Many musicians have had problems with substance abuse, and many musicians write autobiographical songs. Strangely, few musicians who abused heroin and lived to tell of it subsequently wrote songs about it as powerful as a couple who didn’t. Bob Dylan, for example, confessed in an interview to a former heroin addiction, but it seems that no song about the subject was ever released.
If William Congreve was right when he wrote that Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a twisted oak, then perhaps a cautionary song about heroin abuse is a useful form of heroin addiction rehab treatment help.
One singer who did write about his former addiction was James Taylor, albeit so obliquely’ that hardly anyone noticed. The middle verse of Fire and Rain is about Taylor’s time in drug rehab for heroin abuse, but so covertly that it became a pop hit played freely on the radio. The lyrics are beautiful and evocative but could be about any sort of despair or existential crisis (though they seem appropriate to a 12-step rehab, calling on Jesus to see him through another day and admitting: I won’t make it any other way).
However Joni Mitchell, his ex-girlfriend, wrote more directly about it. Never a serious drug user herself, Mitchell penned and sang Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire on her For the Roses album largely about Taylor’s addiction and how it affected their relationship.
Written in sentence fragments, the lyrics describe an addict, out of money, committing petty thefts to get the money for a fix, while his addiction – Sweet Fire calling, You can’t deny me – eggs him on like a lover, seeking Lady Release. On a message board discussion of the song, one addict is in awe of Mitchell’s understanding of the experience when she’s never been a drug addict herself.
Neil Young – like Mitchell a Canadian born singer songwriter and never a drug abuser – wrote at least two songs about heroin: The Needle and the Damage Done and Tonight’s the Night. In his liner notes for the retrospective set Decade, Young said simply of the former song: I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men.
In particular, Young was writing about the drug overdose deaths of two friends: Danny Whitten, a guitarist with Young’s sometime band Crazy Horse, and Bruce Berry, a roadie for the band.
While The Needle and the Damage Done references Whitten and Crazy Horse – I hit the city and I lost my band /I watched the needle take another man – not by name, perhaps because Young felt his fans would know them. However in Tonight’s the Night, Young names Berry, praising his shaky but real voice, but lamenting: If you never heard him sing/I guess you won't too soon.
Critics have long praised Mitchell for her confessional or autobiographical songs, even heaping scorn on one album for turning her focus outward. But maybe Mitchell and Young, by virtue of their sobriety, were better able to depict the individual and societal harm of drug abuse.
If William Congreve was right when he wrote that Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a twisted oak, then perhaps a cautionary song about heroin abuse is a useful form of heroin addiction rehab treatment help.
One singer who did write about his former addiction was James Taylor, albeit so obliquely’ that hardly anyone noticed. The middle verse of Fire and Rain is about Taylor’s time in drug rehab for heroin abuse, but so covertly that it became a pop hit played freely on the radio. The lyrics are beautiful and evocative but could be about any sort of despair or existential crisis (though they seem appropriate to a 12-step rehab, calling on Jesus to see him through another day and admitting: I won’t make it any other way).
However Joni Mitchell, his ex-girlfriend, wrote more directly about it. Never a serious drug user herself, Mitchell penned and sang Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire on her For the Roses album largely about Taylor’s addiction and how it affected their relationship.
Written in sentence fragments, the lyrics describe an addict, out of money, committing petty thefts to get the money for a fix, while his addiction – Sweet Fire calling, You can’t deny me – eggs him on like a lover, seeking Lady Release. On a message board discussion of the song, one addict is in awe of Mitchell’s understanding of the experience when she’s never been a drug addict herself.
Neil Young – like Mitchell a Canadian born singer songwriter and never a drug abuser – wrote at least two songs about heroin: The Needle and the Damage Done and Tonight’s the Night. In his liner notes for the retrospective set Decade, Young said simply of the former song: I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men.
In particular, Young was writing about the drug overdose deaths of two friends: Danny Whitten, a guitarist with Young’s sometime band Crazy Horse, and Bruce Berry, a roadie for the band.
While The Needle and the Damage Done references Whitten and Crazy Horse – I hit the city and I lost my band /I watched the needle take another man – not by name, perhaps because Young felt his fans would know them. However in Tonight’s the Night, Young names Berry, praising his shaky but real voice, but lamenting: If you never heard him sing/I guess you won't too soon.
Critics have long praised Mitchell for her confessional or autobiographical songs, even heaping scorn on one album for turning her focus outward. But maybe Mitchell and Young, by virtue of their sobriety, were better able to depict the individual and societal harm of drug abuse.