MARIJUANA
Hello and welcome! What you are about to read is an essay I wrote for my Sociology of Rock & Roll professor, Dr. Theresa Martinez. I had a very tough semester with many personal struggles when I took her class in Spring 2022 and, although I passed her class with a B-, I never turned in the final Rock & Roll research paper to where it could count towards my grade. But I felt like I owed it to myself and my professor, whom I deeply admire and respect to this day, to write this essay and give it to her before I graduated. It was the principal of the matter. So in Spring 2023, my final semester, I wrote this essay - it became the passion project of my final school year. As I mention in the final paragraph, this essay came from my heart and I am forever proud of my work despite it never contributing to a grade. Dr. Martinez did read it and told me she would have given me an A, to which I say, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read it after everything, and for the education I got from you in both Sociology of Rock & Roll and Deviant Behavior, both of which contributed to this work." I have made some minor edits to spelling and wording, made the in text citations less intrusive, and added YouTube videos and additional songs for your listening pleasure. Other than that, it has not been changed from when I completed it in 2023. Now that I have come back to this after a year, I have a mind to write a mini essay looking at cocaine and/or methamphetamine which were not touched on here.
People who were not alive during the 1960s and 70s tend to look at the era through rose-colored glasses as a time of peace, love and liberal drug use, with LSD and marijuana most often referenced. These drugs did take off during this time, but those who lived through the era remember it as a time of societal conflict and increasing use of “hard” drugs like amphetamines and heroin, which was viewed as causing death of both body and spirit. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Cole of The Association, Gary Thain of Uriah Heep, Tommy Bolin of Deep Purple, and more died from heroin overdose complications during this time. This is the reality-based countercultural era my father told me about, one where drug use was intensely debated and policed, and certain drugs came to symbolize whole movements and ideologies. This ideological battle and broader attitudes about drugs and drug users is on display in music from the time, and that is what this essay will investigate. I will explore how this zeitgeist, with conflicting and aligning societal attitudes about marijuana, LSD, barbiturates, and heroin, was expressed through rock and roll of the late 1960s and early 1970s—marijuana and psychedelics being treated positively by the New Left and counterculture, and heroin largely being treated negatively by society as a whole. To do this I will lyrically analyze songs from Black Sabbath, Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, Kenny Rodgers & the First Edition, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and Neil Young. I will end with a reflection on the task of this paper and why I chose this topic.
American music has dealt with illegal drug use since as early as the 1930s with songs like Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag” (1931) and Cab Calloway’s “Reefer Man” (1932), both songs about marijuana.1 It was around this time that Harry J Anslinger’s crusade against marijuana gained traction.2 He worked to associate marijuana use with Hispanics and Blacks during a time of intense racial tension and fear, repeatedly casting marijuana use as capable of exacerbating the “degeneracy” supposedly present in these populations, and causing criminal behavior. This put marijuana under the purview of the law where it remains today. He also discursively conflated marijuana with other drugs saying it leads to heroin, establishing the stepping stone theory of drug use.2 Though Anslinger’s work was highly sensationalized and challenged even in its own time, it established the marijuana user as “fundamentally removed from mainstream standards of acceptability,” which “imbued it with [a] powerful political and cultural symbolism” that the 60s counterculture latched onto.2 The 1960s was a time of upheaval in American society where youth groups began to challenge basic assumptions and institutions, some seeking to subvert underlying philosophies on which institutions were based, and participating in civil rights and free speech movements.2 It was marked by rebellion which manifested as freedom from sexual constraints, new musical styles, atypical dress, speech and grooming, and drug use1, and for many this included participating in the alternative lifestyle known as the counterculture.2 Marijuana was embraced by these alternative groups, and likewise was treated as innocuous or positive in the music the 60s and 70s.1 The band Black Sabbath praises marijuana in their 1971 song “Sweet Leaf,” which opens with guitarist Toni Iommi coughing after taking a hit:
My life was empty, forever on a down
Until you took me, showed me around
My life is free now, my life is clear
I love you sweet leaf, though you can't hear…
Come on now, try it out!
