CITY UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC MSc in MUSIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY A Brief History of Drug Taking in Popular Music and the Influence of Drugs on the Creation of Music Burak Beklenoglu 9 July 1997 1 Abstract The aim of this project is to try to explain the relationship between drugs and creativity in music, by examining this relationship throughout the history, though mainly in the twentieth century, a period of vast changes in musical style, experimentation and expression. Drugs did create a new environment for music to develop; they had a significant impact on already creative and talented minds and it is highly probable that without them the best of jazz, rock and dance music would not have emerged. Drugs are seen as a route to new forms of musical expression, but to which extent this is the case cannot be clearly defined by the musicians and researchers. This essay contains chapters on the influence of drugs in the creation of jazz, psychedelic rock and (Acid) House & dance music, as well as chapters on how drugs have influenced creative artists in other areas of artistic expression, and a brief history of music & drug relationship with the reasons why musicians take drugs. This essay is not trying to justify any of the drug taking or trying to prove that drugs are necessary to create good and new music, but merely recognises the significance of them for musicians, who create new music. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank : My friend Sinan for making me to do the MSc and inventing the subject of this dissertation; Jim Grant and City University Music Department for convincing the people at high places and enabling me to do this course ; my tutor Gerry Farrell for his help and ideas and support; the staff at the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence Library for their extreme nicety and help and the library staffs of the University of Westminster, City University and Goldsmith’s College. 3 Preface Creation of music can be viewed differently with different types of music. In conventional terms the creation of a musical piece would involve composition of the piece and the writing of the lyrics. However, this essay recognises that live performance, especially in jazz, psychedelic rock and the recent dance & club music, which includes House, Techno, Trance and Ambient, is also a means of creating music, in terms of new directions and sounds. A jazz piece or a rock song is likely to be played differently each time it is performed, with far less closure than a classical performance is likely to have. Improvisation is a central element in jazz and later in psychedelic rock, it is possible that there are certain personality characteristics which attract the musicians to a field in which it is not necessary to follow a score literally, but in which hovering around the reality of the beat of the music is a desirable quality. Another point to be made is that except for purposes of comparison, this essay excludes any detailed consideration of alcohol. This is not to suggest that alcohol is not a drug; whatever other drugs have been in fashion among musicians, alcohol has never been out of favour. However, alcohol is an accepted legal drug in Western society. Its use is not surrounded by the excitement, fear and ignorance which attends the use of other drugs like heroin, cocaine, LSD and Ecstacy . Finally, this essay includes a chapter on drugs and their effects on artists and on artistic creativity throughout the history. Although this chapter may be regarded as irrelevant to the subject, this chapter should prove to be useful in understanding the relationships presented in the latter chapters, considering that musicians are artists. 4 I Drugs and drug taking have been associated with almost each new trend in music throughout this century. Jazz music of the 1920s and 1930s was associated with cocaine, and later in connection with Black culture, with marijuana. Folk music of the 1960s was associated with the “beatnik” world that rejected alcohol in favour of other drugs. Then came rock and roll and picked up on drugs and included them in its music, which is most probably how much of the drug-oriented music of the 1960s originated. Psychedelic music was music about drug taking; music meant to enhance drug taking, or it meant to substitute for drug taking. Cocaine and other stimulants were the drugs of choice in the late 1970s disco subculture. Drugs also have influenced punk and new wave music (1976-85), which formed the basis of some of the Acid House and Techno & Trance sound of today. Music can be anything from a form of release to a symbol of resistance against social norms; it can function as a technique for communicating with the spirit world or a clip-on tool for doing one’s head (and body) in. Drugs of various kinds can emphasise these possibilities or sabotage them.(1) In a society where cultural industries are developing and there is a widening of education, manifestations of bohemia increase, and music becomes the superior site in which these new representations acquire form. Thus, the increase in drug consumption in the second half of the 20th century is part and parcel of its omnipresence in rock and pop music, and of the adoption of the rock star as model for new artistic lifestyle.(2) In its systematic search for innovation, popular music tries to discover new worlds, in its means of distribution it brings to light or dramatises those milieus or subcultures who live extra-ordinary lives, outside social conventions. (3) Patrick Mignon asserts in his article Drugs and Popular Music : “The meeting of drugs and music is not a meeting of two psychoactive products each 5 producing their own effects on body and soul. This idea of a power of music over the soul has a long history in the West. Music, like drugs, has several names : ragtime, jazz, rock’n’roll, rock etc. This diversity relates to the different ways they are defined, for groups or individuals, in order to face up to historical conjecture. This is why music must be analysed as a social world; that is, as an ensemble of practices, of values, of significations, of systems of valorisation and production. It is in such a social world that drugs intervene as one of the elements of its definition. In effect, drugs may occupy a place which is functional -as an aid to work or a means of bearing its load- and, at a symbolic level, be an expression of a relationship to the world, allowing us to examine certain contradictions in its musical project. Music encounters drugs when the experience of drugs accompanies the accession to the musical and cultural avant-garde, when the definition of the musician as artist renders necessary the manipulation of the ensemble of signs of his election; drugs encounter music when they are the necessary component of a way of life of certain sub-groups, when they form part of the definition of what the good life is.“(4) The workings of popular music, notably the competition amongst the producers of this music and their quest for innovation, are at the root of the discovery of new musical and social worlds. In this context, music discovered drugs because they are commonly used by musicians, but also because they are tied to the way of life of exotic and fascinating populations, for example (during the jazz era of early 20th century) the blacks, who represent lost nature or excess. (5) Neither rock ‘n’ roll, nor the mod or garage bands of the sixties, nor punk in the seventies can be legitimately considered outside the context of amphetamine. The same applies to West Coast rock and acid, and to reggae and marijuana. But this is not to suggest that acid-rock bands used only LSD or that stuck only to amphetamine; far from it. Certain drugs influenced the sound and creative context of particular genres more than others, but as the pharmaceutical industry became more competitive and street chemists more 6 sophisticated, so more drugs were added to the music pharmacopoeia. There were sedatives, hypnotics and tranquilizers in a hundred different colours and dosages, notably methaqualone; a range of synthetic painkillers like Dilaudid; an alphabet soup of hallucinogens -LSD, DMT, PCP, MDA, STP etc.- and a variety of one-offs like amyl-nitrate. (6) The fundamental difference between alcohol and hallucinogens as mind- altering substances lies in the fact that alcohol stimulates interpersonal warmth (kinship), while drugs draw the subject away from other-oriented behaviour and into himself (loneliness). For this reason, Western communities tolerate alcohol (though a potentially lethal drug), while pot and LSD remain illegal.(7) Many composers have combined drug-influenced mood, lyrics and texture to produce songs that the psychedelic enthusiast refers to as “a real trip”. Examples often cited include the Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, the Rolling Stones’ “You Turn Me On”, the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star”. Some groups combine simple lyrics with a complex musical texture that demands structure and interpretation from the listener who is in an altered state of consciousness.(8) For example what the Beatles’ music conveys to the recipient in this period is an inward, mystic state of union with the Other and a soaring, private euphoria. This is both the message sent out and the response received : many people at the time listened to these albums stoned on pot or on acid, so the circle was complete. 7 II It is impossible to be certain how long people have been using drugs to change their states of consciousness; certainly the systematic use of drugs dates back many thousands of years. It is possible that the earliest drugs to be used would have been those that occur naturally. About four thousand plants are known to yield psychoactive drugs, but only about forty of these have been regularly used for their intoxicating effects.(9) As a consequence of this, also the use of drugs by artists has an extensive heritage. In Central America, stone sculptures from 1,500 BC have been found which portray hallucinogenic mushrooms from whose stems emerge the heads of gods. The arabesques, Persian miniatures, and geometric designs of Moslem culture are linked by many art historians with the use by the artists of Cannabis sativa and its derivatives, especially hashish. (10) In Europe, it is quite well known that Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamb and Scott all took opium, and William Wilberforce, George Crabbe, Thomas de Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge became addicted to it (11). In the 1790s, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s visions induced by laudanum, a solution of opium in alcohol then commonly available as a proprietary medicine, stimulated his famous mystical poem Kubla Khan. (see Appendix 1)(12) Dr. Michael Gossop argues that “In fact, both Coleridge and his puritan critics shared the same misconception. Opium was not the source of his poetry nor did it lead to the death of his muse. The effects of a drug depend largely upon the psychology of the person who has taken it. Had Coleridge not experienced that particular drug-reverie of which he spoke, he might never have been inspired to write Kubla Khan. At the same time, the vision itself, and more particularly the translation of that experience into lines of poetry afterwards, owed more to the personality and talent of Coleridge than it did to any drug.(13) When Alethea Hayter (1968) examined the work of Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Hector Berlioz, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens as well as other artists under the influence of opium, she found out that opium 8 did not transport any of these artists into a totally new world of the imagination but it may have provided access to unconscious material which was utilised creatively. (14) In the 1950s Aldous Huxley argued that the brain functions normally as a screen. Its job is not to create but to shut off. It is a reducing valve that limits our perception to only a minute portion of what might be called the mind at large. ‘Drugs’ -in Huxley’s case mescaline(*)- ‘unlock the doors to perception of total reality, to all those sensory reports that our brain, in making us concentrate, filters out. The drug allows our attention to wander virtually undisciplined over the infinity of things we would normally see but not see, hear but not hear, think but disregard. Under the influence of the drug we cannot think, for thought requires disciplined attention, narrowly reduced sensory input. But while we cannot think logically under its influence, the drug opens the door to intensified feeling and offers an escape from the world of the intellect, from lives “at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape... is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”’ (15) What Huxley said of mescaline, others said of the less esoteric hallucinogens, marijuana and acid. The effects of LSD, British social historian Peter Laurie concluded, are “to break down the processes that limit and channel sense impressions in the deeper interpretative layers of the brain, allowing neuronal excitation to spread indiscriminately sideways. “ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(*) Mescal and mescaline are derived from the peyote, a small spineless cactus, which grows in Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States. The drug action results in unusual psychic effects and visual hallucinations. The individual may perceive brightly coloured lights, geometric designs, animals, and at times even people. Although one’s sense of colour and space perception may be impaired, insight generally is not. (Einstein, S. Beyond Drugs (Pergamon, 1978), pp. 62-63 & 65) 9 Investigator William Braden reported in his own clinical jargon that acid “stops time. Or in any case, it ceases to be important. ...The subject is content to exist in the moment - in the here and now. ...The sense of personal ego is utterly lost. Awareness of individual identity evaporates...and is expanded to include all that is seen and all that is not seen.” (16) Chemical substances have different effects on different people, and their effects on the same person often vary on separate occasions. For this reason, many scientific investigators have seen little practical use for drugs in the fields of creative endeavour.(17) However, in general it can be said that the chemical changes brought about by LSD interact with the situational variables to alter the amount and type of information available to brain. LSD may only be indispensable for “mind-expansion” itself; and in art or music one can legitimately exploit the effects of something one hasn’t experienced otherwise no one could sing sea shanties who hadn’t sailed, or sing drinking songs without being an alcoholic.(18) Masters and Houston (1968: 8) have defined a “psychedelic artist” as one “whose work has been significantly influenced by psychedelic experience and who acknowledges the impact of the experience on his work.” An experience defined as “psychedelic” (from the Greek for “mind manifesting”) is one delineated by Masters and Houston (1968 : 8) in which awareness is profoundly different from the usual waking conscious state, from dreams, and from familiar intoxication states. Sensory experience, thoughts, emotions, and awareness of the internal and external world undergo marked changes as one’s consciousness “expands” to take in the contents of the ordinarily inaccessible regions of the psyche : “Of the classes of phenomena most common to the psychedelic experience, a few have particular relevance for the artist. They include (among others) accessibility of unconscious materials, relaxation of the boundaries of the ego, fluency and flexibility of thought, intensity of attention or heightened concentration, a breaking of perceptual 10 constancies, high capacity for visual imagery and fantasy, symbolising and myth-making tendencies, empathy, accelerated rate of thought, “regression in the service of the ego”, seeming awareness of internal body processes and organs, and awareness of deep psychical and spiritual levels of the self with capacity in some cases for profound religious and mystical experiences (Masters & Houston, 1968 : 88). (19) Barron (1963) administered psilocybin to a number of highly creative individuals and recorded their impressions. Psilocybin is the active ingredient of a “magic” mushroom, which is native to Central America. Its drug effects are practically indistinguishable from those of mescaline and LSD.