Musings on music, drugs

It has been an interesting week to contemplate drugs, music and the interaction between the two. I was reading Mike Doughty’s new autobiography of art and self-abuse, “The Book of Drugs” (Da Capo), when news of Whitney Houston’s death broke. The next evening, while watching the Grammys, I wondered just how many of the folks offering remembrances of Houston on the stage, via tweet, text or Facebook post, were battling demons, dabbling with them or actively courting them. Could the pop stars protesting to be shocked and dismayed by Houston’s death, be wasted out of their gourds themselves?

The odds are better than 50-50.

Inevitably, this confluence of events — digesting Doughty’s harrowing and hilarious memoir (which he’ll read from at 5 p.m. next Friday in Talking Leaves Books, 3158 Main St.); hearing of Houston’s death; watching the Grammys and tributes — got me thinking. I wondered why so many artists have drug and alcohol problems — and whether drugs had initially helped them get closer to their art, before turning on them.

The list of musicians who died before their time due to pills, pints, powders and potions is incredibly depressing to contemplate. Begin, though you don’t have to limit it to this time frame, with the death of bebop pioneer and troubled genius Charlie “Yardbird” Parker in 1955. Dozens and dozens of prominent jazz musicians, hundreds of passable pop stars, too many young poets with old guitars — Brian Jones, Gram Parsons, Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley.

It’s a nasty proclivity toward self-destruction, whose roots are most likely in the lure toward artistic inspiration and expression. Consider that Dionysius, the Greek god of wine and song, developed a loyal following comprised of people who, according to Men-Myths- Minds.com, “(W)orshipped him in the mountains, drinking, dancing ecstatically to frenzied music, and otherwise behaving like ‘wild ones.’ ”

Sounds like a good concert, doesn’t it? Probably a great place to learn an awful lot about music, too, huh?

In Doughty’s “Book of Drugs,” he writes with an openness that routinely borders on the disturbing about his lengthy dalliance with drugs and booze, things he was well into by the time he met Ani DiFranco while attending the New School in New York City, and eventually co-founded the influential 1990s band Soul Coughing.

Doughty wasn’t just partying a little too hard — he was doing heroin, tripping, hoovering cocaine, and drinking and smoking weed just to even it all out. All of this while Soul Coughing was touring and making fantastic records — the debut effort “Ruby Vroom” being my favorite, and also the finest example of the Bohemian jazz/poetry slam/white funk/hip-hop/folk hybrid the band birthed.

It’s dangerously tempting to ponder the possibility that drugs might have fueled some of the creativity and left-of-center thinking that made those albums great. Going back to Parker again, we are faced with the fact that dozens and dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of musicians in his milieu were convinced that drugs were helping the saxophonist reach those sublime musical heights — to the point where they were more than willing to start shooting up themselves, hoping to get half as close to the primal muse. Big mistake. Most of them died far too young, directly based on that misunderstanding. Same thing happened to a whole slew of folks who thought they could party like Keith Richards.

Doughty, now sober for 11 years-plus, and presiding over a successful solo career, still expresses affection for that sweet surrender to the siren’s song, the insatiable appetite of the Lotus-eater.

“I can’t renounce drugs,” he writes. “I love drugs. I’d never trade that part of my life where the drugs worked, though the bulk of the time I spent getting high, they weren’t doing [expletive] for me. ... This part of my life — even minus the bursts of euphoria — is better, sexier, happier, more poetic, more romantic, grander.” Of course, Doughty is lucky he lived long enough to gain this experience.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters offered one of the coolest acceptance speeches in Grammy history last Sunday. (It’s all over YouTube, if you missed it.) More importantly, is the fact that Grohl is here, in 2012, getting a Grammy for an honest rock record that is both an artistic and a commercial success. Cobain, his Nirvana bandmate, traded that for the annihilating qualities of the “Lotus dance.”

I wonder what he would have made of his old friend’s speech? It’s a shame that we’ll never know.•

jmiers@buffnews.comnull

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Musings on music, drugs