Drug-fueled musical innovation from 1966 on up to, say, 1972 or so really was and still is something to behold. They broke tremendous new ground, but then there was still a lot of new ground to be broken with anything approaching “music” as we understand the term, not so much now. I’m not advocating psychoactives, don’t get me wrong, they’re dangerous, but the music that everyone puts on such a pedestal today was courtesy of LSD and heroin, it really was. That’s one reason why the lionization of the music of that era on this website of all places is sort of amusing, really. They were tripping their butts off and thought they were some sort of revolutionary vanguard. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. I suppose the best revenge was making it a commodity and part of pop culture, just the Top 40 Casey Kasem hits of the day, just kooky fashions that were fun and colorful. To a large percentage of American society, that’s all that it ever was. How anyone could have looked at this on The Smothers Brothers comedy show and not realized what they were looking at is beyond me, but then I wasn’t really part of it, I only see it in hindsight:
Grace Slick was really magnetic, I can certainly see that.
Frank Zappa didn’t use drugs, and The Mothers of Invention were way out there compared to those other drug-fueled bands.
White Rabbit, the most iconic song from that era and in my opinion all time hall of fame material...........
Was overseas in the Army when Woodstock took place and never even heard about it till months later.......of course we never listened to the radio anyway