The Beatles

 

Another early blog topic.  The prior time I compared them to KISS, though the most pertinent comparison therein is the format of the band.  The main singer-songwriters are the bassist (Paul McCartney & Gene Simmons) and rhythm guitarist (John Lennon and Paul Stanley), followed by the lead guitarist (George Harrison and Ace Frehley), with the drummer at the bottom (Ringo Starr and Peter Criss).  That’s about it, and not worth an entire blog, whereas the Beatles by themselves certainly deserve one.

 Paul McCartney (bass/guitar/piano/drums & vocals).  Arguably the most handsome and versatile, “Macca” was far more congenial than Lennon.  “Yesterday” and “Let It Be” were Paul’s songs, but he also gave us “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” and “Helter Skelter”, an amazingly heavy song for which the Stones have nothing remotely comparable.  He’s still alive (bizarre rumors to the contrary notwithstanding) and making music – I’d like to see him live if I get the chance.

 John Lennon (rhythm guitar & vocals).  Lennon was famous for being outspoken, he couldn’t be bothered with anything like tact or diplomacy.  Leave it to John to pose naked with Yoko Ono for “Two Virgins”.  He also openly criticized Elvis for his support for the Vietnam War when the two met up.  He and Yoko Ono moved to NYC in the mid 70s, living in the Dakota, an apartment building on Central Park West (Eighth Avenue as it shoots north from Columbus Circle along Central Park).  Visiting NYC in June 2009, I took a brief visit outside where Lennon was shot in December 1980.  RIP.

 George Harrison (lead guitar & vocals).   The most spiritual of the four, it was George who embraced Eastern mysticism and learned the sitar.  As a kid growing up, I couldn’t endure his more Indian-flavored songs like “Love You To” and “Within Without You”, but as an adult I can enjoy both, and I also enjoy his solo album Wonderwall.  He died of cancer in 2004. 

 Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) (drums & vocals).   Down to earth and reliable, the shortest and least attractive, but despite this he could keep a positive attitude.  As noted above, solid enough at timekeeping that the band didn’t need a click track.   Ringo still appears in public now and then, touring occasionally. 

 Honorable Mentions:  Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best & George Martin.  SS was the original bass player, the band being a five piece with him and McCartney playing guitar.  The story was that he was a fellow art student and Lennon persuaded him to join, against his own preferences.   He decided to remain in Hamburg, McCartney switched to bass, and the Beatles became a four piece.  Then SS died shortly after the Beatles returned to England. 

 Pete Best was the prior drummer before Ringo Starr.  He wasn’t nearly as good a drummer as the rest of the band members were at their instruments, and Starr was known for being extremely reliable.  Starr had been the drummer for Rory Storme & the Hurricanes, the Beatles’ closest competitor in Liverpool.  Best himself declined to take up drums with the Hurricanes and never played for another band.  Summer 1962 was when Starr took over from Best.

 George Martin.  Often considered the fifth Beatle, their producer had no background with pop and rock bands before taking that role.  But he found them amazingly intelligent and innovative, pushing the envelope of what was possible in the studio.  In him they found a sympathetic and competent producer willing to grow along with them, helping them realize their ideas instead of simply insisting that “it can’t be done” or “(oh) you can’t do that”. 

 Hamburg.  One of Germany’s largest cities and an infamous port town with an equally famous red light district, the Reeperbahn.  As late as the late 60s, other British bands, most notably Black Sabbath, also did the Hamburg circuit.  The bands played multiple sets a night for bored sailors and prostitutes, so the experience was very much a musical boot camp for the bands who endured the scene – practically every band who did so came back to England much improved.  Note that the Stones, who were from London, did not do the Hamburg scene. 

Brian Epstein.  Their ill-fated manager.  He helped them out at the beginning, but as the band got more successful, his role became marginalized.  By 1967 he was scarcely there.  It's possible had he not died of a heroin overdose - the band learned of his death while visiting India - they may have steered away from Magical Mystery Tour, or their Apple company.  Sid Bernstein, the American promoter who brought them to the US in 1964, remarked that their entire agreement was oral, not written, and that no lawyers were involved:  an arrangement unthinkable in modern times.  

Ed Sullivan.  The first show was the most important, of course:  February 9, 1964.  For Americans, this was their first glimpse of the band who had already taken the UK by storm.  At this show they played "All My Loving", "Till There Was You", "She Loves" you, followed by "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand".  But they played three more times:  February 16, 1964 ("She Loves You", "This Boy", "All My Loving", "I Saw Her Standing There", "From Me To You", and "I Want To Hold Your Hand"), February 23, 1964 ("Twist And Shout", Please Please Me", and "I Want To Hold Your Hand"), and a later show on September 12, 1965 ("I Feel Fine", "I'm Down", "Act Naturally", "Ticket To Ride", "Yesterday", and "Help").  It's interesting that the band, having been greatly promoted by Sullivan on the rise in 1964, repaid the favor with the 1965 show after they were already well established.

