Hi, I just found out your blog, and I really like it! Lots of things about John and Paul. I find their relationship very interesting and intriguing. About LSD, why do you think it took Paul so long to take it with John? I remember reading somewhere that Paul took it in the end of 1965 or in then begging of 1966 with some of his friends from London, but somehow he didnt want to take it with John. Do you think he was afraid?
Hey there, @righimoraes! I’m glad you’re enjoying what you came across so far! And yeah, your choice of words is absolutely perfect; I think it was those very same characteristics that captivated me so much in the first place (besides the utter beauty involved in a creative process of this magnitude).
I must warn you, this got terribly out of hand, so prepare for a proper testament! But I’d love it if you showed the patience to plough through to the end and let me know what you think!
Now, you can’t begin to imagine how happy I was when you brought up the LSD! Because, in my personal opinion, if there is a change in tune in the middle of this whole symphony that can be described as ‘intriguing’ it is that 1st acid trip they took together. For me, it’s only surpassed in terms of sheer mysteriousness by India. But let’s look at the timeline that preceded it first.
As the story goes, John and George were the first to unwittingly come into contact with the famous lysergic acid diethylamide 25, somewhen between March and April of 1965, in the London home of Dr John Riley, George’s cosmetic dentist.
The experience, as they describe it, was fantastic and life-changing.
We’d just sat down and ordered our drinks when suddenly I feel the most incredible feeling come over me. It was something like a very concentrated version of the best feeling I’d ever had in my whole life. It was fantastic. I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular, but with everything. Everything was perfect, in a perfect light, and I had an overwhelming desire to go round the club telling everybody how much I loved them – people I’d never seen before.
- George Harrison, Anthology
John too seemed to have a rather good trip, as he fondly recalls all the crazy shenanigans they got up to that night.
George somehow or another managed to drive us home in his Mini. We were going about ten miles an hour, but it seemed like a thousand. And Pattie was saying, ‘Let’s jump out and play football, there’s these big rugby poles’ and things like that. I was getting all this sort of hysterical jokes coming out, like with speed, because I was always on that, too. George was going, ‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Oh God! It was just terrifying. But it was fantastic.
- John Lennon, Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner
So amazingly reality-shattering was the whole ordeal, that the two Beatles felt it was crucial to share this new-found enlightenment with the rest of the band.
John and I had decided that Paul and Ringo had to have acid, because we couldn’t relate to them any more. Not just on the one level – we couldn’t relate to them on any level, because acid had changed us so much. It was such a mammoth experience that it was unexplainable: it was something that had to be experienced, because you could spend the rest of your life trying to explain what it made you feel and think. It was all too important to John and me. So the plan was that when we got to Hollywood, on our day off we were going to get them to take acid. We got some in New York; it was on sugar cubes wrapped in tinfoil and we’d been carrying these around all through the tour until we got to LA.
- George Harrison, Anthology
And so, on 25 August 1965, while on break from their tour, John and George share the wonders of LSD with Ringo. Roadies Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans respectively partake and stay straight to keep an eye on things. Paul declines.
Curiously, it was a particular encounter in this LA party that inspired John to write ‘She Said She Said’.
He was describing an acid trip he’d been on. We didn’t want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy – who I really didn’t know; he hadn’t made Easy Rider or anything – kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, “I know what it’s like to be dead,” and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! And I used it for the song, but I changed it to ‘she'” instead of 'he’. It was scary. You know, a guy… when you’re flying high and [whispers] 'I know what it’s like to be dead, man.’ I remembered the incident. Don’t tell me about it! I don’t want to know what it’s like to be dead!
- John Lennon, All We Are Saying by David Sheff
In the same way Paul is absent from this episode, he is notably not featured in the Revolver track itself.
And so begins the months-long effort (especially on John’s part), to try and pressure Paul into dropping acid with them (him).
Paul felt very out of it 'cause we were all a bit cruel. It’s like, 'We’re taking it and you’re not.'
- John Lennon, Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner
As you see, making him feel excluded was one of the prefered methods of manipulation. And it came both in the form as literal exclusions from the song making process (see above) and perhaps more insidious attempts at eliciting jealousy. I think one of the pawns in John’s famous ‘mind games’ ended up being George himself. The latter seemed quite happy to fill the vacancy as the main travel companion, the one with the shared life experiences, and all the closeness that brought.
