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Post by stavros on Oct 11, 2014 17:10:11 GMT -5
This question is the topic of a column in the Daily Telegraph from a few days ago. Unfortunately the website editor of the piece seems to have forgotten that George was a member of the band on the album cover............ I feel this is just another of those headline grabbing surveys that academics seem to churn out every single day of the week to justify their chosen careers. We cannot ever hear the enhanced non-cannabis influenced version of 'Rubber Soul'. So the evidence they use is actually pointless. Rubber Soul is just one high point (pun intended)of the Beatles career, and if any dabbling hindered the production of the album then it still came out better than most albums I have heard.
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Post by Panther on Oct 11, 2014 23:31:13 GMT -5
Cannabis almost undoubtedly improved The Beatles' songwriting during late 1964 through 1965/66. It's hardly a secret that psychoactive ingredients in ingested substances can have enormous influence on artists' productions, usually of a very focused and imaginative kind. While a depressant can, of course, also make people paranoid and lazy (as somewhat happened to John, in particular, in this period), in The Beatles' case -- as judged by the enthusiasm with which they all, particularly Paul, embraced it as one -- it seems to have had the necessary effect of 'protecting' them from the outside world that was threatening to make nutcases of them all.
In short, The Beatles' live performances and business acumen might have been impaired by their heavy cannabis intake, but their mental stability and creativity was probably increased by it. I doubt Rubber Soul would have been quite as good without the presence of herbal jazz cigarettes.
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Post by John S. Damm on Oct 13, 2014 11:18:26 GMT -5
Yeah, this seems like a silly article, I agree with you both.
I wish Paul McCartney was still smoking Pot like there was no tomorrow because he was a cooler dude back when he was! Not only did he rule the Charts in his pot-smoking solo days but he wasn't keeping score with John Lennon on every perceived issue!
Heather Mills got him to quit and that is when Paul seemed to get very uptight about everything!
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Post by joeyself on Oct 13, 2014 16:29:58 GMT -5
Heather Mills got him to quit and that is when Paul seemed to get very uptight about everything! Or...maybe it was Heather herself that caused him to get uptight?? As to the topic at hand, it's one of those things that can't be known. Were the songs better after they started smoking weed? Not by the standard set on A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, a pre-marijuana album. If one is so inclined to think they were, the question then becomes "could they have been better?" If THC was causing a better creative output, then we would have thought the McCartney canon would have been better, no? Again, it's unknowable, and I find it something to muse briefly and then yawn. Which I have... JcS
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