Sir Paul McCartney Drops Bomb – Bob Dylan First Introduced The Beatles To Marijuana In 1964

Sir Paul McCartney dropped a bomb this week when he revealed that his famed band The Beatles smoked marijuana for the first time with legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan back in the 1960s. That is a lot of star power packed into one presumably smoky room.

Paul McCartney Talks Smoking Marijuana With Bob Dylan

McCartney recounted the memorable experience to Uncut magazine for their June issue.

The 78-year-old legend said bandmate Ringo Starr thought the “ceiling was moving” during the group’s first experience with marijuana. 

“It was at the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue and 59th in New York City in August, 1964. We were in a hotel room, all being good old lads having our Scotch and Coke – it was an afterparty, I think,” McCartney remembered. “Dylan arrived and he went into the bedroom with his roadie. Ringo went along to see what was up. So he finds Dylan, rolling up, and he has a toke.”

“He came back in and we said, ‘What was it like?’ So Ringo says, ‘The ceiling is kind of moving down…,'” he added. “We all ran into the backroom going, ‘Give us a bit, give us a bit!’ So that was the very first evening we ever got stoned!”

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Paul McCartney’s Drug Experimentation

McCartney has previously been open about experimenting with various drugs throughout his decades-long career in music. 

 “I tried heroin just the once,” McCartney told Daily Mirror in the early 2000s. “Even then, I didn’t realize I’d taken it. I was just handed something, smoked it, then found out what it was. It didn’t do anything for me, which was lucky because I wouldn’t have fancied heading down that road.”

“I did cocaine for about a year around the time of Sgt. Pepper,” McCartney continued, referring to The Beatles’ 1967 album. “Coke and maybe some grass to balance it out. I was never completely crazy with cocaine.”

“I’d been introduced to it and at first it seemed OK, like anything that’s new and stimulating,” he explained. “When you start working your way through it, you start thinking: ‘Mmm, this is not so cool an idea,’ especially when you start getting those terrible comedowns.”

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The Beatles Sang About Drugs

Sir Paul McCartney also talked about how The Beatles made references to drugs in their songs.

“A song like ‘Got to Get You Into My Life,’ that’s directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time,” McCartney said. “‘Day Tripper,’ that’s one about acid (LSD). ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ that’s pretty obvious. There’s others that make subtle hints about drugs, but, you know, it’s easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles’ music.”

“Just about everyone was doing drugs in one form or another and we were no different, but the writing was too important for us to mess it up by getting off our heads all the time,” he concluded. 

These revelations will certainly have new fans of Paul McCartney and The Beatles seeing their music idols in a whole new light!