(20) One of Barron’s subjects stated, “I felt a communion with all things.” A composer wrote, “Every corner is alive in a silent intimacy.” Barron concluded : “What psilocybin does is to...dissolve many definitions and melt many boundaries, permit greater intensities or more extreme values of experience to occur in many dimensions.” Some of Barron’s subjects, however, were wildly enthusiastic about their apparently increased sensitivity during the drug experience only to discover, once the effects wore off, that the production was without artistic merit. One painter recalled, “I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing - nor such a lack of concern with it afterward.” This statement indicates that an artist is not necessarily able to judge the value of his/her psychedelically inspired work while under the influence of the drug. (21) Contrary to popular belief, most artists find it possible to exercise some technical proficiency, with varying degrees of success, under the influence of LSD. This seems to improve with repeated experiences. The artistic productions are not necessarily inferior to those performed in ordinary states of consciousness. However, they are often judged by the artists to be more interesting or even aesthetically superior to their usual mode of expression. In many instances, artists felt that the LSD experience produced some desirable lasting change in their understanding of their work, which continued to influence the form and direction of their artistic development.(22) The painter 11 Arlene Sklar-Weinstein had only one psychedelic session but claimed that “it opened thousands of doors for me and dramatically changed the content, intent, and style of my work.” (23) Timothy Leary (1963) administered psilocybin to 65 writers, musicians and artists. Written reports were elicited from each subject. The great majority claimed that they had undergone “a creative experience”. Leary reported that the group, as a whole, responded positively to the psychedelic sessions and appreciated the “intense and direct confrontation with the world around them.” Leary postulated that creative persons must break through “game structures” (i.e., their cultural conditioning) if they are to create innovative productions that will be of artistic merit. LSD and similar drugs are seen as one method to facilitate this breakthrough. (24) In another test carried out by L. S. Zegans, J. C. Pollard, and Douglas Brown (1967) investigating the effects of LSD upon creativity it was suggested that LSD “may increase the accessibility of remote or unique ideas and associations” while making it difficult for a subject to narrow his attention upon a delimited perceptual field. As a result “greater openness to remote or unique ideas and associations would only be likely to enhance creative thought in those individuals who were meaningfully engaged in some specific interest or problem”. (25) It is of special interest to note that many of those elements that are universally reported under the influence of LSD are those features traditionally associated with heightened artistic creativity. The ultimate explanation for these changes may lie in a biochemical basis of perception and/or cultural history of the individual. The aesthetic experience typically involves an awareness of something strange, unusual and incredible. Both the non-artists and the artist can experience surprise and wonder as their informationprocessing mechanisms are altered, magnifying the strange perceptual and cognitive material that emerges in psychedelic experiences.(26) The creative person uses the psychedelic experience as raw material for an eventual 12 painting, composition, poem or invention (Ebin, 1961). Other individuals may have access to aesthetic information once the experience is over and subsequently demonstrate a greater interest in art or music. In the case of artists and musicians, states of consciousness are evoked with properties that are reflected in the creative products. Jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow described his first experience of smoking opium with the following words : “...lighting up a million bulbs in my body that I never knew were there - I didn’t even know there were any sockets for them...”. This single phrase may be sufficient to explain why so many creative artists take drugs.(27) III Serious drug-taking has always had some part in the making of music. The excessive use of stimulants and depressants of one sort or another has been associated with the rebel image and with music-making since well before the first bohemians walked the boulevards of Paris. (28) For the Yanomami Indians, living in the rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela, the spirit world is an essential part of everyday life. Access to this world comes through frequent use of hallucinogens and chanting, a functional connection between music and drugs which is probably at the root of the much music-related drug taking.(29). Drugs and music have also been associated at the wine-centred Dionysian rites of ancient Greece and the Vedic hymns in praise of soma, a hallucinogenic mushroom (Wasson, 1969). In both Greece and Turkey smoking hashish was an established communal urban low-life activity usually accompanied by music, played on a baglamas or bouzouki, and song, often consisting of a series of improvised or semiimprovised couplets(30). It has been known that cocaine has been a 13 musician’s drug since Charles Gounod, the composer of the operas Faust and Romeo and Juliette, who recommended it to his singers as an energising elixir for the vocal chords - over a century ago. (31) The many attempts to classify types of drug according to their effects, however, have come to grief on the fact that people will use almost any drug to achieve almost any effect. Opium and its derivatives, morphine and heroin, traditionally regarded as painkillers open to abuse as a destructive escape from everyday problems, can be used to induce visions. Cannabis (Marijuana) can be used as anything from a sedative to a hallucinogen, depending on how, why and by whom it is ingested. LSD, much-praised by hippies and mystics as a gateway to other forms of consciousness, is often used as a stimulant, or again as a form of escape. In spite, or perhaps because, of this interchangeability of their functions, different drugs have been popular at different periods in the history of rock and have become associated with different lifestyles, philosophies and types of music. (32) The professional musician is confronted by the availability and general approval of alcohol and drug consumption, being involved in an industry surrounded by the pursuit of pleasure and set in an atmosphere of leisure. Initially it may become a means of relaxation or pleasurable temporary distraction but with sustained involvement it generally becomes transformed into an occupational hazard.(33) Drugs are thought to be a means, a “helper”, into what the musician’s primary concern seems to be : music, the composing, arranging, performing, and experiencing of the music. Narcotics addiction was prevalent among modern jazz musicians in the United States in the period after the Second World War, and appears to have come about at least partly as a result of stressful factors in the musician’s lifestyle. Due to the unacceptability of his music, the musician suffered from feelings of alienation and found it difficult to make a living. Also, he sometimes felt the need to sustain a sense of heightened emotional arousal, created by music, by taking drugs.(34) The regular reporting in the popular 14 press of the premature deaths or arrests for drug abuse of musicians is just one indication that the professional musician who works in the field of popular music, which encompasses jazz and jazz-influenced music, rock, pop and commercial music, appears to be particularly subject to stress. Little Richard, who began to seriously use cocaine in the early 1970s, believes that the majority of professional musicians generally begin using a variety of drugs as a way to combat boredom, to experience adventure and to artificially reproduce the exhilarated feelings gained from performing their own music in front of a live and frenzied audience of supporters.(35) What drug use can do for a musician, in addition to making it possible for him to get up on the bandstand at all, is to reinforce his feelings of belonging to a group, if the other musicians in the same band are also on drugs. This special emotional contagion of jazz musicians who are “on” may even be picked up by a musician who has not used drugs and is called a “contact high”. The more the musician possesses this feeling of group belongingness, the better he is likely to play in a group. Some musician drug users take drugs for the opposite reason : to feel more alone.(36). With regard to rock and pop musicians , Herman (1982) feels that drugs can be a necessary form of sustenance when involved in arduous work schedules, unsociable hours and the high expectations of audiences. John Lennon is quoted as saying that the only way to survive in Hamburg in the early 1960s when playing for eight hours a night was to take amphetamines. (37) By the time the Beatles led in a new musical era with their first recordings in 1962, music and drugs had long had a special relationship. Jazz musicians had habitually smoked cannabis for half a century and many also took heroin, in some cases with tragic results. The reasons for this connection lay partly in the social circumstances of the jazz musicians, and partly in the fact that drugs have been used for inspirational purposes since the dawn of history. 15 IV The whole history of Jazz began tied to the seductions of a life outside the law. During prohibition, the night clubs, run by the Mafia, harboured the big names of the period in the name of a community of outsiders of American society, and in that of the seduction of the margins. Here illegal alcohol and drugs circulated.(38) In the New Orleans period of jazz, in the early years of the twentieth century, the stimulant most widely used by jazz musicians was alcohol, the use of which was socially acceptable. Famous pianist Jelly Roll Morton reported that he and his fellow New Orleans musicians used to go out of their way to go funeral work because there was lots of beer and whiskey at funerals. This period was one of the few when jazz musicians were an integral and accepted part of their community. Alcohol traditionally leads to aggressive and loud behaviour, and Dixieland jazz music is notably aggressive and loud. A similar circular relationship might have begun to manifest itself in the 1920’s in Kansas City, when jazz moved north. Not only in Kansas City, but also in Chicago and New York, into the 1930’s and the swing era, the stimulant most frequently used by jazz musicians was marijuana. During this period, jazz became less acceptable to the larger culture and the self-concept of many musicians grew more alienated. Marijuana was not a socially acceptable stimulant. Its traditional effect is to make the user feel more light and “swinging”, which is an accurate description of much of the jazz music of the period.(39) Improvisation is and has always been a central element in jazz and it is possible that there are certain personality characteristics which attract the jazz musician to a field in which it is not necessary to follow a score literally, but in which hovering around the reality of the beat of the music is a desirable quality. One jazz musician 16 who has openly discussed how marijuana use improved his playing has said : “Our rebel instincts broke music away from what I would call the handcuff and straitjacket discipline of the classical school...” (Mezzrow & Wolfe).(40) To defy the American way of life was to plunge into black music and jazz; to become a musician was to discover the secret language of drugs and music; grass gave energy, the desire to play, to listen to what others play and to play with them. Grass and music allow one to be cool, to have a good time and get through all eventualities. Jazz is both rupture and an entrance into the bohemian life, into a community which grass, and the slang to which it gives birth, consolidates and protects against the outside.(41) When jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow first smoked marijuana, “I found I was slurring much better and putting just the right feeling into my phrases....All the notes came easing out of my horn like they’d already been made up, greased and stuffed into the bell, so all I had to do was blow a little and send them on their way, one right after the other, never missing, never behind time, all without an ounce of effort. The phrases seemed to have more continuity to them and I was sticking to the theme without ever going tangent. I felt I could go on playing for years without running out of ideas and energy. “ Mezzrow’s experience wasn’t unique; it was widely felt among the jazz community that marijuana helped the creation of jazz by removing inhibitions and providing stimulation and confidence. Hoagy Carmichael described the influence of marijuana and gin while listening to Louis Armstrong :”Then the ‘muggles’ took effect and my body got light. Every note Louis hit was perfection. I ran to the piano...I had never heard the tune before, but somehow I couldn’t miss. I was floating in a strange deep blue whirlpool of jazz”.(42) Marijuana, though it may heighten a musician’s sense of humour and whimsy, may also interfere with his time sense. From a report by C. Knight Aldrich printed in 1944 : “Musicians, particularly members of dance orchestras, are reputed to use marijuana for the purpose of enhancing their musical ability. Piel, in Life Magazine, reports that in the state of marijuana intoxication “the swing musician ascends to new peaks of 17 virtuosity.” Medical writers, however, are inclined to question this belief, and Walton states that “there is very little probability that an individual’s performance is in any degree improved over that of his best capabilities. As judged by objectively critical means, the standards of performance are no doubt lowered.” In an endeavour to discover the cause of the common misapprehension, he says : “There is an increased sensitivity to sound and a keener appreciation of rhythm and timing”, but he feels that “these phenomena, as judged by objective criteria, probably do not exist except during the early phases of the drug’s effects.” He suggests that the release of inhibitions by marijuana may result in bringing latent talents to the surface or in evoking a more intense emotional performance. He also recognises, with Bromberg and others, that a subject’s evaluation of his own performance is enhanced.(43) Marijuana was also central to the jazz scene in the fifties, and was enthusiastically taken up by white musicians on the folk-blues circuit. For those whose folk music was heavily politicised, smoking dope became integral to the protest movement. With the end of prohibition, a rupture occurred in the world of jazz musicians. The closure of the big clubs spelt the end of the big orchestras and an easy living : positions became hard to find and record and radio competed with public spectacles. The new black musicians also defined themselves differently. They were no longer ‘entertainers’, but artists who affected a double rupture; opposed to the white world and to the conventional world. (44) Heroin was the ultimate downer. Ironically, the drug was originally derived from opium in 1898 as a non-addictive substitute for morphine; but by the end of the First World War there were already an alarming number of addicts in major American cities. Also around that time the connection between narcotics and popular music appears to have been made specifically with regard to American modern jazz. Nat Hentoff puts forward the theory that modern jazz was a revolutionary music which was rejected by the general public. Like the music, heroin was anti-establishment, as well. The comments 18 of the jazz musician Gerry Mulligan illuminate this further : “In the late 1940s, just making a living was rough....These were the days of widespread general use of junk around town (New York)....There was a frustration everywhere with us. Nobody really seemed to know what they were doing or where they were going. Junk could provide a dream world. The daily process of living was dull, and you had to scrounge for an income when you just wanted to play your horn. Junk seemed to help in a bad time.“(45). Heroin, it is said, creates an inner sanctum among those who use it within the tribe, that transcends the ordinary channels of musical dialogue and social communication. (46) The 1950’s, which saw the greatest upsurge in the use of heroin by musicians, also saw considerable publicity about the heroin use of great jazz artists like vocalist Billie Holiday and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. Some critics speculated on the extent to which the genius of these artists was linked with their drug use. Others noted that some drugs slow down the time sense and allow musicians to perform marvellously fast passages which do not sound fast to them, while some writers discussed how drugs provided otherwise unavailable wings which permitted a soloist to soar, possibly reflecting Parker’s nickname of ‘Bird’.