go in for a kill. The more I moved, talked, or laughed the tighter it felt.

Luckily for me, this wasn’t the first time I wore a tight fitting dress. I was a child of the strip, I was in Pixie, tight clothing was nothing new to me. This though, this was different.

I fidgeted with the headband that was strategically hiding the hairline to my now brown wig. Earlier that day, Macy had come home from work and dyed the wig for me knowing full well that bright blue hair would put Walter’s father in a foul mood. We had worked so hard to stay on his good side, and we weren’t going to throw all of that away because of a stupid wig.

There is no possible way for me to simply describe Walter’s father. He is a rather odd man, but odd in an overly professional way. He is a lawyer at a record company, and his job was focused on making sure the record company wouldn’t get sued. So yes, his uncle hated rock stars and countless lawsuits they would cause by bei absolute unprofessional idiots.

Before you ask, yes I had thought of using him as a connection for getting a record deal, but as I said before he really hates rockstars.

If he ever asked, I worked at a coffee shop and was not a part of a band. If you asked him, I actually hated rock music and didn’t play any instrument. I was the quiet and shy coffee barista who would one day marry a husband and raise a happy little family with two children, a boy and a girl. It was a beautiful lie. It was a simple life that I could have one time chosen, but it wasn’t for me. I knew I had to take the risk of becoming a rockstar; otherwise, I would regret it and live as a shadow of myself for the rest of my life.

Macy gently tapped me on the side with her elbow. I sent her a warm smile as a thanks for bringing me back to reality. I quickly looked back and forth, earning a confused look from everyone in the limo.

“Sorry, just zoned out for a couple minutes,” I faked a giggle in an attempt to soften the blow that I had actually grown incredibly bored of their conversation.

“No worries,” Henry cooed as he gently pushed the hair that was cascaded in front of my shoulder to behind it.

It was a sweet gesture, but it wasn’t entirely welcomed. Ever since the day in the music store where Steven practically told Henry that Izzy and I had fucked in the closet of the music store, Henry seemed to be acting like we were dating. Henry’s annoying actions were worth the price though, and I would do it again with Izzy if I had the chance.

Was it impulsive? Yes.

Was it immature? Yes.

Was it stupid? Yes.

Would I do it again without any hesitation? Yes.

“We’re here,” Henry said, guiding me out of the limo.

It was a beautiful venue. I noticed some paparazzi standing outside the door, creeping through the windows trying to get a picture of some celebrity that was probably trying to mind their own business inside.

That was the part of fame I didn’t look forward to. I had heard stories of some musicians breaking paparazzi cameras or telling them of fuck off. I couldn’t blame them. They just wanted their privacy, something rockstars or any celebrity would never get.

I felt a flash towards our direction quickly followed by some shouting. Panic flooded my bones as I stood paralyzed by the blinding lights. After a couple of deep breaths, I calmed myself down. Once I had collected myself, I looked over to see the questions were thrown at Walter’s father and not me. As quickly the panic had come, it left. All I had to do was follow Henry into the restaurant.

“Is it true that Halion, the rock stars who made your career, have walked away from the record company to pursue better options?” I heard a man yell amongst the small crowd.

Before we could enter the building, Walter’s uncle replied, “First off, they did not make my career. I have been doing this long before they were even born. Second of all, yes they left the company due to creative differences. There are no hard feelings, and we wish them the best.”

Walter’s father was the embodiment of class as he talked to them and shortly headed inside afterwards. This couldn’t have been the first time he had dealt with this. We then were able to sit down at a table that was decorated with elegant silverware and a deep purple tablecloth. Elegance was an understatement, I felt like a queen as I sat down at the table.

“Vultures, bunch of damn vultures,” I froze as Walter’s father cussed under his breath. So there was definitely more to the story of Halion leaving the band, and I would bet my bass that nothing that came out of his mouth was true when he was talking to the paparazzi.

It’s kinda poetic that Halion was one of the bands his record company watched over. Not only did I used to date the bassist, but Halion was a rock band from Sunset Stip. Heroes isn’t a word you would use to describe them because they were far worse that Motley Crue when it came to how they interacted with groupies, and sadly I had to learn the hard way. Despite their tendencies, which are common amongst rockstars, many of the bands on the strip still looked up to them. Why? Because they made it big. Even Pixie used to look up to them, once again, despite them being incredibly sexist.

“Don’t worry father, they’re just desperate to know about company business because they are talentless swines who can only leach off of others,” the air was caught in my lungs once Walter finished speaking. I forgot that I wasn’t the only one wearing a mask. While Walter was never the outgoing funny guy like Steven, he still was nice and had a good heart, to an extent. It was clear that Walter had expectations that his father had put onto him. I don’t know who I pitied more, him or me. My mind slowly wandered toward the thought of my own parents. What would they think of what I’m doing? Would they scream at me? I’ve done worse before, maybe I’d be okay?

I continued to look over the menu and attempt to not gawk at the prices. It was rather clear that between the 5 of us, we were going to spend more money than the price of my monthly rent for the apartment.

“Does anyone plan on ordering seafood tonight?” I couldn’t sense the poison or frustration that once laced Walter’s fathers words as he spoke. We all shook our head no, and he ordered some wine that apparently would pair well with our steaks.

I didn’t protest as the waiter poured me a glass. Yes, I wasn’t 21, but I didn’t complain. I had my fake on me, if I was asked but part of me was hesitant to use it. Had Walter’s father forgotten how much younger I was than his son? Granted it was only a couple of years, but I was 20...not 21.

Laughter erupted from the entrance of the restaurant, and when I looked to see who was the source of it, my stomach twisted. As if they were Beetlejuice, Halion was currently being led to a table not too far from the one I sat at. I made sure to keep my eyes on the menu as they sat down three tables over. To the naked eye, someone might not notice it, but I had personally been with Halion enough when they were trying to hide their drunken state. Part of me wondered how long they would last here before they would get kicked out. Wouldn’t be the first time they were ‘asked to leave’ as the waiters would put it.

I shot a quick glance over towards Halion as they sat at their table with what appeared to be groupies at their side. Like I said earlier, they were classic rockstars. My heart sunk as I recognized two of the faces of the girls who were draped over Halion’s shoulders. Despite the makeup she wore, covering her entire face, and the new clothing that left little to the imagination, I recognized her. No matter how much Betsy changed herself, I would still recognize her. It had only been a couple weeks since Guns N’ Roses took their gig, but even Cindy who was draped around the lead singer of Halion had changed too.

It was only for a moment, but when I locked eyes with Betsy my heart shattered into a million pieces.

I don’t know why the tears began to fight the dams I had built to keep them in.

Not here, I couldn’t cry here.

I couldn’t cry in front of Walter’s father because he would want to know why I was crying. If he had found out that I was a part of a band, he would evict me.

I shared a quick glance with Macy, who sent a concerned look my way. Not only were two member of Pixie here, but one of them was draped across my ex-boyfriend, someone who I foolishly believed could make my dreams come true.

I took a couple deep breaths before I spoke, excusing myself from the table and heading towards the nearest bathroom. I felt his eyes on me as I weaved through the restaurant. I felt Nyx’s bright blue eyes on me.

The moment the bathroom door closed behind me, shielding from the world, I leaned over the bathroom counter with only my hands supporting me.

I couldn’t tell what hurt worse, the fact that Betsy was draped around my ex-boyfriend or what she had turned herself into. Gone was the powerful kick ass drummer. She was reduced to nothing more than a groupie who barely wore clothing. I was honestly surprised that Cindy and her were let into the restaurant.

I internally cursed at myself when I heard the bathroom door open. I should have locked it. I looked over to see Betsy locking it behind her. It was clear she didn’t want us disturbed.

“What? Are you afraid that your new boyfriend will be walking in on us? You know it wouldn’t be the first time he walked into a woman’s restroom,” I snapped at her, keeping my voice hushed.

“When people asked you if he a tualy did that, you denied it!” Betsy shot back in a voice mimicking mine. I could tell that she wasn’t mad about that, but she was directing her anger through it anyway.

“Well of course I did. He would have broken up with me if I didn’t.”

“Ohh Michelle, you’re more pathetic that I thought you were,” I didn’t have to look at Betsy to know that she was rolling her eyes at me.

I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped my lips and now filled the bathroom.

“Me? Pathetic? He promised me that Pixie would open for them for their next tour!” I shot back. I knew I was acting like a totally bitch, but I didn’t care.

“Hmm, but we didn’t open for them.”

I looked over at her as she flashed a smirk at me.

“You’re a real fucking bitch.”

“I’m nothing compared to you,” she spat back, but now it was my turn to send a stupid smirk her way.

“Of course you are nothing compared to me. You never have been and you never would be,” I shot back.

Silence once again filled the bathroom. The only noise that could be heard was the muted conversations from the restaurant that was beyond a door. The conversations that felt like a world away.

I watched as Betsy slowly walked towards me and whispered into my ear, “Don’t forget that I know your dirty little secret. With only one sentence I can destroy EVERYTHING you have ever worked for. I’m currently dating Nyx, the bassist of Halion. I’m sure you’re familiar with how much sway he holds. All I have to do is whisper that one sentence into his ear, and you’re done. You think your name has been run through the mud before? Just wait until I’m finished with you! The funny thing is that people will believe anything I saw about you. Your reputation as a whore is already well known, so any little lie would be believable. Now the question is, do I start small with the little white lies or do I go straight to the big bombshell and work my way from there? Maybe I’ll start with Izzy, you two seem close. Trust me when I say that I will take great pleasure in watching your life crumble to pieces.”

I stood speechless as I watched her leave the bathroom, laughing.

Was this the beginning of the end? Was she really going to tell everyone that I was masquerading as a guy on Sunset Strip? Was she going to tell the world I was Duff?

With Nyx at her side, she had the power to destroy everything I had ever created. I once again held onto the bathroom countertop. Not only to help stop the shaking, but to make sure I wouldn’t collapse on the ground.

Bottom line I was fucked.

