Hello, and welcome back to This Week in History! Something that rarely makes its way into this column is the history of pop culture. While the previous historian behind this column, Gino Giassanti, dabbled in social events and major occurrences — like the sinking of the Titanic this week on April 15 — I feel that simply rehashing the history he already covered so exceptionally would be pretty basic. So, this week I’m diving into the history of the sixties, my favorite era of music and a remarkable era of change.
We begin this week in history on April 15, 1966, the publication date of an energetic Time magazine cover. Following an almost comically morbid blacked-out issue on April 8, asking, “Is God Dead?” Time magazine put out a wonderfully colorful issue covering “London: The Swinging City.” The cover features a glimpse into the art styles pervading the mainstream pop culture in the “swinging city” of London — the centerpiece for the “swinging sixties.”
Behind the standard Time logo at the top of the image is a darkened Union Jack, but below that is a lovely cacophony of color. Images of a discotheque, the core unit of the expanding music scene, are hidden behind wildly dressed dancers. On the right we see the automobile crazy take hold with a casino-esc scene in the center. In true Mod fashion, there’s also an image of a rocker — maybe even Roger Daltry of The Who — screaming in a wildly British pair of Union Jack sunglasses and a shirt that bears his band name.
For a little context, a few months before the magazine released, the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” album took No.1 on the album charts for a six-week run in December 1965, while in a few short weeks the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” would capture the English charts.
London was swinging, the music was groovy, and yet decades earlier, one accidental discovery set the stage for the destructive innovations to come.
While it should be fairly obvious at this point in the column, I’m not a scientist; but, this week in history let’s join the chemist Albert Hofmann in his lab at Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Switzerland.
Hofmann had spent most of 1942 and early 1943 exploring the neurological effects that lysergic acid diethylamide produced. He was the first to synthesize the fungal compounds as early as 1938, all while seeking a simple medicinal solution for migraines. Immersed in his research and unaware of its full strength, the synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide sat in Hofmann’s lab for five years until this week on April 16, 1943, when he examined its effects once again. Hofmann recalls in his book, “LSD — My Problem Child”:
“In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.”
Hofmann had discovered LSD. Now known as “Bicycle Day,” on April 19, Hofmann attempted to ride his bicycle home from work under the effects of his discovery, but the landscape morphed and bent as he rode, people passing by turned into creatures and he essentially left reality. This week in history, Hofmann was the first person to intentionally take LSD. He continued to take small amounts of the drug for the rest of his life.
Twenty-three years later, on April 19, 1966, the Beatles were recording at Studio Two at EMI Studios —- the secluded castle from which they ruled London’s music scene. There, over several days this week, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr assembled the psychedelically influenced song “Doctor Robert” — it was to go on their trippy response to the “Pet Sounds,” “Revolver.”
Upon its release, “Revolver” produced a new scene of underground psychedelic bands — many of whom would see a period of popularity in the true year of psychedelia: 1967. Though they often tried to deny it, the connection between LSD and this new wave of music is easy to spot.
In Doctor Robert, an unobscured discussion of drug use is a bold inclusion: “You’re a new and better man / he helps you to understand / he does everything he can, Doctor Robert.” Helping his “patients” day and night, Doctor Robert sure sounds like a drug dealer. Lennon commented that the song was “mainly about drugs and pills,” while McCartney said, “It was a big racket, but a joke too about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranquilizers, injections for this and that; he just kept New York high.”
Well, no doubt that the 1960s were forever changed by the growing mainstream appeal of LSD and its pop-culture infamy. Recall Hofmann’s description of LSD as a “kaleidoscopic play of colors,” by 1967, bands on both sides of the Atlantic would name themselves “Kaleidoscope” and embrace an emerging, colorful sound. Meanwhile, in “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” John Lennon sings of “A girl with kaleidoscope eyes,” clearly the “swinging city” was also a “Tripping City.”
And on that colorful, mind-warping note, I’ll see you next week in history!