Music and Drugs
Sometimes people say that without drugs music would have been different. The Beatles. Pink Floyd. Dylan. Grateful dead. Radiohead. Bob Marley. Many people point to these people and say drugs are/were essential to their recording or listening. I tend to disagree. Although it is undeniable that drugs happened to be present for certain albums and songs in periods of the great artists we love…I always imagine that these people were so damn creative that they would have created the same art without it. If perhaps they could have focused and meditated without the drugs they would have ceratinly been able to not only create the same music but they would have been able to do it over a longer period of time. Hendrix. Morrison. Joplin. Cobain. Layne Staley of Alice In Chains. Sublime…That list is endless.
I was just thinking of these things because I saw this video on youtube that really bummed me out. It was video of Johnny Cash on the Pete Seeger show back in the 1960’s….totally strung out. You can see not only what drugs have done to him but this sad awkward smile from his wife as she is put into a horrible situation on national TV. After a while the cameras just stay off of him. Check this out.
Lyzz says:
WOW that is a very sad video.
and i appreciate your view on artists and their work. i am a Jr in high school and I am writing a paper on Drugs in music with a focus on Ray Charles. your entry shares the same views thet i am writing about, thank you.
April 1st, 2007 at 6:05 pm