An Animated John Lennon Describes His First Acid Trip

Way back when, we fea­tured an ani­ma­tion that doc­u­ment­ed the first acid trip of nov­el­ist Ken Kesey. In Kesey’s case, it all hap­pened in a care­ful, cal­cu­lat­ed way in 1959, under the care and con­trol of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Six years lat­er and 5,000+ miles away, John Lennon’s maid­en voy­age went down in a very dif­fer­ent way. A dentist–yes, a den­tist of all people–slipped LSD into John and George’s cof­fee, unbe­knownst to them. Next thing they knew build­ings were burst­ing into fire, and rooms mor­ph­ing into sub­marines. So began the Bea­t­les’ exper­i­men­ta­tion with psy­che­delics and new musi­cal sounds, which, togeth­er, shaped their 1965 mas­ter­piece, Revolver (stream it free on Spo­ti­fy).

John Lennon recounts that first acid trip in the ani­mat­ed video above. The link between psy­che­delics and Revolver gets cov­ered in a new piece in Rolling Stone.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943