Seventy years ago, an unsuspecting Albert Hoffman discovered a chemical substance that would alter the face of rock music and drug culture forever. While experimenting with the medicinal properties in lysergic acid compounds in the late 1930s and early '40s, Hoffman ingested what would soon become known as LSD, a drug that came to define the latter part of the 1960s music scene.
Hoffman wrote the following about his first experience taking acid: "Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away."
With LSD references sprinkled throughout much of the late '60s' music, psychedelic rock became synonymous with the hippie movement, which saw its apex with 1967's Summer of Love. Throughout these years, many songs contained both covert and outright allusions to artists' experimentation with this trippy substance, especially thanks to advocates like Timothy Leary and and Ken Kesey, who helped to introduce acid to certain bands like The Beatles and Grateful Dead.
LSD has lost some of its prominence in the 21st century (today's trendy music drug is MDMA, or "molly"), but the mind-bending references scattered throughout psychedelic rock still resonate with those who recall the drug's zenith. Here are 10 acid-infused lyrics.
