Horrible Histories
- Clan of Magisana
- Feb 15, 2016
- 4 min read
Do electronic music establishments and/or promoters (specifically) play some major role in the relationship between music and drugs today? This article aims to explore the very unqiue relationship between music and drugs throughout 200 years of musical history in order to shed a light on this all important question.
From the beginning of civilisation, ancient people often combined psychedelic drugs and tribal drumming as part of religious rituals. Opium was used in Sumerian and European cultures at least as early as 4000 B.C.
By the 1800s opiates were freely available and smoking in opium dens was unhindered, resulting in an epidemic of opiate addiction. In 1830 Hector Berlioz wrote his odyssey “Symphonie Fantastique,” sonically detailing the effects of an opium experience.
During the early thirties, “Tea pads,” where a person could purchase marijuana for 25 cents or less, began appearing in cities across the United States, particularly as part of the black “hepster” jazz culture. In 1937 Harry Anslinger, Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics convinced US congress that the satanic music, jazz and swing, directly resulted from marijuana usage.
The Beats' Charlie Parker made the front pages in 1946 after a Sunset Strip heroin binge led to his being committed for electro-shock treatment. The fifties also became littered with casualties of alcohol and drug abuse. Country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams died in 1953 after downing a lethal dose of alcohol and amphetamines, shortly followed by jazz musician Tommy Dorsey who died from a prescription drug overdose in 1956. Jazz singer Billie Holiday drank herself into an early grave in 1959.
Singer and pianist Dinah Washington died after consuming excessive amounts secobarbital and amobarbital in 1963 and the Drifters' Rudy Lewis died in 1964 from a heroin overdose. In 1967 Paul McCartney let slip to the world that he had used LSD. In 1968 it was commonly known, Pink Floyd's frontman Syd Barrett strummed only a single chord, or didn't play at all during shows due to his excessive LSD use.
1969 claimed the life of Judy Garland from a prescription drug overdose, as well as Brian Jones (The Rolling Stones) who drowned due to alcohol and drug intoxication. Woodstock, also in 1969, was one of the most prolific expansions in musical creativity, much of which was facilitated by drug use.
The early seventies was not without its casualties, as harder and more dangerous drugs like heroin began finding their popularity in the music scene. In 1970 Jimi Hendrix died of from taking an excessive amount of sleeping pills; also that year, Janis Joplin was found dead of a heroin overdose. Jim Morrison was found dead in a Paris apartment bathtub in 1971 also from a heroin overdose. Around that time Bob Marley brought reggae across the world, and with it a Jamaican, marijuana-endorsing style.
“Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” was the rockers creed of the mid Seventies. It’s now a well-established motto that fulfills the precedent set by some of the greatest musicians in history. Wild drug-fueled behavior is expected from rockstars, so much so that they coined the expression, “Party like a rockstar”. Cocaine became especially popular, alongside disco, in the late Seventies, claiming the life of Elvis Presley in 1977. His autopsy revealed a lethal mix of, not just cocaine but methaqualone, codeine and barbiturates.
In the early eighties alcohol claimed the lives of AC/DCs Bon Scott and Led Zeppelin's John Bonham. The Eighties were a notable time of overindulgence where cocaine and heroin poured down on the music industry like snow. Mike Bloomfield died from a heroin overdose in 1981. The Pretenders' suffered a double-blow with James Honeyman-Scott passing in 1982 from cocaine overdose, and Pete Farndon who overdosed a year later on heroin.
While crack was exploding on the same streets where hip hop was being born, Tubeway Army's Paul Gardiner was found dead from a heroin overdose in 1984, followed by Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott in 1986. And Hillel Slovak from Red Hot Chili Peppers died from speed in 1988. Despite ecstasy having filtered its sinuous way through clubs in the late eighties, electronic music began its rise to popularity during the mid-sixties and continues strong today without a single report of any drug-related deaths of its cultural leaders.
Heroin took the spotlight once again in the early Nineties with the startling and instantaneous rise of grunge rock. Rob "The Bass Thing" Jones overdosed on heroin in 1993. In 1994 Nirvana's Kurt Cobain committed suicide, and in June, bass player for his wife Courtney Love’s band Hole, Kristen Pfaff, was found dead of a heroin overdose.
Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley was found dead in 2002 of an overdose of cocaine and heroin. The Who's John Entwistle and The Ramones Douglas Glenn Colvin also died the same year from cocaine overdoses. 2003 saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Howie Epstein overdose on prescription antibiotics.
In 2007 Ike Turner was found dead of a cocaine overdose. In 2009 excessive use of prescription medication claimed the life of Michael Jackson. In 2011 Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning and in 2012 Whitney Houston died from a lethal cocktail of cocaine, Flexeril, marijuana, Xanax and Benadry.
Clearly the well-established and close relationship between music and drugs, as firmly engraved on the tombstones of the founders of all music culture as we know it, is far less complex than it would first appear. Music, alcohol and drugs often appear together because they are all forms of social entertainment.
To suggest electronic music (specifically) plays some major role in the emergence or continuation of this relationship in todays culture is also to deny more than 200 years of musical history as well as the socially destructive nature of modern day binge-culture.
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