Lennon meets Leary

This one’s new to me. That John Lennon set out to write a campaign song for Timothy Leary, who was running to unseat Ronald Reagan as governor of California. Its title would be “Come Together,” since that was the gist of Leary’s campaign motto: “Come together, join the party.” (We can assume there’d be LSD at that party.)

Well, Leary ran into a problem with his campaign, i.e., he was charged under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, and Lennon went on to rework “Come Together” for the next Beatles record, Abbey Road (which was almost called Everest, can you believe it?) The lyrics appear to have nothing to do with Leary or his campaign, unless you assume that LSD was involved in the composition, in which case, “He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca Cola,” makes perfect sense. Lennon says the words are “gobbledegook.”

Of course, I was lucky enough to sit in on some early takes for “Come Together,” as you’ll recall. You can read the story here, but you can’t hear my guitar work because YouTube muted me and the boys on the video. The crawl tells the tale though …

John was asleep for most of the session, but I can attest that when he was awake Timothy Leary’s name never came up.