Legalize Pot Rally, Hyde Park, London, England, 1967
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was a renowned American poet, world traveller spiritual seeker, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human and civil rights, photographer and songwriter, political gadfly, teacher and co-founder of a poetics school. Allen Ginsberg was in London for a pro-marijuana rally in Hyde Park. He met Jagger at McCartney’s house, and Jagger invited the Beat poet to that night’s session with Paul and John to record uncredited backing vocals for “We Love You”. Ginsberg, waving his Shiva beads and a Tibetan oracle ring, conducted the singers from the other side of the studio glass to the tempo of the stuttering Mellotron track. “They looked like little angels,” he wrote later of the Stones and the Beatles, “like Botticelli Graces singing together for the first time.”