 US vs. UK/Europe.  Up until Revolver, there were separate US releases with different songs, and some songs which were singles only in one market wound up on regular albums in another.  The Beatles put out so many non-album singles that two full CDs worth of songs, Past Masters 1 & 2, exist.  Growing up in Paris, I did the idiotic thing of insisting on getting the US versions instead of simply buying the European ones in the local record store (FNAC).  When albums were released on CD, the UK versions were the ones they used, only releasing US version CDs years later.  By now I’m conditioned to the UK versions and no longer even pay attention to the US ones. 

 Albums.

Please, Please Me (March 1963).  The first, in 1963.  Half covers, the standout tracks being “Twist and Shout” and “Please Please Me”. 

 With The Beatles (November 1963).  Continuing the development, the ratio of originals to covers rising.  My favorites are “All My Loving” and “Please Mr. Postman”.

 A Hard Day’s Night (July 1964).  Ostensibly the soundtrack album for their first movie, with side two being more songs which were not in the movie – of comparable quality.  No covers at all. 

 For Sale (December 1964).   “Baby’s In Black” and “Rock’n’Roll Music” (Chuck Berry) are my favorites, but I’d count this as my least favorite album. 

 Help! (August 1965).   Ostensibly the soundtrack album for the second movie. The US version had instrumental pieces from the movie itself, with less tracks.  Here’s one area where the UK version was much better.  “The Night Before”, “Ticket To Ride”, and “Yesterday” are my favorites. 

 Rubber Soul (December 1965).  The songs are getting darker and more complex.  “You Won’t See Me”, “Nowhere Man”, “Girl”, and “in My Life” are my favorites.  

 Revolver (August 1966).  As noted, the last album where the US and UK versions are different.  It was also the last album for which they toured.  It’s capped off with one of my favorite songs, “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967).  The Beatles quit touring and put this together, blowing everyone’s minds.  The Stones’ response, Their Satanic Majesties’ Request, comes nowhere close.  Itself a response to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson couldn’t top this – and had a nervous breakdown.  His own tentative response, Smile, was only released decades later and still doesn’t come close.  Capped off with “A Day in the Life”, a masterpiece from start to finish.  Incidentally, Pink Floyd recorded their first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, with Syd Barrett, next door at Abbey Road Studios at the same time the Beatles were working on Sgt. Pepper.

 Magical Mystery Tour (November 1967).  Another soundtrack album, with the second side being singles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” (actually recorded before Sgt. Pepper) and more. 

 The Beatles (self-titled), better known as the White Album (November 1968).  A double studio album, and my own favorite thanks to “Helter Skelter” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.  I could do without “Wild Honey Pie” and “Revolution #9”.  The latter is more a psychedelic mix of noises and sound effects with no discernable melody or rhythm.   When our school took a trip to the USSR (Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad) in March 1983, we sang along to these tunes in our hotel room in Kiev, including “Back in the USSR” and “Rocky Raccoon”.  Oddly, McCartney wrote the former song without having visited Russia – which only happened in 2003 [When Paul McCartney lived out his Russian dream - Russia Beyond (rbth.com)], and it was no longer the USSR by then.  It was awhile before I ever listened to side 4. 

 Yellow Submarine (January 1969 – right around the time of my birthday).  Third soundtrack album, the second side being exclusively instrumental background music done by George Martin.  “Only A Northern Song” and “Hey Bulldog” are still awesome songs.

 Let It Be (May 1970).  Recorded before Abbey Road but released after.  That puts us in the position of trying to decide in which order to put them; at first I ordered them by release, but later decided that Abbey Road should be last, for reasons noted below.  After all the studio tricks of the prior albums, the band decided to return to their roots with a bare bones album.  Then they put it on the shelf and recorded Abbey Road, and Phil Spector took over producing it in their absence to finally release it.  Let It Be Naked is a more recent version, ostensibly intended to bring it back to where it should be, also including “Don’t Let Me Down”.  

 Abbey Road (September 1969).  The last album recorded.  Side two runs most of the songs together to “The End”.  George gives us “Something”, and John gives us “Come Together”.  “I Want You/She’s So Heavy” is even DOOM, believe it or not.  The Beatles go out with a bang. 

