Drugs and musicians. Burgers and fries. Love and marriage. They all go together, as Frank once said, like a horse and carriage. Where would popular music be had it not been for the influence of mind altering herbs and chemicals? And how many of its brightest stars would still be alive today were it not for the multiple ways in which they could bend their heads and numb their souls?

Let’s be honest, whatever your feelings about drugs: a vast majority of the best albums, songs and bands owe their existence to narcotics. Entire genres and sub-genres are built on the assumption that the listener will be “on” something, and bands have made whole albums with scarcely an unfried mind between them (Cypress Hill, I’m looking in your direction). The Beatles and Hendrix (marijuana, acid), Velvet Underground (heroin), Bob Marley (marijuana), Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd (acid) Bob Dylan (acid, amphetamines), The Rolling Stones (everything): all are generally thought to have produced their finest work whilst indulging heavily in their chosen product. Waiting For The Man takes a fascinating look at the reasons and history for the inescapable and unbreakable link between music and drugs.

Harry Shapiro’s credentials are that he has “worked in the drugs field for 20 years” (presumably in professional study and counselling, rather than growing his own), and his knowledge and presentation of facts and stories is impeccably delivered. His comprehensive examination of the pivotal role drugs have played in shaping the course of popular music covers the origins of marijuana use in 1920’s jazz clubs, right through to the synergistic relationship between modern dance/trip-hop and Ecstasy consumption.

There’s plenty of fascinating history as he recounts the 1920’s jazz scene in New Orleans, where saxophonist Mezz Mezzrow discovered that, after smoking weed, he “could go on playing for years without running out of ideas and energy”. It was a view shared by virtually all jazz musicians, from Hoagy Carmichael to Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway. Mezzrow was such an avid proponent of “Mary Jane” that the drug became known in many circles as “Mezz”, and few jazz musicians would go on stage without having partaken, in order to loosen their senses and relax their creative minds.

It wasn’t long before the authorities took notice, and Shapiro’s recurring theme throughout the book is of the constant conflict between the various music scenes, and the law. Reactionary and draconian measures, fuelled by newspaper hysteria over the “drugs menace”, were employed by the FBI and, later on, the British police force. It’s a pattern that, Shapiro notes, continues sporadically to this day.

The book carefully details the proliferation of amphetamines and LSD during the 60’s, and it’s this section of the book that truly grabs the imagination. Many of your favourite artists make appearances here – Dylan, Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, The Beatles, The Who, Love, The Grateful Dead, The Doors – and the stories relating to the supposed life-changing mystical properties of acid are particularly interesting. Manufactured accidentally by chemist Albert Hoffman in 1943 (who got some on his fingers and took off on an trip lasting five terrifying hours), the chemical was underhandedly tested on unwitting US army personnel and felons. A respected and otherwise rational officer plunged ten floors to his death, believing he could fly.

Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Owsley Stanley are depicted as visionary if misguided pioneers of peace and a new life philosophy, subsequently adopted by the Beatles and the Grateful Dead amongst many others, and the tales of the “be-in” festivals actually make the music fan yearn to have been there for the spectacle – a time when it genuinely seemed that music and this new mindset had the power to revolutionise the world. Although things didn’t quite work out that way, the ripples created by this movement and these bands last to this day, with successive bands attempting to capture the inspiration they believed only came with chemical enhancement – Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Tricky, Happy Mondays, Dr Dre, etc.

There’s a great chapter on reggae music and the timeless appeal of Bob Marley (and the size of his herb habit is revealed to be truly staggering), and a section detailing the various rock star busts through the years, in which the Rolling Stones play a starring role. The deaths and misadventures are also well covered with a special list at the end of who died from what, and it makes for sobering, saddening reading.

Shapiro also intelligently analyses the birth and development of modern rave and dance music, comparing it accurately to the late 60’s summer of love, in that a similar mood of we’re-gonna-change-the-world optimism pervaded and propelled the scene. The introduction of Ecstasy in the late 80’s catalysed the movement, and provoked furious indignation and hysteria from the media and authorities. The descriptions of the various heavy-handed tactics of the police and governments in dealing with “the scourge” are fascinating insights into the genuine panic felt by the establishment.

Shapiro’s great strength in this book is in his objective and analytical style. He never glorifies, justifies or condones the use of drugs, and never condemns them either. Instead, he presents an even-handed and thoroughly engrossing study of how they have shaped and steered the course of popular music, and his knowledge of myriad genres and movements is flawless. For anyone with an interest in the history of rock music, and its various incarnations as society-threatening ideal and way of life, Waiting For The Man is essential reading. Pass the duchie.