Timothy Leary
You Can Be Anyone This Time Around

“This is a dangerous album”...

Thus David Greenberg in capital letters describes this work from inside the booklet, and to call it an album is perhaps a bit exaggerated since it consists of three tracks totaling just over 29 minutes, but that it's dangerous... of this, there is no doubt. So... let's go in order, because talking about the LSD guru is somewhat complicated.

The first track “Live And Let Live” is a narration by Leary (rap in the credits) through all the themes most dear to him such as the use of psychedelic substances for the liberation of consciousness from the oppression of the American state on the minds of young people, forced to enlist for Vietnam or live in ghettos, constantly oppressed, only because they belong to some ethnic minority present in the USA. There are excerpts from rallies for his election as governor of the state of California to which he presented himself (of which there is a beautiful original poster-like manifesto by fully opening the booklet), all set on a fantastic fourteen-minute psych-blues carpet, inspired by the words of the “master” and crafted by the guitars of Stephen Stills and John Sebastian, Jimi Hendrix's bass, and Buddy Miles's drumming. “You Can Be Anyone This Time Around” is a Leary chant reminding us that we can be anyone and anything, in this period... where he uses snippets of famous pieces like “The Ballad Of John and Yoko” to remind us that we too can be the two protagonists or be the Rolling Stones of “Sympathy For The Devil” or Ginsberg reciting the best minds of his generation... or be natural elements like wind, sky, sun, moon... love, deities, and various reincarnations... in a mystical trip supported by an obsessive rhythm and a piano highlighting its various moments. ”Make a love trip this time around” was his favorite slogan.

And up to this point, we are still in the “normality” of the character embedded in his time. But with the last episode “What Do You Turn On When You Turn On” wonder becomes sound... almost liquid, materialized before us... Leary's voice recites a litany of his most “incisive” thoughts like “Turn On Turn In Drop Out” (decondition yourself, tune in, and free yourself) and the track is a sort of obsessive and unconscious proto-house (perhaps never like here the term acid-house is fitting) naive in its simplicity and dazzling in its freshness/novelty. Where the only flaw lies in the volume, decidedly in the background compared to the voice... but what the heck...!!!

President Richard Nixon told Americans that Timothy Leary was the most dangerous living man and that his philosophy had to be eliminated. It was the beginning of a series of complaints, arrests, imprisonments, and daring escapes. On May 31, 1996, he embarked on his final journey and his ashes were placed on a rocket ship, launched into the skies, and scattered in space among the stars.