Waiting for the Man

In this book Harry Shapiro examines the time-honoured association between drugs and popular music. He begins with a brief discussion of Western drug-taking before drugs were made illegal in America by the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, but the twin rise of jazz and marijuana in the early 1920s heralds the real start of his survey. Each development in popular music has brought with it a new fashion in drugs; Shapiro catalogues these trends and relates them to sociological factors such as race, class and society's attitude towards musicians. He tells in detail the stories of many famous victims of drug abuse, from Charlie Parker to Sid Vicious, and provides evidence of collusion between the drugs and music industries. Shapiro also examines contemporary press accounts of well-known drug arrests, such as those of the Rolling Stones and Boy George, and considers with some irony the 1980s phenomenon of pop stars crusading against drug abuse. Throughout it all, organized crime plays an intermittent but sinister part.