The group, which grew out of Students for a Democratic Society, used a 1969 position paper called “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” as its founding statement. Once LSD was made illegal nationwide in 1967, use of the drug declined dramatically. No longer could hippies take the drug and «trip» in public parks or on city streets.
Discussions and debates about songs referencing drug use
Other people joined together and lived in communes, self-supporting rural communities that sometimes had spiritual components. Still others—especially those who were more easily persuaded—joined religious or seemingly religious cults, such as the Hare Krishnas and the Moonies (also called the Unification Church), and a fewdecided to follow Charles Manson (see sidebar). A cult is a group 1960s Music and Drugs of people who believe in a religion or set of beliefs that appears to be very different from established religions. Not surprisingly, hippies did so outside the conventional channels of family life and mainstream religions. LSD users said that the drug «blew their mind,» and many wanted to constantly return to the altered state that it offered. In Leary’s memorable phrase for his Playboy interview, they wanted to «turn on, tune in, drop out.» Leary and others promoted this «dropping out,» or leaving one’s job, school, or family, as a positive thing, pointing to the great creativity and happiness of those who took hallucinogenic drugs regularly.
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It merged improvisation and sonic experimentation to create longer songs, incorporated the influence of Beat poetry and modern jazz, and utilized Eastern instruments such as the sitar. With a visionary imagination that later tragically collapsed into schizophrenia, Syd Barrett, lead singer and composer of early Pink Floyd, enthusiastically pursued the acid rock ethics of musical exploration and experimentation on his band’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Psychedelic rock, style of rock music popular in the late 1960s that was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called “mind-expanding” drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide; “acid”), and that reflected drug-induced states through the use of feedback, electronics, and intense volume. Other major British acts that evolved from the underground “freak” (drug-using hippie) scene included the avant-garde Soft Machine, the operatic Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Nice, and the more consciously political anarchist Tomorrow. While few psychedelic bands lasted longer than one or two albums, the impact of the genre was huge, revolutionizing fashion, poster art, and live performance.
Sixties Counterculture: The Hippies and Beyond
References to drug use were frequent in rock lyrics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but as long as they were not too direct, radio stations would play the songs. Drug use in music has been a topic of discussion and debate since at least the 1930s, if not earlier. As stated in the old saying «wine, women and song», association of music with using various substances go back centuries.
During these years, however, Grace Slick had her personal demons, with alcohol becoming a particular problem for her, leading to DUI arrests, blown concert dates, abusive behavior toward fans, and periods in alcohol rehab. In recent years, she has conquered her alcohol problem, remaining sober for nearly two decades. His 20-year-old daughter, Diane, had committed suicide only weeks before this session, having jumped to her death from the sixth floor of her West Hollywood apartment on October 4, 1969. One of these sessions was held in the Cabinet Room of the White House in late October 1969, where President Nixon invited a group of congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Speaker of the House John McCormick, and several others. This was the era when ex-Harvard University faculty member, Dr. Timothy Leary, had become a prominent proponent of LSD and “mind expanding” drug experimentation. Prior to Slick’s writing “White Rabbitt,” she had listened to the Davis / Evans album for hours, later saying that the bolero they used in parts of their music – a form of slow, crescendo-building Latin/Spanish dance music – was especially appealing.
In my next article of this series, we’ll see how psychedelic research has been revived and has found support from some unlikely corners, as both veteran groups and the next generation of musicians strive to normalize psychedelic-assisted therapy for managing mental health challenges. Media outlets fanned the flames of fear with tales of bad trips and societal breakdown. Public anxieties rose, fueled by stories of LSD-laced Kool-Aid and free clinics handing out mind-altering substances. This, coupled with the counterculture’s embrace of psychedelics, led to a perception shift — from a tool for scientific exploration to a dangerous societal threat. These pioneering scientists and researchers bridged the gap with musicians, who embraced psychedelics not for research but for recreation and artistic inspiration.
