THINK FOR YOURSELF
The Beatles get by with a little help from a friend.
Picture it.
Bob Dylan, now the recipient of a Nobel Prize, emerges from a blue Ford station wagon and the frenzied thrum of Manhattan's Park Avenue, past a throng of screaming fans, into the Hotel Delmonico (now a luxury condominium tower owned by Donald Trump). He rides an elevator to the sixth floor and sleuths through a bevy of reporters, policemen and hangers-on into the annals of music lore and legend.
"That was rather a coup," Paul McCartney would later admit. The Beatles, in their hotel suite with managers Brian Epstein and Mal Evans, met Dylan for the first time that August night in 1964. They were also introduced to another cultural icon of the '60s: marijuana.
"Until the advent of rap, pop music remained largely derivative of that night at the Delmonico," argued rock journalist Al Aronowitz (the mutual friend who staged the encounter) years later. "That meeting didn't just change pop music — it changed the times."
It is, in hindsight, a kairotic moment after which the Beatles, and music, were inarguably changed. Thanks to Dylan, they had graduated from pills and drink. A year later, they chanced on LSD. Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and all the records to follow would ultimately reveal the discoveries of their psychedelic explorations.
"Do you know what caused Pepper?" McCartney was once asked by producer George Martin. "In one word, George, drugs," he said. "Pot."
By: Conner Dinnison
Source: Inlander
