The Music: LSD: The 60's landscape was forever altered! Part 5- The UK
Donovan asked that go go dancers not perform with him on TV, The Moody Blues were inspired by LSD and Pink Floyd had the 1st LSD rock casualty.
At the age of 15 I lied about my age and got a job working with the promo department at Decca Records in Atlanta. Everyone there had short hair and loved country music, except me. When bands came through, they gravitated to me and many times I would give them a tour of Atlanta’s hippie community. Decca distributed the London label so everyone from The Moody Blues to John Mayall to The Rolling Stones I got to spend time with. This was also probably why I had so much sex, I was seen with rock stars.
When I tell people to this day that The Moody Blues were the biggest selling British group for several years I get funny looks. They outsold the Stones, The Who, everybody.
Quote: Though it’s hard to envisage The Moody Blues waving their freak flag high, let alone tripping on acid, in fact LSD played a crucial role in their development of the band both musically and personally.
“It became part of my life for a while,” says guitarist Justin Hayward. “Until after about 10 or 12 trips when I thought, ‘That’s probably it now. I’ve probably done it. But I’m really glad that I did.”
Keyboard player Mike Pinder notes the positive effects, adding, “It worked in terms of giving you more colour varieties to add to your sound. And you’d notice this more when you were in a meditative state. And the drugs helped you get to that meditative state.”
When it came to LSD, they followed the gospel according to Saint Timothy. They wanted to get into it rather than out of it.
“There were four of us,” recalls Justin of his first trip. “I can’t include John because he’s never done anything like that. We prepared ourselves – got our drinks and everything else that we wanted – and when we were ready we took it together. I can remember it to this day. And I have to say it was a big part of what the music was all about.
"We were all searching for some kind of enlightenment. That took us to meditation. We went to visit the Maharishi (the same one The Beatles had been to and made famous) and did the transcendental meditation course.” Unquote
The Moody Blues - Full Concert - French TV Special 1968
About 1 in 10 Americans take anti-depressant medication today. We have all heard of being bi-polar and other forms of depression. In the 1960’s however a person depressed was told to “snap out of it” or was given amphetamines which would cause a rush followed by a crash. There was no real understanding of the chemical nature of depression so there was a lot of self-medicating going on. Looking back on the lives of Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe it is easier today to see what was wrong. There were people in the 1960’s who should not have taken LSD- which brings us to-
Quote: When it was released in 1966, Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” was one of the first psychedelic rock tunes to top the pop charts; and since then, the hypnotically jangling hit has become synonymous with the acid-drenched ethos of the ear. The song whispers of LSD-fueled summers and syrupy mind trips at first listen, but upon closer inspection, the tune’s true meaning touches on something different.
Like many songs, “Sunshine Superman” began with love. Donovan met his future wife, Linda Lawrence, in 1965. At the time, she was healing from her separation with the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones with whom she had a young son. Donovan and Linda courted briefly; however, in pursuit of her modeling career and a fresh start, Linda left England for Los Angeles, California.
When Donovan found himself in the States, promoting his new hit song “Catch the Wind,” he and Linda reconnected. It wouldn’t be long before the musician proposed, something the young Linda declined in need of time.
“I was miserable but undeterred,” Donovan shared of the experience in an interview. “Back in London, in the early fall of ’65, I lived above the flat of my manager, Ashley Kozak. Missing Linda, I began to write ‘Sunshine Superman.'”
Sunshine came softly a-through my a-window today, the snaking song begins in a tip-toeing rhythm, Could’ve tripped out easy a-but I’ve a-changed my ways / It’ll take time, I know it but in a while / You’re gonna be mine, I know it, we’ll do it in style / ‘Cause I made my mind up you’re going to be mine.
