How LSD changed The Beatles forever
It was a moment of cultural significance when The Beatles, who were deemed as four whiter than white characters who could never put a foot wrong, admitted their affinity for the psychedelic drug LSD. The drug had only just become somewhat common as a recreational party enhancer during the mid-sixties and, when John Lennon and George Harrison took their first hit under the tutelage of the ‘Demon Dentist’ John Riley—who apparently ‘dosed’ the two Beatles during a night on the tiles in the springtime of 1965—they would never look back and the world would be forever thankful for the renewed creative vigour.
While The Beatles were no strangers to drugs prior to Riley’s dosage in 1965, having experimented with a range of stimulants and cannabis over the years in the lead up to this moment, but it was their introduction to LSD which would have the biggest effect on their career. It not only caused a major shift in their music, which can be heard especially on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, but it also caused a chasmic shift in public opinion of the band as well as their public personas. That evening which saw Riley invite John and Cynthia Lennon, George Harrison and Pattie Boyd to dinner at his central London flat would be one of the most pivotal in the history of The Beatles. The evening was a standard dinner party until it all changed shortly after the meal when Riley gave them coffee laced with LSD. At the time that Harrison and Lennon consumed the mind-altering drug, it was still legal and the general public was blissfully unaware of its existence.