(47) Because so many of the big star names of jazz were in trouble with drugs, it was easy to equate their genius with an indulgence in an artificial means to awareness and inspiration, even though to latch onto the drug taking habits of say, bebop musicians, was in a sense to take the whole exercise out of context. Heroin for example, was just one of the ways for the new wave jazz players of the Forties in their bid to exclude society at large, utilising a very intense, complex music called bebop. This new drug appeared as a way of putting some order into the social and aesthetic uncertainties which characterised the new jazz musicians. The effects emphasised most were those that produced a ‘cool’ attitude and a detachment -which is also a description of much of the jazz of the post-World War II period- enabling them to cope with the contradictions of their situation : being amongst the avant-garde, marking off the boundary between the ordinary world and the extra-ordinary world of creation, intensifying, by the will to control over the self and the drug, the will to master one’s artistic project, 19 but also intensifying, in the competition for heroin, the competitiveness which set musicians against one another. (48) It has been suggested that the very use of heroin helped this form of music to develop, causing as it does a ‘cool’ detached view of the world, in contrast to the swinging up-tempo, jumpy style of the earlier jazz bands high on happygo-lucky marijuana. While there may be an element of truth in this, it is safer to acknowledge the heroin use among bebop musicians as the catalyst serving to shut out the world politically and socially by establishing its own milieu of rebellion, and musically, by closing out all external interferences allowing the musicians, initially at any rate, to focus his concentration.(49) The “cool” jazz style that was largely introduced by such recordings as those by the Miles Davis units on Capitol in 1949 and 1950 was not as detached as the term indicated. It was lighter in texture both in ensemble and solo passages, and the rhythm sections were subtler. But the music they produced was often bitterly intense and aggressive. Miles Davis, for example, has never been emotionally “detached” in his work, nor has Gerry Mulligan, who was largely identified at first with the “cool” nucleus. In fact, the “cool” jazzmen generally distilled all the emotional strength they could muster for their music. While it is true that the effect of heroin on the “cool” addicts was to lower their emotional commitment to nearly everything but jazz, they did not consciously use it to separate themselves from their music. Many were, on the contrary, under the illusion that they could play more “purely” if they were “high”.(50). Also it should be noted that many interpreters of the “hot” modern jazz of musicians such as Charlie Parker in the early 1940’s were hooked on heroin and the allegedly more detached “cool” jazz was not in vogue until the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. In a study conducted in New York City during 1954-1955, in order to determine how many jazz musicians use narcotic drugs, with what effects, and what the trends in drug use seem to be, one respondent voiced a reaction which was mentioned by a few others and which gives considerable insight. “Heroin makes me feel better, but has little effect on my playing. I do 20 feel I can execute things a little more freely than when I’m off. Some days I’d love to be back in bed instead of playing, and on these days heroin helps me to play at all.” An example of the kind of rationalisation employed by some heroin users was a comment by one very successful musician, who compared taking heroin to “... going into a closet. It lets you concentrate and takes you away from everything. Heroin is a working drug, like the doctor who took it because he had a full schedule, so he could concentrate better. It lets me concentrate on my sound.”(51) Gerry Mulligan, who was addicted to heroin in the late 1940’s, does claim that “heroin eventually has a degenerative effect, and in my case, I finally couldn’t finish an arrangement.” Heroin does indeed have a fairly quick degenerative effect if an addict has to scrounge for supplies, often gets impure drugs, and is not on a regular, medically controlled dosage.(52) One heroin user said that “If I’m playing something I know well, like ‘How High The Moon’, heroin helps me to be more creative. But if I’m playing something new, the drug interferes.”(53). Jazz being a very difficult form of music to play at its highest standards, the fact should be recognised that heroin addiction failed to stop Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Miles Davis and John Coltrane from pushing the technical and emotional boundaries of the music to the limit (54). However, the integration of the heroin into the jazzman’s way of life can also be seen in terms of its practical advantages; it doesn’t stop one from playing and it protects against the minor illnesses which hamper the life of the musician, such as colds and flu - or at least eliminate the symptoms. This function is another version of the relationship between music and drugs; drugs exist also as drugs for working, and in this sense they are not drugs but remedies against minor physical ailments, and anxiety. No musician could play blind drunk, but plenty played well while stoned on heroin. But the belief that you had to have a habit in order to play like Charlie Parker was the classic mistake many of musicians or would-be musicians made. What they failed, or chose to fail, to comprehend was that Bird played brilliantly on heroin because he was dependent on it, that was the only time he felt well enough to play normally - i.e. better than anyone else. He wasn’t playing 21 better because of heroin; he was just playing normally because he didn’t feel sick.(55) As Art Blakey observed : “You do not play better with heroin, but you do hear better. Bird said he wanted to kick the habit so that he could tell people what he heard...While he is suffering, he cannot produce; but reflecting about his pain, he can create. Musicians who have been ‘junkies’ and then rid themselves of the habit have sometimes really then come into their own musically.” (56) The addicted jazz musicians who took part in the Narcotic Addiction Research Project, which had been started in 1955, had a wide variety of attitudes toward the effect of drugs on their playing. “I thought at first that they helped me play better”; “I used to think I played better when I was on, but I don’t anymore”; “Drugs relax me before I begin playing and help me to be able to play at all”; “Drugs interfere with my playing”; “Drugs help me to play cool music”; “Drugs help me play better”; “I’m less tense when I’m ‘on’ ” were among the range of responses reported. More musicians thought that drugs had no particular effect on their playing than thought that they had a positive effect. Most of the patients who stayed in therapy had some kind of identification with a great jazz musician who was a kind of “hero” to them. These “heroes” played the same instrument which they played and were usually addicts. It is possible that the patients, in some magical way, assumed that they would play as well as the “hero”, who took drugs, if they also took drugs. (57) As for whether marijuana and heroin generally help a musician’s playing, introspective or otherwise, the usual flat answer by writers on jazz is that they do not. The Psychologist Charles Winick (1959) once interviewed 357 jazz musicians and found that 82 per cent had tried marijuana at least once and 23 per cent smoked it regularly. In addition, 53 per cent had tried heroin and 16 per cent used it regularly. A majority of the interviewed musicians replied to the question whether they perform better or worse than usual when under the influence of drugs, that the drugs decreased rather than improved the quality of their musical performance. Furthermore, Winick was unable to show 22 that neither marijuana use nor heroin addiction was related to either a musician’s positive professional standing or lack of esteem as rated by his peers.(58) Winick states that “there is absolutely no reason to believe that heroin use improves anyone’s playing, although it may help a musician to function at all. Without the drug, the addict is unable to do anything, so that the drug helps him to reach his minimal level of functioning. There has never been any demonstration that any ‘plus’ factor is added to a musician by his heroin use. There has, however been ample proof from the experience of the Musicians’ Clinic...that a heroin user who stops taking drugs, with appropriate psychotherapeutic help, improves in his musicianship.”(59) However, this study , tells us little, whereas if we could ascertain how many musicians use some drug in relation to composition, or to arranging, or to technical execution on an instrument, we would have some interesting data, -interesting, because it would relate not only to the effects of the drugs on cognitive processes and technical functioning, but to the process, however stimulated, of generating ideas and the subsequent externalisation of them in art forms. Some studies on a small number of subjects have demonstrated that marijuana use leads to a decline in performance on an objective musical aptitude test (Aldrich, 1944; Williams, 1946; Winick, 1957). This test measures the ability to distinguish musical intervals and rhythm. The subjects also thought their performance under marijuana was better, whereas it actually was poorer than it was in a non-drug state. There is some question about whether tests of this kind, conducted in an institution on a non-jazz musician group, can be generalised to jazz musicians using their drug under illicit circumstances and in the special environment of a night club or similar establishment. (60) There is no doubt that much that is original and profound in modern jazz has come from musician addicts who were as fixated on as immature an emotional level as are most drug users. Over-simplifying a complex subject, we could say that jazz was primarily a music of protest and alienation, and the musicians who were the most alienated were those who took drugs in order to 23 reinforce their feelings of separateness so that they could function and express these feelings in music. (61) V In a lecture delivered in New York in January 1882, the Irish author Oscar Wilde made a now-famous assertion : “Music is the art which most completely realises the artistic idea, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring.” (62) The musician as artist is a concept as old as music itself and the musician has always held a special place in society, but this was reinforced by those who rose to fame as a result of the Sixties youth rebellion with an image of the musician as guru, in many instances playing homage to the Great God Acid. Much of what happened in music during this time is virtually impossible to consider outside of the drug context. Acid had its prophets and scribes in Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey and the Brotherhood of Love; its balladeers, the Grateful Dead, Jafferson Airplane and Country Joe among others; its disciples the hippies and its philosophy of peace, love and self realisation. Some musicians found themselves in a position of consistently having to deliver the revelations which meant trying to reach an even higher plane than the fans were on, through the inspiration and sensitivity as creative artists and through ever increasing amounts of hallucinogens. (63) The sixties were the years of a massive eruption of drugs. However, if one mostly has the image of grass, of hippies and LSD, of counter-cultural values, this also involved other products inscribed within a different process. The eruption of rock’n’roll in the fifties was by no means part of the wake produced by jazz or the beat generation. Drugs were a completely invisible object within rock’n’roll. Nevertheless, besides the exhausting tours which encouraged taking something to keep on going, rock’n’roll involved models of behaviour 24 which made alcohol and drugs the necessary ingredients of a certain way of life.(64) Even before the hippies hit the streets, rock and roll was pushing at its outer limits, both in terms of lyric and musical structure. It wouldn’t be any exaggeration that psychotropics had a major hand in the perception that brought about all this new ground breaking. Speed may have been the fuel for the live show, but marijuana was the great aid to the recording studio. A heightened perception coupled with a rapidly expanding technology and increasingly sophisticated recording techniques enabled rock and roll to go in every direction. The Beatles and Rolling Stones took the simple R&B structures that were the base of rock, and moulded them in elaborate and increasingly baroque directions. Bob Dylan was writing lyrics that would have been scarcely believable to anyone in the fifties. Brian Wilson layered harmony upon harmony, bringing an unprecedented lushness to a simple vocal workout, while Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and, a little later, Jimi Hendrix produced sounds from the electric guitar that were undreamed of by Duane Eddy or Hank B. Marvin. All this experimentation alone would have constituted both a major achievement and a giant stride in the development of rock and roll. Only a couple of short years after the rock generation had first grappled with the new visions and perspectives revealed by marijuana, LSD25 hit the street market.(65) LSD-25, lysergic acid diethylamide, was one of the most notable psychedelic drugs, which embraced everything from nature’s cannabis, peyote and mescaline to the new products of modern chemistry. LSD-25 was first synthesised in 1943 in the laboratories of the Swiss pharmacy company, Sandoz, in Basle, by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. It did not arrive in America until 1949, where it remained part of a restricted medical research project in analysing psychological states of mind, like schizophrenia and paranoia. LSD-25 was an extremely effective way of creating temporary hallucinatory states of mind that enabled doctors and psychologists to literally enter the same states of consciousness their patients were experiencing obviously enhancing their ability to treat these patients through a fuller understanding of their fears. Even though it was strictly used for psycho- 25 analysis, its testers included not only medical patients, but gradually, throughout the 50s, members of American intelligentsia and the beatnik subculture, mainly around Venice Beach in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York and Austin in Texas. LSD-25 got more publicity through the beatnik writers who tried the drug (such as Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg) and gained tremendous popularity in the sixties thanks largely to the proselytising efforts of two Harvard university researchers, Drs Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. As it was presented primarily as a mind expanding substance, which could only aid artistic perception and literary expression, it is not surprising that it appealed to the limited number of beatnik intelligentsia aware of the drug : for professional reasons rather than recreational ones. (66) By the summer of 1963, when Timothy Leary was dismissed from the University of California for holding LSD-25 sessions with a greater regularity than was acceptable to the Board of Directors. From this point it is noticeable that LSD-25 started to lose its scientific status, becoming more and more part of an underground lifestyle and thus being expressed in the music and arts of that society - the ‘Family Dog’ folk music co-operative around San Francisco were an early group of artists and musicians to emerge in 1965. Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, formed the year before to basically document acid experimentation through film and tape recordings simultaneously publicised the drug via a bus painted in noticeable day-glo paints, travelling around to those who were unaware of LSD’s existence. Even though Kesey and Leary were independently presenting LSD for its scientific merits - to enlighten people- many misinterpreted their cause. LSD became increasingly a recreational drug. (67) The most commonly reported phenomena resulting from an LSD experience and having particular relevance to the question of creativity, were greater freedom from prescribed mental sets and syntactical organisation, an unusual wealth of associations and images, synesthesia, the sharpening of colour 26 perception, remarkable attention to detail, the accessibility of past impressions, memories, heightened emotional excitement, a sense of direct and intrinsic awareness, and the propensity for the environment to compose itself into perfect tableaux and harmonious compositions. (68) The effect of LSD on perception is mainly optical but also creates psychological implications which in turn affect the rest of the senses. Retinal recording in the eye of colours is enhanced, enabling many colour combinations that would normally not be noticed, to stand out more clearly. A person would not usually spot all of the varying shades of green on an apple immediately, this would be carried out subconsciously and require deep concentration and scrutiny before these subtleties were acknowledged by the conscious field of the brain. LSD not only heightens the retina’s ability to differentiate these subtleties, it also frees the ‘filtering function of the conscious field of the brain, therefore allowing the conscious access to a higher percentage of information normally stored subconsciously (that percentage depending, of course, on the strength of the dosage). By allowing a freer connection to exist between the subconscious and conscious means that stored memory of the past events and experiences are more accessible (usually when the conscious part of the brain suppresses the majority of, mostly irrelevant, stored memory). But as the LSD has, in a sense, ‘liberated the policing’ of the brain, by loosening the filtering action of the conscious field, the capability to imagine and allow stored memory to interact more freely causes some form of hallucination to take place. Hallucination may also occur through the intensification of the senses, obviously intensifying colour reception. This would explain why some tones of green on the apple may be interpreted as being luminous or sharper than they really are (also helped by the increased powers of detection that the retina in the eye has received by the action of the drug). There seems to be a paradox between the improved ability of the senses, and the heightened ability for the brain to get confused by the abnormally large amount of information held by the conscious field (information which has not been 27 filtered off for subconscious storage). Like in hypnosis, the subconscious and conscious are handling information in unison - therefore breaking down social conditioning which normally helps to govern conscious behaviour. By breaking down those restrictions exercised by the conscious field, LSD promotes autonomous handling of new and previously stored information normal logic becomes surreal. LSD creates a kind of schizophrenic relationship (perhaps even a conflict) between the retina (as a sense organ) and the brain (as a decipher of the information provided), hence LSD-25’s original use in psychological research to analyse paranoia and schizophrenia, where the individual does not distinguish between the difference of conscious and subconscious actions.(69) While amphetamines tend to heighten one’s sense of relation to reality, producing a ‘hyperreality’ as it were, LSD distorts and rearranges the original referent (‘reality’), often to the degree of temporarily blotting it out and imposing an alternative order of sensations. For example, listening to music might induce one to envision a set of moving coloured lights. The LSD user feels awash in a stream of new ideas. Attention span is quite short, for each new idea carries the mind away. With strong doses, some LSD users have difficulty retaining a single thought long enough to voice a complete sentence. Fine motor skills, on the other hand, do not seem to suffer much, which is important for a musician.(70) Hallucinogenic drugs are said to make music sound more meaningful, so it might be just as valid to say drug taking encourages an interest in rock music. It is significant that music was considered equally integral to the enhancement of hallucinogenic experience. In particular, the musician-listener harmony was heightened by an emphasis on shared experience, which, in the sixties, was reflected in the lyrics and constructed through musical techniques which emphasised an electronic mutation of sound and shifting textures of timbral colours, so providing a metaphor for the enhanced awareness of colour and temporal disorganisation associated with LSD. Associations with the metaphysical were generally structured through an adoption of Eastern scales, drones, shifting metres, chant-like 28 singing, and particular instrumentation to include, for example, sitar, tambouras, dilruba and tabla. (71) Much psychedelic art depicted central vanishing points and cosmic arrangements, like the Chocolate Watchband’s album cover for ‘No Way Out’ in 1967. Hearing is often blurred into more drone-like patterns, caused perhaps by the autonomous way the brain is dealing with sonic information (a sense of nausea brought on by the drug -marijuana particularly- also plays a part in that). This also explains the Indian raga/drone effect bands such as The Byrds and The Beatles introduced during this period, through their experience of Indian sitar music and a wish to reflect LSD’s effect on hearing. Once people had experienced these fundamental changes in the process of perception most reflected that in their ‘widened’ thinking and expression. Paul McCartney and George Harrison underline the effect of LSD on the lives of 60s users : “It opened my eyes. We only use a tenth of our brain. Just think what we could all accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a whole new world.” (Paul McCartney). “It’s shattering because it’s as though someone suddenly wipes away all you were taught or brought up to believe as a child and says : ‘That’s not it!’. You’ve gone, so far, your thoughts have become so lofty and there’s no way of getting back.” (George Harrison). (72) LSD-inspired music and groups opened wholly new and seemingly endless possibilities of lyric, rhythm and sound. But it was jazz musicians rather than rock musicians who first tried hallucinogenic drugs, including Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, who after an LSD trip said he had ‘perceived the inter-relations of all life forms’.(73) However, the fact is to be acknowledged that the state of mind induced by LSD ingestion affected musical creation in both positive and negative ways, such as directing attention to novel sources of inspiration and the inability to follow complex chord sequences, respectively. 29 The effect of acid on rock and roll was immeasurable. The idea of actually translating the mind wrenching revelations of the new wonder drugs was an elusive prize that numerous rock and roll bands grasped out for. Only a very few managed to come close to reproducing even a single facet of the psychedelic experience.(74) By 1965 it started to show in the music -most notably of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan-. Rock’n’roll started to look into itself and created a sound that was built for LSD. Compositions became more and more complex as pop moved out of outdated blues 12-bar structures, under the influence of drugs, with higher aspirations (particularly with post-65 Beatles and Pink Floyd). New instrumentation and effects were introduced, as well as samples of audiences, orchestras, backward tapes, conversations and ragas to form an altogether more eclectic assemblage of ideas. Psychedelia was not particularly an attitude, more an awareness and open mindedness to enable more creativity. Acid rock was a musical genre that sprang up around the use of LSD and similar drugs, such as mescaline and psilocybin. The music developed features that clearly derived from the effects of the drug, including the short attention span, the emotional ambiguity and the lack of unequivocal attitudes, the great interest in novel sensations, the egalitarian fascination with everything and with all activities, and the impatiently creative desire to explore complex and subtle elaborations. The psychopharmacological properties of the drug did not directly produce the musical forms. More likely, the drug created mental states with certain preferences and receptivities. Consequently, the music took on features that corresponded to these mental states. (75) A major contribution of LSD to the evolution of rock music was expansion of the use of sound colour. The interesting subjective distortions and spreading of sound caused by LSD, led users to explore new musical sounds in the quest for fascinating sensations. Electronic refinement of musical sound was greatly stimulated during the acid era. This development can best be seen in the Beatles. George Harrison told journalist Hunter Davies about his first time 30 taking LSD, ‘It was as if I’d never tasted, talked, seen, thought or heard properly before.’(76) While under the influence of acid for the first time, John Lennon started drawing and perceived George Harrison’s house as a big submarine where they all lived. This child-like imagery soon grew more pronounced as Lennon became obsessed with acid, taking hundreds of trips which undermined his already volatile personality. (77) Beatles For Sale (1964) and Help! (1965), though not without memorable numbers, were mostly exploitation albums to satisfy the market. Early Beatles’ music was commonly a simple rhythm-and-blues arrangement : guitar, bass, drums and vocals, with few or no sound effects. By 1965, however, Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), influenced in their composition by the use of marijuana and LSD, placed the Beatles’ achievement on an unprecedented plateau of genius. A concept of love that goes beyond a quick one behind the gasworks appeared in The Word, while Nowhere Man examined the inner mental workings of the individual as revealed by psychedelic drugs. She Said, She Said was inspired by a conversation Lennon had with actor Peter Fonda during his second acid trip, and Leary’s psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead provided the material for Tomorrow Never Knows.(78) The sitar appeared on the Beatles’ records around the time that the Beatles may have first been exposed to LSD. To quote Carr & Taylor : “Rubber Soul is the Beatles’ first step into mystic and, although subsequent albums seem to extrapolate these visions much further, the insight - and cutting social comment- showed that the group had ditched the jelly babies forever. They were a studio band pure and simple touring had long since become a question of going through the motions”(79). The Sgt. Pepper album has a large variety of sounds. The acid influence is apparent in the drumming on that album, for the drums are used to create varied sensations and not merely to keep the rhythm. Lucy in the Sky (1967) is a trip song -what with taxi and train and boat, and the tangerine trees and marmalade skies, and the loss of time and the distortion of normal 31 proportions, and the music, if nothing else, and of course the LSD of Lucy, sky, and diamonds, a trip song that is an invitation to discover what acid can turn us on to : our senses of touch and taste and sight and smell and wonder. Paul McCartney’s response to the question ‘What was the life that was reflected in the Sgt. Pepper album?’ was : “Drugs, basically. They got reflected in the music. When you mention drugs these days, heroin and crack and cocaine and all of that serious stuff comes to mind. Remember, drug taking in 1967 was much more in the musicians’ tradition. We’d heard of Ellington and Basie and jazz guys smoking a bit of pot, and now it arrived on our music scene. It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It coloured our perceptions. I think we started to realise there weren’t as many frontiers as we’d thought there were. And we realised we could break barriers.” (80) The Beatles seem to have used LSD for initial inspirations and then edited and mixed and refined extensively while not under the influence of drugs, whereas many other groups of the era were composing, recording and even performing under the influence of drug. This can be accounted as the main reason for the psychedelic but clean-cut sound of the Beatles when compared with the others. Bob Dylan went through some profound drug experiences during 1964-65, taking up Boudelaire’s formula for immortality : ‘A poet makes himself a seer by a long prodigious and rational disordering of the senses’. He talked about recapturing spontaneity and about writing songs that matched his thoughts at the age of ten, which was not going to happen while he was the doyen of protest folk. So he turned his back on politics as marijuana and acid turned him in on himself. Within a few short months the hard-nosed political reality of the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and the Ballad of Hollis Brown, gave way to expressions of drug experiences like Chimes of Freedom, Lay Down Your Weary Tune, Subterrannean Homesick Blues and Mr Tambourine Man. Michael Gray cites Lay Down Your Weary Tune, written in 1964, as Dylan’s 32 first acid song, ‘the first concentrated attempt to give a hint of the unfiltered world.’ (81) Under the influence of LSD, the Grateful Dead did not vary their sound greatly. For example, they seem to have eschewed the “fuzz tone” distortion that was popular with the British bands, but still achieved a very pretty, colourful sound. Noteworthy in this regard was their persistent use of the acoustic piano instead of one of the electric keyboards that were so predominant. The acoustic piano produced a sound that electric ones could not match. It also deserves mention that the Grateful Dead were not a particularly loud band, especially by comparison with other rock bands. Loudness is not essential to acid rock. (82) The Jefferson Airplane engaged in considerable exploration of sound, including their extensive use of combined sound effects with the guitar (e.g., reverb, which produces an echo-chamber effect, superimposed on fuzz tone), experimentation with sound collages (which was also tried by the Beatles), and especially the use of improvised blends of voices. Thus on the live concert recording Bless Its Pointed Little Head, several striking effects are achieved by having the male singer carry responsibility for getting most of the lyrics sung, while the female vocalist was free to oscillate between singing improvised harmonies, shouting in unison with the lead male singer and simply holding long notes. The last of these was especially unusual, for the female vocalist would be singing the same words (more or less) as the male lead and then would abruptly hold one word/note while he sang the next line or two. (83) Under the influence of Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys recorded tracks in the mid-60s using the noises of fire, water, carrot-munching and even, if you listen closely and with a certain amount of imaginative freeplay, the unmistakable sound of sex on the studio carpet. Thanks to the ingestion of huge quantities of LSD-25, surf ‘n’ car ballads effortlessly gave way to cosmic thoughts and musical experiment. (84) 33 Jim Morrison of the Doors freely admitted that he “gobbled down acid like candy” during his days in Venice, California, when he conceived and wrote the major percentage of his songs. Morrison delved deep into the subconscious and used the images and fears that he found there to create a nightmarish, sinisterly erotic fantasy world where mystic killers roamed dreamlike highways, virginal princesses sacrificed themselves to black leather monsters, cities burned, violence was always lurking just below the surface and reptiles abounded. Morrison presided over his strange creation in the role of his lizard king character. (85) Through 1966 and 1967, LSD spread through the British rock scene. Eric Clapton claimed that ‘Acid was conductive to exploring music’. After taking it, he never played straight blues. Brian Jones, who had initially been the drive and musical inspiration behind the Rolling Stones, was particularly prominent. In 1966, the Stones found themselves musically dried up. LSD provided something of an answer, encouraging them eventually to make Their Satanic Majesties Request. Also the Pink Floyd’s See Emily Play is a good example of the British psychedelic sound. However the Pink Floyd took an almost diametrically opposed position. Half hidden by the swirls and blobs of one of the first lightshows, and motivated by the brilliant but far from stable Syd Barrett, they produced a cold, aloof form of music that evoked images of both the glittering icy void of deep space and the chill isolated corners of the paranoid mind.(86). Whilst Pink Floyd stressed that they were not a psychedelic group per se, they drew attention to the need to know that particular forms of music, such as their own space rock, were played when ‘tripping’. Syd Barrett had suggested that Astonomy Domine, the opening song of the 1967 album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was a description of an acid trip taken whilst composing the song, whilst Roger Waters stressed the importance of the light show, the visual context which underpinned the ‘otherworldliness’ and beauty of the space rock experience. ‘Space Rock’ , as the name implies, refers to the sense of being ‘spaced out’, ‘tripping’, and is musically constructed through layers of sound, kaleidoscopic colours, 34 unpredictable and sometimes disorienting effects which create a dramatic realisation of movement through time and space, and which are analogous to the extra-ordinariness of hallucinogenic experience. Within Astronomy Domine the electronic mutation of sound, the huge overwhelming textures, the sinuous tripping of the lead guitar and organ around the harmonic riff and the magical, mesmeric effect of Pete Jenner’s voice as he intones the names of stars and galaxies through a megaphone, resonate with the state of mind when tripping. In particular, the dip shapes in the guitar solo create a strong feeling of floating around the beat and this is reinforced by the lazy meandering around the notes, again suggestive of tripping where the fixed point takes on a new reality. The chord sequence, itself, moves against any sense of formal organisation and, apart from the pause, which separates the two parts of the song to create a feeling of stopped time, and the final cadence, there is no real resolution. Rather there is a disorientation of the norm and a total absorption within the sound itself to effect a musical metaphor for being spaced out, the escape from a rational time sense. In live performance, the electronically generated sound effects and the long improvisatory passages resonated with stroboscopic lighting to effect a feeling analogous to the effect of LSD : the ‘piling up of new sensations’, the associations with changed perceptions and colour. (87) A subtle but extremely important influence can be found in “texture” or the physical properties of the music. These properties often influence one’s state of mind and sometimes produce psychedelic effects in listeners which remind them of their drug experiences. Jimi Hendrix innovated music with these unique textural properties. Hendrix, a self avowed psychedelic stunt pilot, came close to the jangle, the loop and the curve experienced by the acid saturated brain.