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xcvian · 4 years

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look !! it’s xavian shah !! he’s my favorite d-list musician/model with 32K followers, even though he’s only twenty-three. i heard he can be irresponsible and an egomaniac, but i think he’s spontaneous and dynamic. when i first saw him, i could’ve sworn he was avan jogia, but i’m sure he’s heard that before.

i’d like to introduce you all to my problematic son.

first thing’s first, xai’s an ass. his priorities are himself, himself and himself. he takes being a rockstar to the extreme... if we’re honest, he takes just about everything to the extreme.

he’s the drummer in an up and coming band and he’s incredibly talented at what he does. he likes to claim he’s a musical genius due to his ability to play a large majority of instruments and being self taught. his band hate him because he likes to point out how much better he is than them and how they’d be nothing without him. not just due to his talent but also because he ‘works hard getting their name out there’ by being a douche.

his antics include but aren’t limited to getting wasted on various substances, not just alcohol. trashing hotel rooms. sleeping with anyone and everyone. getting into very public altercations. causing chaos... if he can do it, he will. anything to get his name in the headlines. all publicity is good publicity after all.

he’s the ‘bad boy’ of the group and the ‘heartbreaker’. considering he’s a pretty attractive guy, it’s not hard to imagine how much attention he gets from their fans which only boosts his ego even more... didn’t think it could get any bigger but somehow it does.

he was born and raised in doncaster, england in a loving family environment with his mum, dad and two sisters. and as you’d probably expect, even growing up he was a bit of a troublemaker and did whatever he could to get attention like acting up in class and doing things he definitely shouldn’t have been.

the thing is, xai really truly doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion but his own. like some will claim they don’t care but deep down it’s all they can think about but xai really doesn’t. his mind is purely on himself and he loves himself so in his mind, everyone else can fuck off. and anyway, whether people love or hate him, they’ve still got his name in their mouths so he still wins.

he is incredibly charming and manipulative and will use anyone to get what he wants. if you have a higher fame level than him, he will try his best to use you to his advantage to grow up the ranks. and he’ll drop you just as fast when you’re of no use to him. you think he cares if he hurts someone? nah, does he fuck!

xai is a big ol’ torment. like if he knows he’s pushing someone’s buttons and winding them up, he’s going to keep going and keep pushing until they blow up.

as much as xai loves his appearance, don’t think he’s afraid of getting into a fight. if anything, he loves it more when he’s all bloody and bruised because it makes him look ‘punk rock’ and edgy.

there’s a huge possibility that he has sociopathic tendencies... probably narcisisstic tendecies too.

he has a heart of stone so if he gives a shit about you, you’re either extremely special or extremely unlucky because satan boy likes you. though don’t think you’ll be able to use those few people as ammo against him, he’ll act like they don’t exist before ever showing anyone a sign of weakness.

his idols are sid vicious and secretly oasis. he also really enjoys noel fielding but like who doesn’t?

his style is a little out there like sometimes he’s v classic punk-rock but other times he’s quite flamboyant (e.g. similar to noel fielding’s fashion)

he has a very strong yorkshire accent.. think yungblud/alex turner/oli sykes/louis tomlinson vibes. also me but like you don’t know what i sound like (also i sound brummie but we’ll ignore that)

if i knew him in rl i’d probably punch him but for some reason i love him. my demon child!

if you want to plot or anything, hmu over pm or on discord and if have some plot ideas if you’d like to check them out here ! they’re all song themed bc idk that’s my vibe i guess

#shineintro #*// — intro. ✖

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harryandmolly · 5 years

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The Emancipation of Ginny ~ 10

summary: shawn and ginny could’ve ruined everything six months ago, and sticking together despite their past could make or break them now as ginny stays on as his personal assistant. but what happens on tour doesn’t stay on tour.

warnings: Language, Gertler Karaoke (TM), Niall

WC: 7k (yowza)

“Could I just… would you mind terribly if I just…”

“Hmm?” Shawn murmurs, eyes closed, leaning into her as her lips explore his jaw.

“Would you mind much if I just chewed on your chin for a while?”

His eyes open. A bubble of surprised laughter bursts out of his chest. He quiets himself quickly, remembering he’s in her bed and he’s not supposed to be. He looks down at her curled up in his lap. He tightens the arm supporting her around her back.

“What?”

Ginny looks undeterred. She brushes the tip of her little nose against his cheek and leans back again to look at him.

“Your chin is beautiful. I’d like to make a snack of it.”

He closes his eyes again, chuckling, leaning back with her against the headboard. His smile is quiet and lazy. “Go right ahead. It’s all yours.”

The unspoken caveat sits between them uncomfortably, reminding her not to leave a mark if she doesn’t want her ass sent home to Heathrow on the next plane.

Ginny hums and teasingly nips at his chin. Her fingers skim up his chest to tangle in the chain that holds the medals around his neck. She kisses strategically, softly. She’ll be damned if this thing between them stops on someone’s account besides theirs.

Ginny feels his breathing even out. She’s about to climb off his lap and let him sleep when he holds her a little tighter.

“Where ya goin’?” he mumbles, blinking his bleary eyes open.

“Gonna let you nap, love,” she says, sweeping a hand through his curls.

He shakes his head. “Stay and watch a movie?”

She doesn’t need much persuading. She smiles and settles back into him. He flips through the hotel’s options until a big smile splits his face. He perks up a bit.

Ten minutes later, “A STAR IS BORN” comes across the screen in big red letters.

Ginny’s eyes nearly cross from staring at the multicolored pattern of the train’s seat fabric. And she almost misses her stop.

She scrambles around politely disgruntled London Underground riders with murmured “scuze me, pardon me”s and sneaks between the shutting doors before they snap around the Chanel backpack Shawn bought her for Christmas. She leaps out onto the platform at London Bridge station and curses herself for not sleeping through the flight back to London for her week off so she could get adjusted to the time difference. She trudges up the stairs and ascends close enough to the famous Borough Market to smell that perfect melange of paella, tikka masala, coffee and pastries that means she’s almost home.

Her dad’s flat was the “fun” home when she was growing up. Her parents split early, the result of a driven, career-oriented mum and a flighty musician dad. She lived with her mum pretty much full time but her dad would swing in and out of her life. The one steady thing about him was this flat on Maiden Lane with the yellow door and a series of Fiats parked out front.

Ginny’s dad, Bobby Dresden, has the name of a 50s swing singer, and the voice of one, too. He’s not a deadbeat, broke, ramen-noodles-for-every-meal kind of dad. He was always the calling-from-Boston-on-tour, sending-you-an-American-girl-doll kind of dad that just was never around. He tours with a band that plays American classics and they do pretty well. They spend a lot of time in Vegas and, oddly, Manila but he’s home this week too and she hasn’t seen him in almost a year.

She waits on the front step of the flat he’s lived in since she was two. He bought it with the signing bonus he got from his record company and hasn’t touched a single thing since. The consistency is comforting to Ginny, who feels like she has to reintroduce herself to her dad every time she sees him.

He arrives beside her with that sparkling, crooked grin and slings his arms around her. He always did give the best hugs.

“Hiya, Ginny Bunny.”

She smiles into his shoulder and has the strongest urge to sob into his familiarly unfamiliar scent of some random hotel soap and a new cologne.

It’s been a long year.

“Hi, daddy.”

With one final squeeze, he releases her, only as far as arm’s length so he can look her over. She takes the opportunity to do the same.

He has sandy blonde-brown hair that’s pasted stylishly, way more stylishly than a 55-year-old man driving a Fiat should have. But same goes for the rest of him. He’s incredibly tall and lanky, clad in a light Topman sweater pushed up chicly to the mid forearm. His jeans are brand name and inky dark, tailored to end at his ankle above his Ralph Lauren loafers. He looks wonderful, like he always does. She almost cries again.

He curls an arm around her shoulders and she feels dainty the way she does around almost no one on earth. He begins guiding her toward the market to walk and eat, their father-daughterly tradition.

“So, pumpkin,” he begins, his voice raspy from lack of sleep, “How’s the rockstar life?”

Ginny sniffs a laugh. It could be reasonably assumed that Bobby is asking about Shawn, but she knows him and she knows he’s actually just asking about her. He figures rockstar’s PA is basically rockstar, so that’s how he thinks of her. It’s sweet, actually.

“Completely exhausting and every minute of it perfect,” she answers breezily, gazing around the market. Though over a thousand years old, Borough Market’s transience is one of Ginny’s favorite things about it. It has always surprised her every time she comes in. Maybe it reminds her of her dad a little.

“And how’s our Hannah Banana?”

Ginny rolls her eyes. “She’s well, she got herself knocked up again. She barely had time to drink a margarita between kids. Think she’s getting a bit restless now, though. She never has known how to stop working.”

Bobby grins, squinting with a hand up over his face as he looks over the coffee options. The stall they’ve stopped at has a hanging chalkboard sign with the menu options scrawled in flirty, curly cursive.

“I’ve always liked that about Hannah. She and I are the same that way.”

Ginny blinks and finds herself staring at a canister of roasted beans with a furrow in her brow. She’s never really thought about it, but he has a point. All the people she’s loved the most are extraordinarily driven and can’t sit still for shit. It makes her quietly smile to herself. Her dad orders something outrageous sounding with two shots of whatever and a swirl of this or that. Ginny gets a flat white. He pays.

They walk around, catching up on their travels. He’s dating someone from his label, which is of no surprise or consequence to Ginny. She’s always known about his girlfriends but has never met one. It used to upset her more when she was a child but she understands now he would never dream of introducing her to someone he didn’t actively intend to marry. Another of his strange comforts to her. He asks about whether she gets to sing or play much, like he always does. Bobby thinks of her musical talent as a win for him in his parenting book. He’d tell anyone that would listen that it really is god-given, but that he helped foster it. She assures him she sings and plays often. She blinks quickly and studies a gargantuan pot of paella that smells incredible, willing herself not to think about her karaoke performance from last week.

“And how about your fella?”

Ginny looks up at him. Bobby is smiling, fine lines showing on his youthful face, and just for a second, he feels really and truly fatherly.

Ginny’s face warms. “Not my fella anymore, as you know.”

“He’s still holding out, huh? Poor sod.”

Bobby looks pensive, narrowing his eyes out over the layers of canopied food stalls. He’s trying very hard to be mysterious. Ginny sees through it but decides not to poke holes.

“He’s dating someone, actually. A New Yorker.”

Bobby looks down, still seemingly unruffled. “It won’t last, babygirl. Not when he’s got a girl like you.”

Ginny’s breath catches in her chest. It’s an innocent enough statement. Maybe it’s not very fair to Sara, but when are fathers ever fair when it comes to their daughters? That’s not what bothers her. That’s not what has her curling her fingers into her fists and half-listening for the rest of the afternoon. It’s not what has her rolling over sleepless in her bed at her mum’s house.

Her dad’s never offered her many nuggets of wisdom. He never really had to, he was fun dad. But a man of many half-hearted relationships, he does it now, unwittingly. Ginny feels like they stumbled upon treasure but her dad swept it away, claiming it as fool’s gold.

Not when he’s got a girl like you.

Maybe she loves him still. Maybe she always will. Hell, maybe a part of him even still loves her. But Ginny’s beginning to think none of it will matter, not them, not Sara, if they don’t get out of their own way.

Ginny knew something was up as soon as Hannah opened the door to her flat the next morning. Call it best friend intuition, or maybe Hannah’s just super obvious when she has something on her mind by the way her voice raises an octave and she’s even more scattered and flighty than usual.

She doesn’t open her mouth about it though until they’re camped under a tree in Regent’s Park. Ginny is holding Kingsley, snuggling her nose into the baby’s warm neck as he gazes curiously over her shoulder. Hannah watches them both, leaning back on sore wrists as her belly protrudes between them under her stretchy maxi dress.

“I want you back, Gin.”

Ginny looks up, startled, her hand pausing its rubbing motion on her godson’s back. She blinks, blankfaced.

Hannah pulls the corner of her lip into her mouth to chew on. She pushes off her hands and leans forward, eyes focused on Ginny.

“I’ve decided to go back on tour, Gin. Not soon, obviously,” she laughs, running her hand over her belly, “But I need it. I need to know it’s in the plan. It’s what I want most, to take my babies on the road. But if I’m going to tour, I need an album.”

Ginny swallows, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

“I want you to write it with me.”

Ginny’s lips part. She stares at Hannah, waiting for some kind of indication that she didn’t actually just say that.

