Their introduction to pot roughly marked the beginning of the transition, but I think it had more to do with the person who introduced it–Bob Dylan. Just about every serious songwriter was influenced by him. John Lennon said once that he started to feel silly as a married man writing teeny bop songs and wanted to write more seriously like Dylan. Drugs became a big part of their lives and that came out in their music, but it was Dylan who creatively led them away from She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah.
Does John say it isn’t? I’ve only heard him deny that the LSD initials were a coincidence and were unintentional.
I’m gonna go with a guarded “yes”… ultimately the drugs marked the change from an immature pop band to a mature artistic style, but at the cost of some mediocre crappy music in the transition, and ultimately some whacked-out and broken attitudes that ultimately killed the band.
It’s just a damn shame that the Billy Preston angle couldn’t have gone on for a couple of years. Listen to “Don’t Let Me Down.” They were really on to something with that. Seriously, it’s one of the best songs I know. But that wasn’t directly due to drugs… more like coming back down off the drugs and setting into good but different style.
Ultimately the four of them grew apart. Drugs didn’t do that either.
Another way of looking at it.
Music, in general sounds better when stoned. Yes, people from D.A.R.E. and assorted special little snowflakes may disagree, but it’s almost universally acknowledged.
There is a strong correlation between quality of output (in almost any field) and enjoyment of the activity leading to the output.
The rest is history.
Yes, indeed.
When the listener is stoned.
I take it you don’t play an instrument. I guess wiggling fingers or flapping hands might be fun on its own, and I’m sure there are a handful of ulterior motives to play an instrument, but the joy of playing an instrument is listening to that instrument, whether by yourself or interacting with others.
Yes. I have the complete interview transcripts (from Rolling Stone & Vanity Fair) in the Encyclopedia of the Beatles and they definitely disagree on this point. I think they both said they didn’t realize that the song’s initials spelled LSD until later (tho Paul says they didn’t “consciously” realize it, and John says it absolutely had nothing to do with LSD, but rather a quote/drawing by his son). But Paul McCartney said that the lyrics were “of course about acid”. …whereas Lennon was pretty emphatic that they were not about acid.
Could only find snippets of the interviews online:
From songfacts.com:
And from Beatlesbible.com:
Their stories were always diametrically opposed and I never knew quite what to make about that. But after reading a tremendous amount about them, including interviews, I drew the conclusion that neither one was lying, but they just experienced or remembered it differently. And given that they both admitted to doing thousands of acid trips, who knows what really happened and whose memory should be trusted? Either way, it’s an awesome song.
Thousands of trips? That would take years. I didn’t think they were around post-acid long enough.
Quotes from the Encyclopedia of the Beatles:
I took these quotes literally, but it could just be exaggeration. According to Paul McCartney, they were tripping on a daily basis (often multiple hits, multiple times per day) for years. I’m no prude and did my share of experimenting, but if what they say is actually true, it makes me kind of glad that my formative years coincided with the War on Drugs & MADD.
Ah, likely a mixture of hyperbole and counting differences. I don’t know anyone (in the circle I’m aware of; this isn’t dispositive) that would count multiple hits of acid on one occasion as tripping more than once. Nor would they count dropping multiple hits at different times–while still somewhat under the effect–as tripping multiple times. That’s what I meant by you can’t trip more than once a day. I guess in earnest you could pack a couple hits in if you didn’t sleep (8-9 hour peaking, 4 hours hanging out, dropping again), but that too would be stretching it. To get to ‘thousands’ of trips, you’d need to dose once a day every day for five years straight.
Again, though, different definitions could be just as valid. The cohort I’m familiar with ranges from the mid-eighties through the mid-nineties, mostly related to the Grateful Dead and raves. What came before surely influenced that scene, and there is a legacy afterwards, but I’d have no idea even what the current slang is nowadays.
I thought acid was similar to ecstasy in that there’s a short-term tolerance that effectively prevents multiple trips in a short time period. Your receptors simply can’t respond to the drug again until they’ve had 3 days to replenish the serotonin.
So when he says he’s taken thousands of acid trips, it’s just the recollection of a man who has taken so much of everything that his estimates are way off.
Ultimately, this question is about nature vs. nurture. Both are contribute to the end result - the human, the music they create etc.
The intersection of their talents and musicial experiences, the emergence of pot and acid, the move from rock n’ roll to psychedelic rock, the evolution of the post WW2 teenager to the Summer of Love - all contributed to their music.
I don’t know if they were better, per se, as much as the quality of the Beatles’ output establishes an amazing narrative which is at the heart of their legend: in the 7-8 years they made records, they went through an amazing creative arc - Tomorrow Never Knows and the back half of Abbey Road could never have been predicted by Love Me Do. It is easy to see why people look for as many factors as they can to see what contributed to such a historically significant artistic evolution and output…
I’m just about finished reading Steve Jobs’ biography, and he claimed more than once that taking LSD in his youth was one of the most important things he ever did.
Yeah, Lennon was so high he walked right into the path of a bullet. George contracted lung cancer from— what’s the name of that illegal drug? Oh yeah, tobacco.
Can’t even remember the names of the other two offhand, but I’m sure they never amounted to much.
Indeed. Most people knowledgeable about music consider Rubber Soul through Abbey Road their weak period.
I don’t think taking LSD had much to do with his success. I think the fact that he was the kind of guy who tried LSD and maintained an interest in what you might call hippie stuff reflected the qualities that made him distinctive and successful. And while I’m at it I will point out that if he’d had as much trust in modern medicine as he did in the value of psychedelic experiences, he could be here telling us about it himself.
Perhaps not, but he believed it did.
No argument there.
Right. He wasn’t taking acid every day. Once or twice a week at the most.
I opened this thread precisely to see what you would have to say about it Wordman. In your opinion do you appreciate the Beatles music more before or after, let’s say “Rubber Soul”?
Let me say that I really admire your contributions to this board and esteem your opinions on musical topics in the highest regard.
I love the band and I would say that, if put on a scale, the amount of quality songs they wrote after that album outweigh the ones they wrote before it. However mine is an amateur opinion and I’d welcome a more informed viewpoint.