What, if anything, is the correlation between illicit drug use and artistic/musical creativity? It has frequently been suggested that, in particular, hallucinagenic drugs are potentially ‘mind expanding’. Is there any truth to this claim and if so why are these alledged benefits to performance seldom associated with scientific/mathematical excellence? After all, isn’t music really just maths?
Moved from GQ to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I for one preferred them when they were rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreal fuckin’ high on drugs.
Considering they were taking drugs as far back as their Hamburg days - before they even recorded their first record - I’ll say yes, they were better after they started using drugs.
Music is not “just math.”
I didn’t mean that to sound snarky – sorry if it did.
However, benzos and amphetamines aside, they started smoking pot pretty heavily right around Revolver, which for me is the turning point from teeny-bopper, lover’s lament stuff to thoughtful rock and roll, so again, I vote yes. More so once they started dropping acid and came out with shit like *Lucy in the Sky *and Day in the Life and I am the Walrus, etc.
On the other hand, who’s to say it was the drugs that made them better? They did manage to mature as people and musicians over the years, especially within the whole whirl-wind that was The Beatles.
OK, that was just the title. Just picked The Beatles because I like the songs. Shouldn’t have picked an example I was totally ignorant about. Lesson learned (maybe). I’m wondering if there is a more general link including for writers, visual artists etc.
Oh, I see what you’re getting at.
Well, I’m not sure. I tend to think it’s more a causation/correlation thing. The type of person who would become a musician is more likely to become a person who would use drugs … that, kind of thing. Of course, it’s not just drugs, but any sort of vice, really. Did Dylan Thomas become a better writer when he became an alcoholic? Or did Dylan Thomas become an alcoholic borne from the same weird drive that made him a better writer?
I prefer the Beatles’ later stuff - which did come after Dylan introduced them to marijuana - but it’s very easy to overstate the link between drugs and creativity. Even if we take it for granted that drugs can expand people’s minds and induce greater creativity, it’s also true that creativity alone does not make you good. People on drugs (including the Beatles) have produced an awful lot of godawful shit because they mistook their stoner gibberish for something profound or interesting. Drug use over the long run tends to screw up your health and addiction is not great for the creative process because of effects ranging from health problems to the fact that you may be getting high and looking for drugs more often than you are making music. Making good music also requires a lot of practice, and you might not feel like doing that if you’re high all the time. Drug addiction derailed Eric Clapton’s career for years and obviously nobody ever overdosed on not doing drugs, although I guess there’s Pat Boone. I think most drug-addicted musicians are not taking drugs to make better music. They’re taking drugs because of various personal problems, some of which also drive them to make music. Didn’t Miles Davis once say that he didn’t take drugs to make music - he needed drugs to get through everything else, but not when he was onstage?
So I do think the Beatles were better after they started doing psychoactive drugs (I think in Hamburg they were just doing amphetamines), but I think very little of that was because they were doing drugs. It’s hard to imagine a few of their great songs without drugs and I have trouble imagining a lot of Jimi Hendrix’s musical output without LSD because certainly that stuff influenced the psychedelic culture. The bottom line is this: drugs don’t make music. You could give a ton of bands access to drugs and the only one that would have turned into the latter-day Beatles was the Beatles.
Everything is math(s)! That’s why we can express it as 1s and 0s on a laser disk. Ok ok… You’re right, music isn’t really ‘just maths’. That was a silly thing to say, but there’s definitely a significant cross-over in things like pitch, harmony, rhythm, even ambient acoustics.
Couldn’t agree more. As I say, I’m by no means qualified to make this assesment, I’m 28 and emphatically not a Beatles buff, but I guess that it was probably also part of a general shift in music (which they obviously contributed to disproportionately themselves). Their early stuff would I imagine have been electrifying at the time but would have seemed tame and even trite towards the end of their career. Additionally, I don’t think we can neglect the fact that towards the end, they had access to some of the best musical minds in the pop world. They were surrounded by peers and mentors many of whom we would consider legends in their own right. They would have had far greater freedom to experiment and a fanbase so devoted that they had virtually no chance of alienating them. Like you say though, for me the biggest factor was that they were all experienced, knowledgable, hard-working musicians with an unusual level of inate ability. Seems pretty unlikely that they would have all found themselves in the same group, but luckily they did. I only mentioned the Beatles to illustrate the point, don’t know why I’m making such an extended and probably asinine digression. Could be because I’ve had a few beers.
Good points all.
So if the Beatles weren’t necessarily “better” because of (I am going to assume psychedelic drugs use) drugs, then how does one explain the transition from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to “Tomorrow Never Knows”?
It couldn’t simply be written off to the times they were in, musical/songwriting maturation, etc. I do think there’s a case to be made for certain drugs at that time, particularly LSD, that seriously influenced a bunch of musicians in that era, not just the Beatles.
Then there’s heroin…which also hasn’t hurt my CD collection…Stones, Guns and Roses, Nirvana, etc et al…
That of course is true..drugs won’t turn anyone into the Beatles. But if you take a creative genius and give them drugs, it does seem to make them more creative (depending on the drug of course). I haven’t read Aldous Huxley in years but the stuff he wrote on acid was fascinating. He claimed it opened up the doors of perception…which IMS is also the name of one of his books on his drug experimentation.
Of course it probably also depends on WHY you are using the drugs in the first place. If it is to escape reality or numb the pain, that may have a different impact–Huxley (like me in college) was doing it in the name of scientific research.
But back to the OP, I do tend to think their LSD use did indeed have a positive impact on their music and lyrics.
Yeah, once upon a time, against my better judgement, and on the insistance of a cherished friend, I read a biography of Pete Doherty (cover to cover, the shame). One of it’s principal theses was that Pete had initially taken to smoking heroin in order to facilitate the opening of these said ‘doors of perception’ and so unleash his inner musical genius. So at the very least I suppose we can safely infer that it doesn’t always work. (Sorry to any fans, it’s all subjective)
They were no better after they started doing drugs.
They were very talented people who happened to do drugs.
Do you really think they would have gone nowhere without them?
Who made that claim?? 
You have to understand that “better” is a completely subjective term. You may think their “best” song is “Love Me Do”, which was written before they got into drugs.
But it’s hard to imagine they would have ever written “Lucy in the Sky”, “Strawberry Fields”, or “A Day in the Life”** without psychadelic drugs.
**My personal favorite Beatles song and it is also ranked by Rolling Stone as their best song.
So whether or not The Beatles were “better” after they started taking drugs is a matter of taste. But I don’t think anyone thinks they would have gone nowhere without them. That’s just silly.
The Beatles improved as time went on, but that had nothing to do with drugs.
Citation needed.
It might have, but they were together from 1962 to 1970 and a lot of things in music changed in huge ways during that time.
“Toward the end?” They always had George Martin. What they did is inconceivable without him, and he always helped them turn their concepts into music.
I’m cautious about making any kind of statement that broad. Drugs may help some people become more creative in ways they can use in their art; other people may feel the creativity, but they’ll end up as drug addicts who can’t create much of anything because they’ve lost the thread. It seems kind of trite to bring up Syd Barrett in this context and maybe it oversimplifies his problems if you blame them all on drugs, but still, he comes to mind. And there’s no shortage of creative people who could’ve made a lot more music if they hadn’t either lost years to addiction or just died.
I really can’t imagine The Beatles and Hendrix making the music they made without drugs. It’s possible they would have made something else equally amazing, but drugs did have an influence on the course the music took. They didn’t just sit around getting high and waiting for 12 great songs to write themselves, though, so it’s easy to overstate that influence.