Tags
Today Ringo, never the best traveler, opted out of the Greek island tour and flew back to England to be with his pregnant wife. (Maybe he had seen one too many episodes of Gilligan’s Island.) The others continued on without him. According to George,
It was a great trip. John and I were on acid all the time, sitting on the front of the ship playing ukuleles. Greece was on the left; a big island on the right.
This may have been the apex of The Beatles’ acid-gobbling phase; within a month they would meet the Maharishi and publicly renounce the drug. Paul, for one, was already getting a little tired of it:
We went on the boat and sat around and took acid. It was good fun being with everyone, with nippier moments. For me the pace was a bit wearing. I probably could have done with some straight windows occasionally, I’d have enjoyed it a bit more.
Paul was a little ahead of the curve in this respect, but I’d bet that a lot of people across the world — most especially in San Francisco — were feeling similarly, or would be soon. A little over a month into the Summer of Love, things had started to turn — or at least that’s my perception as a historical observer. The real timeline is hard to parse, but when George and Pattie Harrison arrived in SF — less than two weeks hence — they found it
horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains.
But there I go getting ahead of myself again. Back on board The Beatles’ yacht, the MB Arvi, “The sun was shining and we sang ‘Hare Krishna’ for hours and hours,” says George. But, he adds,
Eventually we landed on a little beach with a village, but as soon as we stepped off the boat it started pouring with rain. There were storms and lightning, and the only building on the island was a little fisherman’s cottage – so we all piled in: “Scuse us, squire. You don’t mind if we come and shelter in your cottage, do you?”
The island was covered in big pebbles, but [Magic] Alex said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have the military come and lift them all off and carry them away.” But we got back on the boat and sailed away, and never thought about the island again.