“I know you’ve never tried writing before, but who better than with me, the one who knows you best? God, it’ll be fantastic. We’ll write it, we’ll record it, we’ll produce it, all together, Gin, just like we always wanted. It’s your shot. Your shot to get out of the situation you’re in. He’s between albums right now anyway, you wouldn’t be leaving him in the lurch or anything. It’s perfect. You and me, back on the road. What do you think? No, wait, don’t tell me now. Want you to really think about it. It’s a lot, I know. But I think it would be good! And--”

Hannah goes on rambling for a while like she does when she’s excited and just a little nervous. Ginny watches her talk without listening, restarting her circular massaging motion on Kingsley’s back, more to soothe herself than him.

She stares off into the distance, feeling the breeze blow her hair around. Logically, she knows it’s the summer wind, but it feels like a draft from a door being flung open. It’s the exit strategy, the one she’s been too stubborn to ask for.

Ginny hands the baby back when Marcus arrives to bring his family to Hannah’s doctor’s appointment. She watches them walk off, pulling her feet out of her Keds and sinking her white-painted toes into the patchy grass.

The thing about exit strategies, Ginny finds, is sometimes even when they’re presented to you like a gift falling into your lap, you don’t actually want it. It feels good when you’re thinking, planning, strategizing. You can pat yourself on the back -- good job, you’re working on it.

Now she’s faced with real opportunity, the move is hers to make. She’s faced with something else, too. She really doesn’t want to leave.

An unhelpful montage of every great moment with her team in the last year and change flits through her head, soft and vignetted, glossy and warm. It’s not all Shawn, either. The team is her family, her chosen family. She stays up for late nights talking strategy with Andrew -- she’s learned more from him as a manager than anyone in her professional life. She talks football with Cez and Mike. When she was so homesick that any mention of the word “London” brought Ginny to the brink of quiet tears, Josiah always noticed and kindly and gently distracted her.

Leaving the team is the right thing. As she lies in the dirt with tears sliding sideways into her temples and her toes pulling at the grass to ground herself, she doesn’t question this decision.

But she does need to mourn it.

Sara sits on her knees on the end of her bed, wrapped in a gauzy white sheet with soft morning light coming in the window. She swears she’s never felt more like a movie star.

He always makes her feel like a star.

She’s mashing her chapped lips together, watching him button and zip his jeans as he faces away from her. She has his shirt, that purple t-shirt she really likes, sitting beside her round thighs. His shoes are beside his bag, the one he brought to stay with her this weekend.

This weekend represented a shift she thinks neither of them really planned, or even thought about at all. He’s spent the night before, a few hours stolen between one engagement or another. He’s never spent a whole weekend. With her.

It was a blur of takeout, movies and great sex. She’ll be living off the high of the orgasms for as long as it takes him to come back to her. And as he packs up to head back to his real life, she’ll be going back to hers feeling just a little bit heavier.

When something shifts, it comes off balance and you have to find a way to recover. Sara knows how this works, she’s done it before, but never with someone who isn’t here.

“Do you… uhm, do you know when you’ll be back?” She fights meekness in her voice. She doesn’t want him thinking she’ll be only half here when he’s away. She doesn’t want herself thinking that either.

Shawn looks up from his belt. His eyes are a little wide. She’s never asked before. He feels the teeter-totter of the shift like it’s physically tangible.

He cracks a half-smile like he’s Mr. Casual. It feels wrong as soon as he does it. “Not too long, I think. I’m heading back to LA to meet up with the rest of the team. We have more recording to do. But if this movie moves forward, I’ll come back to New York for meetings. Probably a few weeks.”

There she goes with her lip mashing again. She nods thoughtfully and looks toward the window to look distracted, but the curtains kind of kill her effect.

She looks back when he lifts a knee up beside her on the bed. He cups her round face in both of his enormous hands and gently tilts it up to look at him.

“Gonna be thinking about you, though.”

She smiles. He tucks a strand of red behind her ear and lowers his lips to hers, one more for the road.

When he leaves, though, she feels the shift even more dramatically than before. There’s traces of him everywhere -- leftovers in her fridge, an empty travel can of shaving cream in her garbage, his scent in her sheets.

This shift is making her fucking dizzy.

Shawn’s flight to LAX is delayed an hour. He sits in the first class lounge, leg bouncing, trying not to think about the weird feeling he has, like he forgot something, or lost something in New York.

His phone is serving as an only barely passable distraction. He’s kind of afraid to go too deep into Twitter or Instagram right now -- he doesn’t want to find anything about him and Sara because then he’d feel the obligation to tell her about it. And he honestly doesn’t know what she’d do.

YouTube it is.

He scrolls through videos, still drumming anxious fingers, and before long he realizes something’s off. His suggested videos are not familiar -- clips of Arsenal games, Adele covers, British comedians he’s never heard of. It takes him only a few seconds to recognize Ginny logged into her account on his phone at some point, probably months ago when they were stuck somewhere in Europe bored in another airport lounge. In another life.

He goes to log out and thumbs through options, looking for the button. He doesn’t mean to find the videos. He doesn’t realize they’re her at first. They’re badly lit and don’t have her name on them anywhere, not even in the description. But the songs catch his eye. Just like her video suggestions, the content of her page is so… her.

Someone Like You by Adele

I Wanna Know by Whitney Houston

My Old Piano by Diana Ross

He doesn’t think for a second about not clicking. When he hears the first soft strokes of her voice, he lifts a hand to scrub at his cheek and wonders if anyone else can see the tears in his eyes. He looks up. No one’s watching him.

Her voice is a fix he didn’t know he was craving. The last time he heard her sing hurt so bad he actually physically ran away from it. Thinking about it now kicks up the shame that’s been lingering in his gut for days.

He’s never seen her sing like that. He’s seen her sing every kind of song in every kind of mood. He’s never seen her sing like that, like she was screaming secrets to anyone who would listen. When he got up to leave, he was feeling too many things to make sense of. Selfish -- he didn’t want to face her. Thoughtful -- he didn’t want her to have to face him. Instinctive -- he felt his anxiety pulling him toward the door. He could feel the eyes trying so hard not to watch him while she sang about him. He knew they could only keep away from him for so long. He knew they’d feel like battery acid on his skin when they gave in and looked. So he ran.

He regretted it from the moment he got out the door and knocked into a toxic wave of southern California summer heat, even in the dead of night.

He sits in the lounge ignoring the announcements of his flight boarding, deciding he can limp onto the plane once he’s drowned himself in all her videos. He watches them each back to back, bobbing his head with the beat, studying her, the choices she makes musically, the way he can see she feels every song like it’s radiating out of her bones.

He notes the time stamps. The first video was posted weeks ago. She’s been steadily building up a catalog of them -- different hotel rooms, different times of day, different instruments. He recognizes his acoustic in her arms in her guitar cover of “Gravity” by Sara Bareilles. He takes a scroll through the comments to see if any of his fans happened to catch it. He tamps down an edge of disappointment in his chest when he finds no one has noticed. He pushes it over next to his tinge of jealousy that his guitar has been held by her more recently than he has.

Final boarding call.

Shawn drops his phone beside him and lurches forward to hang his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and fights to breathe, but his chest feels swollen, like everything inside him is blocking up his lungs, starving him of oxygen. Everything he’s been fighting, all the feelings he’s been trying to reason away, even sell away to someone else -- someone wonderful, someone deserving of a whole heart made just for her.

They’re choking him.

He swallows once more, rough and papery. He shoves his phone in his pocket and meanders to the gate just before they’re closing the doors. On the plane, he listens to the original versions of the songs she’s covered. They don’t sound the same anymore. Everything Ginny has touched holds something more in it for him now.

The songs sound better when they’re hers.

Ginny is fresh off a redeye from Heathrow. Being back in LA amongst palm trees and cold-pressed juiceries is jarring after a week and change back home in blighty Britain. She enjoys being caught between the two worlds, her two homes. Appropriately, she buys herself a fancy juice, the strawberry-heavy one, and the pineapple one Shawn likes. She also pulls out the McVities Digestives she bought at duty free, an ode to London.

She’s perched on a ledge beside Shawn’s baggage claim carousel, waiting for him to deplane. She sees him first, tall and broad and in a red hoodie like he’s never thought about keeping a low profile in his life. When he spots her, she watches in confusion as his throat bobs and his steps grow longer and quicker so he can reach her.

Her pulse increases a little frantically as he power walks over. She lifts herself off the ledge to meet him. He drops his backpack at their feet and scoops her into a tight hug, turning his face so his nose is in her gently scented hair. Ginny gasps a ragged breath of surprise and wraps her arms around him, instinctively bringing her fingers up to smooth the little curls at the base of his neck.

“Love? Y’ok?” she nearly pants, her voice high and on the edge of panic.

He deflates against her chest, letting out a long stream of air from his nose. He closes his eyes for a moment to collect himself.

“I know about the videos.”

Ginny manages to get him out to the hired car where Jake is waiting with a driver. Shawn is stiff and awkward around Jake, who eyes Ginny curiously, but lets them tuck themselves into the backseat and tunes out their private conversation. He’s had practice at this, but not recently.

Ginny turns to Shawn as soon as they’re buckled in and pulling away from the curb. Her brows are pulled together slightly, her lips twitch as she decides where to begin. Shawn ducks his head, guilty.

“I… didn’t mean to, I swear. I know you probably would’ve told me if you wanted me to know.”

Shawn pauses in a way that tells Ginny that thought stung him as much as it did her. He shakes it off and tries to continue.

“You were logged into YouTube on my phone. I saw your uploads.”

Ginny tugs the corner of her full lips between her teeth, nodding. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t… I should’ve just left them alone when I found them. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Ginny doesn’t know either. She’s still confused. His reaction to seeing her at the airport was so visceral, so emotional. She’s missing a piece somewhere, like a jigsaw corner lost in a carpet. It leaves her still tense.

“You watched them all?” she asks unsteadily.

He nods. “I watched them all. They’re… fuckin’ beautiful, Gin. I mean, I know you know that. You have to. You’re so… god, fuck, Ginny, you’re so talented. You’re… you’re incredible. I should tell you more often. I don’t tell you that enough.”

Ginny lifts her hands and tents them over her nose and mouth. Steadying her breath feels like a battle she wasn’t prepared for.

“I’m so sorry.”

She looks up at his words. They sound raw from his throat. His face is anguished.

“For what?”

“For making you feel like you couldn’t tell me. Or didn’t want to. I know… I know things are different now. We don’t know how to do… this.”

This. Translation: we don’t know how to be friends when I’m with someone else. It’s a scary fucking thought.

“I just wanted it for me for a while,” she whispers honestly, shrugging and looking past him out the window at the waves of cars on the freeway as they head for Beverly Hills, “I wanted to see how it felt to do something like this for myself, not involve anyone, not you, not Hannah, not Niall, not Teddy. I wanted to see what it was like when it was just for me.”

Shawn wets his lips. “And?”

Ginny’s quiet for a minute, considering. “And it’s lonely. I thought it would fuel me, to do something independent like this. But creating something and keeping it in a vacuum, not telling the people I love that I’ve done something I’m proud of, it… kind of fucking sucks.”

Shawn’s attention is led back to a memory of the first handful of videos he posted on YouTube, way, way back when, before he mentioned it to his friends and family. He remembers that feeling, too. Even though you’re sharing it with countless strangers, it doesn’t feel like it counts until you share it with the people that love you.

“I don’t…” Shawn pauses, scrunches his face and chuckles awkwardly. Ginny nods at him to continue.

“I don’t know… if I have any right to be. But I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Ginny’s gaze is leveling and heavy. Shawn’s eyes fall to her hands lying in her lap.

