Sunday Songbook: Substances
A collection of tunes about stuff we put in our bodies to alter our brains
Go ahead, it’s summer. Roll yourself a blunt the size of a crescent wrench, fix yourself a peyote smoothie, nibble on a San Pedro cactus, or lick your Sonora Desert toad (of course, only with certified health professionals present with ‘tripping ballz’ protocols sanctioned by a respected research ethics board).
While responsibly watched over by experts in white lab coats, you can now safely kick back and groove on my soberly curated collection of tunes about the joys and risks of both controlled and uncontrolled substances.
The Beatles, “Got To Get You Into My Life”
The song's lyrics might suggest a romance, and there is—with Mary Jane. McCartney said he wrote this brassy number after his discovery of marijuana, and his decision to add it to his life as a regular boost to positivity and creativity.
Not coincidentally, McCartney’s songwriting scaled up enormously with the release of the album that featured this track, Revolver. A stunning streak of unforgettable songs followed, from 1965 to 1969.
However, The Leaf giveth and The Leaf taketh. Dope likely inspired some appalling lyrical/musical misfires from Big Mac into his solo years. That said, I think any thinking and feeling human being will agree that the sheer majesty of The Beatles’ Abbey Road is well worth the misbegotten manure of Wing’s London Town.
Macy Gray, “Smoke Two Joints”
“Smoke Two Joints” was originally written and performed by The Toyes in 1983, and was covered by Sublime in the 1990s. Macy Gray’s 2012 rendition is the best, bringing her distinctive vocal style to the song’s original laid-back, reggae-inspired vibe.
Screaming Jay Hawkins, Alligator Wine
Screaming Jay Hawkins affected a comical Voodoo/occult persona in his performances. The singer-songwriter, musician, actor, film producer, and boxer often opened his shows by crawling out of an onstage coffin. Here’s the crazy cat promoting the swampy blessings of “Alligator Wine” in 1990.
JJ Cale, “Days Go By”
In a spirit similar to “Smoke Two Joints,” the king of the Tex-Mex guitar shuffle offers the listener an unhurried and introspective hymn to the relaxing but demotivating properties of marijuana.
Porcupine Tree, Voyage 34
Steven Wilson, leader of the Brit prog rock band Porcupine Tree, always had a jones for extended songs that transition from synth-washed delicacy to guitar god bombastic. “Voyage 34,” a Pink Floydish concept piece recorded between 1992 and 1993, was originally intended as a 30-minute track for the album Up The Downstair. It was later cut up into a series of singles, which were compiled into the album Voyage 34: The Complete Trip in 2000.
Wilson bookended this first track from the album with narration drawn anti-LSD public service recordings, giving the propulsive track a touch of satire as well as an immersive sense of psychedelic voyaging.
Blancmange, “I’m Having a Coffee”
Got to have a least ONE tune here dedicated to the world’s number one chemical addiction! A domestic celebration of the microscopically mundane on Blancmange’s 2018 album, Wanderlust.
Kd Lang, “Black Coffee”
Make that TWO tunes dedicated to the world’s number one chemical addiction! “Black Coffee” has been covered by Peggy Lee, Sinead O’Connor, and by Canadian songbird kd lang in 1997.
Peter Sellers, “Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women”
“Cigarettes is a blot on the whole human race /A man is a monkey with one in his face / That’s my definition, believe me dear brother / A fire on one end and a fool on the the other.”
The chameleon-like British actor Peter Sellers performed this rousing number on The Muppet Show in 1978. In the guise of a fire-and-brimstone teetotaler, his character bangs a drum while inveighing against addictive evils, alongside a group of elderly Muppet singers.
“Cigarettes, Whiskey, and Wild, Wild Women” was originally written and performed by the folk music group, Sons of the Pioneers. But this is the version I can’t get out of my noodle.
Chris Stamey, “It’s All Too Much” (Beatles cover)
A rock trio’s fine cover of a psychedelic anthem originally written by George Harrison and recorded by The Beatles in 1967.
Harrison wrote “It’s All Too Much” as a celebration of his experiences with acid, annotating the revelations and euphoria associated with psychedelic use during the “Summer of Love.” He later explained that the song was “written in a childlike manner from realizations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later confirmed in meditation.”
You can listen to the original song here.
Ian Hunter, “Weed”
A different take on substances, from the legendary former lead singer of Mott the Hoople on his 2024 album, Defiance: Part 2.
In “Weed,” the 86 year-old rocker name-checks the many-tentacled guises of elite corruption, as he addresses the system’s apparent encouragement of the underclass to check out.
I suspect Hunter is referring to how the farcical ’war on drugs’ has shaded into a ‘harm reduction’ clusterfuck. (To give just one local example, there were reports last year of open use and dealing of hard drugs in hospitals, of all places. Deaths from overdose are at all-time high in my province.)
“Humans are stupid and expensive to breed /So let em all let em all let em smoke weed…” Hunter’s lyrics remind me of author Yuval Noah Harari’s matter-of-fact words about a future world in which “useless masses” are given dope and video games as distractions, on their way toward the fossil record. Do the real owners have a plan already underway?
Sturgill Simpson, “Turtles All The Way Down”
“There's a gateway in our minds / That leads somewhere out there far beyond this plane / Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain / Tell me how you make illegal something that we all make in our brain / Some say you might go crazy /Then again, it might make you go sane”
The opening track to Sturgill Simpson’s 2014 album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is a peculiar mix of hardcore country, psychedelic memoir, and epistemological position statement. Somehow it works, and beautifully to boot.
The title references the anecdotal “turtles all the way down,” a metaphor for infinite regress in philosophy and cosmology (the world is imagined to rest on the back of a giant turtle, which itself stands on another turtle, and so on, ad infinitum). Simpson uses this concept to explore the search for ultimate truths and the endless nature of questioning, particularly when the human mind is put to the ontological test by powerful psychoactive substances.
The nonaddictive but not-to-be-taken-lightly psilocybin, LSD and DMT are referenced as catalysts for expanded consciousness and spiritual insight, but the song’s core message is that love is the only thing that has truly saved and grounded the narrator. Simpson has stated that while the song is often seen as being about drugs, it is fundamentally about compassion, love, and treating others with respect, regardless of belief.
Bonus video: Bill Hicks, “The War on Rock & Roll”
Not a song, but a rant about what was truly excessive in comic Bill Hick’s America of the nineties.