HIGH AND MIGHTY
Can it be true that pot-smoking John Lennon's latest love is LSD? Our party correspondent, LARA PRENDERGAST, reports in from London with the inside dope
LONDON, May 14, 1965 — Woah, that was a hard day’s night! Sorry, just got back from a Twickenham Studios shoot for Help! last night that went into the wee hours, when we all know I should be sleeping like a log.
I know it’s been nearly a year but I still can’t get that last title song out of my head. All their songs seem as though they’re about more than one thing, you know? Paul has a hit song lined up for the latest soundtrack album, set for August, called “Yesterday” -- and whilst the band won’t budge from its secrecy oath, if the tune ends up tallying all the illegal narcotics consumed at a Beatles bash, it will be the the Fab Four’s longest tune to date.
But as promised, let’s get to the late-breaking news that John just returned from his first “trip” on LSD – that’s Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, for those who don’t answer to a fearsome team of persnickety fact-checkers, as I do – in late March. It will come as no surprise to observant John-watchers like myself that he now loves LSD with all his heart, and wants more forthwith.
But before I delve into the latest details, I’d like to quickly reveal the results of my six-month Beatles Magazine investigation into the ingestion of other illicit drugs by the Beatles. This story’s coffee-stained rough draft has been sitting on my tiny kitchen counter for months, while I weighed the public’s right to know against my predilection to protect the Beatles’ privacy. Two of those boys grew up with no mum, for mersey’s sakes! But my research couldn’t help but document an easily observable fact: the Beatles have tacked reefer onto their regular daily menu of edible, smokable or drinkable musical enhancements. Plus don’t forget the legendary amounts of booze and pills they swallowed back to their Hamburg days, before they were famous. Now you’re getting the idea.
My reporting has further documented that none other than Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to the pleasures of pot-smoking — a new, late-night party treat ushered in at a shambolic New York City shindig last summer, I’m reliably told. Sources further shared that the boys have been stoned out of their minds ever since, and it seems that to not report these developments to Beatles Magazine readers would be nothing less than a dereliction of duty.
“How do you know this to be true?” was C.J.’s first, supremely sensible response when I finally shared my first draft. I can always count on our editor for commendable caution when it comes to John, Paul, George and Ringo – she doesn’t pull punches but she doesn’t throw any, either.
“How do I know this?” I smiled. “Hell’s bells, C.J., I smelled it myself!”
That was good enough for my boss. But for those who crave confirmation of a more independent journalistic nature, I can quote John’s own, unrepentant disclosure that The Beatles were stoned for most of the writing, filming and recording of Help!, which just wrapped two nights ago.
“The movie was out of our control,” John has now disclosed, bemoaning shots gone in a puff of smoke. “We had good fun in it, though. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. Nobody could communicate with us, it was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time. In our own world.”
Needless to say, the boys have been high as schoolyard hooligans ever since last summer’s Dylan do. This may not be the sort of solid reporting you’re looking for, folks, but I did just get off the phone with George about something else, and he was giggling his way through a Capitol Records gift basket of strawberry scones.
My investigation began last July, when I first spent quality time hanging inside the cloud of cannabis that consistently follows rock-music journalist Al Aronowitz wherever he goes. Al is a bit older than me – mid-30s, I’d say -- and he has an enviable regular gig covering Bob Dylan and The Beatles for the Saturday Evening Post. He’d covered the whole Ed Sullivan thing in February like we all did, but he was watching from the wings in CBS Studio 50 with Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Then six months later he was following Dylan around for a feature. I have no doubt Aronowitz would have broken this story months ago, if he hadn’t been hopelessly whacked out himself.
In one briefly sober moment, Aronowitz did remember to tell Epstein that Dylan had copious amounts of cannabis that summer from his Woodstock hideaway, and that the boys and Bob should gather soon for a joint or ten. Epstein loved the idea, and I’m told he fast-tracked a meeting of the mindless.
