Drugs and music go together like Bob Marley and a blunt, and a new book, "Everybody Must Get Stoned" (Citadel), chronicles the good stuff's long, strange trip into the annals of rock history. BroBible caught up with the book's author, R.U. Sirius, to talk about The Beatles, Deadheads, and the five best drug-induced songs of all time.

BroBible: We think of "Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll" as a line right out of the '60s, but isn't it a sentiment that's been around in some form or other, in most cultures, for a very long time? How and when did drugs become a prominent part of American rock music?

R.U. Sirius: Sure. The obvious one is "wine, women, and song" which has been a hedonistic slogan in many cultures going back many centuries, particularly (but not exclusively) European cultures. The variations on that slogan are sort of fun. The Danes celebrated "beer, cunt, and horn music" and they also got cannabis into the mix at some point. There's also some discussion in the book about the links between music and psychedelic drugs and shamanism in some primitive cultures.

Rock culture really became drug culture during the psychedelic era. I'm sure some musicians used drugs like LSD and mescaline (and, of course, pot) really early (there's a song called "LSD-25" from 1962 that's discussed in the book), but it really went wide in 1966. Of course, during the so-called "summer of love" in 1967, rock was drenched in acid.

Stimulant pills... speed pills like Dexedrine and so forth got around some in the 1950s, particularly for people who had to spend a lot of time on the road touring. Jerry Lee Lewis was absolutely the most crazy-ass speed-psychosis driven motherfucker in rock history. The Jerry Lee stories are some of my favorites.

Musicians obviously turn to different drugs for different reasons. What do each of the major drugs -- pot, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, speed, and acid -- bring to a musician's life and how do they each influence their music?

R.U. Sirius: That's a lot of dope on dope you're asking for! OK, broadly speaking, I think musicians get two things from drugs. They get relaxed, loose, out of their heads... which allows them to leave behind the ordinary neurotic day-to-day crap and really get into -- groove... so to speak -- with the music. I've got some great quotes from Keith Richards, Neil Young and others about this. Or they get energized so they can tour endlessly, thrash, get a bit psycho, or feel powerful. Pot and heroin are good for the groove. Speed is good for the thrash. Coke, ecstasy and acid give you a bit of both... depending partly on the individual.

You devote a whole chapter to The Beatles. Listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," we're not surprised, but were the mop-top lads from Liverpool toking up backstage with Ed Sullivan in the early days?

R.U. Sirius: The Beatles were turned on to pot by Bob Dylan in the summer of '64, so they weren't getting stoned before the historic Ed Sullivan appearances and it's generally accepted that they didn't get high while touring until the last tour in 1966. They had a hilarious poolside trip with Peter Fonda and members of The Byrds on that tour. They did lots of speed pills and alcohol during their early days in Hamburg, Germany. They were pretty much a punk band in Germany, although no one used that label at the time.

Which bands or musicians were the worst junkies and just couldn't survive without the stuff?

R.U. Sirius: Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers were the world's biggest junkies. Some of your readers may not be familiar with them because they were never mainstream but they were hugely influential. Thunders came out of the New York Dolls. The Heartbreakers were huge in New York City in the late '70s and really influenced London Punk, particularly the Sex Pistols. They were going to call themselves The Junkies.



And of course, the Rolling Stones had to make sure Keith Richards was supplied while he toured, particularly during the '70s. Mick Taylor also had a pretty nasty habit during his brief time with the Stones and Ronnie Wood also has had a pretty hard time staying clean.

Who did more drugs -- the Grateful Dead or their fans, the Deadheads?

R.U. Sirius: It's an unfair competition since there are millions of more Deadheads! Seriously though, the crusties -- who are a sort-of subcategory of the Deadheads -- these totally dropped-out Deadhead street people... they probably did more drugs than anybody, even though they would have had to have been cheap drugs. Lots of ripple wine. The Dead did take huge walloping doses of acid in the sixties and early '70s and then play live, which I still think is pretty awesome.

What's the most outrageous drug-related story you uncovered in your research? (An epic bust or escapade or score or binge...)

R.U. Sirius: I really like the Amazing Dope Tales section of the book. Sid Vicious shooting up piss and vomit with his speed may take the cake, although the story about what Ted Nugent did, along with using meth, to avoid the draft may be even more disgusting.

What's the worst drug-related death/tragedy in music history?

R.U. Sirius: I don't know how you can measure that, but I'd have to say the whole Sid Vicious epic sort of takes the cake in terms of Shakespearean pathos. The recent revelation is that his mom gave him his parting shot of heroin. Elvis Presley dying on his toilet filled with more prescription narcotics, stimulants, and sedatives than most people could imagine taking in a month is pretty amazing and ironic. The list of his pharmaceuticals are awesome, and the fact that he volunteered to be a narc and hated people who took acid -- it just shows you how confused a human being can get.

What's the current state of drugs in rock? We know about everyone from Kurt Cobain to Amy Winehouse. But are the majority of today's musicians just sipping a little weed and that's it? Have hip-hop and rap stars taken the mantle as the biggest drug-influenced artists in music? Is rock music suffering without the stuff?

R.U. Sirius: It's harder to generalize these days because you have a really lame and sort of unimportant mainstream and then you have all these genres and subcategories and indie bands touring. Who knows what they're all doing? Going about their business, I guess.

But generally, I would guess that if you could total it all up, musicians use less drugs than they did in the 1960s to 1990s. There's less peer pressure. The idea that the only way to be hip is to try to live like Keith Richards is less prevalent, which is a good thing. On the other hand, I do think a lot of rock musicians maintained a musical and artistic edge by fucking their heads up. Particularly the old ones... they're too comfortable now, you know? Someone should lock Jagger in a room somewhere and force-feed him 1,000 mics of acid. I mean, the Mick Jagger who wrote "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby Standing in the Shadows" and "Paint It Black" and "Memo From Turner" was a provocative artist. The guy you see prancing around stage now is an athlete.

Oh... yeah, you also asked about hip hop. Hip hop has done more for honesty about pot than the hippie bands of the sixties ever did by a million miles. Snoop, Dre, Cypress Hill... the list is endless.

Can you give us a top 5 list of the best (and most obviously) drug-induced songs ever written?

R.U. Sirius:
1. I Am The Walrus, The Beatles
Sure, there are lots of psych bands who can take your heads into outer space, but for the most popular entertainers in the world to put out a piece of gut-twisted psychedelic surrealism like this as a single in 1968... I think that's more interesting. It still sounds fresh, if you're in the right mood.

2: Heroin, Velvet Underground
I don't want to give away my rant about the song from the book, but this song doesn't just feel like smack, it's a protest song against life itself.

3: White Light/White Heat, Velvet Underground
Speedball music. (A speedball is heroin plus speed or coke). No song has ever felt more like the scary but warm and powerful rush.

4: Kashmir, Led Zeppelin
I neglected to mention it in the book, maybe because it doesn't fit easily into any one category, but I would think that if you could handle a mix of coke and acid, Kashmir would be a cosmic architectural head-fuck.

5: Credit in the Straight Word, Hole
It's not so much that it sounds drug induced. It's just a great bohemian primal shout out that says that the only real reason to get famous and rich is to be able to score really good drugs.

By the way, despite this list, I DO cover contemporary music... and I listen to contemporary music. I've pretty much listened to nothing but college radio in the San Francisco Bay Area since like 1982. But it's the old songs that have imprinted themselves deeply into my brain, so I tend to favor them.

Finally, what are your favorite drugs?

R.U. Sirius: I used to take a lot of acid. Now I'm older, I take a lot of antacid.