Drug use was first linked with popular music during the emergence of rock and roll in the 50s, led to mind-bending experimentation in the 60s, reached toxic excesses in the 70s and has been synonymous with rock and roll since. As Amy Winehouse’s performance by satellite of Rehab from rehab proved, drugs remain an integral part of the rock and roll lifestyle. Record labels inherently avoid publicity of their artists’ habits, but artists can’t always be protected from themselves and their drug use is sometimes all too obvious: Keith Urban’s much-publicised visit to rehab, Pete Doherty’s repeated arrests for drug possession, Robbie Williams’ decision to make Rude Box. Much to the chagrin of parents, public indiscretions often just engender credibility with fans.
Governments and health campaigners will insist that we say no to drugs, but the virtues they preach are too contrary to the rock and roll fantasy to be anything but redundant. Would Guns ‘n’ Roses have achieved international notoriety if, instead of guys in leather strides who lived in an LA crack den, they were actually photocopier salesmen who celebrated a good show with a new Dungeons and Dragons figurine? Not likely. What’s more, drug use can facilitate creativity. The tangential effects of experimentation with LSD and mescaline during Ken Kesey’s famed Acid Tests are profound in the music of bands like The Grateful Dead and, later, The Beatles. Very liberal use of the ganja made Bob Marley and the Wailers so chilled that even the sternest agent of the establishment would listen to what they had to say. Ecstasy came part and parcel with the Madchester rave scene and the association did no harm to the genre’s mainstream popularity. It even spawned the ubiquitous smiley-face merchandise. Narcotics, therefore, have undeniably fostered many seminal moments in music.
Roger and Betty’s Let Love Begin, however, is not one of them. Not by a country light year. In an interview with Australian Music Online while promoting his 2002 solo album, It’s All About Love, Tim Oxley (of various bands, most notably The Dearhunters) recalled getting “way too high for recording anything but laughs and giggles”. Six years on, Oxley may present the single biggest missed opportunity to properly measure the long-term effects of marijuana on the brain. His collaboration with Jodi Phillis (of ‘90s pop-rockers The Clouds) is an album of treacly folk songs about love: being in love, sharing love with another, wishing others love, and the “love that is just around the bend, and it’s hesitating, ‘til you are its friend”. The result is so insipidly twee that even the makers of the Teletubbies wouldn’t use the songs for fear of patronising their audience.
If the health department wants to discourage teens from smoking weed, they should forego the TV ads about little Susie who’s too depressed to dance with the girls, or little Jimmy who can’t concentrate on his footy game. Instead, they should have teens listen to Oxley and Phillis harmonise throughout The Happy Song: “This is our happy song / It makes us smile and feel good inside / This is our happy song / Where the suns shines bright all day and night / There are no tears here / Just smiles and Christmas cheer / Oh, I’m glad this song is here.”
The duo has more wisdom to share with the children of the world. On the jangly oom-pah of The Polkadots of Purpletown, about how the polkadots’ efforts to get along with the stripes weren’t reciprocated, and the polkadots had to seek refuge across the valley in Purpletown. And on the sweet lullaby Crazy Life, about how living out their childhood in a car “will be so much fun” when the nasty establishment won’t rent mummy a house.
Take note, kids. The dangers of drugs are all too real.
Philippa_A
said ages ago