The fear I talk about does not stem from hate, like some confused and retrograding sith lord; I have always loved listening to jazz. Filling the role of one of my favourite styles of music, it has always inspired me with both its free spirit and high standard of musicianship. However, this latter attribute is the one which also allowed jazz to fill me with intimidation.

Of course, I have played ‘jazzy’ music before, but ‘real jazz’? No. So what’s my reason for going into it now? Well, a friend of mine had the idea of putting together a quartet of sax, guitar, bass and drums, and try to earn a bit of money playing restaurants, bars and pubs. I like the idea of earning money, and I really like the idea of doing something a bit more challenging to advance my playing. Oh, and it’s definitely serious, I’ve even got myself a copy of The Real Book.

My problem was this: at school, I became bored with studying music. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy playing music, I loved it, but I loved playing the popular music I was into at the time, which was mainly rock. I put very little effort into my music lessons, because I had very little interest in the music that I was studying. Due to the arrogance and naivety of my youth, I didn’t think that the musical theory we were being taught applied to the music I was into, as I had got pretty good at playing by ear and improvising grooves around chord charts. So, when I recently approached the idea of starting to play jazz, I was left wondering nervously if I had the theory to back it up…

There’s no getting past the fact that jazz is an difficult style of music to play, but what makes it so advanced? My theory on the matter is because it pulls the most complex attributes from the fields of both traditional and popular music. Obviously, everyone is aware of jazz’s origins from the blues songs sung in cotton fields, under the oppression of the slave trade, but it’s also easy to draw a parallel between its complicated musical theory and that of classical music. However, jazz also includes improvisation as a key feature, thus requiring a high level of creativity and compositional skill as well as theoretical musicianship. It makes such large demands on its players, so it’s quite easy to see how it can be viewed as ‘a little bit scary’.

Although my opinion about the musical content of the record isn’t really valid, (I’m slightly biased, as I find songs about Christmas as disgustingly sickly as a saccharin infused cake covered in artificial custard), my view on how Mr. Dylan morphs his music and public image is an interesting point. Our music industry is so dependant on public image, expectation and opinion that it can be difficult for any artist to break their mould and create something different to what they have done before. Think of how many pop singers have successfully reinvented themselves? Although it may seem like a large list, compare it to the list of artists who have attempted reinvention and it will seem very small. This latter list probably includes every single ‘one-hit-wonder’ that has ever been, as they do not have the knowledge, funding or appropriate timescale to rebrand themselves successfully.

Herein lies our problem; all popular musicians are packaged as a product. Because we think of music in this physical (or not so physical, if you use iTunes) sense, it can be hard to share the artist’s feelings over any new direction that their music takes. This lack of empathy is quite understandable; if it happened with any other product it would be quite unacceptable. For example, if you went to the supermarket and bought a jar of jam, only to get it home and realise that the brand had been through some crazy marketing transfiguration, and had started selling pickled eggs under the same name, well, you’d be a bit miffed, surely?

People don’t like change. Bob Dylan knows this well, and so I take off my Santa hat to him for being brave enough to work against the rules of business once more.

I just don’t understand it; for the price you pay for these games, you could buy a half decent starter guitar, and the hours invested playing them could actually be used to learn how to play for real. Doesn’t this make more sense? By the way, I have nothing against computer games, I often enjoy playing myself, but I just don’t see the logic in these particular games.

I know why they are popular – our society breeds so much impatience, negativity and self-doubt, that, for most of the general public, anything that takes quite an investment of time and effort, before any results are seen, is often perceived as being boring, or ‘too much like hard-work.’ We live in a world where technology has given us access to quick fixes and instant-gratification in every area of our life, and it seems that most people would rather take an easier route that is paved in a land of fantasy, than do something for real, which could bring disappointment and failure.

However, I know which route I’d choose.

OK, this is all old news now, and I don’t want to discuss how wrong it is, (especially considering the long, drawn-out lawsuit that Gibson filed against PRS, after they apparently copied one of their designs). We all know it’s wrong – having Mr Hendrix’s face emblazoned on the pickguard of this  instrument, over the words ‘Authentic Hendrix’ scream out with partially ironic yelps of injustice. What I want to look at is why anyone has the right to do this; making a posthumous company, which sells products that seem to be completely unrelated.