(88) Blue Cheer utilised 15 amplifiers and, in their live concerts, often played at volumes considerably above the pain thresholds of their listeners in an attempt to produce a distinctive texture. The emphasis on changed perceptions associated with the increasing importance of textural and timbral colour in psychedelic rock was facilitated by 35 advances in the ‘technicalisation’ of music and a growing awareness that synthesisers, such as the revolutionary RCA and the MOOG, could be creative compositional tools. Synthesis facilitated atmospheric textures and multi-layered spatial compositions where the sound could travel rather than staying at a constant distance. Components of sound could also be adjusted in tempo to effect a ‘sounds parts’ timbre, whilst tape-splicing provided the means to access and creatively deploy sound rhythms. Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale, The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, and Stg. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Yardbirds’ Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black and Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, the Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park, and Hendrix’s Purple Haze, were examples of the experimental and imaginative, but above everything else, aspiring to genius song-writing within pop music. All these songs feature stark changes in tempo and harmonic key. Some groups combined simple lyrics with an extremely complex texture; the Beatles have done this several times (e.g., “Strawberry Fields Forever”) producing an effect which demands structure and interpretation from the listener. (13/105). One musician remarked, “The Beatles’ Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and I am the Walrus are the musical equivalents of a light show - everything is happening all at once, the instruments, the sound tracks, the words pile on top of each other and you can assimilate them much better when you’re stoned”. One writer (Korall, 1968) described the result of this combination : “At their ultimate in surrealism and ambiguity, Dylan, the Beatles, and acid-rock groups, ... might initially cloud the mind with a crazy quilt of image, but they do draw you to them within the maelstrom and engage your capacities in a search that frequently is as exciting and fulfilling as the revelation that sometimes lies at the end of a trip. Observers have paralleled the experience with the drug turn on - an analogue not without basis in fact. The drug phenomenon is very much with us and figures in the music of youth.” (89) As mentioned above, one hallmark of the acid sound was subtle complexity. Admittedly, the subjective effects of LSD may have made things far less 36 subtle for a user. Nevertheless, novel sounds, cultivation of the use of accompanying instruments and percussive contrasts produced auditory sensations that users sought. Loud volume was not essential, although it was often thrown in for good measure. Another feature of acid rock’s sound was the occasional use of brief repetition of a simple phrase, with either increasing volume or increasing tempo. This tended to produce in listeners the sensation described by users as a “rush” : a subjective state of brief, agitated euphoria. The popularity of this device was quite possibly enhanced by the fact that marijuana users also experienced rush sensations and would therefore loudly applaud such repetition during live performances. The chord structure of acid rock songs is generally extremely simple. The preference for simple chords can probably be attributed to LSD’s disruption of the attention span and conscious memory. Within the framework of a few simple chords, however, acid rock became highly complex. It was only during the acid era that rock musicians seemed to discover the great potentialities that lay in their instruments. Early rock musicians had simply strummed chords while they sang. Acid rock produced lead guitar solos, the use of “fills” (i.e., the insertion of brief, often improvised instrumental phrases between the singer’s lines) and “jams”. A good example of acid musical structure is the song Truckin’ by the Grateful Dead. Their live recording of it fills an entire album side, yet it is almost all done on a single chord. Acid rock cultivated the creative use of what might be called the intermediate instruments : intermediate between the lead vocalist and the basic rhythm section. On the Grateful Dead’s ‘China Cat Sunflower’, for example, the guitarist quietly plays a melody behind the singer, one that is more complex than the singer’s melody. Another interesting feature of acid rock is that melodies were not generally remarkable. The complexity of acid rock was in spontaneous, improvised elaborations on the simple compositions. In short, the structure of acid rock was geared toward a performer with a weak memory and an abundance of inspirations. At the structural level, acid rock sought new rhyme schemes. The 37 standard ‘June-moon’ and ‘blue-you’ rhymes were quickly abandoned, just as repetitious bass lines were discarded. The quest for novel rhymes was tempered, however, by the impatience of the acid rock composer. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of acid lyrics was their lack of unity across the song. In the typical acid song, each verse is about something different. As mentioned previously, the LSD user has a short attention span and an intense fascination with anything that enters the mind. It would therefore be unimaginably constraining, after getting through the chorus or refrain, to have to resume the topic of the previous verse. For example, considering the first three verses of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Truckin’’ (see Appendix 2), each verse has a different topical theme and a different rhyme scheme as well. The lyrics for the songs on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album often have unity, although in many cases this unity is just a loose structure that provides a framework for heterogeneous observations (e.g., Good Morning, Good Morning or A Day in the Life). The Jafferson Airplane, at the opposite extreme, are often cryptic to the point of incoherence in their lyrics. They carried the lack of unity to extremes : to the point of titling songs with no relation to any of the parts or verses. For example, the title of 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds is never explained and apparently has nothing to do with the song, except perhaps that it is a fast song. (90) Because pop music encompasses many aspects of the contemporary scene, it was natural that references to drugs should eventually appear in the lyrics. Since rock music began, most of its lyrics had dealt with love. In acid rock, love lost its central emphasis. Lyrics became poetical rather than simply being based on romantic entanglements and teenage frustration. (see Appendix 3 for the lyrics of Tales of Brave Ulysses (1967) by Cream). The egalitarian mentality of the LSD user finds everything fascinating, so love is nothing special. This development can be seen in the contrast between the early Beatles’ music, which focused heavily on love lyrics, and their acid rock. When acid rock did turn to love, it was generally without romantic passion. As previously suggested, the acid user was typically detached from such emotions.(91) There are more subtle psychedelic influences on lyrics than 38 specific mention of drugs, according to Larry Larden. He told Stanley Krippner, “The usual girl-boy theme of pop music is often replaced by a mancosmos theme. Psychedelics often expand a song-writer’s perspective and he starts to write about a man’s relationship to his fellow man, to nature, and to the universe.” This trend is noted in the titles of many pop albums (e.g., The Grateful Dead’s Anthem To The Sun, The Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul). (92) The emotion in acid rock has a paradoxical character. It is often intense, but there is a detachment at its core. This may derive from the drug’s effects. Insofar as LSD stimulated and amplified sensations, it would enhance and intensify emotion. However, the short attention span and the enhanced capacity to see various sides and implications of an issue work against emotion. A main source of intense emotion in acid rock comes from the excitement of performing in front of a large audience. The audience counteracts the attention span problem by continuing to be there and to make noise, which has the effect of reminding the performer to be excited. Studio acid rock, in contrast to live performances, tends to be unemotional -as can easily be heard on the Beatles’ acid records. Confined to the studio, they played a highly intellectual acid rock, which was full of ideas but had little emotion. The Jefferson Airplane became similarly introspective and intellectual in the studio (e.g., After Bathing at Baxter’s). Their occasional studio attempts at emotionality (e.g., It’s A Wild Time on the above album) fall flat and are just loud and empty. (93) Acid, however, like marijuana, was not the ideal drug for a coherent live show. Maybe the Grateful Dead could tank up on psychedelics and play a five or six hour show of erratic brilliance, but they were definitely an exception. More often than not, a bunch of acid before a show could lead to uncontrolled outbursts of the kind that Jim Morrison was famous for, or else total confusion and breakdown of even the slimmest musical continuity. A typical case was Eric Burdon, who, at a legendary San Francisco concert, spent more than an hour on stage, unable to do anything but wander, awe-struck, around the 39 stage gazing at the lightshow and murmuring “Gosh, wow” periodically into the microphone. (94) David Crosby’s autobiography is a case study in the difficulty of living a hippie lifestyle to the full and being a professional musician. “I was never able to play while that stoned on psychedelics”, he admitted. “If I was fully dosed and tried to play, I’d be in another room with a guitar three feet thick, while still on stage with the band with which I was supposed to be playing. In one case, that was The Byrds at Fillmore West. Guitar strings would turn to rubber, my hands would pass entirely through the instrument, and the audience (if I saw them at all), could be anything from a field of waving buttercups to a pack of howling demons”. (95) Like any creative artist, Jimi Hendrix was intrigued by the visions he had under the influence of LSD. Like so many others, from his use of mainly LSD flowed an interest in the occult sciences, I Ching, astrology, numerology and colour as sound. Carlos Santana was down at the Record Plant in midNovember when Jimi was doing overdubs for Room Full of Mirrors : “This was a real shocker to me. He said, ‘Okay, roll it’, and started recording and it was incredible. But within 15 or 20 seconds into the song, he just went out. All of a sudden the music that was coming out of the speakers was way beyond the song, like he was freaking out having a gigantic battle in the sky with somebody. It just didn’t make sense with the song anymore, so the roadies looked at each other, the producer looked at him and they said, ‘Go get him’. I’m not making this up. They separated him from the amplifier and the guitar and it was like he was having an epileptic attack....When they separated him, his eyes were red.....He was gone.” (96) Bill Graham (Graham and Stafford, 1969), perhaps America’s leading entrepreneur of pop music : “I’ve seen many musicians perform very, very well, and on occasion they have said, ‘It’s a result of ... having used acid.’ This I have heard many times. But for the most part the musicians I’ve seen perform under the influence of acid - it was close to tragic. The danger ... of 40 acid is that it’s used by many who haven’t learned how to cope with it in proper fashion.” (97) In 1968 and 1969 Stanley Krippner interviewed 27 pop musicians (25 instrumental performers and two vocalists), most of them rock performers. All 27 had smoked marijuana and 24 had tried LSD. Five musicians stated a preference for smoking marijuana before performing, seven felt it impaired their performance, while the others claimed it had neither a positive nor a negative effect. Three musicians claimed that their performance was enhanced by LSD, while six claimed the substance had no effect on their performance. The other 15 were of the opinion that LSD and similar drugs had a negative effect on the quality of their performance, although many claimed that some of their most creative ideas had come to them during psychedelic experiences. According to Stanley Krippner : “I have heard musicians perform both with and without the influence of LSD. In no case could the LSD performance be called superior, or even on an equal level. The performer may have been under the impression that he was doing well; in my opinion however, he typically demonstrated difficulties co-ordinating his performance with that of other members of the group. Problems in tempo were common; frequent fingering errors and missed notes also occurred. Insofar as marijuana is concerned, the effects appeared to be somewhat different, and highly variable from person to person. In general, I have detected neither an improvement nor a deterioration among musicians performing under the influence of marijuana.” (98) The musician and poet Donovan once stated : “It was a very heavy change, the hallucinatory drugs....I tend to think that the drugs didn’t make me write the way I wrote songs.... I believe that very early, before I had taken acid, I was writing dream-state songs, but they were certainly increased and heightened by the use of acid.” (99) John Lennon’s answer to the question asked in the Rolling Stone interview in 1971 “How do you think LSD affected your conception of the music ?” was : 41 “It was only another mirror. It wasn’t a miracle. It was more of a visual thing and a therapy, looking at yourself a bit. It did all that. You know, I don’t quite remember. But it didn’t write the music. I write the music in the circumstances in which I’m in, whether it’s on acid or in the water.” (100) Not all rock stars favoured LSD. Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead’s Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, for example, rejected LSD in favour of alcohol, speed or heroin. They seemed scared of LSD’s disorientating effects, and sought other drugs and drink in order not to ‘expand their consciousness’ but to shut it down. Amphetamines are powerful central nervous system stimulants. Unlike cocaine, which is a naturally derived stimulant, the amphetamines are synthetic drugs. Originally synthesised in 1887 by the pharmaceutical manufacturers Smith, Kline and French, amphetamine was launched on the market in 1932 as a Benzedrine nasal inhaler to relieve the symptoms of colds, hayfever and asthma.