Are drugs less common in prog?

Off Centre wrote: goose wrote: Someone from the original recording KC lineup said something to the effect that drugs weren't anything to do with the band as a whole, that he (the drummer, I think) personally had never taken anything and that he didn't know that anyone else has. Read Sid Smiths KC book and all will be revealed. For a start, Ian McDonald's own diary entries from 1969 mention his drug taking(speed & pot).

Spot on.

The book is worth a read anyway. Quite the best biography of both Fripp and the band so far.

Depends.  Do you distinguish between pot and acid and other "soft" drugs on one side of the fence and highly addictive drugs liek cocaine and opiates on the other side of the fence.  I personally think it is ridiculous to lump all "drugs" into one basket. 

You don't have to go far to see the impact that psychedelics have had on prog.  Just what do you think as in that tea that Gong and Daevid Allen were drinking?

I have heard the the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is really an allegory for overcoming addiction, where Rael is a junkie who passes out on a broadway street after shooting up, and everything that happens after that is a hallucinatory dream.  The references are all there -- the "spraygun" is really a syringe (why else would he "wipe" his gun clean and forget what he did?), Lenny Bruce, a famous morhine addict is referenced,"the children play at home with needles and pins." 

But Jon Anderson on cocaine????  I find that a little hard to swallow (or snort). 

King of Loss wrote: It depends on the band  But I'm 100000000% percent sure that Yes, King Crimson and Jethro Tull were big acid treepers!

According to Ian in the Living with the Past DVD.....if bands of the period had their " drug" albums during the day, they (Tull) must have done several Lowenbrau albums....


Seriously....I wonder how much stuff was consumed during Gong's Teapot Trilogy.....

Edited by DEzerov

My guess is that you can tell which bands were doing drugs by how good the music sounds when you are doing them yourself. I can listen to Yes and Floyd (and most 60's psych) while stoned, but not Tull or Zappa.

I personally restrict myself to the occassional toke these days, but  saw Gong in the mid 1990's while on mushroom tea. A friend says he saw Panterra while on acid, but I dont believe him...

I took acid in Israel many years ago. this may sound like a wierd place to trip, but the tel-aviv beachfront is really cool in the wee hours. I fell in love with a sunflower...that was like tripping in teh f**king sixties man!!!!

Yes on dope...yeah!!

Have you seen the YESYEARS Video at the Tormato studio session recordings? Chris is smoking a big hand-made cigarrete.

I don´t think Jon is on coke, but he is part the Opium Movement. On stage at the 35TH Anniversary he joked about his remembrance of Ganga (Jamaican Hashis) when they originally recorded "Long Distance..."

On 97 he also joked that the "And You and I" ideas came "...out of the smoke..." making reference that he was smoking weed.

What about Wakeman... a confessed alcoholic.

I think Bill Bruford is the only clean member of the Yes team

I´ve seen some video interviews of Tony Banks, and he is continuosly sniffin´(probably he is always cold! )

Gong, Hawkwind, Sub, Guru Guru, Clearlight, Master´s Aprentice, etc. are heavily drug oriented proclaimed super heroes, but I think they aren´t the final answer on a trippy way. In fact those extreme tones sometimes are bad trippin´!!!

OMMADAWN and OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW are tremendously trippy... specially when you are clean..  

PEACE

Oddly enough, Pink floyd did very little drugs( witht the exception of syd barret)

In my Nick mason book " Inisde and out, a personal history of pink floyd"

he says that they only did drugs in their early stuff. But after sauserful of secrets, there was jsut as much pot smoking going on as in my grandmas kitchen

Definitely not.
Drugs are just as commonplace in prog as in any other kind of music.

BePinkTheater wrote: jsut as much pot smoking going on as in my grandmas kitchen

I was going to make a topic like this soon. I know for a fact that Keith Emerson did speed, as my dad's old high school hippy music teacher, a classically trained pianist, hung out with Emerson and did speed with him (he opened up to my dad apparently, once he found out of his love for ELP.) I think it is pretty clear that some Yes members did hallucinagenic drugs. All of Tales seems like a freaking acid trip to me. KC is harder. I know Fripp didnt do drugs (or at least said so). Genesis seemed like they HAD to be into weed at least. Listening to Trespass through through the Lamb just give me the feeling that they used at least mild drugs like weed. I wouldnt be surprised is some of them (like Gabriel and Hackett) used acid or mescaline. I will admit that 70-74 Genesis is some of the best music ever made to listen to while stoned. The other famed prog bands are also iffy to me, but I am pretty sure about Yes, ELP, and Genesis.

Gaston wrote: Less common by the prog makers or the prog listeners? I think you know the answer to that. Personally I think bands like Floyd actually just MADE music for people on drugs. I read A Saucerful of Secrets a while back and it stated that Rog and Nicky only really drank, but Dave and Rick were smokers. I think they also stated that none of them did acid or heavys while performing as "you couldn't possibly manipulate the tech and instruments in that state" or something to that effect... And as a musician who has taken drugs and tried to play, I agree. Stick to the liquid courage. Also, there's a reference in Pompei where the Adrien asks Dave if he thought the Floyd were "a very drug oriented band" and Dave's like "We're not" (obviously stoned at the time, if you look at his bloodshot squints) "you can trust us"..... Gaston

Yeah I always got a kick out of that one too!

Actually, there are very few clips in that movie (in the studio portions at least) where Dave DOESN'T look absolutely stoned out of his gourd.