Pink Floyd's Barrett dies aged 60

Amazotheamazing

telecaster wrote:

Some may use that reasoning to do the exact opposite

Yes, but those people would be idiots. The guys I mentioned would have been great with or without drugs. (well excluding alcohol).

telecaster

Amazotheamazing wrote:

Yes, but those people would be idiots. The guys I mentioned would have been great with or without drugs. (well excluding alcohol).

Ignoring the excluding alcohol bit which doesnt make much sense. I beg to differ.

Those artists were very much products of their time, representatives of the culture - and that culture was a psychedelic one. Psychedlic music and the drug culture can not be separated in my opinion.

Hendrix was a sideman in blues bands before he got 'turned on'

Amazotheamazing

Never heard Hendrix written off so easily and I completely disagree on your assesment of him.

Most of these guys were have been making great music long before they started on the serious drugs, drugs imo, are completely overrated in the creative process.

mike65

Hendrix was a sideman, he started on the "Chitlin Circuit", but got lucky when spotted by Chas Chandler.

http://www.soul-patrol.com/funk/jh_chitlin.htm

Mike.

Amazotheamazing

I didn't say he didn't learn his trade in the clubs, it's the notion that getting "turned on" changed him from regular decent musician in to a genius is what I disagree with.

mike65

Oops! It can be hard to seperate the musician from the muse, if he had'nt partaken in illegal substances would he have been the same creative talent? Maybe, maybe not.

Mike.

Amazotheamazing

Were drugs his muse though? I think he would have the same creative talent, though he might have expressed it differently. After all, plenty of **** musicians take just as much drugs.

telecaster

The question you've got to ask is that if Hendrix had arrived a decade earlier would he have been the same type of musician.

I'm not dismissing the guy - perhaps no musician has ever mastered their instrument as much as Jimi - certainly no one has ever had the expression on electric guitar that he had. But he was of the times, and the times were one big stoney trip.

Purple Haze....Stone Free to name but two entirely drug mused compositions.

To extend the drug muse factor consider the Beatles post 'Help' output when they first started dabbling in illegal drugs.

Amazotheamazing

Same could be said if he arrived a decade or 2 later, still plenty of drugs but completely different scene, drugs are a sidestory to his music, his talent is the story and that talent would have been there with or without drugs, back in the 1920's he might of gone for jazz, in the 1990's rap, who knows, but the talent would have been there regardless.

mike65

Two articles in Sunday Times

My lovebly ordinary brother

and a piece by the normaly accurate Robert Sandall but I have to say the opening paragraph is BS.

Mike.