After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship. That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.’ That is an illusion people are under. It’s nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It’s down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what’s going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death. As Yoko came into the picture, I lost a lot of personal contract with John; but on the odd occasion I did see him, just by the look in his eyes I felt we were connected.
- George Harrison, Anthology
Finally, John - his idol, his hero - regarded him as an equal!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle John and George’s relationship, because the dynamic was also fascinating, and it was with each other that they could explore the more spiritual questions of their existence, something they couldn’t quite do with the more down-to-earth pair of Paul and Ringo. But that doesn’t invalidate the fact that the person John seemed most desperate to share this incredibly intimate experience with was Paul.
On his part, Paul was, as you correctly supposed, rather afraid. We must remember that he was always the most cautious out of all the four. As he put it:
John – he’s got movement. He’s a very fast mover. He sees new things happening and he’s away. Me – I’m conservative. I feel I need to check things. I was last to try pot and LSD and floral clothes. I’m slower than John, the least likely to succeed in class.
- Paul McCartney, The Beatles by Hunter Davies
In the Anthology, he spells it out quite clearly.
But I really was… frightened of that kind of stuff. Cus it’s what you’re taught when you’re younger! ‘Hey! Watch out for them devil drugs!’. So… so when acid came ‘round, we’d heard you’re never the same. It alters your life and you’ll never be the same again. And I think John was rather excited by that prospect; I think I was rather frightened by that prospect! [huffs] Just what I need! You know? To have some funny little thing where I never get back… home again! You know? Oh, jeez, you know? May not be the greatest move… So I delayed. And I was seen to sort of stall a little bit, I think, within the group. Cus a lot of peer pressure- I mean, talk about peer pressure! The Beatles?
Paul McCartney, Anthology
It must have been a rough few months of resisting for Paul, as he recounts multiple times how straining it was to be the one on the side while your band, your closest family, continues to increase the rift between you in an effort to make you jump.
Thoroughly worn down, Paul finally capitulates on 13 December 1965. That night, John and Paul had returned to the Scotch of St James nightclub, where on the previous day the Beatles had their end of tour celebrations. There they met The Who’s John Entwistle and the Pretty Things’ former drummer Viv Prince, but most importantly Nicky Browne, Tara Browne’s wife, who invites them all back to their London home on Eaton Row. Paul and some others accept the offer. John declines.
This time, when Tara Brown suggests they drop acid, Paul relents.
I was more ready for the drink or a little bit of pot or something. I’d not wanted to do it, I’d held off like a lot of people were trying to, but there was massive peer pressure. And within a band, it’s more than peer pressure, it’s fear pressure. It becomes trebled, more than just your mates, it’s, 'Hey, man, this whole band’s had acid, why are you holding out? What’s the reason, what is it about you?’ So I knew I would have to out of peer pressure alone. And that night I thought, well, this is as good a time as any, so I said, 'Go on then, fine.’ So we all did it.
- Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
Of that first trip itself, Paul had this to say:
It was such a mind-expanding thing. I saw paisley shapes and weird things, and for a guy who wasn’t that keen on getting that weird, there was a disturbing element to it. I remember looking at my shirtsleeves and seeing they were dirty and not being too pleased with that, whereas normally you wouldn’t even notice. But you noticed and you heard. Everything was supersensitive.
- Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
You’ll notice that contrary to the other Beatles’ recounts of their experiences while on LSD, Paul’s are often described with more negative words, with ‘disturbing’ being a recurring adjective.
Now, if you are wondering why Paul took LSD with a group of acquaintances but not with his own band (or rather John), that’s when we enter the realm of speculation. Might it have been a matter of pride, a small victory in the way of ‘okay, I saw what it was all about, but on my terms, not because you pushed me into doing it with you’? Might have.
But again, here (as in most places) I find that the most likely motivator was fear. There was, after all, a lot more at stake in a life-changingly intimate experience with your best friend and partner – the same partner with whom you’re not entirely sure just how intimate you want/should/can be – than with a bunch of strangers. So Paul probably would rather sacrifice the heavy significance John was sure to place on ‘first times’, in order to more cautiously scout the whole affair. If this is the motivation behind these events, then it should be seen as a sign of just how important his relationship with John was to him, that he was so careful not to screw it up. (What a pity then that John himself seemed to require big bold moves, entire leaps of faith, as a declaration of true affection…)
Meanwhile, John had become increasingly enthralled with the escapism offered by acid and used it regularly. As his at the time wife, Cynthia - for whom the intimacy suggested by the chemical felt false and manufactured - recounts:
When John was tripping I felt as if I was living with a stranger. He would be distant, so spaced-out that he couldn’t talk to me coherently. I hated that, and I hated the fact that LSD was pulling him away from me. I wouldn’t take it with him so he found others who would. Within weeks of his first trip, John was taking LSD daily and I became more and more worried. I couldn’t reach him when he was tripping, but when the effects wore off he would be normal until he took it again.
