Calling all you children of the 60s, especially those who loved the Beatles. “Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song” of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the first album I ever bought. And this has nothing to do with Paul turning 80 this year.

btw the album was named after a real Sgt. Pepper, a Canadian, but that’s another story.

Variously hailed as a unique, clever, stunning masterpiece, and “the most ambitious and most successful record album ever issued”, Sgt. Pepper also holds the distinction of being the Beatles album with the most “naughty” songs to have been banned by the BBC. The most famous is perhaps Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. John Lennon claimed it was nothing more than an innocent song inspired by his son Julian’s drawing of a classmate, Lucy. But to the BBC, the “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” screamed LSD. Banned!

Ditto A Day in the Life (“I’d love to turn you on”) and Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (“Henry the horse”, two slang words for heroin).

So what caused me to recall these peculiar distant memories of Pepper?

Netflix.

I apologize to those of you who don’t subscribe, but I just watched the first two instalments of a fascinating four-part Netflix documentary, How to Change Your Mind. In it, academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney and New York Times best-selling author Michael Pollan focus on four different mind-altering substance: LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline. This journey to the frontiers of a new psychedelic renaissance explores the potential of these substances to heal and change minds.

It certainly changed mine.

And if you don’t have Netflix, then perhaps consider How to Change Your Mind, the book. I’d love to know if either turns you on .