 Past Masters 1 & 2.  As noted earlier, the band had so many singles which didn’t end up on albums, these two wound up collecting them all together.   “Hey Jude”, “Rain”, “Paperback Writer” and “Revolution” are here.

 Hollywood Bowl.  The band’s only live album, marred by such massive crowd noise of screaming girls that no one considered it more than a de facto bootleg.  I have the original vinyl (rough quality) and the more recent CD reissue, which pulls the band's contribution well above the crowd noise - and even listened to it the other day.  A good mix of songs.  I've heard complaints that due to the crowd noise the band couldn't hear themselves play, but their performance seemed fine to me.  Definitely worth enjoying, especially if you're familiar with bootlegs.

 ’62-66 (Red Album) & ’67-70 (Blue Album).  Two major compilations, these were my introduction to the band.

 Movies.  None of their movies really have any sort of plot and are more like extended music videos.  They vary in tolerability considerably.  “Let It Be” is probably my favorite. 

 A Hard Day’s Night.  Not much of a plot, more like a “follow the band as they make jokes and eventually perform in the studio”.  Also in black & white.  Charming, though, in its innocence.

 Help!   Ok, now things get somewhat surreal.  The silly plot - pursued worldwide for a ringo which Ringo (get it?) took by accident - makes this an elaborate music video for the songs involved and not a true story.  But at least it’s in color.

 Magical Mystery Tour.  At the height of the 1967 hippie period, the band got a tour bus together full of bizarre people and simply filmed it.  Not much happened and it’s more low budget than “Help!”   In that regard it’s difficult to endure except out of morbid curiosity.  The juxtaposition of supremely talented musicians putting this turd together itself is disturbing. 

The Beatles Animated Series.  A Saturday morning cartoon series in the late 60s, sadly not voiced by the band themselves.  It was on before I was born (my Saturday morning TV viewing was the mid-70s).  Season 1 (1965) was 26 episodes, Season 2 was 7, and Season 3 was 6.  The band initially didn't take it seriously but later grew fond of it.  I purchased the set on DVD and watched it once.  I dare say I should watch it again.  That and watch the films again...

Yellow Submarine.  The movie itself.  Actually kind of trippy and irreverent, and in that respect it makes up for MMT.  

 Let It Be.  The band filmed themselves working on the album in the studio, warts and arguments and all, though the rooftop concert does make it worth watching for that alone. 

 The Compleat Beatles.  An excellent documentary, though only on VHS. 

Apple.  Less than a decade before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would form their computer company out of their garage in California, a less successful commercial endeavor sprouted from the Beatles.  In addition to their own record company, Apple would serve as financing for all sorts of projects without any concern as to their sense or profitability.  Naturally this wound up being a money pit.  What's remarkable is that, as brilliant and talented as the band members were as musicians, as businessmen they were utterly clueless.  Part of this was the prevailing counterculture mood, much which was stimulated by Sgt Pepper itself, but ultimately the band members took some time before they realized that they needed to pay attention to these details.  The most obvious explanation was that Brian had handled that so successfully - and honestly - during his tenure that it all went downhill when he died unexpectedly.  Black Sabbath had their own battles with corrupt management in the 70s, whereas Jimmy Page was astute enough, by the time he formed Led Zeppelin, to get Peter Grant, one of the more impressive band managers in rock history.  

 Most other bands at the time would put out singles, then combine them with filler songs of dramatically poorer quality on the albums themselves.  This certainly applies to both the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.  You can get by with Hot Rocks for the former and Endless Summer + Pet Sounds for the latter.   With the Beatles, almost every song on an album is of equal quality – not filler.  And then Sgt. Pepper was the first album written as a complete album, not a collection of singles and extra songs.  The Beatles were unique in many ways – truly sui generis.

 Overrated?   I suspect those who feel this way were exposed to Beatles fans they couldn’t stand, who somehow felt that their own intelligence and good taste were irrebuttably confirmed by their support for the Beatles.  I don’t know – acknowledging the Beatles’ genius seems as “wise” as simply observing that water is wet, the Earth revolves around the Sun, etc. another fact so undeniably obvious that saying so deserves no special credit or recognition.  

Sgt Pepper & Across the Universe

The Beatles, as we all well know, were actively putting out albums from 1963 to 1970 and broke up that year.  Each of the Beatles pursued a solo career, and Paul McCartney was most active in touring.  John Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman in December 1980 in New York City, while George Harrison died of natural causes in 2001.   McCartney and Ringo Starr remain active.

