Paul McCartney and George Harrison Raced to Rescue John Lennon From a Rooftop Where He Was Tripping on LSD
John Lennon frequently used LSD, but one trip was so dangerous that Paul McCartney and George Harrison rushed to help him. Lennon accidentally took the drug during a recording session. He stepped onto the roof for fresh air and remained up there alone. When McCartney and Harrison realized this, they were terrified, knowing Lennon could have easily stepped off the roof.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison realized John Lennon was in a dangerous situation
In a recording session for the song “Getting Better,” Lennon took what he thought was an amphetamine to keep him energized. Soon, though, he realized he’d actually taken LSD. He told Martin he felt sick, and the producer, completely unaware that Lennon had taken anything, took him to the roof for fresh air.
“If I’d known it was LSD, the roof would have been the last place I would have taken him!” Martin said in the Beatles Anthology documentary, per Rolling Stone. “But of course I couldn’t take him out the front because there were 500 screaming kids who’d have torn him apart. So the only place I could take him to get fresh air was the roof. It was a wonderful starry night, and John went to the edge, which was a parapet about eighteen inches high, and looked up at the stars and said, ‘Aren’t they fantastic?’”
Martin eventually left Lennon alone on the roof. McCartney and Harrison knew Lennon had taken LSD, but the gravity of the situation took a while to dawn on them. When they realized the low and narrow parapet was the only thing keeping Lennon from stepping over the edge and plummeting to his death, they raced up to the roof. Luckily, they found Lennon unharmed.
The bassist decided to try the drug with his bandmate
When McCartney and Harrison retrieved Lennon from the rooftop, he announced that he was in no state to record. McCartney offered to walk him the short distance home. When they arrived at Lennon’s house, McCartney, who was far more cautious around LSD than his bandmates, decided to take it. He thought that tripping with Lennon might be beneficial.
“I thought, maybe this is the moment where I should take a trip with him,” he said. “It’s been coming for a long time. It’s often the best way, without thinking about it too much, just slip into it. John’s on it already, so I’ll sort of catch up. It was my first trip with John, or any of the guys.”
McCartney believed the experience brought him closer to Lennon.
“And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling,” he said. “You dissolve into each other … And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away.”
Paul McCartney said George Harrison and John Lennon pressured him to take LSD
This was McCartney’s first time taking LSD with any of his bandmates. He’d taken it before, but he was a bit worried about its effects.
“I was really frightened of that kind of stuff,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “It’s what you’re taught when you’re young: Watch out for those devil drugs. When acid came around, we’d heard you’re never the same. It alters your life and you’re never the same again. I think John was rather excited by that prospect, [but] I was rather frightened by that prospect.”
Lennon, Harrison, and eventually Ringo Starr believed LSD had opened their minds. They wanted McCartney to experience it and told him as much.
“[W]ithin a band, it’s more than peer pressure, it’s fear pressure,” he said in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “It becomes trebled, more than just your mates, it’s, ‘Hey, man, this whole band’s had acid, why are you holding out? What’s the reason, what is it about you?’”