A month later, on the night of August 28th, 1964, the Beatles were performing outdoors at Forest Hills Stadium in New York, for the first of two consecutive sold-out gigs in front of 16,000 screaming fans. After the show, Lennon commanded Aronowitz to deliver Dylan, who was at that moment chilling out at home in Woodstock. Perhaps feeling the portent of the planned summit, Dylan agreed to come to the city after the concert, and meet the band in their sixth-floor suite at the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue.
Dylan came prepared. Joints for everyone!
Ringo offered to go first, as Ringo would so often do, being Ringo. By the end of the night, all four Beatles, Dylan, Epstein and a few others were baked to perfection. I’d have a more definitive accounting but weed always makes me woozy, goddamn it!
Less than a year later, it’s evident – even without eyewitness evidence -- that The Beatles mixed some mind-bending marijuana and a mellow dose of Dylan into their latest hits. I mean, we’ve all heard You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, right?
Here I stand, head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone, I can't go on
Feeling two-foot small
John wrote that song, and lovingly layered into the lyrics Dylan’s emotional openness, and ambiguity of meaning. Plus, I’m not a pot smoker myself, but seems quite likely the man who wrote those words was high as a kite.
***
But enough about Miss Mary Jane. I promised you an LSD story. And this one’s a Beatles Magazine exclusive!
Somewhere around March 21 – during a brief break from filming on A Hard Day’s Night – John and George agreed to attend a dinner party in London at the home of John’s dentist, John Riley. Cynthia Lennon and Pattie Boyd (George’s girlfriend) insisted they go; John’s marriage was already looking a bit rocky, but as Ringo likes to say, tomorrow never knows.
As the guests lingered for an after-dinner coffee before a planned posh London nightclub drop-in, their dentist host – having access to acid available by only through “research” connections -- secretly spiked their brew with LSD-laced sugar cubes. John wasn’t too pleased at first, and no one wants to be around John when he isn’t too pleased!
"I was like, 'What? What’s that?' You know, 'How dare you put something in our coffee without telling us?'” John remembers later. “And [Riley] said, 'I thought you’d like it.' He was a nice guy, and he just thought he’d do us a favor, sort of thing. We didn’t know anything about it, and I’d never had it before. It was incredible. We were all nervous wrecks."
And yet, not nervous enough to stay home and fret.
"We went out to a club, the Ad Lib, and it was incredible,” John further recalls. “I was thinking, 'What is going on? What is happening?' It was like a newspaper: I could read people's thoughts. I was looking at them and thinking, 'I know exactly what’s in your mind, man!' It was pretty scary. We had a great laugh, but it was terrifying at times. We went back to George’s house, I think. It was quite amazing."
Cyn, Pattie and George have all confidently confirmed John’s account. The birds didn’t especially love the “trip,” but George knew he’d be back for more. John too. The boys seem to have found a window, through acid, onto the drug-soaked world of the 1960s, and have no intention of going back the other way. Alice has made it to Wonderland, as it were. “You only need it once,” George said of acid afterwards, but acknowledged that he intended to partake of it “lots of times” in the years to come. That’s the party spirit, George!
As for John — well, it seems to have opened many doors, including the “doors of perception” that novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley described in his 1954 book about his first acid trip. Was Huxley hooked? Well, the guy took LSD on his deathbed, with only hours left to live. You make the call.
And as if to prove acid’s powers, John quickly applied his out-of-body experience to his songwriting. One of my mates snuck me into Abbey Road Studio 2 on a Tuesday night in mid-April for a soundtrack recording session — only a few weeks after “The Dental Experience,” as they’re calling it. John had already written a song that confessed his post-acid, confused, altered state. Weirdly, but totally, it captured mine too.
It seems John wrote this song in the hope someone would hear him a hand. Because let’s face it, who doesn’t need one?
When I was younger so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone and I'm not so self assured
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But ev'ry now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I've never done before….
No question — it’s a guaranteed number-one hit single, with music and lyrics by a huge worldwide celebrity working at the height of his powers. And yet somehow, despite all the perks of fame at the Beatles’ current disposal, it’s hard not to feel a bit sad for the lad who wrote it.
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