Albums made on illegal drugs

I am writing a piece on this subject and was hoping for some help from the ILM crew on this. I need albums where it is verifiable that the artist was on drugs while simultaneously making the music in session.Simultaneously is key here. Also, I'm looking for particular songs about love interests that are really about drugs. In the second category I have tons of songs about women / about drugs, but none about men or transgender or other bizzarities.

Here is what I have so far.

1. Ash Ra Tempel & Timothy Leary- Seven-Up (LSD)
2. Dr. Dre - The Chronic (Marijuana)
3. David Bowie - Station to Station (Cocaine, others)
4. Sly and The Family Stone - There’s A Riot Goin’ On (PCP, Cocaine, Marijuana, Others)
5. Leak Bro’s - Waterworlds (PCP)
6. Quasimoto - The Unseen (Psilocybin Mushrooms)

Songs about love interests that are really about drugs.

1. Rick James - Mary Jane (Marijuana)
2. The Beatles - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (LSD)
3. Laid Back - White Horse (Heroin)
4. E-40 - White Girls (Cocaine)
5. Prince - Erotic City (Ecstasy)
6. Paper Route Gangstaz - Keyshia Cole (Oakland brand of kush marijuana)
7. Ram Jam - Black Betty (Cocaine)
8. Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher (Alcohol)
9. Steely Dan - Doctor Wu (Opiates)
10. Iggy Pop - China Girl (Opiates)
11. The Beatles - Got To Get You Into My Life (Marijuana)
12. Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (Marijuana)
13. 50 Cent - A Baltimore Love Thing (Heroin)

14. The 70s
15. The 80s
16. The 00s
17. The 60s
18. The 90s

melle was on coke when recording white lines

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (coke)

19. The Blinkin' Incans - Songs about Coca and Tribal Warfare - 1473 AD - unreleased, not recorded, crazy coked out idea

8. Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher (Alcohol)

o rly

but man if you're gonna include pot...it's like....just an overwhelming number

yeah, it will be. but i have to compile 100 albums and 100 songs so... the more the merrier

xp
hootchie cootchie

A woman of questionable virtue, especially from the Prohibitionist flapper era.

From hootch (alcohol) and cooter (vagina). People who visited speakeasies were considered to be of low class and even lower morals, and prostitutes were often seen in and around speakeasies, particularly in large cities.

Made popular in America by Cab Calloway's song "Minnie the Moocher", in which Minnie is a compassionate prostitute who becomes very rich, and revived in Britain through its appearance on an episode of "Jeeves & Wooster" featuring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie respectively.
"Folks, now here's the story 'bout Minnie the Moocher / She was a red-hot hootchie cootchie "

I'm not convinced by your hoochie coochie etymology.

http://www.logoi.com/notes/who-is-hoochie-coochie-man.html

Back in the late 19th century, hoochie coochie was a muscle dance which became very popular after the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where it was introduced to the public. A decade later, the hoochie coochie shows were immensely popular and, judging from contemporary accounts, these were clearly not something approved by law enforcement and the high society. At the same time, the dance seemed to have been one of the high points of the Chicago World's Fair.

One news report from 1903, for example, talks of J.S. Starr who "proceeded to organize a crusade against the carnival selecting, out of the whole unlawful bunch of things, the hoochie coochie and gambling devices." Or elsewhere they talk about going "into the disreputable hoochie coochie shows to see what vile things were on exhibition; some of them went themselves and some of them became so interested in the vile shows that they went several times, perhaps to refresh their memories."

In that song, better to concentrate on Smokey being cokey, and he and Min kicking the gong around.

yeah, i thought about that after i read more into it. i think its open to interpretation, but the opium is probably the way to go.

how about albums made where a single artist is on the most drugs...

this works

Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels

I have read at least one article where Guthrie and Fraser have commented on all the speed they were doing while writing/recording that album. Wether that was directly during studio sessions I'm not sure.

All the Cosmic Jokers albums (LSD).

Hard to prove, in general

Aye, it could be entirely apocryphal, but to be honest, I believe it. For those who don't know the story, here is the wiki:

The Cosmic Jokers was never an ensemble, per se; its members did not play together as Cosmic Jokers, and in fact were not even asked to join the group. Their music was created from sessions put together by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser early in 1973. He arranged for several acid parties to be held at the sound studio owned by Dieter Dierks, where musicians were offered drugs in exchange for recording tracks. Participants included Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze of Ash Ra Tempel, Jurgen Dollase and Harold Grosskopf of Wallenstein, and Dierks. Prior to this, all of the musicians involved had been in the Cosmic Couriers, which had played on experimental recordings by Sergius Golowin, Walter Wegmuller, and Timothy Leary.

