It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)
With his spiritual pronouncements during the tour proving similarly unwelcome to many music critics, Harrison subsequently withdrew from making such public statements of Hindu religiosity until producing Shankar's Chants of India album in 1996.
[8][9] While the latter track reflected the singer's recent indulgences with drugs and alcohol,[10][11] "It Is 'He'" documented what author Simon Leng terms "a spiritual epiphany for Harrison" in the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan.
[20] The party slept for a few hours in rooms provided by one of the temples, during which Harrison heard "huge heavenly choirs" in his dreams and experienced "the deepest sleep I had ever had in my life".
[22] Late that morning, Harrison and Shankar accompanied Maharaj to Seva Kunj, a park that commemorates Krishna's love for all-night dancing with his gopis (cow-herd girls).
[25] Harrison and Shankar spent a few days in the city, at the Sri Chaitanya Prema Samastbana ashram, on the banks of the Yamuna River; there, they meditated, wrote music and discussed "the art of devotion".
[53][nb 2] Harrison taped an early version of "It Is 'He'" at his Friar Park studio, FPSHOT, in Oxfordshire, with Bobby Purvis and Bill Elliott of Splinter on backing vocals.
[32] On the officially released recording, he was backed by members of his 1974 tour band,[55] including Tom Scott (flute), Billy Preston (piano, organ), Willie Weeks (bass) and Andy Newmark (drums).
[56] These four American musicians attended the main sessions for Dark Horse, which took place at FPSHOT over August–September,[57][58] in between rehearsals there for the Music Festival of India's tour of Europe[59] and the recording of a studio album by Shankar's ensemble, which Harrison also produced.
[13] In October, with his album still unfinished,[61] Harrison flew to Los Angeles, California, where he rehearsed with his musicians and Shankar's orchestra for the upcoming tour, while carrying out further recording at A&M Studios.
[9] The completed recording features a mix of musical styles,[63] with the R&B-funk rhythm section of Weeks and Newmark,[64] gospel keyboards from Preston,[35] and Richards' wobbleboard recalling pre-rock 'n' roll skiffle.
[41][nb 4] Aside from the Western instrumentation he supplied on "It Is 'He'", Harrison provided Indian music textures through his use of the gut-stringed gubgubbi – described by Leng as a "banjo-meets-vocal sound" – as well as small hand-cymbals (or kartal),[67] commonly played by Hare Krishna devotees during kirtana.
[66][70] Already suffering from laryngitis,[6] Harrison overtaxed his voice during the weeks of combined recording and rehearsals in Los Angeles,[58][71] and his hoarse singing would doom his subsequent concerts in the eyes of many observers.
[89][90] Leng considers that Dark Horse coincided with "a crisis of faith" on Harrison's part and that, amid confessionals dealing with the singer's troubled personal life and rock-star excess, the track was "almost a reminder to himself of golden days in India, when he felt comforted by belief".
[89][nb 6] While he identifies a level of religiosity in other songs on Dark Horse, Allison pairs the album with Material World as works that "literally wear their Hinduism on their record sleeves".
"[105][106] In a more favourable review, Brian Harrigan of Melody Maker called the song "a bit of a groover" and credited Harrison with the creation of "a new category in music – Country and Eastern".
Ian Inglis describes the deceleration into half-time during the verses as "awkward" and notes the failure of "It Is 'He'" next to Harrison's earlier successes with "My Sweet Lord" and "Hare Krishna Mantra".
[107] While also commenting on the underachieving "Ding Dong" single, Alan Clayson writes: "Despite its non-Christian slant, George might have fared better with the wonderful 'It Is "He" (Jai Sri Krishna)'... [The] repeated chorus was so uplifting that it scarcely mattered that it was sung (without laryngitis) entirely in Hindi – no more, anyway, than McCartney breaking into French on 'Michelle' off Rubber Soul.
[32] In a review of the 2014 reissue of Dark Horse, for Paste magazine, Robert Ham cited the song as a highlight of the album, writing: "The giddy 'Is It "He" (Jai Sri Krishna)' ... is a joyous affirmation of [Harrison's] spiritual beliefs that mashes up many of his musical interests, with Indian instruments finding consort with rambling English folk and R&B horn stabs.
[117] In his book The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, Peter Lavezzoli writes that following Dark Horse and the "ill-fated 1974 tour", Harrison "continued to infuse his work with an implicit spirituality that rarely manifested on the surface".
[123] During the Friar Park sessions for Chants of India, Harrison taped the Indian music portions of his song "Brainwashed", which ends with the Sanskrit prayer "Namah Parvati".
