(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
It’s impossible to separate the history of music from the history of drugs. Especially when considering the way that music has twisted and changed since the hippie days of the 1960s, that winding path is like one big trip as different substances and subcultures converge. In the world of rock music, you’d be hard-pressed to find an artist who hasn’t at least hinted towards the illicit. Tom Petty certainly did.
They say that weed is the ultimate gateway drug, and the music world seems to prove that well. It was in 1964 that the Beatles started wandering down a path that changed their sound forever. Sure, they met the inspirational figure of Bob Dylan, but then the folk star gave them a spliff. From that moment on, as they dove deeper into the world of mind-altering substances, the Fab Four were forever hazier.
From the jazz world of Louis Armstrong to the beatnik space of Allen Ginsberg and the New York underground scene, weed has had a place across all genres and forms. Considered as a kind of tool for liberation and creative freedom, artists have believed for decades now that a little pot could relax you to the point of divine inspiration.
That’s something that alcohol can’t do. No one’s ever finished a bottle of wine or downed several beers and said, “Ah, I feel so at peace and so in tune with myself and my body.” But that’s exactly what…
