Silicon Valley billionaire investor Marc Andreessen has been warning about the catastrophes caused by drugs this week on X, America’s last public space for discussion. It’s an open secret that Silicon Valley types are often interested in drugs, which is the typical post-60s madness of liberation. What’s less well known, humorously enough, is that there are people who speak against it. Andreessen is one of them.
But the examples Andreessen chose to highlight come from music rather than science or tech, perhaps artists he liked. Syd Barrett, the original Pink Floyd, Peter Green, the original Fleetwood Mac, & Brian Wilson, the Beach Boy—they all self-destructed in the quest to find themselves. What they found is, if you will, a cruel joke on the desire of that time for Eastern wisdom, for Buddhist release from striving or desire or self-importance.
The first two examples are British imitators of America, which was the basic recipe for rock music. The English, unlike the Americans, have a very rich musical tradition, so they could turn rock, i.e. middleclass white boy identity poetry, into something worthwhile artistically; moreover, lacking an aristocracy, America could neither keep talent down as easily nor entice people with refinement, culture, beauty quite the same way—the necessary pressures for creating artists. Americans on the other hand were freer & somewhat happier, as evidenced in the music of the Beach Boys.
Now two thoughts struck me reading Andreessen's posts on music. One of them is, the year was 1968 & it was already the case that the promise of the ‘60s was failing. Granted, Pink Floyd made better music without Barrett, but that year, he self-destructed. So also Wilson, who had been taking drugs since 1965. As for Green, he self-destructed a year or two later. Lots of others besides them—you could say the parade ended with a hecatomb. There are three remarkable things about this phenomenon, aside, so to speak, from the suffering. First, these are musicians—as professionals, they cast a spell on the audience; yet they were themselves under a rather more dangerous spell, & one, moreover, which seems like it wasn’t necessary. As the name suggests, the musician is not a civilian, he has technique going for him, whereas the audience is not capable of manipulating instruments to elicit emotion; there should be a certain immunity built into that capacity for work. Second, there’s a difficulty in understanding celebrity because people aren’t born celebrities, nor are they trained or educated for celebrity, so that they’re still ordinary citizens from most points of view, nor yet could we say that celebrity is a habit, because celebrities must live apart from ordinary citizens. Either the mores should offer some protection, some restraint or else the special status involve a more perfect achievement of a good life than is available to the ordinary citizen. Third, at that time it was much less common for ordinary people to self-destruct than for celebrities to do so. This has changed tremendously, it seems that celebrities were harbingers of something that would corrupt the larger society, but the current situation is from a certain point of view more easily understandable: Ordinary people envy celebrities, not the other way around. We call this ‘deaths of despair.’
The other thought concerns why all this happened. Now, the usual way in which we speak about the cause or the character of that self-destruction is in reference to the freedom or creativity of those artists. Rare types might be exceedingly vulnerable, but it is of course somewhat difficult to say why. Maybe the place to start, however, is with what surprised Andreessen, that these guys weren’t very violent or passionate as musicians, but instead soft guys. Far from leading the Dionysian revelry—which Steve Sailer might call ‘deaths of exuberance’—they seem to quiet down harshness; their music doesn’t require electric guitars. It’s not obvious why there should be such cruelty in softness, but it’s somehow a feature of our way of life. The basic problem it reveals is that the beauty of the music seems to be a covering up of the ugliness of life, but it cannot help making a promise—a more beautiful life—which leads to disappointment. The cure may be worse than the problem.
These two thoughts are, you could say, the manlier, or technical, & the feminine, or inspired. More, as I started saying, the suffering of the artists is now the much less publicized suffering of the techies, who perhaps play a parallel role. We’re not likely to see comparably shocking self-destruction, but we will have to ask ourselves again why celebrity involves so much suffering.
"The English, unlike the Americans, have a very rich musical tradition, so they could turn rock, i.e. middleclass white boy identity poetry, into something worthwhile artistically; moreover, lacking an aristocracy, America could neither keep talent down as easily nor entice people with refinement, culture, beauty quite the same way—the necessary pressures for creating artists. Americans on the other hand were freer & somewhat happier, as evidenced in the music of the Beach Boys."
Not sure I agree with statement. Maybe in terms of classical music, but America ushered in Country & Western, bluegrass, American folk, Jazz, Blues, and Rhythm & Blues (R&B). Also, you highlight drugs but what role does alcohol play in the destruction of artists of all types have in the culture. Many, many deaths and self-destruction at the bottom of a bottle. Just a few thoughts!
Those three artists foremost had problems with fitting their artistic idealism into the extremely materialistic and cynical music machine they bacame a part of, and which rode them to exhaustion and beyond.
Pink Floyd of course made many songs and whole albums about that dilemma(e.g. Wish You Were Here). Brian Wilson got almost crushed by the machine (which included his father). Peter Green had similar problems, and started to despise matarialism.
They were rich, famous, and hated what they become, and didn't see a way to escape. There were drugs everywhere. Naturally they took drugs to try to ease their pain, but it doesn't mean the drugs where causing the issues.
The Beatles describe how they started to hate touring in 65 or so, and then started to do drugs to escape. But after they quit touring, they got off drugs quickly, at least got off the addiction. There was no need for it anymore.
I don't think LSD was or is a problematic drug anyway. One is not really tempted to overdo, and it is not physically addicitve. (Syd Barret probably is one of the few exceptions)
Andreesen should not mix it up with the really destructive drugs. Those who killed themselves with drugs did it with alcohol, heroin, or cocaine (e.g. Billy Holiday, Jimi Hendrix, Bon Scott, Amy Weinhouse).