During this time of quarantine and bunkering, some are getting back into movies and music. Almost everyone enjoys a good rock song with their cannabis. So we asked the Texas Cannabis Collective group what their favorite cannabis/stoner rock songs were and this is how everyone responded.
#10. Feel Good Hit of the Summer – Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age was formed by Joshua Homme after the dissolution of his previous band Kyuss, another desert/stoner rock band. The song was the second single to be released on the group’s sophomore album Rated R. Walmart even threatened to pull the album in a debate over the song needing a warning. Homme noted that the album is called Rated R and that on its own should be the warning, getting Walmart to back off. The song consists only of the lyrics nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol. The chorus containing the lyrics No. C-c-c-cocaine. Homme clarified that the lyrics came to his head as he stumbled through the desert at night after a New Year’s party trying to figure out what left him so intoxicated. The band has stated that the song maintains a neutral stance, and is intended to be that way. It doesn’t endorse doing drugs, and it doesn’t condemn them. The song even has legendary Judas Priest singer Rob Halford singing backing vocals on the final chorus of the drug-riddled track. The song was given many positive reviews, managed to make quite a few lists as a popular song and remains a staple of their live performances.
#9. Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
Despite this isn’t a song, and in fact, an entire album, that didn’t stop it from getting the votes to be on the top ten of our poll. The Pink Floyd album is listed on numerous sites as having some of the druggiest songs. On the Run and Brain Damage are cited as some of the trippiest, with Brain Damage featuring the title of the album in the lyrics, as it was originally to be titled. Despite the band’s statement to the contrary, people to this day still spread a fun conspiracy that the album was written and performed to be a soundtrack to the film The Wizard of Oz. People that have played the two side by side have talked about apparent synchronicities. Examples include the tornado near the start of the movie aligning with the screaming section of “The Great Gig in the Sky”, Dorothy begins to jog at the lyric “no one told you when to run” during “Time”, the song money playing as Dorothy steps out to see the yellow/golden brick road, Dorothy balancing on a tightrope fence during the line “balanced on the biggest wave” in “Breathe”, and the Scarecrow dance during “Brain Damage.” Online commenters have claimed that someone on a lot of weed must have made the connection. SpinDitty.com says that it is a concept album that discusses the philosophical and physical ideas that can lead to a person’s insanity and ultimately unfulfilled life. We’ll let you decide what you think the album is about.
#8. Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
Another Pink Floyd track makes the list, this time from 1979’s The Wall. The concept album is about a rock star named “Pink” with no relation to the pop star. In “Comfortably Numb”, Pink is medicated by a doctor so he can perform for a show. The song came about as bassist and singer Roger Waters’s experience of being injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps before a Pink Floyd show in Philadelphia on the 1977 In the Flesh Tour. “That was the longest two hours of my life,” Waters said, “trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm.” At the show, Roger’s hands were numb “like two toy balloons.” Waters said during an interview in the 80’s that he was unable to focus, but also realized the fans didn’t care because they were so busy screaming, hence “comfortably” numb. He said most of The Wall is about alienation between the audience and the band. David Gilmour performed the song live in 2006 with David Bowie singing the verses.
#7. Mary Jane’s Last Dance – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Is it a drug song? Or is it a final goodbye to a love. You take the pick with this 1993 single from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Even the guitarist Mike Campbell has lead people to believe he doesn’t quite sure know himself, saying it could be either one. Either way, the cannabis community has embraced it as one of their own for some time. There’s no confusion as why with lyrics saying, “last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain.” The music video wouldn’t give that inclination though with Kim Basinger playing a dead woman dressed in wedding attire by Petty as a mortician’s assistant. This video definitely gets filed under the creepy section despite featuring a young attractive Basinger. Perhaps there is another level of creepy added in once viewers realize that in real life right now Petty is the one that has passed and Basinger is alive and well.
#6. Garden Grove – Sublime
NO Garden Grove is not a hint at marijuana. It’s the name of a town in California. Home of one of the largest glass buildings in the country. The song is pretty much an autobiographical take on Norwell’s trips he had been on in California. Smells like Lou-dog in the van isn’t the smell of weed, but Norwell’s actual Dalmation. The song references sticking needles in your arm which probably alludes to Norwell’s heroin habit, which resulted in his death just two months before the record featuring this track was released. The song is just the life of Norwell.
