On 28 August 1964 the future of rock ‘n’ roll changed forever, when Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to cannabis.
The Beatles were staying at the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue, near Manhattan’s Central Park. According to Derek Taylor, 200,000 incoming calls were received by the hotel switchboard during their two-day stay. Fans stood eight-deep outside, held back by barricades, and the lobby and corridors were patrolled by police officers. Nobody was able to visit the Beatles’ sixth floor suite without full authorisation.
The band were relaxing after the first of two dates at the Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, and were enjoying room service dinner with Brian Epstein and Neil Aspinall. In the hospitality suite next door, Taylor entertained reporters, photographers and celebrities including Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio and radio DJ Murray the K, all of whom were hoping to meet and maybe party with the Beatles.
The two parties were introduced by a mutual friend, the writer Al Aronowitz, at New York’s Delmonico Hotel. Dylan was driven from Woodstock by his road manager Victor Maymudes, picking up Aronowitz on the way.
Police officers prevented the trio from entering the hotel elevators until Mal Evans arrived to usher them upstairs. The Beatles warmly greeted the American guests, and drinks were offered.
Dylan expressed a preference for cheap wine. ‘I’m afraid we only have champagne,’ Epstein apologised, although there were other expensive French wines and Scotch and Coke. The Beatles began asking Evans to get some cheap wine, but Dylan got stuck in to what was available. They also offered him purple hearts, but Dylan and Aronowitz declined and suggested they smoke grass instead.
Brian and The Beatles looked at each other apprehensively. “We’ve never smoked marijuana before,” Brian finally admitted. Dylan looked disbelievingly from face to face. “But what about your song?” he asked. “The one about getting high?”
The Beatles were stupefied. “Which song?” John managed to ask.
Dylan said, “You know…” and then he sang, “and when I touch you I get high, I get high…”John flushed with embarrassment. “Those aren’t the words,” he admitted. “The words are, ‘I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide…'”
The Love You Make
After the misunderstanding had been put right, The Beatles and their guests got down to business. Aronowitz was unskilled in rolling joints so asked Dylan to do the honours; Dylan wasn’t much better, and much of the grass ended up in a fruit bowl on the room service table.
Bob hovered unsteadily over the bowl as he stood at the table while he tried to lift the grass from the baggie with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. In addition to the fact that Bob was a sloppy roller to begin with, what Bob had started drinking had already gotten to him.
Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Some of The Beatles had actually been introduced to cannabis in 1960, although the drug had made little impression.
We first got marijuana from an older drummer with another group in Liverpool. We didn’t actually try it until after we’d been to Hamburg. I remember we smoked it in the band room in a gig in Southport and we all learnt to do the Twist that night, which was popular at the time. We were all seeing if we could do it. Everybody was saying, ‘This stuff isn’t doing anything.’ It was like that old joke where a party is going on and two hippies are up floating on the ceiling, and one is saying to the other, ‘This stuff doesn’t work, man.’
The Americans were rightly wary of the police presence outside the suite, and of the room service waiters who were streaming in and out. Dylan suggested they move to one of the bedrooms, so all ten crammed inside: Dylan, Aronowitz, Maymudes, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starr, Epstein, Aspinall and Evans.
Dylan lit the first joint and passed it to Lennon. It was immediately given to Starr, whom Lennon dubbed ‘my royal taster’. They didn’t realise the etiquette was to pass the joint around, and Starr smoked as if it were a cigarette. Aronowitz asked Maymudes, a proficient roller, to make more joints, and soon everyone was smoking their own.
I don’t remember much what we talked about. We were smoking dope, drinking wine and generally being rock’n’rollers and having a laugh, you know, and surrealism. It was party time.
The Beatles spent the next few hours in hilarity, looked upon with amusement by Dylan. Brian Epstein kept saying, “I’m so high I’m on the ceiling. I’m up on the ceiling.” The normally-refined manager also exhibited some self-deprecating humour.
George and I were sitting on this bed and Brian was sort of lying there rather grandly as he would, very beautifully dressed and everything. I have this image of him with a tiny little bit of a butt in his mouth like an old tramp, trying to be graceful with this terrible little fag end.We actually all got stoned and we were giggling. It was giggling time and we were uncontrollable. And Brian was looking at himself, saying, “Jew! Jew!” He saw the funny side of it. It was as if he was finally sort of talking about the fact. “Oh, I’m Jewish. I forgot.” I don’t think he smoked it a lot. I think the band smoked much more.