The problem is thus; selling your creative art, pushing it into the public domain raises real issues of ownership. With music it’s ridiculously complicated. Thanks to our lush, enriching society of consumerism, everything that’s sold, even art, has to be packaged into a product. Nothing escapes the analysis of the target market, and this is, unfortunately, the centre of our society. We’re generally enthralled with new products, and old items are normally rehashed to create something that fools us into believing it’s new. In the music industry, the ultimate victims of this perversion are the albums that have a label saying Previously Unreleased.

The reason why most unreleased music is not, well, released is normally down to someone deciding that it will not fill a niche, it doesn’t satisfy the rigorous demands of target market data. However, what about when it’s released after someone’s death? Very often, this is genuine, unfinished work. Let me give you an example; I absolutely love the music of Jeff Buckley – it really speaks to me. The tragedy of his early death is reflected in the melancholy of his music, and the fact that he is so highly regarded among critics and musicologists, despite only releasing one studio album, adds to this sense of woe. However, after his untimely passing, his mother (who is in charge of his estate) released Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, a double album filled with many unfinished songs that were meant for his second album (entitled My Sweetheart the Drunk). The first disc is awash with well produced songs, all sounding like they were ready to be released. However, the second disc is a completely different matter; with a couple of remixes from the first disc, and one radio session, the other 8 tracks are all home recordings – demos of tracks that we were never meant to hear. And despite it being some of the most beautiful music ever written, there is a slightly sickening sense that comes to me every time I hear it; a sense of voyeurism that taints the enjoyment of the music.

And this brings me to my point; the main problem with stating your thoughts and feelings to the public through art is simply the fact that if you die, whoever holds your estate / owns your rights can do whatever they like with them. OK, you might not care, due to simply being dead, but if it’s something that could be ‘in poor taste’, it’s a bit of an insult. (Such as making cheap-as-chips, inferior guitars that appeal to kids because they can be described as ‘iconic’, in the sense that there’s a picture of an icon on the guitar and it’s box). This is why it’s so important to protect the image of all artists who have passed away – it is so easy for things to be said, or products released, that cheapen the memory of these great people, and when it comes down to it, apart from their art, memories are all we have left of them.

Throughout history, our society has always looked for role models; we, as the public of this modern world, have an insatiable desire to know of celebrity lives, and most of us believe that these ‘stars’ should uphold certain moral values. Of course, the easiest way to get noticed by the public is to break these expectations of morality, and use shock tactics. (Just look at the state of the recording industry – sex is packaged to prospective audiences, because it is well known that it will sell a record). The news of musicians using drugs works upon the same principles, albeit in a more subversive method. It has been common knowledge for years that the artist may use substances to provide new areas of inspiration, and those in the youth culture who aspire to the artist’s ideal except this fact. In this open-minded view of drug use, we perceive our society’s heroes as the artists who can push themselves right to the edge and come all the way back again. Of course, this carries a direct correlation with the hipster ideology of the bebop jazzmen, however, in an accent similar to martyrdom, those who go over the edge become our legends. This whole ideology of the musician living life on the edge of his compulsions could be brought down to simple adolescent behaviour. Therefore, the thing we must remember is that great art is not created by happy, stable people. The greatest art is a pure source of sublimation, and is often created by neurotic individuals who are ruled by compulsions. Those who have made the biggest steps in pushing music forward are often the closest to the edge.

MDMA was first synthesised just before the First World War, by the German pharmaceutical company, Merck, who wanted to produce an amphetamine-like drug to suppress hunger. However, it was never marketed, and was not rediscovered until the late sixties. Like LSD, the ‘psychedelic amphetamine’ was used in tests by psychiatrists, due to the drug boosting an empathetic response in the patient. Of course, like LSD, it was leaked out onto the streets and by the mid-seventies had become very popular with the gay scene in New York, Chicago and Boston.