In a September 1970 speech before Republicans in Las Vegas, Agnew echoed the concerns of Linkletter and other drug critics, and took special aim at the music and film industries, charging them with encouraging drug use. Agnew stated that certain rock songs and their lyrics, along with some Hollywood films, books, and underground newspapers, were among the chief culprits in the rising national drug problem. Sensationalized media portrayals, hyper-enthusiastic musicians and high-profile incidents fueled public concern, overshadowing the therapeutic potential that early psychedelic research had begun to uncover.
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- Manson and eight Family members were eventually convicted of murder in 1971, and the remaining cult disbanded.
- It was seen as prevalent because it allowed artists to maximize their creative potential and create new production strategies.
- The first real signs of an emerging hippie culture came in 1963, when a young writer named Ken Kesey (1935–2001) took the profits earned from the sales of his first book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and bought a log house in the rural town of La Honda, on the outskirts of San Francisco.
The mood of the event carried through the summer, through a series of festivals and peaceful demonstrations attended by hippies with long flowing hair and joyous smiles. In June, 50,000 people gathered at the Monterey International Pop Festival, south of San Francisco, to groove to the sounds of psychedelic rock. The festival, like so many of the events of that summer, was peaceful and problem-free, seeming to demonstrate to the world that the hippies’ message of love and peace was real.
Psychedelic era
Grace Slick, however, was asked to join the Jefferson Airplane, bringing with her two songs she had used with her former group – “White Rabbit” and “Somebody To Love” (the latter written by brother-in-law Darby Slick at Great Society). These songs would appear on the Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album, Surrealist Pillow, each becoming Top Ten hits. At the opening of Lewis Carroll’s story, Alice and her sister are sitting along a river bank one summer day reading when a rabbit happens by. He was attired in a waistcoat, talking to himself, and looking at his pocket watch. Curiosity got the better of Alice and she followed him down a rabbit hole, where her other-worldly adventures soon began.
- Female Musicians and Sexual RevolutionFemale musicians of the 1960s embraced themes of independence and desire, challenging traditional gender roles.
- Similarly, Jefferson Airplane’s song «White Rabbit»—with its lyric «one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small»—could be an interpretation of the children’s story Alice in Wonderland or a description of a drug trip.
- The entanglement of psychedelics with the volatile 1960s counterculture not only led to their ban but also stifled a potentially groundbreaking era of mental health research treatment, which would have shaped music and culture in profound and lasting ways.
- While the ’60s brought about positive social change, it was also a time of great turmoil.
- In August of 1969 Manson convinced several of his followers to go on a string of killings.
- The investigation and arrests made the Family the subject of much media attention, as Family members shaved their heads and demonstrated outside the courtroom.
Artists — A-H
Despite the profound impact psychedelics had on the anti-war movement, civil rights activism and the counterculture ethos epitomized by festivals like Woodstock, their growing popularity also attracted significant scrutiny. As more people began using these substances to reject mainstream values and explore new realms of consciousness, the media increasingly portrayed psychedelics as dangerous and destabilizing. Many hippies insisted that it was an essential part of their rejection of the «establishment» and no worse, in any case, than the widespread use of tobacco, alcohol, and prescription drugs among mainstream adults. Ironically, the drug so much a part of hippie culture, lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD, was available legally until 1966 in California and until 1967 in the rest of the United States.
In 1965, Grace and Jerry also formed a rock band named the Great Society (a play on Lyndon Johnson’s social program of the same name), which performed for a time in San Francisco’s North Beach area. The song, however, would become controversial and a lightning rod for some social critics and politicians who charged it encouraged drug use among the nation’s youth. This is psychedelics’ frustrating story of artistic and spiritual excess at the expense of scientific progress.
In his remarks to the broadcasters, Nixon assured them he had no intention of telling them what songs to play or not play, or how to program their broadcasts, but he would “appreciate” their cooperation on the matter of songs that promoted drugs. Dean Burch of the FCC also addressed the group, and noted the commission would look favorably on stations that aired anti-dug messages. In the Lewis Carroll story, as well as popularized film versions — there were more than a dozen of these films by the time of the 1967 song, including a popular 1951 Walt Disney film — the White Rabbit character appears at the very beginning.