In May 1968, the American rock band the Beach Boys undertook a concert tour of the United States with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, their Indian meditation guru.

The tour preceded the release of the Beach Boys' Friends album, which similarly reflected the influence of the Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique on the band, and was a commercial and critical failure.

Twenty-nine concerts were originally scheduled, many of them in college venues, but the venture was abandoned after three days of low ticket sales and hostile audience reaction to the Maharishi's segment.

[2] Along with his Beach Boys bandmates Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine, Mike Love was one of the many rock musicians who discovered the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi following the Beatles' public endorsement of his TM technique in August 1967.

[7] In January 1968, the Beach Boys attended the Maharishi's public appearances in New York[8] and Cambridge, Massachusetts, after which he invited Love to join the Beatles at his training seminar in Rishikesh in northern India.

[15][17] The tour would allow the Maharishi to propagate his message to an audience of young pop fans and, according to author Peter Ames Carlin, it would improve the Beach Boys' standing at a time when they and their music had fallen out of step with contemporary trends.

[21] Once back in Los Angeles, Love rejoined the Beach Boys and helped them complete their new album, Friends, which included songs that reflected the group's enthusiasm for meditation.

[24] After this setback, according to Nick Grillo, the Beach Boys' business manager, the band hoped that their upcoming tour with the Maharishi would alleviate the financial shortfall.

[41][42] William Rice, in his review for The Washington Post, described the band's 40-minute performance as "dreadful", citing the poor sound system, the under-rehearsed backing musicians, and the Beach Boys' out-of-tune singing.

[40] Writing in New York magazine, Loraine Alterman said that, although the Maharishi's commitment to making his documentary film was given as the reason, "more likely lagging ticket sales made him meditate on the advisability of performing to half-empty houses.

[43][nb 3] The Iona College show was again poorly received, and the crowd were all the more restless due to the long delay between the Beach Boys' set and the Maharishi's arrival.

[43] Alterman reported that, with the Beach Boys having joined the audience for the lecture, Bruce Johnston was visibly irritated by the fans' ridiculing of the guru, and Love returned to the stage to admonish the hecklers, adding: "I know there are a lot of young people here but you will get older and I know you'll want to remember the Maharishi at Iona.

[46] In the May 11 issue of Billboard magazine, it was announced that jazz musician Paul Horn, who had also attended the retreat in Rishikesh, had formed a production company to make the Four Star documentary.

[47] In June 1968, Amusement Business magazine reported that "the Beach Boys camp insists that the lingering atmosphere of hostility and violence" in the wake of King's death had been the cause of the tour's cancellation, and not the Maharishi's failure to draw crowds.

[43] The Beach Boys' declining popularity in the US was further reflected in the commercial failure of Friends, which peaked at number 126 on Billboard's albums chart,[52][53] with total US sales estimated at 18,000 copies.

[55][nb 4] In his book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, Gary Lachman describes the Beach Boys' professional collaboration with the Maharishi as a "disastrous flirtation" that, for Dennis Wilson, was soon superseded by a more damaging personal association with the Manson Family cult.

"[60] Author Jon Stebbins lists the 1968 tour—specifically, the fact that the band "toured with the Maharishi after the Beatles had rejected him"—among the Beach Boys' major "artistic missteps" that also included their cancellation of the Smile album and their refusal to perform at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.