Sunteți pe pagina 1din 254

H e roi n a n d Music i n Ne w Yor k Ci t y

This page intentionally left blank


H e roi n a n d Music i n
Ne w Yor k Ci t y

Ba r ry Sp u n t
HEROIN AND MUSIC IN NEW YORK CITY
Copyright © Barry Spunt, 2014.

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-30856-6

All rights reserved.


First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-45600-0 ISBN 978-1-137-31429-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137314291
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Sarah Beth and Christy
This page intentionally left blank
Con t e n t s

Acknowledgments ix

One Introduction 1
Two Jazz 19
Three Rock 65
Four R&B 103
Five Folk Music 127
Six Latin and Caribbean Music 151
Seven Conclusion 173

Notes 181
Index 229
This page intentionally left blank
Ac k now l e d gm e n t s

This book has evolved over a number of years, and there are many
people I want to thank for helping me in completing the project. I
have to start with a very special thanks to both Olga Teploukhova
and Danny Kessler from John Jay. From the beginning you were
always there for me with ideas and then more ideas. I want both of
you to know how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.
Many other John Jay colleagues provided all types of support
and encouragement as I was working on the book, especially Dave
Brotherton, Jock Young, Jayne Mooney, Lou Kontos, Bob Garot,
Andrew Karmen, Marcia Esparza, Ric Curtis, Ernie Drucker,
Kathleen Collins, and Josh Eichenbaum. Thank you all!
I want to thank Geoffrey Verheul, Pierre-Yves Linot, Efram
Thompson, and, especially, Chris Farhood for providing me with
what I think could best be described as emotional sustenance as the
months turned into years.
I also want to thank the John Jay graduate and undergraduate stu-
dents who helped me compile and also interpret much of the data:
Leo Dominquez, Sarah B. Rivera, Cory Feldman, Rob Romanski,
Angela Gates, and Tiffany Graves. All of you really did a very solid
job. A special “thank you” to Jim Hodgson.
I sincerely appreciate the comments of Charles Winick, Marc
Schuilenburg, and an anonymous reviewer, who reacted to the ear-
lier drafts of the manuscript.
And to the folks at Palgrave–Lani Oshima, Jeff LaSala, Mara
Berkoff, and Burke Gerstenschlager—thank you so much for your
guidance and faith in my work.
Ch a p t e r O n e
I n t roduc t ion

Drugs and music both play key roles in social life and have long been
interconnected. Drug use by musicians is commonly chronicled in
the mass media. Numerous popular songs are about drugs or con-
tain references to drugs—all types of drugs. Over the years politi-
cians and others have denounced what they see as the glorification
of drugs by the music industry.
Heroin is the one drug that is traditionally considered to be at the
“top of the illegal drug ladder,”1 the drug that sociologist Jock Young
recently described as holding the “pinnacle position in the pyramid
of decadence.”2 While it is well known that many musicians who
play different types of music have been heroin abusers, the nature
of the connection between heroin and music is not well understood
at all. That’s what this book is about. I use narrative accounts from
a sample of 69 New York City–based musicians from a variety of
popular music genres—all of whom were self-acknowledged heroin
abusers—to address these three main issues:

● Why do musicians first start and continue to use heroin? What


are the motivations and circumstances of their use?
● Why is heroin use more common in some music genres and
subgenres than in others?
● What kind of impacts—both favorable and detrimental—does
heroin have on musicians’ playing, creativity, and careers?

New York City is an ideal locale for a study of heroin and music.
It has been the heroin capital of the United States ever since the drug
was first manufactured and distributed (around 1900).3 Since that
time, there has always been a lot of heroin in New York—and there
2 / heroin and music in new york city

still is. The drug has long been the basis of an underworld subcul-
ture in New York, has had a major impact on crime in the city, and
has been a major public health concern, especially in recent years
due to injection-related HIV/AIDS.4
New York has also always been the center of the American music
industry. It has a huge, multifaceted music scene. In terms of record-
ing and performing opportunities, New York has always been the
place for musicians. Countless musicians from every music genre
have moved to New York to pursue a music career, and the allure of
New York remains powerful. All the big names in music—the top
national and international acts—play in New York City. Bandleader
Count Basie once recalled that whenever he played in New York,
“every morning when you woke up and realized that you were in
New York City, you felt a big thrill just from being there.”5

* * *

This chapter begins with a short history of heroin in New York City,
focusing on the users and dealers, and also a brief history of music in
New York, starting from about 1900, when heroin first came onto
the scene. The music history focuses on five major types of popular
music: jazz, rock, rhythm and blues (R&B), American folk music,
and Latin and Caribbean music. Following these histories, I review
what social science research has told us about the New York musi-
cian/heroin abuser. Then I present my theoretical argument and dis-
cuss the methodological approach I take in this study.

Heroin in New York City


Heroin is an opiate—it’s derived from the dried resin that’s secreted
when the flower of the opium poppy is cut or lanced. Poppy grows in
various parts of the world, although in recent years Afghanistan has
been by far the leading worldwide producer.6 The medical benefits of
opiates have been widely known for many centuries—they have been
used for pain (physical and psychological), cough, diarrhea, dysentery,
and a host of other illnesses.7 Opiates—heroin, in particular—are
also very good at inducing euphoria, “bath[ing] the brain’s receptors
in endorphins, suffusing the mind and body in a warm, womblike
security.”8 Heroin can be sniffed, smoked, or injected.
introduction / 3

Long before heroin was first produced, New York had opiate
users. Morphine was a painkiller in common use by the medical
profession in the United States since the 1860s. Opium has been
known in the Western world since the Middle Ages and was a com-
monplace drug in the United States in the nineteenth century.
Americans learned about opium from Chinese workers brought in
to build railroads. The Chinese came to New York in the late 1850s,
and over time, opium smoking became a feature of life in the city; by
the 1890s, opium dens could be found not only in Chinatown but
also in the Tenderloin, a red-light district in Manhattan.9 Opium
smoking became popular mainly among entertainers, prostitutes,
and gangsters.
Before heroin, the typical opiate user was a middle-aged, middle-
class, white woman who had become habituated to opiates through
self-medication, as a result of the widespread medical custom of
prescribing opiates for menstrual and menopausal discomforts.10
Even without a prescription, opiates were easy to obtain. There were
countless patent medicines on the market containing opium or mor-
phine; opiates could be ordered by mail or picked up at pharmacies
and at grocery or general stores.11
In the late 1890s, Bayer Pharmaceutical Products, a German
company, introduced heroin and began marketing it heavily for
the treatment of a variety of respiratory ailments and as a cough
medicine.12 It was hailed as a wonder drug by much of the medi-
cal profession, not only for its very real therapeutic advantages over
other drugs in dealing with bronchial and pulmonary problems but
also—in the days before much was known about addiction—as the
long-sought nonaddicting substitute for morphine.13
Street (nonmedical) use of heroin took hold in New York dur-
ing or just before 1910.14 White opium users began switching to
heroin, and the drug gradually became the drug of choice for the
city’s recreational opiate users. As heroin came to be recognized as
yet another addictive form of opium, Congress passed the Harrison
Narcotic Act in 1914, preventing the sale of opiates for nonmedical
use and officially making heroin illegal nationwide. People who had
legal sources for heroin found that these sources were now closed
and they were forced underground to get what they needed. A
national black market centered in New York began to develop. The
4 / heroin and music in new york city

first major heroin dealers in the city were Jewish gangsters who had
been involved in bootlegging and saw the profit-making potential
of heroin; in the late 1920s, Italian dealers replaced these Jewish
entrepreneurs.15
By World War II, New York City’s heroin users were typically
working-class white males, many of whom were denizens of the
city’s underworld—hustlers, gamblers, and pimps.16 During the war
years it became difficult for traffickers to get heroin into the United
States; the limited amount that could be found was heavily “cut”
(adulterated). Addicts often had to go to pharmacies to stock up on,
boil down, and then inject paregoric—a tincture of opium, which
was a commonly used household remedy from the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.17
Things changed considerably after the war. New York crime fam-
ilies began importing heroin into the country again, and the city
became the center of the east coast heroin trade and perhaps the
largest heroin market in the world.18 In 1951, national publications
decried the heroin situation in New York with stories such as “New
York Wakes Up to Find 15,000 Teenage Dope Addicts” (Newsweek)
and “The Junkies: New York’s Traffic in Drugs” (Time).19 It was
during this time that the French Connection system—whereby
New York crime families established links with Corsican gangsters
in Marseilles to smuggle Turkish opium and manufacture heroin—
began to evolve.
In the 1960s, heroin use surged in the city, especially among poor
young African American and Puerto Rican men, who were trapped
in the city’s ghettos where heroin trafficking had become well estab-
lished and who were seeking escape from the realities of poverty
and despair.20 White teenage gang members were also among the
new users during this period.21 At this time, New York crime fami-
lies were “officially” withdrawing from retail heroin distribution,
enabling new entrepreneurs from inner-city neighborhoods to com-
pete for customers. By the mid-1960s, Harlem had become the cen-
ter of the city’s heroin trade.22
During the 1970s, heroin-related street crime was of huge con-
cern in New York. In the city’s two largest marketplaces—Harlem
and the Lower East Side—heroin was sold in an open fashion, which
shocked public officials.23 New users included many returning
introduction / 5

Vietnam veterans who had been introduced to heroin while serv-


ing overseas. Also during the 1970s, heroin made it to New York’s
suburbs.24
In the 1980s, heroin use in the city was largely supplanted by
crack cocaine,25 but by the mid-1990s, heroin again became easily
available throughout the city, and the purity of an individual street
bag increased significantly.26
Nowadays heroin has a strong presence in the city—an estimated
200,000 New Yorkers are users.27 Heroin is easy to obtain, relatively
inexpensive (the basic street unit is still the $10 bag), and the purity
of the bag’s contents remains high.28 As Keith Streng, guitarist for
the Fleshtones, put it, “New York is a great place to be a heroin
addict. It’s cheap, the quantity is good, you can get it anywhere.”29
Much of New York heroin comes not from Afghanistan but
rather from South America. It arrives in the city primarily through
the efforts of mostly Colombian cocaine drug trafficking organiza-
tions (sometimes working with Dominican and Mexican groups),
using the same distribution methods and money-laundering tech-
niques they perfected in capturing the cocaine market. It’s dealt
on the streets by groups of various racial and ethnic backgrounds,
including African Americans, Asians, Dominicans, Italians, Puerto
Ricans, and Nigerians.30

Music in New York City


In 1900, when heroin first arrived in New York City, the city was the
musical center of the nation. It had Broadway, where musical theater
had its largest audience, the greatest number of theaters, and the
largest cadre of performers.31 It had vaudeville, with its bills made up
of song, dance, and skits—which was first performed in saloons on
the Bowery.32 The city also had Tin Pan Alley, an area of midtown
Manhattan that was the center of the popular music publishing and
songwriting industry, which dominated mainstream popular music
until World War II.33

Jazz
During the first two decades of the 1900s, jazz, which was born in
and around New Orleans in the late 1800s, began to spread to New
6 / heroin and music in new york city

York and became increasingly popular. The very first jazz record was
made in Manhattan in 1917.34 The “stride” jazz piano style devel-
oped mainly in New York in the 1920s. In the late 1920s, the Cotton
Club was a major hot spot in Harlem, featuring top black orchestras
like those led by Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway (but because of
segregation refusing entrance to black patrons).35 By 1930, the city
was the principal location of jazz recordings and also the center of
jazz journalism.
In the mid-1930s, New York was starting to become the jazz capi-
tal of the world. Big band swing, which centered around a dancing
style that emerged from Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, brought jazz to
the mainstream of popular music; in 1938, Benny Goodman played
the first jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, the city’s “citadel of musical
respectability.”36
In the early to mid-1940s, jazz went from big band swing to
smaller combo bebop, which first emerged in New York, particu-
larly at after-hours clubs in Harlem such as Minton’s Playhouse and
Monroe’s Uptown House, where young beboppers came to jam and
experiment. Jazz then moved downtown in Manhattan to 52nd
Street between 5th and 6th Avenues—probably the most celebrated
block of jazz clubs, bars, and bistros of all time.
Through the late 1950s and the 1960s, New York was the world’s
major showcase for jazz, and the music thrived.37 After 1960, jazz
became very diverse, eclectic, and difficult to categorize, but it nev-
ertheless maintained a strong presence in New York. Free or experi-
mental jazz flourished, especially in the downtown Manhattan jazz
loft scene of the 1970s; noncommercial concert areas such as Studio
Rivbea were created in loft spaces to provide places to accommodate
the young jazz musicians who were moving to the city at a time when
many nightclubs were going out of business. The University of the
Streets, founded in 1969 as a venue for visiting artists, hosted (and
still hosts) jazz jam sessions.38 In the 1980s, a downtown jazz scene
associated with venues like the Knitting Factory began to develop, as
did the so-called neoclassical movement—traditional back-to-basics
New Orleans jazz—led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.39
New York remains the world capital of jazz. There are dozens of
places to hear jazz—all kinds of jazz—ranging from larger venues
such as Jazz at Lincoln Center to small clubs. The city routinely
introduction / 7

hosts jazz concerts and festivals. To be a successful jazz musician,


New York is still the place where careers are made.

Rock
Rock music in New York goes back to the birth of rock ’n’ roll.
In the mid-1950s, Alan Freed put on legendary rock ’n’ roll shows
at Brooklyn’s Paramount and Fox theaters—playing a crucial role
in popularizing this new music genre. In the late 1950s and into
the late 1960s, the Brill Building—actually a length of Broadway
named after one particular building in the stretch that had been the
center of Tin Pan Alley—became the place where young lyricists
and composers, some of whom were also performers, made hundreds
of hit rock records.40
In the city in the 1960s and 1970s, first proto-punk and then
punk happened, in small local venues like CBGB on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side.41 In the middle to late 1970s, alongside punk, New
Wave and No Wave first emerged. In the early 1980s, punk devel-
oped into hardcore; like punk, the New York hardcore scene cen-
tered around clubs on the Lower East Side.42 Also in the 1980s, New
York became (and remains) a major center for alternative or indie
rock; by the early 2000s, Brooklyn in particular had become a hub
for this music scene.43
Today, rock music—all forms of rock—is played in New York City.
Most of the city’s vintage rock venues don’t exist anymore; CBGB,
for example, officially closed in 2006. But there are literally hundreds
of places—ranging from large venues like Madison Square Garden to
small clubs holding 50 people—to hear rock in New York.

R&B
In New York City, music made by and aimed at African Americans
has a rich and varied past. An early form was blues music, a musical
source for much of black popular music. It was in New York in the
1920s that the first blues records were made, and blues performers like
Bessie Smith came to play in the city’s black vaudeville theaters and
in the clubs, restaurants, and cafes that emerged alongside them.44
In the Harlem Renaissance years of the 1920s and 1930s, the
Apollo Theater on 125th Street became the city’s apex of black
8 / heroin and music in new york city

popular music. By the early 1940s, this music had come to be called
“race music.” In the mid-1940s, New York music journalist and
soon-to-be record industry giant Jerry Wexler coined the catch-all
term “rhythm and blues” (R&B) to describe a broad range of differ-
ent but related black popular music styles.45
One vocal-based R&B style that developed after World War II
was doo-wop. New York City had dozens of doo-wop groups sing-
ing on street corners in African American neighborhoods in the
late 1940s through the 1950s.46 Soul music was a dominant force
in music by the 1960s; soul had many hub cities and New York was
definitely one of them. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, soul
was largely superseded by new urban styles such as funk, which had
a strong presence in the New York area. Disco extended and contin-
ued the soul tradition and had its world capital in New York in the
1970s. Electronic Dance Music—a descendant of disco with roots
in New York clubs popular among gay African American and Latino
men—was wildly popular throughout the 1980s and 1990s in New
York’s “underground community.”47
And, of course, New York was the birthplace of rap, which first
emerged in the Bronx in the early 1970s. The first hit rap songs—
1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” (the Sugarhill Gang) and 1982’s “The
Message” (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)—were both
New York products. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was rappers from
Queens that helped take rap from an underground music to a main-
stream phenomenon.
New York remains a major base for R&B music styles. Doo-wop
over the years has had revivals and resurgences in popularity and can
still be heard today on New York radio and also sometimes when
you ride the city’s subways. New York–based soul/funk bands and
multi-night festivals are part of the city’s R&B landscape. As dance
music has become a dominant trend in American popular music, the
city scene is very active, with rave parties, commercial club events,
and dance music festivals in abundance. And New York is still the
major east coast center of rap.

Folk
The modern American folk movement dates to union activities of
the 1930s, when folk music became increasingly commercial and
introduction / 9

widespread in the United States.48 Folk music rose again in the


1950s, when folk records began to make it to the pop charts. In
the early 1960s, a number of “protest songs” hit the singles charts,
bringing folk music firmly into the mainstream. Bob Dylan’s “The
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” in 1963 connected folk for the first time
with the youth market, and folk music reached a critical mass.49
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the New York folk scene—the
heart of US folk music—was centered in Greenwich Village. In 1963,
“there were no fewer than thirty-seven coffee houses crammed into the
ten block loop from West Broadway and Bleeker to MacDougal Street
west across 7th Avenue.”50 But by the late 1960s, the Village folk scene
had reached its heyday, as many folk performers began to move to the
west coast to become part of the burgeoning psychedelic scene.51
It wasn’t until the 1980s that folk music began to boom again in
New York, as a new crop of folk musicians emerged. Fast Folk—folk
singers and songwriters who came together and stayed connected to
develop their skills and mutually support and promote their work—
was born.52 And the anti-folk movement began in the East Village.
These were younger songwriters and performers who did not buy
into the folk traditions of the earlier generations. They were unwel-
come at folk clubs and not invited to play at festivals and, in reac-
tion, developed their own music spaces.53
Since the 1990s, folk evolved to encompass a broad range of art-
ists and subgenres, and the folk scene nowadays in New York is very
much alive. Folk is performed in coffeehouses, bars, and clubs across
the city, and also at area festivals, including the annual Antifolk
festival. Folk is also easily found on New York radio.

Latin and Caribbean


New York is one of the most Latin cities in the world. The city’s
Latin community was overwhelmingly Puerto Rican until the late
1970s; since that time there has been a great increase in other Latin
groups, especially Dominicans and Mexicans.54 New York also has
perhaps the largest and most diverse concentration of Caribbean
people in the world; Brooklyn alone is home to close to 400,000
people from the Caribbean.55 Latin and Caribbean music in the city
has roots in a variety of nations and cultures, and thus incorporates
multiple styles and variations.
10 / heroin and music in new york city

The tango, the rumba, Latin Jazz, and the mambo have all been
popular Latin genres in New York. Salsa dominated the city’s Latin
dance scene throughout the 1970s—salsa’s golden age. There were
hundreds of clubs that catered to audiences that wanted to hear this
music. The 1970s was also when Dominican merengue and Jamaican
reggae began to move into the city’s music mainstream.56 In the
1990s, bachata arrived with newer immigrants from the Dominican
Republic.
Today Latin music maintains a strong presence in the city. Spanish-
language radio stations are easy to find, and there are any number of
clubs where people can go to listen and dance to Latin music. Salsa,
merengue, and bachata remain popular among New York Latinos.
Various styles of Mexican music can be easily heard. The city is a
center for Latin Alternative—newer Latin music created by younger
musicians influenced by rock, rap, and dance music. Reggae and
reggaeton—a Latin urban music drawing on reggae, rap, and other
Caribbean styles—are favorites on New York radio, and stars from
both genres regularly perform in the city.

* * *

Based on the histories of heroin and music in New York City, it


seems reasonable to think that, over the years, there probably have
been many New York–based musicians from various music genres
who were heroin addicts. This raises the question: What has social
science research told us about these people? We’ll see that the short
answer is: not very much at all.

Research with the New York Musician/Heroin Abuser


Social science research with New York heroin abusers began in the
early 1950s, and over the years there has probably been more heroin
research done in New York than in any other city in the United
States, if not the world. The first large-scale study—The Road to
H, published in 1964—was done by a team of psychologists led by
Isador Chein, who were concerned with how adolescent addiction
develops and what can be done about it.57 These researchers were
among the first to document the high concentration of use in pre-
dominantly African American and Puerto Rican areas of the city.
introduction / 11

The book includes intensive discussions of the personality charac-


teristics of users, who are basically seen as disturbed personalities.
This view of addicts as pathological people was echoed by sociolo-
gists of the time, such as Robert Merton, who saw drug abusers as
“retreatists” who reject both the American cultural goal of success
and the socially legitimate means of achieving it.58
In the early 1960s, drug researchers started to do ethnography
and life history interviewing with New York heroin abusers. Ed
Preble and John Casey’s “Taking Care of Business” was a particu-
larly groundbreaking piece because its findings totally contradicted
the prevalent view of addicts at the time as dysfunctional people
seeking an escape from life. Preble and Casey documented her-
oin use as a purposeful, active lifestyle. They revealed that being
a heroin user in New York was often a challenging and exciting
task and was seen by users as a route to gaining street status and
becoming a “somebody.”59 This research “changed the direction of
thinking and work in the field of drug research—by both offer-
ing a new theoretical perspective on the heroin user and fostering
a methodology and tradition of research studies expanding upon
this perspective.”60
Since the 1960s, literally dozens, if not hundreds, of survey and
ethnographic studies with New York heroin users have been con-
ducted by drug researchers. These studies have generated a rich lit-
erature on a wide range of issues. A reasonable assessment of the sum
total of this work is that researchers have learned quite a bit about
the New York user—a lot of information and some very compelling
snapshots of users have been produced.
But only one researcher—psychologist Charles Winick—has ever
studied heroin use by New Yorkers in relation to music. Winick
reported on the use of heroin by New York jazz musicians based on
the interviews he conducted with 357 jazz musicians in 1954 and
1955. Of these musicians, “fifty-three percent were said to have used
heroin at least once, 24 percent were seen as occasional users, and
16 percent as regular users.” Winick estimated that of the roughly
5,000 jazz musicians in New York, there were probably over 750
regular users of heroin.61
Some of the reasons given for using heroin included peer pressure,
a way to cope with personal problems, frustration in trying to find
12 / heroin and music in new york city

work, a boost to help with the strain of one-nighters, and a way to


help unwind after playing. Also,

Some respondents observed that a few of the undisputed geniuses of


modern jazz were widely known as heroin addicts, and there is rea-
son to believe that some younger musicians may have begun using
drugs on the basis of some kind of magical identification with their
heroin and the assumption that they would play better if they, too,
were drug users.62

As for the effect that heroin had on musicians’ performance,


Winick found that:

Many (32%) pointed out that if a musician is a regular user of her-


oin, his musical norm would have to be his behavior while on drugs.
Such a person can only play, or function at all, when he is taking
heroin. If a musician is not a regular user, taking heroin irregularly
may make him “go on the nod” (become sleepy) and be less alert,
and thus less able to perform effectively as a musician. Over half
(51%) said it decreased the quality of the performance; 9% felt that
it might make the musician play better.63

* * *

A handful of social science–oriented musicologists have also studied


New York musicians. Thus, Paul Berliner examined how New York
jazz musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to impro-
vise.64 Bruce MacLeod studied how musicians who play New York
club dates—formal social gatherings such as weddings, bar mitzvahs,
and retirement parties—define and evaluate their work.65 Neither of
these studies, however, addressed the issue of drugs.
Christopher Washburne studied the New York salsa scene of the
1990s. His ethnography focused on how musicians “navigate their
everyday lives . . . their attitudes, working environment, education,
difficulties they face, and how they conduct their business.”66 His
discussion of salsa and drugs centers on cocaine, although he notes
that other drugs, including heroin, do have a presence in the salsa
scene.67

* * *
introduction / 13

Thus, little is actually known about New York musicians who abuse
heroin. Only one researcher—Charles Winick—has studied the her-
oin–music connection, but his research focused just on jazz, and he
did his work well over 50 years ago. No one has studied heroin and
music since Winick. In a real sense, the heroin–music connection
is uncharted territory. It is basic knowledge that we just don’t have.
This book addresses three of these issues: the reasons why musicians
use heroin; why heroin use is more common in some music genres
than in others; and the effects that heroin has on musicians’ playing,
creativity, and careers.

* * *

Theory and Methods


It is likely that many New York musicians who have used heroin
began their use for some of the same basic reasons that nonmusician
users have reported to a multitude of researchers over the years: to
deal with problems, to escape, to feel good. It is also likely that some
musicians used for reasons more specific to being a musician, for
example, dealing with fame at an early age.
I propose here that the concepts of “subculture” and “identity”
are also factors in the heroin use of some musicians. Further, these
concepts help explain why heroin use is more common in some types
of music than in others.
In Sociology, subcultures are commonly understood as groups of
people within the overall culture that develop shared systems of val-
ues and meanings. These values and meanings, which are used by
group members as a source for their identities, support participation
(or nonparticipation) in certain types of behaviors.
Music genres and subgenres can be conceived of as subcultures.
Some music subcultures may have values and attitudes that support
and encourage heroin use. Some members of these subcultures might
begin using and developing identities that are organized around
heroin and music. For them, the musician-addict identity would
become prized, one that is proclaimed and promoted in interaction
with others and that is validated through using heroin. For individu-
als such as these, initial and continued use can be understood as
having occurred in the context of subcultural factors.
14 / heroin and music in new york city

The idea that certain subcultures have values and attitudes that are
conducive to behaviors such as drug use and crime has a long tradition
in sociological thinking, beginning with the research of the University
of Chicago sociologists studying gang behaviors during the 1920s and
1930s.68 This notion was extended in the work of scholars such as
Albert Cohen, who linked delinquent subcultures with the “non-utili-
tarian, malicious, and negativistic” behaviors of juvenile delinquents,69
and David Matza and Gresham Sykes, who wrote about how certain
subcultural groups accentuate “subterranean values”—the search for
excitement and “kicks”—and disdain the workaday norms of formal
society.70 In the early 1960s, in Outsiders, Howard Becker explained
how marijuana users formed a subculture with developed rituals, slang,
and ways of behaving.71 About 10 years later, Jock Young argued that
drug taking must be explained in terms of the particular subcultures
to which specific drug-using groups belong.72
British social scientists from the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies studying working-class youth sub-
cultures that arose in England during the 1960s and 1970s not only
showed how the social context of subculture influences behavior,
but also showed how music can be a factor in the creation of subcul-
tures. In their view, youth form subcultures from shared interests,
including shared interests in specific types of music and clothing.
Subcultures, in other words, are expressed in the creation of styles.
British punk was seen as one type of youth subculture that was a
stylistic form of resistance against the social order.73
Subcultural theorists recognize that subcultures are a source of
identity. While “identity” has always been an ambiguous and complex
idea, with no clear definition,74 subculture theorists commonly view
identities as embedded in interpersonal relationships and shifting in
the context of these relationships, rather than as fixed and rigid.75
Alfred Lindesmith was the first sociologist to incorporate the con-
cept of identity into a major theory of heroin addiction. In the late
1960s, Lindesmith argued that addiction is established in a learning
process extending over a period of time. In his view, the universal
feature and source of addiction is a cognitive element—the recog-
nition that the distress of withdrawal is caused by the absence of
heroin and can be dispelled by another dose of it. As a direct result of
the recognition of the source of distress, the addict identity is formed
as one begins to think and speak of oneself as an addict.76
introduction / 15

The drug research literature supports the notion of a link between


subculture, identity, and heroin use. Beginning in the late 1950s,
street research with heroin users had begun to focus on how users
form and maintain identities through their actions and interactions.
A basic conclusion from this research was that an addict’s identity as
an addict can be a favored one, one that he wants to assert, realize,
and project in interaction with others.
Thus, Harvey Feldman described how heroin use was one of the
important activities in sustaining and enhancing a street reputation
that is admired and respected by persons who have a stake in the
street system. It involves a challenge—an attempt on the part of
the “stand up cat” to prove to himself and to others that he is too
tough and strong to be defeated by a high-risk drug. Heroin is a
status-enhancer and it solidifies the view that the user is bold, reck-
less, criminally defiant—all praiseworthy qualities from a street
perspective.77
Richard Stephens studied how the “street addict role”—the
addict’s interests, perspectives on reality, and activities—was formu-
lated and maintained. Once the heroin abuser has become immersed
in this role, which involves being cool and being able to con people,
his identity as an addict becomes central to this sense of who he is, “a
master status trait,” overriding and subsuming other identities.78

* * *

History shows that many very creative people have used, and abused,
various types of drugs, including opiates, and that drugs have helped
in the creative process. For example, during the Romantic Age of the
early to mid-1800s, many artists, writers, and composers drew artis-
tic inspiration from opium.79 Actual research on the link between
drugs and creativity and artistic performance has focused primar-
ily on psychedelics such as LSD, starting with psychiatrists ask-
ing artists to illustrate their hallucinations.80 A basic finding from
this research is that psychedelics can improve both creativity and
performance.81
Journalist Michael Largo created biographical sketches of a wide
range of artists, including musicians, who had problems with vari-
ous types of drugs, including heroin. Largo concluded that, of the
500 artists examined in his book,
16 / heroin and music in new york city

alcohol and drug abuse were ultimately detrimental to their creative


output, especially if they lived past the age of fifty, even if many of
their best works were produced in the height of their addictions. For
a few, less than 10 percent, their only remembered works of creativ-
ity were produced as a direct result of some form of drug or alcohol
use. For the remaining figures, it had neither benefit nor any other
effect on their work—other than that it killed them.82

As for the effects that heroin had on the performance and cre-
ativity of the New York–based musicians who form the sample for
this book, Winick’s study of jazz musicians from the 1950s plus the
anecdotal evidence noted just above suggest that there may be some
beneficial effects of heroin, but that, overall, the impacts are likely
to be adverse for musician-users from all the music genres and sub-
genres under consideration here. Similarly, while there may be some
positives to using heroin in terms of how successful some musicians’
overall careers were, it’s more likely that the adverse effects of heroin
will outweigh any potential positive effects.

* * *

To create the sample for the book, I started with a small group of
well-known New York musicians from various genres who were her-
oin abusers, and over time the sample snowballed from there. The 69
individuals who comprise the sample all met three criteria: they were
based in New York City;83 they were musicians;84 and they were self-
acknowledged heroin abusers at some point in their careers.85
A majority of the individuals who met the sample criteria are
either rock (30 or 43%) or jazz (19 or 28%) musicians, but the sam-
ple includes musicians from other major popular music genres; most
were (or are) major stars, but others had limited mainstream success
and some were virtually unknown to the general public. These 69
individuals are distributed within music genres as follows:

Rock 30 43%
Jazz 19 28%
Folk 9 13%
R&B 6 9%
Latin/Caribbean 5 7%
introduction / 17

The data for the book are taken from retrospective first-person
accounts—direct quotes and personal stories—from the individuals
in the sample. These accounts consist of these musicians’ percep-
tions of their use of heroin and how heroin has affected their music.
The data capture how these musicians experience their subculture
and what the lived reality of being a heroin-using musician is actu-
ally like.
To obtain these data, I mined publications by academics (sociolo-
gists, criminologists, musicologists, historians, and popular culture
scholars) and by music journalists and critics; musician autobiogra-
phies, biographies, memoirs, and interviews; and also a variety of
drug and music websites, blogs, on-line libraries and archives, music
magazines and fanzines, and newspapers.86
While developing the sample, I identified a number of other
New York–based musicians (n=30) who were users. It was not clear,
however, if these individuals had ever used regularly, or they were
acknowledged as heroin abusers by people who were in a position
to know about their lives and careers (fellow musicians, journalists,
friends) but who themselves apparently never talked about their
use—at least not publicly or for the record. These individuals may
have been intensely private people, or just reluctant interviewees;
heroin use is not something everybody would be willing to admit
to or want to talk about. In the language of Erving Goffman, these
individuals may be “covering,” that is, downplaying a disfavored
trait, in an effort to “keep the stigma from looming large.”87 These
30 musicians, while not part of the main sample for this study, are
included as part of the story of heroin and music in New York.88
The plan for the book is to study five major types of popular music:
in chapter two, the focus is on jazz; chapter three, rock; chapter four,
R&B; chapter five, folk; and chapter six, Latin and Caribbean. In
each chapter I examine what New York musician-users have said
about why they first used and continued to use heroin and how
heroin has affected their playing, creativity, and careers. I explore
the subcultural context of music genres and subgenres, particularly
the extent to which these subcultures contain values and attitudes
that support and encourage heroin use and members organize their
identity around heroin and music. I also scrutinize songs by New
York users (and nonusers) in which heroin is the central subject or in
18 / heroin and music in new york city

which the drug is referenced, in order to get a sense of the message


being conveyed about heroin in the song.
In chapter seven, the final chapter, I summarize the similarities
and differences between the music genres and subgenres in terms of
the main issues at hand. A primary concern of the chapter is assess-
ing the utility of the theoretical argument I presented about the
link between subculture, identity, and heroin use. I also discuss the
implications of the methodological strategy I employed in the book,
and suggest some paths for follow-up research.
Ch a p t e r Two
Ja z z

In the previous chapter, we saw that jazz first spread to New York
City in the early 1900s and became increasingly popular. In the
1920s, Harlem developed a dynamic jazz scene and by the early to
mid-1940s, New York City was the jazz capital of the world. Since
the 1960s, jazz has maintained a strong presence in the city. Today,
New York City is still a world capital of jazz.
In this chapter I examine the relationship between heroin and
jazz. Based on the narrative accounts of 19 New York–based jazz
musicians,1 who were self-acknowledged heroin abusers, I focus on
why these musicians used heroin; the effects heroin had on their
playing, creativity, and careers; and why heroin use was more com-
mon in some jazz subgenres than in others. Three historical jazz eras
are assessed:

(1) The early years of New Orleans–inspired Dixieland jazz


through the swing style that reigned during the Big Band era
of the 1930s and the early 1940s.
(2) The bebop era of the mid-1940s through the late 1950s.
(3) The years since the bebop era—basically since the 1960s—
when a variety of new jazz types came to dominate the jazz
scene.

The Early Years


Prior to World War II, if jazz musicians were using a substance other
than alcohol, it’s probable that marijuana—not heroin—was that
substance. Marijuana smoking—legal until 1937—was very com-
monplace, virtually endemic to jazz, and a way to help musicians feel
close to one another and to their music.2
20 / heroin and music in new york city

A 1938 New York Times editorial described the jazz musician in


this way:

Physically exhausted, his nerves at edge, he finishes his stint some-


times before dawn, packs his instrument, fortifies himself with the
bottle, and reports to a favored joint for a jam session. The physi-
cal and nervous toll of such a frantic pace is extreme, and many
[of these musicians] require some artificial stimulus of immediate
effect. They find it in the cup and the weed.3

Buck Clayton, who played the trumpet in Count Basie’s jazz


orchestra, noted that when he played at New York’s Apollo Theater,
“it would seem sometimes that all of the first rows of the theatre
would be filled with guys smoking pot. It would drift up on the
bandstand but nobody minded. They were all our pals and we were
playing just for them.”4
Among the musicians from the early years of jazz, trumpeter
Louis Armstrong was perhaps one of marijuana’s biggest fans.
Armstrong—who settled permanently in Queens in the early 1940s
and lived there for the rest of his life—was introduced to marijuana
by white musicians in Chicago during the mid-1920s.5 His first
source was probably Mezz Mezzrow, a white clarinetist, renowned
for selling only high-quality product.6 Mezzrow eventually moved
to Harlem and introduced “Mighty Mezz,” a very strong Mexican
marijuana, to the jazz scene uptown. Mezzrow felt that marijuana
intensified a musician’s creativity:

Tea [i.e., marijuana] puts a musician in a real masterly sphere, and


that’s why so many jazzmen have used it. . . . You hear everything at
once and you hear it right. When you get that feeling of power and
sureness, you’re in a solid groove.7

One biographer summed up Armstrong’s relationship with the


drug in this way: “He loved marijuana. He smoked it in vast quanti-
ties from his early twenties until the end of his life; wrote songs in
praise of it, including ‘Muggles’8 [marijuana cigarettes] and ‘Song of
the Vipers’9 [‘vipers’ were people who smoked it]; and persuaded his
musician friends to smoke it when they played . . . He regarded it as an
essential element in his life and beneficial to his health. Armstrong
maintained marijuana to be a thousand times better than whiskey
jazz / 21

and that it relaxed him while also keeping him clear headed.”10 It
“makes me feel good as gracious.”11

It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a
Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you’re with another tea
smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.12

Another popular New York City–based musician from the early


years of jazz Cab Calloway, the orchestra leader, had a very differ-
ent view of marijuana. On the one hand, Calloway understood why
smoking marijuana was so prevalent among jazz musicians. In his
opinion, it was all about “the economic insecurity from which [the
musician] suffers so much” and the fact that “the band business is
hectic, musicians are constantly on the move, abnormally irregular
hours, the pressure of work creates serious physical fatigue.”13 And,
like Armstrong, Calloway had no problem writing and performing
songs about marijuana, including the classic “Reefer Man.”14
But Calloway believed that marijuana created bad publicity for
jazz musicians:

There are still numberless Americans who equate music with mari-
juana, who feel that every jazzman is automatically a reefer smoker.
This kind of publicity has been very harmful to us musicians. It has
deprived us of many opportunities for good bookings.15

Calloway also felt that marijuana

injures rather than aids musicianship . . . like all drugs, it weakens a


player’s performance because it slows down his reactions, muddles
his thinking, and distorts tone. There is no acceptable substitute for
sobriety while playing. Intoxication, far from releasing talent, creates
confusion.16

Thus, unlike Armstrong, Calloway definitely didn’t want his


musicians to be smoking pot while on the job. According to the
pianist Benny Payne:

Now, some of the guys in the band, six or seven of them, smoked
tea every day of their lives. Some of them would smoke it like other
people smoke cigarettes and you never knew it. They could play bet-
ter high than straight. Cab used to tell them, “I don’t have anything
22 / heroin and music in new york city

against anybody smoking tea, but if you intend to bring it into the
theater, that will be your job.”17

* * *

In the 1930s, jazz evolved into big band swing, which was brought
to national prominence by clarinetist Benny Goodman, particularly
after his famous concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938. While many
of the musicians in his bands no doubt smoked marijuana, as did
two other prominent swing band leaders—Artie Shaw and Harry
James18 —Goodman was not a fan of the drug. According to Lionel
Hampton, the jazz vibraphonist, Goodman did not “fool around like
most jazz artists . . . No boozing or dope for Benny.”19 Such habits

may go for fellows in a little gin mill or hole in the wall, but it simply
doesn’t go for the musicians in the big band, if for no other reason
than they couldn’t hit the stuff and still keep in shape to play seven
hours a night, or do five shows in a day in a theatre.20

In the early 1940s, police authorities—led by Harry Anslinger, head


of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics—began to target jazz artists who
smoked marijuana as part of a strategy to stop drugs and other “vices”
from weakening the war effort by demoralizing soldiers and civilians.21
One prominent New York–based swing musician who got victimized
was the drummer Gene Krupa, who served 90 days for possession and
for contributing to the delinquency of a minor—a band boy who sup-
plied him with the drug—which was considered a felony.
The reality was that Krupa, who smoked marijuana occasionally,
was hardly the reefer-crazed “dope fiend” depicted in the courtroom
and press.22 Yet, even before he was found guilty, engagements were
cancelled, and he eventually had to disband his orchestra. “By the time
he was released on bail he had lost his office in New York for nonpay-
ment of rent, and his furniture and files had been thrown out on the
sidewalk.”23 Krupa’s take on the impact his arrest had on his career:

I don’t think I was exactly a failure, but on the other hand, I think I
could have been a lot more successful in the field.24

* * *
jazz / 23

In contrast to marijuana, the use of heroin was not widespread at all in


the early years of jazz. In the view of Ira Gitler, the jazz historian and
journalist, “before 1941 and during the early years of the war [World
War II], there was no heroin problem.”25 The historian Jill Jonnes
described heroin use before the war as “something highly exotic.”26
One likely reason for this had to do with heroin’s overall avail-
ability in the United States. After it was first produced, and heralded
as a nonaddictive “wonder drug” by the medical community, heroin
lost its luster when doctors came to realize it was highly addictive
and not a cure-all.27 After it became illegal in 1914, production was
decreased and, while true prevalence is hard to determine, use dwin-
dled.28 As a result, heroin was not widely available during the 1920s,
1930s, and the early 1940s, and it was especially hard to obtain dur-
ing the war years.
That heroin was not used widely by jazz musicians during these
years may also have been a matter of the attitudes held by many of
the jazzmen of that era—especially the older and more conservative
ones—toward heroin and the people who used it, and also, as jazz
began to change, toward the music itself. So, for example, heroin
held absolutely no interest for a serious marijuana smoker like Louis
Armstrong:

It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics—


dope and all that kind of crap. . . . It is actually a shame . . . A dope
addict, from what I noticed by watching a lot of different cats whom
I used to light up with but got so carried away—they felt that they
could get a much bigger kick by jugging themselves in the ass with a
needle—heroin, cocaine, etc, or some other ungodly shit.29

Armstrong called heroin “the drastic stuff,” and he thought that peo-
ple who used it “were dirty-grimy all the time. Show most addicts
a bucket of water and they’ll run like hell to keep it from touching
them.”30
Cab Calloway believed that heroin was “a menace,”

an evil that is as cruel and relentless as a deep-sea octopus. . . . [It] has


hooked some of our most talented artists, both Negro and white. . . .
I know that the drug menace in music is very real, and that unless
immediate steps are taken it will lead to the deterioration of a splen-
did art.31
24 / heroin and music in new york city

Calloway’s and Armstrong’s attitudes about heroin didn’t


stop them, however, from performing songs about opiates. Thus,
Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher”32 was about a woman who knew
how to “kick the gong around”—early slang for using opium.
Originally, Calloway (and later Armstrong) performed the follow-up
tune “Kicking the Gong Around.”33 Several other New York–based
jazz musicians from the early years also performed opium-related
songs, including pianist Clarence Williams’s “Jerry the Junker”34
and orchestra leader Duke Ellington, who had the instrumental
“Hop Head”35 —a slang term for an opium user.36

* * *

But during the early years of jazz, heroin had a sustained underworld
following, which means it was available to jazz musicians, especially
in places like New York City, where many of the clubs they played in
were run by gangsters who were involved in the heroin trade.37 And
indeed there were some New York City–based jazz musicians who
used heroin. One was Sonny Berman, a trumpeter who played swing
in a number of big bands, who died from a heroin overdose in 1947,
when he was in his early twenties.38 According to the bandleader
Woody Herman:

Sonny was a happy young man . . . His potential was enormous, and
he might have fulfilled it if his heroin habit hadn’t cut him down.39

The saxophonist Buddy Arnold was another user. Arnold first


used when he was in his early twenties, a year after making his first
recording. His music career was hindered by his over 30 arrests and
time spent in prison.40 Getting clean and sober in the early 1990s,
after over 30 years of use, he founded with his wife The Musicians’
Assistance Program, a nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment pro-
gram for musicians, which is recognized as the first unified effort by
the recording industry to combat drug abuse by musicians.41
Saxophonist Stan Getz, who grew up in the Bronx, played in
a variety of jazz genres but came to prominence in the big band
era first with the Stan Kenton orchestra and then in the late 1940s
with Woody Herman’s big band. Getz first used heroin in his late
teens when he was with the Kenton band. Getz biographer Donald
Maggin has written:
jazz / 25

Stan continued to get high on booze, drinking himself unconscious


almost every night. A coterie of heroin users in the band noticed this
and enjoyed tempting him with stories of the superior transports of
a heroin high. One night . . . Stan’s tempter told him that he had pur-
chased some terrific dope and asked Stan to follow him to the back.
When they got there, he spooned some powder from an envelope
and told Stan to snort it.42

Getz didn’t feel very good about the fact that he used. Years after
he had quit, he had this to say:

I realize what I have done has hurt jazz music in general. To say I’m
sorry is not nearly enough. I can’t blame what I’ve done on the pres-
sures of creative music in the country . . . it’s pure and simple degen-
eracy of the mind, a lack of morals and personality shortcomings I
have . . . the really good musicians are too smart to mess with it, and
don’t need it anyway.43

* * *

And then there was Billie Holiday. Considered by many to be the


most acclaimed singer in jazz history, Holiday moved to New York
City when she was in her teens.44 Before using heroin, she was an
opium smoker, introduced to it by her first husband.45 She switched
to heroin when opium became hard to find and she was living with
“a bass player named John Simmons, who had been a junkie for
years.”46 She began injecting in the early 1940s, when she was in her
mid-twenties.47 By this time, Holiday was celebrated as “the Queen
of 52nd Street.”48

Gradually her habit became known at venues there; club door-


men would take her heroin deliveries and bring them to the dress-
ing room; fans would hold her supply to keep it safe while she was
performing.49

Personal stories and anecdotes about Holiday’s heroin use abound.


Thus trumpeter Miles Davis recalled:

He [her husband Simmons] kept all the drugs and gave them to
Billie whenever he felt like it; this was his way of keeping her in line.
John was one of those sick hustling street cats from Harlem who’d do
anything for money. . . . “Miles,” Billie had said, “that motherfucker
26 / heroin and music in new york city

John done run off with all my money. So you can loan me some to
get a fix? I need it real bad.” So I gave her what I had because she was
looking real bad by this time, worn out, worn down, and haggard
around the face and all. Thin. Mouth sagging at both corners. She
was scratching a lot.50

Jazz vocalist Anita O’Day—herself a user51—recollected:

I wasn’t only in awe of her singing. I was in awe of her habit. She
didn’t cook up with a spoon. Man, she used a small tuna fish
can and shot 10 cc into her feet. Later, I understand she ran out
of veins all over her body. So she used those on each side of her
vagina. One sure thing, no narc was going to bust her for fresh
tracks.52

And when Holiday couldn’t get the heroin she needed,

she would just sit quietly in a tub of the hottest water she could draw
and sit and sit, even if it took her all day and all night and all next
day. She’d say “I’m not getting out of this fucking tub until some-
body brings me some dope!”53

Heroin did an enormous amount of damage to Holiday’s music


and career. She began missing performances.54 She believed that her
use created tension with her fellow performers and friends:

In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s


no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you
love. And in this country, it’s the worst kind of hell for those who
love you.55

As for the impact that heroin had on her singing, record pro-
ducer John Hammond, who discovered Holiday and produced her
first record, thought that “by the mid-fifties [her] voice had been
ravaged by years of abuse, although her heart and her impeccable
musicianship were still in working order.”56 Holiday herself thought
that

dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do


anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you—and kill you
the long, slow, hard way.57
jazz / 27

Efforts by federal authorities targeting jazz musicians who smoked


marijuana intensified in the late 1940s as heroin use increased. As a
consequence,

the police and other government agents were always at [Holiday’s]


shows . . . heckling, threatening, raiding her dressing room, mak-
ing embarrassing enquiries at her hotel and spreading rumors at the
clubs where she was booked to sing.58

Holiday was arrested more than once. One time, after being
arrested for possession, “she pleaded guilty and asked to be sent
to a hospital to take ‘the cure,’ but the judge noted that she was a
well-to-do entertainer and sentenced her to a year in jail.”59 Because
of her drug convictions, Holiday lost her New York City “cabaret
card,” which was needed to appear in a club that served alcohol. For
Holiday, this essentially meant that she couldn’t work in any of the
clubs in which she previously had headlined.60
Through it all, Holiday preached against using heroin. According
to one of her piano accompanists, Carl Drinkard:

Lady was the first to say that no one else should use stuff. She was
very emphatic about this; she could not endorse the use of heroin,
except by herself. She told the world she could not stand a dope
fiend; she took the attitude that “I’m the only one strong enough to
use stuff and everyone else is a low-life.” She would say, “Now look,
Carl, now don’t you use no shit. Don’t you go near it. Don’t you end
up like me.”61

Holiday died in a hospital in New York City in 1959, at age 44,


mainly from cirrhosis of the liver.62 In the last week of her life she
was under house arrest in that hospital for possession of a suspicious
“white powder” that Holiday was sure was planted on her by a nurse
who was a policewoman in disguise.63

The Bebop Era


It is well known that heroin use was widespread among jazz musi-
cians from the bebop era; many jazz critics and academics have writ-
ten about this.64 There is still much to be learned, however, about
why beboppers used and how heroin affected their music.
28 / heroin and music in new york city

Bebop—a New York–style of jazz—was very different from the


jazz that came before it:

Energetic, sometimes frantic, and bluesy, bebop’s incendiary style,


pulsing rhythm, and intensity contrasted with the melodic, linear,
and commercial qualities of swing.65

Many jazz musicians from the early jazz era didn’t particularly
like this new music. Louis Armstrong had “little but disdain”66 for
bebop and thought that “their music was uncompromising in a way
that he saw as threatening to the public’s acceptance of jazz.”67 Cab
Calloway famously put down bebop by remarking that he thought
that bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie played “Chinese music.”68
Benny Goodman had, at best, very mixed feelings about bebop.
In 1949, he said: “The bop musicians I’ve known have been fine
musicians. They can read anything.”69 But, by 1953, his opinion
had changed:

Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything.
Basically, it’s all wrong. It’s not even knowing the scales. The results
have got to be bad. What you hear in bop is a lot of noise—the
wrong kind of noise. They can’t play their horns . . . And they can’t
take direction.70

Bebop was much more, however, than simply a change in musical


form. It was also about the creation of a subculture and a change in
identity. As Dizzy Gillespie put it:

Musically, we were changing the way that we spoke, to reflect the


way that we felt.71

Part of the change involved racial equality and assertiveness.


During and right after World War II, there was considerable frus-
tration among African American musicians about how they, and
African Americans in general, were treated.72 Bebop musicians were
opposed to the white commercial music establishment, which con-
doned segregated recording, publishing, and performing. Many jazz
musicians had inequitable deals with club owners, record labels, and
publishing houses.73
jazz / 29

Bebop was “a means of black expression, a language that enabled


black artists to say things about injustice, freedom and oppression
that they couldn’t say with words for fear of facing physical harm or
commercial blacklisting.”74 It was “a protest against the failed expec-
tations embodied in swing . . . a profound criticism of the failure of
swing’s ecstatic promise of a modern America rooted in pluralism
and individualism.”75 Beboppers thought that most older jazz musi-
cians were subservient “Uncle Toms” whose showmanship pandered
to their white audiences, and they wanted no part of this.76
Beboppers were nonconformists who “developed a complex and
rich subculture in language, dress, attitude, and politics to comple-
ment their music.”77 Their uniform was sunglasses, goatees, and pork
pie hats; “cool” slang was its argot.78 They were seen as “mysterious
creatures, subject to their own laws and language,” 79 as “outsiders,
even within the jazz world.”80
The bebop ethos was an alternative and subversive one. The
central goals were creativity, spontaneous pleasure, freedom, and
excitement.81 Unlike jazz musicians from earlier times, beboppers
demanded acceptance as artists, “as co-equals with the purveyors of
highbrow culture, the classical composers, the dramatists, the poets,
the painters, and sculptors,”82 not just as performers giving the pub-
lic what it wants. They played and created music for each other, not
for the public.83
Heroin was bebop’s drug of choice, “a badge of this new move-
ment.”84 It was “hip” to use heroin.85 Using was on the edge, and,
as journalist Nat Hentoff put it, “defiantly anti-square.”86 Heroin
“marked its users as bohemian outsiders as well as members of a
pleasure-seeking cult removed from the professionalism and team
unity of the swing bands.”87 Beboppers conveyed that heroin users
“were an elite distinguished from the ordinary working people of the
neighborhood . . . This group affected a style that combined racial
consciousness, a rejection of exploitation in the labor market, a taste
for fashion, and a defiance of decorum and order.”88
Charles Winick, the psychologist who had studied heroin use by
jazz musicians in the 1950s, explained use in this way:

There is a circular relationship which seems to connect four


dimensions: the musician’s acceptance by his society, the degree of
30 / heroin and music in new york city

acceptance of the stimulant by society, the effect of the stimulant on


the body, and the nature of the music which is played. The musician
takes a stimulant which is approximately as accepted by society as he
feels, and the kind of jazz which he plays has the same qualities as
the drug does on the body.89

In this view, when bebop first came on the scene, it was gener-
ally met with a certain measure of hostility by music audiences. As
a consequence, many beboppers reacted by taking a drug that was
seen as very alternative and subversive—that is, heroin. Heroin usu-
ally helped to make the user feel “cool and detached” and simultane-
ously produce a form of music that was viewed in the same way.90
It certainly was not difficult for beboppers to find heroin. Shortly
after the war ended, use of the drug exploded among young men of
color trapped in city ghettos.91 Musicians particularly tended to be
surrounded by dealers and people who had easy access to the drug—
the neighborhood hustlers, gamblers, and pimps.92
According to the pianist Billy Taylor, heroin permeated the New
York City entertainment districts where beboppers played.93

One thing that may have made narcotics traffic easier in New York
then was that everyone was concentrated in one area. In the mid-
40s, it was 52nd Street with eight or ten clubs in two blocks, at least
two quartets in each club or trios or five piece groups and sometimes
three units in each club. It became easier for guys pushing chicks or
dope or whatever to find their easy marks.94

Heroin was also easy to get when musicians were touring. Out-
of-town connections in the drug world could be counted on to show
up. One bebop pianist put it this way:

Wherever [we] went, the pushers would be with us. The grapevine,
as far as drugs is concerned, is very quick, very swift; and as soon as
[we] hit town, someone would contact [us].95

* * *

Understanding the connection between heroin use and bebop jazz


requires recognition of the influence of saxophonist Charlie “Bird”
Parker—bebop’s ultimate hipster, model of cultural opposition, and
central figure.
jazz / 31

Musically, Parker was the “genius of the bebop world,”96 a vir-


tuoso player with “a cool, dignified delivery [and] untrammeled
creativity.”97 According to Nat Hentoff, “starting in the mid-1940s,
most of the younger musicians looked to Bird as the messiah who
had come to deliver jazz from the cul-de-sac of the swing era.”98 Jazz
critic Gary Giddins has written that “ . . . musicians were transcrib-
ing his solos and following him around in the fierce hope that they
could find out how to sound like him, be like him.”99 One of his
biographers thought that “for urban black people of his generation,
Charlie was a genuine culture hero. The revolutionary nature of his
music was explicit. Implicit in his lifestyle was defiance of the white
establishment.”100
The common wisdom is that many young beboppers were “drawn
to [heroin] use partly to emulate the lifestyle, hence aim for the bril-
liance, of Charlie Parker.”101 Many believed that “Parker drew part
of his seemingly inexhaustible greatness from teaspoons of white
powder.”102 As Miles Davis put it, “the idea was going around that
to use heroin might make you play as great as Bird. . . . A lot of musi-
cians did it for that.”103 As put by jazz journalist and critic Marc
Myers: “The thinking was that if Charlie Parker could be an addict
and a genius, it had to be worth a try.”104 A colleague of Parker’s
said: “A lot of younger people were so amazed and fascinated by the
likes of Charlie’s playing . . . that something told them inside that if
they were to assume his personal habits that they could get close to
him.”105
Parker had a huge appetite for heroin—he was the “alpha heroin
user” of the bebop generation106 —and was a big fan of the drug:

I go to this heart specialist and he treats me but it don’t do no good. I


go this ulcer man and give him seventy-five dollars to cool my ulcers
out and it don’t do no good. There’s a little cat in a dark alley and
I give him five dollars for a bag of shit—my ulcer’s gone, my heart
trouble is gone. Everything is gone.107

In his youth, Parker had been prescribed morphine after a car


accident,108 and began using heroin when he was in his mid-teens,
hanging around the jazz scene in his native Kansas City:

I began dissipating as early as 1932, when I was only 12 years old;


three years later a friend of the family introduced me to heroin.
32 / heroin and music in new york city

I woke up one morning very soon after that, feeling terribly sick and
not knowing why. The panic was on.109

Parker “enjoyed living on the fringe between legitimate profes-


sional life and the underworld of drug addicts and hustlers.”110 He
even named a song—“Moose the Mooch”111—after one of his her-
oin connections, “then signed over the ownership of the tune to its
namesake for fifty bucks’ worth of H.”112 In Miles Davis’s view:

Everybody loved Bird and would put up with his bullshit. He was
the greatest saxophone player who ever lived . . . but he was also one
of the slimiest and greediest motherfuckers who ever lived in this
world, at least that I ever met. He was something.113

Parker once told a friend, while rolling up his sleeve and show-
ing his arm: “This is my home, this is my portfolio, this is my
Cadillac.”114 He told another friend:

I know it’s gonna out me one of these days, but man, I’m not a bad
cat, this is just my life and I can’t do without it.115

Parker had a host of physical ailments and died young, at age 34.
Shortly before he died, King Pleasure, a New York–based jazz vocal-
ist, had put words to a 1948 Parker composition, “Parker’s Mood.”
The lyrics foreshadow Parker’s death:

Don’t hang your head


When you see those six pretty horses pulling me.116

* * *

Like Billie Holiday, Parker did not advocate for heroin use. He
warned friends: “Do as I say, not as I do.”117 Despite this, a number of
New York City–based beboppers did, in fact, become users because
they wanted to be like Parker. One was trumpeter Red Rodney.
Rodney was originally from Philadelphia, and relocated to New
York City when he was well into his career. As for how he first got
into using heroin:

I heard Charlie Parker and that was it. That’s what I wanted to do
with the rest of my life.118
jazz / 33

When you’re very young and immature and you have a hero like
Charlie Parker was to me, an idol who proves himself every time,
who proves greatness and genius . . . that’s a hard word to throw
around. But you can’t say less. When I listened to that genius night
after night, being young and immature and not an educated person,
I must have thought, “If I crossed over that line, with drugs, could
I play like that?”119

Rodney has also spoken of how his first use involved a need to
connect with others: “You want a sense of belonging. You want to be
like the others. And so I tried it.”120 For Rodney, heroin was also a
source of identification:

Heroin was our badge. It was the thing that made us different from
the rest of the world. It was the thing that said “We know. You don’t
know.” It was the thing that gave us membership in a unique club,
and for this membership we gave up everything else in the world.
Every ambition. Every desire. Everything.121

Rodney recalled Parker’s reaction when he first found out that he


was using:

When Bird found out that I was strung out, he was furious. . . . He
was disappointed in me. He was very sad, very angry. But he was
smart enough to know that once you’re involved, there wasn’t any-
thing he could say. So we shared. Now we were on the road together
and we shared all the time. He was great even that way. He was a
genuinely nice man. He was disappointed that I had gone out and
messed up, but once it was done, it was done.122

In 1975—20 years after Parker’s death—Rodney remembered


Parker as

a genius and also a very hedonistic person. He lived so wild and so


precarious, on the brink of disaster at all times. It was amazing how
he could even do the things he did in such a short life.123

Another bebopper who believed that Parker was a major factor


in his first using heroin was saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Originally
from Los Angeles, Gordon moved to New York City when he
was in his early twenties, and lived in the city for about 15 years.
34 / heroin and music in new york city

Speaking of the influence of Parker (and also Billie Holiday),


Gordon recalled:

Not that all this is their fault, I’m not saying that. But they were doing
it, and Lady was an established idol, and Bird was the other coming
idol at that time. And, of course, most of the cats then were pretty
young, very young in fact, so they didn’t have the experience.124
We were the revolutionaries. We did what was new and hip with
no forethought of consequences. Heroin just became part of the
scene.125

Looking back on his youth, Gordon has said:

Basically I think what happened was that although I was on the


verge of really getting off the ground, psychologically I wasn’t
ready. Musically, I didn’t feel I was ready. Personally, I didn’t feel
I was ready. . . . I never felt right within myself, honest, justified,
in getting [the acclaim I was getting], the spotlight. So in order to
bolster my confidence, to immune me, I had to resort to artificial
means. So consequently, after a while, I just got off on the wrong
track.126

Gordon “loved shooting up . . . part of the charm, the romance, is


the ritual of sticking a needle in your arm,”127 but

it got to the stage where I told myself it just couldn’t go on. I was
spending up to $200 a day on smack [heroin], my kids were getting
their father’s addiction flung in their faces. So I fought it and went
clean.128

But it wasn’t easy for Gordon to stay clean:

I was getting phone calls every day from pushers, and they were
approaching me in the street. “Aw, come on, Dexter, let’s swing . . . ”
I had to tell them over and over again that I was determined to kick
it.129

Another bebop saxophonist who felt that Parker was at least


partially influential in terms of his first use of heroin was Sonny
Rollins. Born in New York City and a New Yorker almost his whole
life, Rollins is “one of the few still-active links to the bebop era.”130
jazz / 35

Like many heroin-using jazz musicians, Rollins used only for a few
years when he was young.

