![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/James-Taylor-The-Beatles-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Apple Corps)<\/p>\n
Sat 13 September 2025 10:00, UK <\/p>\n
A lot is made about The Beatles\u2019<\/a> introduction to drugs. For some fans, it was the moment their music became outrightly unrelatable, veering too far into the experimental, while for others, it was their gateway into understanding greatness. Regardless of your thoughts, it undoubtedly marked a change in the band\u2019s creative direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beatle fanatics are often obsessed with finding the root cause of this change and are quick to credit Bob Dylan, who, during a fateful meeting in New York<\/a>, was rumoured to have given the band their first ever joint. His general artistic aura, combined with the mind-altering plant, was supposed to have pushed the band through the gateway from which they never returned.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the time they had got to The White Album<\/a>, the band were in full creative flow, firing ideas at a goal without posts and answering to little but no directional influence. Fellow musicians watched in awe at a band operating with complete freedom and so jumped at any opportunity to share their space and gain a little further understanding, even if that meant delving into unhealthy substance habits.<\/p>\n One such artist was James Taylor, who in 1968 intersected with the band at the studio, slowly developing a friendship and subsequently gaining trust. At this point, the cracks in the band\u2019s personal dynamics were beginning to form, if not show, and it just so happened that Taylor provided the chisel that would wedge them open even further.<\/p>\n At that point in time, heroin and opiates were becoming increasingly popular in London, and Taylor sought to capitalise on that. \u201cI picked up pretty soon after I got here,\u201d he said, in an interview with The Guardian. Tentatively, he continued, \u201cI shouldn\u2019t go into this kind of stuff. It\u2019s not an AA meeting,\u201d before revealing, \u201cBut you used to be able to buy something called Collis Browne\u2019s Chlorodyne, which was an old-fashioned medication. Essentially, it was a tincture of opium, so you\u2019d drink a couple of bottles and you could take the edge off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While this largely sounds like a problem Taylor was left to grapple with on his own, he revealed how his relationship with Lennon perhaps triggered a domino effect. \u201cWell, I was a bad influence to be around The Beatles at that time, too.\u201d Why? \u201cBecause I gave John opiates.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As creative and personal relationships were spiralling, Lennon\u2019s growing heroin habit began to fan whatever flames were beginning to form. His own creative concentration was being somewhat lost, and the artistic camaraderie that had always existed within the band was being chipped away at by the drug.\u00a0 The track \u2018Everybody\u2019s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey\u2019 is widely considered an ode to the experience, no matter how much Lennon tries to deflect and paint it as something more universal, like his relationship. But then again, people also attributed that to the breakup of The Beatles.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
But it didn\u2019t create complete despondency. Instead, Lennon went on to pen a track<\/a> for The White Album in reference to his struggle. <\/p>\n
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Apple Corps) Sat 13 September 2025 10:00, UK A lot is made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,62975,128,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-134485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-james-taylor","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-beatles","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}