“You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. ‘Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrrrreal fucking high on drugs.
—Bill Hicks, dude who knew what was up.
Seriously, where would popular music be without illicit substances? Oh, wait… there’s Ted Nugent (shudder). But even the Nuge was at least partly inspired by some dudes who were on some serious shit, (Hendrix, Keith Richards, etc.) Not to mention that his old band The Amboy Dukes only had one hit and it was the ode to hallucinogens that is “Journey to the Center of the Mind.” The drug reference of which The Nuge claims not to have been aware of while recording the song. Even those cuddly straight edge kids from Minor Threat while not partaking themselves couldn’t help but be a bit inspired by some other musicians who most definitely did. Some of them even flagrantly so.
Now I’m not saying that drugs do all the heavy lifting when it comes to penning great music, sure enough, most drugs while proving inspirational at first usually end up more destructive than they ever were useful; but what I am saying is that you can’t deny that drugs have helped shape some of our favorite songs.
But which drugs have helped the most? After all, there are a lot of choices for the inspiration seeking, cliché-riding, self-destructive genius rock ‘n’ roll poet to be. When you punch in the numbers to the ol’ Batcomputer which drug has done the most good for rock and roll? And for that matter which has done the most bad?
MARIJUANA
Might as well begin with the notorious gateway drug. Besides fueling many of jazz’s early greats, weed has of course been a staple of the rock and roll diet as far back as anyone can remember.
Highs:
Black Sabbath “Sweet Leaf”
Wait, that song’s about pot?
Nirvana “Moist Vagina”
Seriously, the entire chorus of the song is Kurt Cobain shrieking the word “marijuana” over and over again, subtlety you have found thine prince.
Bob Dylan “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”
Okay, the chorus for this is “Everybody must get stoned.” Cobain, you’re a hack.
The Beatles
The entire album Rubber Soul as well as Revolver
Cypress Hill
Pretty much everything.
Lows:
Cypress Hill
Pretty much everything after the third album. Temples of Boom is pretty redundant. Yeah, even for Cypress Hill it’s redundant. Okay, some stuff off Cypress Hill IV was fun if you were like super stoned while listening to it. And face it, you were.
Afroman “Because I Got High”
You know, actually despite being overplayed it’s still a fun record. Screw it, this gets a pass. Which means there’s not too many actual lows when it comes to pot. Not surprised.
COCAINE
Highs:
Metallica “Master of Puppets”
“Bump! Bump, bump, bump!”
Yeps, even the guitars sound like they’re doing coke.
Black Sabbath “Snow Blind”
Extra points awarded here because this song makes you feel like you’re some sort of Viking badass dying of hypothermia whilst also zowied off of too much booger sugar.
Grandmaster Melle Mel “White Lines”
Sure, it’s anti-coke, but come on, you know they added the “don’t do it” lines just so they could get played on the radio. “Freeze! Rock!”
System of a Down “This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m on This Song”
Even if this song sucked (which it doesn’t) the title alone would make it wonderful.
Lows:
Oasis
Their entire unlistenable third album.
Actually, almost every band’s third unlistenable album can be blamed on too much coke.
Eagles
This band would not exist without cocaine. And for that cocaine can never be forgiven. Fun Fact: There’s scientific proof that Don Henley’s ‘fro from the ‘70s was just one big gnarly 8-ball of cocaine dyed brown. It’s the same coral reef of coke that Lindsey Buckingham used to wear back then too. This is the reason that you never see the two together at the same time. Or maybe that’s because they’re actually the same smug, soft rock Californian junkie. Come to think of it, you never see Batman with Don Henley or Buckingham either. Hmmm…..
ACID/MUSHROOMS
Highs:
Queens of the Stone Age “Monsters in the Parasol”
It’s hard to find a Queens song that’s about one specific drug (after all, this entire article is named after that one song they do where Josh Homme just lists different illicit pick-me-ups) but “Parasol” makes itself easy to categorize since it is always introduced live as being a song about acid.
Jefferson Airplane “White Rabbit”
Because sometimes you just need a rising sound.
Stone Temple Pilots “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”
I know, I know, how is this song not about heroin? Well, somehow Scott Weiland forgot to shoot up that day and instead dropped a few hits of LSD and had a terrifyingly introspective trip which yielded this ferocious and crunchy classic from one of the most underrated bands of the ‘90s.
The Doors “Break On Through”
Maybe the single finest mission statement rock anthem ever made by any band. And sure, it’s not just about taking a tab and getting weird, it’s about breaking through the doors of perception using a multitude of methods; it’s about freeing your mind of all forms of societal constraint…. But it’s also about dropping acid and seeing some freak shit in the desert. Trust me, it is.
Lows:
Anything The Mars Volta did after Frances the Mute.