We started off with pot and then got involved with the heavier drugs.
We greatly admired Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, and maybe to
some extent that affected us.131

Yet Rollins definitely saw heroin use as part of the bopper’s radi-
cal social stance:

Using drugs was, in a strange way, a negation of the money ethic.


Guys were saying, “I don’t care about this, I don’t care how I dress or
how I look, all I care about is music.”132

Earlier in his career, Rollins believed that heroin changed his life
for the better:

When I was in New York and using drugs and playing my horn and
beginning to get recognized as a young, up and coming player, I was
really in a happy situation. I mean, before I got to the point where I
had to steal and stuff to support my habit. I recall telling somebody
that I would never stop using drugs because it felt good and it put
me in the place I wanted to be, mentally and physically. I remember
really being an advocate of drugs at one time.133

* * *

Despite Charlie Parker’s impact on bebop, a number of New York


City–based beboppers first used heroin for reasons that had little or
nothing to do with wanting to be like Parker. Jackie McLean, Art
Blakey, and Jimmy Heath are three illustrations.
Saxophonist McLean was born in New York and lived for many
years in Connecticut. He was a user for close to 20 years. As to how
he first got into heroin:

I didn’t get involved with drugs because of any particular person.


Nobody made me use them, and nobody influenced me to use them.
And I don’t think anybody ever does; I want to get that straight.
A person uses drugs because like, you’ve got to get burnt before
you know what fire is. I was warned about drugs by people on the
36 / heroin and music in new york city

outside, but I can’t say that I really knew what was involved in it
[heroin] when I started using it. I just thought it was something else
that adults didn’t want high school kids to do. . . . It was just another
way of getting high, like drinking or smoking pot.134

Asked why he thought so many young beboppers got into heroin,


McLean said he felt that:

in the Forties, times were harder than they are now. It was right
after the war, and the situation all over the country was pretty bad.
Everyone had trouble, and heroin made you forget your troubles. It
doesn’t make your life too realistic, but it relaxes you and tends to
takes things off your mind, troubles, you know. It doesn’t give you
hallucinations and make you think the world is a bowl of cherries,
but it does take your mind off your troubles.135

Drummer Art Blakey for many years led the Jazz Messengers, the
New York City–based ensemble, which was a training ground for top
young musicians. The main reason Blakey started to use heroin was:

because I liked it. There isn’t any other reason. It makes you feel
good. . . . Nobody ever found out about it, because I had a lot of
money. Money can cover up almost everything. Today I meet young
musicians who say to me, “It’s all right, Mr. Blakey, I’ll stop when I
want to” and I say to them, “you’ll stop when you have the guts or
when they bury you.” Even today, it’s a fight for me. It’s something
your body gets used to and you miss it. Look at it this way—if they
put me in a jail for a year and let me loose in a room full of naked
women, I’d have a hard time walking out of that room.136
At one time, drug use was the easy way out. I did it because I wanted
to have the experience. I thought I was strong enough to do anything
I wanted to, but I was lucky. I’m telling you, magilla is something
else! We call it “magilla gorilla.”137

Saxophonist Jimmy Heath, a native of Philadelphia, who for many


years has lived in Queens and taught at Queens College, described
his time using heroin as “seven years of horror.”138 He first used
heroin when he was in his early twenties. A girlfriend had fallen in
love with another musician, and Heath was hurt:

What happened . . . hurt me so bad that I was vulnerable and open.


[A fellow musician said] “Look, man, I know how you feel. Try some
jazz / 37

of this. Snort some of this; you’ll feel better.” That was my first
introduction to snorting heroin.139

* * *

One of the young beboppers who idolized Charlie Parker was trum-
peter Miles Davis, who went on to become jazz’s first modern super-
star. Davis was a user in the early 1950s—what he called “a four-year
horror show”:140

I found myself for the first time out of control and sinking faster
than a motherfucker toward death.141

Davis was first turned on to heroin by a fellow musician when he


played in the Billy Eckstine band:

The first time I used heroin, I just nodded out and didn’t know what
was happening. Man, that was a weird feeling. But I felt so relaxed.142

Parker took on a mentoring role toward Davis,143 but as to whether


Parker was a factor in his heroin use, Davis believed:

I guess I might have been just waiting for his [Parker’s] genius to hit
me . . . [but] I wasn’t never into that trip that if you shot heroin you
might be able to play like Bird. I knew a lot of musicians who were
into that. That ain’t what got me into heroin. What got me strung
out was the depression I felt when I got back to America [after a
short stay in Paris]. That and missing Juliette [a woman he had had
a romance with there].144

Also relevant was that Davis had experienced adulation from


European fans and had felt a sense of freedom after having been
treated “like a human being” offstage, but upon his return to New
York, he became keenly aware of the persistence of American racism,
and he struggled to find work and opportunities to record.145
Eventually Davis came to feel that it was very “uncool” to use
heroin:

Shooting heroin changed my whole personality from being a nice,


quiet, honest, caring person into someone who was the complete
opposite. It was the drive to get the heroin that made me that way.
38 / heroin and music in new york city

I’d do anything not to be sick which meant getting and shooting


heroin all the time, all day and all night.146

He also believed that:

People started looking at me another way, like I was dirty or some-


thing. They looked at me with pity and horror and they hadn’t
looked at me that way before.147

Davis eventually kicked heroin “cold turkey” by locking himself


in the guesthouse on his father’s farm in Illinois.148 But he

really kicked [the] habit because of the example of Sugar Ray Robinson;
I figured if he could be as disciplined as he was, then I could do it,
too . . . I decided that was the way I was going to be, serious about tak-
ing care of my business and disciplined. I decided that it was time for
me to go back to New York to start all over again. Sugar Ray was the
hero-image that I carried in my mind. It was him that made me think
that I was strong enough to deal with New York City again.149

* * *

In 1944, when Davis had first arrived in New York City, one of
the places he checked out was Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. One
bebopper who was part of that scene was the pianist Bud Powell.
Powell was born and raised in New York City, and as a teenager
in the early 1940s took part in the informal jam sessions at Minton’s.
In 1945, at another club, Powell got into an incident with a bouncer,
who smashed Powell in the head with a gun.150 After that

Bud started shooting heroin like it was going out of style, and he
was the last person who should have been shooting heroin because
it made him crazy.151

Powell was in and out of mental institutions over the next ten
years and received shock treatments, which, according to many,
impaired his musical effectiveness.152 He lived in Paris during the
last years of his life and apparently didn’t use heroin during those
years (although he continued to drink).153,154

* * *
jazz / 39

Clearly, then, there were various reasons why beboppers used heroin
for the first time. For some, but certainly not universally, first use
was about emulating Charlie Parker: If you shot dope, maybe you’d
be able to play as well as he did. For others, use was not so much
about Parker specifically but rather about a desire to connect with
and be like other hipsters, about a sense of belonging, as a way to
show brotherhood, as part of a social stance.
In either case, use by beboppers was clearly about subculture and
identity. In bebop subculture, heroin use was not only approved and
supported but it was also encouraged. Bebop identity was organized
around heroin use. To be seen and to see oneself as a “musician-user”
was, for these individuals, a very attractive and desired self-image to
have. Thus, heroin not only helped identify an entire subcultural
movement, but it was also part and parcel of musician identity in
New York.
And since beboppers who used heroin were constantly sur-
rounded by other users—some of whom were musicians, while some
not—this identity and lifestyle was easily developed and maintained
through social interaction with these fellow users. As the pianist and
journalist Leonard Feather puts it:

For the addict, the presence of a fellow user not only brings a mental
communion but ensures the presence at all times of a ready supply
of dope.155

At the same time, for some beboppers, first use seems to have
had little or nothing to do with Parker or the musician-user identity.
Some got into heroin for the same basic reasons that other people—
nonmusicians—start using: It helped you escape from your prob-
lems, it made you feel euphoric, and it helped alleviate various types
of stress—both the kinds of stresses any young person might be sus-
ceptible to, and also those stresses particular to being a young musi-
cian, for example, stage fright.

* * *

How did heroin affect the playing, creativity, and careers of bebop-
pers who used it? Charlie Parker believed that when he was playing,
heroin helped to quell or block out any “internal noise” so that he
40 / heroin and music in new york city

could concentrate better. “You do not play better with heroin but
you do hear better.”156
Red Rodney agreed that heroin helped the “internal noise” drop
away:

When a guy is loaded and at peace, he . . . could tune out the honking
of the world. And, “Hey man, I just figured this out,” and we’d try
it that night, and it was great.157

Rodney also agreed with Parker that, even though heroin helps
with concentration, the drug doesn’t actually improve your playing:

No. First of all, you have to be healthy to play well. And you’re not
very healthy using drugs. Nothing is working. Your cells are dead-
ened. It’s the greatest cure for the common cold there is. I didn’t have
a cold for twenty years. That’s about all I can say for it.158

Dexter Gordon had similar feelings. On the one hand, he thought


that heroin

can arouse you; it makes you concentrate very well. . . . There’s a cer-
tain concentrative power with smack because just of the existence of
an addict is—you gotta use your mind so much. It really activates
the mind to secure money and to find connections and sources of
supply and so forth and play your games, do your little movements
and all that shit. It was a very special way of living and also a special
milieu.159

Yet, when he was asked in another interview: “Does it affect your


ability? Does it impair your facility on your instrument?” Gordon
replied:

Technically speaking, I don’t think it helps you any. It in itself doesn’t


impair your facility any. Getting hung up in the pursuit of it, getting
so involved so that you don’t have the drive and interest to constantly
search, this is what it did to me. It affects different people different
ways. All in all, it’s a very bad, ridiculous scene. But evidently it was
one I had to go through.160

A number of other beboppers have talked about how heroin helped


their concentration when they played. According to Jimmy Heath:
jazz / 41

Heroin doesn’t affect your musical ability as long as you can get it. I
felt that mental concentration was better with heroin than with any
other stimulant.161
Alcohol throws your talent out; your technique gets sloppy.
Marijuana makes you get plenty of ideas, but then your mind moves
too fast. You move off one idea to another. Heroin was a concentra-
tion drug. With heroin, you could zoom in on something and block
everything else out.162
It’s also a myth about playing better on heroin. Some people were
drug addicts and still couldn’t play. It’s a curious thing, and I can’t
fully explain why so many of the addicts were so great. If you can
concentrate better, you can work on things very meticulously.163

Heath similarly believes that heroin “enhanced your practice”:164

I don’t know if I would have practiced as intensely if I hadn’t been


on heroin. That’s a question mark. I’m not endorsing heroin by any
stretch of the imagination, because it has too many things that are bad
about it. That’s the only thing that was good about it, its effect on your
concentration level . . . After I got a fix, I would practice all day.165

Jackie McLean has said that what he liked about being high on
heroin when he played was that

it relaxed me, as all opiates do. I understand that now. At the time I
thought it was, like, this relaxes you; no stage fright; just go on and
play. And of course when you’re relaxed you play better. But for that
minute you think the drug is making you play better, and you find
out later on that you were just relaxed.166

And “Red,” a New York bebop saxophonist who was interviewed


as part of an oral history project focusing on heroin use in the 1920s
to 1960s,167 spoke about how heroin used to help him build up con-
fidence to perform:

Heroin didn’t change my musical style, though. It had no impact on


my playing or my style or anything, except for one major fact. And
that was . . . the desire to play or to perform. You see, up till this time,
when it was time for me to go on, I had to psych myself up to it. I
was nervous. “The curtain’s getting ready to open now; we’re getting
ready to do it now”—I had to psych myself up to it. Sometimes, even
while on, I was a little nervous because I was aware the public was
42 / heroin and music in new york city

out there listening to me. Even my solos, my solo work and stuff like
that, I would be . . . I had to psych myself up, more or less, to do it.
But if you had some heroin in you, you were ready. At all times. You
just went on. The heroin took away the stage fright. In fact, it was
almost a must to have some.

* * *

For Parker, those who wanted to be like him, and in fact for most
other beboppers who used, heroin came with all sorts of down-
sides. According to Nat Hentoff: “Much of the time Bird was in a
panic, strung out, with no money.”168 He developed a reputation
as unreliable, and club owners grew wary of him. In jazz historian
Ted Gioia’s view: “On any given night, he might skip a perfor-
mance or arrive late.”169 “His behavior on stage could be erratic
or rude.”170 Parker even “came to be considered persona non grata
at Birdland, the premier jazz club that had been named in his
honor.”171
The percussionist Jose Madera recalled the Charlie Parker record-
ings with the Latin musician Machito in the 1950s.

They would start those sessions at 9 a.m., and Charlie wouldn’t show
up until 11 a.m. Charlie would show up in his pajamas and stuff.
He didn’t know where his horn was, they’d have to go find the horn.
And then Norman would have to buy heroin for him to shoot up,
and then they would record like that.172

According to Miles Davis, sometimes Parker could be really dif-


ficult to be around:

He was always trying to con or beat you out of something to sup-


port his drug habit. He was always borrowing money from me and
using it to buy heroin or whiskey or anything he wanted at the
time.173
When he was desperate for a fix of heroin, man, Bird would do
anything to get it. He would con me and as soon as he left me,
he would run around the corner to somebody else with the same
sad story about how he needed some money to get his horn out
of the pawnshop, and hit them up for some more. He never paid
anybody back, so in that way Bird was a motherfucking drag to be
around.174
jazz / 43

Red Rodney, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Rollins—who all said


they first used at least to some extent because of Parker—have spo-
ken about the problems and troubles connected to their heroin use.
Rodney believed that being a user “showed up in the music”:

Unfortunately, it was a lot of sad things that happened from the


drugs, and that showed in the music also. Hostility, pettiness, a lot of
us became thieves, even though we didn’t want to be. That showed.
Our embarrassment showed. Our being ashamed of people that we
liked knowing that we were hooked. Everything showed. Everything
that happens to you through the course of the day or a week or a
month or a year or your lifetime will show in your playing.175

Gordon has said:

I had to shoot up before I played, and it got in the way of my jobs.


I didn’t get fired but I didn’t get hired either. People didn’t know
when or if I’d show up.176

And Rollins felt that when he was a user:

During this period I became a truly despicable person. I had no


friends. I was really a rough cat. I stole all kinds of stuff from my
own home. I stole other people’s horns. If musicians saw me coming
they’d go the other way. . . . I was pickpocketing and all this kind of
thing. Hanging out with junkies and thieves, those kinds of people.
When I stopped to realize what I was doing, it was terrible. I felt
horrible about myself.177

Rollins did, however, have norms about who he would rip-off:

I never ripped Miles off. I never ripped off Monk or Bud Powell.
Ripping off is something I did, but only to guys who couldn’t play,
guys you might consider to be squares. I only ripped off people that
were outside our life.178

Like many bebopper users, Rollins got arrested on a drug-related


charge—in his case, for armed robbery:

There were two or three of us. We decided to go downtown and


stick up some place. I don’t think we had any specific place in mind.
44 / heroin and music in new york city

I think it was just an idea. It was such a stupid thing to do. But it
wasn’t like I was one of the guys sitting down and planning it. I was
sort of the dumb guy who was just going along. I was the big dope
who took the gun. I didn’t really know anything about guns. I have
never fired a gun in my life. So, being a big idiot, I took the gun and
we went downtown and of course we got nabbed. Fortunately I did
not shoot or kill anybody. [He was convicted and spent 10 months
in Rikers Island jail.]179

Rollins has also talked about the difficulties of trying to get and
stay clean:

I was constantly worried about going back to using dope . . . with all the
drug dealers [at the clubs] offering me drugs, free drugs . . . the tempta-
tion was so great. I fought it, man . . . Once you are addicted, it is not
easy to quit it even if you want to. You just can’t walk away from it.180

Many other beboppers have spoken about the detrimental impact


heroin had on their careers. For example, the pianist Walter Bishop
and the drummer Freddy Gruber—both of whom played and
recorded with Charlie Parker—had very little to say about heroin
that was good. In Bishop’s view:

The years with Bird would have been the best period in my life if I
hadn’t been addicted. I just got to the point where music was nothing
more than the means to support my habit. My progress stopped—
and I could have learnt so much then. At first, when I’d be under
the influence, it seemed to inspire me to practice and create. But this
was a deception, as I found out after about a year. The more addicted
I became, the less I practiced or did anything new. All I was enthu-
siastic about was getting high.181

Gruber, who came up in the New York bebop scene and was very
active on 52nd Street during the late 1940s, said:

By that time [the mid-1950s] I was down to 92 pounds and I couldn’t


get further than the corner to see my connection. Every day it was
the same horseshit, and at some point I just realized, “Man, I’m
gonna die! Fuck this! I’m outta here!”182

Miles Davis spoke about how his heroin use affected the jobs he
chose to take:
jazz / 45

To make ends meet and support my habit I started transcribing


music from records for lead sheets, the first eight bars of a melody,
for twenty-five or thirty dollars. It was easy work and I could do a
job in a couple of hours. I’d get the money and go uptown and get
off. But soon even this wasn’t enough to keep my habit satisfied. My
health was poor and there weren’t that many gigs coming where I
could play regularly.183

According to the critic and record producer George Avakian:

When he [Davis] was hung up on junk, I was astounded to find that


he had worked live in front of the public only four to five weeks out
of the year. No one wanted to hire him. He was too irresponsible
and his habit was ruining him. He’d cancel out at the last minute, so
club owners saw him as absolute poison. . . . He had a terrible repu-
tation for not showing up and for leaving owners hung up with a
financial loss.184

Pianist Horace Silver, who played on several of Davis’s recordings


(and who was not a heroin user), believed that

because of his erratic working pattern, Davis often came to the stu-
dio with his lip in poor shape, and they would only be able to make
one—or at most two—takes of each number. This was responsible
for the sense of hurried informality and the limitations in his range
on sessions such as the quartet side Davis made for Blue Note in
March 1954.185

* * *

Miles Davis led his Quintet from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s,
with frequent personnel changes over the years. The other four mem-
bers of the earliest manifestation of the Quintet—John Coltrane
(saxophone),186 Philly Joe Jones (drums), Paul Chambers (bass),
and Red Garland (piano)—became famous while working with the
band. And all four were heroin users.
Coltrane was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the late
1950s and 1960s, and a user in the early part of his career:

First snorting, then shooting heroin, he found it softened the pres-


sures of traveling, dulled the toothaches resulting from his appetite
46 / heroin and music in new york city

for candy and other sweets, and even seemed to improve his ability
to concentrate on his music.187

Coltrane was fired from several bands in the early 1950s. In 1955,
Davis brought him into his Quintet, but then fired him for what
Davis called his “junkie shit”:

Here was Trane up on the bandstand sometimes nodding out, high


off heroin . . . it was getting to be pathetic. He’d be playing in clothes
that looked like he had slept in them for days, all wrinkled up and
dirty and shit. Then, he’d be standing up there when he wasn’t
nodding—picking his nose and sometimes eating it.188

Another instance of Coltrane’s “junkie shit”—nodding out dur-


ing a recording session—was recounted by Ray Copeland, a New
York trumpeter during the swing and bebop years:

He was definitely high on junk, of that I’m sure. We were sitting near
the rhythm section while the leader was taking a long piano solo. It was
almost time for Coltrane’s solo, and as I turned to look at him I noticed
that he was nodding out, holding his horn in his lap. Before I could do
anything the leader happened to look up from the piano, saw Trane’s
condition, and screamed, “Coltrane . . . Coltrane!” What happened next
was so amazing I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Trane was suddenly
on his feet, playing in perfect cadence and following the piano solo as if
nothing had happened. He played a pretty good solo, and when he was
finished he sat down again and went back to nodding out.189

Coltrane quit heroin cold turkey in 1957. He alluded to his years


of drug abuse in the liner notes to his 1964 album, A Love Supreme:

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual


awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive
life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means
and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has
been granted through his grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.190

The music critic and lyricist Gene Lees recalled this conversation
with Coltrane after he had cleaned up about how tough staying clean
can be:

One night John and I were discussing a gifted musician who was
working for him. The musician had narcotic troubles. Now he was
jazz / 47

making a sincere and valiant fight to lick it and had been clean for
six months. “It’s so hard for anyone” John said, “and it’s even harder
for a musician, because there’s so little to look forward to. It’s such an
uncertain business. If only somebody could give him a little encour-
agement, you know, give him a lift.” He paused for a moment . . . then
said gently, “I think I’ll give him a raise.”191

* * *

Drummer Philly Joe Jones had recruited Coltrane for Davis’s


Quintet. Jones also got fired by Davis because of his heroin use.
Davis recalled how Jones could “pull some stupid shit” when he was
playing high:

Sometimes, Philly Joe would be so sick up on the bandstand he


would whisper to me, “Miles, play a ballad, I’m getting ready to
throw up so I gotta go to the bathroom.” He’d leave the stage and go
throw up and come back like nothing had happened.192

Record producer and writer Orrin Keepnews thought that Jones’s


use was a problem, although it didn’t necessarily interfere with his
playing ability:

He could be a pain in the ass and unreliable. His addiction was a


problem for those who worked with him. He was controlled to a
large extent by his habit. But his problem didn’t interfere with his
performance and how conscious he was of what had to happen in
the studio.193

Looking back on his years of use, Jones reflected:

Well, that was a phase of my life. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t play-
ing bad when I was getting high. . . . But I feel now that I would have
played better, and I think that I’m playing better today than I’ve
ever played.194

Jimmy Heath, the saxophonist who replaced Coltrane in the


Davis Quintet, has also spoken about the ways in which his heroin
use affected his life:

Your social life, your health, your reputation, all of that was a drag.
The side-effects and after-effects are devastating, and the social
48 / heroin and music in new york city

effects are worse! The physical effects are another thing. It messed
me up for seven years.195

As for how Heath felt his heroin use affected his career:

I was recording with the good guys but I wasn’t a leader. This is what
using drugs did to my career.196

Heath was imprisoned for over four years in Lewisburg


Penitentiary on a drug conviction. Inside, he formed a band, wrote
songs, and was forced to get clean:

I think it was a blessing that I went away to get straight. I just thought
four and a half years was too long, man. It definitely stifled my career,
but it also saved my life. My career I could get back. My life . . . I got
to have my life. . . . So being in Lewisburg was a blessing in disguise. I
learned from that never to do that again, and I didn’t.197

Early in his career, Heath had worked with the trumpeter Howard
McGhee. In the late 1940s, McGhee was generally recognized as
a leading bebop musician; in 1949, he was voted as “top trumpet
player” in a jazz magazine poll.198 But the next year he began his
“slide into addiction”199 and the decade was largely a waste for him:

When I was voted top trumpet player in 1949, I figured that I might
get to working regular. But I didn’t. So I hung around with the other
cats and got bored. Then someone would say, “Come on, man, let’s
get high.” So we got high. And that’s how it started.200
It was six years ago when I quit using the stuff. I’d been on it for
seven years. I was spending a hundred dollars a day, every day. It was
insane . . . So I quit . . . I was broke. I had no place to go. I had sold my
home, my furniture, a big record collection that went way back. So I
made up my mind. I spent four days locked in a friend’s room—no
food, no drink, no sleep, no stuff.201

New York City–born pianist Elmo Hope was also a heroin user,
and his career took a hit because of his use. For many years he was
not visible on the city’s club scene in any prominent way,202 and he
“never achieved recognition outside a small circle of jazzmen and
aficionados.”203 Just before fatally overdosing in 1967, Hope com-
mented on the impact of his heroin use on his career:
jazz / 49

I got my problem again. I’m going to try to kick again. It might


be too late. I might have to pay more dues. But I know I can’t get
back to where I ought to be if I don’t stop entirely. Some guys wear
the stuff well. At least, they can function while they’re on. Me, the
minute I take the first taste, my troubles start. And with all the other
tensions going on, I know I’m going to fall apart if I don’t get off.
Music is the most important thing in life to me. And yet I’ve been
goofing that life away for nothing.204

* * *

Thus, New York City–based bebop musician-users have identified


a variety of ways in which their heroin use impacted their playing,
their creativity, and their careers in a negative fashion. These include
engaging in what Miles Davis called “junkie shit” (e.g., conning and
ripping people off and nodding out on stage) and having a “junkie
reputation,” which commonly led to mistrust by fellow musicians,
getting fired from bands, and missing out on job opportunities;
arrest and imprisonment; developing health problems related to
using heroin such as pneumonia or cirrhosis; and overdosing—
sometimes fatally.
Heroin clearly led to a period of professional decline and inactivity
for trumpeter Lee Morgan. Morgan was one of the musicians who
went on to make a name for himself after working with Art Blakey
and the Jazz Messengers. According to Morgan’s biographer:

Surrounded by the drug at home and at work, Morgan’s heroin use


quickly escalated from casual to chronic use, and the addict lifestyle
became his reality. . . . Morgan’s heroin use would soon dominate
his life. In fewer than three years, Morgan’s addiction would leave
him strung out, broke, and barely scraping by . . . Gone were the days
when Morgan would labor over a new composition for weeks . . . The
trumpeter would spend most of his waking hours acquiring heroin
and getting high, neglecting his duties as music director of the
band. Instead of composing new material for his band, networking
to get gigs, or rehearsing, Morgan [was] scoring drugs and getting
high.205

Pianist Sonny Clark was also a user. Sam Stephenson, a jour-


nalist currently writing a biography of Clark, tells the story of how
Clark allegedly stole another musician’s song, in order to claim
50 / heroin and music in new york city

the royalties—“the move of a desperate, depleted junkie.”206 Clark


showed up at a recording session with

a new composition he called “Five Will Get You Ten.” He was an effec-
tive composer, and his tunes were welcome at most sessions. However,
this one he’d stolen from Thelonious Monk. He had probably seen
the sheet music or heard Monk working out the tune on the piano
at the Weehawken, New Jersey, home of the Baroness Pannonica de
Koenigswarter, who routinely made her home a rest stop and club-
house for jazz musicians . . . Monk called the tune “Two Timer”; Clark
gave it a new name so he could claim composer’s royalties.207

Stephenson also notes:

That same month, he [Clark] cut two classic Blue Note albums
under the leadership of saxophonist Dexter Gordon, “Go” and
“A Swinging Affair.” When Clark died five months later, Gordon
remembered these sessions in a letter to Blue Note impresarios Alfred
Lion and Francis Wolff: Clark had “almost totally given up” on his
life, Gordon wrote.208

Clark died in his early thirties:

In 1963 Clark played his last gig at a New York club called Junior’s,
where he died of an overdose in the early hours of January 30. To
avoid bad publicity and to preserve their liquor license, the owners
moved his corpse to a private apartment before calling the police.209

An example of the mistrust associated with being a user was


recalled by the jazz writer and producer Ira Gitler. One time he was
asked to lend saxophonist Sonny Stitt his horn for a recording date:

I remember Sonny’s Imagination session in 1950. [Producer] Bob


Weinstock told me that Stitt was having trouble with his alto horn
and asked me to bring mine to the date. I was momentarily appre-
hensive about lending it to Stitt. Sonny had a reputation for disap-
pearing with other people’s instruments and hocking them for cash.
But I didn’t mind since I was going to be there and could keep an
eye on it.210

* * *
jazz / 51

The physical toll of using heroin can be severe. This was certainly
true for trumpeter Fats Navarro. According to Miles Davis:

Fats Navarro was a real bad junkie, pitiful. Fat Girl’s wife, Lena, was
worried about him all the time . . . He was a jolly kind of person, short
and fat before the drugs got to him. But by now, he was skin and bones,
walking around with this terrible cough wracking through his body
all the time. He would literally shake all over every time he coughed.
It was sad to see him like that. He was such a beautiful cat, man, and a
great trumpet player. I really loved him. I would hang with him some-
times and shoot up with him, too. . . . He never did make it.211

Jazz vocalist Carmen McRae knew Narravo well:

Fats was a real sweet guy B.H.—before horse, is what I mean. He was
jovial and always laughing; he was typical of his size. He was really
big before he got on the stuff. You should have seen him. They called
him “Fat Girl” because he was sort of a cherub, big fat jaws and a
big stomach, and he was so young, in his early twenties. He was still
in his twenties when he died. I hear he was down to something like
between 102 and 110 pounds, and he used to weigh 170–75 at least,
and he wasn’t tall, just fat, you know. He developed TB, which is
how he died, and he wasted away to nothing.212

And then there was the death of trumpeter Freddie Webster.


Webster overdosed from a “hot shot” (lethal injection) meant for
Sonny Stitt, a good friend. As Miles Davis recalled:

Sonny had been beating everybody out of their money to support


his habit. So he did it in Chicago when he and Freddie were playing
there. Whoever he beat arranged to give him some bad shit, probably
acid or strychnine. I don’t know what it was. Anyway, Sonny gave it
to Freddie [not realizing that it was poisoned], who shot it and died.
I was sick over that for a long time. We were almost brothers, me and
Freddie. I think about him, even today.213

* * *

Two additional points about heroin use by beboppers need to be


made. The first point is that not all beboppers who used heroin were
“typical junkies” or engaged in “junkie shit.” Two notable examples
are the drummers Kenny Clarke and his protégé Max Roach.
52 / heroin and music in new york city

Clarke was the house drummer at Minton’s in the early 1940s.


He began using in the late forties214 and a few years later relocated to
Paris. At this stage of his career, “he was earning enough money to
support the habit.”215 In the view of two of the women in his life—
Carmen McRae and Annie Ross, the English jazz vocalist:

[McRae:] He was tremendously discreet about his habit—I only


saw him really out of it on one occasion. He controlled it very well.
Usually, those cats, you know how they get—but not Kenny.216
[Ross:] He handled it with an amazing amount of skill and unob-
trusiveness. For a long time I didn’t know that he was hooked. He
certainly wasn’t a typical junkie. He was always very dignified, very
cool. He kept it well under control.217

Brooklyn-born Roach was a user for only a short period of time


when he was younger. According to Stan Levey, an east-coast bebop
drummer who moved to Los Angeles:

We were crazy people. Max and I were close. I loved and admired
him. He has a special gift that’s given to very few. The life? It was
all music and drugs. When we weren’t asleep, we were doing one or
the other. We went to Harlem for dope and played on 52nd Street.
That’s what we did. . . . Though Max was a junkie for a period
of time, he somehow always was cool. He dressed well, was very
polished, spoke beautifully. He played whatever game had to be
played.218

Roach recalled that Dizzy Gillespie and his wife, a nurse, helped
him go through withdrawal from his habit:

He gave me so much TLC and attention, spent hours nursing me.


His caring made me feel like somebody again after I thought I’d
blown it all away. With everything that he did for me, I felt inspired
to put all the drug crap behind me and build a life again. And I
did.219

Interviewed in 1999, when he was in his mid-seventies, Roach


said that he had

been through the whole mill. I’ve done everything everybody else
did. I don’t know if it was my parents’ prayers or what, but I gave up
jazz / 53

everything a long time ago. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I’m trying
to take care of myself in my old age.220

* * *

The second additional point about heroin use by beboppers is that


there was no dearth of beboppers who were totally turned-off to
the whole heroin scene and never used. In fact, some held especially
negative feelings about the drug. Dizzy Gillespie, for instance, “dis-
dained hard drugs”:221

I never had any desire to use hard drugs, a drug that would make
you a slave. I always shied away from anything powerful enough to
make me dependent, because realizing that everything here comes
and goes, why be dependent on any one thing?222

When he was on the road with Charlie Parker, Gillespie didn’t


like Parker’s friends: “His crowd, the people he hung out with, were
not the people I hung out with. And the guy who pushed dope would
be around.”223 Gillespie also did not like Parker’s “drug induced irre-
sponsibility,” for example, missing gigs.224
Gillespie himself only used heroin one time, and it wasn’t by
choice. He had been given heroin although he was told it was
cocaine, and his system couldn’t take it:

This particular night there must have been eighteen coke dealers
in the club, and Dizzy let one of them, a guy called Dog, sit in on
congas during the first set. Dizzy went off with Dog, and when
we go up to play the second set, Dizzy is wobbling. He starts the
first tune and collapses face forward, busting his horn. I jumped up
from the piano and turned him over, and he says, “It’s beautiful,”
and passes out.225

Like Gillespie, bebop bassist Charles Mingus used heroin only


once.226 Mingus wasn’t too impressed with beboppers who used:

Drugs didn’t make you creative. All the junkie boppers weren’t
worth a shit. . . . You had to work to be creative. Inspiration was a
great and holy gift, but you had to push and pull and work to shape
it.227
54 / heroin and music in new york city

And Horace Silver, who with Art Blakey co-formed the Jazz
Messengers, did not use mainly because of what he experienced early
in his career with the Messengers—many of whom were users:

I left [the Jazz Messengers] because of the drug addiction that was
prevalent among the band members. . . . Almost everywhere we
played, the vice squad came to check us out for drugs. I was always
worried that they would catch one of the guys holding and we’d all
get busted.228
. . . the Jazz Messengers were often late for gigs because the guys
had to cop some shit. When we were late, the club owner would
deduct money from our salary. I was getting a bit fed up with this
situation.229
Sunday night was pay night at Birdland, and all the musician junk-
ies in town knew this. . . . You had to face all these junkies outside
the club at four AM, asking you for money. They would always say,
“Can you loan me five or ten dollars until my check comes in? I’ll
pay you back.” I knew I would never get paid back if I loaned them
any money, but I would usually give them something anyway. They
were a pathetic lot, and I felt sorry for them.230

The Years Since Bebop


When bebop was first starting to be played, it was viewed as some-
what radical, although it came to be accepted by a wide range of fans
and critics. But beginning in the 1960s, other forms of jazz came
to dominate. Free jazz (sometimes referred to as experimental or
avant-garde jazz), which “began in the explorations of Cecil Taylor
and Ornette Coleman in the late ’50s,”231 was a type of jazz played
by musicians who were tired of what they saw as the restrictions
placed on their music by earlier forms of jazz and who were looking
for an opportunity for greater freedom. Post-bop —an extension of
bebop that assimilated influences from other jazz genres—began to
develop in the mid-1960s. Beginning in the 1970s, jazz fusion —jazz
mixed with other genres including rock, soul, and Latin music—
started to gain popularity. In the 1980s, Wynton Marsalis was a
leading force in the “neoclassical” jazz movement, which was mod-
eled on the music of Parker, Monk, and earlier New Orleans jazz and
performed in more formal concert settings.
jazz / 55

In the years since bebop, heroin has had a strong presence in New
York City. I noted in the previous chapter that the late 1960s and
early 1970s saw a significant increase in heroin use. While heroin was
largely supplanted by crack cocaine in the 1980s, there was an upturn
in heroin use beginning in the mid-1990s. Currently in the city, heroin
is inexpensive, widely and easily available, and of very high purity.
Yet all the evidence suggests that, since the end of the bebop
era, the number of New York City–based jazz musician users has
decreased considerably. One factor likely involved in this decline
is the image of beboppers held by jazz musicians from the “after-
bebop” years.
By the mid-1950s, as bebop’s heyday was coming to an end, what
trumpeter Clifford Brown called “a new atmosphere” was apparent
among younger jazz musicians:

A long time you weren’t anywhere if you weren’t hung on something,


but now the younger guys frown on anyone who goofs. There’s a
different feeling now. You can notice how things are cleaning up.232

In 1960, Dizzy Gillespie said in an interview:

A lot of our most talented jazz musicians are dead. And the younger
guys know that narcotics might not have been the main reason for
their deaths, but it led to most of the deaths.233

And in 1971, Art Blakey suggested that among jazz musicians, it


was no longer hip to use heroin:

It’s become old fashioned among musicians, outmoded. It’s so corny


now that cats don’t dig it anymore, which is a good thing.234

Thus, in the era after bebop, heroin was not something that was
supported and encouraged in the jazz subculture or community. The
newer jazz musician would therefore be much less likely to consider
an identity as a “bebop hipster” a desired one. While the newer musi-
cian may very well recognize the musical genius of Charlie Parker,
he would be more likely than a musician from Parker’s generation
to view heroin use as self-destructive, and less likely to believe that
heroin might make you play as great as Parker did. As a result, he
56 / heroin and music in new york city

would probably not be inclined to try to emulate the lifestyle of


someone like Parker and use heroin.
The newer-generation jazz musician would certainly be less igno-
rant of the dangers of heroin use in contrast to the old-timers. This
would especially be the case with African Americans who grew up
in the city in the 1980s and 1990s. Research has established that for
them, heroin taking had a terrible image.235 Many have seen what
heroin had done to older friends and relatives who suffered from
AIDS or wasted away in prison or died violently from overdoses, and
they have resisted the temptation of using the much stronger heroin
that appeared on city streets.
It is likely that many New York jazz musicians from the era after
bebop are like Elliot Sharp and John Zorn—two leaders of the cur-
rent downtown jazz scene—in that they are certainly informed about
heroin but don’t use. Sharp—a guitarist and saxophonist—has said
that earlier in his career, when he was studying music:

I lived in a street culture, though I wasn’t into hard drugs, I felt it


was necessary to have empirical knowledge of them. So I know a bit
about consciousness alteration and playing in rock bands and impro-
visation. It was a good balance to my formal education.236

And Zorn, the prolific avant-garde composer and multi-instru-


mentalist, over the years has cut an instrumental titled “Heroin
Fix”237 and another titled “Speedball,”238 and also at one point was
active with his band, “Painkiller.”

* * *

At the same time, there were definitely New York City–based jazz
musicians from the post-bebop era who were heroin users. One was
pianist Mal Waldron.
Waldron grew up in New York and had roots in hard bop, but over
time got active in post-bop and free jazz. He was Billie Holiday’s last
pianist and also worked with John Coltrane and Charles Mingus.
Waldron began to use in the 1950s. He felt that, in those days, using
was a “career necessity”:

If you didn’t shoot up in the afternoon, you would probably not play
on the record date that night.239
jazz / 57

The whole set-up in America was very, very, very bad. The police
would stop the musicians and search us as we came out of the clubs
after work. We had to turn our pockets inside out. After awhile, the
musicians thought . . . well, if you have the name you might as well
have the game.240

An overdose in 1963 “erased [Waldron’s] memory for playing the


piano; it was restored three years later.”241 Waldron decided he had
to leave the jazz scene in the city and lived and played in Europe for
most of the rest of his life.242

Eventually, I overdosed. I couldn’t remember my own name. My


hands were trembling, I couldn’t play the piano. I needed shock
treatments and a spinal tap to bring me back. So I just got out of
there.243

* * *

Bill Evans—one of the most influential of all jazz pianists—was an


active user for a number of years. Evans grew up in the New Jersey
suburbs and was based in New York City for most of his career.
His girlfriend during the final year and a half of his life (he died in
1980) has spoken about how Evans first got involved with heroin:

Bill didn’t talk about it. But he did say his addiction had started
before joining Miles’ sextet. Bill said he came to heroin on his own.
It was around the time he joined Miles but it wasn’t through Miles.
It happened in New York, with a group of musicians he was close
with. It may have been a very acceptable form of behavior for musi-
cians at that time. Bill had other friends who were musicians. Some
were experimenting. He joined in on it.244

In the view of one of his biographers, Evans

encountered racial discrimination [Evans was white], he suffered


from feelings of inferiority and the physical effort of touring, and
he received enticement from colleagues already hooked . . . Among
those colleagues, Philly Joe Jones was probably most to blame; it
certainly wasn’t Davis, who was upset by Bill’s craving and tried to
discourage him . . . Bill and Philly Joe became great junkie-buddies
over the years.245
58 / heroin and music in new york city

Another former girlfriend commented on why she thought Evans


would relapse after temporarily quitting heroin, which he apparently
did a number of times:

When Billy came down, when he kicked it, which he did on numer-
ous occasions, the world was—I don’t know how to say it—too
beautiful. It was too sharp for him. It’s almost as if he had to blur
the world for himself by being strung out. I had that impression all
the time.246

Another biographer has written about how Evans’s career was


impacted by hepatitis—which Evans probably acquired through
sharing needles—and his poor health generally, which was aggra-
vated by his use:

The effect was to set back the development of his career through
circumstantial complications and the continual short-term need for
more money to pay for increasing amounts of heroin. This alone
made it hard for the fledgling trio he was trying to establish to pay
its own way, and he became a less attractive proposition for first-rate
managers and agents. It would take years to resolve these matters
satisfactorily and for Evans’s career to flourish internationally in the
way it should have done much earlier.247

One of Evans’s good friends was fusion guitarist Larry Coryell. In


his autobiography, Coryell had this to say about Evans:

Bill was a heroin addict. This needs to be mentioned only to explain


some of the problems he had to deal with (because of his habit, his
fingers would swell up like hot dogs) and to understand his quirki-
ness. One time he was so high when he came into the club that he sat
down at the piano in his overcoat and never took it off for the whole
set. Sometimes we must recognize and tolerate the eccentricities of
genius.248

* * *

Drummer Elvin Jones was another heroin user from the era after
bebop. Jones moved to New York City in the mid-1950s. According
to music writer Ben Ratliff, Jones was “one of the most prodigious
heroin users in jazz to live through the 1950’s and 1960’s.”249 One
music journalist put it this way:
jazz / 59

Away from music, his interests at that time were liquor, drugs, and
women. He could drink a quart a day, shoot up six bags of heroin and
scream for more, and walk out on his wife as quickly as a groupie might
spend a set or two hanging around his drums and then ask, “Elvin, can
you fuck a woman like you’ve been fucking those drums all night?”250

* * *

Waldron, Evans, and Jones were musicians from the earlier years of
the “after bebop” era. Three users from the later generation of musi-
cians from this era were the guitarist Emily Remler, saxophonist
Michael Brecker, and pianist Kenny Kirkland.
Remler—born in New York City and raised in New Jersey—was
a folk-rock guitarist before becoming a jazz musician. She died sud-
denly on tour in Australia in 1990; her death was officially listed as
heart failure, following years of heroin use.251 British guitarist Martin
Taylor toured with Remler, and in his autobiography recalled:

It’s no secret that Emily fought a battle against heroin addiction,


which killed her in the end. I remember once, we were playing in San
Francisco and she rang my hotel room and said, “Can I come talk
to you?” I could see that she was all shaking and didn’t look well at
all. She was sweating and shaking and she asked me, “Can you lend
me 50 bucks and I’ll send it to you?” She put me in a real dilemma
because I knew that she wanted the money to go out and score some
heroin and I knew there wasn’t anything I could do. You can’t wag a
finger at someone in that condition and say, “Naughty, naughty, you
shouldn’t do that” because they have a real problem. So, on several
occasions I lent her money and she always paid me back.252

Brecker—considered among the most influential saxophone play-


ers since the bebop era—moved to New York City in his late teens.
He used heroin only when he was younger and was clean the last
25 years of his life.253 Barry Finnerty, the jazz guitarist and author
who played with Brecker and his brother Randy beginning in the
late 1970s, has talked about when he first got to know Brecker and
also about how getting clean impacted on Brecker’s career:

I was shocked when he told me about his heroin addiction. I sug-


gested he try just smoking pot, but he would say, “No, because it
leads to hard drugs, which is what I want.” He was pretty discreet
about it . . . I never once saw him really noticeably [fucked] up in
60 / heroin and music in new york city

public . . . but I knew he was a lot unhappier and troubled than most
people knew. I was worried about him.
. . . when Mike finally got clean, in 1981, as far as I know he never
relapsed once and he never looked back. He went to meetings reli-
giously and put a lot of effort into helping other people who had
addiction problems get clean as well. He was very sincere in his
motivations, he never judged you, he only wanted you to find the
same relief that he had found.
. . . his solo career really took off after he got the proverbial monkey off
his back. And look at the results: 11 Grammies, stellar performances
with the world’s top artists, etc. Not to mention a nice family with
two kids. I think it’s a great thing that after he conquered his demons,
he was able to have such a clear, focused, and productive . . . life.254

Kirkland, born and raised in New York, was a classical jazz/jazz


fusion pianist. He held the piano chair in Wynton Marsalis’s jazz
band in the early 1980s, then left to play rock music in Sting’s tour-
ing band. He died in his apartment in Queens in his early forties,
possibly from a heroin overdose. His heroin use had been an open
secret in jazz circles for years.255 Trumpeter Terence Blanchard knew
Kirkland and

knew something about his drug use, but thinking about Kenny
Kirkland and drugs is like thinking about a family member. With all
the other shit that happens to people, you just think that won’t hap-
pen. And when it does happen, you still don’t want to believe it.256

Summary and Discussion


In this chapter, we saw that both before the bebop era of the 1940s
and 1950s and also since that era heroin was available to New York
City–based jazz musicians but not widely used by them. Use was
considerably more widespread, however, during the years bebop pre-
dominated. Thus, the majority of the self-acknowledged users who
comprise the jazz sample were from the bebop era. As I have shown,
the reason for this is that bebop was a subculture with values and
attitudes that supported and encouraged heroin use and that were a
source of the bebopper identity.
Most of the first-use data for these beboppers revealed a variety of rea-
sons for starting to use heroin. There was clear support for the “Parker
hypothesis”: if you used heroin, maybe you would be able to play like
jazz / 61

him; that is, heroin would make you a better musician. But use was
not just about trying to be like Parker: the reality is more nuanced. For
some bebop users, first use was not so much about Parker in particular,
but rather about a sense of brotherhood and belonging, about a desire to
connect with, and get closer to, fellow musicians who were seen as part of
the bebop subculture. For both groups, use can be seen as being related
to the subcultural identity of the musician-user; this was an attractive
self-image that could be validated through using heroin and maintained
through interaction with other heroin-using beboppers.
Other bebop users said they used for the first time for reasons
that did not seem to be related to Parker or to wanting to be seen as a
hipster. Examples cited were that heroin was seen as just another way
of getting high; because heroin made you feel good; and to cover the
hurt and depression of losing a girlfriend.
The fact that there was considerably less use from the era before
bebop and also from the era after bebop can likewise be understood
as a matter of subculture and identity. Before bebop, heroin was
available, but marijuana was the main drug used by jazz musicians.
Older, conservative jazz musicians of this era, by and large, held
negative views of heroin, and had nothing like an anti-square hipster
image to emulate. As a result, heroin was not likely to be used.
In the era since bebop, heroin has been readily available in New
York. But jazz musicians from this era are quite likely to be aware
of the devastation heroin caused many beboppers. While they may
strongly admire Charlie Parker’s music, they would probably be less
likely than beboppers to idolize him, or want to be seen and come
to see themselves as like him. They certainly would not be likely to
begin to use heroin in the hope they could play like him.

* * *

The jazz musician users in the sample—from all three of the main
eras of jazz—reported a variety of ways that heroin impacted their
playing, creativity, and careers. Most of these users’ statements were
about the problems and troubles their heroin use led to, although
some musicians thought there were positive aspects to their use.
There was very little sense from these musicians that their heroin
use helped them to play better or made them more creative in their
music. For many of the users in the sample, heroin led to periods of
62 / heroin and music in new york city

professional decline and inactivity. They practiced less; they didn’t


work on new music—their music progress stopped, or at least slowed
down. Some clearly had their careers cut short because of their heroin
use.
Copping heroin can be a time-consuming activity that structures a
user’s life. Thus, sometimes, a user might show up late for gigs because
he was out looking for heroin, or cancel out at the last minute, or show
up looking disheveled, or not show up for a performance at all. On
stage, he might nod out or fall asleep or be too high to play. For these
reasons, a user might get fired from bands or lose out on job opportu-
nities because club owners or promoters were reluctant to hire him.
Sometimes, users were in financial difficulties because of their
heroin habits, creating serious tension with people in their lives,
including fellow performers. Users might rip them off, or con them
or borrow money and not pay them back. At least one user stole
another musician’s song. Some users were in debt to nightclub
owners, some of whom were underworld characters involved in the
drug trade and who dealt drugs to users who performed in their
clubs.
Oftentimes, users were hassled by the police. Many were arrested
for possession or other heroin-related offenses and imprisoned. With
an arrest, users lost their New York City cabaret cards, which meant
that less work was available because they were not allowed to per-
form in any club that served alcohol. Many lost time playing because
they were imprisoned due to their heroin-related arrests.
Some bebop users used only for short periods of time when they
were younger and managed to quit, while others used for many
years. Many were in poor health because of their heroin use (espe-
cially when combined with other substances), and some became too
ill to play. In some cases, heroin led to the user’s death: indirectly, for
example, by contributing to other physical illnesses, or directly, for
example, through an overdose or hotshot. Many died very young; it
is well known that when Charlie Parker died at age 34, the coroner
presumed he was at least in his mid-fifties.

* * *

Pianist Randy Weston, who grew up and lived most of his life in
Brooklyn and at one point ran a restaurant that many beboppers
jazz / 63

used to eat at, used to snort heroin when he was younger. Now in
his eighties and still performing, Weston had this view of the general
impact heroin had on the generation of young bebop musicians:

This thing [heroin] wound up spreading like a cancer. It spread


rapidly among the musicians, it spread among the people, it spread
among almost all of us involved in that scene, the young people
of that particular time, including myself . . . A lot of my guys died,
a lot of guys got sick, and this wonderful group of young musi-
cians and friends of the music that we grew up with, who had
such dignity and pride, all of a sudden heroin turned people into
thieves and idiots and it was really the devil that entered into our
community.257

* * *

Overall, the findings from this chapter support the thinking of oth-
ers who have written about the impact of heroin on jazz playing and
creativity. Thus, it was Winick’s belief that

there is absolutely no reason to believe that heroin use improves any-


one’s playing. . . . There has never been any demonstration that any
“plus” factor is added to a musician by his heroin use.258

Similarly, Tolson and Cuyjet argued:

Whatever creative benefits may have been perceived, the reality is


that for most jazz artists, particularly during the creative period
from 1940–1960, substance abuse did more harm than good, and
rather than being the road to creative genius, it was the pathway to
premature death.259

* * *

There were, however, some positive aspects to using heroin. Some


users thought that heroin helped them concentrate by blocking out
“internal noise”; it helped them to relax; and it helped build up their
confidence to perform. Some said it enabled them to practice for
long periods of time. Another positive—noted by journalist and
critic Gary Giddins—is that “heroin was a sedative that relieved
the stimulation of staying up all night every night, a requisite of
64 / heroin and music in new york city

the jazz life that wasn’t necessarily in tune with each musician’s
metabolism.”260

* * *

Tadd Dameron managed to turn a heroin-related “negative” into a


music “positive.” Dameron, a pianist, was one of the most prolific
composers and arrangers of the bebop era. He was a long-time user
in the 1940s and 1950s with “a big appetite for getting high.”261
Dameron spent time (three years) in Lexington, the US Public
Health Service prison/hospital that between the mid-1930s and the
early 1970s was one of the few publicly available drug treatment
facilities in the nation. Users were sent there because they had been
arrested and sentenced to prison (like Dameron) or they voluntarily
committed themselves and stayed to try to get clean.262 Over the
years so many musicians were in Lexington that the facility had big
bands and also several small combos.
Dameron managed to turn the time he spent in Lexington into
an opportunity to busy himself with his music:

He was able to sit down and think about himself and his music.
After a few weeks in isolation he emerged into “population” to begin
writing profusely, broadening his outlook to include “popular” num-
bers and a major religious piece . . . Tadd rekindled his enthusiasm for
composing after the recent, lost years of heroin-induced lethargy. He
used the various [Lexington] bands to try out his own new composi-
tions and also those of others, many of whom had never composed
or arranged before. He encouraged everyone to write.263
Ch a p t e r Th r e e
Roc k

A precise definition of rock music is probably beyond reach, but


there is general agreement that rock has myriad sources and influ-
ences, R&B music above all.1 What began as “rock ’n’ roll” in the
1950s and became “rock” in the 1960s today embraces many styles
and subgenres. As we saw in chapter one, rock music in New York
goes back to the birth of the genre and has a very rich history in the
city.
Since the beginning of rock music, the media has been filled with
endless stories of rock star drug indulgence. As one music journal-
ist put it: “Rock stars move in circles where drugs are, so they take
them.”2 Connections are not hard to find—groupies, fans, music
industry personnel. In Elvis Costello’s view, in the world of rock, “if
you drank all the drinks and took all the drugs you were offered, you
would die. Simple as that.”3
The list of rock stars who have been addicted to heroin in particu-
lar and who have written about it is a lengthy one. According to rock
journalist Deena Dasein:

The dirty secret is that heroin is useful for rock musicians. On tour,
it evens out the excitement of playing to exuberent, enthusiastic
crowds for an hour or two a day, and the boredom of the “hurry
up and wait” that takes up most of the time on the road . . . [It] is a
way of getting privacy, and on tour privacy is at a premium. Heroin
draws you into yourself, pulls a curtain around you, creates a private
jet. . . . And if touring is stressful, how do you handle life off the road
after constantly touring for many months or years?4

I identified 30 New York–based rock musicians, from a range


of rock subgenres, who were heroin abusers and who have talked
publicly about their use.5 In this chapter, I examine the reasons why
66 / heroin and music in new york city

these musicians used heroin; the effects heroin had on their playing,
creativity, and careers; and why heroin use was more common in
some subgenres of rock than in others. I also look at songs by these
musicians that are about or make reference to heroin to see what the
songs are saying about the drug. In this chapter, rock subgenres are
grouped into four general categories: (1) classic rock, hard rock, and
heavy metal; (2) punk, including protopunk and hardcore; (3) new
wave, no wave, and noise rock; and (4) alternative/indie rock.

Classic Rock, Hard Rock, and Heavy Metal


By “classic rock” I basically mean rock music (and music groups)
from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. “Hard rock” is rock with roots in
the blues rock and psychedelic rock of the 1960s. “Metal” is a form
of hard rock with an especially fast and hard edge to it that “came
together in bits and pieces” in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.6
New York has had an untold number of musicians and bands who
are part of these rock traditions. Three such musicians who have talked
about their heroin problems are Walter Becker, Johnny Winter, and
Leslie West. All three eventually got clean and continue to perform.
Becker, from Queens, is the guitarist from Steely Dan, a classic
rock/jazz-rock band that actually was not so much a band as a group
of mainly hired studio musicians backing up himself and musical
partner Donald Fagen, who played keyboards and sang.
Becker was a user during the 1970s. According to Fagen, Becker
had been “kind of leaping toward destruction . . . he’d be late for ses-
sions and was not that easy to deal with. Music was not his first
love at that point, I think.”7 At the end of 1979, Becker’s longtime
girlfriend died in their New York apartment from a heroin overdose/
suicide. In Becker’s own view:

The last few years of the ‘70s got a little out of control around my
place, and it really wasn’t that much fun. The career was a good orga-
nising principle for something that was pretty chaotic in other ways.
But eventually that didn’t work either, and when the dust had settled
its was 1980 and it was time to clean up my act, so I ended up coming
here [Hawaii] because I wanted a complete change of pace.8

Steely Dan had at least two songs about heroin: 1975’s “Dr. Wu,”
and “Time Out of Mind,” from 1980. Like many Steely Dan songs,
rock / 67

however, the lyrics aren’t always perfectly clear in their meaning. In


“Dr. Wu,” the narrator says:

I’ve been strung out here all night


I’ve been waiting for the taste9

But then things become much more cryptic, and one begins to wonder
what the story is really about. Donald Fagen explained it this way:

[A] girl meets somebody who leads another kind of life and she’s
attracted to it. Then she comes under the domination of some-
one else and that results in the ending of the relationship or some
amending of the relationship. The “someone else” is a dope habit
personified as Doctor Wu.10

“Time Out of Mind” seems much more straightforwardly about


heroin. Throughout, the narrator speaks of the pleasures of “chasing
the dragon,” i.e., smoking heroin.

