Monday 7 August 1967 | Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California
On 7 August 1967, George Harrison, his wife Pattie Boyd, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and Alexis ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where they walked through the hippie district of Haight-Ashbury. The visit — undertaken on LSD, surrounded by a growing crowd who recognised Harrison as a Beatle — proved to be one of the most significant turning points in his life. It was the moment, Harrison later said, that he went “right off the whole drug cult” and turned instead toward meditation and Eastern spirituality.
The Journey to San Francisco
The party had spent six days in Los Angeles before flying north to San Francisco in a private Lear jet. The primary purpose of the visit was personal: to see Jenny Boyd, Pattie’s sister, who was living in the city. Pattie later recalled the journey in her memoir:
“We also went to see my sister Jenny, who was living with a friend in San Francisco. We flew there in a private Lear jet with Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall and were met by a limo, then picked up Jenny, and we all went to have lunch. Afterwards we thought it would be fun to go and have a look at Haight-Ashbury, the district that had been taken over by hippies. Musicians like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin lived there, and it was the LSD capital of America. On the way, Derek produced a tab. Would we like some? Since we were going to Haight-Ashbury, it seemed silly not to.”
— Pattie Boyd
George Harrison — officially licensed merch
George Harrison Sun & Moon T-Shirt in black.
‘Like the Manifestation of a Hieronymus Bosch Painting’
Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ press officer and a witness to the day, later wrote in The Beatles Anthology:
“Photographs tell the story of this great visit by one of the Fab Pied Pipers; it is one of the best-known moments in The Great Novel. The crowds that gathered, well-meaning though they were, pressed upon the English visitors and made life difficult and a little dangerous. George didn’t enjoy Haight-Ashbury, yet it was right and inevitable that one of Them should have been there in those times.”
— Derek Taylor, The Beatles Anthology
Pattie Boyd’s account of the walk through Haight-Ashbury captures the increasingly surreal and frightening atmosphere as the crowd grew around them:
“The area is named after the intersection of two streets, Haight and Ashbury, and as we approached, the driver said he wouldn’t drive down the street itself, he’d park among the side-streets. It seemed a little odd but we didn’t argue. We got out of the car, the acid kicked in and everything was just whoah, psychedelic and very… I mean, it was just completely fine. We went into a shop and noticed that all these people were following us. They had recognised George as we walked past them in the street, then turned to follow us. One minute there were five, then ten, twenty, thirty and forty people behind us. I could hear them saying, ‘The Beatles are here, the Beatles are in town!’
We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned – even mothers and babies – and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn’t stop for fear of being trampled. Then somebody said, ‘Let’s go to Hippie Hill,’ and we crossed the grass, our retinue facing us, as if we were on stage. They looked at us expectantly – as if George was some kind of Messiah.
We were so high, and then the inevitable happened: a guitar emerged from the crowd and I could see it being passed to the front by outstretched arms. I thought, Oh, God, poor George, this is a nightmare. Finally the guitar was handed to him. I had the feeling that they’d listened to the Beatles’ records, analysed them, learnt what they’d thought they should learn, and taken every drug they’d thought the Beatles were singing about. Now they wanted to know where to go next. And George was there, obviously, to give them the answer. Pressure.
George was so cool. He said, ‘This is G, this is E, this is D,’ and showed them a few chords, then handed back the guitar and said, ‘Sorry, man, we’ve got to go now.’ He didn’t sing – he couldn’t have: he was flying. We all were. I was surprised he could even do that.
Anyway, we got up and walked back towards our limo, at which point I heard a little voice say, ‘Hey, George, do you want some STP?’
George turned around and said, ‘No, thanks, I’m cool, man.’
Then the bloke turned round and said to the others, ‘George Harrison turned me down.’
And they went, ‘No!’
And then the crowd became faintly hostile. We sensed it because when you’re that high you’re very aware of vibes, and we were walking faster and faster, and they were following. When we saw the limo, we ran across the road and jumped in, and they ran after us and started to rock the car, and the windows were full of these faces, flattened against the glass, looking at us.”
— Pattie Boyd
George Harrison’s Own Account
George Harrison later gave his own vivid account of the day in The Beatles Anthology:
“We went up to San Francisco in a Lear jet. Derek took us to visit a disc jockey, and we went straight from the airport to the radio station in a limo. The DJ gave us some concoction and then we went off to Haight-Ashbury. I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings in little workshops. But it was full of horrible spotty drop-out kids on drugs, and it turned me right off the whole scene. I could only describe it as being like the Bowery: a lot of bums and drop-outs; many of them very young kids who’d dropped acid and come from all over America to this mecca of LSD.
We walked down the street, and I was being treated like the Messiah. The Beatles were pretty big, and for one of them to be there was a big event. I became really afraid, because the concoction that the DJ had given me was having an effect. I could see all the spotty youths, but I was seeing them from a twisted angle. It was like the manifestation of a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting, getting bigger and bigger, fish with heads, faces like vacuum cleaners coming out of shop doorways… They were handing me things – like a big Indian pipe with feathers on it, and books and incense – and trying to give me drugs. I remember saying to one guy: ‘No thanks, I don’t want it.’ And then I heard his whining voice saying, ‘Hey, man – you put me down.’ It was terrible. We walked quicker and quicker through the park and in the end we jumped in the limo, said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and drove back to the airport.