Debbie Geller, The Brian Epstein Story
McCartney, meanwhile, was struck by the profundity of the occasion, telling anyone who would listen that he was “thinking for the first time, really thinking.” He instructed Mal Evans to follow him around the hotel suite with a notebook, writing down everything he said.
I remember asking Mal, our road manager, for what seemed like years and years, ‘Have you got a pencil?’ But of course everyone was so stoned they couldn’t produce a pencil, let alone a combination of pencil and paper.I’d been going through this thing of levels, during the evening. And at each level I’d meet all these people again. ‘Hahaha! It’s you!’ And then I’d metamorphose on to another level. Anyway, Mal gave me this little slip of paper in the morning, and written on it was, ‘There are seven levels!’ Actually it wasn’t bad. Not bad for an amateur. And we pissed ourselves laughing. I mean, ‘What the f**k’s that? What the f**k are the seven levels?’ But looking back, it’s actually a pretty succinct comment; it ties in with a lot of major religions but I didn’t know that then.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Evans kept the notebooks until his death in 1976, when they were confiscated and later lost by Los Angeles police.
Riding So High – The Beatles and Drugs
This article is an edited extract from Riding So High, the only full-length study of the Beatles and drugs.
The book charts the Beatles’ extraordinary odyssey from teenage drinking and pill-popping, to cannabis, LSD, the psychedelic Summer of Love and the darkness beyond, with a far-out cast including speeding Beatniks, a rogue dentist, a script-happy aristocratic doctor, corrupt police officers and Hollywood Vampires.
Available as an ebook and paperback (364 pages). By the creator of the Beatles Bible. Click here for more information and to order.
Also on this day...
- 2010: John Lennon’s toilet sells for £9,500
- 2001: Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band live: Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, Woodinville
- 1998: Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band live: Salle Des Etoiles, Monte Carlo
- 1992: Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band live: Waterloo Village, Stanhope
- 1969: George and Pattie Harrison travel to the Isle of Wight to see Bob Dylan
- 1969: Apple holds a launch party for Radha Krsna Temple
- 1969: Mary McCartney is born
- 1968: Recording: Dear Prudence
- 1966: The Beatles live: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles
- 1965: The Beatles live: Balboa Stadium, San Diego
- 1964: The Beatles live: Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, New York
- 1963: The Beatles live: Odeon Cinema, Southport
- 1963: Television: The Mersey Sound
- 1962: The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (evening)
- 1961: The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (lunchtime)
- 1960: The Beatles live: Indra Club, Hamburg
Want more? Visit the Beatles history section.
Yes, Bob Dylan introduced pot to the Beatles, and the Beatles popularized pot, for the world….but dig deeper…. Canadian country music singer Ian Tyson, in the CBC documentary, Songs from the Gravel Road, claims that HE introduced pot to Bob Dylan, who is an old friend.
So, a country singer from the Canadian province started it!
It was Paul Clayton and Van Ronk who got Bob started…….. Commissioner
No one, “started it”, like music, it’s passed from soul to soul.
Hm, I don’t think the Beatles were popularizers, particularly, no more than any other popular musicians of the time – it’s not as though they went around advertising it! At least not until that ’67 pro-legalization newspaper advert, by which time the stuff had become popular enough on its own.
It was Suze Rotolo one of Dylans early girlfriend who said it was Canadian folk singer Ian Tyson who introduced pot to Dylan.
I am kind of pissed the LAPD lost Evans notebooks
Yeah, me too but really things don’t ever get lost, they only change owner.
Alistair Taylor, (who may not be a credible source, given his account of Raymond Jones), in his 2003 biography ‘With the Beatles’, casually remarks that “The Beatles rolled a joint or three” in the car after their gig at East Ham Granada, which was on 9 November 1963!
Can that be right?
Sounds like nonsense to me. I haven’t read Taylor’s book, but all other accounts suggest The Beatles were completely naive about cannabis prior to August 1964.
I heard they tried it Hamburg but didn’t like it then. Alistair Taylor is a lying, idiot who claims to be this great player in their history. He was a fail.
