Hey Man.

So how do you feel about drugs in the studio? I'm mean the band taking them for whatever reason. I'm not to down with it myself, and I'm not crazy about people getting all fuckered up and trying to 'emote' while their brains drift slowly out the door. But sometimes...what can you do? It's also a bit icky, being illegal and all. I'm not running a damn opium den, folks. Goodness!

Thoughts?

A lot of that depends on the scope of the project, as well as the drug in question. While I generally try to dissuade musicians from getting high in the studio, there have been times where marijuana has helped the musicians get into the groove. The trade-off is usually apparent in the performances, though...

Having said that, I'm of the mind that if a musician doesn't have the natural high of being in the studio environment, then what is the point of the recording? More often than not the performances are better when the musicians are sober. There are a number of exceptions, I know, but in general it is true.

There was one time where I tried to talk a session drummer and bassist out of smoking dope before tracking. It had the opposite of the desired effect, in that they both thought that they had to be high to play. So while they were playing, they were thinking of how much better they would feel if they were high. After that, I relented, and got decent (though not great) performances out of them.

Without cocaine, most of the lp's from the 70's would not have been made. Country, funk, soul, rock, blues, etc. Its a fact.

The issue with drugs is that peoples usefulness on them varies from person to person, drug to drug.

Take herb for example. Everything sounds great when your high. When you play it back when your straight it usually does not. I have played with some folks who have toked and they totally sucked. Some folks can play stoned and do all sorts of amazing shit with precision and focus.
My own personal experiance is that the more stoned I was, the more I sucked. I would be playing bass and start drifting in my mind about how good it was all sounding, and then lose the fact that I was playing. Also, playing a reed instrument with cottonmouth is a chore. Lots of folks swear by it.

Snorting coke can keep you real focused, alert, and on the ball. It also turns people into assholes. It is not a hinderance in terms of getting "work" done, but the personality metamorhpasis it entails can be scarry. Also, lack of sleep and being irratable will get on everyones nerves. But, as stated before, most of your favorite 70's records folks were geeked out of their minds.

Acid/mushrooms - kinda useless. Trying to play guitar or reeds while tripping is a real chore. There might be a few great "acid" induced albums, but they are few and far between. I bet most of them were made not tripping, but with tripping in mind. I could barely hold a converasation when I was tripping, how the fuck could a play well?

Heroin - useless. Charlie Parker was not at his best when he was junked out. All the rockers from kurt to that alice in chains dude to lou reed were pretty much useless when they were junked out. Or, they just died.

Alcohol- some great music came out of this, and is probably a part of most recordings you own and shows you have seen. But, the more bozze, the more sloppy and less focused.

Meth - if you have to record, overdub, mix, and master a whole album in less that 48 hours, this might be your drug. Just dont snort it like coke or you will be up for 3 weeks.

Another aspect is that if you have 4 people palying together, some high, some not, there seems to be a disconnection between them. The stoned folks can interact with eachother, the sober with eachother, with a seperation between the two camps.

My drug days are behind me. I drive a truck for a living and if i get in any kind of accident --- piss test. My teamsters union would not be able to help me. Its kind of hard to pay rent and child support with no job.

not in my studio.
I don't care what you do before and after.

Chris

i think drugs like acid or heroin help when writing music... a friend of mine writes all his songs on smack. the idea is that these drugs open up different neural pathways that you wouldnt use when you are straight, thus allowing a more creative thought process. but i dont think they aid the actual performance really, so i guess there's not that much point getting fucked in the studio...... saying that when my band play live i have to be completely fucked on booze otherwise it just aint the same, but i guess thats a confidence issue?

yushbombn wrote:i think drugs like acid or heroin help when writing music... the idea is that these drugs open up different neural pathways that you wouldnt use when you are straight, thus allowing a more creative thought process.

Forgive me, but bullshit. Drugs make you think you're opening up new pathways to creativity, but they were there all along. It's easier to get high than to self-actualize, though. You had a point with confidence - alcohol decreases inhibitors so you do things that you keep yourself from doing when you're sober.

James Hettfield wrote a good portion of St. Anger while in rehab.
For some, drugs are imperative.


I have a morphine drip i.v. hooked to me at all times while in the studio.

Drugs are good/bad.

For example, I needed 30 minutes worth of filler at the end of my last project, so I dropped acid and locked myself in a room with a banjo and a table saw. Presto! 30 minute song!

Seriously....last time I did psychedelics in a recording situation, I ended up calling everyone "Gary," the LP "One hot one from Gary." and came up with song titles like:

"here comes Gary."
"what? where's Gary?"
"Too much Garyin' goin' on"
"The Elf and Gary: part I: Gary gets involved part II: The elf and the syrinx part III: Hibernating Gary sleeps tonight part IV: the crucifix and the oblong potato, opus IV, in whence Gary finds himself courted by the anti-Gary"


so you know...be careful

Most artists take drugs, some Vienna early 20th century artists used hunger (almost starvation) as a motive and not because of poverty but really aware form of creating hallucinations. Try not eating whole day if you play a concert, you get really aggressive and songs work out much faster, unlike hemp which slows you down. There are even more natural ways of getting high than this, I even once caught K.K.Null doing the yoga meditation before the concert which turned out to be one the loudest, most focused and most aggressive Zeni Geva shows.

yushbombn wrote:i think drugs like acid or heroin help when writing music... a friend of mine writes all his songs on smack.

I lost an entire year of my life because of a heroin addiction. I never put it in a vein, but nonetheless: It is the worst possible thing you can do to yourself!!! It has been a year since I got off of that garbage, and I am still trying to piece together exactly what happened in 2002. If you truly care about your friend, you should say someting to him about it. If not, chalk him up as 'soon to be deceased.'

The members of my band, myself included, drink like its going out of style. We are also potheads. It doesn't enhance our creativity, nor does it inhibit it (although too much booze will obviously affect your level of performance). The beer/pot combo seems to keep everyone's abrasiveness at bay, and though it makes for shorter practices and longer studio visits, we hardly ever fight. Music should be fun to create, by whatever standard of fun you've set for yourself. I suppose there are a lot of you who would disagree, but you must take into consideration that much of your favorite rock music was delivered under very similar influences.

In the studio, with so much anxiety, we'd probably kill each other if we were sober. Though sedative dependency in music on a grander scale has many drawbacks, our microscopic cross-section would crumble without it.

Coke, acid, ex, dope, all that hard stuff....CRAP!!!