Rolling Stone Interview with John Lennon
"How did you first get involved in LSD?
A dentist in London laid it on George, me and the wives, without telling us, at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George's and our dentist at the time, and he just put it in our coffee or something.
When you came down, what did you think?
I was pretty stoned for a month or two. The second time we had it was in L.A. We were on tour in one of those houses, Doris Day's house or wherever it was we used to stay, and the three of us took it, Ringo, George and I. Maybe Neil [Aspinall] and a couple of the Byrds - what's his name, the one in the Stills and Nash thing? - Crosby and the other guy who used to do the lead. McGuinn. I think they came, I'm not sure, on a few trips. Peter Fonda came, and that was another thing. He kept saying [in a whisper], ``I know what it's like to be dead.'' It was a sad song, an acidy song, I suppose. ``When I was a little boy'' . . . you see, a lot of early childhood was coming out, anyway. So LSD started for you in 1964. How long did it go on?
It went on for years, I must have had a thousand trips. Literally a thousand, or a couple of hundred? A thousand - I used to just eat it all the time.
The other Beatles didn't get into LSD as much as you did?
George did. In L.A. the second time we took it, Paul felt very out of it because we are all a bit slightly cruel, sort of ``we're taking it, and you're not.'' But we kept seeing him, you know. We couldn't eat our food; I just couldn't manage it, just picking it up with our hands. There were all these people serving us in the house, and we were knocking food on the floor and all of that. It was a long time before Paul took it. I think George was pretty heavy on it; we are probably the most cracked. Paul is a bit more stable than George and I.
And straight?
I don't know about straight. Stable. I think LSD profoundly shocked him and Ringo. I think maybe they regret it."
Your choice whether you believe it or not.
I quoted the lyrics because I highly doubted that song was about Julian's picture. And you are correct. Drugs are not necessary for
psychadelic imagination although they are certainly often helpful.
There is a correlation between certain types of drug use and certain types of creativity. Spiralling addiction or injudicious use is a different topic.
By his own words, Lennon and Harrison were into acid. And of the four, their music was the trippiest, for lack of a better word.
Now whether their straight creative minds ran to psychadelia or whether the psychadelics allowed it is another speculation altogether.
But none of this addresses the thread topic which is whether or not U2 used hard drugs. I don't know. I've derailed the thread too much already.