To say their music touched our lives would be an understatement.  I’m sure even Mick and Keith would have to admit that – as loathe as they may be to admit so publicly.  I sense that Keith takes a perverse delight in pushing buttons and pissing people off, deliberately fashioning himself as the John Lennon of the Rolling Stones.  Mick is more diplomatic and polite, eager to please, and thus fashioning himself as the Paul McCartney of his band.   By keeping his mouth shut and simply playing the drums, Charlie does his Ringo role well enough.

Economists and those who understand and care about economics often talk about “externalities”, both positive and negative.  These are effects a transaction has on non-participants.  The classic negative externality is pollution.  But music has the wonderful positive externality of itself.  None of us worked for Parlophone or Apple Records, or for the Beatles, but most of us with (AHEM) taste in music enjoy the Beatles’ music whether we simply purchased LPs, CDs, MP3s, or even just heard others playing the music.   We’d hope the effect was positive.

One major NEGATIVE effect was when one track on the self-titled, so-called “White Album”, “Helter Skelter”, persuaded Charles Manson to persuade a gang of hot but stupid teenage girls from California to kill random strangers in L.A. in August 1969.  I’ve already addressed this in a prior blog and don’t want to discuss it again.

A more ambiguous effect was produced by two movies inspired by the Beatles’ music:  “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (named after the album, of course) from the 1970s, and “Across the Universe” which came out in 2007.   It’s these that I’ll be discussing today.   [This will be on the exam.]

 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.  By now this 1978 film is much-ridiculed.  I recall its release back at the time but did not see it, as I was a kid and hadn’t yet joined the Beatles cult.  None of the Beatles were involved, but a whole host of popular bands from the late 70s were.  The core “band” were the Bee Gees joined by Peter Frampton to make 4.   The majority of the music in the film comes from the album of the same name (minus “Within Without You” or “Lovely Rita”) plus the later album Abbey Road.  There’s some stupid plot about Mean Mr. Mustard stealing relevant items and it’s up to the boys to un-f**k everything to the tune of Beatles songs to fix it.  Alice Cooper is here, as are Aerosmith, doing a half-assed copy of “Come Together” which they are too proud of.   The music is lip-synced which is odd because it’s all redone anyway.  Likewise, Steve Martin gets props for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” which he didn’t do particularly well either.  

Essentially they honor the Beatles by making a stupid movie with a stupid plot, someone’s idea of making money off the Beatles by doing something which really doesn’t do much more than remind us that the Beatles were excellent and too many other bands which came after were not.   Having said that, it’s not so bad that no one should ever watch it.  Do your brain and its limited memory capacity a favor and rent the movie from Netflix (as I did), watch it once, then forget it.  Aerosmith continue covering “Come Together”, while the Bee Gees saw fit to forget to reissue this when redoing their back catalog.  I’m sure they’re prouder of “Saturday Night Fever” and for good reason.   

“Across the Universe”.   The 2007 release occurred after I’d drank the Beatles Kool-Aid so I saw it in the movie theater when it came and out and ignored it until seeing it on DVD again last night.   Evan Rachel Wood, who we can recognize as Dolores in the new Westworld series from HBO, is one of the major characters here, Lucy.   The movie starts from the early 60s and winds its way through the decade, plunging through different situations with different Beatles songs performed by the cast members to accentuate plot points.  Jim Sturgess plays a Paul McCartney-type character, Joe Anderson plays Max, not sure if he’s supposed to be John Lennon or Kurt Cobain, who he much more closely resembles. 

I’m guessing the people who did this probably watched “Sgt Pepper” and tried to avoid the same issues, with mixed success.  You really have a continuous narrative set out in Beatles songs loosely chronological according to release, the songs actually sung by the actors (?) or far better lip-synced than in “Sgt. Pepper”.   Bono and Eddie Izzard are here as well.  Somewhat pretentious but not too silly or stupid.   While it seems to take itself seriously I didn’t find it nearly as stupid as “Sgt. Pepper”.  However, I don’t think it’s worth buying and still merits Netflix rental followed by oblivion. 

Now the question is: is there a shitty band (no, the Beatles don’t count as such) which inspired an excellent film?  Get working, people.

If I Were King...

…I would proclaim the following:

 1.  Henceforth, the soda and its parent company formerly known as Dr. Pepper, shall be known as Sgt. Pepper.  Various songs from that album and elements thereof shall be made part of any commercial or promotion associated therewith, and no royalties to be paid to Michael Jackson – they all go to Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, the Harrison estate, and (Sir) Paul McCartney.

 2.  Supermarket checkout lines, express lanes.  If you exceed the limit, your excess purchases will be charged double, starting with the most expensive item and working back to the limit.  You have been warned.  This transaction is NOT voidable by the cashier or manager.  And 20 units of the same item counts as 20 units, not 1.  Learn to count, people!

