Would "Sgt. Pepper's" be a better album if.....

Psychedelic music is somewhat of a misnomer since the music is not necessarily linked to drug use, probably very seldom, or even a drug lifestyle nor would the group or singer had to have taken LSD or any other drug to write or play psychedelic music. Maybe to listen to the music, though. 😃 Exceptions perhaps are Morrison and Joplin who performed with bottle in hand frequently and Carlos Santana who ingested LSD just prior to Santana’s set at Woodstock. Whaaaat! Yes, I know alcohol is not considered a psychedelic.😁 Of course the Stones’ Something Happened to me Yesteday was most definitely about taking LSD. 😳

I was being a little tongue-in-cheek, deliberately and intentionally provocative. I love "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "A Day In The Life", and they most likely came to be as a result of ingesting. Brian Wilson’s Smile definitely did. In "psychedelic", I was referring to the more pompous and self-consciously "high-art", grandiose practitioners of the style. 

I love a lot of the psychelic era stuff. Within You is more eastern mysticism/raga stuff that influenced George (and the other Beatles). The Stones Satanic Majesty, Pink Floyd, Spirit 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus, Captain Beyond--all great somewhat trippy stuff. 

Shame, the 2017 new release has been compressed to the hilt.
https://www.stereophile.com/comment/567554#comment-567554

Cheers George

The second and third Grateful dead albums are really interesting musical explorations, and can be considered psychedelic. Ironically, that era of The Dead ended with the release of Workingman's Dead in 1970, their stab at what is now called Americana. Ironic in that that style of music, which Dylan moved to in his 1968 John Wesley Harding album, and The Band did on their 1969 s/t second (the "brown" album), was a repudiation of psychedelia (as was The Band's first, 1968's Music From Big Pink). Those albums were extremely influential amongst musicians, as was The Byrds Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. Workingman's Dead was the Dead's response and reaction to those albums (Garcia is and was a big fan of Bluegrass and Hillbilly), as was Neil Young's Harvest, and all the Country/Rock that followed in the 70's. Meanwhile, psychedelic music continued on with the mass public---Pink Floyd, etc. The appeal of Dark Side Of The Moon completely eludes me.