For Paul, however, his experiences with LSD seemed not to have freed him of his doubts, for it would only be on 21 March 1967, more than a year later, that he would finally choose to take acid with his songwriting partner, in the well-known episode.
While recording the song ‘Getting Better’ for Sgt Pepper, John mistakenly took and LSD pill instead of a stimulant.
I thought I was taking some uppers, and I was not in a state of handling it. I can’t remember what album it was but I took it and then [whispers] I just noticed all of a sudden I got so scared on the mike. I said, 'What was it?’ I thought I felt ill. I thought I was going cracked. Then I said, 'I must get some air.’ They all took me upstairs on the roof, and George Martin was looking at me funny. And then it dawned on me. I must have taken acid. And I said, 'Well, I can’t go on, I have to go.’ So I just said, 'You’ll have to do it and I’ll just stay and watch.’ I just [became] very nervous and just watching all of a sudden. 'Is it alright?’ and they were saying, 'Yeah.’ They were all being very kind. They said, 'Yes, it’s alright.’ And I said, 'Are you sure it’s alright?’ They carried on making the record.
- John Lennon, Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner
In this particular instance, John is misremembering, for the session did not proceed when the others realised what was happening. As George Martin recalls it:
We stood there for a minute or two, with John swaying gently against my arm. ‘I’m feeling better,’ he announced. Then he looked up at the stars. 'Wow..’ he intoned. 'Look at that! Isn’t that amazing?“. I followed his gaze. The stars did look good but they didn’t look that good. It was very unlike John to be over the top in that way. I stared at him. He was wired-pin-sharp and quivering, resonating away like a human tuning fork.No sooner had John uttered his immortal words about the stars than George and Paul came bursting out on the roof. They had come tearing up from the studio as soon as they found out where we were.They knew why John was feeling unwell. Maybe everyone else did, too - everyone except for father-figure George Martin here!It was very simple. John was tripping on LSD. He had taken it by mistake, they said - he had meant to take an amphetamine tablet. That hardly made any difference, frankly; the fact was that John was only too likely to imagine he could fly, and launch himself off the low parapet that ran around the roof. They had been absolutely terrified that he might do so. I spoke to Paul about this night many years later, and he confirmed that he and George had been shaken rigid when they found out we were up on the roof. They knew John was having a what you might call a bad trip. John didn’t go back to Weybridge that night; Paul took him home to his place, in nearby Cavendish Road. They were intensely close, remember, and Paul would do almost anything for John. So, once they were safe inside, Paul took a tablet of LSD for the first time, 'So I could get with John’ as he put it- be with him in his misery and fear.What about that for friendship?
- George Martin, Anthology
He seemed especially fond of Paul’s attitude, for he reiterates the point in his own memoir.
Paul’s thoughtfulness in going home with John was typical of one of the best sides of his character.
- George Martin, All You Need Is Years
And so Paul drove both of them back to his home in Cavendish, where the moment had finally presented itself for him to go on a little journey with John.
I thought, ‘Maybe this is the moment where I should take a trip with him. It’s been coming for a long time. It’s often the best way, without thinking about it too much, just slip into it. John’s on it already, so I’ll sort of catch up.’ It was my first trip with John, or with any of the guys. We stayed up all night, sat around and hallucinated a lot.
Me and John, we’d known each other for a long time. Along with George and Ringo, we were best mates. And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away.
There’s something disturbing about it. You ask yourself, 'How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t. After that you’ve got to get trepanned or you’ve got to meditate for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make a decision which way you’re going to go.
I would walk out into the garden – 'Oh no, I’ve got to go back in.’ It was very tiring, walking made me very tired, wasted me, always wasted me. But 'I’ve got to do it, for my well-being.’ In the meantime John had been sitting around very enigmatically and I had a big vision of him as a king, the absolute Emperor of Eternity. It was a good trip. It was great but I wanted to go to bed after a while.