Tonight when I chase the dragon


The water will change to cherry wine11

* * *

Winter, the Texas-born blues-rock guitarist, has lived in the New


York area since the 1970s. He began using in the 1960s, and wasn’t
shy about his use: “I didn’t hide it at all. I didn’t have any reason to
hide it—I was real upfront about it.”12 Winter’s experience when he
began using was that “smack just sneaks up on you, without you
realizin’ it. Pretty soon you just can’t get up in the morning without
it.”13 And then, when he was trying to get off of heroin:
It messes with your head. It’s horrible, just horrible. There’s no way
to explain how bad it makes you feel. You just don’t feel like you have
any control over anything. Things you would normally love, you
don’t care about anymore. It’s the worst feeling in the world and you
can’t make it go away. Except without doing more drugs.14

* * *

West was lead guitarist for Mountain, the New York metal band
formed in the 1960s. He used heroin for about six years, “skinpopping”
68 / heroin and music in new york city

instead of “mainlining” in order to use less of the drug.15 At one


point “his royalties were being diverted to his grandfather in order
to prevent him from blowing them on heroin.”16 According to West:
“Heroin really fucks you up. Especially that Chinese shit. Brown
sugar, they called it. Getting off that stuff was the greatest accom-
plishment of my life.”17

* * *

In addition to Becker, Winter, and West, two other “classic rockers”


who were users—both English—are included as part of the sample.
John Lennon of the Beatles moved to New York in 1971, after the
Beatles breakup, and lived most of his last nine years in the city.
Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has lived in the New York
metropolitan area for well over 25 years.
Lennon started using heroin prior to moving to New York; his
wife Yoko Ono had used heroin before he did, and he got interested:
“John kept saying, ‘That must have been so interesting—what was
it like?’ He never stopped hounding me about it.”18 When asked in
a 1970 interview about his experience with heroin, Lennon had this
to say:

It just was not too much fun. I never injected it or anything. We


sniffed a little when we were in real pain. We got such a hard time
from everyone, and I’ve had so much thrown at me and at Yoko,
especially at Yoko. We took heroin because of what the Beatles and
others were doing to us. But we got out of it.19

Lennon wrote one song that was definitely about heroin and one
song that might have been. “Cold Turkey,” from 1969, is about his
attempt at withdrawal:

I promise you anything


Get me out of this hell20

Some think that “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” from 1968, is


about heroin injection:

When I hold you in my arms


And I feel my finger on your trigger21
rock / 69

Lennon, who claimed he never injected heroin, said it wasn’t, and that
the song was just a reaction he had to a gun magazine he had seen
that had the phrase “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” on the cover.22
Keith Richards has been much more open about his heroin use
than Lennon, having talked and written about it quite a bit, espe-
cially in his recent autobiography, Life.
Richards doesn’t clearly recall the first time he used heroin:

It was probably slipped in with a line of coke, in a speedball. . . . If


you were around people who were used to doing that in one line,
you didn’t know. You found out later on. “That was very interest-
ing last night. What was that? Oh.” That’s how it creeps up on you.
Because you don’t remember. That’s the whole point of it. It’s sud-
denly there.23

He had a pretty good sense, however, of the reasons why he con-


tinued to use it:

I think it’s maybe to do with working on the stage. The high levels of
energy and adrenaline require, if you can find it, a sort of antidote.
And I saw smack as just becoming part of that.24
I never particularly liked being that famous. I could face people
easier on the stuff, but I could do that with booze too. It isn’t really
the whole answer. I also felt I was doing it not to be a “pop star.”
There was something I didn’t really like about that end of what I was
doing, the blah blah blah. That was very difficult to handle, and I
could handle it better on smack.25
For all of its downside—I’d never recommend it to anybody—
heroin does have its uses. Junk really is a great leveler in many ways.
Once you’re on that stuff, it doesn’t matter what comes your way;
you can handle it.26

Richards definitely injected, but he never mainlined:

No, the whole delicacy of mainlining was never for me. I was never
looking for that flash; I was looking for something to keep me going.
If you do it in the vein, you get an incredible flash, but then you
want more in about two hours. And also you have tracks, which I
couldn’t afford to show off . . . I used to shoot it up in the muscles.27

During the height of Richards’s use, in the late 1960s to early 1970s,
the Rolling Stones recorded a number of classic albums—including
70 / heroin and music in new york city

Exile on Main St. a double album. But Richards didn’t see much of a
connection between his use and his producing music:

I might have changed a few chords, a few verses here and there, but
I never felt any diminishment or any extra lift as far as what I was
doing was concerned. I didn’t look upon smack as an aid or a detrac-
tion from what I was doing. . . . in certain cases it helps you be more
tenacious about something and follow it further than you would
have, than if you just threw up your hands and said, “oh, I can’t fig-
ure this one out right now.” On the stuff sometimes you would just
nag at it and nag at it until you’d got it.28

But even though Richards thought heroin may have helped him con-
centrate to finish a song, he said, “this is not a recommendation. . . . It’s
certainly not the road to music genius or anything else.”29 In fact,

I did get to a point where the music was secondary. I was devot-
ing most of my time to scoring and taking dope. I was completely
out of it, and Mick had to cover for me. He took over completely. I
managed to make gigs and write some songs, but Mick took care of
everything through most of the seventies.30

As for songs about heroin,

apart from “Sister Morphine” and a few odd references to coke, we


never really wrote songs about drugs. They would only crop up in
songs as they did in life, here and there.31

Protopunk, Punk, and Hardcore


New York was “the first home of American Punk.”32 It was devel-
oped by a small group of bands, based in the Lower East Side, start-
ing around 1974. At roughly the same time in England, punk began
as a working-class movement “fired up by the class discontent erupt-
ing throughout the country in reaction to both 1970s economic
malaise and the repressive ideals of the Conservative party and its
exemplar, Margaret Thatcher.”33 Punk also emanated from bands in
other locales, especially Detroit and Australia.
Irrespective of where it came from, punk music was simple, fast
rock ’n’ roll, drawing influence from the rock music of the 1950s.
Punks attacked mainstream rock music for having grown fat, old,
rock / 71

and bland and, in particular, reacted against “the excesses of mid-


1970’s rock: long instrumental solos, complicated song forms, and
forthright displays of virtuosity.”34
Protopunk bands were those that preceded punk—precursor bands
that punks considered influential.35 Many influential New York punk
predecessors and early punk bands played Max’s Kansas City, a prime
breeding ground for punk during the mid-to-late 1970s; eventually
the New York scene coalesced around CBGB (Country, Bluegrass,
and Blues) on the Bowery. For many New York protopunk and punk
musicians, heroin was the drug of choice. Hardcore, also centered in
the Lower East Side, was 1980s punk—faster, louder, and more aggres-
sive than early punk; we’ll see that there was drug use in the New York
hardcore scene but less heroin than in protopunk and punk.

* * *

The Velvet Underground was probably the ultimate New York pro-
topunk band. Formed in 1965 and disbanded by 1970, it started life
as part of a touring Andy Warhol performance group, with dancers
and a light show, called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.36 While
there was definitely heroin use in the band, the Velvets were prob-
ably more notorious for their songs about heroin than any use by
band members.
Lou Reed was the guitarist and main singer and songwriter.
Until he cleaned up in the early 1980s, he was a multiple drug user,
although speed (which he liked to shoot) and alcohol were his favor-
ite drugs. Heroin was part of his drug menu, although he was never
a full-blown addict:

I had a toe in that situation. Enough to see the tunnel, the vortex.
That’s how I handled my problems. That’s how I grew up, how I did
it, like a couple hundred thousand others.37

John Cale, who cofounded the band with Reed, played viola and
many other instruments. Before he met Reed, he had used plenty of
drugs but had never injected heroin:

I was squeamish about needles. Lou took care of that by shooting me


up for the first time . . . This was magic for two guys as uptight and
distanced from their surroundings as Lou and I. It opened a channel
72 / heroin and music in new york city

between us and created the conspiratorial us-against-them attitude


which would become a hallmark of our band.38

While there is debate about whether some Velvet songs were actu-
ally about heroin, there was no debate about two songs: “Heroin” and
“I’m Waiting for the Man,” both from 1967. Reed wrote “Heroin” as
a student at Syracuse University, during what he called a very “nega-
tive, strung out, violent, aggressive” period in his life.39

I’m goin’ to try for the kingdom if I can


’Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man
When I put a spike into my vein
Then I tell you things aren’t quite the same40

According to Reed, the 7-plus-minute “Heroin” is

very close to the feeling you get from smack. It starts on a certain
level, it’s deceptive. You think you’re enjoying it. But by the time
it hits you, it’s too late. You don’t have any choice. It comes at you
harder and faster and keeps on coming. The song is every thing that
the real thing is doing to you.41

“I’m Waiting for the Man” is about junkie anticipation—a “white


boy” goes uptown to the center of Harlem to meet up with his heroin
dealer; “the first thing you learn is that you always have to wait.”42
“Sister Ray,”43 from 1968, is less clearly about heroin than the other
two songs but, according to Reed:

It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total
debauchery and decay. I like to think of Sister Ray as a transvestite
smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some
sailors home with them, shooting up on smack, and having this orgy
when the police appear.44

* * *

And then there was Nico. Never a full member of the Velvets, the
German model and actress was added by Warhol to their first album
mainly as a “pretty front.”45 After that she began a career as a solo
artist. A heroin user for many years, Nico has been characterized as
“something of a celebrity in narcotic circles. Queen of the Junkies.
rock / 73

She was famous within a limited milieu, i.e., heroin users and those
who thought self destruction a romantic vocation.”46
Nico began to use “because I had too many thoughts” and heroin
“made my good thoughts run slower and my bad thoughts go away.”47
She was introduced to injection through her “artistic friends,” and
“like everyone who starts, I did not expect to be addicted. I thought
I was strong in these matters.”48
After New York, Nico moved to Manchester, England, in the early
1980s. When she first got there, her new manager “was shocked to
learn that she was reduced to the state of a 40-year-old junkie with-
out a penny to her name, sleeping on other peoples’ shabby floors.”49
She toured off and on; one of her band members recalls:

She didn’t have many accessible veins left. They were becoming
harder to find, collapsing (or cowering) beneath the surface of the
skin. Now she was injecting into her hands—a very conspicuous act
for a celebrity junkie. She would cover up her scars with bits of rag,
especially if the audience was close to the stage.50

One of her biographers said that “she would often perform in a


state of withdrawal which would end in tears on stage—‘Why am I
doing this shit? I can’t carry on.’”51 Nico died in 1988 from a brain
aneurysm.

* * *

In the protopunk years, there were a number of New York bands


that were less successful than the Velvet Underground but were nev-
ertheless cult favorites in downtown New York. Television was one
of these bands. Richard Hell, the bass player, and guitarist Richard
Lloyd were both users.
Hell is credited as a creator of a New York punk look or style that
included ripped clothing and spikey hair and wrote “(I Belong to
the) Blank Generation,” one of the first punk anthems.52 For Hell,
what started out as an “occasional vacation” eventually became a
“regular routine”53 and “paradise on earth.”54

I didn’t have any reservations about junk. It was just the ideal state
as far as I was concerned. Not only did it physically make you feel
as good as you possibly could—after all, it’s a painkiller—but it felt
74 / heroin and music in new york city

like the fulfillment of all my fantasies, the way you got to dream but
direct your dreams like a movie director . . . 55
Sticking a needle in my arm felt adult, like I was really in charge of
myself finally, running my own destiny, out from under. It was more
independent than any other choice I’d ever made.56

Lloyd also has spoken about the pleasure he got from heroin:

You could do dope, and then you could drink all night, and you
wouldn’t shake at all, you wouldn’t get drunk, nothing would hurt,
you could play guitar like you’ve never played before, you could fuck
for six or seven hours, straight—you know, like a machine.57

Punk thrived in a New York City in the mid-1970s that was


“synonymous with sleaze, aggression, sex and decadence. This was
the New York of Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver.”58 Hell has vividly
described the cityscape during this time:

The streets of the city were smelly with both garbage—sanitation


workers were striking—and dog shit (the scoop law wasn’t passed
until 1978). On the Lower East Side, people assumed their apart-
ments would be burglarized every two or three years . . . Drug-dealing
gangs ruled districts.59
The Bowery was, of course, literally synonymous with drunkenness
and dereliction, and, only four months before we debuted there,
CBGB had been the Palace Bar, adjunct drink dump to the Palace
Hotel flophouse next door . . . It was also a favorite hangout for the
Third Street Hells Angels club.60

The Lower East Side, well established as a heroin marketplace


since the late 1920s, in the late 1970s was on its way to becoming the
“drug capital of America.”61 According to Hell, in 1975,

whole local blocks, in the course of a year or two, morphed from dwell-
ings into darkness into drug hives. Hordes of junkies slipped money
under hallway doors in abandoned buildings, and tiny taped-shut glass-
ine envelopes were slid back . . . The best brands would draw crowds of
shoppers in lines that wound down tenement stairs and halfway up the
burned-out block, in a single file kept orderly by the dealers’ crew.62

Lloyd once described waiting in line to cop heroin during these


years:
rock / 75

In the morning you would see people lined up, like for a hit movie—in
a line fifty feet deep—with people that sold the dope running up and
down the line saying, “Have your money ready, we’ll be open in ten
minutes.” You know, “No singles, you gotta have fives or tens” . . . And
they would have a menu, like, “Today we have brown dope, white
dope, and cocaine.” You know, “Got somethin’ special today, you’re all
gonna be real happy” . . . I mean, you’d be talking to your neighbor, like
reading the newspaper, waiting for the dope house to open . . . I used to
like to go between sets—run out and do dope and come back.63

Hell, who stopped taking drugs in the mid-1980s, has also writ-
ten about the impact heroin had on his career. He recalls his tour of
England with his band at the time, the Voidoids:

I was horribly junk-sick for nearly all of the tour except the days in
London. I hadn’t experienced serious withdrawal before and I didn’t
know how to handle it. I was sleepless, in full-body pain, and sweat-
ing and vomiting and spurting diarrhea.64

He felt that it got to the point where the Voidoids were just “limp-
ing along, essentially on standby— . . . my drug addiction and general
loss of initiative were part of the problem for them.”65 He eventually
came to feel that “I let my band disintegrate.”66
Hell opined on the effect of addiction on an addict’s work:

It reduces production and increases self-indulgence. A narcotics


addict doesn’t demand as much of himself as he would if he were
straight. If an addicted artist is very, very good, a reasonable amount
of interesting work can be done, but it will probably be fragmentary
and rambling, and chances are there will be far more unrealized or
abandoned projects than there would have been otherwise.67

* * *

The Dictators was another of the New York protopunk bands who
were favorites downtown. Handsome Dick Manitoba, the frontman,
was a user for about 10 years.68 The following is his view of heroin:

Best drug ever. No matter what drug they invent, what I might have
missed . . . I went out with a World Championship ring on my finger.
I went out winning the World Series and I retired in 1983. Heroin
was the granddaddy of them all.69
76 / heroin and music in new york city

But along with it being best-feeling drug of all time, it was probably
the worst choice I could’ve made. I was in my teens, trying to figure
out how to negotiate life—this was the opposite of what I needed in
order to survive. Resilience and toughness are tools you need to get
by in life; heroin smooths it all out and gives you the feeling that
everything’s all right, even when it’s not.70

Andy Shernoff, the bass player, once commented on how music


industry executives reacted to their heroin use:

We got fouled up because of the so-called management. People were


fine with us doing pounds of cocaine. As soon as they found out we
were doing smack, they fled. Those were the days. Nowadays, when
an artist gets fucked up, you put him in rehab.71

* * *

Robert Quine is also part of the story of heroin and protopunk in


New York. Quine, the guitarist who collaborated with many New
York protopunk musicians, most notably Reed and Hell, didn’t have
a heroin problem. But in 2004, he committed suicide by heroin
overdose, depressed after the death of his wife. As Hell wrote in his
obituary:

Quine never injected drugs, but this was an injection and one con-
taining way too many bags of heroin to have been accidental. By his
own avowal, he’d survived a similar try this past winter. He didn’t
want to live after the completely unexpected death by heart attack
of his wife, Alice, last August. They’d been together since the mid-
seventies.72

* * *

The New York Dolls stood at the crossroads of protopunk and punk.
Basically a glam rock band, playing “high-energy, sluttish Manhattan
rock ’n’ roll,”73 the Dolls debuted in 1972 and fell apart in 1975.74 They
never achieved much mainstream success and, in fact, were described
by Punk Magazine as “one of the greatest rock and roll bands in the
history of un-popular music ever.”75 Two band members—guitarist
Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan—were among the most
notorious heroin users over the years in the New York protopunk and
rock / 77

punk scenes. Speaking of Thunders, Dolls guitarist Syl Sylvain once


offered the view that “[there is a] certain charisma about a guy that
everybody thinks is about to drop dead.”76
The Dolls’ collapse in 1975 was largely about Thunders’s and
Nolan’s heroin use. They were on a mini-tour of small clubs in
Florida; in the view of frontman David Johansen:

It was a drag being on the road and they couldn’t cope. As long as
they had stuff, everything was OK . . . John and Jerry would have to
go back to New York and score. It got kind of ridiculous. By the end,
in some redneck outpost in Florida, it was, like, this is impossible.
Let’s not do this any more.77

After the collapse, Thunders and Nolan put together the


Heartbreakers with Richard Hell, who had just left Television. Hell
stayed in the Heartbreakers for less than a year before leaving to
form the Voidoids; after Hell left, the Heartbreakers stayed together
as a functioning unit only for another couple of years and ended up
recording only one studio album. But they were an important band
in New York punk history because, when the Dolls morphed into
the Heartbreakers, protopunk transitioned into punk.
Thunders, an original Doll, had started using when he was 18,
when the Dolls were just forming; for Thunders, heroin was about
having a good time:

I tried it and liked it, and in some ways I don’t regret ever having
used it. I . . . I loved taking drugs, right? I thought I was having a real
good time, taking drugs and playing rock and roll.78

Jerry Nolan became the Dolls drummer after the original drum-
mer (Billy Murcia) died of drowning/choking in a bathtub after
a night of partying that involved mixing alcohol and Mandrax,
a British quaalude. Nolan spoke of when he first starting using
heroin:

[It was] back at Max’s Kansas City. My roadie in the Dolls said,
“Jerry, someone just gave me some heroin, would you like to try it?” I
had never done it, so we went in the bathroom and did a little snoot.
It didn’t affect me so much, didn’t leave much of a memory. I didn’t
do it again for months.79
78 / heroin and music in new york city

But after not using for a few months,

all of a sudden—this is after the second Dolls album, 74, 75—we’re


on tour and in Brussels. Then me and Johnny somehow got a bundle
of pure Chinese rocks. Chinese rocks are tan and rocky; it looks
exactly like cat litter. We crushed it up, snorted it, and got fucked
up. Me and Johnny took a real like to it.80

When Nolan was dope sick, but had to perform:

no matter how sick I was, no matter how much energy I lost, when
we got on that fucking stage I got it together. The only thing I could
do was play drums. I could whack them so hard I surprised myself.
Sometimes the sticks would break in half and go flying. I had such
pride that I had such power in my skinny little body. Its a great
feeling.81

Thunders died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in a


New Orleans boarding house in 1991. The police never fully inves-
tigated, apparently writing it off as a heroin overdose, but there were
only trace amounts of heroin in his system. Less than a year later,
Nolan died while in a coma brought on by a stroke.82
Guitarist Walter Lure was in the Heartbreakers almost from the
very beginning. He, too, was a user, but he got out of the life and
became a Wall St. commodities broker and still plays music. As Lure
once put it: “We did get a reputation for drug-taking, but then we
did do a lot of drugs.”83 He once described his relationship with
Thunders and Nolan in this way: “We had a dope addict relation-
ship. We didn’t even bother playing guitars when we were hanging
out.”84 Looking back,

we were all sucked into the lifestyle to varying degrees and it took
quite a few years of adjusting before I got back into a semblance of
normalcy. I was lucky to have landed a few alternative lifestyles to
sort of replace the ones that were too damaging. I also was fortunate
enough to get a job and actually enjoy the stuff I was doing on Wall
Street.85

Lure wrote two classic New York dopefiend songs: “One Track
Mind” (with Richard Hell) in 1977 (“I got tracks on my arms, tracks
on my face”);86 and “Too Much Junkie Business” from 1982:
rock / 79

Running to the bathroom fixin up the shot


Tie it up shoot it up bang it up blow it up
Too much junkie business87

Referring to the latter song, Lure says that “Johnny would just stick
his name on it years later because he liked it so much and he wished
he’d wrote it, even though I actually had.”88
Lure recalled some Heartbreakers shows when Thunders was very
high:

John would be unconscious in the dressing room before the show


and we would go on without him . . . [but] no matter how messed up
he was, he would still manage to stumble down to the stage by the
second song and plug in. He never missed a whole show when he
was in the building. We did have to pull the plug on his amp once or
twice when he was too screwed up to even play but he would always
get to the stage.89

Another story about Thunders and heroin involved Keith Streng


and Jan-Marek Pakulski, from the Fleshtones, a garage rock band
formed in Queens in 1976 that still tours. They were performing
in Paris, and one night Thunders wanted to play with them, but
for a variety of reasons they didn’t want this to happen. They came
up with a plan to detour Thunders. Pakulski had heard that at
the time Thunders was clean and sober. “I had really good, heavy
duty brown dope that you didn’t need to shoot”90 and Streng sug-
gested that he offer Thunders a line. The thick line laid out for
Thunders

would’ve dropped a horse. I was doing a match head and that was
enough to get me fucked up. Johnny just snorted the whole thing up
and he said, “Thanks, man, that was great.” Well, within a couple of
minutes he was reduced to a drooling pile of shit. He was sitting in
the chair, and his chin was on his chest, and he can’t talk because he
had no tolerance, he’d been detoxed.91

The Heartbreakers were often blamed for introducing heroin


into the English punk scene. They were part of the 1976 Anarchy
Tour, with the Sex Pistols headlining. Until they arrived, the main
drug for English punks was sulfates, that is, amphetamines.92 Glen
80 / heroin and music in new york city

Matlock, the original Sex Pistols bassist, met the Heartbreakers for
the first time at rehearsals:

They looked very New York, dressed up like Italian spivs. Musically
they blew us away with how tight they were and everyone was gob
smacked by the guitars . . . there hadn’t been heroin on the punk
scene until The Heartbreakers turned up.93

The Clash commemorated the Heartbreakers visit in their “The


City of the Dead”:

Don’t you know where to cop


That’s what New York Johnny said
You should get to know your town
Just like I know mine94

According to photographer/friend Bob Gruen, one thing Thunders


and Nolan liked about England was that

it was easier to be a junkie there. In America it was a hustle, whereas


in England you could get certified and receive a prescription supply.
You could buy fresh needles, all kinds of codeine and cough syrups
with opium in them—all over the counter.95

* * *

By most accounts, the Ramones was one of the two most important
bands in punk rock history (the other was England’s Sex Pistols).
One music journalist described them as “arguably the band who cre-
ated, or at least first articulated, New York 70s punk.”96 In English
punk rocker Marco Pirroni’s view: “The Ramones were just bril-
liant. They really did invent their own punk style and they gave
punk its speed . . . It was the Ramones who took everything one step
further and simplified it even more. Apart from that, they wrote
great songs.”97 The Ramones stayed together as a band (with various
drummers over time) for well over 20 years.
Bassist Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member (in 1974) and one
of the band’s two major songwriters (the other was frontman Joey),
was the only one of the original band members who was a heroin
user. He first used in high school in Germany:
rock / 81

There were lots of dealers around the Bahnhof Zoo area. They
would fill the hypodermic needles from big plastic bottles of liquid
morphine. The German dope was strange, but it was fun. It felt like
you were getting an electric shock when you shot it up. Then you
went completely numb.98

From Germany, Dee Dee’s family moved to Forest Hills in


Queens and “I caught my first habit by the age of 21.”99

It was heroin that would get me through the day. Early on I could
sense the big problem with narcotics was that they tended to lead to
crime. If you use heroin, you catch a habit and end up a slave to the
drug. Sooner or later you start to lead a double life and lie for drugs
and dollars until you eventually become consumed by the whole
experience and take on a new identity as a criminal misfit.100

Dee Dee died of a heroin overdose in 2002. The prevailing think-


ing was that it was accidental—he took too much heroin after being
clean for a while—thinking he could handle the old dose, which
he couldn’t because his tolerance had gone down when he wasn’t
using.101 Overdoses commonly result from impurities that are mixed
with heroin, which produce adverse reactions in some injectors, or
from mixtures of heroin and other drugs. But, sometimes, appar-
ently like with Dee Dee, too much heroin simply overwhelms the
body’s responses.
Both Dee Dee and Johnny Thunders went to their graves argu-
ing over who wrote 1976’s “Chinese Rocks,” “the de facto anthem
of New York City junkie rock”102 about going to the streets to score
heroin:

I’m living on chinese rocks


All my best things are in hock103

According to Walter Lure, Dee Dee had written it, with Richard
Hell adding a verse. While the Heartbreakers had no problem record-
ing or performing the song, the Ramones wouldn’t, because they
didn’t want any songs about heroin.104 Johnny Ramone explained it
in this way in a 1977 interview:

Hey, lookit, we don’t wanna do no songs ’bout heroin. I mean, there’s


too much ugliness going around in the world and it’s bad enough us
82 / heroin and music in new york city

singin’ ’bout killin’ people and beating ’em up. I mean, heroin kills
people. You gotta draw the line somewhere.105

Johnny was not shy, however, about drug songs, especially songs
about inhalants, a punk favorite, including 1976’s “Now I Wanna
Sniff Some Glue”106 and 1977’s “Carbona Not Glue,”107 about
a brand of cleaning fluid. The Ramones eventually did record
“Chinese Rocks” in 1980, although the Ramones version was called
“Chinese Rock” (no “s” on the end).108

* * *

Another band that regularly played at CBGB in the mid-1970s was


Mink DeVille. Willie DeVille, front man and songwriter for the
band, was a user from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s:

I did some great shows behind it. They were good shows because
they were just so laid-back that they were soulful, not because I was
smacked out . . . Then I saw, like man, What am I getting into? It’s
like some comic book—it’s like getting off, getting on stage, then
coming back, getting off, going to sleep.109

* * *

The protopunk and punk bands that have been the focus of dis-
cussion so far were, by and large, homegrown in New York. But
many proto/punk rockers who were fixtures in the New York scene
during the heyday of the 1970s and who were heroin users started
their music careers in well-known bands from other cities and then
migrated to New York. Of these, Iggy Pop is probably the best
known.
Iggy was frontman for the Stooges, formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor,
Michigan. He is legendary for his copious drug use, including a full-
blown heroin habit and his outlandish stage performances. He got
into heroin because it brought “welcome ease”:

I always felt the group could work harder . . . I always felt it incumbent
on me to do certain things for everyone, and there was a resentment.
It became a weight. And a great excuse. And it’s only an excuse.
Honestly, there were tensions at that time, the amount of acid I was
rock / 83

taking, things like this . . . it became a burden on the psyche, frankly.


Heroin was a great way to calm down. And it was around.110

The Stooges’ stage shows were legendary for Iggy’s energy and
intensity. But not all of their shows were like this. Danny Fields,
the Stooges’ manager, recalled the time when before going on stage,
Iggy was

waiting for his dealer, to cop, intent on getting his shot of heroin
before he went on. But he had no money. So he went to the VIP
booths one at a time and explained the situation . . . He got more
than enough money. He stood off to the side and shot up. The lights
went down, the music went up, he stood onstage and collapsed.
Without a note being sung. He’d OD’d in front of everyone. And
had to be carried off.111

Iggy sang and wrote (with David Bowie) 1977’s “China Girl,”
considered by some to be a “heroin song,” as “china white” has long
been a type of heroin, and the lyrics speak to the addict’s need for a
morning “wake up” shot:

Wake up in the morning.


Where’s my little China Girl?112

Others say that the song is about an Asian woman Iggy fell for at
the time he was recording the song. Nile Rodgers, who produced
the song, suggests that if the song is about drugs, it might be about
speedballing—combining heroin and cocaine—since cocaine has
often been referred to as “girl.”113
Iggy cleaned up many years ago and has produced music steadily
since the mid-1970s as a solo act and with the regrouped Stooges.
Interviewed recently in The New York Times and asked about his
health, “considering your longtime heroin abuse and your various
accidental and self-inflicted performance injuries,” Iggy said that he
was

a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it’s been nice that
no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I’m a more
than moderately healthy 65 years old male who has gotten away with
a lot of stuff.114
84 / heroin and music in new york city

Another migrant from Michigan who relocated to New York (in


the 1980s) was Wayne Kramer, guitarist and founding member of
Detroit’s protopunk MC (Motor City) 5. Kramer, who still performs
and composes music, recalled the pain he was in when the MC5,
a band made up of friends who grew up together, broke up in 1972:

It was so painful and so ugly that nobody talked to one another. . . . So


I just packed up my guitar and went to the dope house, because
the dope kills the pain, and I didn’t have to deal with anything.
Of course, when you got that kind of pain, it opens the door for
all kinds of funky behavior . . . I became a criminal after the band
broke up. I was doing burglaries, dealing, and fencing TVs, guns,
and drugs . . . I had this hole that had to get filled, from the loss of
my band, so I filled it up with dope and crime.115

Cheetah Chrome was the lead guitarist and Stiv Bators was the
frontman of Cleveland’s Rocket from the Tombs, which morphed
into the New York–based Dead Boys and became stalwarts of the
CBGB scene. Cheetah was a user for many years:

Life became a constant chase for drugs. I couldn’t play without them,
and if I had to rehearse but couldn’t find any dope or any money for
dope, well, I just didn’t rehearse.116

He described how easy it was to buy heroin on Eldridge Street


near CBGB in 1979:

There was something like thirty different dope spots on one block,
open from 7 am to 10 pm. Some were in apartments, where the look-
outs let you up and you slid your money under the door. Some were
in “social clubs,” where you could go in fifteen at a time and buy
from a guy at a table. The dope came in glassine bags with different
colors of tape on them—black, red, yellow, and blue. It was all very
convenient and only about three blocks from CBGB.117

Bators left New York in the early 1980s and kept making music
until 1990, when he was killed by a speeding taxi driver on the
streets of Paris.118 Evidently, he never had the same kind of problems
with heroin as many other New York punk rockers; according to one
music writer, he “never got reduced to pitiful junkie state . . . and was
never too fucked up to perform.”119 Perhaps one reason he went a
rock / 85

little slower on the heroin in comparison to some other punk rockers


relates to a belief he had about the drug, as reported by Hanoi Rocks
singer Michael Monroe: “Heroin is the obligatory tattoo of a non-
conformist. It immediately invalidates its existence by making him
a conformist.”120 Indeed, it’s likely that the last thing that Bators
wanted to be, or to be seen as, was a conformist.

* * *

Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols’ bassist with the iconic punk look, must
be part of the story of heroin and punk in New York, even though
he lived in the city for only a short while, having relocated after leav-
ing the Pistols. He had used speed but not heroin until he met up
with Thunders and Nolan of the Heartbreakers when they came to
England as part of the Anarchy Tour.121 According to Nolan:

One time I shot Sid up backwards, pointing the needle down the
vein rather than up. He didn’t know you could do that. It scared the
shit out of him, but he didn’t want to say nothing.122

Nolan and Vicious stayed connected. When the Sex Pistols


breakup was officially announced, Sid was in a hospital in Queens,
New York, recovering from a methadone overdose, after Nolan had
introduced him to his methadone clinic.123
Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook felt that “Sid moved from speed
to heroin pretty quickly. It took him over.”124 Sid once described
going through heroin withdrawal in this way:

You can’t get comfortable and you sweat. You’re boiling hot and you
pour with sweat and your nose dribbles and all of a sudden you get
the colds and the sweat turns to fucking ice on you and you put a
jumper on and then you’re boiling hot and you take it off and you
get cold again. Like, you just can’t win. You lie down, you sit up. It
drives you insane.125

Famously, Sid was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy
Spungeon in the Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1978. “There were
no witnesses to the killing, but evidence pointed to Sid, who was
duly arrested and charged with her murder.”126 The circumstances
of what happened have never been clear, but theories abound: a
86 / heroin and music in new york city

violent squabble over drugs, a drug deal gone wrong, drugged out
thieves, a suicide pact gone awry?127 Sid managed to get bailed out of
Rikers Island jail, but then got rearrested on an assault charge. At a
party to celebrate his release on bail from that charge, he overdosed
and died. Perhaps, like Dee Dee Ramone, Sid accidentally took too
much heroin after being clean—in his case, following two months
of enforced withdrawal in jail.128
Cheetah Chrome remembers when Sid was out on bail:

We did some dope in one of the dressing rooms. It was the only real
conversation I think we ever had—Nancy had dominated any oth-
ers. “He is a really nice guy,” I was surprised to find myself thinking.
He was filling me in a bit on how his case was going, and I asked
him at one point if he thought he’d done it. He looked me right in
the eye and said, “I don’t know.” And I could tell he didn’t. The poor
schmuck never had a clue about anything. I never saw him again.129

* * *

Two New York punk rockers who came up after the original punk
era but who were true to its spirit and who were users were GG
Allin and STZA. Allin, singer/songwriter of the Murder Junkies,
was known for his bizarre performances and stage antics such as
defecating and chasing the audience with clumps of feces in each
hand and claiming he would kill himself on stage.130 He died in his
sleep in 1993 apparently from an accidental heroin overdose after a
gig. Allin recalled a show in New York in 1989:

I had done, like, tons of heroin. About 2 in the morning I got up and
tumbled down a flight of stairs and broke my ribs, got on the stage
and completely passed out. I was just pretty disgusted with myself
at that performance. And a lot of people thought it was the classic
moment. I was pretty disgusted with it because I just wanted to do
better.131

STZA, songwriter and guitarist in various ska-punk bands since


the late 1990s, has been open about his heroin use and also about
his participation in the Lower East Side squat scene, which began in
the 1980s when activists took over and lived in abandoned proper-
ties and over the years transformed them into permanent housing
rock / 87

and became legal owners.132 To STZA, both are related to the issue
of freedom:

I care about freedom . . . I just want to be free to do what I want to


do; I want other people to be free to do what they want to do. That’s
all that it comes down to.133

He has written at least one ode to heroin: 2003’s “Gimme Heroin”:

I’m puttin the hero back in heroin,


cuz I’m happier walkin dead134

* * *

Hardcore was 1980s’ punk: faster, louder, and more aggressive than
early punk. The hardcore scene developed first in Washington and
Los Angeles, and then in the mid-1980s in New York. Like punk,
New York hardcore was centered on the Lower East Side, at clubs
such as CBGB and A7 and later around ABC No Rio. New York had
dozens of hardcore bands. The Beastie Boys started out as a hardcore
band before becoming a rap group. The Cro-Mags, who began in the
early 1980s and still perform, typify hardcore in the sense that they
have been much more explicitly political than first-wave punk bands
from the 1970s, in their case with members who were practicing Hare
Krishnas and often singing about Krishna Consciousness.135
Hardcore, by and large, denounced the heroin lifestyle of early
punk. According to Roger Miret, vocalist of Agnostic Front, a semi-
nal New York hardcore band, New York hardcore kids liked PCP:
“Angel dust was THE drug. We were street kids. We were livin’ in
the street and were totally whacked.”136
John Joseph of the Cro-Mags, who grew up in the Lower East Side in
the 1970s and who used plenty of drugs, especially cocaine,137 recalled
how he got turned off to heroin as a kid. One day he was hanging out
with his “older junkie friend” Mikey, who shot up and said to Joseph,
“Never try this shit kid. You might like it,” then passed out:

I looked around at his living conditions and I noticed his swollen


vein. He had blood oozing from it, and a foot and a half long river
of drool, dangling from his mouth. “No worries there, Mikey,” I
said.138
88 / heroin and music in new york city

But there was heroin use among New York hardcore musicians.
HR, lead singer of the Bad Brains, a Rastafarian hardcore band
formed in Washington in the late 1970s that relocated to New York
in 1980, was a user in the very early stages of the band’s develop-
ment.139 He “dallied with hard drugs, including heroin,” after drop-
ping out of college.140

I was fiending for drugs. I had been shooting up heroin since I was
16. It was a very private life, as heroin use tends to be, but I started
getting into drugs too heavy . . . the Rasta faith provided a spiritual
basis for kicking heroin.141

Another New York hardcore musician/user was Dave Insurgent,


lead singer of Reagan Youth, the “quintessential New York hard-
core, anarchist . . . band.”142 At one point, Insurgent began dating a
prostitute who supported the couple and their heroin habit. In 1993,
after she was murdered (by Joel Rifkin, one of Long Island’s most
infamous serial killers), his mother died in a freak car accident, his
band split up, and he felt he had lost much of the respect that had
previously been afforded to him by his anarchist peers; he commit-
ted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.143
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, there were a number
of New York bands that combined hardcore and metal, creating a
“crossover genre.”144 One such band was Biohazard. Guitarist Billy
Graziadei recalled the days when “we’d score heroin after work and
party, drink beer and cause trouble.” But then a friend who had “a
big heroin problem” died (by suicide):

That’s when I realized, “You know what? Living like this is way more
dangerous than I ever imagined.” At first you’re like, “I’m only snort-
ing or I’m only smoking” then it’s, “I’m only skin-popping, I’m not
mainlining.” But you end up getting to a place where you think it’s the
bottom, and there’s always one step lower. When Hal hung himself,
I said, “You know what? Making music is getting me more excited
than doing dope.” And we started straightening ourselves up.145

* * *

One lineage of hardcore is “straightedge,” which denounces all drug,


alcohol, and tobacco use. Less a musical subgenre than a lifestyle
rock / 89

choice, straightedgers were turned off to the drug and alcohol use
of their friends and siblings. They thought drugs were an outcast
thing, for losers.146 Many also became vegans, and some swore off
casual sex—seen as another self-destructive behavior.147 According
to one straightedge musician:

Straightedge is not just not taking drugs or not drinking. It’s an out-
look on life. In the sense that you want to be in control of your body
and yourself, you want to have a clear view of what’s going on.148

Straightedge originated in Washington, DC, in the early 1980s


and scenes developed in other cities, including New York, shortly
after that. The straightedge movement can be traced back to just
one song, 1984’s “Straight Edge,” by the Washington hardcore band
Minor Threat:

Never want to use a crutch


I’ve got the straight edge149

As Minor Threat singer Ian MacKaye once put it, in regard to what
he called “the eternal quest to get fucked up”: “That’s entertain-
ment? Fuck that. I was not interested.”150

New Wave, No Wave, and Noise Rock


New Wave came right after punk in the late 1970s. Many view it as
a more melodic version of punk, “an attempt by the music industry
to try and repackage punk in a more friendly way for an American
audience who never really embraced any of the first wave of punk
bands.”151 New York had its share of powerhouse New Wave bands;
Blondie was one of the two most successful bands (the other was
Talking Heads). Vocalist Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein,
Harry’s longtime boyfriend, were users during parts of their
careers.
Harry first used when the Stilletos, a group she was in prior to form-
ing Blondie, broke up, and again for a period of time when she was in
Blondie. After the Stilletos split, she embraced heroin for three years:

I was completely out of my mind. I was into junk, I was really fucked
up . . . I wanted to blank out my mind and whole sections of my life.152
90 / heroin and music in new york city

In Harry’s view, heroin

can become very destructive and also very distracting. It becomes


a complete way of life. It always starts as a party thing, as a social
thing, but then, because it is addictive, it takes over and that’s when
it interferes with what your main interests are.153

She also believes that

it was the time. It was all over the place [1980s]. At first we felt that
it might have been political [to take heroin]. Yeah, I know . . . [giggles
and shakes head] It was everywhere and it really had a lot to do with
the end of Vietnam and the fallout from that . . . It was very notice-
able; it was everywhere.154

According to Stein:

My parents’ generation didn’t have any information about drugs, so I


never really knew how dangerous it was. I saw William S. Burroughs
and Lou Reed, and said, “Hey! They’re my heroes! I wanted to do
that shit! I had no idea that I would be fucked up for a couple of
years from this stuff.”155

Harry was once asked in an interview: “Do you think people take
it [heroin] for inspiration?” In response, she said that she gets “much
better inspiration when I’m straight. I’m much more creative. I have
better ideas. Everything is brighter when I’m straight. It’s a trap. It’s
really stupid. It’s even a waste of money.”156 Harry has also pointed
out, as was the case with the Dictators, that Blondie’s management
had no problem with cocaine use, but once heroin entered the situ-
ation, the label dropped the band, and management backed out—
with most of their money.157

* * *

New York was the birthplace of No Wave, which began in the mid-
1970s and was centered in the Lower East Side and also Soho. It
never found a wide audience and was more or less over by the early
1980s. No Wave was not so much a clearly definable musical sub-
genre, but rather a scene made up of various groups of downtown
rock / 91

New York musicians with disparate styles who rejected punk and
New Wave for being too conventional.158
Given the era and the locale, it is hardly surprising that heroin
was part of the No Wave scene. Adele Bertei, who played keyboards
in the Contortions, one of the original No Wave bands, recalled the
late 1970s:

A lot of smack started to flood the Lower East Side . . . All of a sudden
it was everywhere . . . I remember a time when almost every woman
I knew had a copy of William Burroughs’ Junky next to her bed and
was shooting up.159

The Contortions were led by saxophonist and vocalist James


Chance, who also started using during this time. Chance “became
addicted to heroin and burned out of the public eye just a few years
after his peak.”160 When asked in a recent interview about his band’s
cover of James Brown’s anti-heroin song “King Heroin,”161 Chance
opined:

I found the Contortions’ version of “King Heroin” the more affect-


ing. I think I added something more to it. For one thing I was sing-
ing the song instead of just talking it, but also I possibly have more
personal experience of it than he did.162

When the interviewer asked, “what would the James Chance I’m
speaking to now say to the James Chance of 30 years ago?” Chance
responded:

Haha! I would say “Take it easier! Don’t start so many fights and
take a few less substances. Good advice for most of us, I’d say, . . . Just
less, though! I don’t mean don’t take any.”163

Another fixture on the No Wave scene was Lydia Lunch, singer


in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, another influential New York band.
She once explained why she didn’t become a user:

I had somehow managed to avoid heroin, never done it before.


Saw it take out too many assholes; years wasted on useless pur-
suit. Outrageous expense. Permanent stupor. Kick and kick again.
Wasteful.164
92 / heroin and music in new york city

But one day her boyfriend

convinced me to take a hit. Small toke like your first joint. Knocked
me flat on my ass. Passed out to wake up and puke. He stood over
me laughing. Said it was the usual first response. That I’d get used
to it. Learn to love the vomit. I told him to fuck off. It was my first
and last experience with that shit. Never touched it again. Glad I did
it though. Cured my curiosity.165

* * *

No Wave was the progenitor of Noise Rock, which gained promi-


nence in the 1980s. The hallmark of Noise Rock was heavy guitar
distortion and dissonance. Sonic Youth—whose members are not
users—was probably the most popular band to come from the New
York scene.166
Thalia Zedek—the vocalist in New York’s Live Skull during the
late 1980s—was a user. For her, a gradual flirtation eventually devel-
oped into a habit.

I’d been offered [heroin] a lot of times before I’d ever done it. Then
one time, for some reason, I just did it. The thing about heroin is,
you’re taught that it’s this evil drug and that it’s a really heavy-duty
thing. Then you try it, and it’s actually mellow. You don’t lose con-
trol of your body or your mind; it’s not a severe thing, like doing
angel dust or speed. You think, “I can handle this.”167

Zedek eventually decided to put a halt to her heroin use. Her


motivation:

I couldn’t do music anymore, I was burned out, I couldn’t think very


well. I couldn’t get a job or get my shit together. I knew I had to stop
to be able to write or play.168

It is also worth noting that the New York Noise Rock scene pro-
duced a band whose name sounds like a slick reference to a junkie’s
to-do list: Cop Shoot Cop. They had at least one song about heroin,
1990’s “She’s Like a Shot”:

When I feel like giving up


She’s like a shot in the arm169
rock / 93

Alternative/Indie Rock
The alternative/indie band movement emerged in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. It featured lesser-known bands from a variety of related
rock styles that didn’t have a major record label backing them and
instead were recorded and distributed by a network of independent
companies.170 These bands typically could be heard only on col-
lege radio because tightly controlled FM formats kept new music off
mainstream radio stations.171 Indie music stayed beneath the radar of
the “corporate behemoths” until Nirvana’s huge album Nevermind
in 1991, when the mainstream music business took notice and indie
music became big business.172 Since the indie movement started,
New York has been a major center, home base for a number of bands
and record labels; in recent years, Brooklyn especially has been fer-
tile breeding ground for indie music.
Some well-known indie musicians from the New York scene
have been users. One was Albert Hammond, rhythm guitarist of
the Strokes, probably the most popular group to come out of the
New York scene. Hammond came through rehabilitation recently
and talked about his use:

When you start, it’s cocaine. I was 23, 24 years old. Then I’d take
opium pills, and before recording “Yours to Keep,” I was on heroin.
Mix it up with the rest . . . You don’t even realize it anymore.173

He felt his heroin use impacted his band, in that

when you’re angry with yourself and you’re ingesting a lot of drugs,
it doesn’t help any sense of dialogue and you just feel isolated . . . I
was full-on junkie by the second solo record . . . I’ve definitely seen
the dark part of my soul.174

* * *

Mike Doughty, now a solo artist, was frontman and guitarist of Soul
Coughing, a 1990s New York–based indie band. He talked about
life in the band (he was not happy) and his heroin use at length in
his book The Book of Drugs.175 Doughty was turned on to heroin by
a hipster girlfriend, initially sniffing just one bag. It eventually got to
the point where he was “sniffing $300 worth of dope daily.”176
94 / heroin and music in new york city

I never used a needle. I always had an apartment, and money. I never


ran out of drugs—I was assiduous about that, because if I were to
run out of drugs that would mean I had a problem.177

When he was using heavily, Doughty came to a realization:

My promise to myself to keep the heroin use somewhat in con-


trol, because I wanted to protect my artistic faculties, had become
laughable. Why? I was going to get high first thing this morn-
ing, and the next, and the next. I’ll stumble along, show up when
they tell me to, sing when it’s time to sing, I’d eke out a mediocre
existence.178

Doughty described what sometimes happened to him, physically,


when he was trying to write, which he believes was a consequence
of his heavy use:

My lungs weakened. I had so little breath that I would routinely have


a panicked, choking fight for air just by standing up from a chair
too quickly. I like to leap up and pace whenever I get a good idea. So
creativity was hazardous.179

Doughty also talked about the effect that his heroin use had more
generally on his song writing:

After I was clean, I started writing songs again . . . I didn’t realize,


as I wrote them, that they were in fact lost-love songs addressed to
heroin.180 I . . . wrote terrible, trite songs. That was because my recep-
tors were charred, disabled by the drugs’ assault on my brain and
my heart, and because for the last couple of years of the band, I had
just given up on trying to write a great song, knowing that I was in
a band that didn’t care.181

On this theme Doughty elsewhere stated:

The only thing I discovered about not doing drugs is that I actually
don’t need drugs to write, which is really the most painful fallacy of
the whole thing. I kept going, “I can’t give this up! What will I write
about?” It’s just fucked up. When you start thinking that your music
comes from a substance.182

* * *
rock / 95

Ryan Adams and Steve Earle are both southern-born, “alt country-
rock” singer/songwriters and guitarists who made New York City
their home base and who were users. Adams said that he

did speedballs every day for years . . . I always outdid everybody . . . It’s
a miracle I did not die. I was running the risk of becoming one of
those people who talks to himself all the time. I was about to walk
over this line that there was no coming back from, and I could feel
it. I was seeing ghosts and hearing stuff. Having horrible night-
mares . . . 183 There was intense loneliness, end-of-the-world stuff
going on in my mind, bottomless depression.184

Adams’s mood was reflected in his “Hotel Chelsea Nights” from


2004:

I’m tired of 23rd Street.


Strung out like some Christmas lights.185

Earle was an abuser for many years, but had cleaned up by the
time he moved to New York. He first used in high school, in Texas,
with his uncle Nick:

I couldn’t inject myself—Nick had to do it for me. I didn’t throw up,


which most people do. I should have known I was in trouble right
then. It kind of really agreed with me.186

For Earle, heroin was about escapism:

I liked to get high and watch television. I mean, it was a total shut-
down thing. I don’t shut down very much, I run kind of wide open
all the time. It’s my natural tendency. And it did shut me down.187

Earle got so into heroin in the early 1990s that he just wanted to
stay high, so he stopped performing and recording for four years and
took what he called his “vacation in the ghetto,” moving out of sub-
urbia (after having lost his house) into an inner-city neighborhood
“to be closer to the dope,” living off of royalty checks:

I felt like I was standing outside my own life. It was really fuckin’
lonely, it was really painful. I didn’t think I was coming back, I
didn’t think that was possible.188
96 / heroin and music in new york city

Sometimes when Earle was performing, according to one of his


band members,

we’d go and do a show and he’d be nodding off in the van with a
cigarette in his hand and everybody was worried about whether he’d
burn us out of the van or what was going on. As fucked up as he was
he still did brilliant shows, which always amazed me.189

Earle wrote at least one song that spoke to his feelings about her-
oin, 1996’s “CCKMP” (Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain):

Heroin is the only thing


The only gift the darkness brings190

Earle also wrote a song about Oxycontin, the synthetic opiate


popular in rural Appalachia commonly called “hillbilly heroin.” In
2007’s “OxyContin Blues,” Earle tells a tale of watching his coalminer
father drink himself to death after the mines closed down and
realizing that for the younger generation there’s not much to do:

Except to wander these hills forgotten


With the OxyContin blues191

* * *

Summary and Discussion


Some of the rock musicians in the sample first used heroin when
they were teens, generally before they were deep into their music
careers. For them, heroin was fun; it helped them have a good time;
and it helped when they needed to “escape.”
Others first used when they were in their careers as musicians.
In the punk years, and since, it would certainly not be difficult for
a New York musician to come across heroin. It was available. Some
were introduced to the drug by friends or by a boyfriend or girl-
friend; others were first turned on by fellow musicians or roadies, or
through connections in the music business.
These musicians used and continued to use for a variety of rea-
sons. Some said heroin helped make them feel free and independent
and in control of their lives. Others spoke of how heroin helped
rock / 97

them deal with tensions in their band or with the difficulties around
their band’s breakup. Still others used because heroin helped them
wind down after being on stage, or because it helped them deal with
the fact that they were “famous.” Heroin not only helps you “handle
things that come your way” (to paraphrase Keith Richards) but also,
at least according to how Richard Hell sees it, heroin reduces your
problems: “A person actually has fewer problems when addicted . . . in
that any problems are subsumed into the supreme problem of get-
ting enough drugs not to be sick that day.”192
Yet across subgenres, musician-users had primarily negative
things to say about the effects heroin had on their playing, creativ-
ity, and careers. The classic/hard rockers in the sample spoke about
how over time heroin “makes you feel horrible” and “fucks you up”
and about how life with heroin can become chaotic and music can
become secondary.
Punk musicians were more specific about the heroin negatives.
Some couldn’t rehearse or play without heroin, or were too high
on heroin to play, or passed out from heroin while on stage. Others
spoke of how heroin reduces productivity, how it leads to the dis-
integration and collapse of bands, and how management abandons
bands when it finds out that band members are using. There are also
the perils of being junk sick while on tour, and always running the
risk of overdosing after being clean for a while.
Other musician-users in the sample had strictly negative things
to say about how heroin impacted their music. Some thought that
heroin dampened their inspiration and creativity and ability to write
and play. One thought that heroin perturbed the dialogue within his
band, and another told of management problems because of band
member use.
Very few of the rock musicians in the sample had anything posi-
tive to say about the effect heroin had on their music. Keith Richards
thought heroin helped him concentrate and be more tenacious when
working on a song, which maybe helped him finish the song. John
Cale thought that heroin opened up communication between Lou
Reed and himself, which created the right attitude for the band.
Johnny Thunders thought he played great with heroin—although
he also thought he played great without it.193

* * *
98 / heroin and music in new york city

I identified 14 songs clearly about heroin credited to the New York


musician-users in the sample. The songs were written by musi-
cians from all of the main general categories of rock reviewed in the
chapter. Almost two-thirds of these songs (9 of the 14) came from
punk; 3 of the punk songs are still commonly described as “junkie
rock anthems”: “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” and “Chinese
Rocks.”
Heroin is the central subject in 8 of the other 11 heroin songs by
the New York musician-users. In terms of the message being con-
veyed about heroin in these songs, in most of the cases (6 of the 8) the
drug seems to be portrayed in what reasonably could be described
as either a positive or at least a mixed/ambiguous way, for example,
“CCKMP,” “She’s Like a Shot,” and “Gimme Heroin.” In the other
two cases, heroin is either being condemned (“Cold Turkey”) or is
being viewed in a negative light (“Hotel Chelsea Nights”).
The remaining 2 songs in the overall sample of 13 (“Dr. Wu” and
“Sister Ray”) are less clearly about heroin than the songs noted just
above. But the musicians who wrote these two songs have assured us
they are about heroin and so they were included as part of the group
of heroin songs here.

* * *

A main finding of this chapter is that heroin use can be found in a


variety of rock subgenres, but it seems to have been used more heav-
ily by punk rockers. An explanation for this lies in the notions of
subculture and identity.
When rock ’n’ roll began in the United States in the 1950s, con-
ventional society was horrified. The music’s suggestive stage man-
ner, lyrics filled with sexual innuendos, racially mixed performers
and audiences, and dancing in the aisles was seen as morally offen-
sive, as an attack on sexual decency and the stable family.194 Part of
the societal reaction involved an attempt to “redirect and contain
rock ’n’ roll’s energies with softened cover versions, e.g., Pat Boone
covering Little Richard originals.”195 This was a time when juvenile
delinquency was high on the national agenda, and rock ’n’ roll was
viewed as one of the villains (along with comic books and certain
movies) that contributed to this delinquency.196
rock / 99

Rock ’n’ roll was the basis of a youth subculture that fundamen-
tally was about rebellion against conventional society—the world of
one’s parents—that was seen as sterile and passionless.197 As Richard
Hell put it:

Rock and roll is about subverting respectability . . . To choose rock


and roll was to reject growing up and reject straight society, and to
affirm other ways of being and of looking at the world.198

During the early years of rock ’n’ roll the figure of the “male rock
rebel” emerged.199 This was the free-spirited, alienated, sensitive
outsider, at the fringes of polite society, who had a defiant attitude
and effortless cool, who lived fast and died young. Three famous
mid-1950s films had central importance in providing the proto-
type and basic contours of the rock rebel.200 These were The Wild
One, starring Marlon Brando; Rebel Without a Cause, starring James
Dean; and Blackboard Jungle, in which the song “Rock around the
Clock”201 by Bill Haley & His Comets debuted. The song, which
became a rock ’n’ roll standard, helped bring rock ’n’ roll into the
mainstream, and was “guaranteed to arouse adolescents while stir-
ring revulsion in teachers, ministers, and parents.”202
The characters in these movies, especially Brando’s and Dean’s,
provided the new youth subculture with an enduring cultural mod-
el.203 This was all part of the cultural apparatus around which rebel-
lious rock and rollers molded their identities. And for the cool rebel
rock musician—heroin fit right in. What better drug to express
rebellion? Heroin was the ultimate rebellion. This was nothing
new—serious drug use, including heroin taking, “has been associ-
ated with the rebel image and with music-making since well before
the first bohemians walked the boulevards of Paris.”204

* * *

Like the new youth rock subculture that developed in the 1950s,
punk celebrated rebellion; as one writer put it, “rebellion is one of
the few undeniable characteristics of punk.”205 But punk took 1950s’
rebellion to another level. Punks hated conformity. They were antag-
onistic. They were about refusal, defiance, and contempt.206 In one
100 / heroin and music in new york city

view, “punk was about creating a politics of subversion. In both the


US and the UK, the roots of punk lay in subversion.”207
Punks hated what had happened to rock music.208 Punk was
rooted in rock ’n’ roll from the 1950s and early 1960s; it was fast,
loud, angry, and aggressive. Unlike a lot of mainstream rock of the
1970s, punk songs were typically short and uncomplicated. Further,
in the punk view, “by 1976 rock music had become a bloated self-
parody—an aging generation of ex-hippie millioniare superstars liv-
ing a luxury lifestyle, totally out of touch with the kids who bought
their records.”209 Richard Hell referred to rock stars as “the inter-
national stadium jet-set superstar queens who’d stolen rock and roll
and spoiled it.”210
Punk identity was organized not only around what Hell called a
rejection of “hippie values and star worship,”211 but also around the
“cool rebel,” which “was still a powerful image”212 during the punk
era. For punks, Marlon Brando was still a “culture icon.”213 Indeed,
CBGB—New York’s central site of punk—was a Hells Angels bar,
located just a few short blocks away from the Angels’ Lower East
Side clubhouse. One musicologist viewed the punk identity in this
way:

American punk rock really was . . . about defining oneself as outside


the mainstream . . . through a secret society of musical taste where
one’s identity was validated through what one accepted and rejected
as legitimate forms of musical expression.214

Heroin may not have been New York punk’s main drug, but it
was definitely one of them. Many New York punks thought it was
cool to be a junkie. Since the punk subculture had a much stron-
ger element of rebellion than did the 1950s’ youth subculture, it is
hardly surprising that there may have been a stronger push toward
heroin in punk than in rock more generally or among rockers from
other subgenres.
The fact that there was less heroin use in hardcore punk in com-
parison to the protopunk and punk years of the 1960s and 1970s can
also be understood as a matter of subculture and identity. The con-
traction in heroin use was at least to some extent due to straightedge.
Straightedge subculture and identity was also about rebellion, but it
was rebellion without drugs; for rock musicians not to use drugs or
rock / 101

alcohol for some is the ultimate form of rebellion. Minor Threat’s


Ian MacKaye put it this way: “I liked the rebellion but I always
thought that our thing could be stronger without the drugs.”215

* * *

In his autobiography, Johnny Rotten provided a good example of


how subculture, identity, and heroin can be linked. He had this
thought about Sid Vicious’s attraction to heroin:

She [Nancy] convinced him that heroin was the way it should be.
To be a true star, you must mess about with dangerous drugs. So
he eventually bought the whole rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. He absolutely,
thoroughly believed the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed thing, that
whole approach to life, that drug commitment. It never occurred to
Sid that it was just an image, that they were not necessarily living it
themselves. Sid got into being a heroin addict as an observer. “Gee
whiz, there must be something good about it. All these great, deca-
dent New Yorkers.”216
Ch a p t e r Fou r
R&B

Since at least the early 1900s, New York has been a focal point for
music made by and aimed at the African American audience. By the
1920s, blues had a base in New York because optimal studio record-
ing conditions prevailed, and Bessie Smith, the greatest of all blues
singers, had made New York City home.
By the 1940s, records made by and for African Americans were
called “race records.” In 1945, Jerry Wexler, at the time a writer
for Billboard Magazine and later to become a music business titan,
coined the term R&B (rhythm and blues) as “more appropriate to
a more enlightened time.”1 R&B became the recognized term for
black pop music, and, over time, it has encompassed a variety of
related musical styles.
This chapter focuses on heroin abuse by New York musicians and
performers from the main R&B-derived styles: doo-wop, soul, funk,
disco and electronic dance music, and rap.2 Why did these individu-
als use heroin, and how did their use impact on their playing, cre-
ativity, and careers? I show that there were musicians and performers
who were users from all of these subgenres, with one exception: rap.
I examine why this might be the case, and also show that, despite the
lack of use, heroin clearly plays a role in New York rap music.

