When asked about his involvement in the song, John is explicit. “‘Yesterday,’” he says, “I had nothing to do with.”

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

I know what it’s like to be dead.

—“She Said She Said”

Stop worrying!” United Artists’ movie posters commanded. “Help! is on the way.”

Not so for law enforcement assigned to cover the American tour in support of the sound track. “The Beatles may sing rock ’n’ roll, but they’ve got the cops moaning the blues,” the Long Island Star-Journal had reported on the Beatles’ August 1964 tour stop in New York.

One year later, there are heightened procedures in place.

The Beatles are in a helicopter transporting them from Manhattan to the grounds of the World’s Fair, in Queens, where they’ll be whisked into an armored truck flanked by sixty officers and onto a stage built specially for tonight’s show at Shea Stadium.

As the copter flies over Shea, John listens to the roar of the fans, which can be heard all the way up here, over the noise of the helicopter’s engine. PAUL, THROW US A KISS, RINGO, THROW US A RING, one banner pleads. Flashbulbs pop like machine-gun fire.

The American promoter of the concert, Sid Bernstein, marvels at the sight.

“It’s the top of the mountain, Sid,” John says.

*  *  *

At the Olympic-size swimming pool on the grounds of the Beatles’ rented mansion in Los Angeles, John and Paul are on a secret mission.

“There were good nights and bad nights on the tours,” Ringo says. “But they were all the same. The only fun part was the hotels in the evening, smoking pot and that.”

That is what John and George want to share with Paul and Ringo. On LSD, George recalls, “I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in twelve hours.”

Deeper experience, too. John has always treated George, the youngest Beatle, as “a kid who played guitar.”

“After taking acid [we] had a very interesting relationship,” George says. “I felt closer to him than all the others…just by the look in his eyes, I felt we were connected.”

John agrees. “We are probably the most cracked,” he says of himself and George, while “Paul is a bit more stable than George and I.”

And though John and George make it clear that “we couldn’t relate” to the uninitiated, Paul isn’t swayed, though he “felt very left out,” George later says. Still, while Ringo is willing to experiment, Paul holds back. “It was the way I’d been brought up,” he explains. “‘Beware the demon drug.’” But George admits, “We were all slightly cruel to him,” taunting Paul, “We’re taking it and you’re not.” The other three all drop acid, along with musicians David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and actor Peter Fonda.