Comment Central: What should Paul and Ringo be raising money for?

The two surviving Beatles have reunited on stage in New York to promote Transcendental Meditation among schoolchildren around the world.

Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr played With a Little Help from My Friends in their first concert together for almost seven years.

The rare reunion came at the climax of a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for a charity set up by David Lynch, the film-maker, to bring Transcendental Meditation to one million schoolchildren. “It started for us when we met the Maharishi in India, and it’s going to get bigger and bigger and rule the world,” McCartney told the crowd.

Other performers included Sheryl Crow, Moby, Eddie Vedder, of Pearl Jam, Donovan and Ben Harper.

Lynch, whose films include Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, is spearheading an effort to bring Transcendental Meditation to schools to relieve stress. He has written of nurturing his own creativity with meditation, in his book Catching the Big Fish.

The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace says that it has already provided scholarships to more than 100,000 at-risk pupils, teachers and parents in 30 countries to learn the meditation technique. “We have seen schools that were in bad trouble get the technique for the whole school and within a year there is a 180-degree turnaround. It’s so beautiful,” Lynch said.

McCartney and Starr, who have appeared together only a handful of times since the Beatles broke up in 1970, last played together at a 2002 tribute to George Harrison at the Albert Hall after the former Beatle’s death from cancer at the age of 58.

At the $500-a-ticket Change Begins Within concert on Saturday night, they performed separate sets before appearing together for the finale.

McCartney paid tribute to his former songwriting partner John Lennon, who was shot dead outside his New York home in 1980.

“I love New York and John loved New York. Let’s hear it for John,” McCartney told fans before playing Here Today, a song he wrote after Lennon’s murder. McCartney also sang the Beatles classics Let it Be, Lady Madonna and Blackbird. Starr played Yellow Submarine and Boys.

The highlight came when McCartney introduced Starr as the imaginary singer from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Shears,” McCartney said.

After performing With a Little Help from My Friends Starr stayed on stage for an encore, playing drums on a song that had been written by McCartney while in India — And Remember to be . . . Cosmically Conscious — and also on I Saw Her Standing There.

At a press conference before the performance the two recalled their 1968 trip to India to learn meditation from the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“Over 40 years ago, we ended up in Rishikesh. That is where we hung out with Maharishi. We had met him a few months before in Wales. Since then, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, I have meditated. It’s a gift he gave me,” Starr said.

McCartney said: “It’s one of the few things anyone has ever given to me that means so much to me. For us, it came at a time when we were looking for something to stabilise us at the end of the crazy Sixties.”

Moby joked that it was like being at a meeting of Meditators Anonymous. “As a spiritual dilettante, I have tried a lot of different types of meditation and the thing that really won me over with TM — apart from having my hero David Lynch as its most vocal practitioner – was its effectiveness,” Moby said.

“One of the things that makes TM so effective is you don’t really have to do very much. As a profoundly lazy person, I appreciate that.”

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