When the Beatles admitted to drugging their engineer and producer

In the new Disney+ documentary series “The Beatles Anthology,” a 1991 interview is presented in which the then-surviving Beatles describe secretly spiking the tea served to engineer Geoff Emerick and producer George Martin with “uppers” in order to get them to do studio work later into the night.

In Episode 9, George Harrison described how Emerick and Martin would want to quit for the day around 5:30, while the band wanted to continue recording.

“Some of the people here, the engineer, for instance, would be always like, trying to go home at 5:30. And we’d all be like, well, you know, trying to make history or whatever. And Mal [Evans], our roadie, had this big teapot, it was a big aluminum teapot, and he’d go out. And I remember one specific incident where he made a pot of tea and we doused the tea with uppers. And then he was up there with George Martin, and I think it was Geoff Emerick, giving them the tea. ‘Cause they were, you know, “Can we go home now?” No, you can’t, you bastard. Have a cup of tea. And, you know, until they were up there, you know like, til 11:00 at night.”

Paul McCartney continues,

“Yeah, and then they didn’t want to go home. … They don’t know to this day, until they see this program.”

Ah, good fun in the ‘60s.

Here is a clip of that interview.

And here is the trailer for The Beatles Anthology.