Melodies of Marijuana
Music has been used as a tool to reflect culture for a majority of history. Music has been used for Christian worship for hundreds of years. During the civil rights movement, music was used to fight for justice and present the views of groups such as The Black Panthers (Phillips, 1). Since the late 1960’s, it is arguable that drug culture has been recorded through music as well. Songs such as the Beatles’ original “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” rose to popularity, discussing drug abuse and capturing the essence of narcotics like marijuana and LSD (Rettman, 3). The evolution of substance abuse has been illustrated by music since the late 1960’s, and can still be used to track popular abuse to this day.
The drug related music scene of the late 1960’s captured the rise of a new drug called lysergic acid diethylamide, otherwise known as LSD. The drug was originally invented in 1938, but became popular for recreational use throughout the 1960’s, due to clinical trials that ran
…show more content…
Songs such as “Sister Morphine” (1971) by the Rolling Stones explicitly mentioned the use of drugs such as cocaine, “Sweet cousin Cocaine, lay your cool cool hand on my head. Ah, come on, sister Morphine, you better make up my bed.” Others such as “Brown Eyed Girl” (1967) by Van Morrision, are seemingly innocent, yet allude to the use of drugs. Some theorize that Morrison wrote “Brown Eyed Girl” about his love for heroin, saying that the word “girl” was used in drug culture to distinguish drugs that affect the hypothalamus region of the brain which include cocaine, heroin and ecstasy (“Meaning of”, 1). It is argued that the “brown eyes” part was used to distinguish heroin because when used it is grated into a fine brown powder (“Meaning of”, 1). Many of theses songs depicted in the 1970’s drug music scene are considered classics