Doo-wop
Doo-wop—a vocal-based R&B style developed in African American
communities—achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and
early 1960s. During its heyday, there were literally hundreds of New
York–based doo-wop groups. Two New York City doo-wop per-
formers who sometimes shot heroin together (and who later became
rock stars) were Frankie Lymon and Dion DiMucci.
104 / heroin and music in new york city

Lymon, vocalist of the Teenagers, was a star at 13 in 1956 with


“Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”3 The group’s commercial success
lasted barely more than a year. Shortly afterward, Lymon started
to use heroin. He tried going solo, but his career flopped. He died
of a heroin overdose at age 25; he was found on the floor of his
grandmother’s bedroom, in the apartment in Harlem where he was
raised.4
The year before he died, clean after going through a rehab pro-
gram, Lymon told Ebony magazine:

The kids in my neighborhood grew up fast. Smoking pot was so


commonplace that kids 11 and 12 years old puffed reefers on the
street corners. I had been smoking marijuana when I was in grade
school. But, I didn’t start using the real stuff (heroin) until I got into
show business.5

Lymon told the Ebony interviewer that he had learned to use a


hypodermic needle during a party in New York where a lot of musi-
cians were “shooting the stuff”:6

I never intended to get hooked on dope. I knew it was bad and at


first was content to just to “skin-pop.” But, soon I got daring, and it
wasn’t long before I was injecting the stuff right into my veins.7

The Ebony interviewer suggests that even after getting clean, one
reason Lymon was having trouble finding success as a solo performer
was that few people believed he would stay clean:

Promoters, night club and theatre owners, aware that few addicts
succeed in permanently shaking the monkey off their backs, are
openly reluctant to book an entertainer whose cravings may cause
him to miss performances.8

* * *

Most doo-wop groups were black. By the late 1950s, integrated


groups and also white groups had claimed doo-wop as their turf,
too. Among the white groups, Italian Americans predominated;
Dion and the Belmonts was the most successful of these groups.
Dion, born and raised in the Belmont section of the Bronx, became
white doo-wop’s breakout star.9
r&b / 105

Dion began using as a teenager, first sniffing and then shooting


up:

I first snorted heroin when I was fourteen going on fifteen. I don’t


remember where I got the stuff, probably because at the time, it had
become so common on the streets and in the gangs.10
Heroin was instant courage. It was freedom like I’d never had. It was
complete confidence: a magic potion that set the world right side up.
Smack did for me what I couldn’t do for myself. I wasn’t afraid any
longer. My doubts disappeared.11

He described the effect heroin had on his performance in this


way:

It didn’t take me long to discover that junk also enhanced my stage


performance, too. I’d kind of slide into a song, hunch my shoulders
over, close my eyes and feel the music well up from deep in the pit
of my stomach. There was a weight and warmth to the notes that I’d
never heard before, a thousand special moments tied up in a single
refrain. Nothing had ever felt so absolutely right.12

Occasionally Dion would get high with Frankie Lymon:

The more musicians and singers I met, the more I realized how
much smack was a part of the scene. We shared a gig with [Frankie
Lymon and the Teenagers] . . . He’d come down to the neighborhood
at night sometimes and the two of us would get a couple of dime
bags and do it up together. . . . We’d talk about music, trading licks,
and building castles in the air.13

In the early 1960s, after Dion and the Belmonts broke up, Dion
pursued a solo career, but his heroin addiction “forced him out of
the business for the next five years.”14 He eventually cleaned up in
the late 1960s, and has been performing since. He explained the
reasons for the Belmonts’ breakup in this way:

Some of it I could chalk up to artistic differences. We had different


approaches to the music, different approaches to work. But some of it
I chalk up to the wedge that drug addiction drives into any relation-
ship. An addict isn’t thinking primarily about you when he’s talking
to you. If he’s not enjoying his most recent fix, he’s planning for his
106 / heroin and music in new york city

next one. You’re a point somewhere along that timeline—maybe a


significant point but not the two that really matter. If I suffered
estrangement from friends during those years, I take the blame.15

Soul
Doo-wop was an important antecedent to soul, which blended blues
and gospel music. Soul originated in the 1950s and was at its peak
in the 1960s. It is well known that Ray Charles, one of the fathers of
soul, was a user for a number of years in his youth. James Brown—
the other person most closely associated with soul’s beginnings—
wasn’t a user, but he did express his view of heroin in a song— “King
Heroin,” from 1972. (“ . . . the white horse of heroin will ride you to
hell!”)16 This was one of the songs Brown wrote addressing social
concerns, black pride, and community action, and for a period of
time the song made Brown a national antidrug spokesman.17
New York was one of soul’s centers. One member of the New
York scene was Sam Moore, originally from Miami and half of
probably the most successful soul duo of all time—Sam and Dave.
Moore’s heroin abuse, which began in the late 1960s and lasted until
the early 1980s, wiped him out financially. “Everything I ever had,
I shot up.”18 A main reason he used was that he

never, ever felt like I was success. I always wanted to be a success; I


wanted to be accepted by my peers—other performers. I would have
liked to have had the respect of Ray Charles or Sam Cooke or Jackie
Wilson or Willie John—all those guys. Remember, by the time Sam
and Dave had their hits, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was thirty years
old in 1965.19

Moore felt that after he started using heroin heavily:

It was running my life. At first, I’d send somebody up to Harlem.


Then, I’m going up and waiting while somebody else scores. I’m
afraid—because if somebody sees me, knows who I am, smells
money—somebody would have died . . . But sooner or later, I’m up
there wide open. I’m not thinking about how high and mighty I am.
Wide open, and I’m selling my clothes, too. I was taking my $2,500
suits to the pawnshops, and they wouldn’t take them—they wanted
diamonds or jewelry or TVs. So I went uptown and sold ’em—$25,
$30 for a $2,500 suit. My career was falling apart . . . I was a junkie.
A dope fiend.20
r&b / 107

At one point Moore was living in a Times Square flophouse with


his girlfriend, who he had working the streets:

My girlfriend and I moved into this flea-bitten hotel . . . The lowest


part was she turned to prostitution to keep our habit going and she
would bring the dope in . . . She’d also get up there for all these wet
T-shirt nights and I’d play for the pimps and the drug dealers for
drug money. That was my rock bottom.21

* * *

Rudy Lewis was a vocalist for the New York–based Drifters, one of
the most successful soul groups of all time. The group had formed
in the 1950s and had a number of hit records over the years with
different lead singers; Lewis was lead vocalist on “Up on the Roof”22
and “On Broadway.”23 Lewis would have sung lead on “Under the
Boardwalk,”24 an even bigger Drifters hit, had he not died on the
night before the recording session.25 He was found dead in his motel
room bed. It has never been clear exactly how he died, as no autopsy
was done. Some accounts say the cause was a heroin overdose, as he
had been a user since his late teens and he was found with a needle
in his arm;26 or it may have been a heart attack, or, as a binge eater,
he may have choked to death in his sleep (or as one Drifter put it:
“asphyxiation after a particularly large supper”).27

Funk
The sounds of funk began emerging in the early 1960s. This R&B
subgenre had clear roots in soul (and also in jazz, blues, and gospel
music). New York was the main base for funk music, and the music
endures to this day; rap artists, for example, regularly sample funk
tunes.
New York had its share of funk musicians who were heroin abus-
ers. Perhaps the most well known is Dr. John, who was born and
raised in New Orleans but who has lived in New York City since the
mid-1970s. The funk pianist, a user for well over 30 years, kicked
heroin in the 1990s. In his autobiography he recalled when he first
started using:

I started messing around with narcotics when I was about


twelve . . . started to do it every day while I was in what would have
108 / heroin and music in new york city

been my last year of high school . . . When I looked around, most of


the famous musicians I’d heard of were junkies. That was a heavy
influence on me: it was my way of turning away from [my father]
and joining the set I dug.28

In terms of how heroin affected his playing, Dr. John thought


that

the high didn’t really make much difference in my playing; it was


for my heart and soul. The music some days might have been better,
others worse. But that’s life. That’s how it would have been with or
without the junk.29

Yet in another way, heroin was

a real inconvenience to my music. The police was always picking


us up on seventy-two hour investigations. It was all we ever talked
about. When we were high, we said we got to get out of this fucking
game. This shit sucked. It just became a big trap. Go make the gigs,
the recording sessions. I was doing good with my music on one side,
supporting a don’t-quit-dope habit on the other side.30

* * *

Another New York–based funk music-user was vocalist Chaka


Khan. Originally from Chicago, Khan moved to New York in the
1980s and started snorting heroin as her band Rufus was splitting
up and her solo career was taking off:

I was despondent. I didn’t want to feel anything. I was still working,


recording, performing but I was completely numb . . . I was snorting
heroin. I started off drinking and using weed, and it progressed from
there. I look at pictures of life then (in the 1980s) and listen to the
music and think, “Wow, that must have been a great time! Wish I’d
been there!”31

Khan recalls the day when she

left my penthouse on the Upper West Side and found myself out of
my mind . . . After I left the building—bam! It was as if the whole
city smacked me in the face. The noise, the people-people-people,
the light, the busy-busy, the light, that crazy New York energy, the
r&b / 109

light. I couldn’t go on. I literally could not walk forward. I made an


about-face and got my ass back up into my home in the sky, where
I stayed for days, days, days. Heroin was the only thing I could go
on with.32

* * *

Heroin was also a problem in funk pioneer George Clinton’s bands.


Originally from suburban New Jersey, Clinton has been the front-
man and bandleader of variously named music groups since the
1970s that mainly played funk. Clinton started in music in the
mid-1950s forming the Parliaments, a doo-wop band. In the early
1970s he created Funkadelic, made up of the backing band for the
Parliaments, resulting in Parliament-Funkadelic (P-F), which was
basically one group playing as two bands: Parliament (soul) and
Funkadelic (funk).33
Most of the core musicians of Parliament-Funkadelic were users,
including guitarists Eddie Hazel and Tawl Ross, drummer Tiki
Fulwood, and bassist Billy Nelson.34 Nelson recalled that at one point

the Parliaments were getting paid more than us, no doubt in my


mind. Funkadelic, we didn’t even get a share of the leftovers. But
they didn’t care . . . Tiki, as long as he got enough money to get high.
Pretty much the same with Eddie. It’s a motherfuckin’ shame. The
main reason why shit turned out the way it did—messin’ with drugs.
It was a top fucking priority, man.35

Sammy Campbell, an old friend of Clinton’s, remembers bump-


ing into Clinton in Boston:

I was walking towards the Sugar Shack, and George was coming up
the street. He started telling me the problem he was having. He says
to me, “Yeah, Sam, I don’t know what the hell’s happenin’ with these
guys, they’re fuckin’ up. They gettin’ high, man, they ain’t making
the shows on time.”36

Clinton himself was not a heroin user. He offered a biographer


this explanation:

Everybody in the town, damn near, shot dope. Everybody was


bangin’ in Plainfield. It was deeper than New York . . . somehow,
110 / heroin and music in new york city

prior to ’59, somebody had come through there with real dope. The
Man with the Golden Arm cured me of ever thinking about heroin as
being recreation. Even with all the acid and the stuff we were taking,
heroin or angel dust never appealed to me at all.37

* * *

To summarize thus far: we saw in chapter one that in the 1960s and
1970s, heroin became a huge problem in New York, especially among
youth from the city’s ghetto neighborhoods; Harlem became one of
the city’s largest heroin marketplaces. In this user subculture, heroin
was a route to gaining street status and becoming a “somebody,” and
the addict identity was a favored one. Some of these youth undoubt-
edly became doo-wop, soul, and funk musicians and performers, as
these were also the years that these forms of R&B music were most
popular.
Some white New York–based R&B heroin users—such as Dion
and Dr. John—also first used in their teens and even earlier, before
they got to into R&B music. For Dion, using heroin was about feel-
ing courage, freedom, and confidence. For Dr. John, heroin was
attractive because famous musicians he’d heard of were users, and
using was a way for him to turn away from parental control.
Other New York–based R&B performer-users began to use only
after they found success in the music business. Chaka Khan started
using as her band Rufus was breaking apart. Sam Moore felt that his
first use was related to his feelings about success and being respected
by his peers.
By and large, heroin had a negative impact on the careers of New
York–based doo-woppers and soul and funk performers who were
users. Even after he got clean, few thought Frankie Lymon could stay
clean, which had the effect of reducing his opportunities to perform.
Dion thought that heroin enhanced his stage performance, but at
the same time it was a factor in the breakup of the Belmonts, and it
put his career on hold for a number of years. Sam Moore thought
that at some point heroin started to run his life, and, like Dion, his
career was set back because of his use. Dr. John thought that heroin
didn’t affect his playing, but life became miserable because he and
his user-musician pals were constantly being hassled by the police.
r&b / 111

Disco and Electronic Dance Music


New York was the capital of the disco world. The music, which
emerged out of the political upheavals of the 1960s, was created
in the newly liberated gay clubs of New York in the early 1970s.38
Throughout the 1970s, there were dozens of discos in the city (and
probably thousands nationwide).
The disco drugs of choice were cocaine and amyl nitrite (“pop-
pers”). Amyl nitrite came in vials, originally used by angina suffer-
ers, which, when broken open and inhaled, acted as an aphrodisiac,
causing a sharp drop in blood pressure and near-loss of conscious-
ness. Barbiturates (especially Seconals) and Quaaludes (a sedative-
hypnotic similar to a barbiturate) were also popular in the disco scene.
Heroin, on the other hand, was not commonly used— especially by
those who planned to stay up all night and dance.39
Probably New York’s most famous disco was Studio 54, which
opened in 1977. Steve Rubell, who was part owner plus the host,
made sure that in the VIP room, “anything and everything was
readily available; he [Rubell] made sure that celebs had a ready sup-
ply of their drugs of choice.”40 The club featured “the projection on
the back wall of a mock Man-in-the-Moon, who would regularly
enjoy the benefits of an additional coke-filled spoon in the middle
of the night.”41
In the disco clubs, the star performers were not musicians but
rather DJs. “The top ones had cults that followed them from club
to club.”42 Unlike radio DJs, who mainly just introduced records,
the club DJs were (and still are) true performers, stringing records
together to create something new—their own “sets,” that is,
performances.43
Two of the most prominent DJs from the New York disco scene—
Nicky Siano and Larry Levan—had problems with heroin. Siano
was one of the original DJs at Studio 54, but he got fired after only
three months. “I was so strung out on heroin44 . . . I would take these
long breaks from the booth.”45 Siano had been introduced to heroin
by friends:

I took heroin for the first time on my twenty-first birthday. It made


me throw up eight or nine times, but I loved it. It took away the
pain . . . I felt that I had to say the funniest things everywhere I went.
I felt very insecure.46
112 / heroin and music in new york city

A fellow DJ recalled when Siano would be DJing high on


heroin:

Nicky would be in the booth, and you would see him going into
one of these deep, deep nods. Then you would hear a little crash on
the floor, which was the sound of Nicky falling. The record would
be down to the last grooves, and somehow or other he would force
himself up, reach for a record, and mix it in flawlessly . . . Then he’d
manipulate the treble and bass controls and the whole crowd would
go, “aaagggghhhh!” [Other DJs] would all sit in the booth taking
notes, waiting for Nicky to pass out so they could jump over him to
get to those turntables.47

Larry Levan is widely considered the greatest disco club DJ of all


time. The Paradise Garage, a focal point of the Manhattan gay disco
scene, was built explicitly for him.48 The club, especially toward its
final years in the 1980s, had “developed a significant inner clique of
heroin users, of which Levan was one.”49 Mel Cheren, disco record
producer and Paradise Garage backer, saw how heroin was affecting
Levan:

His heroin problem was worse, his spinning had grown more erratic,
and it became increasingly difficult to find gigs. Many people began
to notice that Larry was losing touch with his crowd, something that
often happens when a DJ is too high to really connect with what’s
happening on the dance floor.50

After the club closed in 1987, according to one writer,

Levan’s notoriously prodigious capacity for drugs, particularly her-


oin and cocaine, reached critical levels. He spent his rent money
on pharmaceuticals, sold his precious records, and his mood swings
became extreme. . . . He missed club bookings, screwed up his studio
work, and his health deteriorated.51

Levan died of heart failure at age 38.

* * *

Disco never died—it turned into electronic dance music (EDM).


This disco offspring, which has literally dozens of forms and has
recently become extremely popular in the United States, has, over
r&b / 113

the years, gained strength, making use of improving electronics and


computerization. An EDM subculture took shape in the late 1980s
and early 1990s at underground rave parties.
Since the early rave days, drugs such as ecstasy, GHB, and ket-
amine have been part of the EDM scene. Like their disco forerun-
ners, EDMers would not likely choose heroin to get ready for a
weekend of frantic dancing. Researchers in the UK found that most
clubbers are largely reticent about the use of “harder” drugs such as
heroin and generally steer clear, although some may use heroin to
“cushion the comedown.”52
In New York in the 1980s and 1990s, the Limelight, the Tunnel,
and the Palladium, all run by Canadian entrepreneur Peter Gatien,
were considered among the elite clubs in New York City’s “under-
ground dance” community. One journalist described how well orga-
nized drug distribution was at the Limelight and the Tunnel. The
party promoters (in charge of thinking up outrageous themes for
the parties, lining up the music, and making sure the dance floors
were packed) supervised house dealers who worked at the clubs. The
types of drugs a club would have available on a particular night
would depend on what type of crowd was anticipated—gays, ravers,
or the arts/entertainment crowd.53
In 1996, heroin played a featured role in the New York dance
music scene when Michael Alig, a party promoter at the Limelight,
and his friend Freeze were arrested and later convicted for the kill-
ing and dismemberment of a drug dealer who worked at the club.
Alig and Freeze had murdered the dealer during a fight over a debt
and stashed the body in the bathroom of their apartment. They
had a box that they had planned to use to move the body outside
but they had to cut off the dealer’s legs so the body would fit into
the box. Alig told Freeze that if he gave him ten bags of heroin,
he would dismember the body. Freeze got Alig the ten bags, Alig
snorted them, they dismembered the body, put it in the box, carried
it outside to a taxi, got dropped off close to the Hudson River, and
threw the body in.

Rap
While funk and disco were “catalysts in the developmental stages
of rap,”54 rap “had roots in black popular music as far back as you
were willing to stretch them.”55 Rap first emerged in the Bronx in
114 / heroin and music in new york city

the early 1970s. It could be heard on the streets—at block parties, in


school yards, parks, and playgrounds—and also indoors—at parties
held in apartment buildings and in abandoned warehouses.56
Early rap DJs would bring soul, funk, and disco records and two
or more turntables to these events, working the turntables simulta-
neously, switching back and forth to mix the best parts of the music.
Rappers worked with the DJs, talking over or “rapping” to the musi-
cal background, borrowing from Jamaican “toasting” (catchy rhym-
ing over a beat), which itself is part of a tradition of oral recitation
that originated in Africa.57
Most early New York rappers were African Americans, but not
exclusively. Rap had a Latin side; Latinos were deeply involved in the
creation of rap from the start.58 This makes sense, given that in New
York, African Americans and Latinos had lived and worked in the
same or bordering neighborhoods, and had been “partying together
for many years. For decades they had been frequenting the same
clubs, with black and Latin bands often sharing the billing.”59 The
second generation of New York rappers included whites, for example,
the Beastie Boys, who started as a hardcore rock group but soon mor-
phed into a rap group60 and “opened rap music up to the suburbs.”61

* * *

Drugs have been an integral part of New York City rap ever since
the beginning. Marijuana has dominated the scene. An untold
number of New York rappers have proclaimed their love of the
drug in their songs, going back at least to the early 1990s with
Redman’s “How to Roll a Blunt” (“ . . . first you get a fat bag of
ism . . . [then] purchase a Philly, not the city of Philly silly punk,
I’m talking ’bout the shit called the Philly blunt”).62 Songs like
these continued through the years, for example, Busta Rhymes’
“Get High Tonight” (1997);63 50 Cent’s “High All the Time”
(2003);64 Styles P’s “Blow Ya Mind” (2007);65 and ASAP Rocky’s
“Roll One Up” (2011).66
New York rap and cocaine (both powder and crack) have been
linked in a variety of ways over the years. To begin with, a num-
ber of New York rappers—including the rap pioneers Kool Herc,
Grandmaster Flash, and Flavor Flav—have gotten seriously caught
up in using the drug,.
r&b / 115

In the early 1970s, Kool Herc held parties in the community


room of a Bronx building he lived in, which played a crucial role in
the early development of rap.67 In the mid-1980s he began smoking
crack:

My father had died, my music was declining and things were chang-
ing. I couldn’t cope, so I started medicating. I thought I could han-
dle it, but it was bigger than I was.68

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was a South Bronx


rap group, whose song “The Message”69 from 1982 became a rap
anthem. The song—a tense, edgy description of the difficulties of
the times—“in the first verse alone was talking about broken glass,
pissing in the streets, being homeless, having your car towed, and
getting jacked by baseheads.”70 Grandmaster Flash, the group’s DJ,
became a serious crack user during the 1980s:

I smoked coke for breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . . Thanks to a steady


diet of nothing but smoking coke for months on end, my teeth were
a mess and I weighed 118 pounds.71

Flavor Flav, the “hype man” (the backup rapper/singer who “hypes
up” the crowd) from Long Island’s Public Enemy, was a crack user
for over ten years:

When we weren’t touring, my group couldn’t find me half the time.


I’d be in someone’s basement, smoking crack. I missed a lot of
shows.72

Old Dirty Bastard (ODB), an original member of Staten Island’s


Wu-Tang Clan, was also a zealous user. One biographer wrote that
cocaine was “the one thing other than center stage that satiated
him.”73 Famously, at the time of one of his arrests, when the police
found 20 vials of crack in the glove compartment of his car, ODB
told the arresting officers: “Officer, can you please make the rocks
disappear? The kids look up to me.”74 Not long afterward, ODB
died in a recording studio from an accidental overdose of a combina-
tion of cocaine and a prescription pain killer.75

* * *
116 / heroin and music in new york city

A number of New York rappers, including the Notorious B.I.G.,


50 Cent, and Jay-Z, sold crack before they became stars. Crack
was pervasive on New York City streets in the mid- to late 1980s,
when all three were teens, and dealing was an attractive and poten-
tially lucrative option for them. The drug was inexpensive to make,
was sold in low-cost units (typically $5) that poor people could
afford, and had a high that was short-lived, so you’d keep coming
back for more.76 Despite the violent competition and high risk of
imprisonment, “for poor but aspiring youth, it isn’t hard to see the
attractions.”77
B.I.G. and 50 Cent were both small-time dealers. B.I.G. began
dealing in his Brooklyn neighborhood around the age of 12:

I used to sell crack. My customers were ringing my bell, and they


would come up on the steps and smoke right here. They knew where
I lived; they knew my moms.78

50 Cent was on the streets selling crack at about the same age.
Some of his family was immersed in the crack trade, including
his mother, who was also a user and who was murdered when he
was eight. In a recent documentary about the War on Drugs—
How to Make Money Selling Drugs—he details how his mother’s
dealer friends supported him as a young boy and brought him
into the drug business.79 Mainly he sold “nicks”—$5 vials of
crack.80

I had never seen crack fiends as anything more than customers . . . I


never knew fiends past their habit and buying patterns. I wasn’t
about to stop dealing crack. Not by a long shot. But I was going to
learn to do it better.81

Jay-Z, who grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn, by most


accounts was much more heavily involved in crack dealing than
either B.I.G. or 50 Cent. He started out “working a corner to try to
get some bread for basic shit.”82

I hit the streets for the same reason a lot of other kids do: I wanted
money and excitement and loved the idea of cutting myself loose
from the rules and low ceilings of the straight world.83
r&b / 117

Jay-Z said he felt that getting into crack dealing was “natural . . . It
was normal. And at some point, you become addicted to the feel-
ing. The uncertainty and adrenaline and danger of that lifestyle.”84
Over time, Jay-Z expanded beyond his Brooklyn neighborhood and
“entered the rap game with hundreds of thousands of dollars.”85

* * *

Not surprisingly, cocaine has also been a central subject in New York
rap songs almost from the beginning of rap. One of the first cocaine
songs was 1983’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”86 by Melle Mel, who
had been the lead rapper and main songwriter for Grandmaster
Flash and the Furious Five until their breakup. Based on the song’s
title and lyrics, for example, “Either up your nose or through your
vein . . . with nothin to gain except killin your brain,” it’s easy to
think the song is anti-cocaine. Yet the song apparently was writ-
ten as a celebration of the drug, and the “don’t do it” message was
added for commercial reasons.87 According to Melle Mel, during the
recording, “everybody was high and coked out.”88
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of the crack era in
the city, a number of New York rappers released songs with strong
anti-crack messages. Two examples were Public Enemy’s “Night of
the Living Baseheads” from 1988 and De La Soul’s “My Brother’s
a Basehead” from 1991. In the former, rapper Chuck D belittles a
basehead,89 who “ . . . stayed all day in his jeep. And at night he went
to sleep. And in the mornin’ all he had was sneakers on his feet.”90 In
the De La Soul song, rapper Pos refers to baseheads as “the lowest of
lowest of all elements that exist,” and the fact that his brother was a
user now meant that, “ . . . from me you lost all respect. Said yo need
to put that shit in check.”91
The next generation of New York rappers took a different stance
toward cocaine in their music. Beginning in the mid-1990s, crack dealing
came to be celebrated in song. As might be expected, given their dealing
backgrounds, B.I.G., 50 Cent, and Jay-Z, all had songs about deal-
ing crack. For example, 1997 saw B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments”
(“I been in this game for years, it made me an animal, there’s rules to this
shit, I made me a manual”).92 Six years later, 50 Cent released “Blood
Hound” (“I love to pump crack, love to stay strapped . . . ”).93
118 / heroin and music in new york city

Jay-Z wrote a number of songs about crack dealing, especially in


the years his recording career was getting off the ground. Among the
earliest was “Dead Presidents,” from 1996 (“My life ain’t rosy but I
roll with it, my mind was fine ’till the dough hit it”),94 and “Rap
Game/Crack Game” in 1997, in which Jay-Z equated the rap and
crack worlds as one and the same (“We treat this rap shit just like
handlin weight, what they want we give it to em, what they abandon
we take”).95 These were followed by songs like 2001’s “Takeover” (“I
was pushing weight back in 88”).96

* * *

The connection between heroin and New York rap is much differ-
ent from the cocaine–rap connection. While clearly there were New
York rappers who used cocaine/crack, I was not able to identify a
single New York rapper who was a self-acknowledged heroin user.
This makes sense in light of what I noted earlier (chapter two)—
that among African American males who grew up in New York
in the 1980s and 1990s, heroin use had a terrible image. Many of
these youth had intimate experience with the variety of problems
that afflicted older family members and relatives as a result of their
involvement with heroin. Given the AIDS epidemic and the War on
Drugs, these youth stayed away from the drug.97
New York rappers from this generation gave voice to this view
of heroin. According to 50 Cent, “All I’ve ever seen it [heroin] do is
make people nod off like walking zombies.”98 Jay-Z saw heroin users
as weak and dependent, the type of people who could never be suc-
cessful in the dealing game: “Weakness and dependence made you
a mark, like a dope fiend. Success could only mean self sufficiency,
being a boss, not a dependent.”99 He remembers as a youngster in
the 1970s: “Heroin was still heavy in the hood, so we would dare one
another to push a leaning nodder off a bench the way kids on farms
tip sleeping cows.”100
Flavor Fav used plenty of cocaine but would not use heroin. A
main reason was that his father was a user:

I used to watch what it did to him, and it wasn’t a good reaction. He


used to be sleepy, nodding and just out of it, man. He was always
r&b / 119

getting locked up for it, too. It wasn’t just him doing it, either. A lot
of his friends were dope addicts. That was the thing, then, just like
crack was the thing in the 1990s.101

Flav recalled as a youngster when two older cousins took him to


a heroin “shooting gallery.” They wanted him to see what heroin did
to people:

One man had a huge swollen leg covered with sores and pus from
poking himself with needles. Nasty. Another guy had a huge, swollen
arm and no fingers except his thumb and his pinkie. They called him
“the human claw.” In another room, a lady was shooting dope into
her veins in her neck, tapping a syringe that was sticking out of the
side of her head . . . I gotta tell you folks, I don’t scare easy, but that
experience really marked me for life, naw’mean? I was really, really
scared. I knew I didn’t want to have anything to do with a needle.102

Flav also had friends who died from heroin overdoses:

There were times when I was around people who stuck themselves
with a needle and never woke up. The next time I saw them, they
were in a suit, in a coffin. I’ve seen too many of my friends overdose
on heroin.103

* * *

New York rappers, by and large, grew up in the crack cocaine gen-
eration, which came after the heroin generation of the 1960s and
1970s. If they dealt drugs as youth, it’s much more likely they would
be dealing crack, not heroin. The heroin trade was never far away,
but, for these youth, heroin was in the background.
There was some heroin dealing, however. 50 Cent’s small-scale
dealing operation in southeast Queens was basically just him and a
friend selling crack, but they also sold a little heroin.104 Heroin had
been part of the drug scene there starting in the mid-1970s, when
drug distribution networks controlled by Mafia families flooded the
neighborhood with heroin, and it was still part of the scene when 50
Cent was growing up there.105

* * *
120 / heroin and music in new york city

Despite the lack of use and minimal dealing by New York rappers,
heroin has been pervasive in New York rap songs, going back to the
very beginnings of the subgenre. In the years just before rap and when
rap was starting to emerge, “Spoken Word” was popular in the black
community. This art form, with roots in poetry from the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s, was basically a word-based performance,
sometimes with music. These performers’ “raps,” which typically
spoke to the need for radical action in the black community and in the
nation as a whole, included those clearly condemning heroin. Two of
the most prominent New York–based Spoken Word performers with
these types of songs were the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.
The Last Poets—a changing group of New York area poets and
musicians formed in the late 1960s who are still around—were
among the most militant of the Spoken Word artists of that era.106
They had at least two songs that portrayed heroin users as lamentable
people: 1970’s “Jones Comin’ Down,” which follows the thoughts of
a user as he prepares to score (“Day break, got the shakes, nose run-
nin’, feelin’ bad, pawn my brother’s do rag, to cop me a transparent
thin bag”);107 and “OD,” from 1971 (“ . . . pulled out the tiny trans-
parent bag, the one filled with the chalk white powder the junkies
call scag, he sighed as he hit the big vein in his arm”).108
Scott-Heron, frequently called the “godfather of rap,” “estab-
lished much of the attitude and the stylistic vocabulary that would
characterize the socially conscious work of early rap groups like
Public Enemy.”109 While in his later years he “struggled publicly”
with crack cocaine,110 in the early 1970s Scott-Heron recorded songs
that maligned heroin use: “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” from
1971 (“Home is where I live inside my white powder dreams, home
was once an empty vacuum that’s filled now with my silent screams,
home is where the needle marks try to heal my broken heart”);111
and “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” also from 1971 (“Ever felt that
somehow, somewhere you lost your way? And if you don’t get help
you won’t make it through the day. You could call on Lady Day! You
could call on John Coltrane! They’ll wash your troubles away”).112
Over the years, as rap as a music style developed, various New
York City rappers wrote songs in which heroin was either the
main subject or, more typically, was referenced. Occasionally, a
song would damn the drug, for example, the Beastie Boys’s “The
Negotiation Limerick File,” from 1997 (“Don’t let me begin about
r&b / 121

heroin, living six feet deep just ain’t the move”).113 More frequently,
however, songs glamorized heroin and portrayed it in an almost
reverential way.
Cam’ron, a Harlem rapper who founded the group the Diplomats
in the late 1990s with his childhood friend Jim Jones, has recorded
a number of songs that mention heroin, for example, 2000’s “Losin
Weight” (“Her mom died, heroin overdose stuffed her wrist”);114
and from 2009, “Cookin Up” (“They bitin’ like Tyson, worse than
that Dracula, your Mom’s buy heroin, with no hands I’m smack-
ing her”).115 But in one song—2010’s “Child of the Ghetto”—he
comes close to venerating the drug (“Stand in the lobby, Cam and
his posse, steak and cheese sandwich from Heaugies, they come to
heroin, the biggest of Dons”).116
50 Cent’s “A Baltimore Love Thing,” from 2005, is a bit more
complicated. The song refers to the heroin problem in a city that in
recent years has had very high per capita rates of use, once earning
the title, “heroin capital of America.” The song is also about a love
relationship with a girl that could be understood as similar to a rela-
tionship that someone could have with heroin. Equally interesting
is that the song seems to be written from the point of view of the
drug, that is, as if 50 Cent were heroin and heroin were telling the
story (“Girl, I’m missin’ you, come and see me soon, tie your arm
up, put that lighter under that spoon, now put that needle to ya arm
princess, stick it in”).117
Jay-Z has recorded a number of songs that reference heroin and
put the drug in a very positive street light. In 2006 alone he released
“Lost One” (“fame is the worst drug known to man, it’s stronger
than heroin”)118 and “Hollywood” (“Don’t lie, go on fly, you’re
addicted to the lights, without the fame, how you gonna survive? It’s
like livin on heroin, you so high”).119
In the following year, Jay-Z released his American Gangster con-
cept album, inspired by the movie of the same name starring Denzel
Washington as Frank Lucas, a top heroin dealer in Harlem in the
early 1970s.120 The movie depicts the Lucas character as an under-
world Horatio Alger and an innovator, and Jay-Z could relate:

As soon as the movie came on, it was like familiar, things that my
pop seen and my uncles seen and you know, different things like
that, things I’ve seen growing up.121
122 / heroin and music in new york city

Jay-Z glimpsed much of himself in the Lucas portrayal: “The way


he carried himself. The way he went about things, the way he wasn’t
loud, but he was very strong.”122
The songs on the album were based on scenes from the
movie. Two tracks in particular—“Blue Magic” and “American
Gangster”—clearly glorify Lucas and his heroin-dealing operation.
In “Blue Magic,” an ode to the heroin Lucas sold,123 Jay-Z writes:
“Blame Reagan for making me into a monster, blame Oliver North
and Iran-Contra, I ran contraband that they sponsored, before
this rhyming stuff we was in concert.”124 The album closes with
“American Gangster”: “I’m from the 80s, home of the heroin, era of
the hustler, the world is my custy.”125
New York rappers continue to write songs portraying heroin as
the hard street drug that it is. Two examples are Ill Bill and Joell
Ortiz, both of whom grew up in Brooklyn. In 2008, Bill released
“My Uncle Shoots Heroin,” a song about his real-life uncle Howie
(“Bathroom floor, found a syringe, when I was on the Hydro Tour
Howie went out on a binge, he shot the heroin since fourteen”).126
Two years later Ortiz released “Devil in a Blue Dress.” The song
is about a heroin dealer (“I used to cop it for 65 a gram, add the
quinine cut, throw it into the grinder till it’s sand, had the bags
already stamped, ink drying . . . ”) who decides to try the drug (“One
day I said ‘fuck it’, I’m doing it man . . . ”) but who develops a habit
and comes to seriously regret his decision to use (“To this day I tell
myself how stupid I am”).127

* * *

Recently, New York rappers have been producing songs that speak
to “purple drank” or “lean,” an opiate-based concoction popu-
lar mainly among rappers from the South. This is a mixture of a
prescription-strength cough syrup containing codeine, with a soft
drink (often Sprite); sometimes a Jolly Rancher candy is added for
flavor. ASAP Rocky lauds the brew in his 2011 single “Purple Swag”:
“Purple swag, purple swag, I’m in the zone, I’m getting throwed.”128
Other New York rappers have referenced “purple” in their songs,
for example, 50 Cent in “Happy New Year,” from a 2011 mixtape:
“Codeine in my cup, look I don’t give a fuck.”129
r&b / 123

Summary and Discussion


Thus we’ve seen that there were New York–based musicians and per-
formers who were heroin users from all of the major post–World War
II R&B subgenres, except rap. In the 1960s and 1970s, heroin use
was a serious problem among youth in inner-city New York, espe-
cially African American youth. In this user subculture, heroin was
a route to gaining street status and the addict identity was a favored
one. Some of these youth became R&B musicians and performers,
as these were also the years that doo-wop, soul, and funk were most
popular. Other New York–based R&B performer-users began to use
only after they were already music professionals. Overall, heroin had
few positive benefits for their music or their careers.
Heroin was not (and still isn’t) a favored drug in the New York
disco and electronic dance music subcultures. But two star New
York disco DJs were serious abusers, and heroin was a central part of
the story of the EDM party promoter who killed and cut up a drug
dealer who worked at one of New York’s top dance clubs.
I was not able to identify even one New York rapper who has
spoken about his own heroin use, and on this basis it seems reason-
able to conclude that there has been little or no use (at least among
performers) in the New York rap scene. This makes sense, given that
most New York rappers grew up in the crack cocaine generation
of the 1980s and 1990s, and, among African American males who
grew up in New York in these years, heroin had a dreadful image
and was seen as a drug to avoid using.
That heroin is glamorized in New York rap songs despite its lack
of use by the rappers themselves can be understood by the stature the
drug dealer—especially the heroin dealer—has had in parts of the
African American community. Dealing was (and still is) commonly
seen as a viable way to earn street credibility, to “achieve some sense
of status, respect, and reputation among one’s peers.”130 “Hustling”
has long been part of street life; the hustler has been described as a
“generic figure who occupies a central position in the symbolic space
of the black American ghetto.”131 On the streets, being a success-
ful dealer equates with being a resourceful hustler, and resourceful
hustlers are looked up to and respected.132 In other words: it’s very
“street” to be dealing, and even more street to be good at it.
124 / heroin and music in new york city

Early New York dealer role models included “Superfly,” from the
1972 “blaxploitation” film of the same name. The main character is
a big-time Harlem drug dealer, who “has all the material possessions
he wants”:133

The game he plays he plays for keeps,


Hustlin’ times and ghetto streets tryin’ ta get over,
That’s what he tryin’ to do, y’all,
Taking all that he can take.134

In real life, a good example would be legendary Harlem heroin


dealer Bumpy Johnson. Johnson was “the prototypical ‘bad man,’
someone who commanded fear and respect from most members of
the African American community.”135 Johnson was admired by gen-
erations of young African American men, “because of his wealth,
uncompromising code, and style.”136
Rap, especially “gangsta rap” from the 1980s and 1990s, is “rooted
in a street style,”137 so that teens, who had dealt drugs and became
rappers, brought a street culture sensibility and commonly played
the role of the street hustler in their songs, videos, and performances.
This is particularly evident in these rappers’ lyrics. Charis Kubrin
has shown that the “street code” identified by Elijah Anderson138 —a
set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, includ-
ing violence—is present not only on the streets but also in gangsta
rap lyrics. These rappers basically tell the street code in their music,
and these portrayals serve the function of establishing identity and
reputation.139
Azie Faison is a former cocaine dealer from Harlem who became
a rapper, founding the group MobStyle. In his view:

Many gangsta rappers leave the drug game and enter the music
game, where they don’t have to worry about cops or jail. In the music
hustle, they can get rich quickly, be famous, and have all the women,
just for speaking their minds on an album. In other words, they real-
ized that rap music was the new hustle.140

A number of New York rappers, including 50 Cent, grew up in


southeast Queens. Ethan Brown, in his Queens Reigns Supreme,141
showed how drug dealers from the area came to influence local teens
r&b / 125

who became rappers. These teens hero-worshipped the dealers who


dominated Queens in the 1980s. “They had the money, the luxury
cars, the jewelry, the girls, the respect of the streets, all of the accou-
trements that would come to define the bling lifestyle in the late
1990s.”142 Rappers needed the dealers to bolster their street credibil-
ity, and, as a result, rap became “drenched in the slang and style of
the 1980s drug business.”143
Another Queens product—from the Queensbridge projects in
the western part of the borough—is the rap duo Mobb Deep. For
20 years, their raps have basically been hard-core street stories, espe-
cially the classic “Shook Ones Part 2,” from their breakout 1995
album The Infamous (“ . . . you all alone in these streets, cousin, every
man for theirself in this land, we be gunnin”).144 In his autobiogra-
phy, the group’s rapper Prodigy spoke to the connection between
growing up in New York in the 1980s and early 1990s and Mobb
Deep’s narrations of street life:

If you were a teenager growing up in the five boroughs during that


time, you know why I acted, talked, rapped, and carried myself the
way I did. The concrete-jungle education that New York City pro-
vided me is priceless. I’m sure it was similar in every inner city on
the map, but nothing compares to the every-man-for-himself state of
mind that New Yorkers have—you won’t find that level of ruthless-
ness anywhere else in the U.S.145

* * *

For rappers, it’s all about being king of the streets. And in the street
subculture, the image of the successful heroin dealer as hustler
remains strong. The status and respect and street credibility that a
successful crack dealer might have gotten could also be earned from
being good at dealing heroin (even though few New York rappers
may have actually ever sold the drug). The successful heroin dealer
shouldn’t use the drug, because use is seen as a sign of weakness and
you can’t be a successful hustler if you are not seen as strong and in
control.
One way to grasp the stature that heroin has in the street culture
of New York rap is to think about slang. “Dope” has been a common
street slang for heroin for years. But in the rap subculture, dope has
126 / heroin and music in new york city

an additional, special meaning. Dope essentially means excellent,


top quality, and cool. Thus, on the streets, to be “dope like heroin”
is to be the best. Like Method Man, who is “dope, nigga, I’m heroin
in its prime.”146 Or Old Dirty Bastard, who warns:

. . . you niggaz better start runnin


Cause I’m comin, I’m dope like fuckin heroin.147
Ch a p t e r Fi v e
Fol k Music

What exactly is folk music? According to one music journalist, “Few


forms of music have as fuzzy a definition as folk.”1 In Pete Seeger’s
view, “No two people, not even the professors, have been able to
agree completely on a definition”2—other than it is music of the
“folk,” that is, the people. Bob Dylan once defined folk music as
“handed down songs.”3
By the late 1930s, when folk music was becoming very popular
in the United States, a community of professional folksingers had
developed in New York, which included Seeger and also Woody
Guthrie.4 Both had strong New York City roots. Seeger was born
in the city and lived in the town of Beacon, an hour away from the
city up the Hudson River. Guthrie—the quintessential American
singer-songwriter—lived in New York at various times for a number
of years; in the last years of his life he remained hospitalized in the
city and died there.5
Both Seeger and Guthrie were members of the Almanac Singers, a
New York–based collective of musicians living, composing, and per-
forming together, who were among the first successful groups to bring
folk music to mainstream audiences.6 Seeger and Lee Hays, another
member, went on to form The Weavers, whose version of “Goodnight
Irene”7 was a number one hit in the United States in 1950.
Folk music rose again in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and New
York’s Greenwich Village—on the west side of Lower Manhattan—
was the epicenter of the revival movement. For decades, the Village
reigned as the “Left Bank of America,” “home to the city’s outliers . . . a
bohemian enclave, a magnet for misfits, and an engine of culture.”8
The Village has been generally considered the Mecca of American
folk music, at least since the 1940s, when the first hootenannies—folk
128 / heroin and music in new york city

music parties with an open microphone—were hosted there by the


Almanac Singers.9 During the 1950s and 1960s’ revival, there were doz-
ens of coffeehouses, and clubs in the Village featuring folk musicians.
The heart of folk singing in the Village, and a springboard for
talent in the coffeehouses, had always been Washington Square
Park.10 Every Sunday, beginning in the mid-1940s, folk enthusiasts
gathered with their guitars at the circular fountain in the park.11
Another main location was the Folklore Center, a record and book
store founded in 1957 by Izzy Young, which became a central meet-
ing place for performers and folk music fans.12

Heroin Use by New York Folkies


Drugs, especially marijuana, were commonly used in the Village
folk revival scene of the 1950s and 1960s.13 Heroin was a feature of
the scene in the early revival years but by the mid-1960s, according
to Dave Van Ronk, a patriarch of the Village scene who was nick-
named “the Mayor of MacDougal Street,” “the hard drug epidemic
had hit, and it was getting pretty ugly.”14
Some of the Village folkies who used heroin became big stars,
while others were much less well known, and some were virtually
unknown to the general public. This chapter is based on the narra-
tive accounts of nine of these users.15 Why did they first start and
continue to use heroin? How did heroin affect their playing, creativ-
ity, and careers?

* * *

James Taylor’s career as a folk musician, and his heroin use, began
when he moved to the Village in the mid-1960s. In March 1971, he
was on the cover of Time magazine, touted as the originator of the
“singer/songwriter era”—“the first self-professed heroin addict ever
to appear on the cover of Time.”16
Taylor, who cleaned up in the early 1980s, has talked extensively
about his heroin use. As for when he first started using,

I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get
a drink17 . . . The places I was living, the people I was spending time
with—everybody was experimenting with everything all the time.
So it was just a matter of time18 . . . Drugs were always around. Being
folk music / 129

a musician and working late hours in a lot of bars, you’re going to see
a lot of drugs consumed. It started out recreationally, the rule rather
than the exception. At least where I was.19

Taylor links his first use to becoming a star at age 20:

When you give somebody millions of dollars and millions of fans,


and amazing press, and incredible support from all areas, when
you’re twenty years old, you feel as though you can have everything
you want. At that age, you haven’t necessarily figured out how to
find it. You just expect to be able to feel good and have what you
want. It is never about finding peace of mind, or serenity, or just
finding your proper place in our own skin. All that takes a long
time. It doesn’t happen overnight just because a celebrity machine
turns its powerful glance on you. So it’s easy to want to buy a pill or
a vial or a syringe.20

Taylor moved to London to record his 1968 debut album; he was


“stoned for most of the sessions.”21 He had “started to take a lot of
codeine. I went to Europe and started to take opium and then I got into
smack heavily for about nine months. I got into it real thick there.”22

Heroin, it deadens your senses. You don’t think. You take all your
problems and trade them in for one problem . . . A lot of creative
energy comes out of a very painful place.23

Taylor wrote at least two songs about his use. “Fire and Rain,”24
from Taylor’s second album, was partly about his efforts to kick her-
oin in England before returning to the United States:

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus


You’ve got to help me make a stand.

“Another Day,”25 from 1997, took him “13 years to finish . . . [it’s]
about experiencing withdrawal and making it to morning, when the
sun comes out and you believe in the fact of yet another day.”26
“Rainy Day Man,”27 from Taylor’s first album, is commonly
thought to be about heroin:

I’ve heard people suggest that the Rainy Day Man is a heroin dealer,
and that’s a good call. That would be a reasonable interpretation of
it, and certainly at the time I was dabbling. But I didn’t really have
130 / heroin and music in new york city

that in mind. The lyric is pretty much self-explanatory; it just says it


will do you no good to try to cheer up someone in this state. What
they need to do is go down, all the way down, to the bottom.28

* * *

The Mamas and the Papas are remembered as one of the great
California folk rock bands from the late 1960s. But the band mem-
bers were products of and found each other through the Greenwich
Village folk scene.29 The Village became somewhat hostile to folk
artists who embraced the electric guitar and other rock trappings,30
and in the mid-1960s Los Angeles and its surroundings became a
haven for emerging folk rock musicians, including those who formed
the Mamas and the Papas.
Two band members—John Phillips and Cass Elliot—were users.
Phillips got addicted to heroin in the mid-1970s, when a heroin-us-
ing musician friend moved into his apartment in London, where he
had been temporarily living. Phillips thought this was a particularly
vulnerable time for him: “I had been so depressed. I was turning 40,
and I felt a lot of pressure about my work and age.”31
Phillips said that for two years he was shooting up heroin (and
coke) every fifteen minutes.32 During this time he had attempted
to record his “comeback album” with Keith Richards, but it didn’t
work out, and he understood he had no one to blame but himself: “I
had sabotaged the greatest break of my career since the Mamas and
the Papas.”33
According to her biographer, Cass Elliot was “never quite so zeal-
ous in her embrace of drugs as John,”34 but she was clearly a heroin
user. According to David Crosby, “We did heroin together a lot.”35
Yet another friend thought that

Cass wasn’t an addict. She was not somebody who had a dependency
that she had to service every day . . . She was too powerful and had
too much class and too much sense of her duties to have given in
that way. She might have missed a rehearsal or she might have been
late or frustrated people because she wouldn’t do exactly what they
expected her to do, but I don’t think that she was, in my recollection,
ever incapacitated.36

Once though, after her first Las Vegas show, Elliot told her boyfriend
folk music / 131

that she had indeed shot up with heroin before going onstage and
those with her at the time had little doubt that this was what had
happened. Missed cues, fluffed whatever lines she had managed to
learn, and forgot lyrics.37

* * *

Bob Dylan is the biggest star to have emerged from the Village folk
scene of the 1950s and 1960s. His early repertoire was almost exclu-
sively folk.38 Dylan lived in the Village from 1961 to 1964; in his
view, New York City was “cold, muffled, and mysterious, the capital
of the world.”39
For years there have been claims and rumors that Dylan had been
a heroin user. Many “Dylanologists”—superfans who are passionate
about Dylan and especially his lyrics—are convinced he was a user,
citing a variety of clues, such as,

● Tarantula, Dylan’s poetry collection written in 1966, includes


lyrics such as “so I shoot dope once in a while. Big deal, what’s
it got to do with you?”40
● The Dylan song “From a Buick 6” includes the lines, “Well,
when the pipeline gets broken and I’m lost on the river bridge,
I’m cracked up on the highway and on the water’s edge, She
comes down the thruway ready to sew me up with thread.”
“Pipeline,” “highway,” and “sew me up with thread” are thought
to be references to injecting heroin.41

One Dylan biographer recounts a meeting between Dylan and one


especially obsessive New York superfan—A. J. Weberman. Weberman
is known for having gone through Dylan’s garbage for evidence to test
out his theories about Dylan’s songs and for confronting Dylan on
the streets. The story goes that Dylan was angry because he thought
Weberman was spreading rumors about his being a heroin addict. At
the meeting Weberman asked him if he was, and Dylan rolled up his
sleeves to show he had no track marks. But “this was not enough to con-
vince Weberman, who figured Bob was probably snorting heroin.”42
Dylan had always denied he was a user. In a 1984 interview
he refuted the idea that he ever had a “drug period”: “I never got
hooked on any drug. Not like you’d say, uh, Eric Clapton, his drug
period.”43 He told journalist and friend Robert Shelton,
132 / heroin and music in new york city

I never had anything to do with glamorizing the drug thing . . . As


for the hard drugs, that’s a question of trafficking . . . But you have
to realize that junk is not the problem in and of itself. Junk is the
symptom, not the problem . . . as Dr. Freud would say.44

But in 2011, when Dylan turned 70, a previously unheard inter-


view conducted by Shelton in 1966 was discovered in which Dylan
talked about having been a serious user and admitted he had been
addicted to heroin in the early 1960s:

I kicked a heroin habit in New York City. I got very, very strung out for a
while, I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about
a $25-a-day habit [roughly $200/day currently] and I kicked it.45

A fair question to ask, however, is: Was Dylan telling the truth
here? It is well known that Dylan has had a contentious relationship
with the press and has not always been forthcoming in interviews.
In fact, as one music journalist put it: “Dylan has been telling jour-
nalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career.
He was particularly prone to fabricating stories in the mid-Sixties.”46
This journalist then goes on to note that in another 1966 interview
with Shelton:

Dylan claimed to have worked as a male prostitute when he first


arrived in New York. That story is obviously complete fiction,
but Shelton ran it with little skepticism in his 1986 Dylan biogra-
phy . . . The fact that he left out the heroin part seems to suggest that
he probably found it to be even less credible.47

* * *

After his Greenwich Village years, Dylan moved with his family to
Woodstock, about two hours north of the city in the Catskill moun-
tains, a community that “has long been home to artists, writers,
and composers escaping the stress and congestion of urban life.”48
Here, Dylan worked with The Band, the Canadian-American rock
group. They backed Dylan on tour and they recorded together and
collaborated over the years.
Band drummer Levon Helm was a user. Helm recalled that in
the late 1960s,
folk music / 133

heroin came into the scene around then. We got into it because
it was there, and it was free. People were always wanting to do us
favors, turn us on, and some of the people we liked to hang around
with were doing it, so it came our way—no charge.49

Helm thought that,

Being a musician, you couldn’t avoid it . . . I’m here to tell you that it’s
a crying shame to see what success can do to some people. I’m sure it
wasn’t the best thing that could have happened to the band.50

Helm has also spoken about how his consumption changed once
he started using:

It was more of a shared thing back then, but of course after you use a
little of it, you start to want all you can get. Later I started to main-
line heroin, and that experience would last a couple of years. Once
I got into it, it took me a little while to get a handle on myself, and
eventually I did.51

Rick Danko, The Band’s bassist, was also a user, especially later
in life.52 In 1996, while touring Japan, Danko was arrested and sub-
sequently found guilty of receiving a package of heroin mailed to
him by his wife from the United States.53 (He received a suspended
sentence and so didn’t go to prison.) Danko said he had asked his
wife by telephone to send him some “medication,” presuming she
would understand he meant codeine, for which he had a prescrip-
tion, and that he was “just very surprised that she did something
that stupid.”54 When the judge in the case urged Danko to follow
through on a promise he made at his initial court session to seek
professional help for his heroin habit, Danko replied: “I’ve been drug
free for three months, so that’s a start.”55

* * *

Most heroin abusers from the Village revival scene were a lot less
well known to the general public than were Taylor or Dylan or The
Band. Tim Hardin, for example, composed two famous songs—“If
I Were a Carpenter”56 and “Reason to Believe”57—but he had only a
cult following, and none of his albums sold well. Hardin first started
134 / heroin and music in new york city

using opiates (morphine and Dilaudid) in high school in Oregon.58


He discovered heroin while serving in Vietnam59 and moved to New
York after his discharge.

I never even thought about stopping. First time I got off on smack
I said, out loud, “Why can’t I feel like this all the time?” So I pro-
ceeded to feel like that all the time.60

One of Hardin’s lesser-known songs was “Red Balloon,”61 from


1967. Some have called the tune his “love song to heroin”:62

Bought myself a red balloon,


And got a blue surprise
It took a lovelight from my eyes.