A culture existed within the gay clubs where drugs were already paramount to the experience of clubbing; speed, LSD, Quaaludes and PCP were all commonly used. As MDMA started making its appearances in this scene, DJs started to change the kind of music they played – originally they mixed disco records back to back, to keep the amphetamine fuelled crowds dancing. However, ecstasy’s effect upon the consciousness soon transpired into the music of the scene; disco was replaced by ‘house’; a style alike to disco that utilised electronic music production, creating a more spacey, and robotically repetitive feel. This repetitive beat would be the backbone of all dance music – due to MDMA creating a longing for repetition in the user. By the eighties, the use of psychedelic drugs was starting to lead the dance genre onto new levels – ‘acid house’ was created, so called because it was said to recreate the feel of an acid trip. However, it was not in America that rave culture first emerged in a big way, as the American gay culture was segregated from the public’s mindset and consciousness. This drug and dance music scene did not reach the mainstream until it was exported to the UK.

Since 1982 MDMA had been coming into Britain in small amounts from the club scene in New York. Due to the low quantity of the drug, its use was reserved for the social elite – the yuppies, musicians, fashion designers and journalists of Soho. However, soon it would break into working class culture, because of its press coverage. The youth of Britain starting getting into ecstasy, as well as the dance music created by the drug users in America and Ibiza. By 1987, new club scenes were taking off in big cities like London and Manchester, and MDMA was right at the heart of them.

The drug was soon spread all over the country, and people were not confining this rave culture to four walls; open air raves were being organised, causing much trouble for the police. These raves were important, because we can link them to the psychedelic inspired open air gigs of the sixties. (These started early in the decade, on the west coast, and then grew into Woodstock by 1969.) However, it is not just the drug use which holds correlations – the sentiment remains the same. The communal hallucinogen experience is a union of consciousness between people, linked by a hedonistic transcendentalism; the MDMA experience is very similar, due to the empathy boosting qualities of the drug – for the users, it seemed to create a deep connection between total strangers. The harsh social reality of the 1980s had created a view of cynicism within Britain, and by the start of the nineties the youth of the country was searching for an alternative; this was found in altered states of awareness and new realties, and their community spirit was rekindled in a tribal sense of fellowship, due to being involved in a strong drug experience with many other people.

So herein lays the truth of ecstasy: the psychedelic amphetamine is a perfect description – half of the drug’s intention is to give energy for dancing to the repetitive music, whilst the other half is concerned with anthropologic missions of consciousness. This helped shape the dance music that was being produced – ambient sounds and filter sweeps created a psychedelic backdrop, whilst a repetitive 4/4 beat blasted away underneath. Building moments in the music became very important, for these heightened the MDMA rush. Break-downs in the music (particularly in trance) were given a ‘spaceyness’ that also brought up the mood of those on ecstasy.

A problem we face when analysing dance music and ecstasy is due to them being culturally coupled so tightly that it is not really possible to consider one without the other. For example, if parts of dance music are designed to create a rise in the drug user, have they ceased to be music and become biological science? Does it really matter if the music appears to be lacking in meaning, and only has a practical purpose?

Rave culture was created by many factors; we could use the set and setting model to demonstrate the mood of the time. Despite the culture being open to other drugs, such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms and ketamine, ecstasy was the drug which started the trend, and is directionally proportional to the changes in dance music; as the quality of the drug decreased, the music changed to match it, moving from a ‘tripped-out’ soundscape of MDMA bliss, to a hard and fast amphetamine charged stomp of music. But the one thing we must remember, especially if we are not so fond of dance music, is that ecstasy has a lot of music to answer for – it did not just help to create upbeat electronic music, but also relaxing ambient music forms, from the chill out areas in the clubs of the rave scene.

To discover why it reaches such heights of popularity, we have to look at the effects of the drug. Cocaine is a stimulant which excites the brain’s ‘pleasure-zones’ (these are normally stimulated by eating and drinking, or sexual gratification) and this induces a buzz of self-confidence and controlled aggression. Surely then coke is the perfect drug for a business which thrives on aggression, frequent partying, gargantuan egos and sex.

Cocaine started getting really popular amongst musicians in the seventies, it was another upper which was seen as a working drug; it would get a musician onto the stage, keep conversation flowing in an interview, and also help them wile away the hours spent travelling.