#5. Flying High Again – Ozzy Osbourne
The 1981 song by Osbourne was featured on Ozzy’s sophomore solo effort Diary of a Madman. The song thought to be about cannabis by many listeners, is actually about Ozzy feeling good that he has a re-emergence in the rock community. This came after being fired by Black Sabbath in 1979, being with the band for over a decade. After that, Ozzy thought his career was over, but Blizzard of Ozz was successful with the single Crazy Train reaching number 9 on the Billboard top tracks. The song was the last single released in America featuring guitarist Randy Rhoads who died in 1982 of a plane crash. The plane crash was a result of a private pilot intoxicated and angry at his ex-wife who was on the tour bus, trying to clip the tour bus with a private jet.
#4. Sweet Leaf – Black Sabbath
If anybody got the idea that Flying High Again was about marijuana, it’s probably because of the notoriety of Ozzy’s drug habits and this song. The song is from the third Black Sabbath album, Master of Reality. The opening contains a loop of Tony Iommi coughing after taking a hit of a joint. Sweet Leaf is considered a signature song of Black Sabbath and is a reflection of the band’s heavy pot use during this time. The title for the song came from a pack of cigarettes which said: “It’s the sweet leaf.” The song’s popularity still continues with other bands paying homage to it. The main guitar riff is the instrumental basis of the Beastie Boys’ song “Rhymin’ and Stealin”, the first track on their breakthrough album Licensed to Ill (1986). The Red Hot Chili Peppers play the riff as the outro to their hit song Give It Away (1991). While The Butthole Surfers have reworked the song as “Sweet Loaf” (1987).
#3. Dark Star – Grateful Dead
Dark Star is possibly one of Grateful Dead’s most known songs today, despite failing to sell even a third of the copies that were printed in 1968. The single was originally 2 minutes and 44 seconds long but has gone on for up to 30 minutes during live performance. This includes 13 minutes of Jerry Garcia solo work on the guitar, as the song would turn into a jam session song during live performance. The song went on to be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Dark Star is an oxymoron: the brightest of objects, seen as the absence of brightness. The song was written by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Garcia was known well in the public with the rest of his band for being marijuana users, so much to the extent that Richard Nixon used Garcia’s picture in a campaign commercial. AS the years went on the band’s use of drugs continued and evolved to new substances, mainly as relief devices for the band’s heavy and constant touring around the world. The band called it quits and disbanded after Garcia’s death from a heart attack in 1995.
#2. The Joker – Steve Miller Band
He’s a joker, He’s a smoker, He’s a midnight toker. The infamous song by the Steve Miller Band topped the charts when released in 1974. The song’s opening lyrics refer to the songs “Space Cowboy” from Miller’s Brave New World album, Gangster of Love from Sailor and Enter Maurice from Recall the Beginning…A Journey from Eden. The song is sometimes noted for its wolf whistle played on a slide guitar after the “lovey-dovey” parts and the “some people call me Maurice” portion. Miller won a lawsuit against rap group The Geto Boys when they used this song as a sample without his permission in 1990. In 2000, he let Shaggy use the bass line from this on his hit, “Angel.” A year later, Miller let Run-D.M.C. sample “Take The Money And Run.” So many stoners have to related to this song that in 2012, Spin magazine named it the most commercially successful pot song of all time.
The honorable mentions
These are the noted songs that made the poll, but not the top ten slots.
Smoke Two Joints by Sublime
Hits from the Bong – Cypress Hill
Bowl For Two – The Expendables
Hash Pipe – Weezer
Champagne Supernova – Oasis
You Don’t Know How It Feels – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
45 – Shinedown
#1. Purple Haze – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Released in 1967, many fans and the press interpreted the song as referring to a psychedelic experience due to lines such as “purple haze all in my brain” and “‘scuse me while I kiss the sky”. However, Hendrix and those closest to him never discussed any connection between psychedelic drugs and the song, although his biographer admits that, at the time, to do so would have been “professional suicide”. Manager and Producer Chas Chandler, who claimed he was present when Hendrix wrote it, later denied suggestions that Hendrix did so while under the influence of psychedelics. Regardless, the cannabis community adopted it as the name of a now popular cannabis strain known for its deeply purple buds. Hendrix offered several explanations of the song’s meaning, one being: “He [the song’s protagonist] likes this girl so much, that he doesn’t know what [state] he’s in, ya know. A sort of daze, I suppose. That’s what the song is all about.” This draws on an experience Hendrix had while still in New York, where he felt that a girl was attempting to use voodoo to trap him and he became ill. Shapiro believes that this is reflected in most of the first two verses: “Purple haze all around, don’t know if I’m coming up or down. Am I happy or in misery, whatever it is that girl put a spell on me.”
Song you think we missed?
Let us know in the comments on Facebook. You never know, there may be a part 2 in the future.