Lennon grew concerned that fans attending Beatles concerts wereunable to hear the music for all the screaming, and that the band'smusicianship was beginning to suffer as a result.[36]The repertoire was by now dominated by Lennon/McCartney songs, whoselyrics were receiving greater attention from the writers than in thepartnership's early days. Lennon's "Help!" expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I meant it ... It was me singing 'help'".[37] He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat Elvis" period)[38] and felt he was subconsciously crying out for help and seeking change.[39] The following January he was unknowingly introduced to LSDwhen his dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon andHarrison and their wives, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug.[40][41] Another catalyst for change occurred a few months later in March. During an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave,Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink…We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first,rock and roll or Christianity."[42] Lennon's comment went virtually unnoticed in England but created a controversy when quoted by American teen magazine Datebook five months later. The uproar that followed—burning of Beatles records, Ku Klux Klan activity, and threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.Told what their host had done, and advised not to leave his housebecause of the likely effects, they left anyway in disbelief, only tobe transported into a world of hallucination during their journey home,where the buildings around them seemed to be on fire; "We were allscreaming ... hot and hysterical."
Deprived of the routine of live performances after their finalcommercial concert in 1966, Lennon felt lost and considered leaving theband.[43]Since his involuntary introduction to LSD in January, he had madeincreasing use of the drug, and was almost constantly under itsinfluence for much of the year. In the words of music historianJonathan Gould, "More than any of the other Beatles, John Lennon'sinvolvement with LSD over the course of 1966 had the aura of personalquest."[44]Lennon "turned his attention inward with the help of LSD, in the hopethat this drastic form of introspection might wean him from hisdependence on the persona of Beatle John", and spent "long hours indiffuse contemplation, wandering the corridors of his mind."[45]According to biographer Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experiencewith LSD during the year brought him "close to erasing his identity".[46]His use of the drug began to profoundly affect his songwriting, both asa product of his self-examination, and in what Gould calls the"hallucinatory imagery" he captured in his lyrics.[47] During 1967 he appeared in his only non–Beatles film, the black comedy How I Won the War. The same year, the group's landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bandrevealed Lennon lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songsof the Lennon/McCartney partnership's early years. Gould calls "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds""a song like no other love song John Lennon had ever written, a chaste,ethereal fairy tale in which Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, and thenkeeps on meeting her and losing her again".[48]Evidencing Lennon's surrealistic lyricism in full force, "The dreamypursuit continues across a surreal landscape of gargantuan flowers,then on via 'newspaper taxis' to ... a train in a station, and a finalfleeting glimpse of the girl with kaleidoscope eyes."[48] In August, introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales.[49] They later travelled to his ashram in India for further guidance, and while there composed most of the songs for The Beatles and Abbey Road.[50]
The group were shattered by the sudden death of Epstein during theBangor seminar. "I knew we were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "Ididn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything otherthan play music, and I was scared".[51] McCartney orchestrated the group's first post-Epstein project, the film Magical Mystery Tour, which proved to be their first critical flop. Its soundtrack album, Magical Mystery Tour, was a commercial success, with lyrics once again infused with Lennon surrealism. Describing "I am the Walrus", Gould writes, "For readers of Lewis Carroll, the Walrus and the Eggman are unmistakable characters from the pages of Through the Looking Glass.[52] In "Strawberry Fields Forever",Lennon used simple phrases to powerful effect: "'Strawberry fields ...Nothing is real.' Sharing a rhythm and a rhyme, these two phrases—theimage and the ethos—are fused in meaning for the duration of the song."[53]
With Epstein gone, the band members were becoming increasinglyinvolved in business activities, and in February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation comprising Apple Recordsand several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture asan attempt to "see if we can get artistic freedom within a businessstructure".[54] However, Lennon's increased drug experimentation, his growing preoccupation with Yoko Ono, and McCartney's own marriage plans left Apple in need of professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role, but he declined, advising Lennon to get back to making records. Lennon approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed against McCartney's wishes.[55]
At the end of 1968, Lennon featured in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (not released until 1996) in the role of a Dirty Mac band member. The supergroup, comprising Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed a vocal performance by Ono in the film.[57] Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon,[58] eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated.[59]Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins[60] (known more for its cover than for its music), Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album. In 1969 they formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing Live Peace in Toronto 1969.In protest at Britain's involvement in the Vietnam War, Lennon returnedhis MBE medal to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBEstatus, which could not be renounced.[61]Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance"(widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin[62]) and "Instant Karma!".Lennon's creative focus continued to move beyond The Beatles andbetween 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimentalmusic together:
Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969. He agreed not to informthe media while the band renegotiated their recording contract, and wasoutraged that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970.[63]Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!"He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple asthat."[64] In late interviews with Rolling Stone,he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a fool notto do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." He spoke tooof the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and ofhow he, Harrison, and Starr "got fed up with being sidemen for Paul...After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedlyled us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?"[65]
Following The Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janovin Los Angeles, California. Designed to release emotional pain fromearly childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janovfor four months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but theyfelt no need to continue and returned to London.[66] Lennon's emotional debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono BandMother", in which he confronted his feelings of childhood rejection,[67] and "Working Class Hero", banned by BBC Radio for its inclusion of the word "fucking".[68] The same year, Tariq Ali's revolutionary political views, expressed when he interviewed Lennon, inspired the singer to write "Power to the People". Lennon also became involved with Ali during a protest against Oz magazine'sprosecution for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as"disgusting fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released thesingle "God Save Us/Do The Oz" and joined marches in support of themagazine.[