for Taylor and the latter's wife, Joan, to join them. The home's location, on a hillside of narrow, winding roads, together with the foggy conditions that night, created the backdrop for the song's opening lines: "There's a fog upon LA / And my friends have lost their way." Harrison had almost completed the song by the time the Taylors arrived, around two hours later than planned. The week with Taylor proved to be important for the direction of the Beatles. At the height of the Summer of Love and the popularity of the band's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, Harrison, Taylor and their small entourage visited the international "hippie capital" of Haight-Ashbury, in San Francisco, on 7 August. Harrison had expected to encounter an enlightened community engaged in artistic pursuits and working to create a viable alternative lifestyle; instead, he was disappointed that Haight-Ashbury appeared to be populated by drug addicts, dropouts and "hypocrites". Following his return to England two days later, Harrison completed work on "Blue Jay Way" at his home in Esher, and he shared his disillusionment about Haight-Ashbury with John Lennon. The Beatles then publicly denounced the popular hallucinogen LSD (or "acid") and other drugs in favour of Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose seminar in Bangor in Wales the band attended in late August. While noting Harrison's role in "inspir[ing] the West's mainstream acquaintance with Hindu religion" through his leadership in this aspect of the Beatles' career, author Ian MacDonald describes "Blue Jay Way" as a "farewell to psychedelia", just as "It's All Too Much", which the Beatles recorded in May 1967, became Harrison's "farewell to acid". Composition Music "Blue Jay Way" was one of several songs that Harrison composed on a keyboard over 1966–68 – a period when, aside from in his work with the Beatles, he had abandoned his first instrument, the guitar, to master the sitar, partly under Shankar's tutelage. The song is in 4/4 time throughout; its structure consists of an intro, three combinations of verse and chorus, followed by repeated choruses. While MacDonald gives the musical key as "C major (minor, diminished)", musicologist Alan Pollack views it as a mix of C major and C modal, and comments on the "highly unusual" incorporation of the notes D and F. The inclusion of the latter note suggests the Lydian mode, which, according to musicologist Walter Everett, had only been