The Obituaries for Syd Barrett.
How about one of the bands, or even still, one of the songs, that started the whole straight edge movement?
I present to you Minor Threat’s song “Straight Edge”
“I’m a person just like you
But I’ve got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don’t even think about speed
That’s something I just don’t need”
Before Minor Threat, the Teen Idles really pushed straight edge, coming up with the black X’s on the hands from their EP Minor Disturbance. The Teen Idles have, IMO, above average angry punk lyrics because they were often directed at different aspects of the movement in such clever angsty ways. The only real anti-drug song from their famous EP would probably be “Deadhead”…
“Deadhead, deadhead, take another toke
Deadhead, deadhead, you’re a lousy joke
Friend of the devil, who you trying to kid
Friends of the devil are dead like Sid”
It may not count as rock, but I think I still have to mention Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack to Superfly.
Not sure it is intended to be, given Tool’s apparent support of drug use but Rosetta Stoned gives the most unglamorous insight into drug use that I have ever heard. Summed up in one line of those lyrics “God damn, I shit the bed”.
The lyric sheet may say “You missed the bus”–I’m at work and can’t verify that–but Daltrey clearly sings “This is a bust” even on the original recording. (Got my iPod with me, so I can verify that.)
Hateful by the Clash
“Oh, anything I want he gives it to me
Anything I want he gives it, but not for free
It’s hateful
And it’s paid for and I’m so grateful to be nowhere”
Odd that no one’s mentioned Metallica’s Master of Puppets yet.
Metallica hasn’t always sucked, hard as it may be to believe these days.
Thanks, I was waiting for someone to bust me on that, because 0.23 sec after I hit the “Submit” button, I remembered seeing the “missed the bus” line in the printed sheet music back in the ‘70s (the piano at my parents’ house was always covered in tons of rock scores in addition to classical), and intuited that it was cleaned up for the printed version.
Another example came from the printed score of “Got to Get You into My Life” by the Beatles…
Another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there
was changed to “…another kind of life there.” Since Revolver broke new ground as one of the first psychedelic albums ever, I guess any reference to an alternative form of “mind” was assumed to be druggy.
OK, so I got out my old Tommy CD and looked in the liner notes, which said “This is a bust!” So the “missed the bus” line must have been substituted by the sheet music publisher. How odd, I never thought a song could be improved that way.
Ed Sullivan Show producer: Uh, guys, Mr. Sullivan doesn’t want any drug references on his show, so you have to change the line “Girl we couldn’t get much higher.”
Jim Morrison: How about “Girl you couldn’t bite my wire”?
Sorry, small hijack. Since Johanna mentioned the wrong lyrics in sheet music, I had to bring up the one in “The Ballad Of John & Yoko.” The lyric that goes:
Last night the wife said, “Oh boy, when you’re dead, you don’t take nothin’ with you but your soul.” [sic!]
…the sic! was transcribed by some imbecile as think! - and it even appears in the promo video for the song that way.
Oh yeah, John’s Cold Turkey is a pretty good anti-drug statement, too.
I’ve never read any printed lyric sheet for this song, but I have always heard the word “think!” at the end of that line…are you saying that is not what he actually sings?
A Perfect Circle’s Weak and Powerless has a similarly unglamorous take on drug use:
Someone feed the monkey while I dig in search of China
White as Dracula as I approach the bottom
Desperate and Ravenous
I’m so weak and powerless over you
In Cocaine, written by J.J. Cale and brought to fame by Eric Clapton,
“Don’t forget this fact,
You can’t get back.
Cocaine.”
Frank Zappa’s Charlie’s Enormous Mouth is a stinging indictment of cocaine and the drug culture.
If you consider alcohol a drug, there’s a Moxy Fruvous song called, “And the Band Played On,” a first-person account of watching a friend, quite literally, die of alcohol poisoning. There’s a line,
“I was so hammered, I stuttered and stammered,
Told him he couldn’t just… Die.”
It makes me weep every time I hear it.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. When you quote someone, usually in print, who has spoken ungramatically, you add [sic] to the end of the quote, to indicate that that is exactly what they said, warts and all.
Who can forget Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s Wildside:
along came Billy possessed and obsessedHe took Annie on a fatal dateAnd showed her things that make heartbeats accelerateAnnie took a hit breathed two short breathsOne for life…the last for deathNow she’s gone, a former ValedictorianEnded up becoming a topic for historiansWashe up dreams and shattered prideAll because Annie took a hit - on the Wildside
Sorry, fishbicycle, but the imbecile was right. The word is clearly “Think.”
Cite?
When I get home, I’ll scan in the sheet music of that section from “50 Songs by Lennon and McCartney” or possibly from “The Compleat Beatles” in which it is written:
“Think!”
P-Funk: Why do you think they call it DOPE?
You seem to have missed the part where I said it was mis-transcribed by someone who thought it said “think!” on the record.
You have to ask yourself: has anyone ever, ever said “Think!” at the end of a sentence? Does it make even a grain of sense to say “Think!” at the end of a sentence? Can you think of why he would have done so?
See, this is the argument that goes on between people who write and people who listen to music. In some Beatles fora, it’s a forbidden topic, because nobody can agree on it. My reference to quoting poor speech stands on logic, if nothing else.