Bob Dylan Week (V) -- Bob and the Beatles (Before the Walrus)

Music journalist Al Aronowitz, in Bob Dylan and the Beatles (2004) claimed that he introduced John, Paul, George and Ringo to Bob, and subsequently to cannibus aswell. During the 1960s, Aronowitz was a reporter for the New York Post, and is said to have pioneered serious rock journalism (and perhaps journalistic "embedding" -- since he was not just an observer, but often a participant, in the emerging drug culture of rock and roll).

According to Hammond Guthrie, in the political newsletter Counterpunch:

Bob Dylan's first meeting with the Beatles was one such pivotal event, which anchors this intriguing collection of anecdotes. It was the summer of 64, just before the US release of "The Beatles for Sale." The Fab Four were still composing ditties like "I Don't Want To Spoil the Party" and covering standards such as "Kansas City."

By now an unofficial attache for Dylan, Al stepped in and introduced him to the Liverpool mop tops. Exactly a year later the Beatles released "Help!" The album and the movie soon got their fans wondering: "Are these guys stoned?" Al Aronowitz knew the truth. He had personally turned them on at the Hotel Delmonico on Manhattan's Park Avenue on August 28th 1964.

Further on this meeting, Matt Schudel, reporting in the San Diego Union-Tribune relates:

The high point of his career, in more ways than one, may have come Aug. 28, 1964, when he brought the Beatles together with Dylan at the Hotel Delmonico in New York. According to inside accounts, Mr. Aronowitz opened his private stash of marijuana and offered some to the Beatles, who apparently had never tried it. John Lennon asked Ringo Starr to be his "royal taster."

"Soon, Ringo got the giggles," Mr. Aronowitz wrote years later, and "the rest of us started laughing hysterically at the way Ringo was laughing hysterically."

The meeting proved musically fruitful, as well, because it led both the Beatles and Dylan in new directions.

So, a parody from The Meth Minute: