Andrew Ferguson offers Weekly Standard readers a fascinating article about George Harrison, a hedonistic rock star with an uncharacteristically un-rock’n’roll approach to the afterworld:

Critics called Harrison “preachy,” and with some cause. I remember attending a concert in the only American solo tour he ever did, in 1974, in Long Beach, California. His voice was shot from infection and over-rehearsal, but none of us in the audience of 40,000 seemed to mind. A croaking Beatle was still a Beatle. Every song was greeted warmly, especially when he played the opening figure of the Beatles standard “In My Life,” grandly arranged and slowed to the pace of a dirge, in an effort to draw meaning out of each phrase: In my life, I love you more.

It was an odd song to do. “In My Life” was written by John Lennon, but Harrison put his own stamp on it, and how. He worked his way to the last line of the last verse: “In my life”—then came a rest of four beats, anticipatory cheers welling up from the crowd, the band prepared to come in like an avalanche—“I’ve loved God more.” And 40,000 people were caught in screamus interruptus. In my section of the cheap seats, there was a half-gulp while we all looked at each other: “Did he just say what I think he said?”

I still marvel at the nerve it must have taken, singing about God, of all things, in front of kids thumping for rock ’n’ roll, not to mention the wised-up musicians and the cynics and pedants of the concert-reviewing press. But you got used to it if you were a George fan, and in time came to expect it, as when, for example, in an acoustic blues called “Deep Blue,” he suddenly popped off with When I think of the life I’m living / I pray God help me; give me your light / So I can love you and understand .??.??. (You were expecting maybe the Hoochie Coochie Man?) And because George insisted, some of us felt obliged, for the first time in our lives, to take the idea (at least) of God seriously.

That Krishna, he works in mysterious ways.