It’s the happiest sound you can imagine. It comes to two minutes and ten seconds in Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Cinnamon Girl. It’s the sound of guitarist and vocalist Danny Whitten, who loses himself in the music he was making. “It feels so good, you have to laugh about it,” writes biographer Jimmy McDonough in Shakey, his book on Young.
Neil Young described Whitten as the “one man on the planet” with whom he could play “better than anyone else”. A few years later he was dead. Young had kicked him out, and Whitten, horrified, died trying to kick heroin with Valium and booze.
When researching a book about musicians, I come across many of these stories. Kurt Cobain is a central figure. His sad introduction to the 27 Club, in 1994 – along with Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and, later, Amy Winehouse, all of whom died at the age of 27 – is etched in my childhood memories. The Ghost of the Screaming Trees Singer Mark Lanegan, who passed away in February at the age of 57, haunts the book. (His cause of death has not been disclosed, but his health was seriously compromised after contracting Covid and he endured long battles with addiction over the years.)
There are happier endings too – Tony O’Neill from Kenickie and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, for example, who escaped heroin to become a brilliant underground novelist. Steven Adler was fired from Guns N’ Roses for taking too much heroin to play his part. Fortunately, Adler survived one of the worst addiction stories imaginable.
But many of the stories in my book only go one way: Bob Stinson of the Replacements (drug-induced organ failure) and David Ruffin of the Temptations (cocaine overdose).
So what about drugs and music?
In some ways it is simple. Music performances take place at night – they are part of nightlife, where everyone wants to kick ass, unwind and have a few drinks. Once you’ve had a few drinks, a little bit of something else may seem like a good idea.
In this setting musicians work. Night after night in different places on a tour. The nerves backstage are palpable. A friend of Danny Whitten said he couldn’t perform once he got off heroin. That must have been terrifying – and in his case certainly insurmountable.
There is relentless coziness in music. Play and record together. Barnstorm. Dinners with label staff or radio people. Interviews and journalists. Other bands, friends of friends and one-night stands. There is no anchor on tour. For most of us, the daily grind of regular work is a good way to stay on track. But there is always fun to be had along the way. It may be the band’s 100th night, but for fans and friends at the show, it’s the first, and they want to celebrate.
Music is visceral. Players and the public want to lose themselves in it. This can be easily reinforced with fabrics. House music and ecstasy, hip hop and weed, rock music with uppers, jazz with smack.
Many people in music try drugs at some point. After that, there’s a lottery element about how addictive a personality is. The good news is that things are getting better. The industry is more aware of the dangers. I only met one musician who regularly used heroin. Cocaine is treated more contemptuously than it ever was. These days, you’ll come across bands practicing wellness as often as you are hunched over a table of rolled up bills. Johnny Marr’s running habit shows it’s just as easy to develop a good habit: “They say it takes eight weeks to become a habit and eight weeks to become a lifestyle,” notes he up. Bonobo’s band does group yoga sessions on the road, and Ellie Goulding graces the cover of Women’s Health, not the most obvious magazine for the pop PR plan. The drug use that remains is often a bit more organized. Early nights and then relaxing after the show on Saturday – that sort of thing.
There is now more emphasis on safety in all aspects of society, and it is happening in music as well.
But way back in the hedonistic wilderness of the 1970s, Danny Whitten was less likely to escape the nightmare he was trapped in.