 3.  Capital punishment for ANYONE on “The Price is Right” who bids ONE dollar more than the last person.  Drew Carey himself will “come on down” with a gun and shoot you on the spot.  Spaying or neutering the offender might be the more appropriate penalty, but this one dollar bullshit just shows the contestant has already lost his/her testicles or ovaries.

 4.  School names.  Enough with this boring idiocy of naming schools after repetitively dull historical figures or equally dull local community figures no one really knows about or cares about – except for the corrupt assholes who picked the names, clearly hoping that one day THEY will have schools named after themselves.  It’s time we picked some names which reflect individuals who truly had a major impact on our society in different ways.  Yes, it’s time for….Albert Hoffman High School; Timothy Leary High School; James Hendrix High School; James Morrison High School; Stevie Ray Vaughn High School; Leo Fender High School; etc.  Or we can pick politically incorrect historical figures, such as Attilla the Hun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Benedict Arnold.  You get the point.  I don’t think they name schools in England after people, preferring localities, so we’ll take some English and use them – Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, Richards, Gilmour, Waters, etc. 

 5.  If you are Adam Lambert, or have his hairstyle, you will be immediately accosted and have your head shaved like the collaborating women in WWII.  And this “bald & goatee” thing is OVER!  Enough!  Hear me Andy Powell and Rob Halford?   Unless you can trace ancestry to a Germanic tribe fighting the Romans, give it a rest. 

 In a related topic, If had more money than I knew what to do with (but wasn’t necessarily king), I would:

 1.         Turn the Turtledove Timeline series (How Few Remains, Great War, American Empire, and Settling Account) into movies, with big name stars, without any concern for turning a profit.  Morgan Freeman as Scipio?  Sure.  Nicole Kidman as Anne Colleton?  Why not?  Tom Berenger as Roger Kimball?  You bet.  Denzel Washington as Cincinnatus?  Good idea.  Maybe even Ed Harris as Irving Morrell, and Robin Williams as Theodore Roosevelt (see the Night at the Museum films).  I’m thinking of Edward Norton as Jake Featherston. 

Minimal changes on the screenplay – even if that means “nigger” is spit out liberally in every movie.  Chill out people, and watch it to the very end.  You’ll love it.

 2.         Buy up every clapped out, rusted 3^rd Gen. Firebird or Camaro and renovate them with V8s, etc.  I’d buy so many I could set up a factory to do this, and buy up crate 350s in bulk with a volume discount.  Then I’d sell them for modest amounts, with no regard to profit. 

 3.         I’d buy up a small town, and collect all the homeless people from across the country.  I’d have social workers figure out which are the (A) crazy but harmless people turned out of asylums because they’re no threat to society, but who still can’t support themselves, the (B) normal people who simply became homeless due to rotten luck, but who could be self-sufficient if someone believed in them and found a decent job for them, (C) drug addicts, and (D) truly criminally insane.  My understanding is that shelters don’t work because predators abuse the homeless therein, such that they’re actually safer on the streets.  Apparently these shelters have poor security.  Hopefully, by relocating the homeless to a remote area, this problem can be eliminated.  At the very least, they will have someplace safe to stay, a roof over their head, food, health care, etc.  I’d try to set it up like a real town, not a mental institution.  No, it’s NOT “The Island.” 

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)

Despite what happened with Marge in the kitchen, Shelbyville cannot lace Springfield’s (or anyone else’s) water supply with LSD: the drug is too unstable and complicated, and gets broken down immediately by the chlorine and other chemicals in the water treatment plants.  This is the same reason the water supplies are essentially immune to potential biological terrorist attack, as these chemicals attack bacteria as well.  In any case, the effects would take an hour or two to really get going, not instantaneous as happened to Marge.  

 In the Beginning, there was Sandoz.  Working on ergot alkaloids for Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, Albert Hofmann (one f, two n’s) invented lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938.  They marketed it as Delysid.  Can you imagine the ads today?  “Delysid is not for everyone…consult your doctor about Delysid.  Side effects may include…”.   Having successfully developed several other (non-hallucinogenic) ergot compounds which became commercially successful for Sandoz, he put LSD aside for the time being.  In 1943, he dusted off the LSD and began working on it again, and accidentally ingested it through his skin, becoming the first person to trip on it.  Soon after he took another trip, resulting in a horrifying bicycle ride (wartime restrictions limiting gasoline engine vehicles).  The rest is history.  His book, LSD: My Problem Child is remarkable, although only half of it is really about LSD itself.  The drug definitely changed him, although he remained the efficient, normal-looking Swiss chemist with the analytical mind we expect from Germans/Swiss.   

