Music with drugs through decades

Rock and Roll in the 50s
Rock and Roll as a as cross-cultural genre with black and white stars saw the light of day in the early fifties. Most known is probably Elvis Presley who used prescribed uppers to get him going in the morning and downers to make him sleep through the night. He was really something, Elvis Presley. Try visiting the first link for watching a video with a well-known hit that has also been copied by a Danish band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk

Of course neither he nor the doctors could control the uppers and downers. Elvis died because of drugs and not, as many believe, because of overweight.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=73d_1206664864

I'll follow that trail from now on because it seems to me there's been some sort of a myth that rock stars have used drugs as something really cool only to give the impression to young people that only lame adults give the advice to stay away from drugs. Make no mistake. I am one of those lame adults and every point of view on this page is made because I'm against drugs, but through decades people have had a different perspective to what was dangerous than there is nowadays. Stimulating drugs have been used through wars, as a way to keep the soldiers going, it has been used as diet pills and even vacations pills to make family fathers able to stay awake on the long car journeys. So I guess it's not surprising that some musicians started doing it too.


The 60s
Next example is the Beatles. In the beginning they took Preludin, German slimming pills, to get them through the long nights on stage in Hamburg. The German slimming pills must have been some kind of amphetamine and of course this was not enough for the group who went on to something stronger.

Now I guess most people know already that John Lennon pulled the press's leg by saying the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about his son's drawing and not LSD. Watch the first link if you want to see the crazy video to the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the second one if you want to watch the very intelligent John Lennon pushing a journalist around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXmBy1_qOQ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LftibKEA7U .

The band members admitted doing drugs and John Lennon even moved on to heroin with his girlfriend Yoko Ono. Luckily Lennon and Yoko didn't die of their abuse but managed to kick the habit. http://www.beatlesbible.com/features/drugs/

The 70s and the 80s
In 1970 a 27 year old singer, Janis Joplin died because of a heroin overdose. She died only few weeks after a famous guitarist Jimi Hendrix, also 27, died of taking to many sleeping pills.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/02/specials/joplin-obit2.html

These two young people are examples of how abuse of drugs may cause death.

Even though we in Denmark have an alcohol culture meaning that it's accepted for adults to drink alcohol at parties I would like to say on this blog that of course drinking to much is also dangerous.

In the very early 80s an Australian hard rock band AC/DC had a Scottish-born lead singer called Bon Scott. In 1979 they released the song Highway to Hell which was a huge success and the song is still commonly known. However, whether the success put a pressure on Bon Scott or drinking was just a very bad habit Bon Scott died in a car where he had been left to sleep it out after a night of heavy drinking. He suffocated in his own vomit and/ or died from alcohol poisoning... not very charming or rebellious.

For more details about Bon Scott and his death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Scott


The rest of AC/DC survived and give these amazing concerts.
See an example of the old used guys with tremendous energy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEPmA3USJdI