Smack My Bitch Up: Why the drugs might work…

Loulla: exhaling opinion like it's the carbon dioxide of the noughties

Remember those timeless words from South Park’s Mr Mackey: “Drugs are bayd, m’kay?” Yes Mr Mackey, drugs are most definitely bad. Anyone who watched the latest Panorama hosted by Alex–I-spent-a-million-pounds-on-champagne-and-cocaine James (and not in that order) will understand the man when he states that his uncovering of the cocaine production business is “a long, long way from a cheeky line at a dinner party in Notting Hill.”

Of course seeing coke filtered through petrol is going to make your average Joe question what he hoovers up through his nostrils, but do we think this’ll have much of an impact on say, oh I don’t know, a certain Irish lad who can’t keep himself out of court? But much more to the point, do we want it to?

Now don’t get arsey and start calling me an advocator of drugs, I am simply answering to the The Man who gives me these interesting titles, and I have to say, said ‘Man’ has a point. Yes, drugs push musicians to the point where they’d sell their mother for their next line and yes, many a noble artist has died in the process, but the one thing that remains from these life-stopping situations is this: where the hell would we be without them?

As irritating as it is to hear about Winehouse’s latest candid camera botch-up, where she’s caught listing the plethora of narcotics she’s managed to fit into her emaciated system, (because lets face it - it’s actually none of our business) the fact remains that if she didn’t have the problem in the first place, she wouldn’t have written ‘Rehab’. Same goes for Jimmy Hendrix and ‘Purple Haze’, The Beatles with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and The Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’. The phrase ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll’ was coined for a reason: because they all fit painfully well together. This, of course, does not mean every artist to have walked the earth was a smack-head, it simply means that without drugs, we wouldn’t have been left with some of the most influential music of the western world.

without drugs, we wouldn’t have been left with some of the most influential music of the western world.

If you go travelling on the great Gringo trail, the one thing you can guarantee is that Bob Marley will be played in every bar you visit, night or day. His greatest hits became known as international love music; everyone sings along, everyone chills out and everyone gets happy and makes friends. Fact. Everyone also has the famous image of Bob with a big spliff between his fingers branded on their brains, the very picture used for the back cover of his album ‘Kaya’, meaning cannabis in Jamaican. Is this a bad thing? No. The image of the person and the image of the joint are inseparable, so much so that he was buried with a big bud of marijuana. Another mental impression, though a rather unpleasant one, is that of Hendrix’s death.

Choking on your own vomit from being too out of it is a horrific way for such a talented person to die, but without all the LSD there would have been no psychedelia. That means no ‘Voodoo Child’, no ‘Foxy Lady’ and no ‘Star Spangled Banner’. Other artists whose lives were fuelled by drugs and alcohol but met an untimely end include: Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, Keith Moon of The Who, Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, Jeff Buckley…etc. The fact remains that if these people hadn’t had enough class A’s and alcohol in their bodies to replace their own blood supply, they wouldn’t have created some of the sounds we still blast our ears with today.

But the buck doesn’t stop there. Drugs still fuel music, and it’s still hardcore. He-llo…ravers? Where would the drum and bass, techno and electro beats be without the happy-clappy pill-popping and ‘I fucking love you man’ exclaimers of ecstasy advocates up and down the county? Well, dance music wouldn’t exactly be no-where, but it’d have a lot of appreciators getting tired at one am moaning about not having enough energy to keep up. And you’d also be deprived of whacking up a few Class A gurn faces on facebook the next morning. Just type ‘gurn’ into groups; you’ll get the picture. This doesn’t mean that if you listen to dance music you’re automatically a pill-head - but it’s pretty hard to go to a rave without tripping over one or two wide-eyed wanderers who’re engrossed with the wallpaper.

In fact, considering the way drugs and music develop and progress together it seems that Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty are quite retro with bringing smack back. And as much as they get plastered over the tabloids for all the wrong reasons, they have made hugely popular music over the past few years. They’re part of the proof that the drugs sometimes do work. As long as they don’t die anytime soon.

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