It is difficult to imagine a world in which music is not as deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric as it is today – but that world is within living memory. It was only after the Second World War and the Big Band era that the music industry began to coalesce into its earliest recognisable form, driven by the blues of the African-American communities of the Deep South, which gave rise to R&B in the 1950s and then its all-conquering cousin, rock ‘n’ roll.
The 1960s was when those formative developments began to take over the world in earnest. The preceding decade had its own cultural revolution – Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and others had set popular music on its way – but the 1960s was where things reached fever pitch.
No two artists define the cultural explosion of that decade more than Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Dylan came first. His refreshing, politically charged folk music – with the social conscience of his hero Woody Guthrie always close to hand – influenced everyone who followed him, including the Fab Four. But his influence on The Beatles extended beyond lyrics and music. It was Dylan who introduced them to cannabis, with consequences that would ripple through everything they subsequently made.
The significance of that introduction is difficult to overstate. It set the four of them on a journey of musical experimentation that would produce Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road – the records on which they became the biggest band the world has ever seen, and rewrote what a group could be. Without that evening in 1964, it is safe to say there would be no ‘A Day in the Life’.
It was 28th August 1964, and Beatlemania was in full swing. That February the band had introduced themselves to America with their era-defining appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. That summer’s evening, they had just performed to a chaotic crowd at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York. Afterwards, still buzzing, they returned to their suite at the Delmonico Hotel in Manhattan – where they were about to meet a shared hero.
Bob Dylan arrived, relaxed and unhurried as ever, and brought along a bag of cannabis to break the ice. He had an assumption to make it on: he believed The Beatles were already well acquainted with the drug, having misheard the line “I can’t hide” in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ as “I get high.” Lennon quickly set him straight.
Undeterred, Dylan passed the bag to his road manager Victor Maymudes and asked him to roll one. Maymudes handed it to Lennon, who – according to legend – lost his nerve at the last moment and passed it to Ringo Starr, apparently declaring him his “royal taster.” Starr lit the joint and, unfamiliar with the etiquette, held onto it rather than passing it round. Maymudes, quickly reading the room, rolled one for each member instead.
By all accounts, they got comprehensively stoned. Starr later recalled that they “laughed our asses off.”
The following year, The Beatles released Rubber Soul – their first album to carry traces of a new, more experimental sensibility. Lennon described it as their “pot album”, and the band openly cited Dylan as a major influence on it. It was the first chapter of a run of records that changed music for ever.
Editors’ Picks
- 1960s Music
- Bob Dylan
- George Harrison
- John Lennon
- Paul McCartney
- Ringo Starr
- Rock History
- The Beatles