In these lines Black Sabbath praises marijuana directly for it’s mood lifting effects and capacity to open minds. They also mention the opposition saying, “Straight people don't know what you're about / They put you down and shut you out.” “Straight people” are those in mainstream society, especially the conservatives to whom marijuana symbolized moral degradation, an abandonment of traditional values, crime, poverty, and deviance.2
While many young people were embracing drug use and alternative lifestyles, a large portion of the country remained conservative with extreme and ever growing anxieties surrounding these movements and the ideologies that accompanied them. Conservatives like Richard Nixon framed marijuana use as a dangerous aspect of the New Left and the counterculture, as well as an issue of national security and morality. Knowledge of marijuana crafted by Ansliger and his 1960s counterparts was “distributed and normalized through print and media outlets, speeches of politicians and other anti-drug crusaders."2 Steppenwolf’s 1968 song “Don’t Step On the Grass Sam” perfectly embodies these dichotomous views on marijuana. The song opens with the lead singer finding a TV program “gonna deal with Mary Jane” and he gets “ready for a trip into hate land” knowing that what he’s about hear is propaganda from Uncle Sam. The chorus of the song goes as follows with classic anti-marijuana talking points alternating with pro-marijuana reaction in parentheses:
Well it's evil, wicked, mean and nasty
(Don't step on the grass, Sam)
And it will ruin our fair country
(Don't be such an ass, Sam)
It will hook your Sue and Johnny
(You're so full of bull, Sam)
All will pay that disagree with me
(Please give up you already lost the fight alright)
Anti-marijuana crusaders may well have lost the fight during this period as it was the most widely used drug of the 60s and 70s. Survey data on marijuana use was first collected by Gallup in 1967 with 5% of college students reporting having tried it in their lifetimes. In 1969, that number was 22%, and in late 1970 it was 43%, with 39% having used in the last year, and 28% in the last month. In 1971 the numbers rose again.2 Marijuana was also the most popular drug of choice for returning Vietnam veterans.3 The drug itself became less of an issue than the people who used it—hippies—and authority sought to control those people. This societal clash of ideology revolving around weed and other drugs came together in Nixon’s War on Drugs and The 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which was created to regulate drugs into 5 schedules. Marijuana was placed in schedule 1, reserved for the most harmful substances of no medical value. The affect if this crusade can be seen in arrest records—in 1965, 18,000 people were arrested for marijuana-related violations, but by 1970 the number had increased to 188,000, and in 1975 it was over 400,000.2 Steppenwolf’s song addresses increased policing saying “You waste my coin Sam, all you can/ To jail my fellow man…/ Please don't stay around too long/ You’re wasting precious time.” It is only 50 years later that people like Sam are stepping out the way and allowing marijuana to be legal at the state level, but the 1970 Act is still in place at the federal level keeping the drug’s full medical potential from being reached—in a sense time is still being wasted.
Additional Marijuana Songs from the Era
Another drug that gained popularity in the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s was the powerful psychedelic LSD. LSD was discovered in the lab, but was introduced into the culture by Dr. Timothy Leary where it became one of the hallmarks of a generation—the acid generation.1 In January 1967 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Leary spoke saying the famed phrase “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” His idea was if you changed yourself with LSD, it would change the world and society. In the late 1960s “the LSD flowed like wine” within the counterculture scene.4 In the music of the late 60s and early 70s, LSD is rarely named in lyrics, but strange non-linear situations are presented that reflect the non-sequential experience of an acid trip. The sound and structure of the music relates the experience even more powerfully and was often used to accompany one’s trip. Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” (1967) carries the name of a popular variety of acid, and is one of several songs of his deemed “instrumental freakout jams”.1 Jefferson Airplane, featuring the “Acid Queen” Grace Slick, are notable for a lack of lyrical continuity due to being “strung out” when they played.1 Their song “White Rabbit” (1967) uses imagery from Alice in Wonderland to convey the psychedelic experience and its superiority to mainstream drugs: “One pill makes you larger/ And one pill makes you small/ And the ones that mother gives you/ Don’t do anything at all.” The song mentions taking mushrooms explicitly, and ends with the command to “remember what the dormouse said/ feed your head/ feed your head” driving home the importance of expanding ones mind, or “turning on” as Timothy Leary would say.
