Politics & Power Quote by Jim Capaldi

There is a particular kind of rock-memoir brag that comes wrapped as a confession, and Jim Capaldi nails it: the humblebrag of chemical destiny. The line pretends to lower the temperature - “I have to confess” - while quietly raising the stakes to mythic. Not just acid, but “probably the first acid ever made,” delivered by a named emissary (“a guy called Johnny Fellows”) freshly back from America, like a psychedelic Paul Revere. Capaldi isn’t only recounting intoxication; he’s building an origin story with provenance.

The intent is both explanatory and self-protective. By pinning a “strong contributing factor” on LSD, he offers an alibi for whatever behavior or creative leap sits just offstage in the larger anecdote. That’s a familiar move in music culture: substances as narrative lubricant, a way to make choices feel less chosen. Yet the phrasing also keeps agency in frame. “Contributing factor” suggests a mix of will and weather, as if artistry and accident were co-authors.

The subtext is about cultural import. America here is the upstream source of the new sensations - a mid-century pipeline carrying counterculture across the Atlantic. Naming Fellows grounds the story in scene politics: who knew whom, who had access, who got there first. Capaldi’s claim isn’t merely “I tried acid”; it’s “we were early enough to mistake the experiment for history.” That’s how legends get manufactured: not by certainty, but by plausibly inflated proximity to the beginning.