“As I wrote the words and music, it became an optimistic heartbreak song. Like many of my songs, it expressed hopeful melancholy,” the artist continued, debunking the common misinterpretation, “The second line, “Could’ve tripped out easy a-but I’ve, a-changed my ways” has nothing to do with an acid trip. It means I could have allowed my thoughts to slip into depression but I didn’t.” Unquote
The meaning of Sunshine Superman
Quote: It was spring 1965. Lennon and his wife, Cynthia, and Harrison and his wife, Pattie Boyd, were attending a dinner at the London home of dentist John Riley and his girlfriend, Cyndy Bury. Before the foursome left, Riley asked them to stay for coffee, then urged them to finish their cups. Shortly after, he told Lennon he had placed sugar cubes containing LSD in the coffee. Lennon was furious. “How dare you fucking do this to us?” He knew something about the drug: It was a powerful hallucinogen – termed a psychedelic – and it caused changes in thoughts, emotions and visions that frightened some observers. Psychologist Timothy Leary had famously been fired from Harvard University in 1963 for conducting experimental therapeutic sessions with the substance.
“It was as if we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a horror film,” Cynthia Lennon said. “The room seemed to get bigger and bigger.” The Beatles and their wives fled Riley’s home in Harrison’s Mini Cooper. (According to Bury, John and George had earlier indicated a willingness to take LSD if they didn’t know beforehand that it was being administered.) The Lennons and Harrisons went to Leicester Square’s Ad Lib club. In the elevator, they succumbed momentarily to panic. “We all thought there was a fire in the lift,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. “It was just a little red light, and we were all screaming, all hot and hysterical.” Once inside at a table, something like reverie began to take hold instead. As Harrison told Rolling Stone, “I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours.” Unquote
Rising to prominence in the height of the 1960s psychedelia, British band the Who were no strangers to experimentation. The introduction of newly popularised psychedelic drugs like LSD influenced everything from fashion to music. The Who even dabbled in a bit of trippy discography in their witty way with their 1967 “concept album” The Who Sell Out. But while frontman Roger Daltrey stayed sober, further establishing his role as the “Dad of the group,” other members—specifically Pete Townshend— often had wild, and even dangerous, experiences.
In 1967 Townshend had begun a spiritual journey, quickly absorbing all of Meher Baba’s writings that he could find, and soon after, became an official disciple. With the aid of religion and a few hallucinogens he had experimented with, Townshend created a story inspired by Baba and his teachings of enlightenment that eventually turned into the band’s rock opera, Tommy.
During the height of San Francisco psychedelia and other summer of love shenanigans, Townshend was certainly part of the action. But during his fourth time trying LSD, things weren’t so enlightening as before. After the Who performed their iconic set at Monterey Pop Festival on June 18, 1967, the band, along with Townshend’s wife Karen, boarded their plane back to London. When they settled in, large purple pills were passed around by band members Keith Moon and John Entwistle, supplied by audio engineer, underground chemist, and a key figure in the hippie movement, Owsley Stanley.
While lead singer Roger Daltrey and Entwistle declined the pills, Moon grabbed one, and not wanting him to do it alone, Townshend and his wife split one—that’s when things turned strange. “After 30 minutes, the air hostess, whose turned-up nose had made her look a little porcine, transmogrified into a real pig, scurrying up and down the aisle, snorting. The air was full of faint music… I finally traced the sound to the armrest of my seat,” remembered Townshend.
He added, “After putting on a headset, I felt I could hear every outlet on the plane at the same time: rock, jazz, classical, comedy, Broadway tunes, and [Country & Western] competed for dominance over my brain.”
While his other bandmates remained seemingly unphased around him, he continued to spiral further into the psychedelic abyss. “I heard a female voice gently saying, ‘You have to go back. You cannot stay here.’”
“But I’m terrified. If I go back, I feel as if I’ll die.”
“You won’t die. You cannot stay here,” said the voice.
“As I drifted back down toward my body,” Townshend recalls, “I began to feel the effects of the LSD kicking back in. The worst seemed to be over; as I settled [into] the experience, though extreme, [it] felt more like my few trips of old: everything saturated by wonderful colour and sound. Karen looked like an angel.”
Bonus: The Pretty Things: LSD
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