RICHARD P'OIRIER
to
US
through that gridiron of style that Harold Rosenberg imagines
as a debilitating shield in front of the British Redcoats even as
they
first entered the American terrain. No, the Beatles have the distinction
in their work both of
knowing
that this is how they see and feel things
and of enjoying the knowledge. It could be said that they know what
Beckett and Borges know but without any loss of simple enthusiasm
or innocent expectation, and without any patronization of those who
do not know. In the loving phrases of "Penny Lane," "A pretty nurse
is selling poppies from a tray / And tho' she feels as if she's in a
play, / She is anyway."
It isn't surprising that drugs have become important to their
music, that they are leading an effort in England for the legalization
of marijuana, partly as a result of the conviction and sentencing on
drug charges of two of the Rolling Stones, and that in response to
questions, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison have let it be known that
they've taken LSD. At least four of the songs on the Sgt. Pepper album
are concerned with taking a "trip" or "turning on": "A Little Help
from My Friends," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Fixing a
Hole" and "A Day in the Life," with a good chance of a fifth in
"Getting Better.
f
'
Throughout the album, the consciousness of the
dramatis personae
in the songs is directed more or less by inventions
of media or of the popular arts, and drugs are proposed as one kind
of personal escape into the freedom of some further invention all on
one's own. Inventing the world out of the mind with drugs is more
physically risky than doing it by writing songs, films or wearing
costumes, but danger isn't what the songs offer for consideration, and
it's in any case up to the Beatles alone to decide what they want for
their minds and bodies. Instead, the songs propose, quite delightfully
and reasonably, that the vision of the world while on a "trip" or under
the influence of a drug isn't necessarily wilder than a vision of the
world through which we travel under the influence of the arts or the
ne~s
media. Thus, the third song on the album, "Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds," proposes that the listener can "picture" a "trip"
scene without taking such a "trip" himself. Here, as in "Baby You're
a Rich Man," the experience of a "trip" is wittily superimposed on
the experience of ordinary travel: "Picture yourself on a train in a
station, / With plasticine porters with looking glass ties, / Suddenly
someone is there at the turnstile, / The girl with kaleidoscope