 Eventually Sandoz was embarrassed by the publicity surrounding LSD and stopped making it.  The premier LSD source of the 60’s, Augustus Owsley Stanley, III, better known as "Bear", claimed to be able to make purer LSD than Sandoz itself; his variety “Blue Cheer” became the name of a SF metal band, and his poetry graces the inside covers of their albums, but he is usually associated with the Grateful Dead and claims he was never very impressed by Blue Cheer.

 Effects. LSD is the most powerful drug known to man, as noted in the Guinness Book of World Records.   Doses are measured in micrograms, not milligrams.  Although it’s been produced in tablet and liquid form, blotter paper (as shown second left) is probably the most popular and well known, and certainly uniquely open to artistic interpretation, something that can't be said about a drug which is injected, snorted or smoked….LSD doesn’t have to be injected, snorted, or smoked.

Low doses.  The spaced out feeling like a mild fever, or Darvocet/Percocet.  Something isn’t quite right, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Still able to have something close to a normal conversation.

            Medium doses.  The visuals show up – trails, colors are brighter, glow, and begin to melt into each other.  Patterns, like wallpaper and oriental carpets, begin to shift, swerve, or scroll; lines on a flannel shirt will dance, woodgrain breathes.  Grass grows before your very eyes.  Album covers breathe and begin to act up, like the living portraits in Harry Potter.  Speech becomes more difficult as the brainwaves no longer directly connect thoughts to spoken words – someone inside (who?) has to translate from the brain to the mouth. 

            Higher doses.  Totally out to lunch, on another planet.  More intense visuals, and the mindf**k goes into overdrive.  The self dissolves into the universe at the molecular level, the ego disappears and nothing has any true meaning anymore.   You’ve shifted into a completely different dimension.  Welcome to “where the hell am I now???”

There is no “cure” for a trip, but thorazine will calm down a bad trip somewhat. Theoretically, a bad trip can happen to even the most experienced tripper, but it's most likely when LSD is taken carelessly  in the wrong set or setting - or if it's given to someone without their knowledge ("Somebody Put Something In My Drink", as the Ramones might  say); the Dead were notorious for doing so, so much so that it was common knowledge to avoid eating or drinking anything in their presence.  Syd Barrett's friends would constantly dose him, thinking they were doing him a favor by keeping him tripping 24/7, ultimately not helping him. 

 The CIA.  It experimented with the drug in the 1950s in the MK-Ultra program, as fully described in Acid Dreams, by Martin Lee & Bruce Shlain.  It turned out to be a lousy truth drug: the subject was as likely to spout complete nonsense as the “truth” (however that could possibly be defined under the influence of the drug), with the interrogator scarcely able to tell one from the other.  It was also useless as a mind control drug, because its effects were so unpredictable and (as noted above) it breaks down in the water supply.  The CIA finally gave up on it altogether, about the same time certain anti-establishment elements discovered it.  This is the twisted part about LSD: it started out within the darkest depths of the establishment, the CIA, and then went to the counterculture.  Before Leary (mentioned below) there was Captain Alfred M. Hubbard, one of the CIA’s biggest fans of LSD.

 Merry Pranksters.  Yes, these are the anti-establishment elements, led by Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) – they ran out of the Beatles’ 1964 tour screaming as they couldn’t handle “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” on acid.  Kesey & crew, with a plentiful supply of still-legal LSD, painted a school bus (“Furthur”) dayglow colors and toured the country in summer 1964, freaking out unsuspecting locals who had yet to experience LSD or hippies.  Eventually the Acid Tests evolved, group parties in California where a warehouse would be rented, a vat of electric Kool-Aid (laced with LSD) was there for communal drinking, and a house band, the Grateful Dead, would play – all in safe, nonthreatening environment where you were surrounded by like-minded (?) people and not thrust out into a hostile outside world of squares and pigs.  In London the same experience was imitated, the house band being Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.  Kesey’s antics are best described in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

 Timothy Leary. The all-time ultimate LSD guru.  After a mushroom trip in 1960, he discovered LSD and proceeded to lose his job at Harvard.  From then he preached the LSD gospel to everyone, convinced that LSD could solve all the world’s problems.  Hofmann met him a few times in Switzerland but felt that Leary was responsible for attracting too much unwelcome attention to LSD and encouraging its use among people who really should NOT be tripping.  Eventually Leary got off his acid trip (after a vacation in exile in Algeria, Switzerland, and finally picked up by the FBI in Afghanistan) and turned his attention to space travel and the ultimate final trip, death itself.  Before he died he engaged in a series of public debates with G. Gordon Liddy, his erstwhile nemesis as a NY prosecutor in the late 60s.

