Par psihotropajām vielām šeit esmu runājis pietiekami. Imo, pienācis laiks dot vārdu Bītliem. Ne visam piekrītu, bet w/e.
GEORGE: The first time we took LSD was an accident. It happened sometime in 1965, between albums and tours. We were innocent victims of wicked dentist whom we'd met and had dinner with a few times. There'd been discos and similar events; everybody knew each other.
One night John, Cynthia, Pattie and I were having dinner at the dentist's house. Later that night we were going down to a London nightclub called the Pickwick Club. It was a little restaurant with a small stage where some friends of ours were playing: Klaus Voormann (bītlu draugs iz Hamburgas laika, vēlāk spēlēja basu Manfred Mann's Earth Band un Plastic Ono Band), Gibson Kemp (who became Rory Storm's drummer after we stole Ringo) and a guy called Paddy. They had a little trio.
After dinner I said to John, 'Let's go - they're going to be on soon,' and John said 'OK', but the dentist was saying, 'Don't go, you should stay here.' And then he said, 'Well, at least finish you coffee first.' So we finished our coffee and after a while I said again, 'Come on, it's getting late - we'd better go.' The dentist said something to John and John turned to me and said, 'We've had LSD.' I just thought, 'Well, what's that? So what? Let's go!'
This fella was still asking us to stay and it all became a bit seedy - it felt as if he was trying to get something happening in his house, that there was some reason he didn't want us to go. In fact, he had obtained some lysergic acid diethylamide 25. It was, at the time, an unrestricted medication - I seem to recall that I'd heard vaguely about it, but I didn't really know what it was, and we didn't know we were taking it. The bloke had put it in our coffees: mine, John's, Cynthia's and Pattie's. <i>He</i> didn't take any. He had never had it himself. I'm sure he thought it was an aphrodisiac. I remembe his girlfriend had enormous breasts and I think he thought there was going to be a big gang-bang and that he was going to get to shag everybody. I really think that was his motive.
So the dentist said, 'OK, leave your car here. I'll drive you and then you can come back later.' I said 'No, no. We'll drive.' And we all got in my car and he came as well, in his car. We got to the nightclub, parked and went in.
We'd just sat down and ordered our drinks when suddenly I felt 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.
One thing led to another, then suddenly it felt as if a bomb had made a direct hit on the nightclub and the roof had been blown off. 'What's going on here?' I pulled my senses together and I realised that the club had actually closed - all the people had gone, they'd put the lights on, and the waiters were going round bashing the tables and putting the chairs on top of them. We thought, 'Oops, we'd better get out of here!'
We got out and went to go to another disco, the Ad Lib Club. It was just a short distance so we walked, but thinggs weren't the same now as they had been. It's difficult to explain: it was very Alice in Wonderland - many strange things. I remember Pattie, half playfully but also half crazy, trying to smash a shop window and I felt: 'Come on now, don't be silly...' The we got round the corner and saw just all lights and taxis. It looked as if there was a big film premiere going on, but it was probably just the usual doorway to the nightclub. It seemed very bright, with all the people in thick make-up, like masks. Very strange.
We went up into the nightclub and it felt as though the elevator was on fire and we were going into hell (and it was and we were), but at the same time we were all in hysterics and crazy. Eventually we got out at the Ad Lib, on the top floor, and sat there, probably for hours and hours.
Then it was daylight and I drove everyone home - I was driving a Mini with John and Cynthia and Pattie in it. I seem to remember we were doing eighteen miles an hour and I was really concentrating - because some of the time I just felt normal and then, before I knew where I was, it was all crazy again. Anyway, we got home safe and sound, and somewhere down the line John and Cynthia got home. I went to bed and lay there for, like, three years.
That is what became known as 'The Dental Experience'.
JOHN: A dentist in London laid acid on George, me and our wive. He just put it in our coffee or something. [It was[ all the thing with the middle-class London swingers who'd heard all about it and didn't know it was any different from pot and pills. He gave us it, and he was saying, 'I advise you not to leave.' We thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy in his house, and we didn't want to know. We went out to the Ad Lib and these discotheques, and there were incredible things going on.
We got out and the guy came with us, and he was nervous and we didn't know what was going on, and that we were going crackers. It was insane, going around London on it. We thought when we went to the club that it was on fire, and then we thought there was a premiere and it was just an ordinary light outside. We though, 'Shit, what's going on here?' And we were cackling in the streets, and then people were shouting, 'Let break a window.' We were just insane. We were out of our heads.
We finally got on the lift. We all thought there was a fire on the lift: it was just a little red light; we were all screaming, 'AAAAAAAARGH!' all hot and hysterical. And we all arrived on the floor (because this was a discotheque that up a building), and the lift stops and the door opens, and we were all, 'AAAAAAAARGH!' and we just see that it's the club, and we walk in and sit down and the table's elongating. I think we went to eat before that and it was like the thing I read, describing the effects of opium in the old days, where the table... I suddenly realized it was only a table, with for of us around it, but it went long, just like I had read, and I though, 'Fuck! It's happening.' The we went to the Ad Lib and all of that, and some singer came up to me and said, 'Can I sit next to you?' I said, 'Only if you don't talk,' because I just couldn't think.
It seemed to going all night. I can't remember the details; it just went on. And George somehow or other managed to drive us home in his Mini, but we were going about ten miles an hour and it seemed like a thousand. And Pattie was saying, 'Let's jump out and play football' - there were these big rugby poles and things. And I was getting all these hysterical jokes coming out, like [I did on] speed, because I was always on that, too. George was going, 'Don't make me laugh. oh, God!'
It was terrifying, but it was fantastic. I did some drawings at the time (I"ve got the somewhere) of four faces saying, 'We all agree with you!' - things like that. I gave them to Ringo, the originals. I did a lot of drawing that night. They all went to bed, and then Geroge's hose seemed to be just like a big submarine I was driving.
RINGO: I was actually there in the club when John and George got there shouting. 'THE LIFT'S ON FIRE!' Acid was the best thing we could take after that!
GEORGE: That first time I had acid, a light-bulb went on in my head and I began to have realisations which were not simply, 'I think I'll do this,' or, 'I think that must because of that.' The question and answer disappeared into each other. An illumination goes on inside: in ten minutes I lived a thousand years. My brain and my consciousness and my awareness were pushed so far out that the only way I could begin to describe it is like an astronaut on the moon, or in his spaceship, looking back at the Earth. I was looking back to the Earth from my awareness.
Because acid wasn't illegal back then and nobody really knew much about it, there wasn't the big panic about 'heaven and hell' that people talk about - we didn't conjure up heaven and hell. But everything in the physical world is governed by duality: everything is heaven and hell. Life is heaven and it is hell; that's the nature of it. And so all that acid does is shoot you into space, where everything is so much greater. The hell is more hell, if that's what you want to experience, or the heaven is more heaven.
JOHN: We must always remember to thank the CIA and the army for LSD, by the way. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it? They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform. But it sure as hell performs them. If you look at the Government report book on acid, the only ones who jumped out of windows because of it were the ones in the army. I never knew anybody who jumped out of a window or killed themselves because of it.
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