And where does your opinion on Taylor come from – the dumper? Maybe you’re the idiot.
The Beatles were quite familiar with various recreational drugs long before arriving in the USA.
Liverpool was far from a drug free zone for young people, especially musicians, and their gig in Germany was often fogged with various drugs.
Hm, your article claims differently, Joe!
https://www.beatlesbible.com/features/drugs/3/
Ah, so it does! But only inasmuch as they may have smoked it once in the early 60s but it didn’t seem to have had much effect. I think it’s still the case that Dylan turned them on to it, after which they became massive stoners.
That sounds about right.
So in a way, it was actually Bob Dylan who broke up the Beatles. The beginning of the end.
Or the end of the beginning?
I’m sure the facts are as they’re told here, but cannot agree with the date at all! It must have been when The Beatles made their two first appearances at the Ed Sullivan Show. (First one on 9th February. They also gave concerts Washington Coliseum 11th, Carnegie Hall, New York 12th, etc. That is, between the 8th and 16th February 1964.
They were in London on the 28th! There were new releases and they also made their “Fron Us To You TV show that day.
I think you’ve misread the date in question. (perhaps you were high?) The toke-up is believed to have happened on the 28th of August, 1964. Whereas the “From Us To You” program you referred to (2nd edition) was recorded on the 28th of February, 1964.
I just read Victor Maymudes book ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN. Of course, in that book, Victor’s the center of everything. According to him, HE had the pot, and when he got to the room, Dylan drank a couple of drinks and passed out. Maymudes says he had the pot, and he rolled all the joints, handed them out ,etc. Also, he said that, while Dylan slept, that the beatles one by one sat by him and asked him all kinds of questions. Dylan remained asleep the whole time. Then the next morning when Dylan’s entourage left, Paul went up to Victor, hugged him for ten minutes, (sic), and said “Its your fault that now I love this stuff”. Obviously this Victor guy was lying. He even says in the book, that the beatles were all in their matching collarless grey suits, when they got to the hotel room. This was a huge disappointment to me, cos any extra info on this occasion is worth knowing about. (ps. Victor Maymudes also claims to have turned Dylan onto LSD. As if.)
i wouldn’t count on anything a self promoter says, def not Victor. yawn.
I wonder what the atmosphere like when that meeting took place. It is like a meeting of six biggest oil companies CEOs.. But of course, with that smoke-filled room , I mean not the usual cigarette smoke, it must be a sublime event. I could imagine how mr Starr simply wouldn’t pass the joint to the other. and mr McCartney, the prolific one, come up with ideas during the trip. I think the Beatles working as a team, and Dylan has always been the lone ranger one. Artistic people…There must be someone out there try to figure out how to make those talents becoming more receptive with the other and work like machine. I bet venture capitalists already work things out how to gather a bunch of talented people and make them work together sustainably by minimizing that superstar syndrome in them.
And… thanks to the Jester… The Beatles and their collective psycho-maturity begins the swirl around around and down… This means that their humanity song writing reached its peak in August 1964… until it gets serious in effects with the introduction of LSD in 1966 – JL especially loses his ability to just be a man with artistic creative talent but becomes a ‘mind man’ only – unable to confront basic living things and skills and deal rationally with relationships – this would eventually ruin his marriage, his group, his income, his happiness, and his music. Pot is harmful, LSD 10x’s worse. and there are some effects that never wear off.
You better just you better just cancel your interest in the band then mate; they were drinking copious amounts & popping prellies by the fist full before the Decca tapes!
You are an idiot. Would these comments be from personal experience? I think not. Have you ever thought for yourself or do you just puke out other peoples propaganda.
A real walking antique! Pot really ruined Bob Dylan’s career, eh? That would be Bob Dylan who just won the Nobel. Steve Jobs, another colossal failure! Any other wisdom for us David?
Bob Dylan and John Lennon?
This photoshop has been circulating for many years and was debunked from at least 2011.
In the link below is the original photograph of John Lennon, with Paul McCartney in the background, backstage at a Beatles’ concert at the Grugahalle in Essen during the German leg of the Beatles’ final world tour, 25 June 1966.
No Bob.
The picture of Dylan is a reversed and cropped version of a photograph by Tony Gale of Bob Dylan in London, 1966.
The original pictures are in the gallery on the website.