 Change the world?  The hippies, including Leary, felt that if LBJ or Nixon could just be dosed, they would wise up and stop the war in Vietnam.  Highly unlilkely. The effects are unpredictable even for the same person tripping more than once – each trip is completely different, like a snowflake – much less predicting how it would affect the President.  For all we know, Nixon might have decided to nuke North Vietnam.  Not good. 

 Acid Casualties.  Charles Manson & Syd Barrett, who I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, are the most notorious.  Hofmann, though, notes that no one has ever died of an LSD overdose, which can’t be said for heroin.  Much of the anecdotes about people flying off rooftops because of an LSD trip gone wrong usually turn out to be urban legends (remember Pop Rocks?).  The rumors that LSD damaged chromosomes turned out to be complete nonsense, as Generation X has ably demonstrated (these kids are normal, right?).  And the top ranks of corporate America are full of baby boomers who consumed vast quantities of acid in the 60s and eventually rejoined the mainstream rat race like everyone else, none the worse for the whole “experience.”

 It’s the music, man.  Of course, far beyond Timothy Leary or Charles Manson, the ultimate legacy of LSD is in the music we listen to today.  Although much of the LSD-influenced music was psychedelic with little appeal to those not already disposed to take LSD, marijuana, mushrooms, etc. – notably Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and Hawkwind – a substantial amount was, and is, accessible to those of us who would never dream of tasting the temporary madness of LSD, but who can nonetheless enjoy the music made by those who did dare to “turn off their minds, relax and float downstream”, the biggest example being the Beatles and their masterpiece, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Very little of Sgt Pepper is psychedelic in the sense of “Interstellar Overdrive” (Pink Floyd), “Dark Star” (Grateful Dead) or anything by Hawkwind or King Crimson.  The LSD effect is more subtle than that: it’s the whole concept of the album and how it all fits together; “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is just the ambassador of LSD within the album itself, to those not in tune enough to recognize it in the whole, the big picture.

            But that’s not all.  To the extent a second wave, an “equal and opposite reaction” in the Newtonian sense, of 70s rock developed, mainly Black Sabbath and punk rock (remember that “Pink Floyd Sucks!” t-shirt?), in defiance of the hippies and California sound, we have a secondary ripple from LSD.  From there, you get the bands Black Sabbath influenced, i.e. Metallica and the whole dark heavy metal genre, and its offshoots such as grunge, meaning that LSD’s impact on music is far beyond the Beatles, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead.  Again, even if some metalheads wouldn’t dream of doing LSD, they still listen to, bang their heads to, and enjoy, music which was indirectly caused by the very drug they shun.  There's also a whole newer genre of heavy metal, which developed in the mid 1990s and continues today, called stoner rock, a genre which deserves its own blog entry in its own right.

             Finally, that brings us to Blue Cheer – not only named after LSD, not only having Owsley’s poetry on their albums, but merging both the San Francisco sound with the darker noise of Black Sabbath and proto-metal...arguably the first stoner rock band.

Ho Chi Minh + LBJ = Sgt Pepper?

Here’s a radical idea: add Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson and you get: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 Think about it: would the massive upheaval, the social revolution, the counterculture, have happened if (A) North Vietnam hadn’t invaded South Vietnam, and (B) LBJ hadn’t sent US troops into Vietnam in 1965? 

 Back in the early 60s, we were like the late 50s: crew cuts, rock’n’roll, Elvis, anti-communist, obey authority, no drugs, etc.  We trusted the government just as we trusted our parents, to tell us the truth and look out for our best interests.  LSD was in the hands of the CIA and a few knowledgeable souls such as Ken Kesey, but otherwise unknown.  There was a very small fringe - beatniks and communists – but they were a very small minority and off the radar of mainstream America.  The Beatles didn’t even put out an album until 1962, and even then it was Please Please Me. 

 By 1970 everything was different.  Woodstock, Altamont, LSD, Kent State, you name it.  Even if the counterculture represented a minority – as distinguished from Nixon’s “Silent Majority” – it was still thrust in America’s face, impossible to ignore.  The war itself was on the news, as were the protests.  A threshold was reached where ordinary people were capable of doing anything.  The Beatles had put away their matching outfits, grown their hair long – or even beards – and Lennon and Yoko posed naked on their album cover.  Even the Beach Boys (???) were singing about marijuana, meditation, all that New Age crap.