(101) Amphetamines and barbiturates -uppers and downers- have been prescribed by doctors since the thirties to restore lost energy or ensure a good night’s sleep respectively. Although their widespread abuse has led to a more responsible attitude towards their prescription among the medical profession, for a long time they were handed out like sweets, a practice satirised by the Rolling Stones in Mother’s Little Helper. The major medical use for methedrine (speed) was only emergency injection to revive victims from a state of technical death due to heart stop. In other words, it was for waking up corpses. At its most terminal, methedrine (‘meth’) could produce extreme and often violent paranoia and hallucinations. Speed stood at the cross-roads of early rock ‘n’ roll and country music, consumed by performers, roadies and audience alike. It was not exactly unknown among British musicians. Amphetamines in various shapes and colours kept the pop and rock ‘n’ roll tours moving in the fifties and sixties and Phenmetrazine, marketed as Preludin, was consumed by the handful by bands, most notably 42 by the Beatles, on their trips to Hamburg. Speed (and later cocaine) worked by giving musicians the courage to get out there and sufficient edge to keep going throughout the performance. (102) The speed phenomenon produced a crop of suitably demented songs. Favourites among the San Francisco speedfreaks were an outfit called the Blue Cheer. Almost a prototype of today’s heavy metal bands, the Blue Cheer relied on sheer volume to punch across their point, boasting anything up to two thousand watts of guitar amplification. The Velvet Underground’s notorious cut Sister Ray has been one of the speedfreaks’ favourite recording worldwide. Nobody could deny that it fitted the mood exactly. In its twenty minute duration the song screeched its way through a high velocity ribbon of the most disquieting jangle the world had ever heard. It is a fact that nobody listened to the music too much, not even the almost inaudible, but oft repeated, lyric line “I’m searching for my mainline”. The record was not there for aural gratification, more to heighten the illusion of jagged, high power madness.(103) Each Velvet Underground song used a small group of notes that kept battering against one another until feedback -the screech, the amphetamine shriek- was the only place to go. The rhythm never let go, it held you down while the lyrics swamped you with street images. The sound of the band was an aural presentation of the amphetamine experience. That was the band’s context, the framework within which they operated; Lou Reed put an amphetamine stutter in Sister Ray to emphasise the point. Against this, Reed sang of a white boy going to Harlem to score heroin (Waiting For The Man) and of the all-consuming love affair between a heroin addict and his drug (Heroin). (104) Amphetamines became the favoured drug for the live show, as acid, like marijuana, was not the ideal drug for a coherent live show. The useful familiar pills did their rounds, but in addition to the well known Dexedrines, spansules, Drinamyl and the rest, methedrine, which was available in clinical ampoules, bootleg pills, capsules or powder, was more powerful than anything that had previously gone the illicit distribution route. 43 Brian Wilson in the Rolling Stone Interview in 1976 : “I used to write on pills. I used to take uppers and write, and I used to like that effect. In fact, I’d like to take uppers now and write, because they give me, you know, a certain life and a certain outlook. I mean the pill might be unnatural, but the song itself doesn’t turn out unnatural on the uppers. The creativity flows through.” (105) In the mean time barbiturates and other, milder downers like quaaludes and mantrax have remained popular among oblivion seekers and heavy-metal freaks lost in a ‘Valhalla’ of plodding rhythms and tortured guitar feedback. As the methedrine craze had worn itself out, heroin became the number one fashion turn on. Heroin was simpler, easier, more to the point and, in the long run, much more deadly. It held the pressures at bay and gave the user not only mental space but cocooned him in a psychological capsule that pain was unable to enter as long as he keeps taking the medicine. James Taylor commented on the effects of heroin : “It knocks out your sensitivities at the same time that it gets rid of the suppressed emotion that you can’t stand anymore. I was incapable of writing on heroin. I imagine even methadone does that to me, to an extent, except that after a while the presence of methadone disappears. You can’t feel it. “ (106) As for another crucial drug used heavily by the rock musicians, however smoother, Stephen B. Groce’s findings as of his research on ‘American smalltime rock and roll musicians’ (1987) reveal that most users found that cocaine ‘interfered with your sense of rhythm’ and caused users to ‘inspect what you’re performing rather than just performing it’. In addition, most of these stage performers reported that they were involuntarily ‘speeding up the songs’ when high on cocaine. (107) Cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant which is derived from the leaves of the Erythroxylon coca, a small plant which is native to the slopes of the Andes. It disrupts normal chemical processes of brain activity. When 44 cocaine is sniffed or injected, the person may feel a sense of restless excitement and as if he/she has unlimited energy. The person may overestimate his actual capabilities at the time. The toxic effects of cocaine use include anxiety, confusion, paranoid delusions, delirium, and auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations.(108) Most of the cocaine users illustrate that sniffing cocaine or injecting the diluted powder into a vein produces an egoreinforcing euphoria, exhilaration, and a powerful rush of well-being. In a study carried out by O’Bireck , the ex-user musicians reflect on their compositional practices while they were users. In most cases complete immersion in the subcultural life of cocaine use while composing resulted in some of these experiences being transformed into authored material. Living by subcultural norms, complete with resultant activities sparked by continual cocaine use, seemed to provide a large number of raw material from which to elicit novel ideas for original music composition. A songwriter has told once : “Yeah, I wrote my hottest songs when I was on my longest benders...beer and blow (cocaine) mostly...a sense of desperation, you know ? I tried to capture the pleasure I had the night before in all the pain I was in then.”(109) A well known keyboard player told at some stage that he felt he couldn’t compose at his peak without using mass quantities of cocaine. The band was relying on him for new material, and he was relying on coke. (110) As cocaine use is combined with occupational activities, a sense of competition appears to follow where the utopian effects of cocaine appear to triumph over occupational obligations. Where ultimate pleasure was once experienced from the composition, recording, dissemination and live performance of original music, cocaine use takes away this pleasure. As a result, musical pursuits are reduced to a strictly obligatory function of a professional musician’s life. This generally results in a marked loss of control over basic life processes and wider career goals. Although the use of cannabis among musicians seems to have declined slightly with the changes in musical fashion, it is still true that where you find 45 any form of rock music you will almost certainly find cannabis. In a sense one can argue that the Beatles, by turning on, perverted pop and invented rock as we know it. VI By the mid 1970s, the rock music business had become strongly linked to the drug trade, and it was estimated that 90 per cent of all cocaine use in the United States centred on the rock and film industries. In the musical front, possibly one of the main problems of the seventies was that no new drug appeared on the streets to change both the consciousness and the music of rock and roll effectively. For over half the decade, both music and the drug consumption seemed to stabilise and turn in on itself. Jazz survived its evolution into concert music, but acid rock did not. Probably much of the reason for the dwindling of acid rock was in the growing disfavour with LSD itself. Musicians and their audiences took new drugs instead of LSD and acid rock declined. Experimentation was constricted to flirtations with the trappings of glittering homosexuality, right wing politics and bizarre chemicals like animal tranquiliser or angel dust. For the most part the successful consumed cocaine, the unhappy used heroin, the struggling took speed and downers and just about everyone used as much booze and marijuana as they could get their hands on. (111) Originality in music comes only after musicians concentrate on amassing knowledge of history (musical and social) and gaining technical ability on musical instruments. A perfect example of that development from a retrogressive state to progressive thinking is Pete ‘Bassman’’s account of his musical career that started in 1982 with Spaceman 3, who concentrated on exploration but did so under the influence of drugs. They were not technically proficient but ‘stoned’ enough to produce 30 minute, one note, high volume songs which they felt at the time “didn’t conform to anybody’s idea of a good 46 group we know, and so felt like we were pioneers of a certain sound...”. In fact, despite their intentions, Spaceman 3 were repeating what the Velvet Underground and the Stooges had done twenty years before them, not because they wanted to imitate those idols, but because the same conditions were in operation. They were young, ‘stoned’, not technically advanced but still in need of exploring, musically as well as mentally, through the help of certain drugs. (112) Just as it began to look as if the seventies weren’t going to produce anything of value, the new wave broke. A new generation marched into the picture with new ideas, new fashions and a more raw energy than had been seen since the mid sixties. The music, which had previously been moving through an unadventurous and inward looking phase, became stripped down, energetic and quite prepared to kick out at old or redundant ideas. Once again rock and roll seemed ready to face the strain. The new wave also brought back the need for fuel. Failing to find any exciting chemical innovations, the punks, just like their spiritual fathers before them, turned back to the tried and trusted standby. A new amphetamine cycle started, proving that the direction of rock and roll is probably more circular than linear (113). During the summer of 1988, a musical concert experience called Acid House arrived on the cultural scene in many British cities. Acid House music was banned from the pop music charts, radio and television, and retail outlets. Some psychoactive substances have been bought, sold, and consumed at Acid House events. At the physiological level, the nature of this music, especially the drumming aspect, seemed instrumental in providing altered states of consciousness. At the interpersonal and social level, the set and setting of Acid House events further enhanced and reinforced the specific physiological psychological responses. (114) 47 The reason why so many comparisons are being made between sixties psychedelia and developments since Acid House is mainly due to the emergence of Ecstacy as a social stimulant in British club culture during the second half of the 80s. Ecstacy or Ecstasy, often called ‘E’, ‘ADAM’ or ‘XTC’ is known chemically as 3,4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA for short. The oils from such diverse plants as nutmeg, dill, parsley seed, calamus, crocus, saffron, vanilla beans and sassafras all contain the chemical precursors of MDMA. However, more often than not, MDMA is produced synthetically in a laboratory from Methamphetamine.(115) Ecstacy was obviously a suitable social drug as it broke down inhibition and conscious defences which also qualified it for serious therapeutic use, a use that LSD had originally been intended for. The fact that many danced tripping on Ecstacy and LSD led to similar forms of dance appreciation that had first appeared on a mass scale during the late 60s - due to the liberating effect of drugs and music. People now ‘freaked out’ to the music under the influence by standing still, keeping their limbs stiff and waving their arms, often shouting “Acieeed!”. Others appeared more mellowed and slowly waved their hands in front of their eyes to witness the visual hallucinatory effect of LSD on the perception of movement. These forms of drug induced abandonment and dancing resembled the freak-outs seen in the films covering the Monterrey and Woodstock festivals of 1967 and 1969 respectively. (116) Ecstacy arrived during a period in the early 80s when the UK was increasingly beginning to look to black American danceability, and street-wise ghetto attitudes. This might explain why Ecstacy in Britain was strictly contained within club culture rather than appealing to an exclusive designer minority. The dance-inducing effect of Ecstacy (through lowering normal inhibitions), particularly when mixed with an amphetamine (providing an artificial feelings of energy), no doubt influenced this too. The fact that Ecstacy was ‘discovered’, so to speak by a group of DJs (Nick Holloway, Danny Rampling, Johnny Walker and Paul Oakenfold) and clubbers on Ibiza, during 1986, also 48 explains why club culture incorporated the drug so quickly. The free and easy atmosphere of a holiday island, plus the presence of hippies, complimented Ecstacy’s empathetic nature. The style of club culture there was less restricted to hip tastes and snobbery, preferring to blend together anything that was, simply, danceable.(117) A spin-off of disco and psychedelic rock, Acid House or House, first occurred on a large scale in early 1988 in the British Midlands (Manchester), Northern England, London and Scotland. It then appeared in New York City and Dallas (Texas) later that year. Acid House music clearly derived from two American sources. Firstly, Detroit ‘Techno’, which is hard edged and digitally computerised dance-beats - a complete contrast compared to the fluid, biological rhythms of traditional funk music. The second major influence with Acid House was Chicago House (and its closely related ‘Deep House’), known for more soulful harmonies. Farley Jackmaster Funk had a huge British hit in 1986 with Love Can’t Turn Around, which was a song based entirely on a bassy trombone sample running through the whole track. Both of these forms of music derived from unlicensed and under-age clubs in ghettos, where alcohol was not sold, therefore, creating a market open for drug pushers with punters faced with no other option than to dance. English raves were held at a later date (19881989) in similar circumstances, with no alcohol or bar sales, leaving little option other than to dance continuously for 6 to 8 hours (resulting in a reasonable demand for amphetamines of some sort). Dr. Martin Paulus, Resident in Psychiatry, University of California at San Diego : “One basis of the rave phenomenon is the music synchronising people’s behaviour to an underlying rhythm. When you move to that rhythm you essentially do one type of behaviour -demands on your behaviour are to do the same thing over and over again; you’re taking a drug that does the same thing over and over again, and it seems to fit perfectly together. (quoted in Mac Dougal Craig, 1995).(118) Drugs of any sort would, therefore, be more likely to go hand with Chicago and Detroit House - as long as they prompted danceability. Most forms of House are based on a heavy 4:4 drum beat which is often used to 49 create a repetitive and hypnotic effect. Ecstacy and LSD also promote similar sonic interpretations, so their effects fitted well with House music. In addition to the Acid House music influenced by Ecstacy, it is also essential to mention the Manchester Indie-dance movement which took another direction. As DJ Mike Pickering of Hacienda in Manchester began to play the relentless, Chicago-based house music, this inspired many young and emerging Manchester bands. One of the first local Manchester bands to appear was Happy Mondays, a loose collective of friends who were well known around the Hacienda as the drug dealers who first brought ecstasy back to Manchester. From the start, their songs had the kind of rolling rhythm that made it easy to dance in the arm-waving, sinuous way that had overtaken the club. And other bands fell in, from the Stone Roses to 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald whose hypnotic single “Voodoo Ray” was a Hacienda anthem. (119) As the Ecstacy-based club culture grew, it became attached to a musical style that directly referenced its Iberian origins; the aptly named ‘Balearic Beat’ which was used to describe not a specific musical style, but a musical eclecticism and an experimentation that drew upon British Indie music, American Hip-Hop, and Chicago-based House music. Technological advances within music production had gathered pace throughout the 1980s, and by 1987 the previously rigid boundaries between musical production and consumption were starting to disintegrate. Centred within this development was a new lease of life for the club DJ. Unlike his traditional British counterpart, the Balearic DJ did not merely play one record after another, interspersing the mix with inane banter, but was required to mix two or three records together at the same time, creating a unique collage of sounds and rhythms.(120) Acid House married that basic House formula with a willingness to test old and new equipment and produce different sound effects - inspired by the psychedelic drugs that some people were increasingly using in London clubs. Acid House succeeded in dehumanising the previously soulful Chicago House by orientating itself around new digital instrumentation. 