WOULD THE BEATLES HAVE SOUNDED THE SAME IF THEY'D NEVER TAKEN DRUGS?

Exploration of Effects of Mind-Altering Drugs Says They May Have
Opened Doors of Perception for the Fabs

Could a drug-free mind ever imagine sailing the oceans in a yellow
submarine, or talking to a girl with kaleidoscope eyes? That was the
question asked by a Scottish scientist who spoke at Liverpool's
famous Cavern Club last week in an attempt to divine whether The
Beatles would have been as good if they had not indulged in illegal substances.

Professor Judith Pratt, of the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and
Biomedical Sciences, examined the effects drugs have on the way
individuals perceive the world before relating it back to The
Beatles's evolution from innocent boy band to spaced-out hippies, a
trip that saw their music evolve from pop to Technicolor psychedelia
and eventually into heroin-influenced blues.

The event was not a normal scientific symposium: after her talk, the
audience stood up and sang along to Hey Jude.

Pratt said: "What would their songs be like if they hadn't been
exposed to drugs? Taking drugs certainly had a positive influence on
The Beatles's songwriting, although that's not to say you should
encourage people to take them. The boost in creativity comes from the
way drugs changed their perception. But it's a moot point whether
they would have made the same music if it weren't for what they were taking."

She focused on two drugs: LSD and cannabis. Smoking marijuana, Pratt
claimed, gave them their first boost in creativity. The possible
reasons why cannabis didn't cause psychosis in the Fab Four include
the relative weakness of the drug, compared to the hyper-strength
"skunk" smoked nowadays, but also because the herbal variety contains
a substance called cannabidiol, which some scientists think could
work to prevent psychosis.

But it was LSD that really sent The Beatles rocketing off the planet.
Pratt said thatunder its influence they recorded Tomorrow Never
Knows, inspired by the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, and much of the
music of their psychedelic phase, including I Am The Walrus, the
Magical Mystery Tour EP and the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band album, which notoriously includes Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,
widely interpreted, though never confirmed by its composer John
Lennon, as a reference to LSD.

Pratt said: "They might not have gone into that more spiritual spiral
if they hadn't taken LSD."

She was unable to conclude whether The Beatles would have been as
good, or at least as adventurous, had they never been introduced to
marijuana by Bob Dylan in 1964, and insisted there was "not an
absolute, direct link" between the drugs and their greatest work.

One pop star cast aspersions on the idea that The Beatles's success
was down to their choice of substances. Jackie McKeown, lead singer
of the indie band 1990s and former bandmate of Franz Ferdinand stars
Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson in Yummy Fur, told the Sunday Herald
he believed The Beatles's music was down to the company they kept and
the musical climate of the time.

He said: "The Dylan effect is more pronounced than the weed. You've
got these songs like Hide Your Love Away, which sounds really stoned,
but also sounds like Dylan.

"A few years later, it's Sergeant Pepper. But are they really being
influenced by LSD, or is it Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and The
Grateful Dead? There's nothing on Sergeant Pepper you wouldn't have
heard in San Francisco six months earlier. All the lyrics are like
plastic, mind-expanding dogs in the sky' kind of stuff, which is
basically Beat poetry set to music."

He did concede that one drug, heroin, had had the positive effect of
wiping away the "excess" of their psychedelic period and led to the
pared-down, bluesy rock of the "White Album".

Jim Gellatly, a former DJ on Xfm Scotland, said it didn't matter
whether The Beatles were influenced by drugs, because the music was
always good, unlike some of the moreoverblownmusic that followed them.

He said: "Look at Pink Floyd's music. You need to take drugs to
listen to it and they needed to take drugs to make it."