 Clearly something happened.  But what?  What did the WAR have to do with it?  The war stretched the government’s credibility gap beyond the breaking point for all but the most diehard right wing reactionary.  During WWI and WWII it was expected that the government may have been fudging a little on its propaganda, what Churchill called “terminological inexactitude”, but so long as the war was being won and the results didn’t stray too far from what we were being told, it didn’t matter too much – we assumed we were being told this for our own good and that our own government was looking out for our own best interests, like parents telling their children about Santa Claus, a harmless story for the benefit of the child’s happiness and well being.

 But Vietnam was different.  Ordinary people could tell that what they were being told didn’t match what was really going on.  Body bags + violence + an unconventional war against an unconventional opponent; it didn’t help that the war was being fought with one hand behind our back.  Instead of invading North Vietnam on the ground, we bombed it from the air; and we know from experience that you although you can’t win a war without air superiority, air power alone won’t win the war without “boots on the ground” – it’s a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for victory.  We could see the napalm, the arc lights, the destruction, but not the victory.

 Tet January 1968 was probably the last straw.  Up until that point the White House, Pentagon and General Westmoreland had been telling America that the war was being won, that the enemy was on its last legs.  Then POW!  The VC and NVA attacked everywhere at once, overrunning much of Hue and breaking into the US Embassy compound in Saigon.  Although the NVA and VC eventually lost all the territory they had gained – suffering horrible casualties and wiping out the VC as a military force – the political damage was done.  The irony was that NOW the war was winnable, but no one – not even the military – believed it anymore.

 It was this destruction of government integrity, how they betrayed our trust (“Born on the Fourth of July”, Daniel Ellsberg, etc.) which ripped our social fabric apart at the seams.  We were a democracy, but we could no longer trust the government, as if our parents, who we loved and respected, turned out to be selfish, lying bastards.  The world was turned upside down.  Now anything was possible.  Black was white.  Night was day.  Drugs were OK.  Promiscuous sex was OK.  And Revolver and Sgt Pepper (as well as the Grateful Dead and Piper at the Gates of Dawn) stepped in to fill the void.  These albums, this music, fit our mood, our spirit.  They described exactly how fucked up, how confused, how crazy we felt.  If America hadn’t been corrupted and weakened from within, if the bond between government and people hadn’t been ruptured, all this counterculture would have remained a small, weak, insignificant margin outside the mainstream, out of sight, out of mind.  The music might still have been made, but it would not have had the impact and the success it did, instead remaining obscure like Bloodrock, Hawkwind, and Blue Cheer.

 In each place, the US and London, a social revolution was going on.  The youth of the counterculture had come to the conclusion that: (A) the establishment looked out for its own interests, not those of the public at large, and not for the younger generation – who it sent to Vietnam to fight its wars; (B) it established arbitrary rules which restricted the freedom of young people to express themselves; (C) it was possible, nevertheless, for youth to rebel against this corrupt authority and take control of their lives, and (D) there was no shortage of outlets for this rebellion.  The music – especially Pink Floyd & the Beatles, and the San Francisco bands, reflected this change, casting away the old restrictions and going off into new, uncharted territory where anything was possible.  Sgt Pepper is the finest example of this: 4 guys going into the studio without having to worry about satisfying mobs of screaming teenage girls or whether they could reproduce the music onstage. 

 LSD.  Undoubtedly, the catalyst for channeling the severe social distortion of the Vietnam War into the creative and productive outlet of music was the drugs, and none more important than lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or acid.  The drug is too important to fully address here, and deserves a full blog entry in its own right.  But for here it’s enough to argue that the drug was responsible for no less than Sgt Pepper, Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd), Blue Cheer, the Grateful Dead, Hawkwind, and countless other bands.  Lennon has always denied that “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was about LSD, but the song title and lyrics, plus Lennon’s own extremely irreverent and cynical personality, convince me that his denial was really an elaborate put down, an inside joke, a slap in the face, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone who ever listened to the song closely.  By expanding our consciousness, by smashing outside the box of conventional thinking, the drug opened new horizons.  Not all the music was good, but the best of it was some of the best ever made, and could never have been made without the LSD.  Sure, these same bands had made quality material in the early 60s, but alcohol, cigarettes, even marijuana, were no substitute for what Jimi Hendrix called “the experience”.  LSD was the only game in town.

 The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and others in London’s Underground movement were watching America, particularly San Francisco, and the shock waves rippling through America from the Vietnam War – including Woodstock, which was an anti-war protest festival – flew across the sea into the streets of London, and channeled through the artists and musicians by LSD, were engrooved into vinyl for the rest of us to experience and enjoy even to this day.  Thanks to Uncle Ho for invading South Vietnam, and President Lyndon Johnson for sending US troops to defend it.