HOW ROCK'N'ROLL FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH DRUGS

Young musicians today are more likely than those of previous generations to
decry the harm that drugs can cause, according to research in America.

The study, based on an analysis of drug lyrics in English-language popular
music since the 1960s, was last week highlighted as one of the few pieces
of good news in the annual survey by the European monitoring centre for
drugs and drug addiction, the EU's drugs agency.

The research, published by the University of Texas at Austin, explodes the
conventional wisdom that popular music encourages teenagers to abuse drugs.
The author, John Markert of Cumberland University, Tennessee, says that
although there has always been a generally hostile attitude towards heroin
and other hard drugs, teenage listeners today "are being exposed to more
negative images of marijuana and LSD than older listeners".

The research comes as MPs are preparing to vote on Wednesday to approve the
reclassification of cannabis. Songs dealing with illegal drugs have always
dotted popular music. In the 1930s, Fats Waller dreamed about a 5ft joint
in Viper's Drag, and Harry "the Hipster" Gibson posed the question: "Who
put the benzedrine in Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine?" But it was not until the
1960s that it became a constant theme.

Mr Markert's study, Sing a Song of Drug Use-Abuse, is based on analysis of
784 songs since the 1960s that explicitly mention an illegal substance. It
shows that while heroin and cocaine have largely been treated with
hostility by musicians, their attitude towards cannabis and LSD has changed
sharply over the years. Mr Markert found 100 songs with lyrics about
heroin, more than half from the 1990s. But whether it is Lou Reed's "It's
my wife, it's my life" from the song Heroin, Neil Young's "I watched the
needle take another man" from The Needle and the Damage Done, or Pearl
Jam's "It's my blood" from Blood, they demonstrate an increasingly hostile
attitude in the 1990s.

Nearly twice as many songs deal with cocaine and they are also generally
negative. Some from the 1960s and 1970s such as "She don't lie, she don't
lie, cocaine", from Eric Clapton's version of JJ Cale's Cocaine, and the
Grateful Dead's "Drivin' that train, high on cocaine", are hardly negative.
But by the 1990s the attitude is far more trenchant with rap music
presenting cocaine, particularly crack, as a loser drug.

Prince's 1990 New Power Generation is typical: "Cocaine was the thing that
I took on ... I was headed 4 the kill, steal, destroy and die". But the
research argues that there has been a much bigger shift in attitudes
towards marijuana and LSD, and musicians use their hostility to drugs to
attack the older generation. Mr Markert says that while Jimi Hendrix's
Purple Haze personified 1960s acid rock, four-fifths of the songs that
explicitly mention LSD are post 1980 and overwhelmingly hostile.

"Contemporary young people view LSD as the drug of older, screwed-up
middle-aged people," he says. The majority of the songs in the sample are
about cannabis and generally take a positive approach, although the more
recent songs are more equivocal. Few 1960s songs explicitly mention
marijuana, mainly because they would have been banned from radio. The
veteran country singer Willie Nelson produced a platinum- selling album,
Hempilation, in 1995 singing the praises of cannabis.

In the 90s, several over 30s musicians, such as JJ Cale, Tom Petty and
Sheryl Crow, released albums that lauded marijuana and were geared to an
older, more marijuana accepting audience. They contrast sharply with the
message from Biohazard's 1994 Failed Territory - "another neighbourhood
gets destroyed by the drug deal" - which attacks the systemic problem
associated with drug use and is shared by nearly half of the 1990s songs
analysed by Mr Markert.

"1990s music such as Biohazard's sees nothing good with dope. Drugs are
bad; there is no equivocation, no okay drugs such as marijuana or LSD and
many of them link cannabis to other drugs such as cocaine as a gateway drug."

HOW ROCK'N'ROLL FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH DRUGS

1960s

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea And frolicked in the autumn mist
in a land called Honalee. Peter, Paul and Mary, Puff The Magic Dragon,1963

Everybody must get stoned Bob Dylan, Rainy Day Women, 1966

One pill makes you larger And one pill makes you small, And the ones that
mother gives you Don't do anything at all. Go ask Alice When she's 10 feet
tall. Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit, 1967

Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade
skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, A girl with kaleidoscope
eyes The Beatles, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, 1967

When I put a spike into my vein And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the
same When I'm rushing on my run And I feel just like Jesus' son And I guess
that I just don't know Velvet Underground and Nico, Heroin, 1967

1970s

I hit the city and I lost my band I watched the needle take another man
Gone. The damage done. Neil Young, The Needle and the Damage Done, 1972

If you wanna hang out, you gotta take her out, cocaine If you wanna get
down, get down on the ground, cocaine She's all right, She's all right,
She's all right Eric Clapton, Cocaine,1977

1980s

Pass the dutchie from the left hand side Musical Youth, Pass the Dutchie, 1984

Your daddy works in porno Now that mommy's not around She used to love her
Heroin But now she's underground Guns N' Roses, My Michelle, 1987

1990s

But that's okay 'cos we're all sorted out for E's & wizz And tell me when
the spaceship lands 'cos all this has just got to mean something Pulp,
Sorted for E's & Wizz, 1995

I'm on crack I'm doing lines all the time John Belushi was a friend of mine
Can't relate, I'm losin weight Grinding my jaw, breaking the law Stealing
tens and twenties from my ma and pa Dickies, I'm On Crack, 1995

Sun so bright that I'm nearly Blind Cool cos I'm wired and I'm out of my
mind Warms the dope running down my spine But I don't care 'bout you and
I've got nothing to do Spiritualised, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating,
1997

You're living life fucked-up every single day And now I can't remember the
last time you were straight You're a joke but no one's laughing any more
White Town, Peek and Poke, 2000