Another psychedelic rock song, “Just Dropped In” (1968) by Kenny Rodgers & The First Edition, is an excellent case of non-linear dreamlike situations being representative of the psychedelic and out of body experiences:
I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky…
…I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin' out as I was a-crawlin' in
While “White Rabbit” points largely to the positives of the psychedelic experience, “Just Dropped In” presents what could be considered a bad or scary trip—“I saw so much I broke my mind/ I just dropped in to see what condition my condition is in.” Rock from the 60s and 70s was not overwhelmingly positive or negative in its assessment of psychedelics, but treated it as a mind expanding wildcard. Authorities treated LSD and other psychedelics negatively seeing them as a direct threat to industriousness, and cracked down on use. Headlines warned away from LSD saying it caused genetic damage (untrue), birth defects (untrue), involuntary hallucinations, and suicide. Public fears of LSD peaked after the 1969 death of Dianne Linkletter who fell from a 6 story window. Her father publicly blamed LSD despite no drugs being found in her autopsy. One year later LSD was scheduled at level 1 along with marijuana despite promising 1950s research in treating depression, anxiety, and alcoholism.4
While the mainstream public and authorities made no distinction between different drugs often conflating them broadly as “narcotics,” rock and roll music made a firm distinction between marijuana and psychedelics, or “dope,” and harder drugs like heroin and amphetamines. In this form of drug exceptionalism, dope was good and mind expanding, but drugs were problematic with the ability to destroy you.1 Steppenwolf’s 1968 song “The Pusher” shows a love of “the dealer… with the love grass in his hand," but fierce antagonism towards drugs and “the pusher” who “don’t care/ If you live or if you die.” The singer declares that he’s “smoked a lot of grass” and “popped a lot of pills,” but “never touched nothin’/ That my spirit could kill.” Much of the disdain for drugs as opposed to dope comes from how those drugs negatively affect the body and soul. Drugs and the pusher will make you “walk around with tombstones in [your] eyes,” “ruin your body,” and “leave you mind to scream.” At the end of the song the singer says if he were the president he would “declare total war on the pusher man,” something Nixon did two years later, but against all illegal drugs.
It is interesting to note that I could find no songs from this era about barbiturates despite this class of hypnotics and sedatives causing more overdoses than heroin and other drugs. The lack of concern from society about barbiturates probably stems from them being a widely used prescription medication, but they were also taken recreationally in the 60s and 70s under street names like reds, goofballs, yellow jackets, downers, and gorilla pills.5 From their inception barbiturates were known to cause dependence and lethal overdose, especially in combination with other substances, and were therefore often involved in suicide deaths. In the US in 1962, a special drug dependence committee established by JFK declared that there were as many as 250,000 Americans addicted to barbiturates, and in 1965 in England there were 135,000. In New York in the period of 1957-1963, there were 8,469 overdose cases with 1,165 deaths, and in the UK between 1965 and 1970, there were 12,354 deaths. One of the most famous deaths by barbiturate overdose in popular culture is that of Marylin Monroe in August 1962.6 In music, both Keith Moon of The Who and Jimi Hendrix died of barbiturate overdose complications. The fact that barbiturates do not show up in music from this time period despite their recreational popularity and danger shows how powerful formal recognition by an authoritative body like the FDA can be in influencing societal attitudes towards substances.
Heroin and cocaine have largely been treated antagonistically in music as well as in society broadly.1 In the 1960s, both the US and UK saw an increase in heroin use where it had previously been rare.7 Crimes attributed to heroin addicted people became a major public concern in large cities of the Eastern United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.8 Heroin users were treated with disdain and the drug itself looked upon with fear, as evidenced by anti-drug films like “Narcotics: Pit of Despair".9 Even naloxone’s predecessor, nalorphine (Nalline), was used by police in Los Angeles, Oakland, and Eureka California as a surveillance tool from the 1950s into the 1970s. It was used to determine who was dependent on opiates, which justified these individuals being continuously surveilled. One architect of the Oakland program said this of someone who had died just after being revived with nalorphine: “[the death was] typical of the ignorant manner in which addicts indifferently dabble with drugs and ignore the death-dealing power of the unknown quantity and quality of the junk they shoot into their veins".10 The disdain is palpable.
Heroin use was also a concern of the military and anti-Vietnam war movement because soldiers were returning home addicted having spent an average of one year among cheap, potent heroin. The peak of heroin use was towards end of the deeply divisive war when many soldiers rejected the authority of the military, and just wanted to stay alive.8 A 1977 study3 of soldiers and their drug use, both during Vietnam and in the three years after returning home, found that 85% of those interviewed had been offered heroin in Vietnam, usually soon after arrival. Of those enlisted men, 35% tried heroin, and 19% became addicted to it, but in the two years after returning home only 3% had used regularly. Alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, and barbiturates were all more common than heroin. Veterans believed overwhelmingly that heroin is very dangerous, and 90% said that of all drugs, heroin had done the most harm in Vietnam.3 At home rates of addiction and relapse were much higher than in the 1977 Robins study cohort, but those who remained addicted were more likely to have a history of social issues and opiate use via cough syrups.8 Even in science, however, there was no empathy for heroin users as one can see in Robin’s conclusion: “heroin is ‘worse’ than amphetamines or barbiturates only because worse people use it".3 This societal view of heroin and heroin users as extremely deviant did not stop individuals from using heroin, especially in the underground and countercultural scene, and musicians were no exception.
