You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Creativity and Substance Abuse

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Things get heavy on this episode, as Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe about the perceived abundance of drug use in jazz culture. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Sign up for You'll Hear It Premium to access our SpeakPipe hotline! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Do you like to get high? Only when I play. I like to get high on life. And thanks for asking. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily jazz and acceptable medical advice coming at. No, no, it's not. Just daily jazz advice coming at you. Yeah, that's right. We're a little scared about this, right? We're a little trepidious. This is a speak pipe from Terry.

Yeah, I haven't heard this. You've heard it. I've heard it. It's been a minute because I've been burying it. But you saw it and it caught your eyes. I said maybe we got something I had on this. We're going to live our life not in a terrified way of horrible questions. We're going to lean into the discomfort.

Right. You ready? Okay. All right. Hey, Adam, Pete. This is Terry. I want to just let you know first that your topics over the last few weeks have been incredible, very interesting and helpful.

So thanks for everything you're doing. I just wanted to quickly ask you about your thoughts. experiences dealing with the historical sense that drugs and creativity have had with jazz. We've lost a lot of jazz greats over the years. You know who they are. Don't need to name them. But didn't know if today you would kind of say that the music genre and the world of jazz in particular still has that mindset that using drugs, taking drugs while you're playing

adds to creativity. I've heard some musicians kind of say that, but not so much in recent times. Anyway, just curious on your experiences of how drug use and performing, you know, what you see, what you hear, what you think about that these days. Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Thank you very much. That's a great question, Terry. Thanks for sending that in. First of all, you sound exactly like a jazz pianist named Hal Galper. So you might want to YouTube Hal Galper. I'm sure you don't look like him,

but you sound exactly like him. You know, a YouTube or even just Google image. I'm going to do that. Oh, that's right. Yeah, he does sound like him. And he looks like him too. Terry looks. Oh, not, we don't know that.

We have no idea. He sounds like he might. It's, you know, it's a great question. I don't know about your experiences with drugs as you perform. But for me, it's never something that I've done. You know, like I'm not a weed guy. ever really you know like that's not the only kind of drug no it definitely is not I mean and I've

definitely you know live my my fair share of life but it's not something that uh that I've I've ever been into and I know a ton of musicians where it's not something they've ever been into and I've known a ton of musicians that have struggled and I honestly think it's more it's more like it's not it's not I should say not more it's not anymore prevalent in music or jazz than it is amongst plumbers or you know what I mean or like anybody like the general population like there was a comedian who was it was like someone was talking about the NFL right and like you know the trouble that like you know various NFL stars get into and they're like as opposed to what carpenters like you know what I mean like the the percentage is about the same like so so I would

imagine that it's just because some very famous jazz musicians have no notoriously had their lives wrecked by substance abuse. Right, right. But it's no more than general population. Yeah, I certainly don't think now. I'm not super well versed in the history of this, you know, just because I wasn't around, you hear different stories.

Obviously, the lives of several prominent jazz musicians, I'm thinking Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, you know, people that have been in, like, movies where there's been a Hollywood version of... Billy Holiday. Billy Holiday, where they really play up. To me, it never really rung true that drugs were as big of a part of their life as, especially the really hard stuff that they wanted to portray them to be.

And then hearing from some personal accounts from older musicians that I got a chance to be around, that kind of confirmed it. Not to say that there hasn't been terrible addiction and substance abuse, as you say, just like with other fields and just people in general. I mean, it's an epidemic at different times and in different ways. ways with and we can't you know we can't do it with two broadest strokes I think though because you talk about alcohol dude you talk about marijuana cook I mean all these different they're different but there's there's the whole addictive side of things but also there's no

consistency it's not like you know if you're a terrible drunk or addicted to smack it makes you more creative person no there's no evidence that that's true I think yeah and that's what I think is like has been Hollywood Hollywood eyes in a way that I think is very you know non-productive and just untrue. Right. Like you think you have to be Jackson Pollock or Jim Morrison or something to live a creative lifestyle. This is not the case at all. Now I did, you know, and you hear about some

younger musicians coming up, especially like kind of during the B-Bop era that really idolized and lionized Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie of these different musicians. And maybe some of them were using certain drugs and then the younger musicians were like, oh, in order to do that, I've got to do that, you know, which is

unfortunate if that happened. But I mean, I would think just by the nature. I'm trying to remember if I've even been around. I mean, I guess I've been around it a little bit. I've definitely never seen anybody like doing better, certainly when they're drinking. No.

That we've been around probably too much. Yeah. And maybe participated in a little here and there where, you know, like I had some drinks and they got up to play and was like. It's never a good idea. It's never a good idea. Whatever inhibitions you think you're getting over, what you're losing in accuracy and execution.

Can do one drink. And that's my kind of limit if I'm playing. because I can't do more than that without losing quality. Yeah, no, same with me. And I think that that's just really not, I mean, look, playing this music, it requires so much mentally and not just like kind of mental math. There's that part about it, but just, you know, I think it's a mental thing in terms of like the amount of brain power you have to put even towards creativity. That's such a, that's not just from your heart. That's from your brain.