Touring and press coverage seemed to be coke’s boundaries – it was not a very creative drug, and due to over-inflated egos it could cause havoc in a confined space such as recording studio. Joni Mitchell once commented that many albums would be entirely different if the substance did not exist. Unfortunately, (and probably due to the excesses of money of rock musicians from the era) many musicians became addicts, and with this came a lifestyle that is surely the embodiment of the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll ethos; falling into a depraved cycle of a sexual desire and need for both human contact and cocaine. After continued heavy use, the user can develop a psychosis and acute paranoia, and we can see this in the cocaine use of the Motown singer, Marvin Gaye. In the months before his death, Gaye’s habit was reaching epic proportions, as was his erratic behaviour – he would get his driver to circle hotels many times before he would have the courage to enter, and became completely obsessed with guns.

Perhaps if these famous musicians were not earning so much money, the drug would not be such an issue, due to its high price. Sting famously once said that “Coke is God’s way of telling you you’ve got too much money”. However, cocaine has always been a rich person’s drug, and perhaps this is why it seems to be so attractive within the business side of popular music; to project an image of success onto the user.

A country separated by political beliefs, Jamaica’s working class have been using ‘ganja’ since Indian workers brought it into the country in 1845, and in the Jamaican religion Rastafari it is referred to as the sacred herb. The Rastafari holy text is the Holy Piby, which is allegedly the closest relation to the first version of the Old Testament, (from which the Rastafari pulled the references to the beneficial herb in Genesis and Revelations). In order to fully understand reggae, we must know more about Rastafarianism, as the musicians were engrossed into its ways.

The Rastafari believed that because of their African ancestry, Africa was Zion, a promised land which they must return home to, in order to become whole and complete spiritually. Whilst they were living in the world of persecution and oppression, they were in Babylon. Their use of marijuana was not just hedonistic either; the drug was used for spiritual purposes, bringing the Rastas closer to god, and in the hallucinogenic field to induce ‘ganja-vision’ – an important part of the male rights of passage during adolescence. With their sacramental herb (and the country’s largest export) outlawed, the Rastas were always facing persecution, and this helped shape the protest music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and similar artists.

Reggae became big worldwide, and the sentiment of the Rastafari carried with it; marijuana became fashionable again amongst youth culture. If we look at how both Rastafarianism and reggae has latched onto cannabis culture, we can see that smokers today still enjoy reggae; Bob Marley has become a cult figure inside this culture, and the colours of Jah cover many pieces of smoking paraphernalia. The universal appeal of reggae to the seasoned ‘pot-head’ could simply be down to the fact that it was made by those in a similar state of consciousness; there may be (to a certain extent) a universal way in which the music is perceived, through the drug forming a shared unconscious mind between the listeners. This would make much sense as the general feel of reggae is the epitome of ganja; made up of slow paced, chilled out but funky music, perfect to just sit and relax to.

Amphetamine started seeing use in Britain during the early 1960s, again to help musicians (such as The Beatles) keep going on tour. However, soon the drug was travelling into the public domain, as it was embraced into mod culture. Whereas musicians had used speed for purely functional purposes, the mods based their whole culture around it – nights out were spent dancing all night, confidently parading around in the week’s fashion, completely trashed on speed. The first mod bands to hit the mainstream were The Kinks and The Who, but it was the latter that were the most popular with the mods. The band was made up of ‘pillheads’ who the mods could identify with, and Roger Daltrey’s cries of a ‘Teenage Wasteland’ and amphetamine-freak stutter on ‘My Generation’ were exactly what the mods wanted from a spokesman for their culture.

Heavy metal has long been integrated with speed since the San-Francisco ‘speed-freak’ scene back in the early seventies, and one place it has really shaped music is in the band Motorhead. Formed in 1975, by the ex-Hawkwind bassist and self-confessed consumer of amphetamine sulphate, Lemmy Kilminster, Motorhead (the American slang for a speed user) created music with haste and aggression. They brought the genre of speed metal into the limelight, and (despite numerous line-up changes) continue to tour thirty years after Lemmy started the band.

Motorhead were getting big in England about the same time punk was finding its feet in popular culture. Like the mods, speed suited the punks; they represented a previously unheard voice in popular culture – the views of the working class youth, manifested in an aggressive, despondent style. Amphetamines served its purpose, creating an atmosphere which could breed anger, but also representing itself as ‘working class cocaine’ due to its price and availability.

Amphetamine use among rock musicians, and followers of the music, has always been common, and I believe, always will. Whilst its use in the music industry was taken over in the eighties by cocaine, it will probably always be used by audiences of music and unsigned musicians, due to its inexpensiveness.