“I don’t know if you have any right either. But it’s nice to hear.”

“Wha’s the magic word?”

Ginny groans, shaking her head so her curls bounce. “Go Rams.”

The tall wrought iron gate buzzes. Ginny pushes it in and continues smirking on her walk up the driveway to the front door. Niall’s standing there waiting for her in gym shorts, a t-shirt and ankle socks. His hair is flat over his forehead. He’s holding two beers. He hands her one with a twinkle in his eye.

“Can’t believe you make me say that every time I come to your house,” she chides, swiping one of the brews from his hand and striding past him.

“You can take the boy out of Derby County, you can’t take Derby out of the boy.”

Ginny blinks. “You’re not from Derby County.”

He shrugs, like it’s never occurred to him to care about that. He locks the door and scampers behind her in his socked feet, letting her guide him back to his living room. The Leicester-Leeds game is muted and there’s a guitar on the couch. She collapses next to it with a groan.

“Welcome back, then,” he laughs, settling on the other side of the guitar, eyes on the game.

“How’ve you been?” she murmurs, smiling over at him sleepily.

He nods. “Good, love. Writing a lot. Bit of hiking. Staying far away from women and their wiles.”

“Good boy,” she chuckles.

“How was home?”

Ginny bobs her head. “Saw my dad. Always an experience.”

Niall knows the saga. He doesn’t much trust or like Ginny’s dad. He doesn’t understand why someone who Ginny loves so much could feel even the slightest disinterest in her. He decides not to press that.

Ginny looks over. Niall sees something in her eyes.

“What?” he hums.

She bites the inside of her lip and winces. “Hannah offered me a job.”

Niall’s eyebrows lift. He sips his beer, nodding for her to continue.

“She wants to plan a tour. Wants to start working on an album now, finish it after she takes a bit of time after the birth. She wants me to help her write it.”

Niall looks intrigued, but remains quiet. He cocks his head. “I think that sounds great, Gin.”

Ginny closes her eyes. “It does. It does sound great. So why am I being a priss about it?”

He snorts. “What d’you mean?”

She sighs, exasperated, “Like, why am I not bouncing off the walls to get out of where I am? Why don’t I want to get back on Hannah’s team for an obvious step up? Why is it not so easy for me to say yes?”

She looks up at Niall from her swollen cuticles, irritated from near-constant recent picking. He doesn’t look terribly surprised, but thoughtful.

“I think there’s no one easy answer to that, Gin. I think even if you won’t say it out, you’re still in love with him. And I don’t know how you get away from that other than time and space.”

Ginny remains curiously unemotional. “I think I’m worried time and space won’t work either. Just make it hurt more.”

Niall rolls a thumb around the rim of his bottle. “Would it hurt more than seeing him happy with someone else?”

“Can’t imagine anything hurting more than being away from my best friend.”

It’s strikingly honest, so much so it makes even Niall’s breath catch. “But can he stay your best friend if you work for him indefinitely?”

She groans and drops her head into her hands. “Probably not.”

Niall sighs. “Nothing you haven’t heard before, babe, from me and Hannah. And probably your mum. Something’s going to be the thing that pushes you, and it won’t be any of us. It’ll be you. It has to be.”

Ginny is quiet. She lifts Niall’s guitar and snuggles close to it like a lover. It makes him chuckle, watching her graze her fingertips over the strings. It stirs up another notion.

“And maybe…” he begins, trailing off. She looks up. He shrugs again like he always does before he says something deeply intuitive and intelligent, “Maybe it’s not enough, the opportunity you’d be leaving for.”

Ginny looks startled, maybe a little frightened. “What else is there?”

Niall looks up at the TV. “You tell me, Gin.”

“Andrew Gertler, you need a new hobby!” Ginny cries.

Andrew turns from his seat to grin at her wickedly. Ever the team’s karaoke enthusiast, he shakes Tom’s cap, making the slips of folded paper inside shake and crinkle temptingly.

“Your turn, Gin. Team bonding. Non-negotiable.”

Ginny grunts. She swallows a snarky comment along the lines of “yeah, because the last karaoke outing was such a ‘kumbaya’ experience” and takes her folded slip. Shawn a few seats down has been eerily quiet all night and trying not to connect eyes with her.

It makes her roll her own. He’s acting like he’s afraid she’ll get up and sing another heartbreaking power ballad in his honor. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” starts playing in her head, making her smirk.

She’s on last. A few months ago, she’d have been delighted. The final word on karaoke night is a high she’d live on for days. She’d pick from her choice of her beltiest songs, bringing down the house every time. Tonight she’s just not sure she has the energy.

Niall’s words have been swirling around her head all afternoon. She drank a few beers and napped beside him on the couch while Shawn and Andrew were in another meeting about the movie. She was awakened by Niall’s head tipped back, releasing snarling snores that shook the whole house. She left him with a kiss on the cheek and a head full of questions, wandering back to their hotel where she had calls and emails to return to keep her best friend’s life running smoothly.

She’s distracted and reinvigorated by her friends and their performances, if it’s fair to call them that. Andrew’s up to bat first. He chooses “The Reason” by Hoobastank, a truly bizarre opening number. Mike and Zubin team up for “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. Ziggy attempts “The Power of Love” by Celine Dion and gets lambasted by the rest of the team for butchering it. Ginny knows logically that her friends didn’t set out to make her feel better, that this wasn’t a well-designed intricate plot to distract her from her own crazed brain, but it makes her feel so much calmer, steadier, led away from the ledge she’s been teetering on for… weeks.

And then it’s Shawn’s turn.

The evening’s festivities haven’t had the same effect on him that they did on her. He remained mostly quiet, clapping politely and speaking only when spoken to. He was mostly left alone, the team figuring he was either tired from jetlag or moody from being away from Sara.

Ginny gets an odd twisting in her stomach when he takes the stage. Up to this point, he hasn’t been conspicuously recognized. But now that he’s up there, there’s no hiding him. He doesn’t look like he wants to hide. The anticipation feels like it’s rising water around Ginny’s waist, more threatening by the second.

His shoulders are slightly hunched. He cups the mic with one hand, staring off above the heads of his rapt audience. Ginny’s jaw feels sewn shut as she waits. The first chords of something come up over the speakers. Shawn’s reaction is immediate. He darts to the DJ and murmurs something urgently. The DJ, a twenty-something fuckboy who just looks amped to have Shawn Mendes on his stage, nods and cuts the track.

Shawn walks off the stage. Anyone who wasn’t paying attention definitely is now. He heads back toward their cluster of tables and drags his guitar case out from under it, having come straight from his movie meeting where he played them a few songs.

Ginny watches him retreat back to the stage, this time to some applause that he doesn’t acknowledge or even seem to hear. As he passes, she locks eyes with Andrew, who looks grave. Her eyes dart away, eagerly watching Shawn.

Shawn plugs his new Taylor acoustic into the speaker and starts plucking. In seconds, she recognizes it. Her face falls, and she didn’t even realize she was wearing any kind of expression until it snaps into an oddly blank knowingness.

He repeats the opening chords a few times. Ginny vaguely notices the crowd begin to catch on and recognize the tune, but she doesn’t think that’s why he’s doing it. She thinks it’s for him. He looks more nervous than she’s seen him on stage in ages -- shaky, sweaty, a little pale. Almost sickly. She rocks forward in her seat, fingers gripping her knees.

“I’m not fucking going up there.” She says it to herself, loud enough for anyone around her to hear. They’re not listening.

Tell me somethin’, girl

Are you happy in this modern world?

When his voice comes in, she half-expects it to sound as broken as he looks. She should’ve known better. It’s smooth and rich and well-practiced, like he’s been getting ready for this. The thought has her teeth on edge with the rest of her taut body.

Or do you need more?

Is there somethin’ else you’re searchin’ for?

He’s looking down straight at her. She thinks of Jack’s words, whispered in Ally’s ear as she quivers sidestage, terrified of her own fate.

“All you gotta do is trust me. That’s all you gotta do.”

Ginny hangs her head in his hands. She can’t watch him sing to her. Her knee bounces, shaking the hands that hold her up. Her body vibrates with the opposing forces of her choices.

I’m falling

In all the good times I find myself longin’

For change

And in the bad times I fear myself

He plucks at the chords again, waiting for her. He doesn’t take his eyes off her, not once. He doesn’t care about all the people staring curiously at her, following his gaze. He doesn’t care about the iPhones popping up, flashes going off, recording the scene. He will stand here playing these chords until his fingers bleed if it’s what it takes to get her on this stage.

She doesn’t wait that long.

Ginny lurches to stand. Instead of going around to take the stairs to the stage, she lifts her leg and steps up onto it, popping up to thunderous, curious applause. Andrew folds his hands over his nose and mouth, tensing from the shoulders down. The entire team watches in shocked silence as Ginny steps forward. As soon as she’s up there, their eyes don’t leave each other. Zubin swears under his breath. Jake sits forward eagerly.

Ginny takes the mic.

Tell me something, boy

Aren’t you tired tryin’ to fill that void?

The audience reacts even more strongly to Ginny’s voice. It’s nothing like Lady Gaga’s -- it’s softer somehow, warmer, more delicate.

Or do you need more?

Ain’t it hard keeping it so hardcore?

As they build to the chorus, Shawn continues watching her shine. He knows they have the audience. He can feel them, even if he can’t really hear them. He’s focused on the way her eyes are trained on him more steadily than they have been since Ibiza, maybe even before. He doesn’t want to blink. His Ally doesn’t need his coaching, doesn’t need him mouthing the words or nodding encouragingly. She’s got this.

I’m falling

In all the good times I find myself longing

For change

And in the bad times I fear myself

He watches her eyes slide shut and smiles for what feels like the first time all night.

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Her voice is bold and huge, unapologetic. She lifts her hands, rising to the occasion as her voice soars.

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now

Shawn leans in, only inches from her face, to sing into the mic with her. Their eyes remain locked, their breath mingles, closer than they’ve ever been even with a guitar, a mic and a million miles between them.

In the shallow, shallow

We’re far from the shallow now

The DJ has movie timing. He starts playing the backtrack from the film just as Shawn backs away from the mic, wetting his lips. His Ally doesn’t need his prompting, she isn’t going to hold her hands over her mouth and cower from the mic. She’s going to fucking sing.

Ginny lets her eyes shut, disconnecting from him. This moment isn’t about them, it’s about her. She’s making it hers.

She invents her own lilting, crooning, bellowing vocal run, different from Lady Gaga’s but still so fitting that it’s breathtaking. She doesn’t ignore the eyes this time. She feels them, all of them, and lets herself believe she’s worthy of the attention. When their cheers rise, she grins through her final note and opens her eyes once more. He’s beside her, smiling just as wide and goofy.

In that moment, something settles in the pit of her stomach that’s been riled for too long, niggling at her, wrecking her calm, disturbing her sleep. As she takes the last chorus, she finally feels absolutely certain about the one thing that has been holding her back.

No matter what, she and Shawn are going to be ok.

She doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be on his team. She doesn’t know if they’ll ever get to be in love again. She doesn’t know what the next step is, but she knows he will always be there.

He steps into the mic with her, repeating the final refrain. Ginny feels a chill down her spine at the depth of the words hanging between them.