I’d just had enough after about four or five hours. John was quite amazed that it had struck me in that way. John said, 'Go to bed? You won’t sleep!’ 'I know that, I’ve still got to go to bed.’ I thought, now that’s enough fun and partying, now … It’s like with drink. That’s enough. That was a lot of fun, now I gotta go and sleep this off. But of course you don’t just sleep off an acid trip so I went to bed and hallucinated a lot in bed. I remember Mal coming up and checking that I was all right. 'Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, I could feel every inch of the house, and John seemed like some sort of emperor in control of it all. It was quite strange. Of course he was just sitting there, very inscrutably.
- Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
There it is then. The main event. And it was just as profoundly intimate as they’d hoped/feared.
I urge you, again, not to get lost on the fantastically romantic imagery of eye contact to the point of merging, but to notice the slightly uneasy light in which Paul paints the entire episode, with the resurgence of ’disturbing’. And so my tag for the whole LSD scene is born: “How do you come back from it?”
Because these two got to the point of losing their own identities in the other, they truly became One, and they were not ready for it. It was everything John wanted and everything Paul was trying to avoid, and I think it started to destroy them.
And even if John thought this was the level of closeness he ought to be at with Paul (for reasons that I tried to express in the first posted opinion of mine), even he reckoned later that the LSD induced smashing of his ego was more detrimental to his mental and emotional health than beneficial.
I had many [bad trips]. Jesus Christ. I stopped taking it 'cause of that. I mean I just couldn’t stand it. I dropped it for I don’t know how long. Then I started taking it just before I met Yoko. I got a message on acid that you should destroy your ego, and I did. I was reading that stupid book of Leary’s and all that shit. We were going through a whole game that everybody went through. And I destroyed meself. I was slowly putting meself together after Maharishi, bit by bit, over a two-year period. And then I destroyed me ego and I didn’t believe I could do anything. I let Paul do what he wanted and say, them all just do what they wanted. And I just was nothing, I was shit. And then Derek [Taylor] tripped me out at his house after he’d got back from LA. He said, 'You’re alright.’ And he pointed out which songs I’d written, and said, 'You wrote this, and you said this, and you are intelligent, don’t be frightened.’ The next week I went down with Yoko and we tripped out again, and she freed me completely, to realise that I was me and it’s alright. And that was it. I started fighting again and being a loud-mouth again and saying, 'Well, I can do this,’ and 'Fuck you, and this is what I want,’ and 'Don’t put me down. I did this.’
- John Lennon, Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner
Paul’s overall opinion on acid was as follows:
Sometimes it was a very very deeply emotional experience, making you want to cry, sometimes seeing God or sensing all the majesty and emotional depth of everything. And sometimes you were just plain knackered, because it would be like sitting up all night in a train station, and by the morning you’ve grown very stiff and it’s not a party any more. It’s like the end of an all-nighter but you haven’t danced. You just sat. So your bum might be sore, just from sitting. I was often quite wiped out by it all but I always thought, Well, you know, everybody’s doing it.
The thing I didn’t like about acid was it lasted too long. It always wore me out. But they were great people to be around, a wacky crowd. My main problem was just the stamina you had to have. I never attempted to work on acid, I couldn’t. What’s the point of trying, love?
- Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
On 17 June 1967, the whole ‘Paul admits to taking LSD’ debacle happens, and though he defends his statement and his position to the press, by then the bands interested in the substance had started to wane, when some of the disillusionment over the whole drug-cult started settling in.
By 26 August 1967, the Beatles had publicly renounced drugs and started looking for the answers to life’s big questions with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his system of Transcendental Meditation.
(But we know how similarly those endeavours ended, with bitter disillusionment and an even greater rift within the band and John and Paul themselves. That, though, is another story.)
And in the end (for those brave few that endured this far), I too see this whole LSD dabbling as exactly what they thought it would be: life-changing. It was a definite turning point (so much so that I chronologically tag it as the Bridge of the piece) in their relationship. They had reached total togetherness. But something there, maybe the restrictions they imposed unto themselves of what is socially acceptable, maybe something even more crucial in human nature that repels us from totally losing a concept of self (despite how much escapism we sometimes desire), made it so they couldn’t handle that. And if this startling realization didn’t start, it definitely enlargened the fractures in the partnership.
But what do you guys think? I’d love to hear your opinions. Especially considering their ‘67 seemingly happy communal living. Maybe India was the true turning point. Maybe it was sooner, when they stopped touring and ‘living in each other’s pockets’. Please let me know your thoughts, and once again, thank you so much for this ask!
