August 26, 1967, Bangor, North Wales
On June 19, 1967, the day after his 25th birthday, a news crew arrived at Paul McCartney’s house to ask him if he had taken LSD. Paul had been shouting the odds about drugs, telling Life magazine and The People newspaper about the trips he had been on, what he had seen, how it had changed him. Paul invited the men into his garden, sat down and told them, yes he had taken the drug, had taken it four times to be precise.
The interviewer asked if he felt that as a pop star, an icon to millions, perhaps he should not be telling the world about his usage? “I don’t think my fans are going to take drugs just because I did,” he replied. “… I was asked whether I had or not … I am quite prepared to keep it as a very personal thing if you will too. If you shut up about it, then I will.”
LSD was proving to be problematic for the band, especially Paul. He was far from being antidrugs and still enjoyed smoking pot, but he was always wary of anything that really took you out of control. John loved spiraling out of himself and losing all sense of reality but Paul was too focused to embark on that journey.
His refusal created one of the first significant fissures within the band. Normally, they moved as one. Not this time. Moreover, in the pop world of the mid-60s, LSD had acquired a badge of hipness. Either you were very cool and had taken the trip, or you were a square, someone on the outside. For a long while McCartney was on the outside but finally succumbed in late 1966. Gang thinking had won him over. “I eventually thought,” McCartney recalled, “we can’t all be in The Beatles with me being the only one who hasn’t taken it.”
In The People, McCartney said of his trip, “It was truly a religious experience. I had never realized what people were talking about when they say God is within you, that He is love and truth … God is a force we are all part of.”
The rest of the band read the above quote with a sense of real astonishment. For a year and half they had been trying to get Paul in on the trip and when they finally did, what did he do but go and tell the whole world about it? For them, there were compelling reasons to keep quiet about LSD. For one, the drug had been made illegal and such a disclosure would attract the attention of the infamous Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher of Scotland Yard. Pilcher’s harrying of pop stars was a cause for concern. He determined to use every method—legal or illegal—to catch his fish and did so. The Rolling Stones had been famously busted for drugs at Keith Richards’ house in February of that year.
Second, the band knew the kind of press storm such an admission would bring and they could do without the hassle. It was hard enough being a Beatle without adding needlessly to the load.
Yet here was McCartney without even consulting them breaking cover and informing the world what he (and therefore by extension, the gang) had been up to. John and George were furious. John was, of course, even more scathing of Paul’s actions. “He always times his big announcements right on the letter doesn’t he?” (Lennon’s last comment carries much weight. To this day, McCartney’s press announcements invariably fall on significant Beatle-related dates.)
It is also possible there was another force at work, one that perhaps demonstrates McCartney’s constant desire to usurp his rivals. At the time of his announcement Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were facing prison sentences for possession of drugs. Richards had thrown an LSD party at his Redlands Estate in West Wittering, in the south of England, the police caught wind and 18 policemen had descended on the house. Their haul was negligible but their determination to prosecute was not. Battle lines were drawn.
Many people saw this trial as the Establishment taking on the new pop aristocracy although interestingly the one band that seemed immune to prosecution was The Beatles. George Harrison and Pattie Boyd had attended the Redlands party but left early having decided not to trip out with the rest of them. When Harrison drove out of Redlands, the police moved in. It has long been assumed that they had been waiting for the Beatle to depart, which gives you some idea of the standing they still enjoyed as national treasures.
The following year, thanks to events such as this, that privilege would be stripped away and John and George would be busted. McCartney’s admission therefore was not only provocative—catch me if you can—but allowed The Beatles to leapfrog The Stones as the leaders of the counterculture movement.
In a show of great solidarity Brian Epstein publicly supported his friend, adding he had tried LSD and found it had helped him enormously. Epstein’s actions backfired on him. He was rebuked by an angry McCartney—who thought Epstein was trying to steal his thunder—and then by such favorites of his as Cilla Black, who demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing, as the last thing she wanted was her manager linked to dirty drug takers. Epstein said sorry and then privately wondered why he had bothered trying to cover for his clients.
Meanwhile, George had traveled to San Francisco, the city where hippy drug culture had started, to see such trendy areas as Haight-Ashbury. Expecting to find a place peopled with right-on youngsters and groovy shops, George found himself instead walking around a rundown area, surrounded by freaks for whom drugs were not playing a liberating role but were wreaking physical and mental harm.
Offered tabs of LSD and tokes on huge joints, George refused everything and got out of there as quickly as possible, swearing never to take LSD again. John carried on as normal but the pace he was setting himself was just too much to bear. The acid he was taking, smuggled in from America, was pure and incredibly strong. The highs may have been unbelievable but the lows were the worst.
In August, The Beatles came into the Maharishi’s orbit and on August 26 decamped to North Wales to attend a meditation course. On their second day there, the band held a press conference where they turned 180 degrees and renounced the use of all illegal substances. “You cannot keep taking drugs forever,” McCartney told the world. “We are looking for something more natural. This is it. It [drugs] was an experience we went through. Now it’s over and we don’t need it anymore. We think we’re finding other ways of getting there.”
George added, “LSD is not the 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.” The rest of the band agreed with him. Meditation would now replace the function of drugs as an artistic conduit and the pursuit of its powers and gifts would bring about one of the band’s finest works with their next album, simply entitled The Beatles but known the world over as The White Album.