The Velvet Underground & Nico’s 1967 song “Heroin,” written by Lou Reed in 1964, follows the rollercoaster of heroin’s effects from rush to nod and back again as the cycle of use continues. In the song Reed, who began experimenting with drugs at age 1611, uses heroin to feel like this:
…Try for the kingdom, if I can
‘Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
At this part of the song the instrumentals get more upbeat and intense like the rush felt from heroin, afterwards slowing down into an instrumental nod. This pattern continues several times with each rush getting more intense with screeching violin that gets louder and louder until it's a roaring wall of noise. Each use of the drug becomes less about chasing euphoria, and more about running away from a distressed American society at war over seas, and with itself—“When the smack begins to flow/ I really don’t care anymore/ …[About] all the politicians makin' crazy sounds/ And everybody puttin' everybody else down/ And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds.” At the end he is utterly dependent, heroin is his everything and what he lives for—he shoots to feel “as good as dead” and thanks God for it.
Lou Reed wasn’t the only musician that struggled with heroin addiction in the late 60s and 70s. Hard drugs flowed into society and into the music business taking its toll on artists and the people who loved them. Marianne Faithful, Keith Richards, Johnny Cash, and John Lennon all struggled with heroin addiction, and more artists died from overdose complications. Neil Young’s song “Needle and the Damage Done” from his 1972 album Harvest is about this issue, and was inspired by his Crazy Horse bandmate, guitarist Danny Whitten. In a 1971 performance on The Johnny Cash Show12, Young said, “a lot of great artists get affected by that (drugs/heroin), a lot of great art goes down the drain." While recording an album, Whitten’s heroin addiction was out of control, and so Young dismissed the band13, something referenced in the song: “I hit the city and I lost my band/ I watched the needle take another man/ Gone, gone, the damage done.” The song is moving and brings the issue of heroin use to the deeply personal, showing empathy for those caught in the throws of addiction while warning away from the drug: “I sing this song because I love the man/ I know that some of you won’t understand/ Milk blood to keep from running out.” Young loves Whitten, but realizes that much of society won’t understand why given the behaviors that come with addiction, like “milking blood,” which is repeatedly asking for money or drugs from family and friends to feed the addiction—“I love you, baby, can I have some more?” In this song, the damage done by heroin is not just physical like infections and collapsed veins, its also the damage done to relationships. “I've seen the needle and the damage done/ A little part of it in everyone/ But every junkie's like a settin' sun.” The last two lines recognize that lots of people use substances, but that heroin addiction is different in some way, more powerful and destructive with an inevitable end—death. While assembling the Harvest tour on November 18th, 1972, Whitten was again unable to keep up due to his addiction, and so Young fired him. Within 24 hours of being fired by Young, Danny Whitten died from an overdose caused by a mixture of alcohol, which he was using to get over his heroin addiction, and diazepam.13 The song ends abruptly like a life cut short. While a majority of society was actively antagonistic towards heroin users, Neil Young wrote a song that brought empathy and humanity to the issue of addiction.
It has been a journey figuring out what to write for this paper, but I never forgot about it. I considered looking at 80s thrash metal’s response to war, psychedelic rock’s influence on the metal genre, contemporary music’s treatment of current social issues like rising authoritarianism, and other topics. After reviewing the instructions, I searched my heart for something personal and landed on drugs in rock and roll. All of the music I analyzed are songs I grew up listening to with my dad, who himself grew up during the period and knew people lost to heroin. He ensured my understanding that the 60s and 70s was not all peace and love, but was a very hard and divisive period of this country’s history. Heroin use is something my family has dealt with personally as well. My dad’s brother in law Boon came back from Vietnam with a heroin addiction, and Boon’s son Jones, my cousin, died from a heroin overdose in 2017. Since that time I have been building my understanding of the opioid epidemic and addiction with the intention of working in recovery and harm reduction. I have greatly enjoyed learning even more about the drugs use in the late 60s and early 70s through this essay, and this class as whole gave me a far better understanding of my father’s experience. He often expresses the same drug exceptionalism seen in “Don’t Step On the Grass Sam,” and after learning about drug discourse from the time, I see where it comes from. I think this assignment is an important part of this class, and way for students to explore their own experiences or those of their loved ones. I will forever appreciate the deeper understanding of life and American society that this class has given me.