Kaiser took the tapes from these sessions, edited and mixed them with Dierks, and released them on his label, Kosmische Musik, complete with the musicians' pictures on the LP sleeve, without asking for their permission. Göttsching didn't find out about the record release until he heard it playing in a record store in Berlin and asked the counter help what was playing.

No, I meant in general, not that album specifically

Ohhh right. Yeah. Even if you have a quote from the artist(s), people's memories are never entirely reliable. Or they could well be making it up.

remember reading an interview with the Cocteaus where they admitted being completely coked up the whole time they made Blue Bell Knoll. secret most druggy band ever?

where musicians were offered drugs in exchange for recording tracks.

Even if this were true, which I doubt, getting paid in drugs for recording an album doesn't necessarily mean the album was recorded on drugs

"Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones is really about poppers.

I thought all of his songs were either about heroin or infidelity?

happy mondays "yes please" - crack

It's not illegal but didn't ween record an entire album while huffing scotch guard?

Also, maybe Ram Jam reinterpreted it, but Black Betty wasn't originally written about drugs. It was about the whip used on slaves or prisoners or both way back in the day.

Even if this were true, which I doubt, getting paid in drugs for recording an album doesn't necessarily mean the album was recorded on drugs

I think you're missing the implication that the albums were recorded at the acid parties - it wasn't a case of 'here are some drugs, come back in two weeks and record a session'. The wiki is also not the best source to be critically analysing for truth. I am sure I've read direct quotes from some of the members confirming this story (as much as personal testament can), but as I say, it could still be apocryphal.

It's not illegal but didn't ween record an entire album while huffing scotch guard?

It sounds like it!

"Golden Brown" - The Stranglers, supposedly about a woman but really about heroin/opium/marijuana (opinions vary)

"Rumours" - Fleetwood Mac, as with many albums recorded in the 70's in LA, the entire album was recorded on coke.

short term memory loss by the sand pebbles (it's on last.fm) sounds like it's about some girl but it's about the doob

http://evilbeetgossip.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/britney_blackout1.jpg

"What's Become Of The Baby" by The Grateful Dead was infamously recorded and mixed while the band was doing nitrous oxide.

""Rumours" - Fleetwood Mac, as with many albums recorded in the 70's in LA, the entire album was recorded on coke."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BS4.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAUJmXTLiIo

But really you could replace it with, ummm, any Redman record.

And actually, weren't Wu-Tang coked off their tits making Wu-Tang Forever?

As Butler told Guitar World in 2001, "Yeah, the cocaine had set in. We went out to L.A. and got into a totally different lifestyle. Half the budget went on the coke and the other half went to seeing how long we could stay in the studio...We rented a house in Bel-Air and the debauchery up there was just unbelievable." In the same interview Ward opined, "Yes, Vol. 4 is a great album but listening to it now, I can see it as a turning point for me, where the alcohol and drugs stopped being fun."

i think you'd have to have a certain amount of success, or else have your own studio, because studio time is expensive, and to go in and noodle around while fucked up would have to be afforded by a big bankroll or no limitations on studio time, so i'm with Tom D in that it's hard to prove; there's probably a lot more rumor about bands being wasted in the studio vs actually just living a drug-fuelled lifestyle around the time of recording a particular album. not saying it hasn't happened, but not as ubiquitous as lore would have it

No Spacemen 3 mentions?

Didn't Fleetwood Mac have a coke period, around the time of "Rumours"?

around the time of 1970 till 2009

goldie used to like to talk about how he made lots of tracks on E

Now he writes lots of symphonies on E

... or in E

like Alex in SF said, Spacemen 3/Spiritualized were super open abt their heroin usage, and virtually every song is a love song about drugs

parody thread i'm not actually going to start: "albums made on legal drugs"

"although ray davies had been a tea drinker for some time, it is arguable that the village green preservation society would never have been made if donovan had not introduced him to assam"

etc

lolz no Velvets yet? hahahahahaha

I mean its kinda ridiculous that VU's "Heroin" or Clapton's "Cocaine" or Peter Tosh's "Legalize It" is not tops on the list here

Tori Amos' Boys for Pele involved ayahuasca and god knows what else. Ah, I miss old Tori. :(

D'Angelo - Brown Sugar: "love song" about weed

Lil Wayne's mixtapes to thread.

lil wyte as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWHrnMgE4L4

The La's' "There She Goes" is about that smack, like.