In Hardin’s wife Susan’s view, the song title references the fact that
heroin has often been sold in balloons, which can be swallowed
quickly if the need arose. The “blue surprise” speaks to the adverse
effects of heroin, one of which is that a man who uses it may not
be emotionally available for a woman (“it took a lovelight from
eyes”).63
According to one music website, heroin didn’t seem to help
Hardin’s career very much:

Heroin problems and general irresponsibility often made him miss


shows or perform poorly; he suffered from pleurisy in 1968, and
a tour of England the same year had to be cancelled when he fell
asleep on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, shortly after dismissing his
backing group in front of the audience.64

Hardin died of a heroin and morphine overdose in 1980. One


Village club owner who knew him well felt that Hardin “had no
control over his life . . . Some guys are like puppies that break their
leash and run headlong into traffic.”65

* * *

Bob Gibson was even less well known than Tim Hardin, but he
was an influential and active Village folkie, a New York City–born
singer-songwriter who “in the early 1960s was working pretty often
folk music / 135

in the Village.”66 Gibson wrote dozens of folk songs, although none


became a hit for him or for others.
Gibson has talked at length about his heroin use:

I used heroin for about two years in what I thought was a sensi-
ble, discriminating manner. It gave me control of my emotions, I
thought. I ceased to deal with any kind of emotional factors in my
life. I tried to handle them chemically instead.67

But heroin had a serious downside for Gibson and his career:

By the mid ’60s, my life really became untenable. I simply had to


leave the business. A lot of times my work had no longer been a
priority. I couldn’t work unless I was “well.” I did not feel capable.
I was ill. Everything became secondary to, first, getting well. And
“getting well” meant mainline injection every six hours. It became
expensive and you just can’t go to a store for it. My whole life just
became enmeshed in that thing.68
Then there were the horrors of trying to maintain a heroin habit on
the road, on tour. I’d try to figure how much I’d need for a month
and take that with me, and then it would be gone in two weeks.
Then I’d be stuck out in the boonies and I’d have to involve other
people in getting more stuff to me.69

* * *

David Blue was also little known to the public despite being active in
the Village folk scene. At one point Blue felt that he

just totally wanted to get off this planet and not have to face any-
thing . . . I never took drugs to heighten my awareness but rather to
cut it off completely and obliterate reality . . . Heroin was the absolute
bottom because it’s like a total anti-life drug. It was just like death
and that’s where I wanted to be. Luckily, I found out I was wrong.70

Years after he had cleaned up, Blue reflected on his use in an album
that “was about smack and loneliness and suicide and pain.”71 Two
tracks particularly spoke of life with heroin: “House of Changing
Faces”72 and “Come on John.”73 In the first, Blue acknowledges that,
“I still have the tracks to remind me what life was like, high and
wasted, when I wanted to die.” The second is about Blue’s “friend”
136 / heroin and music in new york city

with a habit, “a habit of runnin’ away/He says he can’t take it/But he


takes it every day.”

* * *

Fred Neil was a dominant figure in the Village revival scene. He


was most famous for writing Roy Orbison’s hit “Candy Man,” 74
and the Midnight Cowboy theme “Everybody’s Talkin,” 75 made
a success by Harry Nilsson. According to a musician friend, Neil
was “a local celebrity. He had groupies. He had people carrying his
guitars. He had people giving him drugs.” 76 There is little doubt
Neil was a user but he apparently never spoke on the record about
his use.
One family member—his sister-in-law—thought that Neil ben-
efited from using heroin in at least one respect:

The little professional communicating he did could never have been


done without the obliviousness that drugs give you. It freed him
enough to allow creativity to come through, or to even address that
creativity. Because he hated being on stage, hated it. When people
would applaud at the end of a song he’d mumble, “Fuck you very
much” under his breath. He hated being there, and resented having
to do it to make a living.77

But many others just saw the downside of heroin for Neil. He was
notorious for his junkie behavior. For example, according to record
executive Jac Holzman,

He was a weasel in his business dealings, didn’t keep his promises.


We gave him continual advances. He’d come in to the office and get
an advance, and then come in the next day and deny we’d given it to
him. The usual drug stuff.78

One producer called Neil “a brilliant songwriter and a total scum-


bag. The forerunner of the unreliable performer.”79

We’d book recording sessions and he’d show up or not show up. I
mean, here’s a guy who wrote “Candy Man” and the day he finished
writing it he went to the Brill Building and sold it to about twenty
different publishers for fifty bucks each.80
folk music / 137

Folksinger Judy Henske, who recorded a number of Neil’s songs,


recalled when she once

ran into him up at our manager’s house. Herbie Cohen had said,
“Judy, you’re such an up person, and you love his music so much, you
should really give Fred a talk about getting clean, because he’d be a
lot better off.” I started talking to him about how he should give up
heroin. I must have talked for five hours and he didn’t say a single
word. He would stare straight ahead and go “uh huh, uh huh.” When
I finally finished I said, “Well, whaddya think Fred?” He just looked
at me and said, “Yeah, but do you know any place I could score?”81

* * *

Like Fred Neil, Karen Dalton, a Village-based folk singer and banjo
player, was clearly a user who evidently never talked about her use
publicly. Unlike Neil, however, Dalton was virtually unknown to
the public. Despite her talent—she has been described as “the best
singer you’ve never heard of” and “folk music’s answer to Billie
Holiday”82 —Dalton didn’t find much success in the music business
and was never more than a cult favorite. As one journalist put it,
Dalton was “self destructive”:

She drank heavily, used drugs and had a tendency to disappear on a


whim. She played only cover versions, and her decision to not play
her own material in an era that belonged to singer-songwriters per-
haps also hindered her success. She was uncomfortable performing
live, and she also loathed recording.83

A folk singer friend recalled the time that Dalton overdosed at


her house:

She called me up after that and she said: “I guess it’s been three
weeks. It’s taken me this long to call and say I guess I oughtta thank
you for something.” She was furious at me for bringing her back.84

By the early 1990s, Dalton was living on the New York City
streets. The same folksinger friend recalled:

Whenever I performed there she would show up. She didn’t look too
bad. She had an odor and her teeth were awful, but she was a very
138 / heroin and music in new york city

clean person and very beautiful to everyone, so I don’t think people


noticed her teeth.85

Dalton died in 1993. How she died remains muddled. One jour-
nalist described Dalton’s last days as “living on the New York streets,
destitute, her health gone.”86 According to a musician and producer
who knew her,

Some said it was a drug overdose . . . But from what I understand, she
ran out of steam.87

* * *

In addition to those folk singers from the Village revival scene who
were users who wrote and sang songs about heroin, there were also
folk singers from the scene who were not users but who had songs
about heroin and other opiates. For the most part, these songs had
very little good to say about these drugs.
Richard and Mimi Fariña, the husband-and-wife duo, were two
such singers. Richard, who died in 1966 in a motorcycle accident
shortly after the duo’s second album was released, is known to the
public primarily for his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up
to Me,88 which was published just before his death.89 He wrote, and
the Fariñas recorded, “Mainline Prosperity Blues,” in large measure
a put-down of the heroin user’s work ethic:

They say I could be productive


But I think I’ll just recline right here instead.90

The singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte Marie was another fixture in


the Village scene. She was never a heroin user, but at one point in
her life she became addicted to codeine as she was recovering from
a throat infection.91 This experience became the basis of her song,
“Cod’ine.”

You’ll forget you’re a woman, you’ll forget about men,


Try it just once, and you’ll try it again.92

Dave Van Ronk, also never a user, covered the 1920s’ classic
“Willie the Weeper,” which is about an opium addict who dreams of
folk music / 139

being a sailor. The song refers to smoking “pills,” which, during the
early 1900s, was common drug vernacular for opium:

Oh, well after he had smoked about a dozen pills


He says, “This ought’a kill all my aches and ills.”93

* * *

Folk singer Peggy Seeger (part of the Seeger extended musical family
and Pete’s half-sister) was not part of the Village revival scene (she
was living in the UK during those years) nor was she a heroin user,
but she certainly merits mention here because she was the first to
record “Take Me in Your Arms (Miss Heroin).”

So you’ll start inhaling me one afternoon,


you’ll take me into your arms very soon.94

The song has an interesting history. Seeger recalled that a friend


of hers found the song on a piece of paper hanging in the mens’
room of a barracks at an army base in New Jersey, and the friend
reduced the lyrics. They know the author’s name, but they’ve never
been able to find him.95

The East Village Scene and the Beats


During the folk revival, New York City also had a scene centered in
the Lower East Side/East Village area of Manhattan.96 The Fugs,
founded by Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg in the early 1960s,
were the best-known band from this scene. Neither Sanders nor
Kupferberg were heroin users, but some Fugs were. Al Fowler and
Bill Szabo were early members of the band. According to Sanders,

Both were hooked on heroin, which made it difficult for them to


come to rehearsals or keep to an exact, non-sweaty schedule. So they
soon went their ways . . . We couldn’t really have a junkie in a band
that didn’t make a lot of money.97

Sanders thought that the Fugs were

a pot band more than anything else. I would certainly never take
heroin, for instance. When my friend Janis Joplin died, I vowed to
140 / heroin and music in new york city

tell people as much as I could about the dangers of heroin. I wouldn’t


throw the word “dope” around. If you mean pot or magic mush-
rooms, you could certainly say we were in favor of the legalization of
the stuff and took our share of it.98

Sanders saw many lives “wrecked by heroin”:99

In some apartments in the Lower East Side a hypodermic needle


boiling on a gas ring was almost as prevalent as a folk guitar by the
bed. Miriam [Sanders’s wife] noticed how, just as in later decades
a person might ask, “Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette?” back in
those days it was likely to be “Do you mind if I shoot up?”100

The Holy Modal Rounders—Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber—


were a folk duo from the Lower East Side scene. Both were, at one
point, members of the Fugs. Guitarist Steve Weber was a user:

Yeah I used to get strung out once in a while but you know it hap-
pens to the best of us, at least I didn’t kill my damn fool self.101

The band added members and eventually relocated to the west


coast, although Stampfel stayed in New York. A musician friend
recalled that when Weber lived in New York:

Weber and [another friend] had hustled all the time to get heroin,
they would make their own needles out of basketball needles, they
would file down a basketball needle and put it on an eyedropper. It
was expensive, getting hustled and having to hustle back.102

Weber recorded at least two songs about heroin. The Rounders


did “Sally in the Alley,”103 which Stampfel wrote. One music jour-
nalist called the song “a nursery rhyme about a junkie” that may
have been written with Karen Dalton in mind:

Sally in the ally sifting garbage


Sally in bed without a hit.104

With the group Junk Hog, Weber recorded “Lonely Junkie,” also
written (actually cowritten) by Stampfel, in which Weber makes it
clear that, for him, heroin is definitely a top priority:
folk music / 141

I live for the moment


And that moment is skag.105

* * *

Before creating the Fugs, both Sanders and Kupferberg had been
Beat poets. The Beats were a cultural and literary movement that
emerged in the late 1940s, and the East Village was their home base
on the east coast. While the Beats’ preferred music was, and always
had been, jazz,106 the Beats were without a doubt an influence on
the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were
clear connections and “some surprising overlap”107 between the Beat
and folk music scenes.
Historian Sean Wilentz has documented the relationship
between these two scenes. He notes that the origins of the Beat
impulse, like those of the folk revival, dated back to the Depression-
era Left,108 and that “the major Beat writers began to forge their
friendships and find their literary voices in the same 1940s America
that produced the Almanac Singers.”109 Wilentz examines at length
the relationship between Bob Dylan and the principal Beat poet
Allen Ginsberg, who “became friends and maintained personal and
artistic connections for well over 30 years, until Ginsberg died in
1997.”110
Drug-wise, marijuana was the Beats’ favorite drug.111 Aside
from marijuana, the Beats “experimented with a variety of drugs in
addition to being serious drinkers, and morphine and heroin were
part of the mix.”112 Interviews conducted with New York Beats by
sociologist Ned Polsky in 1960 found that drugs were a pervasive
part of Beat life, and that about one in ten Beats was a heroin
user.113
Ginsberg experimented with a wide variety of drugs, including
heroin, but not to the point of addiction.114 Smoking opium “turned
out to be the supreme junk delight for him.”115 Probably his most
famous line of poetry, though, was about heroin. It’s the very first
line from 1956’s “Howl”— one of the most widely read poems of the
twentieth century: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through
the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.”116
142 / heroin and music in new york city

In addition to Ginsberg, the major New York Beats were the


writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and the poet Gregory
Corso. Kerouac, who wrote the literary classic, On the Road, favored
amphetamines, especially Benzadrine inhalers, which could be pur-
chased in pharmacies without a prescription and mixed in with alco-
hol to get high.117
Both Burroughs and Corso were serious heroin users. Burroughs
was addicted first to morphine and then to heroin.118

Addiction is an illness of exposure. I was associated with addicts and


since morphine was available to me I took it from time to time and
eventually became addicted.119

He was introduced to heroin by Herbert Huncke, a poet and street


hustler who got hold of the drug through contacts in Times Square.
In Burroughs’s view,

You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong moti-
vations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a
matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score.
I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar
experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can
remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. You don’t
decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re
an addict.120

Burroughs’s two most famous books center on heroin. Junky121


(the source of the above quote) is the story of his experiences as a
heroin addict in New York City. Naked Lunch,122 a novel, is basically
a narrative told by “William Lee” consisting of “routines,” that is,
vignettes drawn from Burroughs’s own experiences with heroin and
other opiates.123
As to how opiates affected his writing of these and his other
works, Burroughs felt that “since they have the effect of diminishing
awareness of surroundings and bodily processes, [they] can only be
a hindrance to the artist.”124

Under morphine one can edit, type, and organize material effec-
tively but since the drug acts to decrease awareness the creative factor
is dimmed. Junkie is the only one of my books written under the
folk music / 143

influence of opiates. The other books could never have been written
if I had been addicted to morphine at the time.125

Corso was a key member of the Beat movement, although he


never was as successful as Ginsberg, Kerouac, or Burroughs. He
achieved fame with his poetry in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but
then his life,

for the next thirty five years followed a pattern in which fewer and
fewer poems were written and his prolific letter writing habit slowed
to a trickle. As time passed he alienated more and more of his friends
and his days were spent in the pursuit and use of drugs.126

Corso felt that his tragedy was that,

I had just married when I began with the drug, not knowing that
I’d be addicted to it. Thus after awhile, down went my marriage and
down went my muse, and still I could not understand why I con-
tinued to take the drug or why in the first place. All I know is that
I would be deathly ill without it. I managed to stop when the baby
came, and thank God I never ventured to hook my wife (most do so
thus to keep their wives). But I was far from well.127

Summary and Discussion


The folk musician-users in the sample, in describing why they
first started to use heroin, repeated a number of themes voiced by
musician-users from other music genres. Both James Taylor and
Levon Helm spoke about how, as musicians, heroin was easy to get;
as Helm put it, “You couldn’t avoid it.” Others discussed use in the
context of how the drug made them feel, how it gave them control
over their emotions, and how effective it was in terms of “obliterating
reality” (David Blue). Taylor also addressed how heroin use related
to the difficulties around becoming a “millionaire star” at age 20.
The impact of heroin on these musicians’ playing, creativity, and
careers also echoed themes revealed by users from other genres. Thus,
Tim Hardin missed shows, performed poorly, and possibly fell asleep
on stage once because of heroin. Heroin and cocaine use was behind
John Phillips’s failed attempt at a comeback album. Bob Gibson’s
career suffered and for a period of time was put on hold because of
heroin. And while heroin may have helped Fred Neil make it through
144 / heroin and music in new york city

performances and act professionally on stage, it also made him come


to be seen as untrustworthy by some in the music business.

* * *

All the folk musician-users in the sample were from the 1950s/1960s’
folk revival period. I was not able to identify any folk musician–users
from the generation before the revival years or from the generation
since those years. Why might this be the case—why was heroin an
issue for musicians in the 1950s/1960s’ revival period but not before
or since?
We’ve seen that heroin has been readily available in New York for
most of the almost 70 years since World War II ended—especially
for musicians. Both Ed Sanders and Dave Van Ronk spoke about
how widespread heroin use was generally in downtown New York
City during the revival years; James Taylor recalled how easy it was
for him to find heroin in Greenwich Village during the years he
lived there. Heroin was there, and some musicians used it.
But understanding heroin use by a musician in the revival subcul-
ture requires going beyond the simple issue of availability. We need
to consider the influence of other subcultures on the folk music sub-
culture. During the revival years, pro-heroin use values and attitudes
from outside folk music are likely to have impacted some musician
identities and to have been a factor in their use of heroin.
One influence was the Beats. There were varied connections
between the Beats and the New York folk music scene of the 1950s
and 1960s. The Beats were a very dissident subculture. They wanted
to distance themselves as much as possible from mainstream America.
They felt revulsion for the status quo, a disdain for consumerist
materialism, and they railed against the prudery of their parents’
generation. Not surprisingly, then, it was a subculture in which drug
use generally was endorsed and considered normal behavior. Heroin
was used by many Beats, including at least two of its literary stars.
Given the interaction between these subcultures, the values and atti-
tudes about heroin held by the Beats may very well have influenced
some musicians from the revival folk scene to use the drug.
A second likely influence was the New Left. American folk music
had been connected to the political Left for decades. An earlier gen-
eration of leftists was concerned in large measure with trade unions
and labor rights, and many folk singers from this generation wrote
folk music / 145

and performed songs that conveyed a leftist message and that were
linked to the labor movement. Woodie Guthrie was undoubtedly
against the rich and on the side of the average working person. Pete
Seeger is famous for his activism and was on the front lines of a vari-
ety of social justice crusades starting in the 1930s. Based on his work
with the Almanac Singers—the first organized group to attempt to
use folk music as a vehicle for social change128 —Seeger helped found
“People’s Songs,” compiling a huge library of labor songs and spear-
heading a variety of pro-labor activity.129
Folk music’s left-wing connotation was “strong enough that it
became a target of the anti-communist witch hunt.”130 Beginning
in the 1940s, folksingers were routinely investigated and harassed
by the FBI and other governmental agencies. Congressional hear-
ings were held and a number of folksingers, including Seeger, were
questioned by the notorious House Committee on Un-American
Activities (HUAC). During these McCarthy years, Seeger and
a number of other well-known folk singers and entertainers were
“blacklisted” and had their careers damaged because they were
blocked from singing on TV and radio, from performance, and they
lost recording contracts.131
The New Left of the 1960s was different, focusing less on labor
issues and more on civil rights and antiwar issues. As Dave Van Ronk
put it: “The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War profoundly
changed the political atmosphere, and pulled a lot of people to the
left.”132 Numerous New York folk musicians wrote protest songs linked
to these movements. Protest songs made Bob Dylan famous, and he
helped this music reach a mass audience. The Fugs, too, were “fero-
ciously political . . . utilizing music and performance as the most potent
means of pushing their message ahead . . . the Fugs were at the forefront
of the civil rights movement as it bled into the antiwar protests.”133
The New Left was part of the larger 1960s youth counterculture.
As such, the climate was a very permissive one when it came to drug
use. At the time, drugs and radical politics often went hand in hand.
For many of the New Left, taking drugs was a way of saying “No!” to
authority, of bucking the status quo. Sometimes the drug use included
heroin. Given the relationship between folk music and the Left, such
pro-drug attitudes and behaviors are likely to have been an influence
on some folk musicians of the revival era deciding to use heroin.

* * *
146 / heroin and music in new york city

The main reason there were no heroin users from the earlier gen-
eration of folk musicians is undoubtedly the lack of availability
of the drug during that era. I noted in chapter one that heroin
was not easy to obtain during the 1920s, 1930s, and the early
1940s, and especially during the World War II years.134 These were
roughly the same years as the era of this earlier generation of folk
musicians.
In fact, I found no evidence that these musicians did anything
more than drink. Pete Seeger, for one, “kept his distance from
marijuana.”135 His view of heroin was reflected in his reaction to
discovering that a young folk singer from the revival generation he
admired was using heroin:

I felt sick at heart, almost like weeping. This guy was talented. Now
his career will be like the brief flare of a match instead of a fine
hearth fire which could have warmed us all, for years.136

It’s likely that another reason why there was no heroin use among
musicians from this earlier era is that this folk subculture was not
influenced by other subcultures existing during those times that had
values and attitudes supportive of drug use in general or heroin use
in particular. The Beats were essentially a post–World War II move-
ment, the political Left in those years was not connected to a pro-
drug youth subculture, and there were no similar subcultures existent
at the time. Thus, there were no subcultural supports for heroin use
for this generation of folk musicians. There was little or nothing in
their worldview that might lead them to consider using heroin.

* * *

In chapter one, I noted that since the folk music revival of the 1950s
and 1960s, folk music in New York City evolved to encompass a
broad range of artists and subgenres. One of the major folk scenes
in the city is Anti-folk, which began to develop in the East Village
in the 1980s, and since the early 1990s has been based around the
Sidewalk Café there. These younger songwriters and performers
were of a different mind than folkies from earlier generations. They
did not buy into the past traditions of folk music and took an edgier,
more rebellious approach to the music. For those of this generation,
as Jeffrey Lewis, a staple of the New York Anti-folk scene, once put
folk music / 147

it: “The past glory of the ’60s folk clubs had degenerated into tourist-
trap nostalgia joints.”137
As for the drug use of New York Anti-folk musicians (and also
New York folkies from other contemporary subgenres such as Indie
folk or Americana), a reasonable assessment—based on the limited
literature that exists, including song lyrics—would be that while
many of these musicians are definitely no strangers to drug use,
heroin does not appear to have much of a role in this scene. At most,
heroin seems to come up just in the occasional song reference, for
example, Lewis’s “Everyone’s Honest,” about a friend who had been
a user:

He told me that he’d gone clean


It’s all the same to me.138

Contemporary New York folk musicians—if they use drugs at


all—seem much more likely to be recreational users of marijuana
or other psychoactive substances than to be involved with heroin.
Thus, for example, in the song “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went
Insane,” Lewis basically describes a “bummer” acid trip: “I was
hanging with some friends just getting loaded/When all of a sudden
my mind exploded.”139 And in a follow-up song, “No LSD Tonight,”
Lewis laments that because of “the acid song,” some fans offer him
the drug at his shows but that for him, “being drunk is fun I guess
but being stoned makes me depressed.”140
Another staple of the New York Anti-folk scene—Adam Green
of the Moldy Peaches—has not been shy about talking about his
use of ketamine (an anesthetic used mainly for veterinary purposes
but used by some to get high). Referring to a film he shot on his
iPhone called The Wrong Ferrari, Green said that he “was on a lot of
ketamine at the time. It’s really impossible to separate the ketamine
from this movie. It’s a ketamine classic.”141
Why does heroin not seem to play much of a role in the cur-
rent New York folk scene? One likely reason is that there is little in
the way of subcultural support influencing folk musicians from this
generation to use the drug. Certainly the Beats and the New Left are
much less dominant than in the revival years. The Beats are still read
but are not as influential. While no doubt the spirit of radical poli-
tics and a commitment to New Left causes persist today for many
of the current folk generation, the New Left and the larger youth
148 / heroin and music in new york city

counterculture of which it was part were essentially movements of


the 1960s that started to break apart by the 1970s. No subcultures
that might be approving or supportive of heroin use have taken the
place of the Beats or the New Left. Absent such values and attitudes,
heroin use would be less likely to occur in the current generation of
folk musicians in contrast to the revival generation.
I suggested previously that one reason New York jazz musi-
cians and rappers who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s may have
abstained from using heroin was that they were fully aware of its
dangers—they had seen what happened to people they knew who
used—and they wanted no part of it. The newer generation of folk
musicians grew up during the same years and may have seen many
of the same things and thus hold similar views of the drug and
also stay away from it. In this regard, Beck Hansen, who was part
of the New York Anti-folk scene in its early years, recalled in an
interview that while growing up in Los Angeles, he had witnessed
the drug-induced deaths of several loved ones and so resisted using
“hard drugs”:

I lost a few close friends. Watching somebody fade away, you


know, in slow motion . . . I grew up in an area where the effects of
drugs . . . were tragic and brutal, so any kind of romance associated
with that was annihilated for me at a very early age.142

* * *

Another factor likely to be related to heroin use by New York folk


musicians from the 1950s/1960s’ revival is the “outlaw” theme or
image in American folk music. The outlaw has long been part of oral
legends and is celebrated as a folk hero in the American and other
folk traditions. Here I refer not to the rock ’n’ roll motorcycle rebel
discussed in chapter three but to the true American outlaw—people
like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and the Depression-era bank rob-
ber Pretty Boy Floyd. In American folk music, men like these have
been portrayed as romanticized figures—brave and daring men, the
embodiments of true liberty who flaunt authority and champion
the interests of the masses.143 These are the people historian Eric
Hobsbawm calls “social bandits”—considered by their people as
“heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even
folk music / 149

leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped


and supported.”144
Both Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger sang outlaw songs. Each
covered the 1920s’ tune “Poor Jesse James”: “He stole from the rich
and he gave to the poor/He’d a hand and a heart and a brain.”145
Guthrie wrote “Billy the Kid,” whose “picture is posted from Texas
to Maine/And women and riding and robbing’s my game,”146 and
also “Pretty Boy Floyd,” who could be counted on for,

a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.147

But the outlaw was an especially powerful theme in folk music


during the revival years of the 1950s and 1960s. David Blue, for
example, wrote and sang “Outlaw Man”: “My legacy is the highway/
On the highway, I will run.”148 But it was Bob Dylan who was most
devoted to the outlaw in song. He covered Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy
Floyd,” and wrote not only an outlaw song—“Outlaw Blues” (“Don’t
ask me nothin’ about nothin’/I just might tell you the truth”149),
but also a whole outlaw album—Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.150
Also, one of Dylan’s most quoted lines—“to live outside the law, you
must be honest”151—speaks to his view of the integrity of the outlaw.
Thus, it has been argued that,

over and over Dylan casts himself as an outlaw, as the negation of


whatever society expects or requires, as judge and satirist of the sta-
tus quo. Distanced from society, he questions its values and refuses,
at least imaginatively, to conform to its standards . . . The only thing
we know for sure about this figure is that he has his freedom.152

The outlaw theme may very well have played a role in the heroin
use of some revival folk musicians. Outlaws are risk takers, they live
dangerously, and, as we’ve seen, using heroin can be very danger-
ous. Any member of a subculture in which heroin use is supported
or encouraged who might see himself and adopt an identity as an
outlaw might be inclined to use if the drug is available. Using heroin
is a sure sign of outlaw cool.
This theme doesn’t seem to have much of a presence in the cur-
rent folk scene. The newer generation of folk singers apparently is
less enamored of the outlaw, which is understandable, given their
150 / heroin and music in new york city

stance toward the old folk music traditions. These folkies—even the
prolific Jeffrey Lewis—are not writing songs or covering traditional
outlaw songs.

* * *

Few musicians from any genre have been as prolific and versatile as
Bob Dylan. In addition to his protest and outlaw songs, he has writ-
ten songs of varied types and with various themes. Surely he must
have written songs about drugs?
Not according to Dylan. He has always claimed he doesn’t write
drug songs. “I have never and never will write a drug song.”153 What
about “Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 and 35” (“everybody must
get stoned”)—which many people understand as a “marijuana song”?
When asked about this recently, Dylan seemed to maintain his long-
standing claim about not writing drug songs with this rather cryptic
response: “It doesn’t surprise me that some people would see it that way.
But these are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.”154
This raises an additional question: In the way that Dylan’s
“Blowin’ in the Wind” is considered the prototypical protest song
from the folk revival period, was there also a prototypical “heroin
song” from this era? Since it wasn’t a Dylan song (Dylan doesn’t
write drug songs), what song might it have been?
Some might vote for James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” but the
song is only partly about heroin, and it was released in 1970, not
at the height of the folk revival. This author’s vote goes to a song
that emerged not from New York but rather from the London scene,
which was happening roughly contemporaneously with the New
York revival. The song is Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death.”155 Jansch
was one of Britain’s most famous folk singers, and this is one of
his best-known songs; it’s from his 1965 debut album, which estab-
lished Jansch as a star in British music. The song, covered by many
performers over the years, was inspired by the death of a folk music
friend, whose troubled life as a youngster:

Had made you turn


To a needle of death.156
Ch a p t e r Si x
L at i n a n d Ca r i bbe a n Music

This chapter focuses on the link between heroin and Latin and
Caribbean music in New York. After a short description of the Latin
and Caribbean populations in the city, I discuss heroin use and also
heroin dealing in these populations. Then I present an overview of
the various subgenres of Latin and Caribbean music that have been
popular in the city. Finally, I examine the use of heroin by New
York–based performers and musicians from these music subgenres.

* * *

New York has one of the most diverse populations of Latin Americans
of any city in the world. Over the years, New York’s Latin popula-
tion has continued to increase, and today roughly 30 percent of the
city’s population is Latin, that is, they have origins in the Hispanic
countries of Latin America.1
Until the late 1970s, New York’s Latino community consisted
primarily of Puerto Ricans, who have been deemed US citizens since
1917 and thus have had few restrictions placed on their travel to
New York. In the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of Puerto Ricans
came to New York to fill jobs in wartime industries. East Harlem in
Manhattan became the predominantly Puerto Rican community of
Spanish Harlem or El Barrio. Currently, the Bronx is the borough
with the largest number of Puerto Ricans in the city.2
There was a surge in immigration from the Dominican Republic
to New York beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, and since 1990
the Dominican population in the city has almost doubled.3 The
largest concentration of Dominicans lives in Washington Heights
in the northwestern end of Manhattan. In the past two decades,
the Mexican population in the city has grown more than five-fold,
152 / heroin and music in new york city

and Mexicans are now the third-largest Latin group in New York,
with “Little Mexicos” having sprung up in various neighborhoods
throughout the city.4 There has also been an increase in South and
Central Americans from countries including Ecuador, Colombia, El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
People from non-Spanish–speaking Caribbean (West Indian)
countries have lived in New York since at least the early 1900s.
While there is no accurate count of the number of Caribbeans living
in New York (there is no Caribbean “check-off” in the US Census),
the numbers that do exist indicate that Jamaicans are the largest
group in the city, followed by Haitians and Trinidadians, and that
Brooklyn is the borough where most New York Caribbeans reside.5
Annually, on Labor Day weekends in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights
section, the American Day Carnival and Parade brings together at
least a million West Indians from around the New York area to cel-
ebrate West Indian culture.

Heroin Use
Heroin use became a widespread problem among New York Latinos
after World War II. Before the war, the typical New York City her-
oin user had been an aging, working-class, white male. After the
war, this changed completely when heroin use escalated among poor
African American and also Puerto Rican male youth.6
Heroin use by New York Latinos after the war has been explained
as a reaction to the problems that migrants face in trying to come to
terms with an alien and hostile environment7 and as “one solution
to the social and psychological problems of Puerto Ricans which
result, in part, from the social burdens imposed on a recent immi-
grant group.”8 One observer wrote: “When Puerto Ricans migrate
to New York, cultural conflicts, brought about by industrialization
and migration from rural to urban areas on the island, are deepened
and even aggravated by additional factors such as discrimination,
minority group status, and a language barrier.”9
An anthropologist who worked in El Barrio in the early to mid-
1950s recalled that the patterns of drug use

differed greatly from today [early 1990s]. To begin with, heroin


was the only drug used, and it was used primarily by males. I still
latin and caribbean music / 153

remember that all the vacant lots had garbage in them, which was
used to make fires to sterilize needles. At that time, sterilization of
needles was done very carefully. It was crude, but it was very overt.10

Starting in the middle to late 1960s until the early 1970s, a “tidal
wave” of heroin addiction swept inner city New York.11 Heroin mar-
kets increased with an influx of new users, including many soldiers
returning from Vietnam who had been introduced to the drug while
serving overseas.12 At this time Puerto Ricans were about 15 per-
cent of the New York population but about 25 percent of the heroin
addicts.13
In the early 1970s, the South Bronx, which borders on Spanish
Harlem, had a heroin problem commonly described as an “epidemic.”
“One out of every five people in the Mott Haven area of the [South]
Bronx was addicted. The whole borough of the Bronx lacked a
detoxification program, inpatient or out.”14 During this time the
Young Lords, a group of revolutionary nationalists comprising
young Puerto Rican activists modeled on the Black Panthers, felt
compelled to take over a hospital in the Bronx and start a “guerrilla
clinic,” a drug detox program to rehabilitate heroin addicts.15
Interviews with New York Latin King and Queen gang members
who grew up in the 1970s to 1980s in New York City revealed that
about one-third had been substance abusers and that heroin was the
drug for many.16 The users

often placed their drug habit in the context of coping with extreme
levels of anguish and psychological turmoil . . . while hedonism and
experimentation were one reason to first experiment with drugs, it
was depression and other psychological distress that compounded
their use and led them into cycles of abuse.17

One leader of the Kings started using heroin a little later in life:

I managed to avoid it all those years and then I started and I kid you
not I loved that hit till this day, I’m not gonna be like one of those
ex-addicts that says I hate it when I think about it, Nah, I loved it, it
was warm, it enhanced my sex life . . . So it gave me a sense of power
and I just didn’t care about the world. I thought that nobody could
notice that I was nodding out and vomiting and my eyes are like
this, and then I woke up.18
154 / heroin and music in new york city

When asked, “how long did it take you?” the King leader
responded: “10 years.”
From the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, crack cocaine
became the predominant street drug in Latino New York, which
“infused new energy into the underground economy making drug
dealing the most vibrant equal opportunity employer for young
males in El Barrio.”19 But then heroin again became a street favorite
in Latino communities.20 Research in the late 1990s with new her-
oin users confirmed that young New York Latinos (especially Puerto
Rican) males and females in their teens and twenties were among
the city’s new users.21
One reason some young Puerto Rican males began using during
these years may be that they kept close relations with an older gener-
ation of users. While working with these older users, who oftentimes
were dealers, the young men got initiated into use. They continued
to use the drug because they were dealing it, and they couldn’t avoid
it. By contrast, Puerto Rican females were more likely to have been
introduced to heroin by girlfriends in leisure contexts, for example,
while hanging out and getting ready to go out partying.22
A study of drug use in the New York Dominican community
during the 1990s found less heroin use among Dominicans than
among other Latin groups. In large measure because of its associa-
tion with needles, using heroin was perceived by many Dominicans
in the study as a sign of weakness and lack of self-control and as
something whites, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans but not
Dominicans might be likely to use.23 At the same time, selling her-
oin was much less likely to be seen as wrong, especially if the money
earned through dealing was being sent home to the Dominican
Republic to support a family or being saved to go back to improve
the life of one’s family.24
There has been scant data available on New York City Latinos,
but national studies suggest that heroin use remains a problem.
Nationally, Hispanic teens’ use of heroin has been outpacing use
by their white and African American peers.25 Also, more Hispanic
youths are using prescription drugs, including opiates like Oxycontin,
to get high, and the rate of prescription-drug abuse is higher among
Hispanics than among other ethnic groups.26

* * *
latin and caribbean music / 155

Heroin use has traditionally been minimal in the Caribbean coun-


tries of the West Indies.27 Research conducted in New York in the
1970s found that West Indians were less likely than either American
blacks or whites to use the drug,28 although anecdotal accounts
of heroin use by Haitians living in New York were reported in the
1990s.29 But in the early 2000s, heroin became more readily avail-
able in Caribbean countries including Jamaica, and use started to
show up among youth throughout the area.30 At least part of the
explanation for this is that the Caribbean is a route for heroin com-
ing from South America on its way to the United States, and some
of this heroin remains in and is used by island residents.31 This trend
is quite likely to have implications for rates of heroin use by West
Indians migrating to New York City in upcoming years.
Things have also been changing in Puerto Rico and the Dominican
Republic with regard to heroin use by local populations, with likely
implications for heroin use in Hispanic New York. In Puerto Rico,
heroin has been a problem since at least the 1970s, but recently the
drug has become a public health emergency. The number of intrave-
nous heroin users has increased, and the island has a very high HIV/
AIDS infection rate, with more than half of all newly reported cases
coming from intravenous drug use. One source of these increases is
that, as Puerto Rico sought stricter sentences for drug dealers and
more jail time for users, many publicly funded treatment programs
adopted zero tolerance policies, cutting off treatment to people who
relapsed.32
In the Dominican Republic, heroin use was rare prior to the
early 2000s, but anecdotal reports suggest that use has been on the
rise. One reason for this is probably the island’s increasing role as a
main transit point for South American drug cartels, prompting local
use. But an additional key factor is the upsurge in deportation of
Dominicans residing in the United States back to the island.
This started in the late 1990s when US immigration policy was
changed such that noncitizens—including permanent legal resi-
dents—became vulnerable to deportation even for minor crimes
committed years ago. Since then, the United States has sent around
30,000 deportees—many from New York City—back to the island.33
Research with this population has found that forced removal is a key
precipitating factor in engaging in high-risk behaviors such as heroin
156 / heroin and music in new york city

use. Stigmatized, rejected, and alienated, some deportees experience


a rekindling of past heroin use, while others begin using for the first
time. Heroin is their drug of choice because it “numbs their feelings,
helps them escape momentarily from their dilemma, and blocks out
memories of their families and loved ones in the US.”34

Heroin Dealing
The Latino role in New York heroin dealing began essentially in
the early 1970s, when Turkey—the source of much of the heroin
in New York—banned opium cultivation. Many new distributors
entered the market, including Puerto Ricans and Cubans. In the
1980s, Dominicans became major players, quickly expanding into
heroin sales when profits from crack began to wane in the latter part
of the decade.35
Ethnographic research with Dominican street-level dealers in
Washington Heights in the 1990s found that they

operate street level markets, meeting customers on stoops and cor-


ners but exchanging the actual heroin . . . and money at indoor loca-
tions only. They sell almost any quantity desired, but keep only
small amounts on the premises. Heroin is kept in bags and bundles,
for example, but larger amounts are quickly produced. Street-level
workers are in their mid to late 20s, while managers are generally
in their 30s and 40s. Some “owners” are quite young. Few speak
English well enough to sustain a conversation with their largely
English-speaking clientele and have difficulty “screening” new cus-
tomers. New European-American faces make them nervous.36

According to the DEA, in the early 1990s, Colombian drug lords


began introducing a high grade of heroin into the United States,
and by the early 2000s Colombian organizations controlled the
transportation of South American heroin into New York City. Over
time they came to rely on Dominican and occasionally Mexican
groups to help transport the heroin.37 By 2009, reports were that
“Colombia-based traffickers bring some of the purest heroin in the
world to the streets of New York.”38
Most New York heroin still comes from South America, and
Latinos still play a major role in retail street sales. Mexican drug
groups have become the more powerful importers as the Colombian
latin and caribbean music / 157

cartels have weakened. Recent reports suggest that with the growth
of drug trafficking through Mexico, which traditionally has had
a low incidence of heroin abuse, local Mexican markets for heroin
have expanded, leaving a growing number of local abusers.39

* * *

In the 1960s and 1970s, Caribbean drug dealing involved mari-


juana almost exclusively. Organizations led by young Caribbeans
linked cultivators on the islands with exporters/importers and street-
level distributors in New York and other cities. By the mid-1970s,
Rastafarians were the main participants in these organizations.40
Until the mid-1980s, Caribbean groups like these “tended to operate
within their own community, and thus seldom came to the attention
of the rest of the city.”41
Things changed in the mid-1980s when crack cocaine became a
problem as “predominantly West Indian gangs were among those
that moved into this expanding industry.”42 These gangs, which had
begun as small-scale dealing operations in New York Caribbean
communities in the late 1960s, had their roots in the slums of
Kingston, Jamaica.43
For almost a decade, one gang (or “posse”) from Kingston, known
as the Gulleymen, ran a heroin and cocaine distribution operation
in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The gang’s leader—Eric
Vassell—had migrated to Brooklyn in the early 1980s and first began
selling marijuana and then powder cocaine, and soon branched out
into heroin—the first Jamaican posse leader to sell the drug.44 This
turned out to be “a brilliant entrepreneurial move . . . After the New
York police initiated Operation Pressure Point to drive heroin dealers
out of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Vassell reaped a whirlwind of
profits from the brisk smack business on his side of the East River.”45
After a warrant for his arrest was issued, Vassell escaped to Jamaica
but was eventually captured and was returned to and imprisoned in
New York.
Jamaican gangs today still have a New York presence dealing
mainly, but not exclusively, marijuana and cocaine (Jamaica is a top
transit point for South American cocaine en route to the United
States). At least one prominent Kingston-based drug gang—the
Shower Posse—has had branches in a number of cities in the United
158 / heroin and music in new york city

States including New York.46 The gang suffered a blow recently when
Christopher “Dudas” Coke, who ran the posse for almost 20 years
from the barricaded neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, was sentenced
to 23 years in a US federal prison for drug trafficking.47

Latin and Caribbean Music


Latin music “has been an integral part of New York’s musical fab-
ric for decades.”48 The first Latino music craze to hit New York
City—in 1913—was the tango, which originated in Argentina and
Uruguay and became a worldwide phenomenon.49 The rumba, from
Cuba, was big in New York in the 1930s. Latin (or Afro-Cuban) Jazz
was born and developed in New York in the early 1940s by Mario
Bauza along with Machito and his Afro-Cuban band, which com-
bined Cuban rhythms and African American big band jazz. New
York City–born Tito Puente became Latin Jazz’s first superstar.
The mambo—also from Cuba—was popular in the city begin-
ning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1950s. The craze
of the mid-1960s was Latin Boogaloo, a mix of Latin sounds plus
soul, jazz, and rock.50 In the 1970s, merengue, the national dance
music of the Dominican Republic, reached a mass audience in New
York.
It was also in the 1970s that, under the influence of New York
City–based Puerto Rican musicians, mambo evolved into salsa, a
“hybrid” of different Latin music styles from various Latin coun-
tries.51 The rise of salsa was tied to Fania Records, salsa’s greatest
record label; the Fania All-Stars were established as a showcase for
the leading Fania musicians and singers.52
Ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel has described salsa as “the voice
of barrio youth” and believes that with salsa, “Latin music became
self-consciously rooted in New York as never before.”53 Music pro-
ducer Sergio George, who grew up in New York in the era when
salsa was born, recently described those times as, “a real Nuyorican
experience . . . it was just an incredible moment in history and I’m
glad I was a part of it.”54
In the 1990s, Latin Pop—slick and highly produced pop music
with a Latin influence—hit the mainstream. Miami—America’s
most Latin city—was the epicenter, although New York produced a
good amount of talent for music producers. In the late 1990s, Latin
latin and caribbean music / 159

Alternative began to be marketed as an alternate to Latin Pop. This


was Latin music that didn’t fit the pop associated with Miami night-
clubs; the music makes room not only for pop but also for rock and
R&B styles. In recent summers, New York has been the site of the
Latin Alternative Music Conference, which showcases new talent
and puts on free concerts throughout the city.
Also in the 1990s, bachata, a form of Dominican music and dance
embracing tales of romance and heartbreak, came to New York with
the wave of immigrants from the Dominican Republic that began in
the early 1990s. The decade also brought music genres from Mexico
to New York as Mexicans migrated to the city. Tejano and norteno
are now regularly played in New York—sometimes on subways—
by a growing community of Mexican musicians.55 Mariachi bands
routinely perform throughout the five boroughs. One can also hear
narcocorridos—updated versions of corridos, which are songs about
Mexican heroes (including criminal heroes) and revolutionary fight-
ers. These newer songs celebrate drug-running “narcos” as modern
folk heroes. The lyrics are rife with images of “los tres animals”—
the three animals that are often used to represent drugs in Mexican
slang: the rooster (marijuana), the parakeet (cocaine), and the goat
(heroin).56

* * *

Literally, dozens of Caribbean music styles are played and can be


heard in New York, reflecting the diversity of Caribbean peoples in
the city. Most popular is reggae, which first arrived with the mass
migration of Jamaicans into New York beginning in the early 1960s
and achieved mainstream popularity in the United States beginning
in the 1970s, largely through the music of Bob Marley. Reggae lyrics
are shaped by Rastafarian philosophy, which believes that marijuana
(“ganja”) is a sacramental plant, while drugs such as heroin (and also
alcohol and cocaine) are forbidden.
Reggaeton—a fusion of Panamanian reggae with Puerto Rican
rap music—has become one of the most popular Latin/Caribbean
styles in New York. The music started out largely as an “under-
ground” phenomenon in Puerto Rico, and drug use and dealing
(along with sex and violence) were major focuses.57 In New York, its
popularity began to build up in the late 1990s and at least since the
160 / heroin and music in new york city

early 2000s reggaeton has had a strong presence in New York City
clubs and on the radio.

Heroin Use by New York Latin/Caribbean Musicians


By way of introduction it’s important to note that in the New York
Latin music scene, the predominant “hard” drug has always been
cocaine, not heroin. Christopher Washburne, an ethnomusicologist
and Latin musician, devotes a whole chapter in his Sounding Salsa58
to “the pervasiveness of cocaine and its associated business practices
on the New York salsa scene.”59
Washburne discusses how cocaine use was widespread in the
1970s and 1980s. Musicians turned to cocaine for various reasons:
“to stay awake, to alleviate stage anxiety, to deal with personal issues,
for recreation, for the communal benefits of belonging to a group of
users, or for a variety of other motives.”60 There is no evidence that
this has been the case with New York–based Caribbean musicians,
whose cultural background and possible Rastafarian beliefs suggest
that marijuana would be the favored drug, and that cocaine would
be much less likely to be used.
As to the New York Latin music industry’s involvement with
cocaine traffickers, Washburne examines how from the begin-
ning, drug traffickers “quickly asserted influence on salsa, estab-
lishing themselves as key partners in the music’s production and
distribution.”61 In the 1970s and 1980s, traffickers were connected
at every level, for example, many salsa recordings were funded by
cocaine money; many nightclubs served as fronts for money launder-
ing; drug organizations provided capital for new bands; and salsa
musicians were offered cocaine as payment for marathon club gigs.62

* * *

There is also the issue of payola in the music industry, which


sometimes involves drugs—typically but not always or necessarily
cocaine. This is the practice of record labels bribing radio stations
to play certain songs and particular artists more frequently with-
out publicly disclosing such information. In various forms, payola
has been common in the music business for a number of years.
In a famous case in the late 1950s, rock pioneer Alan Freed was
latin and caribbean music / 161

convicted of the crime; his career fell apart and he died “broke and
virtually forgotten.”63
Journalist Fredric Dannen has documented the “institutionalized
payola” that went on in the 1970s and 1980s as independent promo-
tion men plied radio station program directors with cash, cocaine,
expensive gifts, and prostitutes to play records.64 Dannen noted that
there were allegations that high-level music industry employees had
strong connections with high-level organized crime figures involved
in heroin smuggling,65 and that a well-known record company had
been a way station for heroin trafficking.66
In the Latin music industry and especially in the big Hispanic
markets such as New York City, payola has been described as
“completely rampant”—it “riddles the world of Spanish-language
radio.”67 Latin music labels “have been consistently prepared to pay
big money to get music on the radio.”68 According to one investiga-
tor, one reason for this is that

the Latin music industry in the U.S. has been and still is not as devel-
oped and not as corporate as the mainstream English language music
industry. So when it comes to radio it was much more based on per-
sonal relationships. It came much more from an old school—corrupt
but old school system—that used to be prevalent in American radio.69

In one recent case, Univision—the Latin media giant headquartered


in midtown Manhattan that has radio stations all over the United
States (and that bills itself on its corporate website as the “Hispanic
Heartbeat of America”)—agreed to pay one million dollars in penal-
ties after executives were accused of bribing station managers “with
briefcases stuffed with cash” to get songs more time on the air.70

* * *

Turning now to the use of heroin among New York–based musicians


from these music genres, I was able to identify only five individuals
who were self-acknowledged abusers, who have talked about their
use.71 All five were Latin musicians—four from salsa and one from
Latin jazz. As was expected, none of them was a Caribbean musi-
cian, who, as all the evidence suggests, would be much less likely
than a Latin musician to use heroin.
162 / heroin and music in new york city

Probably the best known of the users are Hector Lavoe and Cheo
Feliciano. Both were originally from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and both
moved to New York when they were 17 years old (Lavoe to the Bronx
in 1963, Feliciano to Spanish Harlem in 1952). Both also got caught
up in using heroin after they arrived.
Hector Lavoe was “as much of a rock star as salsa has ever
known.”72 He became famous as a vocalist in Willie Colon’s band,
recording more than 10 albums together; Colon became Lavoe’s
“mentor and sidekick.”73 According to one writer:

The success of that first album changed Lavoe’s life radically. He


received instant recognition, steady work, and a wad of money that
provided a comfortable life. It happened so fast that he didn’t know
how to cope with it.74

Lavoe then started using heroin:

He began attending parties where so-called hipsters and musi-


cians mingled and drugs like cocaine and heroin were readily avail-
able . . . Hector soon began hanging around with hangers-on who
were more than willing to share their drugs . . . in exchange for a
photograph or an invite to a hipster party.75

Lavoe “liked the [heroin] high and the fact that the drugs made
a lot of the confusion and doubts about his life go away76 . . . it made
him feel cool, which was miles from the insecurities he felt about
himself and his world when he was not high. But the main attrac-
tion was the idea of escape.”77 Heroin probably also helped him deal
with personal calamities that occurred in his life, which he found
overwhelming, including the accidental death of his son in a gun
incident, and a fire that ravaged his house in Queens.78
Heroin took a serious toll on Lavoe’s music career. He “had to rely
on others to take care of him—wake him up for gigs and literally
drag him to work.”79 “I began showing up to gigs late and then not
at all. I had encountered a serious problem.”80 His addiction “regu-
larly aroused the anger of promoters and club owners.”81
The unity within the Colon band “began to unravel as Hector
began making snide and often disparaging remarks to the musi-
cians, sometimes in the middle of a performance.”82 Sometimes he
latin and caribbean music / 163

would “shout insults at members of the audience.”83 One musician


from the band recalled a performance from 1977:

That night he just lost it. He was just walking around the stage talk-
ing to himself. We had never seen that side of him before and it was
a scary thing to see.84

Colon eventually fired Lavoe from his band, although they


remained friends. “Colon’s dad had been a heroin addict. The young
bandleader had been down that road before.”85 Lavoe then formed
his own band and became a guest singer for the Fania All-Stars.
With his own band, he “encouraged lengthy solos: the other musi-
cians could cover for him when he was too high, or needed to slip off
stage to get high. He always had sidemen with chops.”86
In 1993, in his last interview (which was filmed), Lavoe looked
very ill and seemed to be in denial about his situation. When asked
about his life, he responded: “I’m fine, couldn’t be better.”87 He died
a few months later of AIDS-related complications.

* * *

At roughly the same time Lavoe began using heroin, singer and per-
cussionist Cheo Feliciano, who was 11 years older than Lavoe, was
getting clean. Feliciano, also a Fania All-Star, has spoken at length
about his heroin problem. As for how he first got involved with the
drug:

Sometimes we get caught up in the action around us. Especially


for someone who comes from such a small town like Ponce, where
the tallest building is just three stories tall, all of a sudden you find
yourself in an environment like that in New York. I was one of those
that fell into that trap.88

Once he started using:

I became increasingly irresponsible. My life started falling apart. I


spent little time at home. Before joining the sextet at the job site, I
would get high. After the gig I would stay out all night and stayed
high. After a few hours sleep, I would feel sick and go out again in
search of more drugs.89
164 / heroin and music in new york city

I would arrive to work late. I wouldn’t begin singing until I was high.
I was always arriving late—with only minutes before the gig started.
I would invent twenty thousand excuses. I would rip my clothes and
say I was mugged.90

For Feliciano it got to the point where

people were tired of me, of my irresponsibility. They shut the doors


in my face. Everybody turned their backs on me. All my friends dis-
appeared. I was alone. I hit the bottom of the barrel, the lowest you
can go. I knew that I had to either get out of it or die.91

Once, after a month’s gig in Puerto Rico, he decided to stay:

Whatever money I earned went into my veins. At first, friends put


me up . . . then I had no place to stay and started living like a beggar
in the streets. I spent much time in La Perla—slept under houses,
abandoned cars, abandoned buildings. I lived for drugs. I never
stole, but I took advantage of my friends and fans and asked them
for money. I roamed the streets of El Condada without taking a
bath, without shaving for a month, with worn-out shoes . . . Everyone
saw me.92

Feliciano came to realize:

I had to do something with my life because this thing was holding


me back towards whatever I had to do in the developing of my per-
sonal life, my family life, my professional life . . . everything. I saw I
was going down the drain.93

He decided to temporarily retire from performing, and cleaned


up at a rehabilitation program in Puerto Rico. In 1973, after a three-
year hiatus, he “returned to claim his throne as the king of New York
salsa singers.”94
Feliciano was close to Lavoe and others in Latin music who had
heroin problems and tried to help them as much as he could:

We had friendships together. Héctor, he was, besides the superstar


he was, I consider him my son. When I had done the change in my
life, when he felt that his problems were filling up his cup, he used
to come to me for help, “Cheo, please, háblame, help me, help me I
want to get out of this.” And he used to come to my office in Puerto
latin and caribbean music / 165

Rico when I had my record company . . . he used to come, talk to me,


he used to spend hours with me there, as I spent them with Ismael
Rivera, as I spent them with Frankie Ruiz. I tried to give them what
I got, but like I said, it’s a decision you have to make personally.95

* * *

Ismael Rivera is considered by many to have been the greatest salsa


singer of all time. Rivera was from Santurce, Puerto Rico, and he is
considered a folk hero in his native land. Rivera spent much less time
in New York than either Lavoe or Feliciano but he did live in the
city for a number of years. He recorded for Fania, and there is little
doubt about the impact he had and continues to have96 on the New
York Latin music scene.
Rivera recalled the first time he played the Palladium Ballroom, a
dancehall in midtown Manhattan that was a top Latin music venue
from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s:

I wanted to get up there and when I did, I said: “Man, is this it?”
Is this really all there is? And then I got a little bit depressed. And
I turned back to something I thought was in the past. I turned to
tecata, dope . . . I take things hard so I got hooked on the shit. If I had
known what junk would do to me, I would never have touched it.
But back then we weren’t enlightened.97

One biographer described Rivera during two tumultuous years he


spent in Manhattan when he was using as

literally lost in the streets of El Barrio. He went barefoot; he was


crazed and confused. The once mighty warrior of Puerto Rican
soul was seen picking from garbage, looking for quarters in phone
booths, and searching for solace in a lonely basement.98

Richie Bonilla, Rivera’s manager, recounted how Rivera eventu-


ally got clean. It involved making a pilgrimage to Potobelo, Panama,
to worship before the statue of the Black Christ, in a church where
every October, thousands of people—the sick, the troubled, the
needy—go to pray seeking a miracle.99

The people of this religious pilgrimage bathed him in the ocean,


and then he carried a heavy cross, like Christ did, with 50 other men
166 / heroin and music in new york city

around the church. He knelt in front of the cross and he could see
the needle marks disappearing from his arms.100

Bonilla said that when Rivera returned to New York,

he walked into my office. He looked holy, he was clean shaven and


he had that spiritual glow. I started booking the band and he not
only showed up on time, but he was packing every place. Within a
short time, he was the top band in the industry again.101

Cheo Feliciano was once asked in an interview if he thought


Rivera was “ever able to come to grips with his problem, or did that
pursue him until the day he died?” In response, Feliciano said he
thought that

Ismael had the concept wrong. He thought that by running, by


doing exercise, he would feel better. So how can you do that if you
punish your body for one night or two nights, then, instead of going
to bed, you go run on the beach and do 10 miles? And that’s what
killed him. He burned his body out doing exercise. He died in his
mother’s arms, clean, he was not using drugs. He was clean. But he
was burnt out. His heart failed him right in front of his mother.102

* * *

Domingo Quinones is part of the current generation of salsa sing-


ers. Born and raised in New Jersey, he lives and works between New
York and Puerto Rico. In addition to his recording and performing,
in the early 2000s, he played Hector Lavoe on the New York stage
in the play “Quien Mato a Héctor Lavoe?” (“Who Killed Hector
Lavoe?”)
Quinones has talked only sparingly on record about his heroin
use but he has been open about it. In a recent interview he said that
in his life he had consumed “todo.” When asked what he meant by
“todo,” Quinones replied, “cigarettes, crack, heroin, parakeet [pow-
der cocaine], alcohol, marijuana—everything.”103
In a Spanish television interview in 2006, Quinones conceded:
“the last stage in my life was very turbulent, when it becomes
a necessity it gets very difficult. When I go to that world I go to
extremes.”104 In the same interview he also made clear: “The times
I’ve relapsed, the band is totally above the influence and not to blame.
latin and caribbean music / 167

My surroundings have not been cause for my issues, I’ve always been
surrounded by good people.”105
Quinones tried cleaning up through conventional detox and treat-
ment programs, including one in Cuba,106 but, like Ismael Rivera,
he only succeeded via a religious conversion, and, also like Rivera,
his career has rebounded as a result.

