Billy Joel:
You had to have the **white-**hot spotlight
You had to be a Big Shot last night!
*Now I know you’ve been kicked around
You ain’t alone in this ugly town
If you put a needle in your arm
You bite the dust, you buy the farm
Hey hey hey hey, hey stoopid
Whatcha tryin’ to do?
Hey hey hey hey, hey stoopid
They win, you lose,
Hey hey hey hey, hey Stoopid! *
The whole thing is anti-drug and anti-suicide. Here’s the full lyrics -
http://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/lyrics/hs.php#1
Oh, Alice Cooper, of course.
This is from a Spanish song, so please excuse the bad translation. It was Loquillo y los Trogloditas’ first hit. My father, like many fathers, understood it as “tooting drugs” but myself, like many teenagers, understood it as “why do so many people let drugs ruin their lives”.
RocknRoll Star
… baby, you’re lucky you met me,
'cos someday I’m gonna be a rock’n’roll star
that day baby you’ll feel lucky you can say that you met me.
(story of the rise of a star)
and when I’m full of meth and booze
I’ll need somebody to pick me up as I hit the floor
that day baby I’ll be lucky if I happen to meet you.
For the record, something I’ve seen Loquillo say in several interviews, when asked about drugs:
“you know, I’ve been in this business for a long time and I still sometimes get the jitters before a show. Back at the start, our manager would give us some pills, ‘to calm the jitters’ and one day I’m about to take them and I look at them and I think ‘are you a moron or what? You know you love it once you’ve been there for five minutes and they’re rocking with you, what the fuck you need this shit for?’ and I threw them away and we changed managers a bit later. I’m not going to tell you I don’t smoke a joint cos I do, but the day I need to speed up so I can do my job I better sign up for an old folks’ home. I love the job, don’t need no pills or coke to do it”
Captain Jack is another good one by him. Not so much about the eeevils of taking drugs, but just a complete rundown of how pathetic the user’s life is.
Personally, I think much of The Who’s Quadrophenia is a pretty good anti-drug/alcohol message.
I just thought of a really good one: Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie. He wrote around the time he got off drugs. Here’s the chorus:
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom’s a junky
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all time low
"You had it comin’ " by The Dictators alter ego, Manitobas Wild Kingdom:
“Got fired from your job, man you blew a good career,
So you slept on my couch and my tv disappeared.
I was your only friend, the others said goodbye,
Some of them have told me they didnt care if you died.
No one sent you flowers, no one could deny,
you had it comin’, you had it comin’, you had it comin’…”
I had a now dead best friend like that. We all probably did.
Just remembered another one:
Johnny Ryall, by the Beastie Boys.
Damn, re-reading the lyrics reminds me of what a kickass song that is. (And that whole album, actually.) I don’t usually quote lyrics because I find it pointless, but a few lines stand out. It’s about a former singer/songwriter who lost it all from smoking rock, and is now a homeless alcoholic.
Makes his home all over the place
He goes to sleep by falling down on his face
…
He drinks where he lies
He’s covered with flies
…
He’s no less important than you working class stiffs
Drinks a lot of liquor but he don’t drink piss
…
heh.
My favorite line from the song is probably lifted from somewhere else; I don’t know. But I do love it:
A platinum voice but only gold records
Black Sabbath Hand of doom
Shame Ozzy didn’t take his band’s own lyrics to heart.
from the Dead Kennedies:
You should’ve got a couple of piercings
and decided maybe you were gay.
I never thought you’d be a junkie
'cause heroin is so passe.
Kristopherson’s “Billy Dee”:
Some folks called it suicide and others blamed the speed
But we just called it crucified when Billy Dee O.D.'d
The anti-drug part is the line,
But I always interepreted the song as more a condemnation of the lifestyle, rather than the drug (cocaine).
Re: Steppenwolf, The Pusher – it’s definitely a condemnation of heroin. Grass is allright, but heroin is bad, m’kay?
Re: John Lennon. I always thought it odd that he included this line anyway, since (AFAIK) Lennon didn’t even believe you *have * a soul.
“Pop Life” - Prince:
What’s the matter with your nose?
Is that where all your money goes?
“Tonight’s the Night” - Neil Young:
'Cause people let me tell you
It sent a chill
up and down my spine
When I picked up the telephone
And heard that he’d died
out on the mainline.
“Hotel California” - The Eagles
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave
“Say It Ain’t So” - Weezer (alcohol):
Somebodys heine is crowding my icebox.
Somebodys cold one is giving me chills.
…
Say it aint so a-woah-a-woah.
You drug is a heartbreaker.
Say it aint so a-woah-a-woah.
My love is a life-taker.
Tom Paxton is a folk artist, but he wrote the atypical hard rocking “Hooker”
While ladies play at cards, how will you spend your life?
Lying in a six foot velvet room, dying in a six foot carpenter tomb.
Lying in the gutter with the aches and pains, trading the years for the aching veins.
Dying at least when the tricks are few, when I can’t get action from a john like you…
Don’t point your fingers, say your prayers at me.
The truth is hard but I’m gonna tell it, there’s a whole lot of ways to sell it.
He couples the song in concert with his “Cindy’s Crying”
Cindy’s crying but it ain’t no use, she got a habit and she can’t get loose.
Stopping each and every man she meets, gonna be a hooker on Bleeker Street.
Police stopped her on the straight today, she was holding and they took her away.
Threw her in jail and made her wait, she was crying 'Oh, Jesus, let me just get straight.
Cindy went south and took the cure. “This time honey, I’m straight for sure.”
Went to the corner to the grocery store, you were gone ten minutes and I knew you’d scored.
A lot of the examples cited here are stories about individuals who came to a bad end via pills, smack, or coke. The anti-drug message is often more implicit than actually stated. How about “In the Quiet Morning”, Joan Baez’s lament for Janis Joplin…
It’s such a sad song. Although the focus is not on drugs at all, but on Janis’s tragic difficulty with existing. The word “mainline” is the only hint of drugs, and Baez uses it for wordplay regarding train travel, i.e. traveling out of this life.
From the examples cited so far, heroin and cocaine come in for the most condemnation, while pot gets off easy.
Looks like a publicist has been turned loose.
Reported. (fuschiairis)
From Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” which he wrote for his friend and roadie, Bruce Berry, who died of a heroine OD.
'Cause people, let me tell you
It sent a chill up and down my spine
When I picked up the telephone
And heard that he’d died out on the mainline
Man!
What a great song. Thanks for sharing it 9 years ago.
Moderator Note
Zombie Alert!
This thread dates back to 2006 and was raised by a spammer who has since been wished away to the cornfield.
Almost…
This may be a zombie thread but it’s never too late to mention “Why does it hurt when I pee?” from Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage album.