We’re far from the shallow now

The fading notes are lost in the barreling shouts of their audience and the polite, bewildered applause of their teammates (all except for Jake, who’s clapping and whistling louder than anyone in the room).

Shawn swings the guitar behind his back and opens his arms as Ginny steps into them. She fights the urge to bury her face in his neck and sob with relief. She knows the phones didn’t stop recording after the song ended. They’ll be watched like hawks for the rest of the night.

They separate. Shawn’s smile is warm and welcome, back in its place after a little too long away from home. She matches it, tucking some curls behind her ear as he starts to lead her back to their table. They’re greeted by hugs and high fives all around from their team who are still exhibiting signs of whiplash but are rolling with the punches.

Ginny meets Andrew’s eyes. His expression is difficult to read -- a mix of concern, fondness, anxiety. It’s how he’s always looked when Shawn and Ginny do anything that passes beyond the barrier of very basic working friendship.

She smiles back and sinks into her chair, unwilling to apologize, explain or backtrack. Shawn takes the chair beside her, slinging his heavy arm behind the back of it as he talks to Zubin around her head. She steals a sip of his beer, he pretends not to notice.

Absolutely nothing is what normal once was. Their old normal is unrecognizable. Whatever this is now, no matter how weird and loaded with history and inconvenient, it’s their new normal.

And it’s not gonna be easy.

Please support my longstanding love of super emo karaoke scenes and buy me a Ko-fi (link on main page)!

Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @mendesoft @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @thotfulalena @sinplisticshawn @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve @sauveteen @fallmoreinlove @voguemnds

#shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn #shawn mendes #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes series #friends to lovers

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beatsfortheillperth · 3 years

Text

Words with Umys

All photography by @giulio.rose.giannini, find more blessed works by Giulio on instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/giulio.rose.giannini/

Our next words are with a creative that calls the small town Wendell, North Carolina, home. Brimming with good energy and presenting production and sounds genuine to the mood he radiates - UMYS is someone that shows the ever-adapting not to mention soothing road music can take one down.

Whether you be cruising or chilling through the day or night, UMYS has the soul sorted and the mind elevated with his truly diverse array of beats.

Adding a layer of vibrations and sonic sounds to hip hop classics old and new and experimenting beyond genres, UMYS is one of those musical brains that one really shouldn't miss as his music sets moods not to mention emotions beyond expectations.

Bringing together stress relief in the form of his beat-tapes, chill flips vol.1 and 2, both released last year in July and August. Then add to the mix his new years day phonk blessing - Phonk Nights Vol. 1, a collaborative 7 track beat-tape with sr.sn - fellow North Carolina native, friend, and musical vision, and you just can't go wrong, as UMYS provides a catalog for any situation that requires some bounce or a burst of creativity.

A true gem of the production world and appreciator of fellow creators, UMYS presents quality, and with that enjoy our words with the North Carolina beat-smith, making moves and shifting boundaries within music.

On a side-note check the beatsfortheill Soundcloud below for UMYS's mix for the online magazine curated and delivered with nothing but goodness.

All songs featured in the mix are by UMYS and his close friends so be prepared for some blessed goodies.

UMYS & the Homies Beatsfortheill Mix-

https://soundcloud.com/chofiemay/umys-the-homies-beatsfortheill-mix

Much Love.

Hey UMYS, thank you for the opportunity to share words, I thought we would start with a few random questions to get things flowing.

Favourite Food: Habachi Steak WITH Fried Rice

Favourite Beverage: Dr. Pepper

Last track you listened to: GETTING FRKYFRKY TONIGHT by LO$ER

A childhood memory in regards to music: Taking guitar lessons when I was about 10 years old.

Must cop Album: Die Lit by Playboi Carti

Favourite track at the moment and why it's a favourite: 12.21 by bsterthegawd. Honestly, everyone go listen to this yourself because words could not explain the beauty of this track.

Views on life beyond Earth: I find it incredibly hard to believe that Earth is the only place with life being such a small place in such a big universe.

Views on mainstream media: I typically stay away from mainstream media and try to formulate all my opinions on my own research.

Your go-to artist when you were 15: A$AP Rocky

Favourite Location: Key West, Florida

Movie or Show recommendation: South Park

What you love about your hometown: The people, all my very best friends are from my hometown and I always love going back home to see everyone.

Thanks for that Warren aka UMYS (pronounced YOU-MISS). I'd like to start by asking, what inspired you to start producing in the first place?

Did you have any help or musical experience before you began producing? When did you start experimenting with beat-making? And also what keeps you producing in the present?

I started producing when I was 16 years old. One of my hometown best friends, linanthem, used to come over to my house during the summers and work on beats in my living room and watching him work was so inspirational.

Pretty early on in our friendship he helped me learn FL Studio and I started off making shitty trap beats no one would ever rap on hahaha. I took some guitar lessons early on in life but basketball took over my life until I was about 18 and then that’s when I started making beats every day.

My passion for music keeps me sitting at my computer every single day trying to learn and experiment with new sounds.

You're from a small town Wendell in North Carolina, small-town vibes here for me too. How do you feel being from a small town benefits you as a creator?

Does your community effect the music you make at all? What do you feel are some cons to making music in a small town?

Being from a small town as a creator definitely has its pros and cons. Some of the pros being I’m a well-known name in my hometown but some of the cons are the lack of connections that can be made.

Luckily, Wendell is just outside of Raleigh which is a really big city so that allowed me to dive into that scene as well and make a lot of connections throughout the 919.

The community around me most definitely inspires me. When I hear something I like, I’m instantly inspired to hop on my computer and make something with a similar vibe to whatever I just heard.

What is the North Carolina music scene like and how do you feel your music fits into the mix? Can you share a few of your favourite artists coming out of North Carolina?

What do you feel creatives are doing right there and also what places would you recommend our readers check out if they're ever in the area?

Where do I even start hahaha. The music scene in North Carolina seems to be growing every single day and the really cool part about it to me is we all seem to have our own unique sound.

Some of my favorite artists in NC are, Maasho, Sonny Miles, Dot Wav, Felix Wood and Curtis Waters.

My favorite producers are the homies of course, GMO, sr.sn., linanthem, primoux, B4 and MFM. I feel like all the creators around here know each other and we are all friends and/or mutual friends.

All the musicians I’ve met in NC have been nothing but nice and ready to work. If you’re ever in North Carolina, you should definitely check out Raleigh. There are WAY too many amazing places to eat.

Back onto your music, I've raided your Bandcamp, and honestly so much goodness there, I'd like to talk about your three tapes available on Bandcamp separately, but the first one I'd like to have a chat about is your July 4th, 2020, 13 track release "chill flips vol.1"

This is a true gem of a release, thank you for making these beats that just take you to another world of listening, much respect. Chilled and healing samples and flips of the likes of Danny Brown, Playboi Carti, Eazy E, Lil Wanye, Marvin Gaye, Kendrick Lamar, Tupac, and more, you take listeners on an elevated journey, much love.

What was "chill flips vol.1" like for you to create and what do you enjoy about this tape overall? Being your first beat-tape, can you share what inspired each track from this release and what you personally enjoyed about each track?

This is definitely one of my personal favorite projects but one of my least known. I never got too into Bandcamp but wanted to put a tape up there which is why I released chill flips as an exclusive on bandcamp.

chill flips vol. 1

a milli (flip) - I love this track so much. I feel like this really sets the tone for the rest of the tape and allows you to relax and get comfortable for what’s ahead.

J0000008.WAV – This was actually the first beat I made using my SP-404sx. It was a little bit of an experiment but turned out so well.

die like a rockstar (flip) – This beat is inspired by the producer stxn.x. The chops in the song were made by him. Definitely one of my personal favorites on this tape.

i was in a really good mood when i made this – This beat is a real feel good beat. I definitely made this in a really good mood hahaha.

a damn shame – Some more inspiration from my man stxn.x with his smooth drums

can't relate bro – This is probably my favorite flip I have ever made hahaha. What’s better than Playboi Carti on a smooth lofi beat.

fast cars, bad b*tches, and designer clothes – Lil Pump but it’s lofi LMAO

i'm not mad – This one was a fun one to make. Extremely simple beat but so chill.

backseat freestyle (flip) – The keys on this track really bring it together. Definitely one of the more chill ones on the tape.

i'm on a diet_ - This was one of my first flips to really pop off on Soundcloud so this one is a special track to me.

tomato salad – I actually made this beat for a Kenny Beat’s Beat Battle and it came in 5th place. I liked it a lot and thought it was a good vibe to add to the tape

thug 4 life – I honestly really just wanted to make a Tupac flip on this tape and this is what came out.

high school – This is another early one to pop off for me. Such a simple yet beautiful flip.

Link to chill flips vol.1 on Bandcamp here - https://umys.bandcamp.com/album/chill-flips-vol-1

You followed up chill flips vol.1 within a couple of months with chill flips vol.2 released on the 8th of August 2020, and for sure this release is another blessing to the ears. Blending old with new, words, samples, and bass-lines like a natural, this release is a solid ode to those you flip much respect.

I've enjoyed chill flips vol. 1 and 2 in various environments and for me vol.2 is perfect for mornings to motivate your day, your plays on tracks by Migos, Playboi Carti, Nas, Barry White, and more is beyond refreshing, thank you for this release.

What inspired you to release chill flips vol.1 and 2 reasonably close together? Also, what did you enjoy about putting this slightly shorter beat tape together? Do you have a favourite from the mix? If so share your favourite and why it appeals to you the most?

Also, have to ask on your track "wow" who did you sample in the beginning? Her vocals add so much to this beautiful Post Malone flip.

You have a gift with that btw, by blending samples to create a unique journey. How do you come up with these little blended treats? Is there some sort of process you follow with these particular tracks?

Link to chill flips vol.2 here -

https://umys.bandcamp.com/album/chill-flips-vol-2

Honestly Chill Flips Vol.1 and 2 dropped closely together because I was just really excited about them hahaha. My favorite from the two is either Can’t Relate Bro or Cheese in my Pockets.

Both of those are 2 of my favorites till this day. I liked the facts Chill Flips vol. 2 is shorter making it easy to sit down and listen to from start to finish and I feel there’s never a dull moment on that tape.

The track wow actually got me a strike on Soundcloud because of the Post Malone vocals hahaha. The vocals at the intro were actually from Splice and it just seemed like the perfect intro.

Thank you so much for the kind words about my sampling. I honestly just go through a lot of trial and error and stick with what sounds best. I try to not overthink in the process of making music.

It’s supposed to be fun and I don’t want to ever make it not fun by getting frustrated. If I get stuck, I move on to another beat and come back to it later and try again.

Thanks so much for your insight so far, it's much-respected, your solo releases have a lot to offer, variety, and mood with each play, thanks again for what you're doing creatively.

Something you also showcase through your SoundCloud and Bandcamp is your ability to collab with taste and precision. I'm referring to your January 1st, 2021 collab release "Phonk Nights Vol. 1" that you co-produced with Raleigh, North Carolina producer talent and best friend of yours sr.sn.

"Phonk Nights Vol. 1" has to be one of the best releases of this year and you and sr.sn worked brilliantly together on it. I get the feeling things are really natural when you work together is that true?

How did you two meet and what inspires you to collab with sr.sn often?

You've collaborated before this beat-tape was released, beautiful works as well. What was it like working on a whole tape together compared to single releases? And what made you both want to release a Phonk tape?