Since I accepted Jesus Christ as my one and only savior, and publi-
cized it, not to brag about it, but to show the public that an artist can
also seek refuge in God, and that I could be in this same environ-
ment with the same people and in the same locations only not doing
the same things I did before, my record sales have gone up like never
before. My fan base has even increased.107

* * *

Sabu Martinez was a Latin Jazz conga player and percussionist. Born
in El Barrio in New York, he was a user through a good part of
the 1950s, when he was in his twenties. He eventually cleaned up,
moved to Sweden permanently where he continued to play music,
and died there in 1979.
Not much has been written about Martinez, but in 1976 he
was interviewed for a Swedish “mens magazine.” According to the
interviewer, even after he stopped using, Martinez faced a troubling
situation,

His wife had left him. He had lost his children’s affection and respect
(he left others to provide food, shelter, and clothing). He used to be
one of the world’s best conga players, but it was so long since he
had worked that many had forgotten him. Orchestra leaders, who
normally would have let him sit in for regulars out on sick leave,
hesitated to engage him.108

As Martinez himself put it:

I was standing in front of a double “No.” I couldn’t get jobs with


non-users of heroin because they were afraid of a relapse. And I
couldn’t take jobs with addicts because I’d stopped.109

Martinez had been playing professionally since the age of 11,


and at 18 he had hit the big time when he joined jazz great Dizzy
168 / heroin and music in new york city

Gillespie’s last big band, which played Latin Jazz. (Martinez


went on to play with other stars of jazz including Horace Silver,
Art Blakey, and Kenny Clarke.) Martinez got the chance to join
Gillespie’s band when its original conga drummer, Chano Pozo,
was memorably killed in a barroom fight in Harlem over a bad
drug deal. Apparently Pozo had purchased some marijuana that
was bogus—it might have been oregano—and Pozo’s buddies made
fun of him. Pozo was furious he got burned and went back to the
dealer asking for a refund, but the dealer refused, then “Chano
bitch-slapped El Cabito hard enough to knock him off his feet, in
front of everybody.” The next day in the same bar, El Cabito shot
Chano seven times.110

* * *

Frankie Ruiz is also part of the story of heroin and Latin/Caribbean


music in New York. Ruiz was a champion of “salsa romantica,” a style
of salsa, popular in the 1980s and 1990s, that “sought to combine
Afro-Cuban beats with pop production values.”111 Like Domingo
Quinones, he was born and grew up in New Jersey and lived and
worked in both New York and Puerto Rico.
A number of news items and stories indicate that Ruiz was a seri-
ous heroin user, but Ruiz apparently never spoke on the record about
his use. One report referred to his “long struggle with alcohol and
drug addiction”;112 in one obituary (Ruiz died in 1998, aged 40), the
author said that Ruiz “made his name singing light romantic Latin
music and died of the heavy side of show business: years of cocaine,
heroin, methadone and alcohol overuse, and finally, cirrhosis of the
liver.”113 I noted earlier that Cheo Feliciano spent a good deal of time
talking with Ruiz trying to help him through his heroin problem,
but evidently to little avail.
We’ve seen that some musicians, for example, Hector Lavoe, first
started using heroin to help deal with the pressures of finding suc-
cess in the music business. In Ruiz’s case, the sequence was different.
Drugs “became a problem early in his life and remained so for the
duration . . . Unlike others before him, music, fame and fortune were
not the stepping stones to substance abuse. Those elements came
later.”114 And then, when he did become successful, “the mounting
latin and caribbean music / 169

temptations and pressures of fame, together with his gruelling tour-


ing schedule, led to an escalation of his drug habit.”115

* * *

There have been numerous reports in the press about drug mules—
adults and sometimes children—arrested trying to transport drugs
across international borders. In two recent (and separate) incidents,
Latin musicians were arrested trying to smuggle heroin into New
York from a Dominican Republic airport.
One musician was Jimmy Bauer, a New York–based bachata singer
of Dominican heritage, who in 2010 was stopped trying to smuggle
88 pellets of heroin—more than a kilogram of pure heroin—in his
stomach. According to the news story, Bauer got sick when a couple
of the pellets he had swallowed burst. He was rushed to a hospital,
where an X-ray exam revealed the pellets, which were extracted from
his stomach. He was then arrested for trafficking, and ended up
getting a 6-year prison sentence. He later admitted that he tried to
smuggle the heroin because he was broke, had financial problems,
and wanted some quick cash to make a bachata music video.116 In
2013, Martha Heredia, a “Latin American Idol” winner from the
Dominican Republic, was also arrested as she was about to board a
plane to New York. Police found almost three pounds of heroin in
the heels of three pairs of shoes packed in her suitcase.117

Summary and Discussion


The reality is that in the New York Latin music scene, heroin has
had a role, but it has always been a secondary role when compared to
cocaine, whether the issue is musician use, music industry involve-
ment with trafficking, and most likely payola also. In the New York
Caribbean music scene, a reasonable conclusion is that heroin plays
little or no role.
Of the five performer/musicians who identified themselves as
heroin abusers, four were from salsa (Sabu Martinez was the excep-
tion). This is not surprising since salsa has probably been the most
popular form of Latin music in New York since the 1970s. Three of
the four—Hector Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, and Ismael Rivera—were
170 / heroin and music in new york city

from the early salsa era, when heroin was a big problem in Hispanic
communities in New York and easily available, especially to people
like musicians. The case of Domingo Quinones reminds us that salsa
is still popular and so is heroin. All five of the self-acknowledged
abusers were of Puerto Rican heritage, which is also not surprising
since historically there have been far more Puerto Ricans living in
New York City than any other Hispanic group.
Little good came from heroin for these people. Heroin did seri-
ous damage to Lavoe’s career and to his life more generally, and he
died young (46) essentially because of the drug. Feliciano thought
that because of heroin, his life went “down the drain.” Rivera, like
Feliciano, was literally forced to live in the streets for long stretches
because of heroin. Feliciano, Rivera, and Quinones all found that
once they got clean, their careers revived. Martinez’s case shows that
the stigma of having been a heroin user can haunt one’s career even
well after use has stopped.
One factor Cheo Feliciano thought was related to his use of heroin
and that of other Puerto Ricans in New York is the struggle and con-
flict around trying to achieve a satisfying sense of identity—a sense
of “who we are.” Feliciano once described the conflict this way:

During that time I was one of the many victims that had succumbed
to drug addiction. For many Latinos back then, there was an identity
crisis. The Colombian wanted to be back in Colombia. The Puerto
Rican wanted to be back in Puerto Rico. We tried to make our own
little Colombias and Puerto Ricos in the States.118

Also, when asked about heroin addiction in a Spanish-language


interview, Feliciano responded: “Falta de ubicacion de identidad que
uno no esta en su tierra” (“lack of location, and identity that one isn’t
in their homeland”) could have been cause for this.119
This kind of struggle has been part of the subcultural experience
of many Puerto Ricans and other Latinos who have moved to New
York City over the years.120 Journalist Juan Gonzalez spoke of the
conflict he experienced growing up in New York as one of many
“brown-skinned, Spanish speaking teenagers who didn’t seem to fit
into any established racial group.”121 In his view, “the social impera-
tive to choose a racial identity, and then only in purely black and
white terms, impelled those of us in the second generation at first to
latin and caribbean music / 171

jettison our native language and culture, to assimilate into either the
white or the black world.”122
The author Piri Thomas has written about how this kind of iden-
tity conflict can be a cause of heroin abuse—particularly his own. In
his Down these Mean Streets, Thomas describes how as a dark-skinned
Latino (his mother was a white Puerto Rican while his father was a
dark-skinned Cuban) he was seen in New York as African American,
which led to confusion about his racial/ethnic identity. He felt that
racially he belonged to both groups (black and white) but ethnically
he belonged to neither, and that this struggle and his experience of
discrimination was a factor in his decision to use heroin.123
Another aspect of Latino subculture and identity that can be a
factor in heroin use is “machismo,” which emphasizes the impor-
tance of toughness, aggressiveness, and risk taking. In a study of
Mexican American heroin users (“tecatos”), Quintero and Estrada
argue that for young men, drug use is a means to act out macho val-
ues of risk taking, excess, and outstripping others. The tecato enters
drug use in order to demonstrate socially valued toughness and “cra-
ziness” or to show that he can control a vice where weaker men have
failed. The machismo values of excess and outstripping others lead
to escalating drug use and eventually heroin. For many tecatos, the
beginning of injection use was a tangible sign that they had achieved
the socially valued goal of becoming “real drug addicts.”124
Machismo seems to have been an element in Ismael Rivera’s
heroin use. Rivera once said he considered the Palladium “a test of
musical prowess . . . a macho trap. How ‘bad’ could you be under
the influence and still perform. That was the measure of manhood,
of musicianship.”125 Machismo was also clearly displayed by Hector
Lavoe in his last interview. He said he was “fine,” but it was obvious
he wasn’t. Machismo dictated he could not appear weak.

* * *

In El Cantante (The Singer), the 2007 biographical movie about


Hector Lavoe that starred Marc Anthony as Lavoe,126 Lavoe’s wife
Puchi (played by Jennifer Lopez) utters this memorable line: “Hector
never knew how much people loved him. And that’s the thing. It’s
like he didn’t want to know.” This leads one to wonder how Lavoe
actually was perceived and treated by the music industry.
172 / heroin and music in new york city

Willie Colon, who stayed friends with Lavoe after he fired him
from his band, had some strong views about this. When Lavoe died
in 1993, Colon mourned him in a newspaper column.127 In the
article, Colon shared his views about how various components of
the music industry betrayed and exploited Lavoe, including

the “record moguls who live like Saudi princes selling his records
and reselling them as CDs without paying royalties as Lavoe lan-
guished in poverty”; the promoters who paid him “crumbs”; and the
imitators who tried to cash in on his reputation.128

Colon also thought that some of the blame has to go to Lavoe’s fans,
who were “accomplices to his tragedy.” But Colon also blamed him-
self: for not having the courage “to face him in his condition.”129
Colon was definitely not a big fan of the Lavoe movie:

The Creators of El Cantante missed an opportunity to do something


of relevance for our community. The real story was about Hector
fighting the obstacles of a non-supportive industry that took advan-
tage of entertainers with his charisma and talent. Instead they did
another movie about two Puerto Rican junkies.130
Ch a p t e r Se v e n
Conc lusion

My primary goal for this book was to bring some needed insight
into the connection between drugs and music. I chose to keep the
focus strictly on heroin because it is generally considered the “king
of street drugs” and, in contrast to other hard drugs such as cocaine,
using heroin is typically seen not just as “deviant” but as dramati-
cally deviant. It made sense to focus on the role of heroin in not just
one type of music but in a variety of popular music genres. And
since drug and music scenes can be very different depending on the
locale, it also made sense to keep the focus on one place and to have
New York City be that place, since for years New York has been the
capital of both heroin and music in the United States.
My intention was not to offer a comprehensive theory of her-
oin and music. Rather, I wanted to explore the lived experiences of
heroin-using musicians. I wanted to understand why musicians first
use and continue to use the drug, why heroin is more common in
some genres and subgenres of music than in other music types, and
how heroin affects a musician’s playing, creativity, and career. This
is the kind of knowledge from which the sociology of drug abuse
and the sociology of music can benefit. The book also addressed
some of the central concerns in the field of cultural criminology,
which seeks to understand both normative and deviant behavior by
focusing on interaction, intersubjectivity, and experience.1
The sample of 69 heroin-using musicians was mostly from rock
and jazz, but there were at least five musicians from each of the
other main music genres under consideration. All of these self-
acknowledged users used heroin at least regularly if not daily, and
most were injectors. Most were also long-term users, while some
174 / heroin and music in new york city

used for shorter periods of time. Some eventually cleaned up, while
others never did. Almost half of the sample (48 percent) are dead
(including 16 of the 19 jazz musicians) and many of these users died
from a heroin-related overdose.
Most heroin research focuses on the street addict. But heroin
abusers are not all the same. Those who are celebrities and have mon-
ey—like many of the musicians in the sample—are sociologically
different from other abusers. Their money and connections make a
difference. It’s generally easier for them to function as addicts—they
are less likely to be living the “junkie lifestyle” and resorting to hus-
tling and crime to fund their habits. The injectors may also be less
likely to find themselves in situations where they have to share their
needles and run the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS or hepatitis.
The decision not to try to conduct interviews with the musicians
in the sample who are still alive was based on my presumption they
would not only be very difficult to reach but also reluctant to talk
about their heroin use, especially since they’ve talked about it pos-
sibly numerous times already in interviews or in books they them-
selves have written. In fact, using the narrative accounts I employed
in the book—what the musicians themselves had to say—was the
best way to get at the issues at hand for all members of the sample.
Some of the musicians had much to say, some had little to say, but all
these data capture individual lived experience and tell us what these
people are thinking and feeling.
As with any self-report data obtained from drug abusers, it’s nec-
essary to comment on the validity (accuracy) of these kinds of narra-
tive data. Since research involving drug abusers relies extensively on
self-reports, over the years a sizable literature on this issue has devel-
oped. A fair conclusion is that, at least when collected by trained
interviewers, data about drug use and drug-related behaviors can be
considered sufficiently accurate.2
There is no reason to think that the data used for this book are
any less valid than the data used in other studies of drug abusers
based on self-reports. At the same time, some of the 69 heroin-using
musicians in the sample may have downplayed their heroin use and
related behaviors in interview situations because they wanted to make
a favorable impression and present themselves in a socially desirable
way. Alternatively, some respondents may have exaggerated their use
so as to come across in a more “hardcore” or “badass” way.
conclusion / 175

Summary of Main Findings


Musicians are at special risk for using drugs, including heroin. The
demands of performing are intense, musicians spend long hours on
the road, they are in continual contact with people who use drugs,
and they are likely to have people around them who are enablers.
The findings from this study confirm that heroin has been an inte-
gral part of music in New York City since at least the end of World
War II. The drug has roots in almost any musical genre popular in the
city and maintains a profile in the New York music world to this day.
In terms of the circumstances of and the reasons for first use, there
were few differences between musicians of the various genres; com-
mon themes were reported across genres. Many of the musician-users
first used before they became musicians, some when they were in their
teens, and they were introduced to heroin by a boyfriend or girlfriend
or by friends. It was more likely, however, that the musician-user didn’t
start to use until after he or she found some success in the music busi-
ness and was turned on to the drug by fellow musicians or through
connections in the music business; both Frankie Lymon and Hector
Lavoe, for example, first used at parties with fellow musicians.
Some of the main reasons for using, as described by the musi-
cian-users in the sample, were consistent with those reported in the
research literature by nonmusician users: heroin made them feel good
and helped them deal with and escape from everyday problems and
also from special problems they were facing at the time, for example,
when Miles Davis was dumped by a girlfriend. Respondents also
spoke about how heroin helped them deal with insecurities and feel
in control of their lives.
Some of the reasons given were more specific to being a musician.
For example, Dion and James Taylor spoke about how heroin helped
them deal with the difficulties of stardom and becoming millionaires
at a young age. One factor in Lavoe’s use was the difficulties that he
faced in dealing with his quick initial success. Other musicians spoke
about how heroin gave them the confidence to perform, wind down
after being on stage, and deal with tensions in their bands.
This study confirms that subculture and identity are also factors
in the heroin use of New York musician-users. This was found to be
the case in all of the popular music genres that were examined.
Thus, a main reason for use for many young bebop musicians was
that they wanted to be part of a hipster subculture, and for them, use was
176 / heroin and music in new york city

about a sense of brotherhood and belonging, about a desire to connect


with, and get closer to, fellow musicians who were part of the bebop sub-
culture. The subcultural identity of the musician-user was seen as a very
attractive one to have, and using heroin validated this hipster identity.
An explanation of the fact that there was more heroin use in punk
than in the other rock subgenres also lies in the notions of subculture and
identity. The punk subculture had a strong element of rebellion, much
more so than in other rock subgenres. Punk identity in large measure was
organized around the image of the cool and defiant rock rebel. For some
punks, heroin was the right drug to use to express this rebellion.
In the New York African American user subculture of the 1960s
and 1970s, which included doo-wop and soul performers, using her-
oin was a route to gaining street status and becoming a “somebody,”
and the addict identity was a favored one. The 1980s–1990s street
subculture of New York rappers had a very different view of heroin.
Being a successful dealer might bring status and street credibility,
but the drug had a bad image, and rappers didn’t use. They saw what
heroin had done to people they knew, and they viewed the use of the
drug as a sign of weakness, something that was no good for a street
hustler, who needed to be seen as strong and in control.
During the Village folk revival years of the late 1950s to mid-
1960s, subcultures with values and attitudes supportive of heroin
use (including the Beats and the New Left) influenced the folk music
subculture of the time. These values and attitudes are likely to have
impacted some musician identities and been a factor in their use of
heroin. Another subcultural factor likely to be related to use by folk
musicians from this era is the outlaw identity, which supports risk
taking and living dangerously.
Among Latin performers, one subcultural factor related to heroin
use was the conflict that Latino New Yorkers faced related to struggle
to achieve a satisfying sense of identity, a sense of “we-ness.” Another
subcultural factor linked to identity and heroin use was machismo,
which values risk taking, excess, and outstripping others.

* * *

As to the effects of heroin on musicians’ performance and creativity,


I had hypothesized, based on limited research but considerable anec-
dotal evidence, that there may be some beneficial effects of heroin,
conclusion / 177

but that overall the impacts are likely to be adverse, for musician-us-
ers from all the music genres and subgenres that were under consid-
eration. Similarly, it seemed that the adverse effects of heroin would
outweigh any potential positive effects of the drug in terms of how
successful musicians’ careers were. Both hypotheses were undeniably
supported by the data.
The jazz musicians in the sample reported a host of difficulties
and problems related to their heroin use. In general, heroin seemed
to provide little benefit to these musicians’ performances or careers.
Many had their forward progress as musicians impeded or their
careers cut short because of the drug.
Some of the jazz musicians were in poor health because of heroin and
became too ill to play. Many ODed from the drug or died from heroin-
related complications. Many had serious financial problems because of
their habits. Harassment and arrest by the police and imprisonment
were also very common. A recurring theme involved engaging in what
Miles Davis called “junkie shit,” which included such things as missing
or being late for gigs, nodding out on stage, or being too high to play.
Having a “junkie reputation” led to mistrust by fellow musicians, get-
ting fired from bands, and missing out on job opportunities.
There were some positive aspects to using heroin. Heroin helped
some users including Charlie Parker concentrate by blocking out
“internal noise”; it helped them to relax; and it helped build up their
confidence to perform. Some said heroin helped enable them to
practice for long periods of time.
The rock musician-users also had primarily negative things to
say about the effects heroin had on their playing, creativity, and
careers, echoing many of the same themes as the jazz musicians.
Some rock musicians spoke about how life with heroin became cha-
otic and how it dampened their inspiration so that music became
secondary and their productivity was reduced. Some told of how
they couldn’t rehearse or play without heroin, or were sometimes too
high to play, or passed out from heroin while on stage, or how their
band collapsed because of heroin. Many spoke of the problems they
faced being “junk sick” while on tour. Very few of the rock musi-
cians spoke of the positive ways in which heroin affected their music.
Keith Richards, for one, thought heroin helped him concentrate and
be more tenacious when working on a song.
178 / heroin and music in new york city

By and large, the R&B users suffered through the same issues as
the jazz and rock musicians. Frankie Lymon noted that even after
getting clean, he had trouble finding success as a solo performer
because few people believed he would stay clean. Dion’s heroin use
was a factor in the Belmonts’ breakup and forced Dion out of the
music business for a time (although he also said that using heroin
“enhanced” his stage performance). Sam Moore felt that his career
“fell apart” because of heroin and that heroin “wiped him out finan-
cially.” Dr. John spoke of police harassment. For the disco DJs, the
main issues were missing club bookings, “erratic spinning,” nodding
out at the turntables, and losing touch with the dance floor crowd,
none of which helped their careers.
Folk musician users in the sample also echoed themes heard in
previous chapters of this book: missed shows, poor performances,
failed comeback albums, careers put on hold, and reputations of
untrustworthiness. This was also true for the Latin performers; the
stories they told were about band disunity and firings and breakups,
people turning their backs on them, difficulty finding work, family
breakups, and the overall serious toll heroin took on their careers
and their lives more generally.

* * *

I was also interested in songs in which heroin is the central subject or


is referenced, to get a sense of the message being conveyed about the
drug. I identified heroin songs in all the major popular music genres
with the exception of Latin/Caribbean music. The lack of such songs
in Latin/Caribbean music makes sense, given the role heroin plays in
these music types (i.e., a secondary role to cocaine in Latin music and
essentially no role in Caribbean music). A reasonable overall conclu-
sion is that the message about heroin in genres and subgenres that have
heroin songs is mixed and varies according to the genre and subgenre.
A number of New York–based jazz musicians from the early years
who were not users performed songs that were about opium, and yet,
ironically, bebop jazz had relatively few songs about heroin; also, at
least one nonusing jazz musician from the era since bebop recorded
instrumentals with heroin-related titles.
In rock, there were a number of songs in which heroin is the main
subject, typically but not exclusively from punk rockers; in most
conclusion / 179

of these songs heroin is viewed in a positive light. New York punk


produced at least three “junkie rock anthems.” Overall, in rock there
were only a couple of songs that clearly condemned the drug.
There were few heroin songs in New York R&B prior to rap.
Heroin has been pervasive, however, in New York rap songs, going
back to the very beginnings of the subgenre. “Spoken Word” por-
trayed heroin users as lamentable people. But since then, New York
rappers have produced a number of heroin songs that portrayed the
drug in an almost reverential way, despite the fact that New York
rappers don’t actually use the drug.
New York folk music was an interesting mixed bag in terms of
heroin songs. All the heroin songs I identified were from the revival
period of the late 1950s to early 1960s; some of these were done by
nonusers. The songs ranged from “love songs” to heroin, to songs
that speak to personal efforts to kick and make it through with-
drawal, to songs about the problems associated with addiction that
warn potential users to be careful with this drug.

What’s Next?
There are at least two potential follow-up projects—each employ-
ing the basic theoretical perspective and methodological strategy I
followed in this book—that need to proceed. The first would be an
examination of the heroin–music connection in a city that, like New
York, is a center for both heroin and music but which is different
enough as a city so that the heroin and music scenes are not simply
mirror images of those in New York.
Los Angeles would be a good first choice. The city has long been
a major center for Mexican black tar and brown powdered heroin on
the West Coast. And if New York is the music capital of the United
States, Los Angeles has long been a second music capital having
had, for example, thriving jazz, folk rock, punk, hardcore, and rap
scenes. London would also be a good choice. There is a long history
of opiate use in the United Kingdom, and newspaper and anecdotal
reports indicate that heroin is not at all difficult to obtain.3 As for
music, London remains a city with a scene that has been described
as “unique and glorious.”4
The second follow-up project would be to explore the role of
heroin in the other arts in New York, including literature, film and
180 / heroin and music in new york city

theater, fashion and photography, art, and comedy. There is a large


body of news and anecdotal evidence about heroin use among New
Yorkers in these arts but no social science research on the nature and
scope of the connections has been done.
This project should focus on the rich New York–based written lit-
erature that exists involving heroin use and dealing, including “dope
paperbacks”—inexpensive books involving “junkies” from the years
before television; novels about heroin; and autobiographies and
memoirs, especially those done by African Americans writing about
their upbringing in Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s with heroin all
around them. The discussion of heroin and the Beats in chapter five
can be viewed as a first look at the heroin–literature relationship in
New York.
Further, at latest count there were at least 30 New York–based
films about or that include heroin use, and there are also plays that
are about heroin addiction and in which New York heroin addicts
are main characters. It is well known that heroin use has been com-
mon among New York fashion photographers and models. In the
1990s, “heroin chic” sent the message that it was cool and hip to
look like a heroin user with models that appeared thin, tired, and
strung out. Also, over the years a number of New York–based artists
have had well-publicized problems with heroin.

* * *

Any study of heroin and the arts in New York would have as a central
figure the comedian and satirist Lenny Bruce, who died of an OD
in 1966. Arrested multiple times on drug and obscenity charges,
including once during a performance in Greenwich Village, his
harassment by and battles with the criminal justice system basically
ruined his career. Record producer Phil Spector famously said that
Bruce “died from an overdose of police.”5 To Bob Dylan, Bruce “was
an outlaw, that’s for sure.”6 As regards his heroin use, Bruce put it
this way: “I’ll die young, but it’s like kissing God.”7
No t e s

1 Introduction
1. John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: HarperCollins, 2004),
266.
2. Jock Young, “Moral Panics and the Transgressive Other,” Crime Media
Culture 7, no. 3 (2011b): 245–258.
3. David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America
before 1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); David
Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987).
4. Rich Cohen, Tough Jews (New York: Vintage Press, 1998); David
Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America before 1940
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); David Courtwright,
“The Roads to H: The Emergence of the American Heroin Complex,
1898–1956,” in One Hundred Years of Heroin, ed. David Musto,
chap. 1, 3–19 (Westport, CT: Auburn House, 2002); Blanche Frank
and John Galea, “Current Drug Use Trends in New York City,” in
Epidemiologic Trends in Drug Abuse. Proceedings from the December,
1998 Community Epidemiology Work Group (Rockville, MD: National
Institute on Drug Abuse, 1998), 181–189; Andrew Karmen, New York
Murder Mystery (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Musto,
The American Disease; Edward Preble and John Casey, “Taking Care of
Business: The Heroin Users Life on the Street,” International Journal of
the Addictions 4 (1969): 1–24; Luc Sante, Lowlife (New York: Vintage
Books, 1991); Barry Spunt, “The Current New York City Heroin
Scene,” Substance Use and Misuse 38, no. 10 (2003): 1533–1543; Travis
Wendel and Richard Curtis, “The Heraldry of Heroin: ‘Dope Stamps’
and the Dynamics of Drug Markets in New York City,” Journal of
Drug Issues, 30, no. 2 (2000): 225–260.
5. Count Basie, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 51.
6. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report (New
York: United Nations (UNODC), 2010, ISBN: 978–92–1–148256–0
United Nations Publication Sales No. E.10.XI.13, 137.
182 / notes

7. Edwin Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston, MA: Little, Brown,
1972), 8–16.
8. John Colapinto, “Heroin and Rock,” Rolling Stone 735 (May 30, 1996):
16.
9. Mark Caldwell, New York Night (New York: Scribner, 2005); Rufus
King, The Drug Hang-Up: America’s Fifty Year Folly (Springfield, IL:
Charles C. Thomas, 1972); Luc Sante, Lowlife (New York: Vintage
Books, 1991); Cohen, Tough Jews.
10. Courtwright, Dark Paradise; Musto, The American Disease; Eric
Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
11. Schneider, Smack; Musto, The American Disease; Brecher, Licit and
Illicit Drugs; David Bellis, Heroin and Politicians: The Failure of Public
Policy to Control Addiction in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1981).
12. Courtwright, Dark Paradise; Musto, The American Disease.
13. Nancy Campbell, J. P. Olsen, and Luke Walden, The Narcotic Farm:
The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts (New York:
Abrams, 2008); King, The Drug Hang-Up, chap. 3.
14. Musto, The American Disease; Courtwright, Dark Paradise; Schneider,
Smack; Jill Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of
America’s Romance with Illegal Drugs (New York: Scribner, 1996).
15. Musto, The American Disease; Courtwright, Dark Paradise; David
Courtwright, Herman Joseph, and Don Des Jarlais, Addicts Who
Survived: An Oral History of Narcotic Use in America, 1923–1965
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989); Schneider, Smack.
16. Schneider, Smack.
17. Alfred McCoy, with Cathleen Read, and Leonard Adams, The Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972);
Schneider, Smack.
18. Campbell, Olsen, and Walden, The Narcotic Farm; McCoy, The Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia; John McWilliams,The Protectors (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1990).
19. Brian Bennett, “Over 100 Years of National Drug Related Headlines,”
Erowid, 2006 http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/media/psychoac-
tives_media8.shtml.
20. Courtwright, Dark Paradise; Musto, The American Disease; Schneider,
Smack.
21. Preble and Casey, “Taking Care of Business”; Courtwright, “The
Roads to H”; Bruce Johnson and Andrew Golub, “Generational Trends
in Heroin Use and Injection in New York City,” in One Hundred Years
of Heroin, ed. David Musto, chap. 7 (Westport, CN: Auburn House.
2002).
notes / 183

22. Karmen, New York Murder Mystery; Schneider, Smack; Musto, The
American Disease; Wendel and Curtis, “The Heraldry of Heroin.”
23. Wendel and Curtis, “The Heraldry of Heroin.”
24. Schneider, Smack.
25. Wendel and Curtis, “The Heraldry of Heroin.”
26. Frank and Galea, “Current Drug Use Trends in New York City.”
27. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Press
Release #080–05, August 3, 2005, “Statement Re: New Law Lifting
Buprenorphine Restrictions,” http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr
/pr080–05.shtml; New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene, “Local Government Plan Report: Mental Health Services,”
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/ downloads/pdf/mh/mh-localgovtplan
-2008.pdf.
28. Barry Spunt, “The Current New York City Heroin Scene,” Substance
Use and Misuse 38, no. 10 (2003): 1533–1543; U.S. Department of
Justice, National Drug Threat Assessment, “Drug Availability in the
United States,” February 2010. http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs38
/386661/heroin.htm.
29. Joe Bonomo, Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band
(London: Continuum Books, 2007), 342.
30. Spunt, “The Current New York City Heroin Scene”; U.S. Department
of Justice, National Drug Threat Assessment, “Drug Availability in
the United States.”
31. Hollis Alpert, Broadway! 125 Years of Musical Theatre (New York:
Arcade Books, 1991).
32. Alpert, Broadway!; Reebee Garafalo, Rockin Out: Popular Music in the
USA (New York: Pearson, 1996), 17.
33. Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (New
York: Da Capo Press, 1996); Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken
Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll (New
York: Rolling Stone Press/Summit Books, 1986); Ian Inglis, “‘Some
Kind of Wonderful’: The Creative Legacy of the Brill Building,”
American Music 21, no. 2 (2003): 214–235.
34. Marc Myers, “Jazz’s First Record Turns 95,” February 21, 2012.
35. Samuel Charters and Leonard Kunstadt, Jazz: A History of the New
York Scene (New York: Da Capo Press, 1963); Thomas Fiehrer, “From
Quadrille to Stomp: The Creole Origins of Jazz,” Popular Music 10,
no. 1 (1991): 21–38.
36. Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux, Jazz (New York: W. W. Norton,
2009), 183.
37. See Schneider, Smack; Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz (London:
Continuum Books, 2001).
38. See University of the Streets website: www.universityofthestreets.org.
184 / notes

39. Peter Cherches, “Downtown Music, 1971–1987: An Overview and


Resource Guide,” 2007, http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research
/fales/DowntownMusic/cherches0.html; Will Hermes, Love Goes to
Buildings on Fire (New York: Faber and Faber, 2011).
40. Gillett, The Sound of the City; Inglis, “‘Some Kind of Wonderful”;
Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages.
41. Legs McNeil and McCain Gillian, Please Kill Me (New York: Grove
Press, 1996); Roman Kozak,This Ain’t No Disco: The Story of CBGB
(Boston, MA: Faber and Faber, 1988).
42. Brian Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk (New York: Sterling Publishing,
2008).
43. Mike Evans, NYC Rock: Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Big Apple (London: Sanctuary
Publishing, 2003); Will Hermes and Sia Michel (eds.), Spin: Twenty
Years of Alternative Music (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005).
44. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds.),
Harlem Renaissance Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
45. Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American
Music (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Nelson George, The Death
of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
46. Philip Groia, They All Sang on the Corner (Port Jefferson, NY: Phillie
Dee Enterprises, 1983).
47. Kai Fikentscher, ‘You Better Work!’ Underground Dance Music in New
York City (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000); Dave
Thompson, Funk (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2001); Frank Owen,
Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture (New
York: Macmillan, 2003).
48. Ronald Cohen, Folk Music: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2006).
49. Gillett, The Sound of the City; William Roy, “Aesthetic Identity, Race,
and American Folk Music,” Qualitative Sociology 25 (2002): 459–469;
Marc Myers, “Kenton Declares Jazz Is Finished,” JazzWax, www.
JazzWax.com, December 8, 2010.
50. Eddi Fiegel, Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot
(Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2005), 74.
51. Mark Brend, American Troubadours (San Francisco, CA: Backbeat
Books, 2001).
52. See Smithsonian Folkways website: www.folkways.si.edu.
53. James C. McKinley, “U.S. Agents Seize 17 In Raids to Dismantle
Jamaican Drug Ring,” The New York Times, December 8, 1990. http://
www.nytimes.com/1990/12/08nyregion/us-agents-seize-17-in-raids
-to-dismantle-jamaican-drug-ring.html.
54. Laura Limonic, “The Latino Population of New York City, 2007,”
Center for Latino American, Caribbean, and Latin Studies, 2008,
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/lastudies.
notes / 185

55. Center for the Study of Brooklyn October 24, 2012, http://www
.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/csb/csb_history.htm.
56. Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to
Reggae (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006); Christopher
Washburne, Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008); Lloyd Bradley,
This is Reggae Music (New York: Grove Press, 2000); Raquel Z. Rivera,
“Policing Morality Mano Duro Stylee: The Case of Underground Rap
and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-1990s,” in Reggaeton, ed. Raquel
Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini-Hernandez, 111–134
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
57. Isidor Chein, Donald Gerard, Robert Lee, and Eva Rosenfeld, The
Road to H: Narcotics, Juvenile Delinquency, and Social Policy (New
York: Basic Books, 1964); see also Schneider, Smack; John Helmer,
Drugs and Minority Oppression (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
58. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free
Press, 1957).
59. Preble and Casey, “Taking Care of Business.”
60. Richard Dembo, Review of E. Preble and J. J. Casey, 1969. “Taking
Care of Business—The Heroin User’s Life on the Street,” International
Journal of the Addictions, 4 (1997): 1–24, Substance Use & Misuse 32,
no. 2: 195
61. Charles Winick, “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians,” Social Problems
7, no. 3 (1959–1960): 240–242.
62. Winick, “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians,” 246.
63. Winick, “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians,” 245.
64. Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
65. Bruce MacLeod, Club Date Musicians: Playing the New York Party
Circuit (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
66. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 6.
67. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 132.
68. Frederick Thrasher, The Gang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1927); Clifford Shaw, The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1930).
69. Albert Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York:
Free Press, 1955), 25.
70. Gresham Sykes and David Matza, “Juvenile Delinquency and
Subterranean Values,” American Sociological Review 26, no. 5 (1961):
712–719.
71. Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New
York: Free Press, 1963).
72. Jock Young, The Drugtakers (London: Paladin, 1971).
186 / notes

73. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals:
Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (Birmingham, UK: Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1975); Dick Hebdige, Subcultures:
The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979).
74. Robert Garot, Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identity in the School
and on the Streets (New York: New York University Press, 2010);
James Cote, “Identity Studies: How Close Are We to Developing a
Social Science of Identity? An Appraisal of the Field,” Identity: An
International Journal of Theory and Research 6, no. 1 (2006): 3–25.
75. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (New
York: Prentice Hall, 1969); Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and
the Social Order (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922); George
Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1934); see also Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-
Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); Zygmunt
Bauman, Liquid Modernity. (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); Zygmunt
Bauman, Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi (Cambridge:
Polity, 2004).
76. Alfred Lindesmith, Addiction and Opiates (Chicago, IL: Aldine,
1968).
77. Harvey Feldman, “Ideological Supports to Becoming and Remaining
a Heroin Addict,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 9, no. 2 (1968):
131–139.
78. Richard Stephens, The Street Addict Role (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991);
see also Harold Finestone, “Cats, Kicks, and Color,” Social Problems 5,
no. 1 (1957): 3–12; Alan Sutter, “The World of the Righteous Dope
Fiend,” Issues in Criminology 22 (1966): 177–222.
79. Thomas Dormandy, Opium: Reality’s Dark Dream (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2012).
80. Jos Ten Berge, “Breakdown or Breakthrough? A History of European
Research into Drugs and Creativity,” Journal of Creative Behavior 33,
no. 4 (1999): 259.
81. Stanley Krippner, “Psychedelic Drugs and Creativity,” Journal of
Psychoactive Drugs 17, no. 4 (1985): 235–246; Ten Berge, “Breakdown
or Breakthrough?”
82. Michael Largo, Genius and Heroin (New York: HarperCollins, 2008),
1–2.
83. Being “New York City–based” means that the individual was born
and/or raised in New York City and continued to call the city home,
or the individual at some point relocated to the city. In other words,
these are people who spent the major part, if not all, of their career in
New York City. New York City includes the city’s five boroughs plus
the metropolitan area, that is, Westchester County, Long Island, and
parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.
notes / 187

84. By “musician” I mean an individual who identifies him or herself as a


musician and who is recognized by others as a musician. This includes
vocalists but not other people who play a role in the New York City
music industry, such as arrangers, conductors, publishers, producers,
or engineers. Also not included are individuals who were at some point
in their careers New York City–based musicians but who are primarily
recognized by the public for other creative activities such as art, poetry,
and theater.
85. Being a “self acknowledged heroin abuser” basically means that the
individual has talked about the fact that at some point in his or her
career, he or she was an abuser. My interest here is not in musicians
who may have dabbled or experimented with heroin or used the drug
recreationally—no doubt there have been very many New York City–
based musicians who have used heroin. Rather, the focus is on musi-
cians who were regular users, including full-blown addicts. Also, while
many of these musicians had problems with other drugs, especially
cocaine and alcohol, in addition to heroin, the focus of this book is
squarely on heroin and not on other drugs.
86. There were no interviews conducted specifically for this project.
87. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963); Kenji Yoshino, Covering
(New York: Random House, 2006).
88. A number of New York City–based musicians from various genres
have publicly self-acknowledged a “drug” problem without clearly
stating what that drug is. These individuals are not included in my
sample. There are also New York musicians who are “commonly
acknowledged” or presumed or rumored or framed by urban legend
to be heroin abusers, although such a claim cannot be verified. They,
too, are not included here. Also, out-of-town heroin-using musicians
who might have talked about purchasing or using heroin while in New
York City while on tour or while recording in the city, or out-of-town-
ers who famously died from a heroin overdose while in the city, are not
part of the sample.

2 Jazz
1. Listed alphabetically, these 19 musicians are: Walter Bishop, Art
Blakey, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon,
Freddie Gruber, Jimmy Heath, Billie Holiday, Elmo Hope, Philly Joe
Jones, Howard McGhee, Jackie McLean, Charlie Parker, Max Roach,
Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Mal Waldron, and Randy Weston.
Additionally, these 15 New York–based jazz musician-users who did
not talk about their use—at least publicly or for the record—are part
of the story of heroin and jazz in New York (also listed alphabetically):
188 / notes

Buddy Arnold, Sonny Berman, Michael Brecker, Sonny Clark, Kenny


Clarke, Tadd Dameron, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones, Kenny Kirkland, Lee
Morgan, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Emily Remler, Sonny Stitt, and
Freddy Webster.
2. Paul Lopes, “Signifying Deviance and Transgression: Jazz in the
Popular Imagination,” American Behavioral Scientist 48, no. 11
(2005): 1468–1481; Jill Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A
History of America’s Romance with Illegal Drugs (New York: Scribner,
1996); Mark Caldwell, New York Night (New York: Scribner, 2005);
Merrill Singer and Greg Mirhej, “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in
the Making of Jazz,” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4
(2006): 1–38; Burton Peretti, The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and
Culture in Urban America (Champaigne Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1992).
3. Cited in Lopes, “Signifying Deviance and Transgression,” 1471.
4. Cited in Lewis Erenberg, Swinging the Dream (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998), 103.
5. Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong in His Own Words (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 35.
6. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 122.
7. Peretti, The Creation of Jazz, 140.
8. Louis Armstrong, “Muggles,” Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
1923–1934 (New York: Columbia/Legacy, 1994).
9. Armstrong, “Song of the Vipers.” Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man.
10. Laurence Bergreen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life (New York:
Broadway Books, 1997), 4.
11. Armstrong, Louis Armstrong in His Own Words, 221.
12. Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Boston, MA: Mariner
Books, 2009), 122.
13. Cab Calloway, “Is Dope Killing Our Musicians?” Ebony 6, no. 4
(February 1951): 22–28.
14. Cab Calloway, “Reefer Man,” Cab Calloway: Best of the Big Bands
(New York, NY: Columbia, 1990).
15. Calloway, “Is Dope Killing Our Musicians?”
16. Calloway, “Is Dope Killing Our Musicians?”
17. Cab Calloway, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1976), 156.
18. Tom Nolan,Three Chords for Beauty’s Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2010); Peter Levinson, Trumpet Blues: The Life of
Harry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
19. Lewis Erenberg, Swinging the Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998), 80.
notes / 189

20. Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 80–81.


21. Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 245.
22. Ross Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny
Goodman (New York: Norton, 1994), 320–321.
23. Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing, 321.
24. Bruce Klauber, The World of Gene Krupa (Ventura, CA: Pathfinder
Publishing, 1990), 55.
25. Ira Gitler, Swing to Bop (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985),
27.
26. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 133.
27. David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America Before
1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).; David
Courtwright, “The Roads to H: The Emergence of the American
Heroin Complex, 1898–1956,” in One Hundred Years of Heroin ed.
David Musto, chap. 1, 3–19 (Westport, CT: Auburn House, 2002).
28. Courtwright, Dark Paradise; “The Roads to H.”
29. Armstrong, Louis Armstrong in His Own Words, 114.
30. Cited in Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams,123.
31. Cab Calloway, “Is Dope Killing Our Musicians?” Ebony 6, no. 4
(February 1951): 22–28.
32. Calloway, “Minnie the Moocher,” Cab Calloway: Best of the Big Bands.
33. Calloway, “Kicking the Gong Around,” Kicking the Gong Around.
34. Clarence Williams, “Jerry the Junker,” Clarence Williams, 1934.
France: Classics Records, 1996.
35. Duke Ellington, “Hop Head,” Duke Ellington and His Orchestra,
1924–1927 (France: Classics, 1990).
36. See Charles Winick, “How High the Moon: Jazz and Drugs,” The
Antioch Review 21, no. 1 (1961): 53–68; Charles Winick, “The Taste of
Music: Alcohol, Drugs, and Jazz,” Jazz Monthly 8, no. 8 (1962): 8–11,
for a more general discussion of drug references in jazz songs.
37. Eric Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
38. Gitler, Swing to Bop, 278.
39. Frederick Spencer, Jazz and Death: Medical Profiles of Jazz Greats
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002), 129.
40. Dennis McLellan, “Buddy Arnold, 77; Sax Player Founded Drug
Program for Musicians” (Obituary), Los Angeles Times, November 11,
2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/11/local/me-arnold11.
41. McLellan, “Buddy Arnold, 77.”
42. Donald Maggin, Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz (New York: W. Morrow,
1996), 37.
43. Maggin, Stan Getz, 140.
44. Julia Blackburn, With Billie (New York: Vintage Press, 2005), 268.
190 / notes

45. Blackburn, With Billie, 199.


46. Schneider, Smack, 26; Blackburn, With Billie, 118.
47. Caldwell, New York Night, 292.
48. Blackburn, With Billie, 118.
49. Caldwell, New York Night, 293.
50. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1989), 235.
51. Anita O’Day, High Times, Hard Times (New York: Limelight Editions,
1981), 180.
52. Ingo Niermann and Adriano Sack, The Curious World of Drugs and
Their Friends (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 49.
53. Blackburn, With Billie, 238.
54. Singer and Mirhej, “High Notes,” 23.
55. Singer and Mirhej, “High Notes,” 23.
56. John Hammond, John Hammond on Record: An Autobiography (New
York: Ridge Press/Summit Books, 1977), 340.
57. Singer and Mirhej, “High Notes,” 23.
58. Blackburn, With Billie, 199.
59. Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 246.
60. Singer and Mirhej, “High Notes”; see also Paul Chevigny, Gigs: Jazz
and The Cabaret Laws in New York City (London: Routledge, 1991) and
Maxwell Cohen, The Police Card Discord (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press, 1993).
61. Donald Clarke, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon (New York: Da
Capo Press, 2000), 323.
62. Blackburn, With Billie, 298.
63. Blackburn, With Billie, 296.
64. Jazz critics who have written about this include Nat Hentoff, The
Jazz Life (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978); Gary Giddins and Scott
DeVeaux, Jazz (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009); and Ted Gioia, The
History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); academics
include Schneider, Smack; Erenberg, Swinging the Dream; and Singer
and Mirhej, “High Notes.”
65. Peter Rutkoff and William Scott, “Bebop: Modern New York Jazz,”
The Kenyon Review 18, no. 2 (1996): 91.
66. Teachout, Pops, 241.
67. Teachout, Pops, 281.
68. Linda Dahl, Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz
Women (New York: Proscenium Publishers, 1984); see also Gioia, The
History of Jazz, 62 and Robert Walser (ed.), Keeping Time: Readings in
Jazz History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 155.
69. Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing, 354.
70. Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing, 354.
notes / 191

71. Cited in Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 225.


72. See Gerald Tolson and Michael Cuyjet, “Jazz and Substance Abuse:
Road to Creative Genius or Pathway to Premature Death,” International
Journal of Law and Psychiatry 30 (2007): 530–538.
73. Nate Chinen, “John Levy, Bassist and Talent Manager, Dies at 99,” New
York Times, January 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/
arts/music/john-levy-bassist-and-talent-manager-dies-at-99.html.
74. Mark Myers, “Why Sonny Rollins Matters.” December 7, 2011.
75. Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 225.
76. Rutkoff and Scott, “Bebop,” 93–95; Kenaz Filan, The Power of the
Poppy (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2011), 169.
77. Rutkoff and Scott, “Bebop,” 112.
78. Filan, The Power of the Poppy, 169.
79. Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (New York: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, 2007), 20.
80. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 204.
81. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 121.
82. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 205.
83. Giddins and DeVeaux, Jazz, 70; see also Gioia, The History of Jazz,
205.
84. Mike Hennessey, Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke (London: Quartet
Books, 1990), 113.
85. John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: HarperCollins, 2004); see
also Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on
the Hipster,” Dissent 4, no. 3 (Summer, 1957): 276–293; Rutkoff and
Scott, “Bebop.”
86. Hentoff, The Jazz Life, 81.
87. Erenberg, Swinging the Dream, 233.
88. Schneider, Smack, 43.
89. Winick, “The Taste of Music,” 9.
90. Winick, “The Taste of Music,” 9; see also Hentoff, The Jazz Life, 79.
91. Andrew Karmen, New York Murder Mystery (New York: New York
University Press, 2000); Courtwright, “The Roads to H.”
92. Schneider, Smack, 64.
93. Schneider, Smack, 32.
94. Nat Hentoff, Listen to the Stories (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
95. Arnold Shaw, 52nd St.: The Street of Jazz (New York: Da Capo Press,
1971), 298.
96. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 132.
97. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 132.
98. Hentoff, Listen to the Stories, 75.
99. Gary Giddins, Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker (New
York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 76.
192 / notes

100. Ross Russell quoted in Lewis MacAdams, Birth of the Cool: Beat,
Bebop, and the American Avante-Garde (New York: Free Press, 2001),
56.
101. Howard Mandel, Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz (New York:
Routledge, 2008), 33.
102. Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 15.
103. Davis, Miles, 76.
104. Marc Myers, “Bill Evans on High,” JazzWax, www.JazzWax.com,
August 27, 2007.
105. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 133.
106. Leland, Hip, 264.
107. Robert Reisner (ed.), Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1962), 47.
108. Filan, The Power of the Poppy, 168.
109. Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s (New York: Da Capo Press,
1966), 17.
110. Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 233.
111. Charlie Parker, “Parker, Moose the Mooch,” Charlie Parker, a Studio
Chronicle 1940–1948 (London: JSP Records, 2003).
112. MacAdams, Birth of the Cool, 52.
113. Davis, Miles, 65.
114. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 231.
115. DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 194.
116. Robert O’Meally, The Jazz Singers [A Smithsonian Collection
of Jazz Vocals from 1919–1994]. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Collection of Recordings/Sony Music Special Products, 1998 [Sound
recording].
117. Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 15.
118. Steve Voce, “Obituary: Red Rodney,” The Independent, May 31, 1994,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-red-rodney.
119. Gene Lees, Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 103.
120. Lees, Cats of Any Color, 104.
121. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 119.
122. Lees, Cats of Any Color, 104.
123. Roland Baggenaes, Jazz Greats Speak (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press, 2008), 59.
124. Gitler, Swing to Bop, 280.
125. David Hutchings, “Jazz Great Dexter Gordon Blows an Elegant
New Note as an Actor—and Oscar Hopeful—in Round Midnight,”
People Magazine 26, no. 21 (November 24, 1986): 113, http://www
.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20095090,00.html.
notes / 193

126. Hutchings, “Jazz Great Dexter Gordon,” 113.


127. Hutchings, “Jazz Great Dexter Gordon,” 113.
128. Hennessey, Klook, 15.
129. Hennessey, Klook, 15.
130. Jerry Shriver, “The Art of Jazz Still Thrives with Saxophonist Sonny
Rollins,” USA Today, May 5, 2001, www.usatoday.com/life/music/
news/2011–05–05-sonny-rollins-jazzfest_N.htm.
131. Eric Nisenson, Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation
(New York: Da Capo Press, 2000), 39.
132. Nisenson, Open Sky, 38.
133. Nisenson, Open Sky, 39.
134. A. B. Spellman, Four Lives in the Bebop Business (New York: Limelight,
1966), 194.
135. Spellman, Four Lives in the Bebop Business, 196.
136. Leslie Gourse, Art Blakey: Jazz Messenger (New York: Schirmer Books,
2002), 38.
137. Gourse, Art Blakey, 47.
138. Jimmy Heath, I Walked with Giants (Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 2010), 71.
139. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 62.
140. Davis, Miles, 131.
141. Davis, Miles, 127.
142. Davis, Miles, 96.
143. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 226.
144. Davis, Miles, 130.
145. DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 446–447; Gioia, The History of Jazz,
293.
146. Davis, Miles, 136.
147. Davis, Miles, 163.
148. Davis, Miles, 169–170.
149. Davis, Miles, 174.
150. Davis, Miles, 112.
151. Davis, Miles, 112.
152. Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s, 122; Michael Ullman, Jazz Lives
(Washington: New Republic Books, 1980), 110.
153. Francis Paudras, Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell (New
York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 261.
154. Powell was a protégé of Thelonious Monk, who was Minton’s resident
pianist in the early 1940s. Monk is a good example of a bebopper who
was presumed to be a regular heroin user if not an actual addict but,
in fact, wasn’t. According to Robin D. G. Kelley’s recent biography,
Monk was a serious drinker but only used heroin occasionally, could
go weeks without using, and never was an addict (see Robin D. G.
194 / notes

Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original


[New York: Free Press, 2009], 151).
155. Peter Pettinger, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2002), 62.
156. Reisner, Bird, 52.
157. Voce, “Obituary: Red Rodney.”
158. Lees, Cats of Any Color, 105.
159. Gitler, Swing to Bop, 283.
160. Hutchings, “Jazz Great Dexter Gordon,” 113.
161. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 70.
162. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 71.
163. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 71.
164. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 71.
165. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 71.
166. Spellman, Four Lives in the Bebop Business, 195.
167. David Courtwright, Herman Joseph, and Don Des Jarlais, Addicts
Who Survived: An Oral History of Narcotic Use in America, 1923–
1965 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 234.
168. Hentoff, Listen to the Stories, 76.
169. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 218; see also Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 71.
170. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 232.
171. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 232.
172. Jose Madera, “The Latin Jazz Corner—Latin Jazz Conversations—
Jose Madera,” n.d., http://www.chipboaz.com/blog/2009/02/25/
latin-jazz-conversations-jose-madera-part-1.
173. Davis, Miles, 65.
174. Davis, Miles, 65.
175. Gitler, Swing to Bop, 256.
176. Hutchings, “Jazz Great Dexter Gordon,” 113.
177. Nisenson, Open Sky, 41.
178. Nisenson, Open Sky, 42.
179. Nisenson, Open Sky, 40.
180. Nisenson, Open Sky, 68.
181. Steve Voce, “Obituary: Walter Bishop” The Independent, 35, January
1998, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-walter
-bishop.
182. Bill Milkowski, “Freddie Gruber: None of a Kind,” Jazz Times,
November 2004, http://jazztimes.com/articles/15079-freddie-gruber-
none-of-a-kind.
183. Davis, Miles, 143.
184. Mark Myers, “Interview: George Avakian (part 3).” March 17, 2010.
185. Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz (London: Continuum Books,
2001), 655.
notes / 195

186. Sonny Rollins was the original saxophonist but only stayed with the
band for a couple of months.
187. Ashley Kahn, A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature
Album (New York: Viking Press, 2002), 15.
188. Davis, Miles, 209.
189. Kahn, A Love Supreme, 81.
190. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (liner notes) (Universal City, CA:
Impulse, 1965).
191. Lees, Cats of Any Color, 77.
192. Burt Korall, Drumming Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 290.
193. Orrin Keepnews in Jazz Profiles, “The Wonder of Philly Joe Jones,”
July 30, 2013, http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2013_07_01_archive.
html.
194. Philly Joe Jones, Interview in Downbeat, n. d., cited in http://www.
musicianguide.com biographies/1608001248/Philly-Joe Jones.html.
195. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 71.
196. Heath, I Walked With Giants, 78.
197. Milkowski, “Freddie Gruber.”
198. Hennessey, Klook, 114.
199. DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 446.
200. Hennessey, Klook, 114.
201. Hennessey, Klook, 115.
202. David Rosenthal, Hard Bop (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993), 169.
203. Rosenthal, Hard Bop, 44.
204. Sam Stephenson, “Sounds from Rikers Island,” November 5, 2010,
www.jazzloftproject.org/blog/uncategorized/sounds-from-rikers
-island.
205. Jeffrey McMillan, Delightfullee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 100.
206. Sam Stephenson, “Notes from a Biographer: Sonny Clark” Paris
Review Daily, January 26, 2011, http://www.theparisreview.org/
blog/2011/01/26/sonny-clark-part-ii.
207. Stephenson, “Notes from a Biographer.”
208. Stephenson, “Notes from a Biographer.”
209. Rosenthal, Hard Bop, 59.
210. Myers, “Ira Gitler on Sonny Stitt,” April 1, 2011.
211. Davis, Miles, 134–135.
212. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of
Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It (New York: Dover Publications,
1955), 375.
213. Davis, Miles, 105.
196 / notes

214. Hennessey, Klook, 114–116.


215. Hennessey, Klook, 115.
216. Hennessey, Klook, 116.
217. Hennessey, Klook, 116.
218. Korall, Drumming Men, 99.
219. Donald Maggin, Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie
(New York: HarperEntertainment, 2005), 125.
220. Mike Zwerin, “Max Roach: From Hip Hop to Bebop,” January
14, 1999, http://www.culturekiosque.com/jazz/miles/rhemile29.
htm.
221. Giddens and DeVeaux, Jazz, 1999, 318.
222. Dizzy Gillespie, To Be, or Not—to Bop: Memoirs, 283 (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1979).
223. DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 254.
224. DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 431.
225. Maggin, Dizzy, 337.
226. Brian Priestly. Mingus: A Critical Biography,33 (New York: Da Capo
Paperback, 1984).
227. Gene Santoro, Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles
Mingus, 248 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
228. Silver, 2006, 80.
229. Silver, 2006, 81.
230. Silver, 2006, 56.
231. Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (New York: Faber and
Faber, 2011), 21.
232. Nick Catalano, Clifford Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz
Trumpeter, 114 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
233. Singer and Mirhej, “High Notes”, 28.
234. Arthur Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician to Musician Interviews, 243
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1993).
235. Ansley Hamid et al., “The Heroin Epidemic in New York City:
Current Status and Prognoses,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 29, no.
4 (1997); Curtis, 1998; Barry Spunt, “ The Current New York City
Heroin Scene,” Substance Use and Misuse 38, no. 10 (2003).
236. Kruth, 2001.
237. Zorn, Heroin Fix. Filmworks II.
238. Zorn, Speedball. Naked City.
239. Mike Zwerin, “Mal Waldron: Looking for Musical Surprises” New
York Times, January 22, 1998, www.nytimes.com/1998/01/22/style
/22iht-waldron.t.html.
240. John Wennersten, Leaving America: The New Expatriate Generation
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008), 79.
241. Ratliff, Coltrane, 33.
notes / 197

242. Wennersten, Leaving America, 79.


243. Zwerin, “Mal Waldron.”
244. Myers, “Waxings and Musings,” August 23, 2009.
245. Pettinger, 2002, 62.
246. Myers, “Bill Evans on High,” August 27, 2007.
247. Keith Shadwick, Bill Evans: Everything Happens to Me—a Musical
Biography (San Francisco, CA: Backbeat Books, 2002), 72.
248. Larry Coryell, Improvising: My Life in Music (New York: Backbeat
Books, 2007). 59.
249. Ratliff, Coltrane, 57.
250. J. C. Thomas, Coltrane: Chasin’ the Trane (New York: Da Capo Press,
1976), 159.
251. Myers, “Emily Remler,” March 30, 2008; see also JazzUSA
Foundation, n.d.
252. Martin Taylor, Kiss and Tell: The Autobiography of a Traveling
Musician (London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2000), 112.
253. Myers, “What Killed Jazz and When (part 3),” August 8, 2008.
254. All three quotes are from Barry Finnerty, “Remembering Mike B,”
2007, http://www.barryfinnerty.com/musings.htm.
255. Joseph Hooper, “Requiem for a Heavyweight: Marsalis Bids Kirkland
Farewell,” April 5, 1999, http://observer.com/1999/04/requiem-for-a
-heavyweight-marsalis-bids- kirkland-farewell.
256. Lee Jeske, “Getting a Kick Out of the Habit,” April 19, 1999, http://
www.tart.org/work/citysearch/music/kick_habit/.
257. Randy Weston, African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 44.
258. Winick, “The Taste of Music: Alcohol, Drugs, and Jazz,” 10.
259. Tolson and Cuyjet, “Jazz and Substance Abuse,” 537.
260. Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 101.
261. Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 57.
262. Nancy Campbell, J. P. Olsen, and Luke Walden, The Narcotic Farm:
The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts (New York:
Abrams, 2008), 152.
263. Ian MacDonald, Tadd: The Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron
(London: Jahbero Press, 1998), 61.

