![]() Love the Beatles? Listen to Ken's podcast " Everything Fab Four."īut in truth, Lennon's experimentation with the drug had begun much earlier-most likely, during Ono's summer 1968 exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery. Yet at other times, he would attribute his flirtation with heroin to his bandmates' refusal to accept Ono as their equal, claiming that they began to snort heroin "because of what the Beatles and their pals did to us." Lennon attributed Ono's mid-November 1968 miscarriage to the raid's aftermath, later remarking that "we were in real pain" after the loss of their baby. Lennon later claimed that the couple's addiction developed in the wake of a hashish raid on his Montagu Square flat by Detective-Sergeant Norman Pilcher's notorious drugs squad. "The two of them were on heroin," said McCartney, "and this was a fairly big shocker for us because we all thought we were far-out boys, but we kind of understood that we'd never get quite that far out." By the advent of the "Get Back" sessions, Ono openly joked about taking heroin being the couple's form of exercise. ![]() However, Lennon's addiction left his bandmates in a state of alarm. The Beatles' struggle to finish "The White Album": How bad did it get? In the coming years, they would make international headlines for tripping out on LSD, and in the summer of 1968, as the Beatles had toiled in the studio to record The White Album, McCartney would engage in an extended dalliance with cocaine. Later, marijuana would come into their lives by way of Bob Dylan in August 1964. They had become veteran pill-poppers during their days in Hamburg's seedy postwar clubs, seeking out amphetamines to increase their stamina during those long nights on the Reeperbahn. The Beatles, after all, were that good.Īs history has demonstrated resoundingly, the band members were no strangers to drug experimentation. While heroin had infiltrated their midst, they managed - for a time, at least - to overcome the drug's insidious nature. That fall, they would release "Abbey Road," their magisterial swan song. The "Get Back" project would come in for a rough landing with the band's triumphant Rooftop Concert on January 30th, and they would record a spate of new classics that summer. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and find new levels of greatness.Īnd for the most part, they would succeed. By this time, they had challenged themselves to "get back" to their roots, strip away the high-gloss production of LPs like "Revolver" and "Sgt. With The White Album lording over the global record charts, the Beatles were the biggest act in the world by a wide margin. In early 1969, the faces of heroin addiction for McCartney, Harrison and Starr - three quarters of rock music's Fab Four - were Lennon and his wife Ono. Peter Jackson's "Get Back" docuseries is a mesmerizing feast for the eyes The National Safety Council recently reported that opioid addiction has become so pervasive that Americans are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than an automobile accident. During that fateful year, the Beatles suffered, as so many families do today, from the daily pain and bewilderment of an opioid addiction.Īlthough we have slowly come to recognize the opioid epidemic as the Western world's most perilous health crisis, we have yet to turn the corner in terms of stemming its tide. In truth, although each of the above was a contributing factor, by January 1969 a much darker force had made its presence known in their world. Was it Yoko Ono's constant presence in the studio? Paul McCartney's increasingly controlling nature? John Lennon's rage to break free of the partnership that he had brokered with McCartney after their meeting in a Liverpool churchyard in July 1957? Or simply Ringo Starr's apathy or George Harrison's need to strike out on his own and fulfill his promise as a songwriter in his own right? And in the ensuing decades, the reasons for their eventual disbandment have been debated ad nauseam. Fifty years ago, the Beatles entered their final year as a working rock 'n' roll band.
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