The Beatles’ Real-Life Dr. Robert Had the Feel-Good Cure for Celebs

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If the walrus was Paul, John was the mule. John Lennon claimed he was the Beatle who typically carried the band’s stash of diet pills in the early years, when the group needed artificial stimulation to get through long nights of multiple sets in the clubs of Hamburg, Germany.

Lennon once joked that he was his own inspiration for the 1966 song ‘Dr. Robert,’ which predated such better-known Beatles drug references as ‘A Day in the Life’ (“I’d love to turn you on”) and the perennially debatable intentions of ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.’ “If you’re down, he’ll pick you up, Dr. Robert,” Lennon sang. “Take a drink from his special cup, Dr. Robert.”

When the song appeared on the UK version of ‘Revolver’ in the summer of 1966 (in America, it was on the ‘Yesterday and Today’ album), many swinging Londoners figured the real Dr. Robert had to be gallery owner Robert Fraser. Fraser, who was friends with all the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and helped advance the careers of Pop artists like Peter Blake and Andy Warhol, was a bon vivant known as “Groovy Bob” for his endless supply of mind-altering substances.