Did you know one of the most influential bands of all time, the Beatles, wrote several songs about tripping? Heres a list of 7 such songs...
Did you know one of the most influential bands of all time, the Beatles, wrote several songs about tripping? Here’s a list of 7 such songs!
- Lucy in the sky with Diamonds
First things first: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—an album that the members have admitted was heavily influenced by LSD. The lyrics are quite visually striking (“the girl with kaleidoscope eyes”, for instance), and the first letters of its title form the word LSD as well. But Lennon has denied any influence of LSD in this song, saying that this was based on a drawing by his son. Maybe it’s just a convenient excuse.
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With A Little Help From My Friends
Taken from the same album, this song was a great hit even though it was sung by Ringo Starr. There is also the iconic line which made this song popular: “I get by with a little help from my friends/ I get high with a little help from my friends”. The reference is quite obvious, isn’t it?
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Day Tripper
This song, the popular B-side to the 1965 single “We Can Work It Out”, has been admitted by both writers Lennon and McCartney to be about recreational drug use. Lennon came up with the idea of punning on the word “day tripper”, and used it to imply not people who took day trips, but weekend hippies, rather.
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She Said She Said
This song was inspired by the comments made by Peter Fonda, who said that he know what it was like to be dead. It happened during an LSD party, and Lennon was so moved by what Fonda said that he eventually turned it into a song. And might it just be added, that it was a good one.
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Got To Get You Into My Life
A song off the 1966 album Revolver that Paul McCartney admitted that he had written for his then-discovered drug marijuana. In fact, he went so far as to call it “an ode to pot”. While that wasn’t particularly eloquent, the lyrics in the song were, and seems like a decent enough love song in its own right.
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Magical Mystery Tour
It isn’t tough to imagine the kind of magical mystery tour they were singing to actually have happened in their time. This song makes barely veiled references to rolling their own cigarettes in the form of spliffs and blunts. In fact, McCartney himself commented the Magical Mystery tour was itself a kind of drug. Interesting, wouldn’t you say?
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Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Paul McCartney and George Harrison’s favourite song off the White Album, this is again one of those songs that Lennon claims has nothing to do with drugs. But it is seems a tough thing to believe given the similarities that critics have found between the gun written in the lyrics and the hypodermic needle used to shoot up heroin. Another factor being the opening lines, allegedly taken from an acid trip that Lennon had with Derek Taylor. One might think the BBC had some basis in banning the song.
