Drugs did not interfere with the group’s communal loyalty and confidence in each other or impede incentives toward their passionate manhood’s professional goals. Instead, drugs enhanced their motivation to continue toward increased musical productivity which contributed to their growing fandom success. The Beatles not only conformed to consumerism’s appetite for corporate revenue, but their self-aligned approach unsettled the status quo’s methods for doing so. This combination of communal and expanded passionate expressions from the use of drugs was, in the opinion of this writer, their “magic” that triggered male fans’ reactions that claimed, “I can do that.” Merging their communal bond with expanded, uncharted personal preferences not only unlocked the method toward freedom of expression but the validity of its purpose.

Discussion of The Beatles’ expanded compositional and audio advances are found under In the Recording Studio section. It’s not merely a listing of what these advances were – there are many researchers who can more effectively do this. Instead, it will show how The Beatles’ masculine expressions were able to accomplish these progressive ideas by utilizing their self-aligned perspectives.

Lennon said:

Nobody could communicate with us because it was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time,” said Lennon. The Beatles soon graduated to using LSD within a year. From Revolver and beyond, their expanded ideas in composition, audio techniques and personal philosophy was welcomed by fans.

Eric Shaal, “When The Beatles’ Pot-Smoking Made Filming ‘Help’ a Nightmare,” Showbiz Cheat Sheet, November 1, 2019, https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/when-the-beatles-pot-smoking-made-filming-help-a-nightmare.html/.
 

Beatles musicologist Walter Everett examined songs on Rubber Soul that departed from earlier material and were now “richer, more melodious and haunting.” The album exuded an even stronger communal-based reflection of the group with, “a sense of collective identity, a mood and a sound linking them.”

Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through the Anthology, 329.

Songs had a slower, mellower tone which allowed for a new approach to rhythmic tempos, using triplet, swing sixteenth note density referents not previously used.

Rubber Soul now focused more upon The Beatles’ songwriting individuality, seen as an element of passionate self-awareness, while their communal connections may be perceived as stronger compared to previous songs. McCartney said, “I didn’t have a hard time with it, and to me it was mind-expanding. Literally, mind-expanding.”

Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, 190.

Since the theory of expanding self-alignment is the foundation of this blog’s argument for The Beatles’ continued success and longevity, then it must hold that there is evidence of continued personal expansion past drug use or even The Beatles’ own higher levels of commercial success. Harrison provided this evidence.

Harrison Separates from LSD

Harrison wanted out of The Beatles group for at least a year before Candlestick Park. The following statement from Harrison was made when he visited Haight-Ashbury in August 1967. Sgt. Pepper was already released two months earlier.

I can’t say how this [LSD] experience has affected others. We are all individuals. I made the mistake of assuming that my experience with LSD would be the same as anybody else’s. So, I presumed, mistakenly, that everybody who took LSD was a more illuminated being.

The Beatles, Anthology, 179.

Harrison realized that his own spiritual expansion and creative self-awareness through LSD were not shared by others. Witnessing the counterculture crowd in Haight-Ashbury made it clear that his own self-aligned nature and personal reflection of his masculine identity did not coincide with the counterculture and its communal responsibility and purpose. That is, seeing himself as a leader of popular music, he may have felt disappointed in the weaker communal nature of others – many of them his followers who did not match his own stronger one.

I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings. But it was full of horrible spotty drop-out kids on drugs and it turned me right off the whole scene. It certainly showed me what was happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what I’d thought – spiritual awakenings and being artistic. That was the turning point for me. That’s when I went off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid [LSD]

The Beatles, Anthology, 259.

Harrison seemed to desire a community of fans who grasped the value of seeking enhanced creativity and well-being through the enhanced self-aligned view he perceived for himself. The contrast seen in this example clarifies how The Beatles’ drug use expanded their already persisting self-aligned masculinity and does not imply that drug use leads directly to self-alignment. His decision to disassociate with the counterculture’s desire for hallucinogens is seen as his escalating self-awareness to determine another way forward. Harrison continued to devote the rest of his life to a spiritual understanding that was suitable for him and his self-aligned growth.

For more Marijuana and LSD influences on The Beatles, watch for the upcoming, Sounds of Masculinity: Male Fandom and The Beatles’ Glory.