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07:18 pm: Bītli par LSD. Part 4
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PAUL: Pot and LSD were the two other major influences (līdzās apkārt notiekošajam). Instead of getting totally out of it and falling over, as we would have done on Scotch, we'd end up talking very seriously and having a good time till three in the morning. Now it's reverted and in many ways it's as though that period didn't happen. It's come full circle: the waters have closed over again and we've got militaristic things in the air instead of people putting flowers down the barrels of guns.

JOHN: I never took it [LSD] in the studio. once I did, actually. I thought I was taking some uppers and I was not in the state of handling it. I took it and I suddenly got so scared on the mike. I said, 'What is it? I feel ill.' I thought I felt ill and I thought I was going cracked. I said I must go and 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 that I must have taken some acid.

I said, 'Well, I can't go on. You'll have to do it and I'll just stay and watch.' I got very nervous just watching them all, and I kept saying, 'Is this all right?' They had all been very kind and they said, 'Yes, it's all right.' I said, 'Are you sure it's all right?' They carried on making the record. (1970)

We didn't really shove the LP full of pot and drugs but, I mean, there was an effect. We were more consciously trying to keep it out. You wouldn't say, 'I had some acid, baby, so groovy,' but there was a feeling that something had happened between Revolver and Sgt Pepper. (Whether it would have happened anyway is pure speculation.)
(..)
If we'd met Maharishi before we had taken LSD, we wouldn't have needed to take it. We'd dropped drugs before this meditation thing. George mentioned he was dropping out of it, and I said, 'Well, it's not doing me any harm. I'll carry on.' But I suddenly thought: 'I've seen all that scene. There's no point, and [what] if it does do anything to your chemistry or brains? Then someone wrote to me and said that whether you like it or not, whether you have no ill effects, something happens up there. So I decided that if I ever did meet someone who could tell me the answer, I'd have nothing left to do it with.

We don't regret having taken LSD. It was a stepping-stone. But now we should be able to experience things at first hand, instead of artificially with a wrong stepping-stone like drugs. (1968)

GEORGE: Whoever takes LSD, they change, and they don't go back to how they were before. The effect wears off over a period of time, but there's a certain change that's not going to go away. (..) LSD isn't a real answer. It doesn't give you anything. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may never have noticed before, but it isn't the answer. You don't just take LSD and that's it forever, you're OK. To get really high, you have to do it straight. I want to get high, and you can't get high on LSD. You can take it and take it as many times as you like, but you get to a point that you can't get any further unless you stop taking it.
(..)
After having LSD, I looked around and everything I could see was relative to my ego - like, 'That's my piece of paper,' and ,'That's my flannel,' or, 'I am.' It drove me crackers; I hated everything about my ego - it was a flash of everything false and impermanent which I disliked. But later I learnt from it: to realise that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth (that's what I felt like - I hadn't seen or heard or done anything in my life, and yet I hadn't stopped talking). 'Who am I?' became the order of the day.

PAUL: When acid came around, we heard that you were never the same after you took it - it alters your life, and you can never think in the same way again. I think John was rather excited by this prospect, but I was rather frightened by it. 'Just what I need,' I thought. 'I'm going to have some funny little thing, and then I'll never be able to get back home again. oh jeez!'

So I delayed, and I think I was seen to stall a little bit within the group. Talk about peer pressure! I mean, The Beatles had got to be one of the ultimate peer pressures going; they were my mates, my fellow musicians. I remember in 1965 we'd had a few days off in Los Angeles and had hired a house in Hollywood. John, George and Ringo took acid there, but I wouldn't do it that day. It took me quite a while to get round to it, until I eventually thought, 'We can't all be in The Beatles, with me being the only one who hasn't taken it.'

JOHN: Who gave the drugs to The Beatles? I didn't invent those things. I bought it from someone who got it from somebody. We never invented the stuff.  (..) We don't give instructions on how to live your life. The only thing we can do - because we're in the public eye - is to reflect what we do, and they can judge for themselves what happens to us. If they're using us as a guideline, we can only try and do what's right for us and therefore, we hope, right for them.

PAUL: I admit there are dangers in taking it, but I took it with a deliberate purpose in mind: to find the answer to what life is all about.


Tags: muz, psy