50 Music was facing up to the very latest equipment and basing itself solely on those terms. (121) And when the psychedelic missionaries had found a drug, which was Ecstacy, that directly matched the formal properties of sequenced House music, a drug that ‘fitted’ a musical genre as a hand fits a glove, Slowly but surely the Balearic spirit was abandoned, out went the hip-hop influences, with their ‘awkward’ emphases on the first two beats on the bar, and out went any rock influences that disrupted the beat. In came a form of perfectly-sequenced ‘four to the floor’ British House that appeared to liberate music from the stifling restrictions of the male-dominated music scene.(122) The musical change started to reflect the acquired feeling and perception of Ecstacy by the creators of this new music. As a musical trend, Acid House appears to be the danceable replacement for the punk and new wave music period, which did not consist of danceable music. It borrows part from recordings, mixes them up and adds synthesisers, and puts this mix to a drum machine’s beat. Tracks of sounds are heavy on the low end of the scale and very rhythmic, running high volume from 120 to 130 beats per minute. According to Sheila Whiteley : ”The incorporation of ‘the lysergic mood’ into House has been attributed to the emergence of ‘Detroit Techno’ which combined Chicago sound (disco and Euro-electronic). Acid House combined repetitive reversed reverb on vocals and used vocal and synthesised loops to produce hypnotic and danceable tracks. The drug related experience of dance and Ecstasy, LSD and amphetamines became more overt when samples of music, derived from such varied forms as classical and disco, are strung together to create a disorienting bricolage which enhances psychedelic experience. One of the major characteristics of Acid House is the harmonic instability, which is often intensified by combining the original sequence with a different progression to effect a confusing clash of harmony. Anasthasia by T99, for example, effects a sense of disorientation by starting the sampled theme at a different place, so altering the rhythmic configuration. Total Confusion by Nebula II demonstrates how textural density 51 can be created by an amalgamation of samples of varied timbral characteristics. Glissando effects are also important and effect a swirling sound which is analogous to the giddy experiences encountered when dancing on Ecstasy.”(123) The demand for continual 4/4 House music throughout the early 1990s meant that dance music’s relationship with Ecstacy fundamentally altered. Whereas Ecstacy was previously used to enhance the sounds and textures of dance music, the situation reversed, the continuous DJ set was used by Ecstacy consumers to heighten their weekend drug trip. Whilst the increasing tempo of Acid House, the prevalent use of sub-bass and the use of anthem sections in the middles of hardcore tracks can be attributed largely to the replacement of hallucinogenic drugs by Ecstacy and amphetamines, for those who could not sustain high-energy dancing or who wanted to relax and chill out, the emergence of Ambient provided a unique and essential musical experience. The absence of heavy drums induced relaxation whilst the textures and electronic bleeps maintained a psychedelic quality which was in tune with ‘coming down’ from ‘E’ related experience of Ecstacy and Energy. During the early spring of 1990 Ambient House emerged as a term to describe the more ambitious attempts within the rave scene to progress away from the drugs related rave culture that had become so popular the summer before. Traditional House drum beats and piano riffs were replaced by transcendental ‘sonic’ effects to emulate emotional responses originally experienced through drugs like LSD, Ecstacy and marijuana. One could see it as the ‘classical’ music of the 90s, in the way it used the latest technology (which Classical composers, of course, did in their time) to orchestrate layers of melodies and sound effects (often sampled directly from the environment) with compositions resembling suites rather than songs, often running for thirty minutes or more. (124) Significant to the development of House and Ambient were the minimalist composers such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich whose use of tape recorders, in such compositions as Rainbow in Curved Air and Electric 52 Counterpoint respectively, accessed the potential of musical repetition, where the constant reiteration of a harmonic / rhythmic cell induced a hypnotic effect analogous to contemporary Trance. (125) Trance is slow build up music, heavily overlaid, minimalistic (often based on one rhythmic cell), with stepped dynamics which constantly build up, but without a sense of climax. The use of, for example, a particular riff for thirty or more bars, drone-like at times, focuses the sense of being ‘entranced’ with a particular sound or sound event and, as such, there is a relationship to drug experience (put into a state of rapture, ecstasy). Trance is very often a hybrid form, i.e. ambient trance. In this instance, the music would be heavier than ambient but would focus comparable techniques such as soundscaping and textural colours. The growing depersonalisation of Trance has lead to a ‘stripping down’ to the ‘pure’ form, to the bare essentials of the analogue synth, the Roland TR909 kick drum and hi hats. All aspects of the music basslines, pads, stabs and rhythmic patterns, ‘sound effects’ and lead instruments- are now generated from this sound source.(Whiteley, S. The Space Between The Notes (Routledge, 1992)) It is suggested that the parallels between psychedelic space rock, ambient and trance are rooted in an underlying philosophy based on an expanded sense of time which is homologous with both hallucinogenic experience and musical form. At a simplistic level, this is reflected in the length of tracks. As a reflection of alternative experience, however, the extended compositions resonate more with different conceptions of time and space and changes in sensory perception. The concept of spatial exploration through subtle and gradual build-ups in texture, the sampling of speech and sound effects are present in such tracks as Little Fluffy Clouds by the Orb. Little Fluffy Clouds simply uses a snippet of an interview with American singer Rickie Lee Jones to focus the listener’s attention. Often the music almost swamps the words, but not quite, inferring that whilst the voice is important, it should not be associated with the lead line in a song. Emphasis is laid on the rhythmic effect of words, using various abstract phrases as cadence points in the music to 53 underline their meaning, fitting, whilst not really making complete sense in themselves. The quote from Rickie Lee Jones also contains a lot of imagery, vivid colours which maintain a psychedelic feel, essential to coming down from, for example, Ecstacy, itself a mild hallucinogenic.(126) The desired sound is spacious, with lifting and changing textures and a smooth transition between soundscapes : a sense of continuity ensures that there are no abrupt sudden changes to disturb the ‘tripping’ listener. The Ambient act Porcupine Tree’s album Voyage 34, described on the album sleeve as ‘a post rave space wave to the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, is evocative of Pink Floyd. The music covers both sides of the 12” record and the entire first side is strongly psychedelic in its shifting textures, dark timbres and acidlike interjections on keyboard. The music accompanies and provides musical metaphors for an acid-taker’s gradual transformation as he embarks on his 34th trip or voyage. Each section of the ‘experience’ is focused by a spoken statement. manic laughter, distanced vocals and swirling textures suggest a withdrawal into the self, and are underpinned by an incantatory and pounding drum rhythm. Then the mood shifts and lighter atmospheric sounds, over a repetitive high-hat drum loop, move towards a total absorption the sound. And the swirling textures continue until the end of the song. (127) The psychedelic era wanted to portray the drug experience, whilst Acid House opted for even more anonymity, as the people who were producing the music were not in fact ’pop stars’ (as they never played live or rarely gave interviews) but ‘normal’, streetwise clubbers and DJs who had access to keyboards and recording facilities. Besides, ecstasy-consuming dancers with a few hundred pounds in the bank could invest in twin record decks and a mixer; thereby creating their own musical creations. Equally, the experience of Acid House meant that many were inspired to purchase cheap sampling and sequencing equipment, and began to make their own records. In doing so, Ecstacy-consuming musicians began to pay close attention to one specific psychopharmacological property of Ecstacy, namely its ability to encourage repetitive behaviour by stimulating the 1b receptor in the brain. When you add 54 Ecstacy to the sequenced kick drum crotchet beat of House (and its 1990s Techno variant) and you have a dance floor full of Ecstacy consumers who appear to have entirely synchronised their bodies to the music. The dancer was as much a star at a rave event as the DJ or stage-bound performer. Mirroring this development was the DIY ethic whereby collectives of ‘faceless’ DJs and musicians played music to a scene that was not interested who they were, merely the rhythms that they produced. (128) As Ecstacy consumers became Ecstacy Evangelists, and as more and more Evangelists became DJs and musicians, the situation arose whereby Ecstacyinfluenced producers were making music solely for Ecstacy consumers. Experimentation was squeezed out of the scene, leading to a dance music that was directly derived from the psychopharmacological properties of Ecstacy, a music that facilitated the much talked about ‘trance dancing’ that the E-consuming elite saw as the first step to the New Age. (129) Original scene makers such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling have gradually distanced themselves from the musical eclecticism and spirit of adventure present in early Acid House. Interestingly, both DJs now champion the ‘Goa Trance’ movement, a scene within a scene where Leary-esque hippy platitudes abound. Goa Trance is itself currently merging with ‘Dream House’, a variant of House with extended string-laden intros designed to increase Ecstacy’s empathogenic qualities. It is no coincidence that Dream House bears more than a passing similarity to the Acidhead’s Progressive Rock of the 1970s, and is derided by many as a retrogressive musical form. (130) Another movement, which is called Jungle or Drum and Bass, succesfully managed to detach drugs from music. Jungle or Drum and Bass consists of a frenetic hi-hat percussion track at around 320 beats per minute (bpm), a second percussion track at around 160 bpm, and an irregular and shifting bass line at around 80 bpm. The 160 bpm drum track invariably has an erratic beat emphasis, thereby directly rejecting the ‘four to the floor’ basis of House 55 and Techno music. Whereas the psychopharmacological structure of Ecstacy matches to the musical structure of 4/4 House and Techno, the musical structure of jungle discourages Ecstacy use. Jungle’s frantic percussion and irregular bass line mitigate against the bodily synchronisation felt by the Euser when dancing to House. Whilst Ecstacy is now deemed to be essential for the full enjoyment of House and Techno music, this is not the case with jungle. The complex relationship between drug (Ecstacy) and music (House rhythms) has broken down. This breakdown has been caused by something as seemingly insignificant as the beat emphasis on a record. (131) VII Considering all said and written in order to explain the relationship between drugs and musical creativity, to reach concrete results seems to be very hard, the reasons being firstly a musician is not necessarily able to judge the value of his/her psychedelically inspired work while under the influence of drug and secondly the effects of drugs on the mind depends heavily on the mind of the user individual itself. However, from the evidence gathered from the musicians and researchers about the effects and influence of drugs on music, it is quite possible to draw some conclusions. A number of early studies were devoted to the claim that LSD increased creativity (e.g. Krippner 1980, 1968). If true, a creativity-enhancing effect of LSD could itself possibly explain the rise of acid rock. However, the research indicated that LSD can at best be said to stimulate novel ideas among already creative people. These people typically become excited and enamoured over their ideas during the LSD experience and some, but certainly not all, of these ideas were still regarded favourably when the trip was over. Among noncreative people, LSD seems to have no value in stimulating creativity, with the possible exception of eliciting unusual word associations (Zegans, Pollard & 56 Brown, 1967). The important point is that the ingestion of this chemical did not lead directly to certain musical forms. The psychopharmacological properties of LSD did not create or shape acid rock per se, but LSD’s effects made people sensitive and receptive to certain types of innovation and novel ideas and also gave them some emotional ambiguity and the “impatiently creative desire to explore complex and subtle elaborations”(132) Cohen’s statement (1964) is worth considering : “All that can be said about the effect of LSD on the creative process is that a strong subjective feeling of creativeness accompanies many of the experiences.” (133) Creativity is not automatically enhanced by psychedelic drugs. Technical execution and evaluation often suffer. Indeed, the research literature (e.g., Abramson, Jarvik & Hirsch 1955; Abramson et al. 1955) demonstrates that LSD may have a negative effect on the concentration and motor performance of subjects. On the other hand, certain aspects of creative behaviour sometimes change in positive directions. These changes are amenable to outside evaluation as well as post-LSD evaluation by the artists themselves. (134) Hallucinogens lead to expansion of sensations; they are both amplified and spread out (Baumeister, 1984). Neural mechanisms that inhibit sensory input are disrupted, thereby resulting in a loss of stable, clear sensory reception and processing. LSD can produce interesting subjective distortions and spreading of sound (Joyson, 1984). The Acid Rock sound of the 1960s included subtle complexity, novel sounds, repetition with increasing volume or tempo, simple chord structures, yet it also was complex within that simple musical structure (Baumeister, 1984). Acid rock was shaped, in part, from hallucinogenic drug effects, including short attention span, emotional ambiguity and lack of unequivocal attitudes, interest in novel sensations, egalitarian fascination with everything, and a desire to explore complex and subtle phenomena. 57 The above conclusions are also to be considered in regard to the relation of Ecstacy and today’s dance music. Again, it is necessary to recognise that the vision, the Club DJ / musician gains by taking Ecstacy and more particularly the translation of that experience into a musical creation owes more to the talent and perception of the musician than it does to the drug. It is safe to say that once the musician have experienced the fundamental changes in the process of perception under drugs, this is reflected in his / her thinking and expression, hence in his / her composition and creativity. It should also be noted the dance music DJs and musicians are quite well known not being addicted to Ecstacy, after the initial creative boost and learning process, and create their music with the aid of the flashbacks of already perceived experiences. Performing on drugs is a slightly different process. Charles Winick states : “It could be speculated that one reason for the frequently found subjective feeling that the musician is playing better when on drugs is perhaps that the kind of dependent person who takes the drug is having his dependency affirmed every time he takes it. Thus having again re-established and satisfied his dependency, he feels relatively free to ‘let go’ and express himself in music.”(135) Drugs undoubtedly make the musician feel better and gain an increased sensitivity to sound and a keener appreciation of rhythm and timing, but when it comes to performing, they have little effect on playing / singing. Acid House and psychedelia are both cultural movements that suffered when the drug factor became increasingly predominant. This tendency derived from an initial confusion as to the part drugs played in these cultural movements. As these movements developed, under the impact of new musics and new technologies, they shifted towards excess. It became distorted when members tried to build on new developments in music and technology, resulting in excess.