It's from everything. And so if you're impaired in any way, I mean, if you're really good, yeah, you can. can still sound pretty good. You can get away with things that somebody that's not as good, just kind of on autopilot if you've been drinking or smoking or something, but you're never going to be as good. I mean, you could never convince me that somebody's better when they're taking any kind of substance than they would be otherwise, because that would suggest that their creativity, their genius playing or whatever it is doesn't come from, it comes from the substance abuse

and not from, you know, the skills that they have. and the passion that they have. Yeah, yeah. And what they've developed. And I would just, that would never make sense to me. I mean, Billy Holiday, you know, was not an amazing artist because she was tortured, soul and all these things. Some of those things may have been true. And she certainly went through a lot.

And the other side of this is like, we got to look at like the cultural implications on these musicians. For sure. Society put on. For sure. As opposed to actually having that a connection with the music. For sure. You know, excelling at something where you are being placed into situations that you are not. socially accepted. I mean, like,

the whole thing of like, Miles Davis is in New York, and we think, okay, New York in the 50s and 60s was so progressive. Only compared to Alabama. Yeah, but I mean, he's still got butted in the nose in front of a village, you know, the club in the village. Yeah, and he's like, oh, that's my name on here. They're like, move along and he's like, that's my name. It's incredible. Yeah, yeah. So that would drive me to drink. That's for sure.

I agree with all that. I agree that it's more of a, you know, we have to look at the broader cultural circumstances that these artists were under at the time, then, you know, jazz plus heroin equals good. Like, that's just ridiculous. And then certain drugs, because they were used by minorities, was criminalized in a way. I mean, there was, like, cocaine was legal because it was like a,

and look, I'm getting way beyond my pain right here, but I know, like, the song doesn't give me the, you know, uh, cocaine, da-da-da-da-da. Um, is part of, you know, there, there was certain usage of, wasn't cocaine in the original Coca-Cola? Yes, that's the rumor. I'm, I'm sure there's some modern jackass in there somewhere, but that is the rumor.

Right. But, man, I think to Terry's broader point, like, you know, I would say that it's proven out even more so today than ever. I mean, if you think about, you know, some of the great names of our time. I mean, I was even just watching, like, a little young Jacob Collier's Tiny Death. There's no way that guy's on any kind of like, he's high on life for sure. Oh, man, you got to be scouts. I thought you're going to be like, that guy's a crack hit. But how can you get more creative than that thing?

You know what I mean? And like, I don't... Actually, I have a list here of musicians that I personally know that are drug addicts. Let's call them out. Is this a good time? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who you got?

Jacob? No, but you know what I mean? Like, yeah. I don't think that you go hand in hand at all. In fact, I think the idea that you need to be to alter your state at all to be creative is counterproductive. Yeah.

I think, you know, most of us get up and go to work. Yeah. And work on our art and work on our craft. And that's how 99% of, and then all those people are people. So now some of them are alcoholics, some of them are drug. Yeah. But 99% of that's all they want to do. Now, I do think that maybe we, it seems like we encounter in the creative world,

especially at the higher levels of maybe creativity and artistry, you do get people with sort of addictive personalities. Of course. That could fall, you know, if you're not careful, like if you don't channel it the right way, it's very easy for that to be, you know, going. in the direction of a substance or something. But any more than attorneys or doctors? You know what I mean?

Like, I think it's just there's... Being around too many attorneys makes me want to drain. No, but I think there are just... As you become more successful, there are pressures that people put on themselves and coping mechanisms, whether it's smack. I don't know, I keep saying smack, but I love... I don't know.

I think it's heroin. It's black tar heroin. That's another term I just threw. No idea what any of those things are. One of my kids asked me the other day, they were like... They were like, meth, do you smoke it or something? Yes.

I mean, my kids are not young, young. You know, but they weren't asking like because I want to do it. But I realized I didn't even know. I felt like such a nerd. I'm like, you know, I don't know. How do you take math? However the hell you can do it. Well, you're from High Ridge.

I thought maybe at least you've seen it. No, I believe you smoke it. You smoke it. I believe so, but I've never smoked meth. Meth does not seem big in the jazz community. None of these things really do. No, but actually, so, you know, You know, in all the years I've been playing jazz, I'm trying to even think.

Maybe I'm just unaware. Honestly, you know it's big in the jazz community right now? Mountain Dew. I see a lot of Mountain Dew games. Diet. Diet Mountain Dew. Yeah. No, I just, it's been so rare that I've encountered any kind of hard drug usage, if ever, that I've actually seen or hurt.

I mean, I guess you hear about something, but I mean, like musicians that I've worked with or being on the scene or whatever, it's not like I've ever gone to rehearsal and there's like a bail of math or however it's organized. Again, if you were in finance. would you see more or less? You know what I mean? It's like I feel like it gets a bad rap just because of the legendary figures that have died too young

from drug use. There's so many musicians. Not just in jazz either. Like Jimmy Hendricks, Kirkrow Bang. You know, like... Well, it's also changed. It's changed a lot. It's changed a lot since, like,

when we came up in the jazz world as 50 years ago, you know, thankfully. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just numb with food at this point, so... Yeah. Keto for life. Well, good. Well, well,

Speaking of being addicted to think, we have some people that are addicted to the you'll hear. That's the greatest segue in the history of the show. We have people that are addicted to the you'll hear a podcast. Wow. I didn't think it was that funny. For real? So awkward. It's so good.

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