Did drugs change Johns personality ?

[nimrod]

The CIA used it to break down willpower and resistance before and during interogation. Sounds like it did the trick on John all by himself.

Yeah after reading Fred Seamans book Im solidly behind this reasoning. I mean who the hell knows how much of that book is the truth, but even if 20% of it is fact then John was indeed a sad fucker, couldnt decide what to wear, what image to adopt, hooked on cigs & caffiene, and pretty much regarded Yoko as his mother, very sad for a guy who was a leader..

I remember george saying in an interview 'if you were soldiers, John was the guy who would lead the charge and you would naturally follow him'
what happened to that guy ?

[Dcazz]

I think one of Yoko's nicknames was "Mother" and the song Julia was about both of them. I think John had lots of problems and by his own addmission he'd had "thousands" of trips, something had to give. His needs seem to have regressed back to what he missed out on or went through (sort of) as a kid. Being an creative person probably saved his life but not all of his pshyc came out alive.
If you extrapolate further his "retirement" from 1975-1980 could have been a neccessary ulitimate symptom of his psyc retreat after his "long weekend" in LA. which was IMHO the lowpoint in his descent that started years before.
John's ability to reinvent himself always seemed to pick him up and keep him going, this time as a dad and husband ,etc... 5 years later he was back.
An interesting article in Readers Digest a few years ago, detailed a chance meeting a woman had with John and Yoko riding bikes at a Christian Compoud in Japan before his death. She said he seemed very happy, open and approachable. Maybe he finally found what he needed was right in front of him all the time.

[Toejam]

I think drugs massively changed John Lennon but  so did becoming so incredibly rich and famous and acclaimed. I've always felt the end was so messy beccause John had become unhappy on account of his heroin addiction. I'm convinced if he hadn't have got on that stuff things would have been much different even to the extent they mightn't have split up at all. I think heroin made John incredibly irritable and testy which was the prime factor in the bands demise. Without heroin John would have been more room in his life for The Beatles and to maybe want to keep the band together more.

[nimrod]

I put it down to LSD more than Heroin, I think LSD can change a personality as it has done with Barrett, Green etc

We'll never know for sure though..

[fabfour]

When I read this by Geoff Emerick I cant help feeling that his personality was changed during 1967, in a way like Syd Barret (Pink Floyd) and Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac) but to a lesser degree

Geoff Emerick on the making of Lucy in the Sky: John's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (which also ended up being banned by the BBC because the title words spelled "LSD") was up next, and it soon became one of my favorite tracks on the album. It was actually done very quickly- including rehearsal, it took only three nights to complete. By this point the four Beatles were starting to get a little fed up with being stuck in the studio. After all, they'd been there for nearly five months and it wasn't the dead of winter, the weather was starting to brighten, so they were probably starting to get itchy. I know I was
By now it was evident that John's personality was changing. Instead of being opinionated about everything, he was becoming complacent; in fact, he seemed quite content to have someone else do his thinking for him, even when he was working on one of his own songs. By the spring of 1967, he was becoming increasingly disengaged, and that would more or less continue until the end of the Beatles career. No doubt Paul was aware of the situation, and he was seizing the opportunity to step in and expand his role within the band.
That manifested itself down in the studio as they worked on this song, with John's lead vocal getting less aggressive and more dreamy with each successive take. That might have been a reflection of what he was smoking behind the screens, but Paul was clearly steering him in that direction, too. We had decided to route George Harrison's guitar through the Leslie speaker during the choruses, and because that reminded John of the Dalia Lennon vocal effect from "Tomorrow Never Knows", Mal was duly dispatched to see if he could find a rope so John could try out his theory, that you could get the same effect by swinging around a microphone suspended by a rope. From the wink that Mal gave me when he returned some hours later, empty handed, I suspect that he had spent the evening in the pub instead. He knew how absurd, and potentially dangerous, the request was, and he probably guessed that John would have forgotten all about it by the time he got back, which, of course, is exactly what happened."

I hope that this a plausible reason for John turning into a bit of wacko....No Beatle changed more than John

[JohnEric]

To me (and I could be wrong), he looked so out of it during the Sgt. Pepper-period, to the point he didn't even look like his normal self at times.

[Dcazz]

To me (and I could be wrong), he looked so out of it during the Sgt. Pepper-period, to the point he didn't even look like his normal self at times.

I agree. There's one picture of him where he looks so thin and gaunt that you can't help thinking whats wrong! His neck is thin and extended he looks rough.

[Dcazz]

I got a book for Christmas that shows two pictures of John from Reolver 66 to Sgt. P in 67. The change of one year is drastic in my opinion. In the 66 photo he's full faced and reasonably healthy looking but the 67 photo he looks drawn and gaunt. Imo, I think his "thousands of trips" can be blamed. And then there's 1969!

[nimrod]

theyre interesting pics dcazz, Ive seen them all before but together they tell quite a story

[Dcazz]

theyre interesting pics dcazz, Ive seen them all before but together they tell quite a story

I think so. from casual experimentation to steady excessive use to snorting heroine. Evey picture tells a story!