(136) Once, drugs were seen as a route to a new form of 58 musical expression. Today, with all the emphasis on ‘recreational drugs’ as new consumer commodities, drug-taking in quantity is all too often seen as the reward and proof of rock stardom. And between taking drugs to make music and making music to take drugs, the performers, the music and the fans have lost a great deal. It may well be that in the future the most rewarding use of the psychedelic chemicals will be among the artists of a culture, among those people who commit themselves to a life of discovery and innovation. The exploration of one’s mental processes with drugs, seeds, and plants may have to be circumscribed and limited. Nevertheless, the current influence of psychedelic experience on art and music demonstrates that this exploration cannot be prohibited entirely without suppressing a vital and growing creative force. 59 Appendix 1 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk paradise from ‘Kubla Khan’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Opium is traditionally the drug of dreams, and these lines from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan were inspired by opium: the rhythm of the poem reflects something of the hypnotic quality of the drug itself. There is also an intriguing allusion to opium within the poem. (Taylor, Derek. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (New York : Bantam Press, 1987, p.16) 60 Appendix 2 Truckin’ by the Grateful Dead Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street Chicago, New York, Detroit and it’s all on the same street Tour typical city involved in a typical daydream Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings Most of the cats that you meet on the street speak of true love Most of the time they’re sitting and crying at home One of these days they know they gotta get going Out of the door and down to the street all alone What in the world ever became of sweet Jane She’s lost her sparkle, you know she isn’t the same Livin’ on reds and vitamin C and cocaine All a friend can say is ain’t it a shame 61 Appendix 3 TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES by Eric Clapton and Martin Sharp You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever, But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun. And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids, And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses: How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing, For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips. And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise, And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea. And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body, Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind. The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers, And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter. Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell, And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured By the sirens sweetly singing. The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers, And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter. printed from the ‘Eric Clapton - Discography II’ WEB-site at http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~davies/ecla/discog-index-2.html. 62 Notes ( 1 ) Toop, David. ‘Drug Culture as Pop Culture’, MIXMAG, Vol. 2, Issue No. 13, June 1992, p.12 ( 2 ) Mignon, Patrick. ‘Drugs and Popular Music : The Democratisation of Bohemia, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off - Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture (Avebury, 1993), p. 175 ( 3 ) ibid., p. 177 ( 4 ) ibid., p. 176 ( 5 ) ibid., pp. 177-178 ( 6 ) Shapiro, Harry(a). Waiting For The Man : The Story of Drugs and Popular Music (Quartet Books, 1988), p. 99 ( 7 ) Sullivan, Henry W. The Beatles with Lacan : Rock ’n’ Roll as Requiem for the Modern Age (Peter Lang, 1995), p. 49 ( 8 ) Krippner, Stanley (a). ‘Psychedelic Drugs and Creativity’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol.7(4) Oct-Dec, 1985, p. 242 ( 9 ) Gossop, Michael. Living With Drugs (Wildwood House, 1987), p.6 (10) Krippner, Stanley (b). ‘The Influence of “Psychedelic” Experience on Contemporary Art and Music’ in Gamage, James R. & Zerkin Edmund L. (eds). Hallucinogenic Drug Research : Impact on Science and Society (Stash Press, 1970), p.84 (11) Gossop, op.cit., p. 9 (12) Dennis, John. ‘High Times : How Important Have Drugs Been In Rock?’, History of Rock, 5(51), 1982, p. 1019 (13) Gossop, op.cit., p. 17 (14) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 84 (15) Pichaske, David. A Generation In Motion : Popular Music and Culture In The Sixties (Ellis Press, 1989), p. 127 (16) ibid., pp. 127-128 (17) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 83 (18) Gannon, Frank. ‘Arts In Society : Pot, Pop and Acid’, New Society, 21 September 1967, p. 402 (19) Krippner(b), op.cit., pp. 91-92 (20) Einstein, S. Beyond Drugs (Pergamon, 1978), p. 66 (21) Krippner(a), op.cit., p. 236 (22) Janiger, Oscar & De Rios, Marlene D. ‘LSD and Creativity’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 21(1), Jan-Mar 1989, p. 134 (23) Krippner(a), op.cit., p. 241 (24) ibid., p. 237 (25) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 88 (26) Krippner(a), op.cit., p. 244 (27) Wilson, C. ‘Drugs and The Creative Man’, Penthouse, 1967, p. 43 (28) Herman, Gary. Rock’n’Roll Babylon (Plexus, 1994), p.35 (29) Toop, op.cit., p. 12 (30) Morris, Roderick C. ‘Greek Cafe Music’, Recorded Sound, No. 80, July 1981, p. 81 (31) Peerce, S.H. ‘Cocaine : A Whiff of What ?’, Phoenix, 1971, p. 10 (32) Dennis, op.cit., p. 1019 (33) O’Bireck, Gary M. “Gettin’ Tall” - Cocaine Use Within A Subculture of Canadian Professional Musicians : An Ethnographic Inquiry (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1993), p. 51 (34) Wills, G and Cooper, Cary L. Pressure Sensitive - Popular Musicians Under 63 Stress (SAGE Publications, 1988), p. 40 (35) O’Bireck, op.cit., p.49 (36) Winick, C (a). ‘How High The Moon - Jazz And Drugs’, Antioch Review, Spring 1961, p. 62 (37) Wills, G and Cooper, Cary L, op.cit., pp. 40-41 (38) Mignon, op.cit., p. 179 (39) Winick, Charles (b). ‘The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians’, Social Problems, Vol. 7, 1959, p. 252 (40) ibid., p. 251 (41) Mignon, op.cit., p. 180 (42) Winick (a), op.cit., p. 62 (43) Aldrich, C. Knight. ‘The Effect of a Synthetic Marihuana-like Compound on Musical Talent as Measured by the Seashore Test’, in Grupp, Stanley E.(ed.), Marihuana (Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1971), pp. 178-179 (44) Mignon, op.cit., p. 181 (45) Wills, G and Cooper, Cary L, op.cit., p. 39 (46) Shapiro, Harry (b). ‘Singin’ The Blues On Reds’, Home Grown, 1(8), 1980, p. 31 (47) Winick (a), op.cit., pp. 62-63 (48) Mignon, op.cit., p. 182 (49) Shapiro(b), op.cit., p. 29 (50) Hentoff, Nat. The Jazz Life (Da Capo, 1978), p. 81 (51) Winick(b), op.cit., p.245 (52) Hentoff, op.cit., p. 82 (53) Winick(a), op.cit., p. 62 (54) Toop, op.cit., p. 12 (55) Shapiro (a), op.cit., pp. 66-67 (56) ibid., p.81 (57) Winick, Charles & Nyswander, Marie. ‘Psychotherapy of Succesful Musicians Who Are Drug Addicts’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 31, 1961, p. 633 (58) Krippner(b), op.cit., pp. 101-102 (59) Hentoff, op.cit., p.83 (60) Winick, C. (c)‘Marihuana Use by Young People’, in Harms, Ernest (ed.). Drug Addiction in Youth (Pergamon Press, 1965), p. 32 (61) Winick (a), op.cit., p. 66 (62) White, T. ‘Be True To Your Facts : The Case of Brian Wilson’, Billboard, January 11, 1992, p.6 (63) Shapiro (b), op.cit., pp.29-30 (64) Mignon, op.cit., pp. 183-184 (65) Farren, Mick. ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll’, Home Grown, 1979, 1(5), p.17 (66) Russell, Kristian. ‘Lysergia Suburbia’, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture (Avebury, 1993), pp. 104 - 105 (67) ibid., p.106 (68) Janiger, Oscar & De Rios, Marlene D., op.cit., p. 133 (69) Russell, op.cit., pp. 107-108 (70) Baumeister, Roy F. ‘Acid Rock : A Critical Reappraisal and Psychological Commentary’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 16(4), Oct-Dec., 1984, p.339 (71) Whiteley, Sheila. ‘Altered Sounds’, in Melechi Antonio (ed.). Psychedelia Britannica : Hallucinogenic Drugs in Britain (Turnaround, 1997), p. 124 (72) Russell, op.cit., p. 109 (73) Shapiro(a), op.cit., p. 131 64 (74) Farren, op.cit., p.18 (75) Baumeister, op.cit., p. 344 (76) Herman, op.cit., p. 39 (77) Shapiro(a), op.cit., p. 145 (78) ibid. (79) Sullivan, op.cit., p. 48 (80) Taylor, Derek. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (New York : Bantam Press, 1987), p. 94 (81) Shapiro(a), op.cit., p. 144 (82) Baumeister, op.cit., p. 340 (83) ibid. (84) Toop, op.cit., p. 12 (85) Farren, op.cit., p. 18 (86) ibid. (87) Whiteley, op.cit., p. 128 (88) Krippner (b), op.cit., p. 105 (89) ibid. (90) Baumeister, op.cit., pp. 340-342 (91) ibid., p. 342 (92) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 104 (93) Baumeister, op.cit., pp. 341-342 (94) Farren, op.cit., p. 18 (95) Toop, op.cit., p. 12 (96) Shapiro, Harry & Glebbeek, Caesar. Jimi Hendrix - Electric Gypsy (Mandarin, 1993), p. 401 (97) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 102 (98) Krippner(a), op.cit., p. 242 (99) Taylor, op.cit., p. 100 (100) Wenner, J.S. The John Lennon Interview (1971), Rolling Stone, October 15th, 1992, p. 51 (101) Shapiro(a), op.cit., pp. 101-102 (102) ibid., p. 107 (103) Farren, op.cit., p. 39 (104) Shapiro(a), op.cit., p. 119 (105) Felton, David. The Brian Wilson Interview (1976), Rolling Stone, October 15th, 1992, pp.79, 81 (106) Werbin S. ‘The Rolling Stone Interview : James Taylor and Carly Simon’, Rolling Stone, January 4, 1973, (135), p. 20 (107) O’Bireck, op.cit., p. 37 (108) Einstein, op.cit., p. 51 (109) O’Bireck, op.cit., pp. 16-17 (110) Aikin, Jim. ‘Other Windows’, Keyboard, May 1992, pp. 16-17 (111) Farren, op.cit., p. 39 (112) Russell, op.cit., p. 146 (113) Farren, op.cit., p. 39 (114) Lyttle, Thomas & Montagne, Michael. ‘Drugs, Music, and Ideology : A Social Pharmacological Interpretation of the Acid House Movement’, The International Journal of the Addictions, 27(10), 1992, p. 1159 (115) Redhead, Steve. ‘The End of the End-of-the-Century Party’, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off - Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture 65 (Avebury, 1993), p. 8 (116) Russell, op.cit., p. 125 (117) ibid., pp. 120-121 (118) Metcalfe, Stuart. ‘Psychedelic Warriors and Ecstasy Evangelists’ in Melechi Antonio (ed.). Psychedelia Britannica : Hallucinogenic Drugs in Britain (Turnaround, 1997), p. 182 (119) ‘Manchester’, Rolling Stone, May 31st, 1990, p. 55 (120) Metcalfe, op.cit., p. 167 (121) Russell, op.cit., p. 124 (122) Metcalfe, op.cit., p. 169 (123) Whiteley, op.cit., p. 130 (124) Russell, op.cit., pp. 158-159 (125) Whiteley, op.cit., p. 129 (126) ibid., pp. 133-134 (127) ibid., pp. 136-137 (128) Metcalfe, op.cit., pp. 168-169 (129) ibid., p. 172 (130) ibid., p. 181 (131) ibid., p. 179 (132) Baumeister, op.cit., p. 339 (133) Krippner(a), op.cit., p. 90 (134) Krippner(b), op.cit., p. 237 (135) Hentoff, op.cit., p. 92 (136) Russell, op.cit., p. 131 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aikin, Jim. ‘Other Windows’, Keyboard, May 1992 Aldrich, C. Knight. ‘The Effect of a Synthetic Marihuana-like Compound on Musical Talent as Measured by the Seashore Test’, in Grupp, Stanley E.(ed.), Marihuana (Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1971) Baker, G.A. & Coupe, S. The New Music (Harmony Books, 1980) Barron, F. Creativity and Psychological Health : Origins of Personal Vitality and Creative Freedom (Princeton, New Jersey : Van Nostrand, 1963) Baumeister, Roy F. ‘Acid Rock : A Critical Reappraisal and Psychological Commentary’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 16(4), Oct-Dec., 1984 Campbell, Colin & Murphy, Allan. Things We Said Today : Complete Lyrics and a Concordance to the Beatles’ Songs, 1962-1970 (Ann Arbor : The Pierian Press, 1980) Carr, Roy & Tyler T. The Beatles : An Illustrated Record (Harmony Books, 1981) Chambers, Iain. Urban Rhythms - Pop Music and Popular Culture (Macmillan, 1985) Curry, Andrew E. ‘Drugs In Jazz and Rock Music’, Clinical Toxicology, 1(2), June, 1968 Dennis, John. ‘High Times : How Important Have Drugs Been In Rock?’, History of Rock, 5(51), 1982 Doukas, J.N. The Electric Tibet : The Rise And Fall of the San Fransisco Rock Scene (North Hollywood, California : Dominion, 1969) Draper, J. Sources of Psychedelic Imagery in Rock Music of the Late Sixties (Silverado, California : Loc Studios, 1988) Ebin, D (ed.). The Drug Experience (New York : Orion Press, 1961) Einstein, S. Beyond Drugs (Pergamon, 1978) Farren, Mick. ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll’, Home Grown, 1979, 1(5) Felton, David. The Brian Wilson Interview (1976), Rolling Stone, October 15th, 1992 Frith, S. ‘House rules’, Village Voice (NY), September 6, 1988 Gannon, Frank. ‘Arts In Society : Pot, Pop and Acid’, New Society, 21 September 1967 Gossop, Michael. Living With Drugs (Wildwood House, 1987) Hentoff, Nat. The Jazz Life (Da Capo, 1978) 67 Herman, Gary. Rock’n’Roll Babylon (Plexus, 1994), Holiday, B. The Lady Sings The Blues (New York : Doubleday, 1956) Janiger, Oscar & De Rios, Marlene D. ‘LSD and Creativity’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 21(1), Jan-Mar 1989 Joynson, Vernon. The Acid Trip : A Complete Guide To Psycedelic Music (Todmorden, UK : Babylon Books) Korngold, M. ‘LSD and the Creative Process’, Psychoanalytic Review, Vol.50, 19631964 Krippner, Stanley. ‘Psychedelic Drugs and Creativity’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 17(4) Oct-Dec, 1985. Krippner, Stanley. ‘The Influence of “Psychedelic” Experience on Contemporary Art and Music’ in Gamage, James R. & Zerkin Edmund L. (eds). Hallucinogenic Drug Research : Impact on Science and Society (Stash Press, 1970) Leary, T. ‘The effects of test score feedback on creative performance and of drugs on creative experience’ (Cambridge, Massachusettes : Harvard University Department of Social Relations, 1963) Lyttle, Thomas & Montagne, Michael. ‘Drugs, Music, and Ideology : A Social Pharmacological Interpretation of the Acid House Movement’, The International Journal of the Addictions, 27(10), 1992 Masters, R.E.L. & Houston, J. Psychedelic Art (New York : Grove, 1968) Metcalfe, Stuart. ‘Psychedelic Warriors and Ecstasy Evangelists’ in Melechi Antonio (ed.). Psychedelia Britannica : Hallucinogenic Drugs in Britain (Turnaround, 1997) Mezzrow, M. & Wolfe, B. Really The Blues (New York : Random House, 1946) Mignon, Patrick. ‘Drugs and Popular Music : The Democratisation of Bohemia, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off - Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture (Avebury, 1993) Montagne, M. ‘Drug Taking and Artistic Creativity’, Soc. Pharmacol., 1, 1987 Morris, Roderick C. ‘Greek Cafe Music’, Recorded Sound, No. 80, July 1981 O’Bireck, Gary M. “Gettin’ Tall” - Cocaine Use Within A Subculture of Canadian Professional Musicians : An Ethnographic Inquiry (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1993) Peerce, S.H. ‘Cocaine : A Whiff of What ?’, Phoenix, 1971 Pichaske, David. A Generation In Motion : Popular Music and Culture In The Sixties (Ellis Press, 1989) Redhead, Steve. ‘The End of the End-of-the-Century Party’, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off - Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture (Avebury, 1993) 68 Russell, Kristian. ‘Lysergia Suburbia’, in Redhead, Steve (ed.). Rave Off - Politics and Deviance In Contemporary Youth Culture (Avebury, 1993 Shapiro, Harry. Waiting For The Man : The Story of Drugs and Popular Music (Quartet Books, 1988) Shapiro, Harry. ‘Singin’ The Blues On Reds’, Home Grown, 1(8), 1980 Shapiro, Harry. ‘Drugs And Rock’, Druglink, May/June 1987 Shapiro, Harry & Glebbeek, Caesar. Jimi Hendrix - Electric Gypsy (Mandarin, 1993) Sullivan, Henry W. The Beatles with Lacan : Rock ’n’ Roll as Requiem for the Modern Age (Peter Lang, 1995) Taqi, S. ‘Approbation of Drug Usage in Rock and Roll Music’, Bull. Narc, 21(4), 1969 Taylor, Derek. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (New York : Bantam Press, 1987) Toop, David. ‘Drug Culture as Pop Culture’, MIXMAG, Vol. 2, Issue No. 13, June 1992 Wenner, J.S. The John Lennon Interview (1971), Rolling Stone, October 15th, 1992 Werbin S. ‘The Rolling Stone Interview : James Taylor and Carly Simon’, Rolling Stone, January 4, 1973, (135) White, T. ‘Be True To Your Facts : The Case of Brian Wilson’, Billboard, January 11, 1992 Whiteley, Sheila. ‘Altered Sounds’, in Melechi Antonio (ed.). Psychedelia Britannica: Hallucinogenic Drugs in Britain (Turnaround, 1997) Wills, G and Cooper, Cary L. Pressure Sensitive - Popular Musicians Under Stress (SAGE Publications, 1988). Wilson, C. ‘Drugs and The Creative Man’, Penthouse, 1967 Winick, Charles. ‘The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians’, Social Problems, Vol. 7, 1959 Winick, C. ‘Marihuana Use by Young People’, in Harms, Ernest (ed.). Drug Addiction in Youth (Pergamon Press, 1965) Winick, C. ‘How High The Moon - Jazz And Drugs’, Antioch Review, Spring 1961 Winick, Charles & Nyswander, Marie. ‘Psychotherapy of Succesful Musicians Who Are Drug Addicts’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 31, 1961 69