Sorry, guys but I kind of wanted a couple of actual tunes laced into those 45 minutes of spazzgasm sound. Seriously, just a couple.
Tedious Prog Rock
Don’t get your space cape in a bunch, I love me some prog rock. But like any genre there is a lot of terrible shit out there too. And unlike say, a really awful, one dimensional, melody-deficient punk song which will waste your time for maybe 2 minutes before being forgotten; a bad prog song is going to take up 13 whole minutes of your life that you’re never going to get back. 13 whole minutes and that’s only if you stop the song in the middle of the second flute solo.
HEROIN
Highs:
Velvet Underground “Heroin”
*Spoiler alert.
Rolling Stones “Dead Flowers”
Okay, basically anything Keef wrote around this time had something to do with the white horse but this song had one of the most overt references as well as it simply being just a beautiful country-tinged Stones tune.
Elliot Smith “Needle in the Hay”
“You ought to be proud that I’m getting good marks.” Actually all I think about when I hear this song is Richie Tenenbaum painting his wrists red in that lonely but rather dreamy scene shot perfectly by Wes Anderson.
Guns ‘N Roses “Mr. Brownstone”
For a song about smack this is really an ass mover. Just a really irresistible, fucked up groove.
Alice in Chains
Almost every-fucking-thing. Even some of the stuff that Jerry Cantrell wrote that Layne Staley sang is about heroin. Like the classic “Would?” which is about the heroin O.D. of Mother Love Bone’s Andy Wood.
Lows:
Besides killing or helping to kill a bunch of talented people? How about the obligatory recovery/ rehab lyrical dreck that inevitably comes out of rock stars once they clean up and decide to incorporate their program’s slogans into their lyrics. You can totally write a great song about kicking, just do it using your own words not something that sounds like Tony Robbins wrote it for you.
CRYSTAL METH
Highs:
Mastodon “Curl of the Burl”
The song is about tweakers who go out to the woods with chainsaws, cut out burls from trees and then sell the wood to furniture makers and whatnot. Next the tweakers use the money to go score more meth so they can return to the forest and repeat this process until Birchmen come to eat them or something.
Green Day “Geek Stink Breath”
Like a lot of meth songs this one sounds oddly peppy. Even with its horrorshow, Cronenberg lyrics.
Lows:
Third Eye Blind “Semi-Charmed Life”
The song that got stuck under your eyelids in the mid-nineties no matter how hard you tried to hide from it was all a Lou Reed style junkie character study that might not be so bad if it wasn’t so overproduced with mall-rock food court crunch guitars.
Alcohol
Highs:
Country Music
Lows:
Country Music
At the end of the day the impact of these any of these drugs on popular music seem to reflect the positive and negative proportional quality of the various substances being discussed. So while pot has relatively few lows the highs it provides aren’t necessarily as high as the highs that heroin or cocaine offer. But of course, that shit has some serious lows like fucking death and complete chemical dependency. Which makes it a bit tricky to quantify which drug has done the most good or bad. Because while the highs of heroin and its influence on music can be extraordinary the drug’s lows definitely negate almost all the good it’s done. Which goes for most of the harder stuff on this list.
Which really brings this contest down to two contenders, marijuana and acid. And while it’s a close finish, I gotta hand the crown to pot. Partly because of the lack of come down. At its worst pot has inspired some overly doomy, sludgy stoner rock or hippie dippie mellow tripe; both usually utterly forgettable. Music that fails because it’s uninspired. Acid on the other hand has at its worst helped generate music that disappoints for precisely the opposite reason: because it reaches for more than it can grasp. It attempts to be profound but it is merely a pedestrian exercise posturing to be more. In a word: pretentious. And the thing is, I actually respect an overly ambitious failure like that more. At least if you’re being pretentious you had something you were aspiring to achieve, right? Dull, stoner glaze rock that just kind of putters around and shrinks away after it’s complete strikes me as a bigger failure on the artistic side of things. But then why does marijuana win this contest? Because while with a critical ear I can appreciate what I think the artist was going for with a particular piece of music as a listener I’d simply rather you’d waste as little of my time as possible. If you’re going to put out drivel at least have the courtesy to make it quick.
But above all marijuana wins thanks to its ubiquity. Because when you think about it, almost every damn artist that’s made any music that’s whatsoever substantial has smoked pot. Led Zep, Nirvana, Beastie Boys, The Clash, everybody except Frank Zappa, got high. It’s nearly impossible to listen to anything recorded since 1964 that hasn’t had someone who worked on it who wasn’t partaking in some weed smoking. I write this as a guy who doesn’t even smoke pot, at least I haven’t since I was a kid; but pot is part of the lifeblood of rock and roll. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy this music without it and I’m not even saying that the music necessarily wouldn’t exist without it. What I’m saying is that pot was there. With almost all the music that we all love, pot has had some part to play.
Go hug a hippie.
