Songs about drugs
Sex. Drugs. & Rock'n'Roll.
We hear that term, we say that phrase, it's a terrible cliché these days - or, maybe it's still just the truth. Either way, we've covered a fair bit of rock'n'roll here at Blog on the Tracks. We've even covered sex. A few times. We made a "knocking boots" list, way back...songs you like to play when you're doing the do. More recently we had a list of songs appropriate for sex with someone you really love.
But we have never covered songs about drugs. And there are hundreds. Or thousands.
There are even some really good ones!
So why is that? And what's it all about? And what is the best song about drugs? And why do you think so?
Those are the questions we will look at today.
Some people might think songs about drugs started with The Beatles - specifically Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds; a song about a pretty poor painting from a very young and untalented artist. But it had the initials LSD - it had to be a sign!
Funny that people had - two years earlier - happily sung along to Paul McCartney's Got To Get You into My Life; a love song to marijuana. An ode to the plant that Paul adored/adores.
And anyway Ray Charles was already singing Let's Go Get Stoned; The Rolling Stones were talking about very sneaky drug-taking with Mother's Little Helper; Bert Jansch had released Needle of Death (a fairly overt tale for the times) on his self-titled debut - and way before any of that there were songs about drugs.
So, it certainly didn't start with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - but that is one of the famous drug songs. That and a certain folk song that was either about a magical dragon or a very magical dragon (depends who you ask, of course).
But with the exception of Jansch's song (and he was never a chart-topper) a lot of the tunes were filled with cloaked messages. People blissfully sang along to Mother's Little Helper and of the person who "went running to the shelter..." without realising that this was about a dependence on pills. But really it's hard not to notice it if you listen to the song the whole way through.
People have been hearing what they want to hear in songs for as long as songs have been sung - that's why we get Lou Reed's Perfect Day turning up at weddings. The best use of the song remains that scene in the movie Trainspotting.
Sometimes Reed was far more obvious in his message though - again, around the time that the Beatles were sending subtle drug references in the songs on Rubber Soul and Revolver - and then apparently more overtly for Sgt Pepper - Reed was writing songs about "waiting for my man, $26 in my hand" (characters in songs, actually out scoring drugs; Waiting for My Man). And then, most directly, "when I'm rushing on my run and I feel just like Jesus' son" (Heroin).
Some of these songs were cautionary tales. Heroin was also celebrated in songs and in that famous Velvet Underground tune you can actually read it either way or both ways but there's no mistaking it as the songs moved into the 1970s.
By that point some of the first songwriters from the 1960s were beginning to fall victim - so the songs became more about the message, less about the feeling. Take Neil Young's Needle and the Damage Done; (also consider the death of Danny Whitten) there's no mistaking lines like "every junkie's like a setting sun".
James Taylor was another with his tale, A Junkie's Lament; putting his personal struggle in a song.
Eric Clapton's song Cocaine - which of course is actually J.J. Cale's song Cocaine - was perceived to be a good-time song; celebrating a lifestyle of fun and freedom and taking a ride, checking it out, hanging out.
Before Cale wrote that, Black Sabbath (a band we looked at earlier this week) was celebrating marijuana (Sweet Leaf) and cocaine (Snowblind) for recreational use. The band had of course also looked at the terror and creeping grind of drug-use and the vice-like grip of it all with songs like Hand of Doom.
And then - I'm not sure when it really happened, or if there was an exact time when it happened, but suddenly the songs about drugs started to be less about the drugs and the experience and more about the people and how the drugs became an accessory, an enabler, a lifestyle choice and enhancer.
Think of Spaceman 3 - specifically the title, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To.
Of course it didn't actually start there (maybe you have your own ideas on where and when that shift occurred - if indeed you think it did occur?) But from there you have the rise of writers like Evan Dando (My Drug Buddy, Style - arguably Style is less a song about drugs than about paranoia; but it's still paranoia and a creeping inertia brought on, ultimately, by drug use). And then there were show ponies like Marilyn Manson (I Don't Like the Drugs But the Drugs Like Me).
There are the hipsters like The Dandy Warhols who can do elegantly wasted (Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth); tongue-in-cheek twisted iconography (Lou Weed); balls-out party drug songs (Horse Pills); the eternal comedown (Sleep); or bits of all of those in the one song (The Last High).
There are the songs that are so full-on in their message about drugs, harrowing, grim, all-too-real but brilliant still as songs - in spite and because of their angry message. I think instantly of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt and Gil Scott-Heron's Home Is Where the Hatred Is.
There are the songs that are great - regardless of whether you think they are drug-songs; you might not even know. Or it's certainly not a factor (not hugely, anyway) in why you like the song. I think instantly of my two favourite U2 songs, Bad and Running To Stand Still. I wasn't digging the songs because they were about drugs when I was 10 and 12.
There are good-time party songs about drugs - often marijuana - something like Ben Harper's Burn One Down perhaps?
There are so many songs about drugs. But like songs about any subject - death, birth, love, life, the weekend - there are bad and good; ones you love, ones you can't stand.
S
o - what are your favourite songs about drugs? And why? Are you a Pass the Dutchie kind of a drug-song listener? Or are you a Cold Turkey kind of drug-song listener?
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Hrmm... off the top of my head, Pool Shark by Sublime. A kick-ass punk number, plus sadly proved to be true a few years later when Bradley OD'd
I'M RICK JAMES BEAATCCH
"Feel good hit of the summer" by Queens of the stoneage I don't do drugs but this songs makes me want too. ha
Can't go past 'Higher' by Black Grape, if only for the Nancy and Ronald Reagan samples/impersonations. "Each of us was once strung out on several drugs"
'He'll never be an Old Man River' by TISM is worth a mention as well. "I'm on the drug that killed River Phoenix" "I saw him in convulsive throes, I said 'I'll have one of those!'" etc.
'Sister Morphine' Rolling Stones/Marianne Faithful.
Here Come the Nice - Small Faces for the lighthearted end of the spectrum.
It can be a bit of a tough listen but on Tonight's the Night - Neil Young covers the dark and disastrous side of drug use. The album is loose and the emotion close to the surface. Best taken with a half bottle of Scotch.
"Smoke two Joints" by Sublime - rolling into Amsterdam to experience the local "culture". Everytime I hear this song cranked up it takes me back to that time.
I hate 'Burn One Down'. It's like Ben Harper is showing off that he can smoke pot more politically correctly than everybody else.
On the other hand, I'm quite fond of Robyn Hitchcock's 1986 b-side 'Tell Me About Your Drugs': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhIcI-j-D6U
Also, I like Tom Petty's song 'Last Dance With Mary Jane', about stopping smoking pot, although the following year he released a song with the chorus 'Lets roll another joint', so I don't know how serious he was...
Ben Harpers 'Burn One Down' is a goody. Back in the day we also went through a Cypris Hill phase and I think just about all their songs have got some reference to smoking up haha!
@ J #2 - Gotta love Sublime! Another good drug song by them is 'Smoke Two Joints'. I just read that the surviving members were trying to do a tour with a new singer under the name 'Sublime' but got denied by the courts.
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'So Young', 'New Generation' & especially 'Picnic by the Motorway, all by Suede. 'So Young' has the now hackneyed line 'Lets chase the dragon', whilst 'New Generation' sings 'We take the pills to find each other'. 'Picnic...' has that veil of romanticism that surrounds drugs- 'Just put on your trainers and get out of it with me', a response to the ennui of modern life.