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The songs Paul McCartney wrote about marijuana

Thu 13 July 2023 17:00, UK

Most famous, of course, for his work alongside John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as The Beatles, Paul McCartney and his three fellow Liverpudlians changed the face of popular music almost single-handedly throughout the 1960s. They began the decade as four cheeky mop-tops from Liverpool writing primarily of love. Eventually, they found themselves looking like the cast of Scooby-Doo singing about yellow submarines, meter maids, tangerine trees, marmalade skies and spiritual peace, man.

In no small part was this artistic shift brought about by the devil’s lettuce, marijuana. The substance was first introduced to The Beatles by Bob Dylan. The Fab Four first met Dylan in August 1964 in New York following one of the folk rocker’s concerts at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens.

Dylan allegedly got the Fab Four so high that Paul McCartney thought he had figured out the meaning of life. Meanwhile, Ringo Starr, unaware of the conventional joint-sharing policy, held onto the joint instead of passing it along. Dylan’s road manager Victor Maymudes, realising that he was dealing with amateurs, then rolled a joint for each band member. Starr shared the story’s inevitable conclusion with late-night TV host Conan O’Brien in 2012, stating: “We got high and laughed our asses off.”

While Dylan remained friendly with The Beatles long after their split, especially with George Harrison, there were a few signs of budding resentment between the two parties amid copyist accusations in the mid-1960s. In 1965, The Beatles followed up the year’s first album, Help!, with Rubber Soul. The new album marked a notable change in style for the band as their lyrics took on a more insightful edge, enhanced and inspired by the newly discovered mind-altering herb.

The Beatles’ first song about marijuana was the 1964 non-album single ‘She’s a Woman’. On the surface, it may appear as yet another lovelorn ditty, but McCartney had another muse in mind. “That’s Paul with some contribution from me on lines, probably,” recalled John Lennon in the book All We Are Saying. “We put in the words ‘turns me on’. We were so excited to say ‘turn me on’ – you know, about marijuana and all that… using it as an expression.”

By 1966, The Beatles were experienced weed smokers, and once more, McCartney decided to write a song in devotion. Discussing ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ in a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney revealed, “I’d been a rather straight working-class lad, but when we started to get into pot, it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn’t seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana, and to me, it seemed it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding.”

“So ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ is really a song about that,” he added. “It’s not to a person, it’s actually about pot. It’s saying, ‘I’m going to do this. This is not a bad idea.’ So it’s actually an ode to pot.”

As The Beatles inched towards their most psychedelic chapter, marked by 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, the references to drugs began to proliferate under the influence of LSD. With lyrics like “roll up for the magical mystery tour” and “I get high with a little help from my friends,” not quite so much was left to the imagination regarding lyrical inspiration.

Below, we list the tracks Paul McCartney wrote as odes to marijuana.