Relationship of 1960s Rock Music and Drugs

Many critics of rock music and American culture contend that rock 'n' roll of the late 1950s and the 1960s expressed the demands of a growing youth culture. The songs "helped youth develop a sense of generational unity" (Jahn 292). Mike Jahn believes that among these demands in the 1960s was the right to get stoned (Jahn 292). Robbie Robertson of The Band believes that the 1960s brought about a change in lifestyles, and that the songwriters were "expressing the feelings of people, the people in the street" (Last Waltz).

Author John Fuller believes that rock music and the musicians played an active role in influencing youth. He argued that rock music had a hypnotic-like power of suggestion. The interaction between the musicians and the crowds "would alter the pattern of the crowds and the way they reacted when brought together en masse under the impact of that music" (Fuller 38). Guitarist Jimi Hendrix was one of the rock stars to recognize the interaction that was happening at concerts. According to Fuller, "He directly traced the source of his commanding power over audiences to the hypnotic phenomenon" (79).

Rock song lyrics are often relevant, powerful and commanding. Hendrix sai

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e others such as Frank Zappa did not. Rock stars also died of drug overdoses. In any event, drugs and rock became synonymous in the minds of many. It was not the rock/drug scene that caused problems, but the excesses. Some people believed that excess drug usage, excessive noise levels and the excessive power of rock stars were responsible for leading impressionable and immature minds to drug abuse: They sang of sexual overkill and heavy drug scenes, and lauded destruction. They became idolized heroes and as a result, they were emulated, simulated, imitated and worshipped (Fuller 136-7). In a sense, the music and lyrics, as well as the overall rock culture, may be looked upon as encouraging the use of drugs, but no evidence has been presented to signify the extent to which the music and lyrics led to increased drug use or drug abuse. The report of the Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse indicates that just as anti-drug messages have little impact, "there seems no basis to assume that pro-drug messages are substantially more influential" (Drug Use in America 364). Indeed, most of the so-called drug songs contained two-level imagery enabling the songs to be taken as drug-oriented or not, depending for t
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