{"id":518690,"date":"2026-06-30T19:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T19:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/518690\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T19:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T19:11:16","slug":"paul-mccartney-on-john-lennons-accidental-acid-trip-at-abbey-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/518690\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney on John Lennon\u2019s accidental acid trip at Abbey Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the mid-1960s, the Beatles had left behind their matching suits and clean-cut image in favor of something far more bohemian. Rubber Soul was famously dubbed the band\u2019s \u201cpot album\u201d by John Lennon, while increasingly mind-altering substances helped shape the psychedelic sounds of Revolver<\/a> and Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band.<\/p>\n

It was a period of constant experimentation, both musically and chemically. As Paul McCartney later told Howard Stern, \u201cThings happened in the studio that you couldn\u2019t always predict.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stern asked McCartney about one of the best-known stories from the making of Sgt. Pepper: the claim that Lennon was tripping on LSD while recording the album\u2019s fourth track, \u201cGetting Better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"The\n<\/p>\n

The Beatles record the final piano chord to “A Day in the Life\u201d at Abbey Road Studios, February 22, 1967. (Image credit: Mark Hayward Archive\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy, because he had a little pillbox,\u201d McCartney recalled. \u201cHe\u2019d have his little uppers and his little downers, and he thought he was taking a little upper, and we could get on with the session.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Then] he comes over to me and whispers, \u2018I took the wrong pill.\u2019<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018What did you take?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Acid.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

A bandmate unexpectedly taking LSD isn\u2019t the ideal recipe for a productive recording session, but McCartney remained remarkably unfazed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d he remembered thinking, \u201clet\u2019s work around that, then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bigger challenge was keeping producer George Martin<\/a> in the dark.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point, George Martin comes in, who knew nothing about anything,\u201d McCartney said. \u201cHe said, \u2018John doesn\u2019t look too well.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018No, he\u2019s not feeling a little under the weather,\u2019 because we had to hide it all from George. He was a grown-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney on the Time John Lennon Took Acid Before Recording The Beatles\u2019 \u201cGetting Better\u201d – YouTube
\n\"Paul<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Martin\u2019s innocence wouldn\u2019t last forever. George Harrison later revealed that he and the other Beatles once spiked the producer\u2019s tea<\/a> with LSD during a late-\u201960s recording session to keep the vibe going, and Martin didn\u2019t learn what had happened until decades later.<\/p>\n

On this occasion, though, Martin simply tried to help. Concerned for Lennon\u2019s wellbeing, he took him up to the roof of EMI Studios for some fresh air before leaving him up there alone.<\/p>\n

Knowing exactly what was happening, McCartney and Harrison rushed upstairs to retrieve their bandmate before he wandered off the roof’s edge and plummeted to the ground.<\/p>\n

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\"The\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

When Stern asked whether incidents like that were debilitating or simply part of the Beatles\u2019 creative process, McCartney suggested it was a bit of both.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings happened in the studio that you couldn\u2019t always predict, and a lot of it was very good,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we rolled with the punches. We were pretty good at rolling with the punches; that one was quite a punch to roll with, but we did it, and we finished the track.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an approach that served the Beatles well. Whether it was recording reverse electric guitar<\/a> parts for \u201cTomorrow Never Knows\u201d or devising Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) to spare Lennon the chore of double-tracking his vocals, the band consistently turned unexpected situations into innovations. Finishing \u201cGetting Better\u201d despite Lennon\u2019s accidental acid trip was just another example of how they kept the session \u2014 and the music \u2014 moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By the mid-1960s, the Beatles had left behind their matching suits and clean-cut image in favor of something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-518690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}