Rock-n-roll and the Use of Drugs in the Period between 1955 and 1966 - Essay Example

Running Head: ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC Rock-n-roll and the use of drugs in the period between 1955 and 1966 Rock-n-roll and the use of drugs in the period between 1955 and 1966 The time period between 1955 and 1965 can be seen as one of the most crucial for the evolution of rock and roll music within popular culture. The evolution of the concept of the ‘teenager’ was creating an emergent importance within the concept of popular culture as the attraction to rebellious music, art, and attitudes were beginning to reflect a youth that was dissatisfied with life as framed by their parents. As the counterculture began to emerge, however, an associated interest with mind altering drugs began to be a part of the experience. While the era of drug use and free thinking is often thought of as the 1960s, the counterculture began much earlier, stemming from the gravitation of certain individuals to jazz and folk music which was often expressed by those who were calling themselves beatniks and bohemians. The period of time between 1955 and 1966 were pivotal, however, as the course of social change also saw changes in the way in which intellectualism was pursued, leading to the heavier use of drugs during that time period. In 1966, Grace Slick wrote one of the more iconic songs that projected the connection between literacy, rock and roll, and the drug culture. Referencing Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland she wrote “One pill makes you larger/One pill makes you small/ And the ones that mother gives you/Don’t do anything at all/Go ask Alice/When she’s ten feet tall” (Farber, 2007, p. 62). At the same time, there has been a struggle between embracing the effects of drug use and the consequences of indulging in drugs with too much intensity. Rock and roll lifestyles are both filled with the hedonism of sex and drugs and written to reflect the spiral downward that is taken through the ’looking glass’ when drug abuse takes over one’s life. One of the more famous quotes about drug use and the early years of rock and roll came from David Crosby who said “if you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there”, intimating the close connection between the use of drugs, forgetfulness during use and the revolutions of the 1960s which included a high level of drug use (Farber, 2007, p. 63). Drug abuse and alcoholism as it was connected to musicians did not begin in the 1960s. Where there are high levels of artistic emotions combined with the pressures of success, drug use and alcohol abuse were often involved. However, cultural groups that specifically aligned themselves with the use of drugs was a relatively new phenomenon in the 1950s. The type of groups that were defined by a sort of intellectualism that was following some of the great writers of the time, as well as following paths towards hedonism and self indulgences were ’beatniks’ and ’bohemians’ of the 1950s. The music of jazz and folk music, two genres that helped to form the structures of rock and roll, were a type of music that drew people towards it that often indulged in drug use. According to Weinstein (1999), “the initial sparks were struck in the 1940s that set the counterculture ablaze with drugs in the 1960s” (p. 169). When Ardous Huxley wrote Doors of Perception in 1954, the counterculture was motivated to seek the perfect high, that state in which transcendence had occurred in which the promise of drug use was finally fulfilled. Seeking to fulfill some sort of intellectual imperative, the book written by Huxley gave a framework of understanding about the nature of mind altering drug use and the advantages of what one can learn from having taken mind altering drugs. Huxley (2009) describes what Spanish conquerors saw when they encountered Native Americans. He states “they eat a root which they call peyote, and which they venerate as though tit was a deity”(p. 9). The book became centering piece of pop culture from which the pursuit of the ultimate spiritual experience was sought after which included high levels of drug abuse in order to explore the corridors of the mind. Douglas Brode (2004) has written a book that looks at the acceptance of rock and roll music from the point of view that Walt Disney contributed legitimizing it within popular culture. Brode writes that while movies such as Blackboard Jungle (1955) had associated rock and roll with juvenile delinquency, Disney portrayed the pre-teen movie star Hayley Mills as joyfully moving to the rock and roll beat in the movie The Parent Trap (1961). Disney recognized the emergence of a new youth culture, using the counterculture aspects of popular social interactions, such as dance and music, to enhance the work that he was doing through animation and live action films. The emergence of the concept of teenager, the idea that there was an in between period of life that linked childhood to adulthood, was not a part of the understandings of life in a significant way prior to World War II. Brode (2004) writes “The very concept of the ‘teenager’, as we employ that term today, came into being during the post war years when the affluent offspring of Eisenhower-era conformists rebelled against their parents, seemingly (as one famous 1955 film put it) without a cause” (p. 8). Where the emergence of this social group began to form a relationship with the popular cultural, the consumerist advantages were immediately seen by those who understood the youth culture as it was evolving. Disney saw this and “while most Hollywood studios approached the phenomenon with