First off, this isn’t a list of songs to listen to while high. That would be a much different list. I always found the idea of pot songs kind of cheesy. It’s like 4-20, I don’t like doing anything because people say it’s what you’re supposed to do. But these songs transcend the cheesy.
Songs about dope in the seventies were notable for their variety. They ran the gamut from pop ditties, to metal, to country. In fact, there’s a higher than usual, no pun intended, number of country and acoustic songs on this list.
The big benefit of that is it made marijuana mainstream. While the government was pushing the evils of potheads, on variety shows you had Jim Stafford slyly pushing an innocent narrative, of down home good times. That wasn’t lost on the viewing public, who stopped buying the narrative the Nixon and Ford administrations were pushing. The first step was making potheads something you could laugh at. And eventually, laugh with.
The trick was keeping it subtle, without mentioning the drug by name. Which was a trick done all the way back in some of the earliest phono records, when songs about reefers and marijuana were fairly popular.
Anyway, this is my wholly unscientific list, gleaned from my own music library. You might have other favorites, and you’re welcome to leave those in the comments.
10. Wildwood Weed, Jim Stafford
Back in 1974, Jim Stafford was riding high with four top 40 singles from his debut album. The fourth was Wildwood Weed based on the old country standard Wildwood Flower, an instrumental by the Carter Family. It’s a storytelling song, spoken rather than sung.
Two brothers who are farmers happen to chew on a weed growing wild, discover its intoxicating properties and begin to grow it intentionally. All goes well till the feds show up and burn the crop. The farmers sit there, only a bit melancholy as they’re sitting on a bag of seeds.
Despite being banned on many radio stations, it still hit number seven on the pop charts. Though portraying a bumpkin, Stafford is a consummate professional, and one of the best guitarists around, though often overlooked. In high school he played in a band with Gram Parsons, who went to fame with the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, and who had a massive influence on Keith Richards and other British and American musicians, before dying of an overdose in 1973.
9. Smokin’ by Boston
I have to admit, I can only handle hearing this song about once a decade. It gets its spot on the list by being the only song about pot on an album that almost everyone seemed to have in the seventies.
Boston’s first album, released in 1976 was chocked full o’ hits, and in the process changed the sound of rock and roll. They were debatably the first band to capture the sound of a live concert in the studio, thanks to the genius and perseverance of its founder, Tom Sholtz.
Smokin’ is a blast of boogie which sounds like it’s being played in outer space. Smokin’ refers to the band being hot, but it’s also a cover for several marijuana references.
It’s a feel good anthem for the partiers. Candy for the mind and body.
8. Going to California, Led Zeppelin
Perhaps the mellowest song in the Led Zep canon, Going to California makes no secret of its inspiration, though the references are subtle and fly by. Listen closely in the instrumental introduction and you’ll hear the unmistakable sound of what is believed to be someone taking a pull off a joint.
Aside from that, there’s only one reference to weed, as the song is about California, earthquakes, Joni Mitchell and the other musicians growing out of the Laurel Canyon scene. As Robert Plant was to say onstage in 1971, it was dedicated to “the days when things were really nice and simple, and everything was far out all the time”
Written in front of the hearth at Bron-Yr-Aur, a cottage in Wales where the band decamped to write, and recorded at Headley Grange, a house in Britain which was used for many sessions during the seventies by such groups as Bad Company, Fleetwood Mac and Genesis, among others.
This was the epitome of a band fleeing to the country for idyllic settings, lots of chirping birds and no prying eyes to watch what was going on. And from that same hearth, later was to come Stairway to Heaven.
7. One Toke Over The Line, Brewer and Shipley
Not many songs get singled out by a sitting vice-president of the United States as “blatant drug-culture propaganda” that “threatens to sap our national strength” In fact, Spiro Agnew, VP under Richard Nixon pressured the FCC to ban the song.
He was effective in several regions of the U.S., but it still managed to reach #10 on the charts in 1971.
Mike Brewer related the genesis of the song, “One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, “Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight.” I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it.”
In fact, when he wrote it he intended the song to be a joke, but it took off.
It got an unexpected boost when a couple of regulars on the Lawrence Welk show performed it, with Welk obviously clueless about the song’s meaning. As Michael Brewer later said, “The Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, named us personally as a subversive to American youth, but at exactly the same time Lawrence Welk performed the crazy thing and introduced it as a gospel song. That shows how absurd it really is. Of course, we got more publicity than we could have paid for.”
6. Willin’, Little Feat
Lowell George was a confusing character. He sang about truckers, but was born in Hollywood. He was on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour at the age of six, was playing flute and guitar by eleven, and later learned sax, shakuhachi and sitar. By high school he was immersed in jazz.
Then he graduated and got a job in a gas station, pumping gas. That’s where he got his stories.
He was vocalist and guitarist of the Mother’s of Invention in the sixties, and when Zappa heard a demo of the song Willin’, he suggested he start a band. That became Little Feet.
With it’s refrain of “give me weed, white and wine,” it’s as close as you can come to a stoner’s singalong anthem. Go ahead, give it a listen and try not to sing. I dare you.
5. Illegal Smile, John Prine
The only song on this list to be made redundant by legal cannabis, Illegal Smile appeared on John Prine’s debut album in 1971. It was the opening track, and despite a seemingly obvious reference, Price assured us that it’s “not about smokin’ dope. It was more about how, ever since I was a child, I had this view of the world where I can find myself smiling at stuff nobody else was smiling at. But it was such a good anthem for dope smokers that I didn’t want to stop every time I played it and make a disclaimer.”
Regardless of Prine’s intent, it does in fact make a good anthem for dope smokers. And though it might be legal now, we can still light up and find ourselves smiling at things nobody else does.