3 Rock
1. See Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The
Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll (New York: Rolling Stone
Press/Summit Books, 1986); Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City:
The Rise of Rock and Roll (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996).
198 / notes

2. Ian Penman, “Drugs In Rock Culture: Don’t Try This at Home,” The
Guardian, August 2, 1996, http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library
/Article/drugs-in-rock-culture-dont-try-this-at-home, 2.
3. Simon Napier-Bell, Black Vinyl White Powder (London: Ebury Press,
2001), 236.
4. Deena Dasein, “Rock ‘n’ Horse: Rock’s Heroin Connection,”
December 1996, http://globalpop.tripod.com/pop/heroin.html.
5. These 30 musicians (listed alphabetically) are: Ryan Adams, Walter
Becker, John Cale, James Chance, Cheetah Chrome, Willy DeVille,
Mike Doughty, Steve Earle, Albert Hammond, Debby Harry, Richard
Hell, HR, Wayne Kramer, John Lennon, Richard Lloyd, Walter Lure,
Handsome Dick Manitoba, Nico, Jerry Nolan, Iggy Pop, Dee Dee
Ramone, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Chris Stein, STZA, Johnny
Thunders, Sid Vicious, Leslie West, Johnny Winter, and Thalia Zedek.
These five rock musicians are not part of the sample per se but are part
of the story of heroin and rock in New York: Stiv Bators, Adele Bertei,
Billy Graziadei, Dave Insurgent, and Andy Shernoff.
6. Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman, Louder Than Hell: The
Definitive Oral History of Metal (New York: Harper Collins, 2013), 7.
7. Richard Cromelin, “Return of the Nightfly,” Metal Leg: The Steely
Dan Magazine 5, no. 18.4 (April 1992), http://www.granatino.com
/sdresource/18crom.htm.
8. Steely Dan, “The Return of Steely Dan,” Mojo Magazine, October
1995, http://www.steelydan.com/mojo.html.
9. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Corp Author: Steely Dan. Katy Lied
(Universal City, CA: MCA, 1999, 1975).
10. Arthur Lubow, “Fancy Dan,” New Times, February 18, 1977, From the
Steely Dan Internet Resource. Granatino.com/sdresource/burrough.
htm.
11. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Corp Author: Steely Dan Gaucho
(Santa Monica, CA: MCA, 2000, 1980).
12. Mary Lou Sullivan, Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny
Winter (New York: Backbeat Books, 2010), 153.
13. Sullivan, Raisin’ Cain, 168.
14. Sullivan, Raisin’ Cain, 160.
15. Leslie West, Interview on Howard Stern, July 23, 2007 [Radio].
16. Leslie West, “Mountain,” Classic Rock Magazine, 2003, http://www.
daveling.co.uk/docmountain.htm.
17. West, Interview on Howard Stern.
18. Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2009), 551.
19. John Lennon, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon,” Rolling
Stone 74, 75, January 21 and February 4, 1971. http://imaginepeace.com
/archives/4385.
notes / 199

20. John Lennon, “Cold Turkey,” The John Lennon Collection (Hollywood,
CA: Capitol Records, 1989).
21. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr,
“Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” The Beatles (London: Parlophone,
1987).
22. Lennon, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon.”
23. Keith Richards, Life (New York: Little Brown, 2010), 259.
24. Richards, Life, 285.
25. Richards, Life, 285.
26. Richards, Life, 314.
27. Richards, Life, 260.
28. Richards, Life, 260.
29. Richards, Life, 261.
30. Victor Bockris, Keith Richards: The Biography (Cambridge, MA: Da
Capo Press, 2003), 213.
31. Richards, Life, 304.
32. Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and
Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001), 441.
33. Brian Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk (New York: Sterling Publishing,
2008), viii.
34. Caroline Polk O’Meara, “The Bush Tetras, ‘Too Many Creeps’, and
New York City,” American Music, 25, no. 2 (2007), 203.
35. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 184.
36. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 346.
37. Victor Bockris, Lou Reed: The Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1994),
85.
38. John Cale and Victor Bockris, What’s Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography
of John Cale (New York: Bloomsbury, 1999), 73.
39. John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: HarperCollins, 2004),
268–269.
40. Velvet Underground and Nico, “Heroin,” The Velvet Underground &
Nico (New York, NY: Polydor, 1996).
41. Leland, Hip, 267.
42. Velvet Underground and Nico, “I’m Waiting for the Man,” The Velvet
Underground & Nico.
43. Velvet Underground, “Sister Ray,” White Light/White Heat (Hollywood,
CA: Polydor, 1996).
44. Dave Thompson, Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell: The Dangerous
Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed (New York: Backbeat
Books, 2009), 37.
45. Leland, Hip, 252.
46. James Young, Nico: The End (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1992),
66.
200 / notes

47. Richard Witt, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon (London: Virgin,
1993), 243.
48. Witt, Nico, 243–244.
49. Witt, Nico, 285.
50. Young, Nico, 79.
51. Witt, Nico, 293.
52. Richard Hell, Blank Generation (New York: Sire Records, 1977).
53. Richard Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (New York: Harper
Collins, 2013), 217.
54. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 130.
55. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me (New York: Grove
Press, 1996), 166.
56. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 154.
57. McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 166.
58. Steven Wells, Punk: Young, Loud and Snotty (New York: Thunder’s
Mouth Press, 2004), 138.
59. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 137.
60. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 138.
61. See Richard Curtis, Travis Wendel, and Barry Spunt, “We Deliver:
The Gentrification of Drug Markets on Manhattan’s Lower East
Side.” (Final Report to the National Institute of Justice Grant #1999-
IJ-CX-0010, 2002).
62. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 160–161.
63. McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 209–210.
64. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 229.
65. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 241.
66. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 263.
67. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 252.
68. Brian Smith, “Tator Tautology,” Detroit Metro Times, May 21, 2003,
http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=4933.
69. Judy McGuire, The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists
(Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2011), 189–190.
70. McGuire, The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists,
189–190.
71. Will Hermes, “Punk Reunion: New York,” Spin Magazine, September
21, 2007, http://www.spin.com/articles/punk-reunion-new-york/.
72. Richard Hell, “Delicate Rage,” New York Magazine, May 21, 2005,
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/9310
73. Savage, England’s Dreaming, 59.
74. Like many early bands, the Dolls have resurrected themselves over the
years and continue to perform
75. John Holmstrom and Hurd, Bridget (eds). Punk: The Best of Punk
Magazine (New York: HarperCollins 2012).
notes / 201

76. Pamela Des Barres, Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon
(London: Abacus, 1997).
77. Mat Snow, “Hairspray and Hard Drugs: The New York Dolls,” Q,
January 1995. http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/hairspray
-and-hard-drugs-the-new-york-dolls
78. Nina Antonia, Too Much Too Soon: The New York Dolls (London:
Omnibus, 2005a), 188.
79. Jerry Nolan, “My Life as a Doll,” Village Voice Rock and Roll Quarterly
(July 1991), 22.
80. Nolan, “My Life as a Doll,” 22.
81. Nolan, “My Life as a Doll,” 22.
82. Nina Antonia, Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood (London: Cherry Red
Books, 2000), 230–233.
83. Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan, Punk: The Definitive Record of
a Revolution (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001), 213.
84. Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia, End of the Century—The Story of
the Ramones ([Film] Magnolia Pictures, 2005).
85. Dom Daley, “Walter Lure—Interview Exclusive,” Uber Rock,
November 12, 2009, http://www.uberrock.co.uk/interviews/62-no-
vember-interviews/292-walter-lure-interview-exclusive.html.
86. Richard Hell and Walter Lure, “One Track Mind,” Born to Lose: Johnny
Thunders with the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers & Alone (Kent:
Delta Music, 2003).
87. Johnny Thunders and Walter Lure, “Too Much Junkie Business,” Born
to Lose: Johnny Thunders with the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers &
Alone (Kent: Delta Music, 2003).
88. Daniel Clodfelter, “Walter Lure: The Devil Inside,” LA Record, August
25, 2009, http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/08/25/walter-lure-of-
the-heartbreakers-interview-the-devils-inside.
89. Daley, “Walter Lure—Interview Exclusive.”
90. Joe Bonomo, Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band
(London: Continuum Books, 2007), 234.
91. Bonomo, Sweat, 234.
92. Antonia, Too Much Too Soon, 182.
93. Nina Antonia, “The First Punk: Johnny Thunders,” Mojo, March, 2005.
94. The Clash, “The City of the Dead,” Clash on Broadway (New York:
Epic, 1991).
95. John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (New York: Picador,
1994), 135.
96. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 256.
97. Colegrave and Sullivan, Punk, 212.
98. Dee Dee Ramone and Veronica Kofman, Lobotomy (New York:
Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1997), 26–27.
202 / notes

99. Ramone and Kofman, Lobotomy, 86


100. Ramone and Kofman, Lobotomy, 32.
101. Vera Ramone King, Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone
(the Ramones Years): A Punk Love Story (Beverly Hills, CA: Phoenix
Books, 2009), 143; McGuire, The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and
Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists, 162.
102. Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (New York: Faber and
Faber, 2011), 255.
103. Dee Dee Ramone and Johnny Thunders, “Chinese Rocks,” Under
the Influence, n.d.
104. Fields and Gramaglia, End of the Century.
105. Nick Kent, “The Ramones: So the New Wave Have Scruples Too,”
NME, June 18, 1977, http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article
/the-ramones-so-the-new-wave-have-scruples-too.
106. Dee Dee Ramone, “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” Ramones (New
York: Sire Records, 1976).
107. Ramones, Carbona Not Glue. Leave Home. “From WorldCat I got:
Leave Home” (Los Angeles, CA: Warner Archives/Rhino, 2001).
Sound recording.
108. Dee Dee Ramone, “Chinese Rock,” Ramones Mania (New York, NY:
Sire Records Co, 1988).
109. Barry Miles, “Willy DeVille—Just Another Tough’n’Tender Street
Poet Outta New Yawk,” NME, August 13, 1977, http://www
.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/just-another-toughntender
-street-poet-outta-new-yawk.
110. Paul Trynka, Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed (New York: Broadway
Books, 2007), 114.
111. Erik Hedegaard, “Iggy Pop’s Trail of Destruction,” Rolling Stone
937 (November 12, 2003): 70–81, http://iggypop.org/iggypopinter-
views2001.html.
112. Iggy Pop and David Bowie, “China Girl,” The Idiot (Beverly Hills,
CA: Virgin, 1990).
113. Nile Rodgers, Le Freak (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2011), 195.
114. Andrew Goldman, “The Taming of the Stooge: Iggy Pop Isn’t Ready to
Give Up the Carnal Life,” New York Times Magazine, 12, July 1, 2012.
115. McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 217.
116. Cheetah Chrome, Cheetah Chrome: A Dead Boy’s Tale from the Front
Lines of Punk Rock (Minneapolis, MN: Voyageur Press, 2010), 260.
117. Chrome, Cheetah Chrome, 265.
118. Chrome, Cheetah Chrome, 321.
119. Humppe, “The Punk Chronicles Chapter XX,” November 24, 2010,
http://clickswitch.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/the-punk-chronicles
-chapter-xx.
notes / 203

120. Martin Popoff, “Twelve Shots on the Rocks (Liquor and Poker): An
Interview with Singer Michael Monroe,” Lollipop, n.d., http://www
.lollipop.com/article.php3?content=issue65/hanoirocks.html.
121. Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), 183.
122. Colegrave and Sullivan, Punk, 219.
123. Colegrave and Sullivan, Punk, 290, 319.
124. Colegrave and Sullivan, Punk, 219.
125. Mark Paytress, Vicious! The Downfall of the Prince of Punk (London:
Sanctuary, 2004), 186.
126. Gary Herman, Rock’n’Roll Babylon (London: Plexus, 2002), 62.
127. Savage, England’s Dreaming, 510.
128. Herman, Rock’n’Roll Babylon, 63.
129. Chrome, Cheetah Chrome, 253.
130. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 9.
131. Douglas Levy, “GG Allin: Portrait of a Serial Singer,” The GG Allin
SuperSite Media Guide—Anthropomorphic, #1 January, 1993, http://
www.oocities.org/ekx001/MG/ANT1993MG.html.
132. Matt Corbett, “Leftover Crack—Interview,” Racket Magazine, March
16, 2008, http://racketmag.com/interviews/leftover-crack-interview/;
Colin Moynihan, “Sharing a Part of Activist History in the East
Village,” The New York Times, March 4, 2012. http://www.nytimes.
com/2012/03/05nyregion/east-village-museum-shares-a-piece-of-
activist-history.html.
133. Hannah Wagner and Roya Butler, “Leftover Crack Interview,” All
Schools Network, n.d. http://www.allschools.de/interview/53834.
134. STZA, “Gimme Heroin,” Leftover Crack/ Citizen Fish Split 7 (with
Citizen Fish) (Fat Wreck Chords, 2006).
135. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 64–65.
136. Steven Blush, American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Port Townsend,
WA: Feral House, 2010) 188.
137. John Joseph, The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon (New York: Punkhouse
Publishing, 2007), 380–383.
138. Joseph, The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon, 95.
139. John Barry, “I Against I: It’s Not Easy Being a Punk Legend, But
H.R. Still Has That P.M.A,” Baltimore City Paper, October 15, 2008,
http://www2.citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=16871
140. Mark Andersen, and Mark Jenkins, The Dance of Days: The History of
the Washington D.C. Punk Scene (New York: Soft Skull, 2009), 28.
141. Andersen and Jenkins, The Dance of Days, 57–58.
142. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 262.
143. Reagan Youth, “Reagan Youth Biography,” n.d., http://www.newre-
darchives.com/bands/Reaganyouth/bio.htm.
204 / notes

144. See Wiederhorn and Turman, Louder Than Hell, 267–305.


145. Wiederhorn and Turman, Louder Than Hell, 298–289.
146. Wells, Punk, 84.
147. Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life (New York: Back Bay
Books, 2001), 139.
148. Andersen and Jenkins, The Dance of Days, 113.
149. Minor Threat, “Straightedge,” Minor Threat (EP, 1984).
150. Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, 120.
151. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 207.
152. Kris Needs, “Blondie,” Mojo, February 2008, http://www.rocksback-
pages.com/Library/Article/blondie.
153. David Sinclair, “Debbie Harry and Chris Stein: Blonde on Blonde,” The
Independent, July 13, 2006, http://www.independentco.uk/news/people
/profiles/debbie-harry-and-chris-stein-blonde-on-blonde-407773.html.
154. John Doran, “Interview: Debbie Harry. Talk of Her New York Salad
Days, and Actual Salad, with the Blondie Legend,” The Stool Pigeon,
June 20, 2011, http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/interview-
debbie-harry.html.
155. Hermes, “Punk Reunion.”
156. Chris Salewicz, “Blondie: Do Greenheads Have More Fun?” Creem,
December 1981, http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/
blondie-do-greenheads-have-more-fun.
157. BBC, Blondie—One Way or Another, 2006 [Film] BBC1.
158. Mike Evans, NYC Rock: Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Big Apple (London :
Sanctuary Publishing, 2003); O’Meara, “The Bush Tetras, ‘Too
Many Creeps’, and New York City.”
159. Savage, England’s Dreaming, 517; Simon Reynolds, Rip It up and Start
Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, 145 (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).
160. Jamie Levinson, My Brother Is James Chance (Taxiland Films, 2004).
161. James Brown, “King Heroin,” James Brown. (Madrid: Polydor, 1981);
James Chance, “King Heroin,” Lost Chance (New York City: ROIR,
1995).
162. Zoe Howe, “Bow to the Devilish Prince: James Chance Interviewed,”
The Quietus, July 7, 2010, http://thequietus.com/articles/04586-james
-chance-interview-twist-your-soul.
163. Howe, “Bow to the Devilish Prince.”
164. Lydia Lunch, Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary (New York: Akashic
Books, 2007), 120–121.
165. Lunch, Paradoxia, 121.
166. Cogan, The Encyclopedia of Punk, 309–310.
167. Holly George-Warren, “Come: The Next Chapter in Thalia Zedek’s
Indie Saga” Option Magazine no. 48 (January/February 1993), http://
zedek.sowrong.org/option.html.
168. Thalia Zedek, Thalia Zedek: A Different Girl. Unauthorized
Biography, n.d., http://zedek.sowrong.org/bio.html.
notes / 205

169. Cop Shoot Cop, “She’s Like a Shot,” Consumer Revolt (London: Big
Cat, 1992).
170. Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, 3–5.
171. Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, 9.
172. Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, 494–495.
173. Albert Hammond, “Interviews—Rock & Folk April 2011: Albert
Hammond, The Strokes,” shesfixingherhair, 2011b, http://www
.shesfixingherhair.co.uk/blog/interviews-rock-folk-april-2011.
174. Albert Hammond, “Albert Hammond Jr. Confesses Drug Problem”
April 29, 2011, Contactmusic, 2011a, http://www.contactmusic.com/
news/albert-hammond-jr-confesses-drug-problem_1216108.
175. Mike Doughty, The Book of Drugs: A Memoir (Boston, MA: Da Capo
Press, 2012a).
176. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 160.
177. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 244.
178. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 154–5.
179. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 159.
180. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 165.
181. Doughty, The Book of Drugs, 204.
182. Mike Doughty, “Doughty Emerges from Soul Coughing
Clean, Upbeat,” VH1, 2012b, http://m.vh1.com/news/article.rbml?id
=1424482&artist=soul_coughing.
183. Ryan Adams, “Ryan Adams,” Spin Magazine, June 21, 2007.
184. Anthony DeCurtis, “Ryan Adams Didn’t Die. Now the Work
Begins,” The New York Times, June 17, 2007, http://topics.nytimes.
com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/ryan_adams/index.html.
185. Ryan Adams, “Hotel Chelsea Nights,” Love Is Hell (Universal City,
CA: Lost Highway, 2004).
186. Lauren St. John, Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of
Steve Earle (New York: Fourth Estate, 2004), 36.
187. St. John, Hardcore Troubadour, 104.
188. Toby Manning, “Steve Earle Gives New Meaning to the Expression
‘Lifetime Achievement’,” Word, May 2004.
189. St. John, Hardcore Troubadour, 241.
190. Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams, “CCKMP,” I Feel Alright
(Burbank, CA: Warner Bros, 1996).
191. Steve Earle and Allison Moorer, “Oxycontin Blues,” Washington
Square Serenade (S.l.: New West Records, 2007).
192. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 251.
193. Nina Antonia, “The First Punk: Johnny Thunders,” Mojo, March,
2005b.
194. Paul Friedlander, Rock & Roll: A Social History (Cambridge, MA:
Westview Press, 2006), 26; Ronald Cohen, “The Delinquents:
Censorship and Youth Culture in Recent US History,” History of
Education Quarterly 37 no. 3 (1997): 266.
206 / notes

195. Ray Pratt, Rhythm and Resistance (New York: Praeger, 1990), 138.
196. Cohen, “The Delinquents,” 254.
197. Napier-Bell, Black Vinyl White Powder, 148; see also David Baker,
“Rock Rebels and Delinquents: The Emergence of the Rock Rebel
in 1950s ‘Youth Problem’ Films,” Continuum: Journal of Media and
Cultural Studies 19, no. 1 (March 2005): 39–54.
198. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 198, 130.
199. Cohen, “The Delinquents,” 39.
200. Cohen, “The Delinquents,” 40–41.
201. Bill Haley, “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley & His Comets
(Universal City, CA: MCA Records, 1999).
202. Cohen, “The Delinquents,” 266.
203. Pratt, Rhythm and Resistance, 135.
204. Herman, Rock’n’Roll Babylon, 35.
205. Craig O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise!! (Edinburgh:
AK Press, 1999), 38.
206. Ken Gelder, ed., The Subcultures Reader (London: Routledge, 2005),
83–89.
207. Colegrave and Sullivan, Punk, 12–13.
208. John Holmstrom and Bridget Hurd, eds., Punk: The Best of Punk
Magazine (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 46.
209. Wells, Punk, 27.
210. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 116.
211. Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, 147.
212. Wells, Punk, 71.
213. Holmstrom and Hurd, Punk, 9.
214. Keith Roe, “Music and Identity among European Youth,” Soundscopes.
info vol. 2, July 1999, http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes
/DATABASES/MIE/Part2_chapter03.shtml.
215. Mark Andersen, and Mark Jenkins, The Dance of Days: The History of
the Washington D.C. Punk Scene (New York: Soft Skull, 2009), 21.
216. Lydon, Rotten, 158.

4 R&B
1. Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American
Music (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 62.
2. Six New York–based R&B musicians/performers have spoken pub-
licly about their heroin abuse; listed alphabetically, they are: Dion
(DiMucci), Dr. John, Chaka Khan, Frankie Lymon, Sam Moore, and
Nicky Siano. Also part of the story of heroin and R&B in New York
are: Larry Levan, Rudy Lewis, and, from Parliament-Funkadelic:
Tiki Fulwood, Eddie Hazel, Billy Nelson, and Tawl Ross.
notes / 207

3. Frankie Lymon, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” Billboard Top Rock ‘n’
Roll Hits, 1956 (Santa Monica, CA: Rhino, 1989).
4. Gary Herman, Rock’n’Roll Babylon (London: Plexus, 2002), 81.
5. Art Peters, “Comeback of a Child Star,” Ebony 22, no. 3 (1967): 43.
6. Peters, “Comeback of a Child Star,” 49.
7. Peters, “Comeback of a Child Star,” 49.
8. Peters, “Comeback of a Child Star,” 49.
9. Reebee Garafalo, Rockin Out: Popular Music in the USA (New York:
Pearson, 1996), 129.
10. Dion DiMucci, The Wanderer (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988), 51.
11. DiMucci, The Wanderer, 51.
12. DiMucci, The Wanderer, 52.
13. DiMucci, The Wanderer, 78.
14. Garafalo, Rockin Out, 129.
15. Dion DiMucci, Dion (Cincinatti, OH: Servant Press, 2011), 49–50.
16. James Brown, Make It Funky: The Big Payback: 1971–1975 (S.I.
Polydor, 1996).
17. R. J. Smith, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (New York:
Gotham Books, 2012), 260.
18. Sam Moore, “Soul Survivor,” People, June 16, 2003, http://www.peo-
ple.com/people/archive/article/0,,20140335,00.html.
19. Sam Moore and Dave Marsh, Sam and Dave: An Oral History (New
York: Avon Books, 1998), 86.
20. Moore and Marsh, Sam and Dave, 83.
21. Sam Moore, “Soul Man Sam’s Heroin Shame,” ContactMusic, January
2004, www.contactmusic.com/news-article/soul-man-sam.s-heroin
-shame.
22. The Drifters, “Up on the Roof,” The Very Best of the Drifters (Los
Angeles, CA: Rhino, 1993).
23. The Drifters, “On Broadway,” The Very Best of the Drifters.
24. The Drifters, “Under the Boardwalk,” The Very Best of the Drifters.
25. Garafalo, Rockin Out, 128.
26. Rudy Lewis, “Rudy Lewis Death, the Drifters: A Famous Man Few
People Knew,” http://forever-27.com/rudy-lewis/rudy-lewis-death-the-
drifters-a-famous-man-few-people-knew/, n.d.
27. Jeremy Simmonds, The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (Chicago:
Chicago Review Press, 2008), 532.
28. Mac [Dr. John] Rebennack, Under a Hoodoo Moon (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 1994), 31.
29. Rebennack, Under a Hoodoo Moon, 38.
30. Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill, The Harder They Fall: Celebrities
Tell Their Real Life Stories of Addiction and Recovery (Center City, MN:
Hazelden Books 2005), 88.
208 / notes

31. Chaka Khan, “Khan’s Regrets over Drug Use,” ContactMusic, October
2009, www.contactmusic.com/news/khans-regrets-over-drug-use
_1118237.
32. Chaka Khan, Chaka! Through the Fire (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press,
2003), 135–136.
33. P-F dissolved in the early 1980s, but the P-F All Stars, a successor
band, still performs.
34. Dimitri Nasrallah, “George Clinton: A Parliafunkadelicment Thang,”
Exclaim, October 2005, http://exclaim.ca/Features/Timeline/george
_clinton-parliafunkadelicment/Page/4.
35. David Mills, Larry Alexander, Thomas Stanley, and Aris Wilson,
George Clinton and P-Funk (New York: Avon Books, 1998), 57.
36. Mills et al., “George Clinton,” 58.
37. Mills et al., “George Clinton,” 51–53.
38. See Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco
(London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 3–56, chap. 1.
39. Peter Braunstein, “Disco,” American Heritage (November 1999): 43;
Garafalo, Rockin Out, 334; Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around, 29.
40. Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around, 210.
41. Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2004), 274.
42. Garafalo, Rockin Out, 340.
43. Bill Brewster, and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
(New York: Grove Press, 1999), 8.
44. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 188.
45. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 280.
46. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 244–246.
47. Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 246.
48. Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around, 269.
49. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 287.
50. Mel Cheren, My Life and the Paradise Garage (New York: 24 Hours for
Life, 2000), 445.
51. Matthew Collin, Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid
House (London: Profile Books, 2009), 13.
52. Karenza Moore and Steven Miles, “Young People, Dance, and the
Subcultural Consumption of Drugs,” Addiction Research and Theory
12, no. 6 (2004): 519.
53. Frank Owen, Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club
Culture (New York: Macmillan, 2003), 42.
54. Cheryl Keys, Rap Music and Street Consciousness (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2002), 40.
55. Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling
Stone History of Rock and Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press/Summit
Books, 1986), 599.
notes / 209

56. I use “rap” rather than “hiphop” because rap refers more specifically
to a type of music, while hiphop speaks to a larger subculture and life-
style that includes not only rap but also break dancing, DJing, graffiti
art, slang, and fashion.
57. Dennis Rome, Black Demons (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2004), 101–
102; see also Keys, Rap Music and Street Consciousness, 17–38.
58. Timothy Brennan, Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial
Jazz (New York: Verso Books, 2008), 117; see also Raquel Rivera, New
York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); Juan Flores, “Recapturing History: The Puerto Rican Roots of
Hip Hop Culture,” in Island Sounds in the Global City, ed. Ray Allen
and Lois Wilcken, 61–73 (New York: New York Folklore Society,
1998).
59. Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hip (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000), 76.
60. Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman, Louder Than Hell: The
Definitive Oral History of Metal (New York: HarperCollins, 2013),
408.
61. Jon Pareles, “Rapper Conquered Music World in ‘80s with Beastie
Boys” (Adam Yauch obituary), New York Times, May 4, 2012, http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/arts/music/adam-yauch-a-founder-of-
the-beastie-boys-dies-at-47.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
62. Redman, “How to Roll a Blunt.” Whut? Thee Album (New York, NY:
Rush Associated Labels, 1992).
63. Busta Rhymes, “Get High Tonight,” When Disaster Strikes (New York:
Elektra, 1997).
64. 50 Cent, “High All the Time, Get Rich or Die Tryin’” (New York:
Aftermath, Interscope, Shady, 2003).
65. Styles P. “Blow Ya Mind,” Super Gangster (Extraordinary Gentleman)
(New York: Koch Records, 2007).
66. ASAP Rocky, Roll One Up, Live.Love.ASAP.
67. Sam Dolnick, “Hope for a Bronx Tower of Hip-Hop Lore,” New
York Times September 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07
/nyregion/07.
68. Wayne Marshall, “Kool Herc,” in Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia
of the Movement, Music, and Culture, ed. Mickey Hess, 22 (Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 2007).
69. Grand Master Flash, “The Message,” Grand Master Flash & the Furious
Five (Englewood, NJ: Sugar Hill Records, 1982).
70. Joseph Saddler, [Grandmaster Flash]. The Adventures of Grandmaster
Flash (New York: Broadway Books, 2008), 157.
71. Saddler, The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash, 169, 197.
72. Flavor Flav, Flavor Flav: The Icon, the Memoir (Las Vegas, NV: Farrah
Gray Publishing, 2011), 62.
210 / notes

73. Jaime Lowe, Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB (New York:
Faber and Faber, 2008), 227.
74. Lowe, Digging for Dirt, 126.
75. Simmonds, The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars, 532.
76. Tony Whitehead, James Peterson, and Linda Kaljee, “The ‘Hustle’:
Socioeconomic Deprivation, Urban Drug Trafficking, and Low-
Income, African-American Male Gender Identity,” Pediatics 93, no. 6
(1994): 1053.
77. Eithne Quinn, Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005), 50.
78. Toure, “Biggie Smalls, Rap’s Man of the Moment” New York Times,
December 18, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/18/arts/pop-
music-biggie-smalls-rap-s-man-of-the-moment.html.
79. Matthew Cooke, How to Make Money Selling Drugs [Film] (Tribeca
Films, 2012).
80. Ethan Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme (New York: Anchor Books,
2005), 140.
81. Jackson, From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens
(London: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 95.
82. Jay-Z, Decoded (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010), 23.
83. Jay-Z, Decoded, 75.
84. Jay-Z, “Jay-Z Speaks on His Drug Dealing Past & Almost Being
Shot With Oprah” The O Magazine, October 2009, http://realtalkny.
uproxx.com/2009/09/topic/topic/featured/jay-z-speaks-on-his-drug-
dealing-past-almost-being-shot-with-oprah/#ixzz2SMzOewUU.
85. Dimitri Bogazianos, 5 Grams (New York: New York University Press,
2012), 54.
86. Melle Mel, “White Lines,” Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five
(Englewood, NJ: Sugar Hill Records, 1982).
87. Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 234.
88. Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute (New York: HarperCollins,
2011), 338.
89. In the early years of the crack era, abusers were often called baseheads,
in reference to freebase, an earlier form of smokable cocaine.
90. Public Enemy, “Night of the Living Baseheads,” It Takes a Nation of
Millions to Hold Us Back (New York: Def Jam Recordings, 1988).
91. De La Soul, “My Brother’s a Basehead,” De La Soul Is Dead (New
York: Tommy Boy, 1991).
92. Notorious B.I.G., “Ten Crack Commandments,” Life after Death
(New York: Bad Boy Records, 1997).
93. 50 Cent, “Bloodhound,” Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (New York: Aftermath,
Interscope, Shady, 2003).
94. Jay-Z, “Dead Presidents,” Reasonable Doubt (Roc-A-Fella Records,
Priority, 1996).
notes / 211

95. Jay-Z, “Rap Game/Crack Game,” In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (Roc-A-Fella


Records, Def Jam Records, 1997).
96. Jay-Z, “Takeover,” The Blueprint (New York: Roc-A-Fella Records,
2001).
97. Ansley Hamid, Richard Curtis, Kate McCoy, Judy McGuire, Alix
Conde, William Bushell, Rose Lindenmayer, Karen Brimberg, Suzana
Maia, Sabura Abdur-Rashid, and Joy Settembrino, “The Heroin
Epidemic in New York City: Current Status and Prognoses,” Journal
of Psychoactive Drugs 29, no. 4 (1997): 375–391; Richard Curtis,
“The Improbable Transformation of Inner-City Neighborhoods:
Crime, Violence, Drugs, and Youth in the 1990’s,” The Journal of
Criminal Law and Criminology 88 no. 4 (1998): 1223–1276; Barry
Spunt, “The Current New York City Heroin Scene,” Substance Use
and Misuse 38, no. 10 (2003): 1533–1543; see also Travis Wendel,
Ric Curtis, Jay Hamilton, Geert Dhondt, and Robert Riggs, “More
Drugs, Less Crime: Why Crime Dropped in New York City and the
US, 1981–2007” (Paper presented at the Crime Decline Conference,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY, New York, September,
2011).
98. Jackson, From Pieces to Weight, 5.
99. Jay-Z, Decoded, 86.
100. Jay-Z, Decoded, 4.
101. Flavor Flav, Flavor Flav, 122.
102. Flavor Flav, Flavor Flav, 69–70.
103. Flavor Flav, Flavor Flav, 74–75.
104. Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme, 140.
105. Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme, 4–5.
106. See Rickey Vincent and George Clinton, Funk (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1996), 164–165; and Mark Anthony Neal, Songs in
the Key of Black Life (New York: Routledge, 2003), 131.
107. The Last Poets, Jones Coming Down. Last Poets (Douglas, 1970).
108. The Last Poets, O.D. This Is Madness (Douglas, 1971).
109. Ben Sisario, “Gil Scott-Heron, Voice of Black Protest Culture,
Dies at 62,” New York Times, May 28, 2011, http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/05/29/arts/music/gil-scott-heron-voice-of-black-culture-
dies-at-62.html?_r=0.
110. Sisario, “Gil Scott-Heron.”
111. Scott-Heron, “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” in Pieces of a Man
(New York: Flying Dutchman, RCA Records, 1971).
112. Scott-Heron, Lady Day, and John Coltrane, Pieces of a Man.
113. Beastie Boys, “The Negotiation Limerick File.” Hello Nasty (S.l.:
Capitol, 2009).
114. Cam’ron, “Losing Weight,” S.D.E. [Sports, Drugs, and Entertainment]
(Epic, 2000).
212 / notes

115. Cam’ron, “Cook’n Up.” Crime Pays (Diplomat Records, Asylum


Records, 2009).
116. Cam’ron, “Child of the Ghetto,” The King of Ohio, 2010.
117. 50 Cent, “A Baltimore Love Thing.” The Massacre. Aftermath
(Interscope Records, Shady, 2004).
118. Jay-Z, “Lost One.” Kingdom Come (Roc-A-Fella Records, Def Jam
Records, 2009).
119. Jay-Z, “Hollywood.” Kingdom Come.
120. Ridley Scott, Steven Zaillian, and Others. American Gangster [Film]
Universal Pictures, 2008.
121. Jay-Z, American Gangster (Roc-A-Fella Records, Def Jam Records.
2007).
122. David Halbfinger and Jeff Leeds, “For Jay-Z, Inspiration Arrives
in a Movie,” New York Times, September 20, 2007, http://
www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/arts/music/20jayz.html?n=Top
%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FS%2FScott
%2C%20Ridley&_r=0.
123. Judy McGuire, The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists
(Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2011), 147.
124. Jay-Z, “Blue Magic,” American Gangster.
125. Jay-Z, “American Gangster,” American Gangster.
126. Ill Bill, “My Uncle Shoots Heroin,” The Hour of Reprisal (Uncle
Howie Records, Fat Beats, 2008).
127. Joell Ortiz, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” HotNewHipHop2010, http://
www.hotnewhiphop.com/search/songs/joell+ortiz/
128. ASAP Rocky, “Purple Swag” [Single].
129. 50 Cent, “Happy New Year” [Mixtape], 2011.
130. Whitehead, Peterson, and Kaljee, “The ‘Hustle’,” 1051.
131. Loic Wacquant, “Inside the Zone: The Social Art of the Hustler in
the Black American Ghetto,” Theory, Culture, and Society 15, no. 2
(1998): 11.
132. See Darius James, That’s Blaxploitation! (New York: St Martin’s
Griffin, 2005), 99.
133. Rome, Black Demons, 90.
134. Curtis Mayfield, Superfly (Los Angeles: Rhino, 1999, 1972).
135. Eric Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 105.
136. Schneider, Smack, 104.
137. Keys, Rap Music and Street Consciousness, 5–6.
138. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
139. Charis Kubrin, “Gangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the
Code of the Street in Rap Music,” Social Problems 52, no. 3 (2005):
360–378.
notes / 213

140. Azie Faison and Agyei Tyehimba, Game Over: The Rise and
Transformation of a Harlem Hustler (New York: Atria Publishing,
2007), 220.
141. Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme.
142. Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme, xx.
143. Brown, Queens Reigns Supreme, xxv.
144. Mobb Deep. Shook Ones Part 2, The Infamous (New York: RCA,
1995).
145. Albert [Prodigy] Johnson, My Infamous Life (New York: Touchstone,
2011), 170.
146. Method Man, “I’m Dope Nigga,” Blackout! 2 (New York: Def Jam,
2009).
147. Old Dirty Bastard, “Raw Hide,” Return to the 36 Chambers: The
Dirty Version (New York: Elektra, 1995).

5 Folk Music
1. Jim Farber, “That’s Not At All Folk,” New York Daily News, March 17,
2013, 5.
2. Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal (eds.). Pete Seeger in His Own
Words (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), 67.
3. Anne Margaret Daniel, The Rhymers’ Club, Part Two: Bob Dylan and
Edgar Allan Poe 07/02/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne
-margaret-daniel/the-rhymers-club-part-two_b_3519344.html.
4. Dick Weissman, Which Side Are You On (London: Continuum,
2006), 10.
5. Will Kaufman, Woody Guthrie: American Radical (Champaign:
University of llinois Press, 2011).
6. Nora Guthrie, My Name Is New York (Brooklyn, NY: Powerhouse
Books, 2012).
7. Weavers, “Goodnight Irene,” The Weavers Greatest Hits (Santa
Monica, CA: Vanguard, 1986).
8. Sam Roberts, “America’s Left Bank” New York Times, April 5, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/nyregion/how-greenwich-vil-
lage-got-its-funk.html?_r=0; see John Strausbaugh, The Village (New
York: HarperCollins, 2013).
9. David King Dunaway, and Molly Beer, Singing Out: An Oral History
of America’s Folk Music Revivals (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010), 2.
10. Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 287–289.
11. Weissman, Which Side Are You On, 94.
214 / notes

12. See Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (New York: Doubleday,
2010), 61–62.
13. See Suze Rotolo, A Freeweelin’ Time (New York: Broadway Books,
2009), 145.
14. Dave Van Ronk, and Elijah Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A
Memoir (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005), 209.
15. These nine musicians are: James Taylor, John Phillips, Levon Helm, Rick
Danko, Tim Hardin, Bob Gibson, David Blue, and Steve Weber; Bob
Dylan is cautiously included in this group (see the discussion to follow).
Fred Neil, Karen Dalton, and Cass Elliot are also part of the story.
16. Dave Thompson, Hearts of Darkness (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat
Books, 2012), 197.
17. Timothy White, James Taylor (London: Omnibus Press, 2005), 119.
18. David Browne, Fire and Rain (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2011),
55.
19. Joe Smith, and Mitchell Fink, Off the Record: An Oral History of
Popular Music (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 309.
20. Smith and Fink, Off the Record, 309.
21. White, James Taylor, 140.
22. Thompson, Hearts of Darkness, 112.
23. Browne, Fire and Rain, 250–251.
24. James Taylor and Stephen C. Foster, “Fire and Rain,” Sweet Baby James
(Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Records, 1987).
25. James Taylor, Valerie Carter, Arnold McCuller, Kate Markowitz, David
Lasley, Bob Mann, Clifford Carter et al., “Another Day,” Hourglass
(New York: Sony, 1997).
26. Timothy White, “James Taylor: Immense Singer, Considerable
Cranium,” Mojo September 1997, http://www.james-taylor.com/
articles/mojo-september-1997.
27. James Taylor, “Rainy Day Man” James Taylor (S.l.: Apple, 2010).
28. Ian Halperin, Fire and Rain: The James Taylor Story (New York, NY:
Citadel Press Books, 2003), 49.
29. Robbie Woliver, Hoot: A 25 Year History of the Greenwich Village Music
Scene (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 60.
30. Marc Myers, “Jazz Wax,” Jazz’s First Record Turns 95, February 21,
2012, www.JazzWax.com.
31. Mary Vespa, “Mackenzie Phillips and Her Rock Legend Dad Toil to
Escape the Rack of Drugs,” People, March 2, 1981, http://www.people.
com people/archive/article/0,,20078715,00.html.
32. Chris Campion, “John Phillips: A Lifetime of Debauched and Reckless
Behaviour,” The Telegraph, September 25, 2009, http://www.telegraph
.co.uk/culture/music/6228133/John-Phillips-a-lifetime-of-debauched
-and-reckless-behaviour.html.
notes / 215

33. Chris Campion, “King of the Wild Frontier,” The Guardian, March 14,
2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/15/john-phillips
-mamas-and-papas.
34. Eddi Fiegel, Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot
(Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2005), 235.
35. Fiegel, Dream a Little Dream of Me, 236.
36. Fiegel, Dream a Little Dream of Me, 241.
37. Fiegel, Dream a Little Dream of Me, 271.
38. Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute (New York: Harper
Collins, 2011), 58.
39. Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume One (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2004), 103.
40. Bob Dylan, Tarantula (New York: Schribner, 1966), 48.
41. Bob Dylan, Michael Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Paul Griffin, Bobby
Gregg, Harvey Brooks, Charlie McCoy, Frank Owens, and Russ
Savakus, “From a Buick 6,” Highway 61 Revisited (New York:
Columbia, 2004).
42. Howard Sounces, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (New
York: Grove Press, 2011), 264.
43. Andy Greene, “Questions about Bob Dylan’s Claim That He Was Once
a Heroin Addict,” Rolling Stone, May 23, 2011, http://www.rollingstone
.com/music/news/bob-dylan-admits-heroin-addiction-in-newly-released
-1966-interview.
44. Robert Shelton, No Direction Home (New York: Ballantine Press,
1986; 2010), 5.
45. Greene, “Questions about Bob Dylan’s Claim.”
46. Greene, “Questions about Bob Dylan’s Claim.”
47. Greene, “Questions about Bob Dylan’s Claim.”
48. Barney Hoskyns, Across the Great Divide (Milwaukee, WI: Hal
Leonard, 2006), 127.
49. Levon Helm and Stephen Davis, This Wheel’s on Fire (Chicago, IL: A
Cappella Press, 1993), 196.
50. Helm and Davis, This Wheel’s on Fire, 209.
51. Helm and Davis, This Wheel’s on Fire, 209.
52. Adam Sweeting, “Rick Danko [obituary],” The Guardian, December 16,
1999, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/1999/dec/17/guardianobituaries.
Adamsweeting.
53. Robert Doerschuk, “Rick Danko—The Last Interview,” December 7,
1999, http://theband.hiof.no/articles/rd_120799.html.
54. Rick Danko, “Rick Danko Says Heroin Arrest a Mistake,” Reading (PA)
Eagle, July 3, 1997a, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat
=19970703&id=jIc1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=dqYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2639,8
75828.
216 / notes

55. Rick Danko, “Rocker Rick Danko Convicted of Heroin Smuggling,”


San Jose Mercury News July 25, 1997b, http://www.mapinc.org/
drugnews/v97.n260.a01.html.
56. Tim Hardin, “If I Were a Carpenter,” Reason to Believe (the Best Of)
(New York: Polydor, 1987).
57. Tim Hardin, “Reason to Believe” Reason to Believe (the Best Of) (New
York, NY: Polydor, 1987).
58. Ann Louise Bardach, “The Heavy Heart of Tim Hardin,” 1980, http://
www.songsinger.info/th/articles.html.
59. Mark Brend, American Troubadours (San Francisco, CA: Backbeat
Books, 2001), 176.
60. Bardach, The Heavy Heart of Tim Hardin.”
61. Tim Hardin, “Red Balloon,” Reason to Believe (the Best of) (New York:
Polydor, 1987).
62. Mick Taylor, “The Complete Red Balloon Story,” The Cornershop,
February 19, 2008, http://musiccornershop.blogspot.com/2008/02
/complete-red-balloon-story-by-mick.html.
63. Taylor, The Complete Red Balloon Story.”
64. Tim Hardin, n.d. “Tim Hardin Biography,” http://www.zipcon.net/-
highroad/hardinbi.htm.
65. Paul Colby, The Bitter End (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002),
93.
66. Van Ronk and Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, 165.
67. Carole Bender, and Bob Gibson, Bob Gibson: I Come for to Sing
(Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2001), 91.
68. Bender and Gibson, Bob Gibson, 94.
69. Bender and Gibson, Bob Gibson, 95.
70. David Rensin, “David Blue: A Natural Progression,” Music World,
June 1973, http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/david-
blue-a-natural-progression.
71. Rensin, David Blue.”
72. David Blue, “House of Changing Faces,” Stories (New York: Asylum
Records, 1971).
73. David Blue, “Come on John,” Stories (New York: Asylum Records,
1971).
74. Fred Neil, “Candy Man,” Bleecker & Macdougal (Itasca, IL: Collectors’
Choice Music, 2002).
75. Fred Neil, “Everybody’s Talkin,” Many Sides of Fred Neil (Hollywood,
CA: EMI, 1998).
76. Woliver, Hoot,121.
77. Edmonds, “I Don’t Hear a Word They’re Saying,” Mojo February
2000, 54.
78. Edmonds, “I Don’t Hear a Word They’re Saying,” 56.
notes / 217

79. Edmonds, “I Don’t Hear a Word They’re Saying,” 54.


80. Richie Unterberger, Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers (San
Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman Books, 2000), 262.
81. Edmonds, “I Don’t Hear a Word They’re Saying,” 58.
82. Laura Barton, “The Best Singer You’ve Never Heard of,” The
Guardian, March 22, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007
/mar/23/folk.
83. Barton, “The Best Singer You’ve Never Heard of.”
84. Barton, “The Best Singer You’ve Never Heard of.
85. Barton, “The Best Singer You’ve Never Heard of.”
86. Jim Caligiuri, “In Her Own Time—The Return of Karen Dalton,”
The Austin Chronicle, February 8, 2008, http://www.austinchronicle
.com/music/2008–02–08/589038.
87. Barton, “The Best Singer You’ve Never Heard of.”
88. Richard Fariña, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (New
York: Random House,1966).
89. Unterberger, Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers, 240.
90. Richard Fariña, and Mimi Fariña, “Mainstream Prosperity Blues,”
The Best of Mimi & Richard Fariña (Santa Monica, CA: Vanguard,
1988).
91. Woliver, Hoot,105.
92. Buffy Sainte-Marie, “Co’dine,” The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie (Santa
Monica, CA: Vanguard, 1986).
93. Freddie Keppard, Erskine Tate, and Doc Cook, “Willie the
Weeper,” Freddie Keppard, 1923–1926: The Complete Set (Arnhem,
Netherlands: Retrieval, 2005).
94. Peggy Seeger, and Ewan MacColl, “Take Me in Your Arms (Miss
Heroin)” Kilroy Was Here (Folkways, 1980).
95. Personal communication from Peggy Seeger to the author during a
performance and lecture at John Jay College, New York, April 12,
2010.
96. The Lower East Side is in the southeastern part of Lower Manhattan;
the East Village is essentially the northern section of the Lower East
Side.
97. Ed Sanders, Fug You (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2011), 134.
98. Jason Gross, “Ed Sanders,” Perfect Sound Forever, June 1997, http://
www.furious.com/perfect/sanders.html.
99. Ed Sanders, Tales of Beatnik Glory (New York: Thunder’s Mouth
Press, 2004), 5.
100. Sanders, Fug You, 82.
101. Sam Wainwright Douglas and Paul Lovelace, The Holy Modal
Rounders—Bound to Lose (Carnivalesque Films, 2006).
102. Douglas and Lovelace, The Holy Modal Rounders.
218 / notes

103. Steve Weber, Luke Faust, Peter Stampfel, and Robin Remailly, “Sally
in the Alley,” Alleged in Their Own Time (Somerville, MA: Rounder
Records, 1975).
104. Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan (New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2010),
353–354.
105. Peter Stampfel, “Lonely Junkie,” Peter Stampfel & the Bottle Caps
(Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records Corp, 1900).
106. Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 63.
107. Ronald Cohen, Rainbow Quest (Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2002), 108.
108. Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 51.
109. Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 54.
110. Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 10–11.
111. Eric Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 143; Carlo McCormick,
“Beat Pharmacopoeia,” in The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, ed.
Holly George-Warren, 367–370 (New York: Hyperion, 1999).
112. Schneider, Smack, 143.
113. Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats, and Others (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press,1985), 144–182.
114. Bill Morgan, I Celebrate Myself (New York: Viking Press, 2006), 85.
115. Morgan, I Celebrate Myself, 349.
116. Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems, 1947–1980 (New York: Harper &
Row, 1984).
117. Schneider, Smack, 143; see also Nicolas Rasmussen, On Speed: The
Many Lives of Amphetamine (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 94–99.
118. Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 121.
119. Daniel Odier, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs (New
York: Penguin Books, 1989), 144.
120. William S Burroughs, Junky (New York: Penguin Books, 2003),
xxxviii.
121. Burroughs, Junky.
122. William S Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 2001).
123. Barry Miles, The Beat Hotel (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 92.
124. Odier, The Job, 133.
125. Odier, The Job, 159.
126. Gregory Corso, An Accidental Autobiography (New York: New
Directions, 2003), 372.
127. Corso, An Accidental Autobiography, 377.
128. Dick Weissman, Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat
Books, 2010), 184.
129. Kaufman, Woody Guthriel, 122.
notes / 219

130. William Roy, Red White and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and
Race in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2010), 79.
131. Dunaway and Beer, Singing Out, 76–107; see also Weissman, Talkin’
‘Bout a Revolution, 202–205.
132. Van Ronk and Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, 198.
133. Thompson, Hearts of Darkness, 115.
134. Recall from chapter two that even in jazz, heroin did not become a
problem until after the war.
135. David King Dunaway, How Can I Keep from Singing (New York:
Villard Books, 2008), 331.
136. Rosenthal and Rosenthal, Pete Seeger in His Own Words, 310.
137. Jeffrey Lewis, “Rip-Off Artist,” New York Times Opinionator [blog],
August 9, 2008, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/
rip-off-artist/?_r=0.
138. Jeffrey Lewis, “Everyone’s Honest,” Indie-rock Fortune Cookie (Cooper
Station, NY, 2001).
139. Jeffrey Lewis and Jack Lewis, “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went
Insane,” The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane: And Other Favorites
(London: Rough Trade, 2001).
140. Jeffrey Lewis, Jack Lewis, and Anders Griffen, “No LSD Tonight,”
It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines through (New York:
Rough Trade Records, 2003).
141. Amos Barshad, “Adam Green Explains His Macaulay Culkin–
Starring, Ketamine-Influenced iPhone Movie the Wrong Ferrari,”
Vulture, April 7, 2011, http://www.vulture.com/2011/04/adam_
green_explains_his_macaul.html.
142. Beck Hansen, “Beck Issues a Sinister Drugs Warning,” Contactmusic
May 6, 2005, http://www.contactmusic.com/news-article/beck-
issues-asinister-drugs-warning.
143. See Richard Meyer, “The Outlaw: A Distinctive American Folk,”
Journal of the Folklore Institute 17 (May–December, 1980): 94–124.
144. Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969),
20.
145. Bascom L. Lunsford, “Poor Jesse James,” Minstrel of the Appalachians
(New York: Riverside, 1959).
146. Woody Guthrie, Jeffrey Place, Guy W. Logsdon, Moses Asch,
Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, and Cool White, “Billy the Kid,” Woody
Guthrie: The Asch Recordings (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Folkways, 1999).
147. Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd,” Dust Bowl Ballads (New York:
Buddha Records, 2000).
220 / notes

148. David Blue, “Outlaw Man,” Nice Baby and the Angel (New York:
Asylum Records, 1973).
149. Bob Dylan, “Outlaw Blues,” Bringing It All Back Home (New York:
Columbia, 1980).
150. Bob Dylan and Gordon Carroll, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: Original
Soundtrack Recording (New York: Columbia, 1989).
151. Bob Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” Blonde on Blonde (New York:
Columbia, 2004).
152. Peter Vernezze and Carl Porter, Bob Dylan and Philosophy: It’s All
Right, Ma, I’m Only Thinking (New York: Carus Publishing, 2005),
79.
153. Bob Dylan, “Rainy Day Women #12 and #35,” Songfacts, http://
www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2934.
154. Mikal Gilmore, “Bob Dylan Unleashed: A Wild Ride on His New LP
and Striking Back at Critics,” Rolling Stone, September 27, 2012, http://
www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-unleashed-a-wild
-ride-on-his-new-lp-and-striking-back-at-critics-20120927.
155. Bert Jansch, “Needle of Death,” Bert Jansch (London: Sanctuary
Records, 2001).
156. Bert Jansch, “Needle of Death by Bert Jansch,” Songfacts, http://
www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=18126.

6 Latin and Caribbean Music


1. New York City Department of City Planning, “Population Facts,”
2013, http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/pop_facts.shtml.
2. New York City Open Data, “Hispanic Population by Selected
Subgroup by Borough,” 2013, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/ City-
Government/Hispanic-Population-By-Selected-Subgroups-By-
Borou/w9du-8cu6.
3. Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2011),
117.
4. Kirk Semple, “In New York, Mexicans Lag in Education,” The
New York Times, November 24, 2011, 2011b, http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/11/25/nyregion/mexicans-in-new-york-city-lag-education.
html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Francisco Rivera-Batiz, “Mexicans
Are Now New York City’s Fastest Growing Ethnic Group,” Teachers
College Media Center, September 10, 2003, http://www.tc.columbia.
edu/news.htm?articleID=4495; Robert Courtney Smith, Mexican
New York (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 19–20.
5. New York City News Service, “Caribbeans Say ‘Count Us In,’” 2009,
http://nycitynewsservice.com/tag/caribbean/.
6. David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America
before 1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); David
notes / 221

Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York:


Oxford University Press, 1987); Eric Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the
American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
7. Elena Padilla, Up from Puerto Rico (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970), 212–248.
8. Edward Preble, “Social and Cultural Factors Related to Narcotic Use
among Puerto Ricans in New York City,” Substance Use & Misuse 1,
no. 1 (1966): 40.
9. John Langrod, Lois Alksne, Joyce Lowinson, and Pedro Ruiz,
“Rehabilitation of the Puerto Rican Addict: A Cultural Perspective,”
Substance Use & Misuse 16, no. 5 (1981): 841.
10. Joan Mencher, “Growing Up in Eastville, a Barrio of New York,”
in The Anthropology of Lower Income Urban Enclaves: The Case of
East Harlem, ed. Judith Freidenberg, 56–57 (New York: New York
Academy of Sciences, 1995).
11. Schneider, Smack, x.
12. Schneider, Smack, 159–181.
13. Joseph Fitzpatrick, Puerto Rican Americans (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1987), 171–173.
14. Miguel Melendez, We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with
the Young Lords (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 176–177.
15. Melendez, We Took the Streets, 168.
16. David Brotherton and Luis Barrios, The Almighty Latin King and
Queen Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 236.
17. Brotherton and Barrios, The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, 235.
18. Brotherton and Barrios, The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation,
236–237.
19. Philippe Bourgois, “The Political Economy of Resistance and Self
Destruction in the Crack Economy,” in The Anthropology of Lower
Income Urban Enclaves: The Case of East Harlem, ed. Judith Freidenberg,
111 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1995).
20. Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 3.
21. Ansley Hamid, Richard Curtis, Kate McCoy, Judy McGuire, Alix
Conde, William Bushell, Rose Lindenmayer, Karen Brimberg, Suzana
Maia, Sabura Abdur-Rashid, and Joy Settembrino, “The Heroin
Epidemic in New York City: Current Status and Prognoses,” Journal
of Psychoactive Drugs 29, no. 4 (1997): 375–391; Barry Spunt, “The
Current New York City Heroin Scene,” Substance Use and Misuse 38,
no. 10 (2003): 1533–1543.
22. Hamid et al., “The Heroin Epidemic in New York City,”380–381.
23. Michele Shedlin and Sherry Deren, “Cultural Factors Influencing
HIV Risk Behavior among Dominicans in New York City,” Journal of
Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 1, no. 1 (2001): 71–95.
222 / notes

24. Shedlin and Deren, “Cultural Factors Influencing HIV Risk Behavior
among Dominicans in New York City,” 86–89.
25. NBC News, “Illegal Drug Use Rising among Hispanic Teens,”
September 24, 2007, www.nbcnews.com/id/20961698/ns/health-
addictions/t/illegal-drug-use-rising-among-hispanic-teens.
26. Join Together, “Prescription Drug Abuse Rising among Hispanic
Youth,” July 27, 2006, http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/drugs/
prescription-drug-abus-r.
27. Axel Klein, Marcus Day, and Anthony Harriot, eds., Caribbean Drugs
(Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2004), 203.
28. Paula Holzman Kleinman and Irving Faber Lukoff, “Ethnic Differences
in Factors Related to Drug Use,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior
19, no. 2 (1978): 190–199.
29. Hamid et al., “The Heroin Epidemic in New York City,” 382.
30. Glenda Anderson, “Troubling New Signs of Heroin,” The Gleaner
(Jamaica), July 20, 2003, http://jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/
20030720/lead/lead2.html.
31. Klein, Day, and Harriot, Caribbean Drugs, 154.
32. Alexander Hotz and Kristofer Rios, “Puerto Rico’s Ignored Public
Health Crisis: ‘I’ve Lost a Lot of Friends to Drugs,’” The Guardian,
July 15, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/15/puerto
-rick-health-crisis-heroin-drugs.
33. Daniel Kanstroom, “Deportation Nation” [Op Ed], The New York
Times, August 30, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/opin-
ion/deportation-nation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
34. David Brotherton and Luis Barrios, Banished to the Homeland
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 229; see also David
Brotherton and Yolanda Martin, “The War on Drugs and the
Dominican Deportee,” Journal of Crime and Justice 32, no. 2 (2009):
21–48; Yolanda Martin, Wasting Away: Substance Abuse and Health
Risk Outcomes Among Dominican Deportees (PhD diss., New York:
CUNY Graduate Center, 2012).
35. Travis Wendel and Richard Curtis, “The Heraldry of Heroin: ‘Dope
Stamps’ and the Dynamics of Drug Markets in New York City,”
Journal of Drug Issues, 30, no. 2 (2000): 225–260.
36. Hamid et al., “The Heroin Epidemic in New York City,” 383.
37. National Drug Intelligence Center, “New York Drug Threat
Assessment—Heroin” November 2002, http://www.justice.gov/
archive/ndic/pubs2/2580/heroin.htm.
38. US No Drugs, 2009. “Drug Trends—New York,” http://www.usnod-
rugs.com/drugtrends.htm?state=New%20York.
39. Laura Villagran, “As Mexico’s Traffickers Ship Drugs North They
Leave Addicts in Their Wake,” The Christian Science Monitor, January
notes / 223

25, 2013, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0125/


As-Mexico-s-traffickers- ship-drugs-north-they-leave-addicts-
in-their-wake; Mary Cuddehe, “Myths and Realities about Drug
Addiction in Mexico,” The Lancet, January 1, 2011, http://www.thel-
ancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140–6736(10)62322.
40. Ansley Hamid, “Ganja to Crack: Caribbean Participation in the
Underground Economy in Brooklyn, 1976–1986. Part 1. Establishment
of the Marijuana Economy,” Substance Use and Misuse 26, no. 6 (1991):
621–623.
41. Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1992), 79.
42. Kasinitz, Caribbean New York, 79.
43. Kasinitz, Caribbean New York, 79.
44. Laurie Gunst, Born Fi’ Dead (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 185; see
also James C. McKinley, “U.S. Agents Seize 17 in Raids to Dismantle
Jamaican Drug Ring,” The New York Times, December 8, 1990, http://
www.nytimes.com/1990/12/08 nyregion/us-agents-seize-17-in-raids-
to-dismantle-jamaican-drug-ring.html.
45. Gunst, Born Fi’ Dead, 10.
46. Liz Robbins, “Vivian Blake, 54, Founder of Jamaica Drug Gang,
Dies,” The New York Times, March 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.
com/ 2010/03/26/world/americas/26blake.html?_r=0.
47. Ed Pilkington, “Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke Handed 23-year US Jail
Term for Drug Trafficking,” The Guardian, June 8, 2012, http://www.
theguardian.com world/2012/jun/08/christopher-dudus- coke-jail-
term.
48. Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (New York: Faber and
Faber, 2011), 26.
49. Susan August Brown, n.d. “Argentine Tango: A Brief History,” http://
www.tejastango.com/tango_history.htmlno.
50. Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hip (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000), 83.
51. Christopher Washburne, Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in
New York City (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008),
165–167.
52. See Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba
to Reggae (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 90–95.
53. Peter Manuel, “Representations of New York City in Latin Music,”
in Island Sounds in the Global City, ed. Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken,
23–43 (New York: New York Folklore Society, 1998), 35.
54. Zayda Rivera, “Sergio George Produces ‘Salsa Giants’ Bringing
Together the Genre’s Legends,” New York Daily News [Viva Supple-
ment], 2013, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts
224 / notes

/sergio-george-produces-salsa-giants-bringing-genre-legends-article
-1.1420427.
55. Kirk Semple, “To Hear Mexican Ballads, Take the D Train,” The
New York Times, February 11, 2011, 2011a, http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/02/12/nyregion/12bands.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
56. Elijah Wald, Narcocorrido (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 28.
57. Raquel Z. Rivera, “Policing Morality, Mano Duro Stylee: The Case
of Underground Rap and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-1990s,”
in Reggaeton, ed. Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah
Pacini-Hernandez, 111–134 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2009), 111.
58. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, chap, 4, 130–150.
59. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 131.
60. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 144.
61. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 130–131.
62. Washburne, Sounding Salsa, 130–150.
63. Bill DeMain, “Alan Freed and the Radio Payola Scandal,” Performing
Songwriter, n.d. http://performingsongwriter.com/alan-freed-payola-
scandal/.
64. Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the
Music Business (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 14.
65. Dannen, Hit Men, 92–3 and 282.
66. Dannen, Hit Men, 53.
67. Jordan Levin, “Payola Called Fixture in Latin Music,” Puerto Rican Herald,
December 8, 2002, http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2002
/vol6n51/PayolaFixture-en.html; Jasmine Garsd, “Oh, Yes He Did: Latin
Grammys Speech Demands End to Payola,” NPR News November 11,
2011, http://m.npr.org/news/NPR+Music+Mobile/142240749.
68. Nate Anderson, “Payola! (or, How to Undermine Your Own Argument
to Congress),” Ars Technica, July 27, 2010, http://arstechnica.com/tech
-policy/2010/07/payola-or-how-to-undermine-your-own-argument-to
-congress/.
69. Garsd, “Oh, Yes He Did.”
70. Meg James, “Univision Settles U.S. Radio Payola Case,” Los Angeles
Times, July 27, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/27/business/
la-fi-ct-univision-20100727.
71. The five self-acknowledged heroin users were Hector Lavoe, Cheo
Feliciano, Ismael Rivera, Domingo Quinones, and Sabu Martinez.
Frankie Ruiz is also part of the story although he apparently never
talked on the record about his use.
72. Ernesto Lechner, “Reevaluating the Legacy of a Salsa Pioneer,” Los
Angeles Times, October 3, 1999, http://articles.latimes.com/1999oct/03/
entertainment/ca-18006.
notes / 225

73. Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, 35.