Can you share your favourite track from "Phonk Nights Vol. 1"? Also, can you give us a run-through of what inspired each track from the release and what you enjoyed about creating each one?

I am so glad you enjoyed it so much. We had such a good time making it. sr.sn and I met in our early years of high school because we had a class together. It seems like after that we just became best friends. I don’t think either of us could tell you exactly how we became best friends, we just did. Ian is really easy to

work with because we both have our own sounds, but they blend together so nicely. It’s not like that with everyone but Ian and I have a whole folder of beats that are just great. The story behind Phonk Nights is actually really cool. We made the whole entire tape from December 22nd-28th and then released it on New Years so it was an extremely quick process. We play video games together almost every night and on the 22nd we were in discord and we made Wocky Slush. After that, we kept making 1-2 tracks a night and I think the only day we took off was Christmas Day. Then, all of the sudden we had 7 really solid tracks and wanted to just throw them on a tape. So that’s how Phonk Nights happened.

Phonk Nights Vol. 1

Sum Expensive w/ sr.sn – This sample just seemed like the perfect sample to have as an opener. This track really sets the tone with a really smooth and mellow start followed by a hard drop.

Wocky Slush w/ sr.sn – This was the first track we made for Phonk Nights. We also released it as a single and this was around the time that wocky slush Tik Tok went viral and we both thought that video was hilarious.

Ghost Ridin' w/ sr.sn – Probably my personal favorite on this tape, the vocals and the beat just match up so well. This track is a vibe and has a real nice bounce to it.

Pop a Perc w/ sr.sn – This track was one of our first phonk collaborations and definitely a fan favorite from our collabs.

That's How All my Partners Roll w/ sr.sn – This one was such a quick cook up and just resulted in perfection. A very simple melody with some hard 808s, you can’t go wrong with that.

I Get da Bag w/ sr.sn – One of my favorite samples on the tape. Switched the vocals around a few times on this one and finalized it with some Gucci hahaha.

Splashin' w/ sr.sn – We were both so excited about this one. It’s the perfect closer to the tape.

Link to Phonk Nights Vol. 1 here -

https://umys.bandcamp.com/album/phonk-nights-vol-1

Support sr.sn here - https://soundcloud.com/srsn

I'm honored to mention you've also put together a blessed mix of moods and sounds for the beatsfortheill Soundcloud - "UMYS & the Homies Beatsfortheill Mix"

It is compiled with tracks by yourself and your best friends which makes it that little bit more special. Tracks by the likes of sr.sn, linanthem, sleepdealer, fk linny, GMO, and B4 all talented in their own right but blended together, you get a listening delight and story thanks to your mixing on this favourite for myself, thank you.

Firstly, can you give us a paragraph about what inspired this mix and what you tried to create with it?

How did you feel while you were making it? And finally, what do the people mean to you that you feature in the mix? And how important is it to have good friends around you while you create?

I have been so excited to talk about this mix. I had such a great time making it. The concept behind the mix is it’s only my real-life friends who also produce.

I take so much pride in how amazing my friends are at making music. They all inspire me every single day. I love these guys and would take a bullet for any of them. I always love having people around when creating.

It’s really fun to be in an environment doing what you love with people that you love.

Link to UMYS & the Homies Beatsfortheill Mix here -

Here at beatsfortheill, we have a love for various forms of art.

Can you recommend a few artists from different fields that you think our readers would appreciate? if you can link them even better. What do you enjoy most about their work?

I am a huge fan of Rude Manners and all of his work musically and artistically. His socials are @rudemanners and his art account is @daltonmannerud.

He’s a super genuine guy and has done some of my artwork for me. Definitely be sure to tune into everything he’s doing.

Also, a really good friend of mine and the best photographer I know, Giulio Giannini. His Instagram is @giulio.rose.giannini and you should definitely go check out his shots.

He has done a handful of shoots with myself and other upcoming artist and producers out of Raleigh and is a really good guy. Not to mention he’s a great architect with some wicked designs. Please be sure to check my man out!

Musical Recommendations?

Anything by bsterthegawd, Lil Gotit, Wifi Gawd, LO$ER, DJ Yung Vamp, and Swum have been heavy in my personal music rotation lately.

How important do you think downtime is for creatives? When you take a break from music, what do you like to do to recuperate and replenish? Also, do you have any other interests away from music that helps you when it comes to creating a track?

I think that giving yourself some downtime is extremely important. Sometimes when you just lock in and over work yourself, your mixes may start sounding sloppy and just little details you may just skip over them.

It’s good to do stuff to refresh your brain and give it a break. Personally I use video games, basketball, and quality time with my friends as breaks from that creative mindset.

I really love movies so I often include iconic movie scenes and quotes in the intros and background in some of my beats.

Do your family know you make music? If not, why? If yes, are they supportive? Has your upbringing influenced the music you make at all?

What about your upbringing (ideas, traditions, etc) have you carried with you through to adulthood?

Yes! My family has been nothing but supportive which is awesome.

My dad calls me every day and always asks how things with music are going. I wasn’t really raised in a musical household, so I didn’t really have any inside influences when it comes to music.

But I do share the same values and traditions with my family and spend almost every holiday with them. I remain very close with my family and family is something that has always been important to me.

Back to your music, it must be mentioned, your latest EP release "Changes" which came out via Kindbrew Records on March the 5th of this year. It's got that lazy Sunday kind of vibe, smoothed through with jazzy vibes all round, love this release, much respect.

You've worked with Kindbrew Records in the past with your single City Lights which was officially released later through Changes. It's a soulful retreat by yourself, the single, and the EP, much love.

What's it like to work with Kindbrew and what was it like for you to release an EP with Kindbrew Records?

Also, what did you enjoy about making Changes? What do you enjoy most about exploring and creating music from varying genres? Can you share what sort of feel you were going for with Changes?

I absolutely love Kindbrew Records. Coldbrew is doing a great job with the label and is a good friend of mine. I really enjoyed making Changes. I was going through a bit of a hard time when I made that EP and I wanted to express myself through that tape.

I told myself a long time ago that I never wanted to limit myself to a single genre and wanted to be known for having a wide range of music. I love experimenting and trying out new sounds.

Link to UMYS Changes EP here - https://open.spotify.com/album/5KaelTe9ZlCrNDFWyWEhAe

Link to Kindbrew Records here - https://www.instagram.com/kindbrewrecords/?hl=en

What keeps you humble as a creative?

When I send a song to one of my friends and they tell me it doesn’t sound good hahaha.

I appreciate honesty and I typically rather get feedback and criticism when I send an unreleased beat to someone rather than them just telling me it sounds good and that’s it

Umys and linanthem

How do you keep yourself in the right headspace with everything that has been going on this year and last with the various obstacles the world has had to face collectively?

I just try to focus on the positives. I try to remember all the great relationships I have with people and how well music is going, and I always try to always look forward and never back. Living in the world right now is not easy and I encourage anyone that is struggling to reach out to a friend and just talk to them.

What helps keep you positive?

Generally, I am just a really happy person and I believe that’s because of all the amazing people I have in my life to be thankful for. It can be hard to stay positive especially in unprecedent times. But, it’s good to surround yourself with honest and loving people and I am so thankful to have people like that in my life.

B4 and Umys

Musical Influences?

linanthem of course because he’s who got me started and I’d say some of my other biggest influences are Monte Booker, bsd.u and swum.

Any shows or releases coming up that we should keep an eye out for?

Right now I am in the planning phase and trying to figure out who and where to release some projects through. But, I do have a single coming out with Lodge Records on June 11th!

Any Last Words?

Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know me and for all of the kind words and questions. S/o to beatsfortheill!!!!!

Support UMYS here:

Bandcamp - https://umys.bandcamp.com/

Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/umys

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/1mb6xWEzSmVN3YiSa4NSC1

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/umysbeats/?hl=en

Twitter - https://twitter.com/umysbeats

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royalbloodlp · 7 years

Photo

ROYAL BLOOD cover & interview in French magazine MYROCK #47, July-August 2017 (click to enlarge)

Translation of the interview below (thanks to @believersdie for their help)

ROYAL BLOOD

AN ALCHEMY IN THE MIDDLE OF CHAOS

Three years after winning the title of this generation's most exciting challenger, the duo composed of Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher is coming back with "How Did We Get So Dark?" a long-awaited second album which exceeds our expectations by far. It's an authentic classic, played with only drums and bass guitar, to prove once and for all that no, guitar isn't the ultimate rock instrument.

(Thomas Malfrouche / Photos Manon Violence)

Three years ago, no one had heard about Royal Blood. Since then, you've played shows all over the planet and you've been taken under the wings of Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page and Iggy Pop. Doesn't all of this make your head feel dizzy?

Mike Kerr (lead vocals, bass guitar) : My head feels good, thank you!

Ben Thatcher (drums) : So does mine, but I try to protect it as you can see [he's wearing a typically French beret, note from the author]. Hats are my new thing. I decided to swap my usual cap for the local hat. Today, we're in Paris so it's a beret, but I intend to get a cool cowboy hat in the US!

M.K. : To answer your question, our lives did completely change in the space of three years. When we started Royal Blood, we didn't think that one day, our music would be listened to by people other than our friends. Playing our songs all over the world, in front of an audience who was always asking for more, that's what I'll remember from this two-year madness.

People are under the impression that playing shows helped a lot to increase your visibility. When your first album was released, some were skeptical. But whoever saw you live joined your adventure. Each night, each concert, were they just battlefields?

M.K. : Absolutely. Since the beginning, concerts are the essence of Royal Blood. It started up like this, making the most noise we could in a basement. We kept this. The location doesn't matter, whether it be a club, a stadium or a festival, each time we try to see ourselves in our small rehearsal premises and play with the same spirit as we did there. Moreover, being only two in the band accentuates this. We can look each other in the eye, react automatically to the other. On stage, we just follow our guts. And we lived awesome things on the last tour. I remember this concert in the plains of Quebec for the Festival d'Eté, where we opened for Foo Fighters. We played in front of a hundred thousand people, it was huge. There was a tornado notice, and the weather was becoming more and more chaotic as we were playing. We were literally seeing the lightning unleash. So much that we had to leave the stage after playing six tracks, for security reasons. But these six tracks will stay in my memory forever.

Did you get the chance to party with Dave Grohl anyway?

M.K. : Obviously! We spent almost three months on the road with the Foo Fighters guys, and we saw Dave every day.

Is the rumor true, is he the coolest guy in the rock'n'roll scene?

M.K. : No, he became number two. Right after me (laughter).

B.T. : And after me! So Dave is the third coolest dude. But it's okay, he's still on the podium!

M.K. : We're joking around, but for us, two small guys from Brighton, all that's happening to us is still unbelievable.

B.T. : Every day, I feel like I'm living a dream. For example today, being in Paris to talk about our music is completely surreal. And we were just told we are headlining a show at the Zénith [huge concert venue in Paris, note from the translator] at the end of the year [November 9th, note from the author]. That's crazy! This world is crazy!

M.K. : We would never have imagined all of this. Let's take Jimmy Page, for example. One of our heroes. An untouchable musician. An icon. He came to see us live a few times, and he met us after the show to talk and party. He's a real gentleman, he is very polite and sophisticated. He doesn't live in a castle tower, like most of the rockstars of his level. He keeps being passionate about music, he goes out a lot, sees many concerts, discovers new bands. It's an honor to know he likes our work.