4. Makin’ It Natural, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
In 1971, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show secured a meeting with the head of CBS records, Clive Davis. The drummer bashed away at a trash can, the others played acoustic and sang, while the keyboard player danced on the stunned Davis’ desk. They got the contract.
Their first album’s songs were written by Shel Silverstein, including Makin’ It Natural. Silverstein had worked with Dr. Hook on a film score, and was already known as an author/illustrator.
Makin’ It Natural talks about giving up all the vices for love, a common sentiment. Though by the second verse, he’s backing off on the idea a bit … “I’m going to throw it out the window, someday.”
I’m gonna throw my grass out the window Crumple up my papers too Give away my speed, Cause all I'm gonna need Is just a little bit of love from you And we'll be makin' it natural Ain't it just about time That old stuff I was so keen on I no longer have to lean on Cause your love's enough to keep me high Now if any you heads want some Panama red All you gotta do is to reach out your hand I'll trade my stash for just a little bit of cash To buy a simple golden wedding band And we'll be makin' it natural But don't you ask me how It's been the cause of all my sorrow But I think I'll start tomorrow 'Cause I sure could use a hit right now I'm gonna throw it out the window, some day Give away my cocaine Bust my spikes and flush a million mikes Of acid right down the drain And we'll be makin' it natural Don’t you ask me how, but baby we can do it if we try, It just takes a little willpower, that’s all, just a little willpower So let’s get together and build me up a little willpower Roll me up another one
3. Roll Another Number (For The Road), Neil Young
Tonight’s The Night might be the most stoned album of all time. Rocked by the deaths of his guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, Young wrote songs full of heartbreak and anger, and it’s not particularly easy listening, unless it’s late at night, you’re ripped to the tits and in a down mood.
Then it’s the perfect album.
Some would argue of Young’s songs, Homegrown should be on this list. I’d make the same argument, as it helped fuel a movement which moved pot back to nature. But unlike Homegrown, and most of the songs on this list, this one actually sounds like it was recorded while stoned.
According to Young, it’s “the first horror record” recorded in all night sessions while mainlining tequila and burgers, in a dark makeshift studio with a sympathetic band.
Young was disillusioned with fame and all that came with it. “Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.”
“The album ‘Tonight’s the Night’ is the best I have ever made. It’s recorded live. On one side there are four songs recorded in one take without stopping.” Speaking more recently, Young said “We played starting at midnight, through the night, and drove home just before dawn to our hotel every night for a month. Visitors came by late at night. One of these nights we practically nailed the whole album, and that is what we wanted to do…keep it real. We drank tequila and smoked weed. Teenagers, don’t do what we did. We didn’t fix the mistakes. The whole album and why we made it and I wrote those songs was all a mistake. It won’t be repeated again. Some say it’s the best thing we ever did.”
Think I’ll Roll Another Number (For The Road) is about exactly what it says, and doesn’t go much deeper than that. With an inebriated chorus and steel guitar, it’s a perfect road anthem, for dark winding roads none of us enjoy, but from time to time find ourselves on.
2. Passage to Bangkok, Rush
Rush set a good example for stoner rockers. Together for forty years, they never compromised artistic integrity for sales. Set their musical standards high. And still managed to smoke a lot of dope, without becoming burnouts in the process.
One of the few songs they wrote that directly touched on pot was Passage To Bangkok, a song from their 1976 album 2112. Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist took the title from E.M. Forster’s novel, A Passage To India. Guitarist Alex Lifeson tells the story, ‘This piece is about a fun little journey to all the good places you could go to have a puff. We thought it would be kind of fun to write a song about that, and Neil did it in a very eloquent way, I think. That song was probably written in a farmhouse, on an acoustic guitar, in front of a little cassette player of some sort. We would record like that and then go down in the basement and rehearse it.”
He went on to state the music was inspired by Led Zeppelin’s Kasmir, also based on travel in an exotic location.
When asked about how much dope they were smoking then, Lifeson told High Times “Probably not as much as now [laughs]. We were average, maybe slightly above average smokers. Ged less so; he was never a heavy smoker. But Neil and I and a few guys in the crew were. We just thought that the whole idea of traveling the world to find the best [weed] that you can would be such a fun thing to do. It was a fantasy journey for all of us. But as Neil was putting it together, the lyrics were so great. It had a little exotic, kind of Eastern feel to it. Now you don’t have to go very far.”
Indeed not. Now it’s very common to find all the strains they talk about in the song at your local dispensary.
1. Sweet Leaf, Black Sabbath
From the echoed cough that kick off song, to the leaden riff that carries it through, no pot song from the seventies flows like lead up your spine like Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf.
It’s guitarist Tony Iommi’s cough, taken from a recording of him and Ozzy Osbourne smoking dope back when they were making the album, Master of Reality in 1971. The title itself comes from a packet of Irish cigarettes which made the claim to having “the sweet leaf.”
The whole band lays claim to writing it, and it’s obvious it was done out of a spirit of stoned fun. It’s not particularly original, the riff is stolen from a relatively obscure Zappa song. The lyrics aren’t what you’d call high brow …
My life was empty, forever on a down Until you took me, showed me around My life is free now, my life is clear I love you sweet leaf, though you can't hear Oh, yeah baby! Come on now, try it out! Straight people don't know what you're about They put you down and shut you out You gave to me a new belief And soon the world will love you sweet leaf Oh, yeah baby!
Poetry it’s not. But it all works, and became a go to song for people firing up a joint in a car for the better part of the seventies. And beyond.
Go ahead, give it a listen you’ll find your eyelids are dropping stoned before the vocals even come in.
It gets its place at the top of my list for being there loud and proud for all these years, and for having the balls to explicitly deal with the subject matter when most bands were content to keep their references hidden.