It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what I’d thought – spiritual awakenings and being artistic – it was like alcoholism, like any addiction. The kids at Haight-Ashbury had left school and dossed out there, and instead of drinking alcohol they were on all kinds of drugs.
That was the turning-point for me – that’s when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle (it was liquid). I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn’t put that into my brain any more.
People were making concoctions that were really wicked – ten times stronger than LSD. STP was one; it took its name from the fuel additive used in Indy-car racing. Mama Cass Elliot phoned us up and said, ‘Watch out, there’s this new one going round called STP.’ I never took it. They concocted weird mixtures and the people in Haight-Ashbury got really f****d-up. It made me realise: ‘This is not it.’ And that’s when I really went for the meditation.”
— George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
George Harrison — officially licensed merch
George Harrison All Things Must Pass T-Shirt in grey.
The Flight to Monterey — and a Near-Disaster
After escaping Haight-Ashbury, the party was driven to the airport and boarded a Lear jet for Monterey. The flight proved almost as alarming as the walk through the district had been:
“I was sitting right behind the pilots; two big brown-brogue-shoed Frank Sinatras. As it took off, the plane went into a stall – we hadn’t got very high before we went into a steep turn and the plane made a lurch and dropped. The whole dashboard lit up saying ‘UNSAFE’ right across it. I thought, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Alex was chanting, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,’ and I was saying, ‘Om, Christ, Om…’ Somehow it recovered itself, and we flew down to Monterey and stopped there. We went to the beach and became calm again.”
— George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
Trouble Getting Coffee in Monterey
The day’s surreal quality continued in a Monterey café, where the group’s long hair and hippie-style clothing made them unwelcome. Derek Taylor recorded the scene:
“We went on to Monterey, and had difficulty getting coffee in a coffee-shop. When the waitress, pretending not to see us in this Lytham-St-Anne’s-on-Pacific, was hailed by George (‘We have got the money, you know,’ he said finally, not quietly, waving a thousand dollars in bills) she recognised him and dropped every piece of crockery she was holding. Dozens of plates and saucers and cups shattered on the floor – she had collected them, too many of them, as she busied herself to avoid the cloud of denim in the corner. Things hadn’t loosened up everywhere yet, it seemed.”
— Derek Taylor, The Beatles Anthology
The Turning Point
The Haight-Ashbury visit is widely regarded as the moment George Harrison turned away from LSD and began his deeper commitment to Eastern spirituality and Transcendental Meditation. Within weeks, The Beatles would meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a lecture in London on 24 August 1967 — an encounter that would take them to Rishikesh, India, the following year and profoundly shape the music and philosophy of their final years together.
Harrison’s disillusionment with the Haight-Ashbury scene was not a rejection of the spiritual search that had drawn him to India and to the sitar — it was, as he described it, a clarification. The drug culture, he concluded, was not the path. Meditation was.
George Harrison — officially licensed merch
George Harrison Water Colour Portrait T-Shirt in white.
Key Facts
| Date | Monday 7 August 1967 |
| Location | Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California; then Monterey, California |
| Party | George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Alexis ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas, Jenny Boyd |
| Primary purpose of San Francisco visit | To visit Jenny Boyd, Pattie’s sister |
| Significance | Harrison’s turning point away from LSD and toward meditation and Eastern spirituality |
| What followed | The Beatles met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in London on 24 August 1967 |
Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco — where George Harrison walked on 7 August 1967, in what he later described as the turning point that led him away from LSD and toward meditation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did George Harrison visit Haight-Ashbury?
Yes. On 7 August 1967, George Harrison visited the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco with his wife Pattie Boyd, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and Alexis Mardas. The visit, undertaken on LSD, proved deeply disillusioning and marked the turning point at which Harrison stopped taking the drug and committed more fully to meditation.
Why did George Harrison visit San Francisco in 1967?
The primary purpose of the visit was to see Jenny Boyd, the sister of George’s wife Pattie Boyd, who was living in San Francisco. The trip to Haight-Ashbury was an addition to the day, not the original plan.
What happened when George Harrison visited Haight-Ashbury?
Harrison and his party were recognised as they walked through the district, and a crowd of up to forty people followed them. On Hippie Hill, a guitar was passed through the crowd to Harrison, who showed the crowd a few chords before the group retreated to their limousine. The crowd rocked the car as they tried to leave. Harrison described the experience as deeply disillusioning, comparing it to a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
How did the Haight-Ashbury visit affect George Harrison?
Harrison later said the visit was the turning point at which he stopped taking LSD. He described the drug culture he witnessed as being like alcoholism rather than the spiritual awakening he had expected. The experience accelerated his commitment to Transcendental Meditation, and within weeks The Beatles met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in London.
Who was with George Harrison at Haight-Ashbury?
George Harrison was accompanied by his wife Pattie Boyd, Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall, press officer Derek Taylor, Alexis ‘Magic
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