caution, Disney consistently celebrated the new youth culture” (p. 8). The connection of the emergence of the teenager as a social group with a specific identity connects to the proliferation of drug use as it began to more blatantly become a part of the identifying characteristics of rock and roll is through the mergence of rebellion and the belief during adolescence that the body was an immortal state, that while death existed it was either romanticized or situated in some far off abstract place of later age. In the search for trying to find an understanding for their world, for their situation within the world, and for how to cope with overwhelming aspects of life, adolescents are more susceptible to experimentation of different aspect of life. Drug use is one way in which experimentation can occur. With the emergence of a youth culture in which rebellion and countercultural belief systems were forming, the use of drugs and the combination with music that was representing that culture, become connected and identifiably relevant to the emerging youth. The connection between drugs and American popular music was developed through the connections between traveling medicine shows and musicians. Musicians were hired by the medicine shows as a way to appease the crowds before the sale of the medicine would begin. Opiates were a central part of the drugs that were sold to the attendees of these shows, thus connecting the music to drugs early on in American history. The narrative about the use of drugs becomes a running theme within the music that appears previously to the 1950s when drug use all but disappears from the lyrics of popular music. The theme re-emerged with rock and roll, with lyrics and concepts that were representing the emerging youth culture. According to Plasketes (2010), “Drug stories within popular music lyrics are not simply endorsements or confessions, but can also serve as a discursive narrative framework for positioning an individual or group within society - a method for making sense of the world and one’s position in it” (p. 114). The audience for rock music was primarily a middle class youth culture that was “consumed with the concerns of leisure” which included running narrative about the use of drugs that was becoming an important experience of adolescence and the time of discovery. Listening closely to the music, one begins to understand that while the use of drugs is prominently discussed, it is often more about the negative effects of drug use. Where rock and roll has often been accused of being an endorsement for the lifestyle of drug use, most of the music within the rock and roll repertoire bashes either the user or the lifestyle that includes use. While exemplifying the emerging social statements and belief systems of the 1960s, the discussion within the lyrics most often suggested the weaknesses that were being reflective of the use of drugs, with the lyrics blasting the concept of drug use through depictions of the terrible consequences. Even though drug use within rock and roll represented the nature of the changing social atmosphere, the music did not, as assumed, suggest that drug abuse was an acceptable form of punishment. The term ‘rock and roll’ was coined by disc jockey Alan Freedman who was comparing the experience of listening to the music with a sexual reference that was used as slang for sex (Ammer, 2004, p. 352). Rock and roll has always been about indulgence, the beat and the movement that it evoked a deep part of the history of popular music with an emerging youth culture taking over the way in which music was developed for its intended audience. As shown by the use of rock and roll by Walt Disney, it is clear that the way in which Disney and other artistic reflections of the time experienced rock and roll was through a sense of necessity that was defined by the rebellious spirit of the genre. In supporting the emergence of a teenage population as a part of the social grouping structures, the nature of rock and roll became highly dependent on the use and abuse of drugs. The sacrifices in talent over the subsequent years to the pitfalls of drag abuse show how the integration of drugs and rock and roll has not always been successful. However, through the colorful metaphors of suffering and popularization of drug use, the connection between an emerging set of structures that defined the counterculture begins to form shape and understanding. The 1950s saw the rise of the youth culture, while the 1960s created the defining differences between youth and their parents. In attempting to describe and form alternative opinions about the world and the way it was experienced, the youth found ways to use music to explore drug abuse to further their adversarial relationship with the world. References Ammer, C., & Facts on File, Inc. (2004). The Facts on File dictionary of music. New York: Facts on File. Brode, Douglas. From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2004. Print. Case, G. (2010). Out of our heads: Rock n roll before the drugs wore off. New York: Backbeat Books. Farber, B. A. (2007). Rock n roll wisdom: What psychologically astute lyrics teach about life and love. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publ. Huxley, A. (2009). The doors of perception: &, Heaven and hell. New York: Harper Perennial. Plasketes, G. (2010). Play it again: Cover songs in popular music. Farnham, England: Ashgate. Romer, D. (2003). Reducing adolescent risk: Toward an integrated approach. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Weinstein, S. (1999). The educator’s guide to substance abuse prevention. New York: Taylor and Francis, Inc. Read More