Interview for The Daily Mirror

In an article published in LIFE Magazine, on June 16, 1967, Paul McCartney is quoted saying:

After I took [LSD], it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what all we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world. If the politicians would take LSD. there wouldn’t be any more war, or poverty or famine.

Paul McCartney – Interview with LIFE Magazine, June 16, 1967

The UK press immediately seized upon it, and three days later Paul gave a statement to Independent Television News (ITN).

PAUL McCARTNEY, the Beatle in the centre of a storm since he admitted taking the “heaven and hell’ drug LSD, told me last night:

“I admit there are dangers in taking it.“

Then he added:

“But I took it with a deliberate purpose in mind: To find the answer to what life is all about.”

Paul had invited me to his home in St. John’s Wood London, after reading yesterday’s Daily Mirror editorial, which called him a B F and advised him to see a psychiatrist.

He said : “I won’t agree that I’ve swayed kids into taking LSD. Kids do what they want to do — always. They may follow us and grow a moustache, wear our kind of clothes — but they make their own decisions on personal things. Do all of Cliff Richard’s fans go around believing in God? No. When it gets down to personal issues we all make our own decisions.”

Paul said that he felt sorry for those who called him a bloody fool, “because I know I’m not.”

He added:

“As for seeing a psychiatrist — that’s nonsense. They admit they only know 80 per cent, of the brain’s function. So they can only give you a 20 per cent, answer to your questions.”

The 25-year-old bachelor Beatle, dressed in a floral silk shirt and cherry red trousers, went on:

“It’s not up to me to give the answer to LSD. I admit the dangers in taking it. But if you were to describe an aspirin as a ‘heaven and hell’ aspirin it would immediately fill you with horror… Unless you found out for yourself.”

He felt angry because his confession has been interpreted as irresponsible.

“It was a personal thing,” he said, “taken in a personal sense in my own personal home. I did not interfere with anyone else. Neither would I. And I feel I have been far more rational and sensible than anyone who calls me a bloody fool. If the human being is denied the right to think for himself then we are all going to land up in a society of nowhere men. If anything I’ve said is irresponsible then the Daily Mirror or any newspaper that prints it is acting with equal irresponsibility. I have been condemned for telling the truth. I wanted to keep quiet, but I was asked, and I told the truth rather than lie. And when I said ‘Maybe I will take LSD again’ — I don’t know whether I will or not. I can’t predict what is going to happen in the future.”