MELODIES BEFORE ALL

With all the concerts you played, how did you find the time to write this new album?

M.K. : The secret is that we didn't take any vacation, we got back to work right away. It's impossible for us to write on the road. We could have, during sound checks, especially since we're only two. But we prefered to rest and keep our energy for the show. So we wrote this record after we went back home, in Brighton, like we always did up to now. We're used to going to the Brighton Electric, a small rehearsal studio that we love. Then, we recorded at the ICP studios, in Brussels. It's the best studio which we ever had the chance to work in, a place filled with gear, with lots of microphones, amplifiers, and other toys. The location is quite isolated, and at the time the weather was cold. It was very immersive and very solitary. We spent two months there, literally cut off the world. It did us good. Especially when you see the state of the world we're living in...

The production of this record is incredible, the audience feels like you wanted to highlight the melodies. Of course, there are good old riffs, but the choruses are overpowering, they remind of the 80's, when Kiss', Alice Cooper's, Bonnie Tyler's and Joan Jett's hard rock was on the radio.

M.K. : We've always loved pop music, choruses that blow you away and make you want to sing them. For this album, we wanted to declare our love to melodies and stop hiding them behind our wall of fat sound. For me, a good chorus is the heart of a good song, it is what makes you want to listen to it over and over again. As such, I consider that this album is our most direct album. What's melodic isn't necessarily hot tempered. It's just a matter of balance and dosage. Desmond Child mastered this harmony perfectly. For instance, "Livin' On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi [co-written by Desmond Child, note from the author] is a pop song, and at the same time it's very hard, with fat guitar riffs. I love this kind of contrast.

BEHIND THE ALBUM COVER, BY MIKE KERR

"Firstly, we wanted to create a unity between the cover of our first album and this one. When I saw this photograph for the first time, I felt like it represented exactly the impression I wanted to give with this record. It's difficult to choose an album cover. It must be aesthetically pleasant, but it must go well with the music too. And especially, it must be cool on vinyl format! What's funny is that, on our first album, you could only see the eyes of the character. Here, it's the opposite, you can see everything except the eyes. Is it the same person? You can create your own story..."

BASS, DRUMS, AND NOTHING ELSE!

Just like the previous one, is this album guaranteed without any guitars?

M.K. : Totally! You know, we worked hard to find our own sound, and I'm sure that if I played a guitar, we would sound like many other bands. And we'd rather keep our identity with the restraints which became our strengths, than make it easier with a guitar and blend in with the crowd. But I have nothing against guitars. Maybe one day, we'll end up adding some here and there.

B.T. : We'll call Jimmy Page then. (laughter)

Speaking of sound, did you use some new finds on this album?

M.K. : Not really, I always combine a lot of pedals with effects that transform my bass' sound. But no need to hope that I tell you my tricks, they're secret. (laughter) Let's say that this time, we minded the details way more, we made each song unique, when in our first album, all the tracks had the same sounds. In these new songs, there are a lot more variety and textures.

The drums are very wide, as if you were playing in a stadium. Did you play in a huge room with a natural reverb in the studio?

B.T. : Not at all, it was actually the opposite! The drums were in a tiny room, with a very muffled sound. I moved them in an angle of the room, which left me more space so that my hits could resonate. Sometimes you just have to be creative in the studio. The best thing is that for the first time, I was able to play in live conditions, with enough microphones to record all the parts at once. In the first album, I had to learn to play differently and record each part separately. It's very different, and it makes the tracks more groovy.

STRENGTHENING THE BLOOD RELATIONSHIP

The album gets its name from this song, "How Did We Get So Dark?". A good old rock hit just the way we like them, heavy and overpowering at the same time. It's so efficient that we're under the impression that writing songs is quite easy for you.

M.K. : Yet we suffered with that one! The music was composed quickly, but as much as I wrote and wrote the lyrics again, I couldn't find a catchy melody. So, we left it out, and it nearly didn't make it to the album! Then, last January, I made our producer Tom Dalgety listen to it. He saw the potential of the song right away and encouraged us to keep working again and again on the chorus. Eventually, we managed to dig this crazy melody up. And in the end it became my favorite track. But it was far from easy.

Is this album title, "How Did We Get So Dark?", an assessment about the current state of the world which we live in, or is it more personal?

M.K. : A bit of both. How did we get there, why are we at the bottom of the pit? Is the planet fucked? Am I speaking to politicians? To my girlfriend? To my friends? It's hard to tell. This ambiguity made us choose this particular title. Each one can read into it whatever they like, I find it more interesting. And, well, I don't like explaining my lyrics.

Why?

M.K. : Because once they are released, they don't belong to me anymore. They literally belong to the audience. They can listen to my lyrics the way they want, there are no instructions for use.

A track like "She's Creeping" is really surprising. It's got a very 90's groove, it reminds of Nirvana, Weezer, and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

M.K. : We wanted a track that reminds of the greatest hours of alternative rock, with a groove that smells like sunshine. There's also a bit of a Bill Withers side. It's the first time we had ever written a song like this, and it was very pleasant to do. The approach was very minimalistic, but it reassured us on our process, because with only a bass guitar and a snare drum, you can write fucking good songs! The groove doesn't need anything else. It's also a song that says a lot about us, since it was born from an exchange between Ben and I. That's a band, it's an alchemy, an improvisation in the middle of chaos. We're in the same plane, we're working together to reach our destination. The complementarity which is the base of Royal Blood, you can really hear it on this particular song.

You were friends before starting the band, did Royal Blood change anything in your relationship?

M.K. : Oh yes, Royal Blood tightened the bonds between us. We have shared so much during these last three years... We spent more time together than with anyone else. In this kind of situation, hatred and love are your only options. We could easily have torn each other apart on the road, we could have learned to hate each other, but the opposite, we became closer than ever.

#royal blood #mike kerr #ben thatcher #royalbloodvevo #royalblooduk #yall better read this interview till the end i spent an entire afternoon working on that translation #but well it was fun & it made me practise english so thats cool #also my scans are not really high quality but thats the best i could do :((#also dont let this flop pls #**

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rockrevoltmagazine · 7 years

Text

FAT MIKE ANNOUNCES PUNK IN DRUBLIC

Fat Mike Presents

Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival

Featuring Alternating Co-Headliners

NOFX, Flogging Molly And Bad Religion, Plus Four More Bands Per Show

Touring Festival Launches September 16 In Tacoma, WA

With Stops In Boise, ID, Concord, CA, Sacramento, CA & Huntington Beach, CA

Stone Brewing To Release Small Batch

Stone & NOFX Punk in Drublic Hoppy Lager

Exclusively In Festival Markets

Created from the mind and liver of NOFX‘s frontman Fat Mike, the Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival will debut in the Western U.S. this fall with five special events featuring the best in punk rock music and regional craft beer.

Named for NOFX’s classic Punk In Drublic album, which has sold over one million copies, Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival launches September 16 in Tacoma, WA, with stops in Boise, ID,Concord, CA, Sacramento, CA, and Huntington Beach, CA. NOFX will co-headline each date of Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival alongside Flogging Molly in some markets and Bad Religionin others, and every show will also feature four other bands. Look for full details to be announced in August at www.PunkInDrublicFest.com.

Each Punk In Drublic festival date will feature up to four hours of craft beer tastings with over 100 craft beers, including some of the West Coast’s best and local favorites. Craft beer tastings are included with admission. Festival hours will be Noon – 9:00 PM.

Fat Mike has joined forces with premier music event producer/promoter Synergy Global Entertainment and respected craft beer event production powerhouse Brew Ha Ha Productions for the festival. In addition, to celebrate Punk In Drublic, Fat Mike teamed up with craft beer pioneers Stone Brewing to brew their very own Stone & NOFX Punk in Drublic Hoppy Lager, which will be available in cans only in the festival markets. This collaboration is a huge show of support by Stone, as it marks the first time ever that Stone has worked with a musician for a can release. They’ve even included the festival tour dates on the back of each can. This is a first-of-its-kind level of commitment from a brewery partner for a festival tour.

When asked how Stone & NOFX Punk in Drublic Hoppy Lager tastes, Fat Mike says, “It’s something to wash the noise away.” However, other slogans offered by Mike that were quickly turned down by Stoneincluded, “It’s the beer of champagnes” and finally, “They say you can’t get beer from a stone…oh shit, we just did!”

“We know we’re crazy for letting Fat Mike in our brewery, but we’re doing it anyway,” says Greg Koch, Stone Brewing co-founder. “We have a lot in common in not only refusing to follow the status quo, but actively rejecting it. I have incredible respect for what he and Fat Wreck Chords have done for the independent music scene. Craft beer is currently in a similar open-your-eyes-to-the-man’s-corporate-obfuscation battle. Is independent craft beer punk rock? Very. And even more so now with this collab. See you in the pit!”

Cameron Collins, Co-Founder & Director of Events at Brew Ha Ha Productions explains, “Craft beer and punk rock are cut from the same cloth. Small, independent, and up against some big challenges: taking on BIG BEER, and local bands determined to do it their way, despite what might make them a quick buck. Punk In Drublic throws off the mantle of the ordinary to create an event unlike any other…a perfect pairing of craft beer and punk rock!”

Catch the Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival “stumbling through a town near you”:

Saturday, September 16 – Tacoma, WA – America’s Car Museum (on sale Friday, July 28)

Sunday, September 17 – Boise, ID – Ford Idaho Center Amphitheater (on sale Friday, July 28)

Saturday, October 14 – Concord, CA – Concord Pavilion (on sale Friday, August 11)

Sunday, October 15 – Sacramento, CA – Bonney Field (on sale Friday, August 11)

Saturday, October 28 – Huntington Beach, CA – Bolsa Chica State Park (on sale Friday, September 1)

The Saturday, September 16 (Tacoma) and Sunday, September 17 (Boise) Punk In Drublic shows will feature performances from NOFX, Bad Religion, Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, Bad Cop / Bad Copand more. Tickets for these two shows go on sale Friday, July 28 at 10:00 AM local time at www.PunkInDrublicFest.com.

General Admission and VIP tickets for the Tacoma and Boise shows are priced as follows. Ticket details for other dates will be announced in August. All tickets include craft beer tasting and access to view the music stage for attendees 21 years or older.

General Admission: starting at $39

Early Entry + VIP Lounge: $99

Early Entry + VIP Lounge + Meet & Greet: $199

VIP Tickets include access to a VIP Entry Lane and VIP Lounge, with:

– Exclusive craft beer tastings

– VIP viewing area of the stage

– Private restrooms

– VIP cash bar

– One hour early entry for craft beer tastings (for those 21+), starting at 12:00 PM

Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival is pleased to welcome Rockstar Energy Drink, Wienerschnitzel, Stone Brewing and Cosmic Fog as sponsors and supporters in its inaugural year. Sponsor activations vary by market.

Look for details on the other Punk In Drublic Craft Beer & Music Festival shows in the coming weeks. Visit www.PunkInDrublicFest.com for more information.

(Stone & NOFX Punk in Drublic Hoppy Lager, courtesy Stone Brewing)

FAT MIKE ANNOUNCES PUNK IN DRUBLIC was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

#Bad Religion #Craft Beer and Music Festival #Fat Mike #FESTIVAL #Flogging Molly #Goldfinger #Hoppy Lager #less than jake #NOFX #Punk in Drublic #RockRevolt #RockRevolt Magazine

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cedarrrun · 4 years

Link

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how '60s pop music and Hollywood spread Transcendental Meditation to a new audience.