Miss E… So Addictive

Has any member of the Beatles ever explicitly said that "Lucy in the Sky" is about acid? Similarly, "Doctor Wu" doesn't strike me as being about heroin, tho obv heroin is in there.

Dr. Wu is about cuban gentlemen that sleep all day. And heroin.

The Beach Boys' "Smile Sessions" (or whatever you count within that mess of old recordings)...I'm not including the final delayed commodity, which...um...nevermind...

Apparently, one of the recordings of 'Our Prayer' was done while the band was on acid. Other than that, I think a fair amount of people know of Brian Wilson's descent into madness from LSD. He's basically a man-child now. Although without him and I guess the Beatles, Elephant Six wouldn't of come into existence. With that in mind, I also include at least half of the Elephant Six Collective recordings in this thread.

Come on. Olivia Tremor Control? This is a given.

is this paper you're writing for 10th-grade social studies or something

like i said if you are counting pot, you can probably just pick any rock album since the 60s at random, excluding straight edge stuff or bruce springsteen

Fleetwood Mac, Rumours - cocaine
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible - neon

xxp it's for a magazine in the uk.
xp. i know, but the difference is that the drug use had to have been done in the studio by the members as they were making the tracks and it has to be verifiable. i know this last point is debatable, see emily's note, but for the most part if most band members agree to it, it probably happened.

I think you can rest assured that plenty of George Clinton affiliated albums had to have the masters dusted off before the final mixing.

"excluding straight edge stuff or bruce springsteen"

I've excluded both from my life and am quite content with that.

The liner notes to The Verve's A Northern Soul states the album was recorded under the influence of ecstasy.

husker du - zen arcade (acid)

apparently rumours was recorded on cocaine

Word has it that some Fleetwood Mac albums, including Rumours and Tusk, were recorded while band members were actually "high" on cocaine.

Regarding Ween, The Pod was supposedly recording while huffing scotchguard, but turns out this was a joke the band made up.

Several songs on Chocolate And Cheese were written while tripping on acid.. if that counts.

Sgt Pepper

or is that too obvious?

Most of the Butthole Surfers albums were probably recorded under severe influence.

Also have heard over and over that Meat Puppets II was performed on acid.

Sleep - Dopesmoker (aka Jerusalem)

Supposedly they spent their whole major label advance on pot...

Pretty sure Sunn 0))) has discussed recording in "altered states" a few times too.

Sunn O))) recording in altered states shockah!

John Coltrane was supposedly blitzed on LSD for OM.

The Stooges (weed)
Fun House (coke)
Raw Power (smack)

The Gallaghers have pretty much admitted to being heavily on Cocaine during the making of "Be Here Now".

Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow. Acid, allegedly. For eveyone. Also, I met George Clinton briefly a few weeks ago, and there's no way he's touched down to earth yet.

Dre didn't smoke chronic

Soft Cell, "Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing" - ecstasy. They even got their dealer to sing backing vocals.

http://www.vinylmaniaque.com/pochettes2/jordy-sp.jpg

all of john frusciante's ones

Neil Young: "Tonight's The Night" - recorded completely fucked up; cf. Shakey pp 411–412.

Mind-altering chemicals were an essential component of this particular trip, with alcohol at the top of the list ... "We weren't stumbling or anything," recalls Ralph Molina. "We'd just get to a point where you get a glow, just a glow. The head was fucking great, man. When you do blow and drink, that's when you get that glow."

xpost only Frusciante's first 2 albums were made while fucked up. He got clean after that.

re: Neil Young.. apparently "On The Beach" was recorded while the people involved were very high on marijuana, administered via honey slides.

not trying to be a huge dick here, oscar, but did you really need our help for this?

right you are, whitey. i conveniently disregarded the fact that he continued to put stuff out well into his second tenure with RHCP

LAMF - on both counts.

Also of course, You Can't Put Your Arm(s) Around a Memory.

Oh, and the first Only Ones record.

basically every rapper is stoned when they record?

verifiable... definitely lil wayne - da drought 3 (lean) (since you don't have that yet)

I keep seeing this as "Albums made out of Illegal Drugs" and imagine something like

Juan Obregón: If you want to smuggle narcotics in copies of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, that is nothing new, Senora.

Helena Ayala: No, not *in*. The LP *is* cocaine. High-impact, pressure-molded cocaine. It's oderless. Undetectable by the dogs. Undetectable by anyone...

Juan Obregón: I don't believe you, Senora.