74. Max Salazar, Mambo Kingdom (New York: Schirmer Trade Books,
2002), 275.
75. Marc Shapiro, Passion and Pain: The Life of Hector Lavoe (New York:
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007), 54.
76. Shapiro, Passion and Pain, 54.
77. Shapiro, Passion and Pain, 65.
78. Carlos Rodriquez Martorell, “Lavoe’s Last Word,” New York Daily
News, July 11, 2007, http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/lavoe-word-
article.
79. Izzy Sanabria, “The New Hector Lavoe on Time and Even Makes
Surprise Appearances,” Latin New York 3, no. 7 (1980): 30.
80. Salazar, Mambo Kingdom, 275.
81. Frances Aparicio and Wilson Valentín-Escobar, “Memorializing La
Lupe and Lavoe: Singing Vulgarity, Transnationalism, and Gender,”
Centro Journal 14, no. 2 (2004): 78–101, http://www.redalyc.org
/articulo.oa?id=37716207.
82. Shapiro, Passion and Pain, 66.
83. Shapiro, Passion and Pain, 66.
84. Shapiro, Passion and Pain, 105.
85. Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, 35.
86. Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, 278.
87. David Lugo, “Hector Lavoe: The Last Interview (Part 2),” Youtube.
com, 1993, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFvm3yoGy6g.
88. George Rivera, “A Conversation with Cheo Feliciano,” JazzConClave,
2001a, http://www.jazzconclave.com/i-room/cheo.html.
89. Salazar, Mambo Kingdom, 245.
90. Salazar, Mambo Kingdom, 245.
91. Mary Kent, Salsa Talks: A Musical Heritage Uncovered (Venice, CA:
Digital Domain, 2005), 99–100.
92. Salazar, Mambo Kingdom, 245.
93. Abel Delgado, “Interview: Cheo Feliciano,” Descarga.com, February
23, 2000, http://www.descarga.com/cgibin/db/archives/Interview18
?eUWCTk73;656.
94. Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, 25.
95. Delgado, “Interview: Cheo Feliciano.”
96. This past summer (2013) an “Ismael Rivera tribute” was held in the
Bronx as part of New York City’s SummerStage arts festival.
97. Soledad, “Interview with Ismael Rivera,” Latin New York 47 (April,
1977): 30.
98. Aurora Flores, “Ecua Jei! Ismael Rivera, El Sonero Mayor (A Personal
Recollection),” Centro Journal 16, no. 2 (2004): 74, http://www.zon-
delbarrio.com/Maelo.pdf.
226 / notes

99. See Jim O’Donnell, “The Church of the Black Christ,” Around the
World in Eighty Years, February 18, 2013, http://www.aroundtheworld
ineightyyears.com/the-black-christ.
100. Kent, Salsa Talks, 51.
101. Kent, Salsa Talks, 51.
102. Delgado, “Interview: Cheo Feliciano.”
103. Elnuevodia.com, “Domingo Quinones—Canta Sus Verdades [Sing
Your Truths],” Elnuevodia.com August 13, 2012, http://www.elnuevodia
.com/domingoquinonescantasusverdades1321249.html.
104. APC, “Interview with Domingo Quinones,” APC [Spanish television]
March 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOxDqy5UzFo.
105. APC, “Interview with Domingo Quinones.”
106. EFE, “Domingo Quiñones se Recupera de su Dependencia de Las
Drogas en Cuba,” EFE, May 5, 2004, http://bogota.tropicanafm.
com/noticia/domingo-quinones-se- recupera-de-su-dependencia-de-
las-drogas-en-cuba/20040505/nota/154508.aspx.
107. George Rivera, “A Conversation with Domingo Quiñones,”
JazzConClave, 2001b, http://www.jazzconclave.com/i-room/domingo
.html.
108. Karl La Corbiniere, “The TV Idol Who Became a Slave to Heroin—
and Beat It,” Fib-Aktuellt June 2, 1976, http://www.hipwax.com/
sabu/FA061976.html.
109. La Corbiniere, “The TV Idol Who Became a Slave to Heroin—and
Beat It.”
110. Ned Sublette, Cuba and Its Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press,
2004), 541
111. Lechner, “Reevaluating the Legacy of a Salsa Pioneer.”
112. Lechner, “Reevaluating the Legacy of a Salsa Pioneer.”
113. Philip Sweeney, “Frankie Ruiz [obituary],” The Independent, August
19, 1998, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obitu-
ary-frankie-ruiz-1172610.html.
114. Eileen Torres, “A Tribute to the Late Frankie Ruiz,” Salsa Centro,
2002, http://www.salsacentro.com/index.htm.
115. John Child, “Frankie Ruiz: Another Salsa Casualty” (Obituary),
Descarga.com, August 30, 1998, http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/
db/archives/Profile30.
116. H. Nelson Goodson, “Vargas, Known as Jimmy Bauer Sentenced
to Six Years in Dominican Prison for Heroin Mule Smuggling
Conviction,” Hispanicnewsnetwork, February 29, 2012, http://his-
panicnewsnetwork.wordpress.com/2012/03/01.
117. Associated Press, “Latin American Idol Winner Arrested after
Smuggling Heroin from Dominican Republic on Flight to New York
Inside Her Platform Heels,” Daily Mail (UK ), February 21, 2013,
notes / 227

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282648/Latin-American
-Idol-winner-Martha-Heredia-arrested-smuggling-heroin-Dominican
-Republic-flight-NY-platform-heels.html.
118. Rivera, “A Conversation with Cheo Feliciano.”
119. Alex Roland, “Interview with Cheo Feliciano,” Youtube.com 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XVH_tFuS88.
120. Fitzpatrick, Puerto Rican Americans, 3–4.
121. Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 90.
122. Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 92.
123. Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets (New York: Vintage Books,
1967), see especially chapters 4, 9, 11, and 13.
124. Gilbert Quintero and Antonio Estrada, “Cultural Models of
Masculinity and Drug Use: Machismo, Heroin, and Street Survival
on the US-Mexico Border,” Contemporary Drug Problems 25, no. 1
(1998): 147–168.
125. Flores, “Ecua Jei! Ismael Rivera, El Sonero Mayor (A Personal
Recollection),” 71.
126. León Ichaso, Julio Caro, Jennifer Lopez, Simon Fields, David
Maldonado, David Darmstaedter, Todd A. Bello, Marc Anthony,
Christopher Becerra, John Ortiz, Vincent Laresca, Manny Pérez, and
Andres Levin, El Cantante, New Line Home Entertainment, 2007.
127. George De Stefano, “The Tragedy of Héctor Lavoe,” Descarga.com
November 1, 1993, http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/archives/
Profile7?eUWCTk73;798.
128. De Stefano, “The Tragedy of Héctor Lavoe.”
129. De Stefano, “The Tragedy of Héctor Lavoe.”
130. Willie Colon, “Willie Colon Speaks Out on El Cantante,” Salsadiaries,
Weblog, entry posted in August 2007, http://salsadiaries.blogspot.
com/2007/08/willie-colon-speak-out-on-el-cantante.html.

7 Conclusion
1. Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward, and Jock Young, Cultural Criminology:
An Invitation (London: Sage Publications, 2008).
2. See, for example, Lana Harrison and Arthur Hughes (eds.), “The
Validity of Self-Reported Drug Use: Improving the Accuracy of
Survey Estimates,” NIDA Research Monograph 167. NIH Pub. No.
97–4141 (Washington, DC: Supt. of Docs, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.,
1997); Shane Darke, “Self-Report among Injecting Drug Users: A
Review,” Drug and Alcohol Dependence 51, no. 3 (1998): 253–263.
3. See, for example, Nick Enoch, “Drug Dealers Who Lived Millionaire
Lifestyle Drinking Dom Perignon and Driving Lamborghinis in
228 / notes

£5.5m Heroin Ring Are Jailed,” Daily Mail, June 14, 2013, http://
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341805.
4. Laura Barton, “London’s Unique and Glorious Music Scene Is Unlike
Any Other City’s,” The Guardian, July 26, 2012, http://www.the-
guardian.com/musicmusicblog/2012/jul/26/londons-unique-glorious-
music-scene.
5. See Ralph Gleason, “An Obituary [Lenny Bruce],” in The Unpublished
Lenny Bruce, ed. Kitty Bruce, 1984, 126–128 (Philadelphia, PA:
Running Press, 1966).
6. Bob Dylan and Chuck Plotkin, Shot of Love (New York: Columbia
Records, 1990). Sound recording.
7. Richard Neville, Play Power (New York: Random House, 1970), 138.
I n de x

50 Cent, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122 American Day Carnival and
on heroin use, 118 Parade, 152
Queens upbringing of, 124 American Gangster (film), 121–2
American Gangster (Jay-Z), 121–2
A7 (club), 87 “American Gangster” (Jay-Z), 122
ABC No Rio, 87 amphetamines, 79–80, 142
Adams, Ryan, 95 amyl nitrite, 111
addict identity, 176 Anarchy Tour (1976), 79, 85
addiction, 3, 14, 75, 187n85 Anderson, Elijah, 124
identity and, 14–15, 110 “Another Day” (Taylor), 129
in inner city, 153 Anslinger, Harry, 22
adolescence and heroin use among Anthony, Marc, 171
Latinos, 153, 154, 155 Antifolk festival, 9
Afghanistan, 2, 5 anti-folk music/movement, 9, 146–7,
African Americans, 4, 7–8, 114, 176 148
newer generations’ view of heroin anti-heroin songs, 91, 106, 120–1,
use, 56, 118, 123, 148 138, 179
“race records” and, 8, 103 See also heroin songs
racial equality and, 28–9, 37, 57 anti-use musicians
Road to H and, 10–11 after bebop years of jazz and, 53–6
See also rhythm and blues (R&B) Calloway, 21–2, 23–4
music Clinton and, 109–10
Afro-Cuban Jazz, 158 Davis, 46, 49, 51, 177
Agnostic Front, 87 in hardcore scene, 87
alcohol, 16, 71, 168 Lunch and, 91–2
effect of on musical performance, 41 in straightedge scene, 88–9, 100–1
folk musicians and, 146 Apollo Theater, 7–8, 20
jazz musicians and, 19–20 Argentina, 158
Alig, Michael, 113 Armstrong, Louis, 20–1, 23, 24, 28
Allin, GG, 86 Arnold, Buddy, 24
Almanac Singers, the, 127, 128, 141, 145 arrests, 49, 62, 113, 155
alt country-rock music, 95 of Bruce, 180
alternative/indie rock music, 7, 66, of Danko, 133
93–6 of Heath, 48
230 / index

arrests—Continued Bertei, Adele, 91


of Holiday, 27 big band music, 6, 22, 158
of Rollins, 43–4 Billboard Magazine, 103
of Vicious, 85–6 “Billy the Kid” (Guthrie), 149
See also crime Biohazard, 88
artists, 179–80 Birdland, 42, 54
ASAP Rocky, 114, 122 Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
availability of heroin before 1950s, Cultural Studies, 14
23, 146 Bishop, Walter, 44
Avakian, George, 45 Black Christ, the, 165–6
black market, 3
bachata music, 10, 159, 169 Black Panthers, 153
Bad Brains, 88 Blackboard Jungle (film), 99
“Baltimore Love Thing, A” Blakey, Art, 35, 36, 49, 54, 55
(50 Cent), 121 Blanchard, Terence, 60
Baltimore, Maryland, 121 “(I Belong to the) Blank Generation”
Band, The, 132–3 (Hell), 73
barbiturates, 111 Blondie, 89–90
Basie, Count, 2, 20 “Blood Hound” (50 Cent), 117
Bators, Stiv, 84 “Blow Ya Mind” (Styles P), 114
Bauer, Jimmy, 169 “Blowin’ in the Wind” (Dylan), 150
Bauza, Mario, 158 Blue, David, 135–6, 143, 149
Bayer Pharmaceutical Products, 3 “Blue Magic” (Jay-Z), 122
Beastie Boys, the, 87, 114, 120–1 Blue Note, 45, 50
Beat poets/movement, 141–3, 144, blues music, 7, 103
146, 147–8, 176, 180 Bonilla, Richie, 165–6
Beatles, the, 68–9 Book of Drugs, The (Doughty), 93–4
bebop music, 6, 27–54, 60–4 Boone, Pat, 98
description of, 28 Bowery district, 74
effect of heroin use on musical Bowie, David, 83
performance in, 29–30, Brando, Marlon, 99, 100
39–42, 61–2, 63 Brecker, Michael, 59–60
image of bebop musicians in “after Brecker, Randy, 59
bebop” years, 55–6 Brill Building, 7, 136
Parker and, 30–5, 37, 39–40, 42, Broadway, 5
43, 44, 53, 177 Bronx, the, 8, 113–14, 151, 153
subculture of, 28–30, 55–6, 60, 175–6 Brooklyn, 7, 93, 152
See also jazz music Crown Heights, 152, 157
Becker, Howard, 14 Brown, Clifford, 55
Becker, Walter, 66, 68 Brown, Ethan, 124–5
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Brown, James, 91, 106
Me (Farina), 138 Bruce, Lenny, 180
Berliner, Paul, 12 Burroughs, William S., 67, 90, 91, 142–3
Berman, Sonny, 24 Busta Rhymes, 114
index / 231

Cale, John, 71–2, 97 “Cod’ine” (Sainte Marie), 138


Calloway, Cab, 6, 21–2, 23–4, 28 Cohen, Albert, 14
Campbell, Sammy, 109 Cohen, Herbie, 137
Cam’ron, 121 Coke, Christopher “Dudas,” 158
“Candy Man” (Neil), 136 “Cold Turkey” (Lennon), 68, 98
El Cantante (film), 171–2 Coleman, Ornette, 54
“Carbona Not Glue” (Ramones), 82 college radio, 93
Caribbean drug use/dealing, 155, 157 Colombia, 5, 156–7, 170
Caribbean music, 159–60, 169 Colon, Willie, 162–3, 172
Caribbean people, 9, 152 Coltrane, John, 45–7, 56
Carnegie Hall, 6, 22 “Come on John” (Blue), 135–6
Casey, John, 11 Comets, the, 99
CBGB, 7, 74, 84, 87, 100 communism, 145
“CCKMP” (Earle), 96, 98 concentration, 39–41, 63, 97, 177
Central Americans, 152 Contortions, the, 91
Chambers, Paul, 45 Cook, Paul, 85
Chance, James, 91 “Cookin Up” (Cam’ron), 121
Charles, Ray, 106 Cop Shoot Cop, 92
Chein, Isador, 10 Copeland, Ray, 46
Chelsea Hotel, 85 corridos music, 159
Cheren, Mel, 112 Corso, Gregory, 142, 143
“Child of the Ghetto” (Cam’ron), 121 Coryell, Larry, 58
“China Girl” (Iggy Pop/Bowie), 83 Costello, Elvis, 65
“Chinese Rock” (Ramones), 82 Cotton Club, 6
“Chinese Rocks” (Ramone/Hell or crack cocaine, 5, 55, 115
Thunders), 81, 98 anti-crack songs and, 117
Chinese workers, opium and, 3 dealt by rappers, 116–18, 119,
Chrome, Cheetah, 84, 86 123–5
Chuck D, 117 Dominican drug trafficking
“City of the Dead, The” (Clash), 80 and, 156
Civil Rights Movement, 145 in Latino New York, 154
Clark, Sonny, 49–50 West Indian gangs and, 157
Clarke, Kenny, 51–2 See also cocaine
Clash, the, 80 creativity. See effect of drug use on
classic rock music, 66 creativity
Clayton, Buck, 20 effect of heroin use on creativity
Clinton, George, 109–10 crime, 23, 173
cocaine, 5, 12, 83, 166, 168, 173 in 1970s, 4–5, 74
in disco subculture, 111 outlaw theme in folk music, 148–9,
Jamaican gangs and, 157 176, 180
in Latin music industry, 160–1, 169 stealing, 42–3, 49–50, 62, 81
rap and, 114–15, 118–22, 123–5 See also arrests
See also crack cocaine Cro-Mags, the, 87
cocaine songs, 117 Crosby, David, 130
232 / index

Crown Heights (Brooklyn), 152, 157 suicide, 66, 76, 88


Cuba, 156, 158, 167 of Vicious, 86
cultivators, 157 of Webster, 51
cultural criminology, 173 See also overdose
Cuyjet, Michael, 63 delinquent subcultures, 14
deportation of Dominicans, 155–6
Dalton, Karen, 137–8, 140 depression, 153
Dameron, Tadd, 64 detoxification programs, 153, 155,
Danko, Rick, 133 164, 167
Dasein, Deena, 65 “Devil In a Blue Dress” (Ortiz), 122
Davis, Miles, 37–8, 47, 49 Dictators, the, 75–6, 90
effect of heroin on career of, 44–5 DiMucci, Dion, 103–4, 104–6, 110,
Evans and, 57 175, 178
on Holiday, 25–6 Dion and the Belmonts, 104–6,
on “junkie shit,” 46, 49, 51, 177 110, 178
on Navarro, 51 Diplomats, the, 121
Parker and, 31, 32, 37, 42 disco music, 8, 103, 111–12, 123, 178
Rollins and, 43 discrimination, 152, 171
on Webster’s death, 51 DJs, club, 111–12, 123
De La Soul, 117 DJs, radio, 111
Dead Boys, 84 DJs, rap, 114
“Dead Presidents” (Jay-Z), 118 Dolls, the, 76–8, 200n74
dealers, demographics of, 4 Dominican Republic, 10, 151,
See also drug dealing 154, 169
Dean, James, 99 heroin use/distribution in, 155, 156
death, drug and alcohol related, 49, music of, 158, 159
55, 174, 177 Dominicans, 9, 10, 151, 154
of Allin, 86 doo-wop music, 8, 103–6, 110,
of bebop musicians, 62 123, 176
of Becker, Walter’s girlfriend, 66 “dope” (slang), 125–6
of Berman, 24 Doughty, Mike, 93–4
of Dalton, 137 Down These Mean Streets (Thomas),
of Hardin, 134 171
of Holiday, 27 dress
of Kirkland, 60 of bebop musicians, 29
of Levan, 112 of punks, 73, 85
of Lewis, Rudy, 107 Drifters, the, 107
of Lymon, 104 Drinkard, Carl, 27
of Murcia, 77 Dr. John, 107–8, 110, 178
of Navarro, Fats, 51 drug dealing, 4, 5, 155
of ODB, 115 bebop musicians and, 30
of Parker, 62 dealers’ refraining from heroin use,
of Quine, Robert, 76 125–6
of Remler, 59 in EDM clubs, 113
index / 233

among Latinos, 156–8 Holiday and, 26


by rappers, 116–18, 119, 123–5, 176 Lavoe and, 162–3
drug economies, 154 Levan and, 112
drug trafficking, 4, 5, 156, 169 Parker and, 31, 39–40, 55–6
in Latin music industry, 160–1 by R&B musicians, 123
in Mexico, 156–7 by rock musicians, 97, 177
“Dr. Wu” (Steely Dan), 67, 98 Winick on, 12
Dylan, Bob, 9, 131–3, 141, 145, 180 effect of heroin use on musicians’
definition of folk by, 127 careers, 1, 13, 16, 17, 173, 176–8
drug songs and, 150 by bebop musicians, 44–7, 61–2, 63
outlaw songs and, 149, 150 Davis and, 44–5
Evans and, 58
Earle, Steve, 95–6 by folk musicians, 143–4
East Harlem, 151 in Fugs, 139
East Village, 9, 139–43, 217n96 Gibson and, 135
Ebony magazine, 104 Hammond, Albert and, 93
ecstasy, 113 Hardin and, 134
EDM (electronic dance music), 8, 103, Hell and, 75
112–13, 123 Holiday and, 26
effect of drug use on creativity, 15–16 Hope and, 48–9
Burroughs on, 142–3 by jazz musicians, 19, 24, 177
marijuana and jazz and, 20, 21 Lavoe and, 162–3, 170
effect of heroin use on creativity, 17, Levan and, 112
173, 176–8 Lymon and, 110, 178
concentration and, 97, 177 Martinez and, 167, 170
Doughty on, 94 Miles Davis Quintet and, 45–6,
by folk musicians, 143–4 47, 48
Harry on, 90 Moore and, 106–7
by jazz musicians, 19, 61–2, 63, 177 Morgan and, 49
Mingus on, 53 Parker and, 53
Neil and, 136 on R&B musicians, 123, 178
Richards and, 70 on rock musicians, 104, 177
effect of heroin use on musical Rollins and, 35
performance, 1, 13, 16, 17, 19, stealing and, 42–3
173, 176–8 Waldron and, 56
bebop music and, 29–30, 39–42, effect of marijuana use on musical
61–2, 63 performance, 41
concentration and, 39–41, 63, 177 effect of marijuana use on musicians’
DiMucci on, 105, 110 careers, 22
Dr. John on, 108, 110 El Barrio neighborhood, 151, 152, 154,
Earle and, 95–6 165, 167
Elliot and, 130–1 El Cabito, 168
Feliciano and, 163–4 electronic dance music (EDM), 8, 103,
folk music and, 143–4 112–13, 123
234 / index

Ellington, Duke, 6, 24 lack of heroin in contemporary


Elliot, Cass, 130–1 scene, 146–8
England, 14, 80, 179 Mamas and the Papas, 130–1
English punk scene, 14, 79–80 Neil and, 136–7, 143–4
escapism, 95, 96, 162, 175 New Left politics and, 144–5, 146,
Evans, Bill, 57–8, 59 147–8, 176
“Everybody’s Talkin” (Neil), 136 outlaw theme in, 148–50, 176, 180
“Everyone’s Honest” (Lewis), 147 subculture of, 144, 176
“Exile on Main St.” (Rolling Stones), 70 Taylor and, 128–30, 133, 143, 144,
Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the, 71 150, 175
exporters/importers, 157 Village revival scene, 127–39, 176
Folklore Center (record and book
Fagen, Donald, 66–7 store), 128
Faison, Azie, 124 Fowler, Al, 139
Fania All-Stars, 163 Fox theater, 7
Fania Records, 158 free jazz music, 54
Fariña, Mimi, 138 Freed, Alan, 7, 160
Fariña, Richard, 138 Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The (Dylan), 9
Fast Folk music, 9 Freeze (friend of Alig), 113
Feather, Leonard, 39 French Connection system, 4
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 22 “From a Buick 6” (Dylan), 131
Feldman, Harvey, 15 Fugs, the, 139–41, 145
Feliciano, Cheo, 162, 163–5, 166, Fulwood, Tiki, 109
168, 170 funk music, 8, 103, 107–10, 123
Fields, Danny, 83 Funkadelic, 109
Finnerty, Barry, 59
“Fire and Rain” (Taylor), 129, 150 gangs, 14
“Five Will Get You Ten” (Monk Gulleymen (Kingston), 157
composition stolen by Clark), 50 Latin King and Queen gangs, 153
Flav, Flavor, 114–15, 118–19 Shower Posse, 157–8
Fleshtones, the, 5, 79 West Indian gangs, 157
folk music, 2, 16, 17, 127–50, 178 gangsta rap, 124
anti-folk, 9, 146–7, 148 Garland, Red, 45
Beats’ influence on, 141–3, 144, Gatien, Peter, 113
146, 147–8, 176, 180 gay clubs, 111
Blue, David and, 135–6, 143, 149 George, Sergio, 158
Dalton, Karen, 137–8, 140 “Get High Tonight” (Busta Rhymes),
definition of, 127 114
Dylan and, 9, 127, 131–3, 141, 145, Getz, Stan, 24–5
149, 150, 180 GHB (drug), 113
East Village folk scene, 139–43 Gibson, Bob, 134–5, 143
Gibson and, 134–5, 143 Giddins, Gary, 31, 63–4
Hardin and, 133–4, 143 Gillespie, Dizzy, 28, 52, 53, 55, 167–8
history of, in NYC, 8–9 “Gimme Heroin” (STZA), 87, 98
index / 235

Ginsberg, Allen, 141–2, 143 Heartbreakers, the, 77, 78–80,


Gioia, Ted, 42 81–2, 85
Gitler, Ira, 23, 50 Heath, Jimmy, 35, 36–7, 40–1, 47–8
“Go” (Clark), 50 hedonism, 153
Goffman, Erving, 17 Hell, Richard, 73–5, 76, 77, 81, 97,
Gonzalez, Juan, 170–1 99, 100
Goodman, Benny, 6, 22, 28 Hells Angels, 100
“Goodnight Irene” (Weavers), 127 Helm, Levon, 132–3, 143
Gordon, Dexter, 33–4, 40, 43, 50 Henske, Judy, 137
Grandmaster Flash, 114–15 Hentoff, Nat, 29, 31, 42
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Heredia, Martha, 169
Five, 8, 115, 117 Herman, Woody, 24
Graziadei, Billy, 88 heroin, history of, 2–3, 23
Green, Adam, 147 “Heroin” (Velvet Underground),
Greenwich Village, 9, 127–8, 176 72, 98
Gruber, Freddy, 44 heroin-arts studies, 179–80
Gruen, Bob, 80 “Heroin Fix” (Zorn), 56
Gulleymen (gang), 157 heroin-literature relationship, 180
Guthrie, Woody, 127, 145, 149 heroin songs, 17–18, 178–9
“American Gangster,” 122
Haitians, 152, 155 “Another Day,” 129
Haley, Bill, 99 anti-heroin songs, 91, 106, 120–1,
hallucinations, 15 138, 179
Hammond, Albert, 93 “Baltimore Love Thing, A,” 121
Hammond, John, 26 “Blue Magic,” 122
Hampton, Lionel, 22 “CCKMP,” 96, 98
Hanoi Rocks, 85 “Child of the Ghetto,” 121
Hansen, Beck, 148 “China Girl,” 83
“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” “Chinese Rock”/”Chinese Rocks,”
(Lennon), 68–9 81, 82, 98
“Happy New Year” (50 Cent), 122 “Cold Turkey,” 68, 98
hard rock, 66 “Come on John,” 135–6
hardcore music, 7, 66, 71, 87–8, 100–1 “Cookin Up,” 121
Hardin, Tim, 133–4, 143 “Devil In a Blue Dress,” 122
Hare Krishnas, 87 by Doughty, 94
Harlem, 4, 6, 19, 110, 151 “Dr. Wu,” 67, 98
Harlem Renaissance, 7–8 “Fire and Rain,” 129, 150
Harrison Narcotic Act (1914), 3 in folk music, 179
Harry, Debbie, 89–90 “Gimme Heroin,” 87, 98
Hays, Lee, 127 “Heroin,” 72, 98
Hazel, Eddie, 109 “Heroin Fix,” 56
health problems, 49, 51, 58, 62, 83 “Hollywood,” 121
See also death, drug and alcohol “Home Is Where The Hatred Is”
related (anti-heroin song), 120
236 / index

heroin songs—Continued Holy Modal Rounders, the, 140


“Hotel Chlesea Nights,” 95, 98 Holzman, Jac, 136
“House of Changing Faces,” 135 “Home Is Where The Hatred Is”
“I’m Waiting for the Man,” 72, 98 (Scott-Heron), 120
in jazz, 24, 178 hootenannies, 127–8
“Jones Comin’ Down” (anti-heroin “Hop Head” (Ellington), 24
song), 120 Hope, Elmo, 48–9
“King Heroin” (anti-heroin song), “hot shots” (lethal injections), 51, 62
91, 106 “Hotel Chelsea Nights” (Adams), 95,
“Lady Day and John Coltrane” 98
(anti-heroin song), 120 House Committee on Un-American
“Losin Weight,” 121 Activities (HUAC), 145
“Lost One,” 121 “House of Changing Faces” (Blue), 135
“Mainline Prosperity Blues” (anti- How to Make Money Selling Drugs
heroin song), 138 (documentary), 116
“Moose the Mooch,” 32 “How to Roll a Blunt” (Redman), 114
“My Uncle Shoots Heroin,” 122 Howl (Ginsberg), 141
“Needle of Death,” 150 HR (lead singer of Bad Brains), 88
“Negotiation Limerick File, The” Huncke, Herbert, 142
(anti-heroin song), 120–1 hustling, 123, 176
“OD” (anti-heroin song), 120 hybridity (in music), 158
“One Track Mind,” 78
in punk music, 71–2, 78, 98, 178–9 identity, 13, 17, 18
“Rainy Day Man,” 129–30 of addiction, 14–15, 110
Ramones and, 81–2 bebop musicians’ heroin use and,
“Red Balloon,” 134 39, 55, 60, 175–6
in rock, 98, 178–9 Latinos and, 176
Rolling Stones and, 70 punk music and, 98–9, 100, 176
“Sally in the Alley,” 140 See also subculture(s)
“She’s Like a Shot,” 92, 98 “If I Were a Carpenter” (Hardin), 133
“Sister Ray,” 72, 98 Iggy Pop, 82–3
“Speedball,” 56 Ill Bill, 122
“Time Out of Mind,” 67 illegality of heroin, 23
“Too Much Junkie Business,” 78–9 “I’m Waiting for the Man” (Velvet
Velvet Underground and, 71–2 Underground), 72, 98
heroin users, 4–5 immigration, 151, 152, 155, 159
identity and subculture and, 15, indie rock, 7, 66, 93–6
17, 18 industrialization, 152
social science research on, 10–13 Infamous, The (Mobb Deep), 125
“High All the Time” (50 Cent), 114 inhalants, 82
HIV/AIDS, 2, 118, 155, 163, 174 Insurgent, Dave, 88
Hobsbawm, Eric, 148–9 internal noise, 39–40, 63, 177
Holiday, Billie, 25–7, 34, 35, 56 interview research, 17, 173–4, 186n83,
“Hollywood” (Jay-Z), 121 187n84, 85, 88
index / 237

intravenous heroin use, 85, 155 Keepnews, Orrin, 47


mainlining, 68, 69, 88, 104, 133, Kenton, Stan, 24
135 Kerouac, Jack, 142, 143
vein damage and, 26, 73, 87, 119 ketamine, 113, 147
Khan, Chaka, 108–9, 110
Jagger, Mick, 70 “Kicking the Gong Around”
Jamaica, drug use/dealing in, (Calloway), 24
155, 157 “King Heroin” (Brown), 91, 106
Jamaicans, 152, 159 Kingston, Jamaica, 157
James, Harry, 22 Kirkland, Kenny, 59, 60
Jansch, Bert, 150 Knitting Factory, 6
Jay-Z, 116–18, 121–2 Koenigswarter, Pannonica de, 50
Jazz at Lincoln Center, 6 Kool Herc, 114–15
Jazz Messengers, 36, 49, 54 Kramer, Wayne, 84
jazz music, 2, 17, 19–64, 173, 177 Krupa, Gene, 22
Afro-Cuban, 158 Kubrin, Charis, 124
bebop era of (1940s–1950s), 27–54, Kupferberg, Tuli, 139, 141
60–4
big band, 6, 22, 158 labor issues, 145
early years of (1930s–1940s), 19–27, “Lady Day and John Coltrane” (Scott-
60–4 Heron), 120
history of in NYC, 5–7, 19 Largo, Micheal, 15–16
Latin, 158 Last Poets, the, 120
years since bebop of (1960s-present), “Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane,
54–64 The” (Lewis), 147
jazz musicians, 16 Latin Alternative music, 158–9
marijuana use by, 19–22, 23, 61 Latin Alternative Music Conference,
Winick’s research on heroin use by, 159
11–12, 13, 16, 29–30, 63 Latin America, 151
“Jerry the Junker” (Williams), 24 Latin and Caribbean music, 2, 16, 17,
Johansen, David, 77 151–72, 178
Johnson, Bumpy, 124 Feliciano and, 162, 163–5, 166,
“Jones Comin’ Down” (Last Poets), 168, 170
120 history of in NYC, 9–10
Jones, Elvin, 58–9 Latin Jazz music, 10, 158, 161,
Jones, Jim, 121 167–8
Jones, Philly Joe, 45, 47, 57 Latin music industry, 160–1, 169
Jonnes, Jill, 23 Lavoe and, 162–5, 166, 168,
Joplin, Janis, 139 170–2, 175
Joseph, John, 87 Quinones and, 166–7, 168, 170
Junk Hog, 140–1 Rivera and, 165–6, 167, 170, 171
“junkie shit” (Davis on users’ Ruiz and, 168–9
behavior), 46, 49, 51, 177 salsa, 10, 12, 158, 160, 161, 169–70
Junky (Burroughs), 91, 142–3 Latin Boogaloo, 158
238 / index

Latin King and Queen gangs, 153 Lucas, Frank, 121–2


Latin music industry Lunch, Lydia, 91–2
cocaine in, 160–1, 169 Lure, Walter, 78–9, 81
heroin in, 161, 169 Lymon, Frankie, 103–4, 105, 110,
Latin Pop, 158–9 175, 178
Latinos, 8, 176
demographic information on, 151–2 machismo, 171, 176
heroin dealing among, 156–8 Machito, 42, 158
heroin use among, 152–6 MacKaye, Ian, 89, 101
rap and, 114 MacLeod, Bruce, 12
Lavoe, Hector, 162–5, 168, 170–2, Madera, Jose, 42
175 Madison Square Garden, 7
El Cantante, 171–2 Maggin, Donald, 24–5
“Quien Mato a Héctor Lavoe?,” 166 “Mainline Prosperity Blues” (Farina),
Lees, Gene, 46–7 138
leisure, 154 mainlining, 68, 69, 88, 104, 133, 135
Lennon, John, 68–9 Mamas and the Papas, the, 130–1
Levan, Larry, 111, 112 mambo music, 10, 158
Levey, Stan, 52 management, abandonment by, 76,
Lewis, Jeffrey, 146–7, 150 90, 97
Lewis, Rudy, 107 Mandrax (quaalude), 77
Lewisburg Penitentiary, 48 Manhattan, 161, 165
Lexington (U.S. Public Health Service Bowery, 74
prison/hospital), 64 Broadway, 5
Life (Richards), 69 East Village, 9, 139–43, 217n96
Limelight, the, 113 Greenwich Village, 9, 127–8, 176
Lindesmith, Alfred, 14 Harlem, 4, 6, 19, 110, 151
Lion, Alfred, 50 Lower East Side, 4, 70, 74, 86–7,
Little Richard, 98 157, 217n96
Live Skull, 92 Manitoba, Handsome Dick, 75–6
Lloyd, Richard, 73–5 Manuel, Peter, 158
London, England, 179 Mariachi bands, 159
“Lonely Junkie” (Stampfel/Weber), marijuana, 14
140–1 Beat poets and, 141
Lopez, Jennifer, 171 Caribbean drug dealing and, 157
Los Angeles, California, 179 contemporary folk musicians and,
“Losin Weight” (Cam’ron), 121 147
“Lost One” (Jay-Z), 121 doo-wop musicians and, 104
“Love Supreme, A” (Coltrane), 46 effect of on careers, 22
Lower East Side, 4, 157, 217n96 effect of on musical performance,
crime in, 74 41
punk development in, 70 folk revival scene and, 128
squat scene in, 86–7 Fugs and, 139–40
LSD, 15 jazz musicians and, 19–22, 23, 61
index / 239

Pozo and, 168 money laundering, 160


rap music and, 114 Monk, Thelonious, 43, 50, 54,
Rastafarianism and, 159, 160 193–94n154
marijuana songs, 20, 21, 114 Monroe, Michael, 85
Marley, Bob, 159 Monroe’s Uptown House, 6
Marsalis, Wynton, 54, 60 Moore, Sam, 106–7, 110, 178
Martinez, Sabu, 167–8, 170 “Moose the Mooch” (Parker), 32
mass media, 1, 4 Morgan, Lee, 49
Matlock, Glen, 79–80 morphine, 3, 31, 142
Matza, David, 14 motivations for heroin use, 1, 69, 142,
Max’s Kansas City, 71, 77 173
MC5 (Motor City 5), 84 by bebop musicians, 29–30, 60–1
McCarthy, Joseph, 145 for courage, 105, 110
McGhee, Howard, 48 depression, 153
McLean, Jackie, 35–6, 41 emulation of Charlie Parker as, 31,
McRae, Carmen, 51, 52 32–3, 33–4, 34–5, 39, 60–1
medical use of heroin, 3, 23, 31 emulation of other musicians as, 90,
in England, 80 106, 110
Mel, Melle, 117 as escapism, 95, 96, 162, 175
merengue music, 10, 158 for experience, 36, 153
Merton, Robert, 11 by folk muiscians, 143
“Message, The” (Grandmaster Flash Getz and, 25
and the Furious Five), 8, 115 for inclusion, sense of belonging,
metal music, 66 33, 39
methadone, 85, 168 by jazz musicians, 19
Method Man, 126 across music genres, 175
Mexican American heroin users, 171 Nico and, 73
Mexicans, 9, 151–2 to be nonconformist, 85, 99–100
Mexico psychological distress, 153
drug trafficking in, 156–7 Richards and, 69
music of, 159 by rock musicians, 96–7
Mezzrow, Mezz, 20 to satisfy curiosity, 142
Miami, Florida, 158–9 for sense of power, 153
Midnight Cowboy, 136 for sense of privacy, 65
Miles Davis Quintet, 45–6, 47, 48 social science research on, 11–13
Mingus, Charles, 53, 56 street status as, 15, 123
“Minnie the Moocher” (Calloway), 24 for stress relief, 36–7, 39, 61, 65,
Minor Threat, 89, 101 82–3, 97, 175
Minton’s Playhouse, 6, 38, 52, Taylor and, 129
193n154 Mott Haven (Bronx), 153
Miret, Roger, 87 “Muggles” (Armstrong), 20
Mobb Deep, 125 Murcia, Billy, 77
MobStyle, 124 Murder Junkies, 86
Moldy Peaches, 147 music industry, drug trafficking and, 161
240 / index

music recording, 6, 7 “OD” (Last Poets), 120


musician-addict identity, 13, 39 O’Day, Anita, 26
Musicians’ Assistance Program, The, 24 Old Dirty Bastard (ODB), 115, 126
musicians, definition of, 187n84 “On Broadway” (Drifters), 107
“My Brother’s a Basehead” (De La On the Road (Kerouac), 142
Soul), 117 “One Track Mind” (Lure and Hell),
“My Uncle Shoots Heroin” (Ill Bill), 122 78
Myers, Marc, 31 Ono, Yoko, 68
Operation Pressure Point, 157
Naked Lunch (Burroughs), 142 opiates, 2–3, 15, 154
narcocorridos music, 159 Burroughs and, 142–3
Navarro, Fats, 51 opium, 3, 4, 15, 138–9
Navarro, Lena, 51 Beat poets and, 141
“Needle of Death” (Jansch), 150 jazz musicians’ use of, 24, 25, 178
needles, 153, 154 Orbison, Roy, 136
“Negotiation Limerick File, The” Ortiz, Joell, 122
(Beastie Boys), 120–1 “Outlaw Blues” (Dylan), 149
Neil, Fred, 136–7, 143–4 “Outlaw Man” (Blue), 149
Nelson, Billy, 109 outlaw theme in folk music, 148–50,
“neoclassical” jazz movement, 54 176, 180
Nevermind (Nirvana), 93 Outsiders (Becker), 14
New Jersey, 166, 168 overdose, 24, 62, 119, 177
New Left politics, 144–5, 146, 147–8, 176 of Allin, 86
New Orleans jazz, 6 of Bruce, 180
New Wave music, 7, 66, 89–90 of Dalton, 137
New York City, New York, 1–2, 74, of Hardin, 134
186n83 of Iggy Pop, 83
as jazz capital, 6–7, 19 of Lymon, 104
postwar drug trafficking in, 4 of ODB, 115
New York Dolls, the, 76–8, 200n74 of Quine, Robert, 76
New York Times, 20, 83 of Ramone, Dee Dee, 81
Nico, 72–3 of Vicious, 86
“Night of the Living Baseheads” of Waldron, 56
(Public Enemy), 117 of Webster, 51
Nilsson, Harry, 136 See also death, drug and alcohol
Nirvana, 93 related
“No LSD Tonight” (Lewis), 147 Oxycontin, 96, 154
No Wave music, 7, 66, 90–2 “OxyContin Blues” (Earle), 96
Noise Rock music, 66, 92
Nolan, Jerry, 76–8, 80, 85 Painkiller, 56
norteno music, 159 Pakulski, Jan-Marek, 79
Notorious B.I.G., 116, 117 Palace Bar, 74
“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” Palace Hotel, 74
(Ramones), 82 Palladium Ballroom, the, 113, 165, 171
index / 241

Panama, 159, 165 psychoactive drugs, 15, 147


Paradise Garage, the, 112 Public Enemy, 115, 117, 120
Paramount theater, 7 Puente, Tito, 158
paregoric, 4 Puerto Ricans, 4, 9, 151, 153, 170
Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 30–5, 39–40, heroin use among, 152, 154, 155
53, 54, 177 Road to H and, 10
death of, 62 Puerto Rico, 155, 156, 164, 166, 168
influence of, on other musicians’ punk identity, 100, 176
heroin use, 31, 33–5, 37, 42, punk look/style, 73, 85
43, 44, 55–6, 60–1 Punk Magazine, 76
“Parker’s Mood” (Parker), 32 punk music, 7, 66, 70–92, 97
Parliament Funkadelic, 109 in England, 14, 79–80
Parliaments, the, 109 Heartbreakers and, 77, 78–80,
“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” 81–2, 85
(Dylan album), 149 heroin songs in, 71–2, 72, 78, 98,
Payne, Benny, 21–2 178–9
payola, Latin music industry and, protopunk, 66, 71–7, 90, 101,
160–1, 169 200n74
PCP, 87 Ramones and, 80–2
“People’s Songs” library, 145 rebellion and, 99–100, 176
Phillips, John, 130, 143 subculture of, 98–9, 100, 176
Pirroni, Marco, 80 See also rock music
police, 22, 27, 108, 110, 178 purity of street-sold heroin, 4, 5
Polsky, Ned, 141 “purple drank” (soft drink mixture),
Ponce (Puerto Rico), 162, 163 122
“Poor Jesse James” (unknown), 149 “Purple Swag” (ASAP Rocky), 122
Pos, 117
posses, 157 quaaludes, 77, 111
See also gangs Queens, 8, 124–5
post-bop music, 54 Queens Reigns Supreme (Brown),
Potobelo (Panama), 165 124–5
Powell, Bud, 38, 43, 193n154 “Quien Mato a Héctor Lavoe?,” 166
Pozo, Chano, 168 Quine, Alice, 76
Preble, Ed, 11 Quine, Robert, 76
prescription drugs, 154 Quinones, Domingo, 166–7, 168, 170
“Pretty Boy Floyd” (Guthrie), 149
Prodigy, 125 race, 170–1
protest songs, 9, 145, 150 of heroin dealers, 5
protopunk music, 66, 71–7 segregation and, 28–9
Dictators and, 75–6, 90 “race records,” 8, 103
Dolls and, 76–7, 200n74 racial discrimination, 28–9, 37, 57,
Television and, 73–5, 77 152, 171
transition into punk, 76–7 radio, college, 93
Velvet Underground, 71–3, 101 radio DJs, 111
242 / index

radio, Spanish-language, 10 Reed, Lou, 71–2, 76, 90, 97, 101


“Rainy Day Man” (Taylor), 129–30 “Reefer Man” (Calloway), 21
“Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 and reggae music, 10, 159
35” (Dylan), 150 reggaeton music, 159–60
Ramone, Dee Dee, 80–1, 86 rehabilitation programs, 153, 155, 164,
Ramone, Johnny, 81–2 167
Ramones, the, 80–2 relapse, 155, 166, 167
“Rap Game/Crack Game” (Jay-Z), 117 religious conversion, detoxification
rap music, 8, 113–22, 148, 209n56 and, 165–6, 167
drug dealing by rappers, 116–18, Remler, Emily, 59
119, 123–5, 176 rhythm and blues (R&B) music, 2, 16,
lack of heroin use and, 103, 118–22, 17, 103–26, 178
176 disco, 8, 103, 111–12, 123, 178
“Rapper’s Delight” (Sugarhill Gang), 8 doo-wop, 8, 103–6, 110, 123, 176
Rastafarianism, 88, 157, 159, 160 electronic dance, 8, 103, 112–13, 123
R&B. See rhythm and blues (R&B) funk, 8, 103, 107–10, 123
music history of in NYC, 7–8
Reagan Youth, 88 rap, 8, 103, 113–22, 123–5, 148,
“Reason to Believe” (Hardin), 133 176, 209n56
Rebel Without a Cause (film), 99 soul, 8, 103, 106–7, 110, 123, 176
rebellion subculture of, 123
punk and, 99–100, 176 Richards, Keith, 68, 69–70, 97, 130,
straightedge and, 100–1 177
recovery/sobriety/quitting, 24 Riker’s Island jail, 44, 86
of bebop musicians, 62 Rivera, Ismael, 165–6, 167, 170, 171
Bonilla and, 165–6 Roach, Max, 51–3
cold turkey, 38, 46 Road to H, The (Chein et al.), 10–11
Coltrane and, 46–7 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 38
Dameron and, 64 “Rock Around the Clock” (Bill Haley
Davis and, 37 and the Comets), 99
detoxification programs, 153, 155, rock music, 2, 16, 17, 65–101, 98–9,
164, 167 173, 177
Evans and, 58 alternative/indie, 7, 66, 93–6
Feliciano and, 164 classic rock, 66
Gordon and, 34 definition of, 65
Lymon and, 104, 110, 178 hard rock, 66
Quinones and, 167 hardcore, 7, 66, 71, 87–8, 100–1
Roach and, 52–3 history of in NYC, 7
Rollins and, 44 metal, 66
Taylor and, 128 New Wave, 7, 66, 89–90
withdrawal, 85 No Wave, 7, 66, 90–2
“Red” (NY bebop saxophonist), 41–2 Noise Rock, 66, 92
“Red Balloon” (Hardin), 134 protopunk, 66, 71–7, 90, 101, 200n74
Redman, 114 See also punk music
index / 243

Rocket from the Tombs, 84 Shower Posse (gang), 157–8


Rodgers, Nile, 83 Siano, Nicky, 111–12
Rodney, Red, 32–3, 40, 43 Silver, Horace, 45, 54
“Roll One Up” (ASAP Rocky), 114 Simmons, John, 25
Rolling Stones, the, 68, 69–70 “Sister Morphine” (Rolling Stones), 70
Rollins, Sonny, 34–5, 43–4 “Sister Ray” (Velvet Underground),
Romantic Age (early to mid-1800s), 15 72, 98
romanticization of heroin use, 12, 73 skinpopping, 68, 88, 104
Ross, Annie, 52 slang, 125–6
Ross, Tawl, 109 Smith, Bessie, 7, 103
Rotten, Johnny, 101 soldiers/veterans, 153
Rubell, Steve, 111 “Song of the Vipers” (Armstrong), 20
Rufus, 108, 110 Sonic Youth, 92
Ruiz, Frankie, 168–9 Soul Coughing, 93–4
rumba music, 10, 158 soul music, 8, 103, 106–7, 110, 123,
176
Sainte Marie, Buffy, 138 South America, 5, 155, 156
“Sally in the Alley” (Stampfel), 140 South Americans, 152
salsa music, 10, 12, 158, 161, 169–70 South Bronx, the, 153
cocaine and, 160 Spanish Harlem, 151, 153
See also Feliciano, Cheo; Lavoe, Spector, Phil, 180
Hector; Rivera, Ismael; Ruiz, speed, 71, 83, 85
Frankie “Speedball” (Zorn), 56
“salsa romantica” music, 168 speedballing, 83
Sam and Dave, 106 Spoken Word art form, 120
Sanders, Ed, 139–40, 141, 144 Spungeon, Nancy, 85–6, 101
Sanders, Miriam, 140 squatters, 86–7
Santurce (Puerto Rico), 165 stage fright, 39, 41–2
Savoy Ballroom, 6 Stampfel, Peter, 140
Scorcese, Martin, 74 Stan Kenton orchestra, 24
Scott-Heron, Gil, 120 stealing, 42–3, 49–50, 62, 81
Seeger, Peggy, 139 Steely Dan, 66–7
Seeger, Pete, 127, 145, 146, 149 Stein, Chris, 89
segregation, 28–9 Stephens, Richard, 15
self-control, heroin use and, 154 Stephenson, Sam, 49–50
Sex Pistols, 79–80, 85 sterilization of needles, 153
Sharp, Elliot, 56 Stilletos, the, 89
Shaw, Artie, 22 Sting, 60
Shelton, Robert, 131–2 Stitt, Sonny, 50, 51
Shernoff, Andy, 76 Stooges, the, 82–3
“She’s Like a Shot” (Cop Shoot Cop), “Straight Edge” (Minor Threat), 89
92, 98 straightedge subculture, 88–9, 100–1
“Shook Ones Part 2” (Mobb Deep), street subculture, 15, 123, 125–6
125 street use of heroin, 3–4, 174
244 / index

street-level distributors, 156, 157 “Ten Crack Commandments”


Streng, Keith, 5, 79 (Notorious B.I.G.), 117
stress relief, 36–7, 39, 61, 65, 82–3, Thatcher, Margaret, 70
97, 175 Thomas, Piri, 171
Strokes, the, 93 Thunders, Johnny, 76–7, 78, 79, 80,
Studio 54, 111 81, 85, 97
Studio Rivbea, 6 Time magazine, 128
Styles P, 114 “Time Out of Mind” (Steely Dan), 67
STZA, 86–7 Tin Pan Alley, 5, 7
subculture(s), 13–15, 17, 18 Tivoli Gardens, 158
folk music, 144, 176 Tolson, Gerald, 63
hipster/bebopper, 28–30, 55–6, 60, “Too Much Junkie Business” (Lure),
175–6 78–9
punk music and, 98–9, 100, 176 “los tres animals” (Mexico), 159
R&B, 123 Trinidadians, 152
rock ’n’ roll and, 98–9 Tunnel, the, 113
See also identity Turkey, 156
Sugarhill Gang, 8 “Two Timer” (Monk composition
suicide, 66, 76, 88 stolen by Sonny Clark), 50
Superfly (film), 124
Sweden, 167 “Under the Boardwalk” (Drifters), 107
“Swinging Affair, A” (Clark), 50 United States, 3, 9
Sykes, Gresham, 14 University of Chicago, 14
Sylvain, Syl, 77 University of the Streets, 6
Szabo, Bill, 139 Univision, 161
“Up on the Roof” (Drifters), 107
“Take Me in Your Arms (Miss Uruguay, 158
Heroin)” (unknown), 139
“Takeover” (Jay-Z), 117 Van Ronk, Dave, 128, 138–9, 144,
“Taking Care of Business” (Preble and 145
Casey), 11 Vassell, Eric, 157
tango music, 10, 158 vaudeville, 5, 7
Tarantula (Dylan), 131 vein damage, 26, 73, 87, 119
Taxi Driver (film), 74 Velvet Underground, The, 71–3, 101
Taylor, Cecil, 54 veterans/soldiers, 153
Taylor, James, 128–30, 133, 143, 144, Vicious, Sid, 85–6, 101
150, 175 Vietnam protests, 145
Taylor, Martin, 59 Vietnam veterans, 5, 153
“tecatos,” 171 Village revival folk scene, 127–39, 176
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, 91 Voidoids, the, 75
Teenagers, the, 104
tejano music, 159 Waldron, Mal, 56–7, 59
Television, 73–5, 77 War on Drugs, 116, 118
index / 245

Warhol, Andy, 71, 72 Williams, Clarence, 24


Washburne, Christopher, 12, 160 “Willie the Weeper” (standard), 138–9
Washington, Denzel, 121 Winick, Charles, 11–12, 13, 16,
Washington Heights (Manhattan), 29–30, 63
151, 156 Winter, Johnny, 66, 67, 68
Washington Square Park, 128 withdrawal, 85
Weavers, The, 127 Wolff, Francis, 50
Weber, Steve, 140–1 working-class youth subcultures
Weberman, A. J., 131 (England), 14
Webster, Freddie, 51 World War II, 4, 152
Weinstock, Bob, 50 availability of heroin before and
West Indian gangs, 157 during, 23, 146
West Indian population in NYC, 152 “Wrong Ferrari, The” (film), 147
West Indies, 155 Wu-Tang Clan, 115
West, Leslie, 66, 67–8
Weston, Randy, 62–3 Young, Izzy, 128
Wexler, Jerry, 8, 103 Young, Jock, 1, 14
“White Lines (Don’t Do It)” (Melle Young Lords, 153
Mel), 117 youth, 14
“Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”
(Teenagers), 104 Zedek, Thalia, 92
Wild One, The (film), 99 zero tolerance policies, 155
Wilentz, Sean, 141 Zorn, John, 56

S-ar putea să vă placă și