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

“The thing about John was that he really was a genius,” said Farrow in a phone interview from her home in Florida. “He was just so quick. He really saw people’s faults as well as the good things. So, if he thought he could, he would nail you—in a hilarious way. All I could think about was ‘I wish they had never done this song.'”

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

Farrow felt tremendous relief when she finally heard it during a family gathering in November 1968 at their home in the famed Dakota Building in Manhattan, New York (coincidentally, the site of Lennon’s residence and eventual murder in 1980).

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

In January 1968, Farrow left with her famous older sister Mia to join Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on a first-class trip to his ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas in Northern India. Mia was nursing wounds from her recent divorce from Frank Sinatra. Nineteen-year-old Prudence was fulfilling a dream to study Transcendental Meditation with her guru—a miracle she had prayed for a year prior during a pilgrimage to Lordes, France.

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh

A Guru with a PR Plan

“[Maharishi Mahesh Yogi] was not only a great spiritual master, but a fantastic businessman as well,” said Susan Shumsky, the Maharishi’s personal assistant for 20 years and author of the book The Maharishi and Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles’ Guru.

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, known in the West as the “the giggling guru,” due to his penchant for spontaneous laughter, made his first trip to the United States in 1959, and he would complete 13 world tours by 1971. His mission was to spread the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM), a type of mantra meditation passed on to him from his guru Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. He believed that the simplicity of the practice was particularly suited to the Western mind, and that through daily practice, 20 minutes twice a day, practitioners could achieve pure bliss consciousness, allowing them to live their lives from a place of love instead of from the prison of their unconscious minds.

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

This message of love resonated particularly powerfully amidst the backdrop of the turbulent '60s where the Vietnam War was killing tens of thousands of young American men, a spate of high-profile assassinations and violent protests rocked the evening news, and the specter of nuclear annihilation spurred by the development of the Atomic Bomb and a Cold War with the Soviet Union frightened a nation.

Remembering this era, Prudence Farrow said “We didn’t go inside as a culture… the reasons that the world had used for war—they didn’t work. So, we had to find a way to survive inside our minds.” She added, “The Beatles were enormously influential…. they became a voice for that movement.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

George Harrison was born in Liverpool, England, on February 24, 1943, in the final years of World War II. The catastrophic effects of the war were obvious in the burned out buildings dotted throughout this bustling port city, the second most bombed city in England outside of London. The youngest of four, Harrison was raised in a Catholic working class family, in a modest four-room house with no electricity and a toilet in the yard.

When he joined The Beatles (then known as The Quarrymen) in 1958 at his schoolmate Paul McCartney’s invitation, Harrison was only 15 years old. The band’s meteoric rise to fame and unprecedented success is the stuff of legend now, but it’s easy to underestimate the immense creative output of The Beatles, who recorded 12 studio albums and 22 singles, starred in 5 feature films, and charted 17 number one hits during their prolific 8-year career, from 1962-1970. The group’s extraordinary fame prompted John Lennon to claim that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” To this day, The Beatles have sold more albums than any other artist on the planet.

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

The Beatles began experimenting with psychedelics in the mid-'60s and integrated their experiences into their music. In Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World (featuring previously recorded interviews with Harrison), Harrison describes his first time dropping acid in 1965, and how he had visions of yogis of the Himalayas. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I’d never thought about them for the rest of my life, but suddenly this thought was in the back of my consciousness.”

1965 would be the same year the group was introduced to the music of Indian classical music legend Ravi Shankar while hanging out with David Crosby of The Byrds in Los Angeles. Harrison finally met Shankar a year later when he was touring England, and he began taking sitar lessons from the master, who simultaneously fed Harrison’s interest in Hindu tradition and spirituality.

Ravi Shankar

“Ravi and the sitar were kinda like an excuse trying to find this spiritual connection,” said Harrison in Living in the Material World. “I had read stuff by various holy men and swamis and mystics and I went around and looked for them. Ravi and his brother gave me a lot of books by some wise men. One of the books was by a Swami Vivikenanda, who said ‘If there is a God, you must see him. And if there is a soul, we must perceive it, otherwise it’s better not to believe. It’s better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.’”

Ravi Shankar, who would have turned 100 this past April and is being celebrated in a series of concerts featuring his musician daughters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones, as well as George Harrison’s son Dhani Harrison, was a dear friend and mentor to Harrison until his death from lung cancer in 2001.

Shankar’s second wife Sukanya Rajan recounted their unusual relationship in a phone call from her San Diego home, “He [Ravi Shankar] was so close to George. He was like a son, a friend, a disciple, all in one, a very unique friendship.”

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

In this quest for deeper meaning, Harrison and the rest of The Beatles traded LSD and other mind-altering substances for meditation. Harrison’s wife at the time, the model Pattie Boyd, read about Transcendental Meditation in the newspaper in 1967 and attended a seminar about the practice. When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was visiting London later that year, Harrison and the entire band went to a lecture and were so entranced that they dropped everything to leave the following day for a 10-day spiritual conference in Bangor, Wales, to learn TM for themselves. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful also joined.

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

“Rishikesh was like arriving on another planet,” said Prudence Farrow. “For centuries, this was the place where people would come to meditate and gain enlightenment.” Rishikesh had earned its moniker as “the birthplace of yoga” thanks to the hundreds of ashrams, temples, and flocks of seekers that arrive from all over the world to learn meditation and yoga at its source and bathe in the holy Ganges River that flows through town.

Because Farrow was traveling with her famous sister, Mia, the two of them were housed in a special private block or “puri” on the Maharishi’s ashram. “I felt really cheated,” she said. “It was a celebrity thing. I wanted to be like the other people.” John Lennon and George Harrison, who were joining the course two weeks late, were placed in this same block (the remaining Beatles would only stay for a few weeks and were not taking the training course). The Maharishi assigned Farrow to be their “course buddy” and to catch them up to speed when they arrived.

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

But, instead of sharing notes about the Maharishi’s lectures, the trio traded stories about why they were there. “John kept saying, ‘I’m here because of George,” she said. “George was the real McCoy. He was a real seeker. He was what he was whether he was a Beatle or not. He was a musician. That was his destiny. He had no choice. And he was pure because of that.”

Despite the Maharishi’s recommendations to meditate for at least eight hours each day, music was everywhere. Along with the Beatles, Mike Love, singer/songwriter from the Beach Boys, and the Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch, were also there. Without outside distractions, the Beatles were even more productive than usual, reportedly writing 48 songs while in India, most of which appeared on The White Album, with a few appearing on Abbey Road.

“John would sit out on the patio and pluck out things all the time,” Farrow said. But, she quickly became fully absorbed in her practice, sometimes not leaving her quarters for days. “I had already made a decision that this was all that mattered to me. I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t think Maharishi would even ever think of me as a teacher because I became so crazy.” Her sister didn’t understand her devotion. “Mia had no idea what I was talking about. My mind was completely blown and she was like ‘what is the matter with you?”

In an interview given in 1980 shortly before his death, Lennon recounted the story behind the song Dear Prudence. “[Prudence] had been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else.” But, Farrow believes that, like Harrison, Lennon recognized her singular dedication to expanding consciousness. “I was like George, dedicating my life to this thing that most people couldn’t even feel or know that existed. And there’s a certain purity to that.”

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

The Maharishi's Rishikesh Ashram

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

“I absolutely believe that Maharishi changed the world,” said his longtime assistant Shumsky. “He brought about a world at peace, compared to where it was...and his motive was not only to create world peace, but his motive with individuals was to uplift them and help them be all they can be, to help them develop their full potential.”

At 72, Prudence Farrow only just recently retired from teaching TM after over 50 years. “One of things that he [Maharishi] started us doing was meditating in these large groups to put out peace into the collective consciousness,” said Farrow. “And so from my perspective, you are our children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren... whenever I’m around yoga people now, I feel so responsible for all of you... you’re the future of this revolution in the West. It started with us, but you will take it further and really establish it in Western culture.”

See also How to Teach Peace

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

amyddaniels · 4 years

Text

Prudence Farrow on The Beatles and the '60s Spiritual Revolution

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how '60s pop music and Hollywood spread Transcendental Meditation to a new audience.

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh

A Guru with a PR Plan

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

Ravi Shankar

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

The Maharishi's Rishikesh Ashram

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

See also How to Teach Peace

0 notes

krisiunicornio · 4 years

Link

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how '60s pop music and Hollywood spread Transcendental Meditation to a new audience.

The ruins of "Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, India

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh yogi

A Guru with a PR Plan

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

Ravi Shankar

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

See also How to Teach Peace

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

cedarrrun · 4 years

Link

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how 60s' pop music and Hollywood spread transcendental meditation to a new audience.

The ruins of "Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, India

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh yogi

A Guru with a PR Plan

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

Ravi Shankar

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

See also How to Teach Peace

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

amyddaniels · 4 years

Text

The Sound of '60s Spiritual Revolution

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how 60s' pop music and Hollywood spread transcendental meditation to a new audience.

The ruins of "Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, India

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh yogi

A Guru with a PR Plan

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

Ravi Shankar

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

See also How to Teach Peace

0 notes

krisiunicornio · 4 years

Link

George Harrison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Prudence Farrow, and how 60s' pop music and Hollywood spread transcendental meditation to a new audience.

The ruins of "Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, India

When Prudence Farrow heard that John Lennon had written a song about her, she was deeply worried.

The song—"Dear Prudence"—ended up being the second track on the seminal Beatles double album, known as The White Album.

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet a brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue. It’s beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

See also The Beatles and the Music that Brought Meditation West

“It’s a beautiful song,” she said. “For me, it’s the only song [on The White Album that truly captures the flavor of Rishikesh, India”

How Prudence Farrow Met John Lennon and the Maharishi

See also 13 Important Indian Places Every Yogi Should Visit

But there would be a slew of other famous guests studying with the Maharishi at the same time, most notably, The Beatles, aka The Fab Four.

Just how did this fated meeting of Hollywood elite, rockstars, and Western seekers come together on the banks of the Ganges in the winter of 1968 in search of spiritual awakening?

Maharishi Mahesh yogi

A Guru with a PR Plan

“He was very good at convincing people to help him in various ways. And he did it through love. He was an incredibly loving person.”

See also 5 Female Gurus to Celebrate Right Now

“The Maharishi wanted to create world peace,” said Shumsky. “That was his main goal. He wanted to prevent World War III.”

If the Beatles were a voice for this new “inner” revolution of consciousness, their undisputed leader was the the youngest and “quietest” member of the band: lead guitarist, George Harrison.

George Harrison in India

The "Quiet Beatle" Finds Ravi Shankar, Psychedelics, Then Transcendental Meditation

See more Did You Know Beatle George Harrison Was a Yogi?

Ravi Shankar

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

The Maharishi personally invited the entire band and their wives to his compound in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to become TM instructors.

Rishikesh, India

Life at the Ashram

See also 7 Destination Ashrams for an Authentic Yoga Experience

See also 5 Spiritual Musicians to Follow

Still Dreaming of World Peace

By the time Maharishi died in 2008, he reportedly trained 40,000 Transcendental Meditation teachers who taught the practice to over 5 million people.

See also How to Teach Peace

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes