The Faustian Bargain of Rock and Roll
By Cory Franklin
August 1st, 2025
Do drugs make musicians more creative?
The United States and Great Britain in the 1960s and 70s were a golden age for creative musicians who pioneered a number of original musical genres that thrive today in one form or another. Recently, two of the greatest figures of that era died within days of each other: Brian Wilson, who popularized surf music and took rock in previously unexplored directions, and Sly Stone, one of the first to fuse rock with funk and soul music.
The two had much in common despite outward differences, including, unfortunately, being victims of serious drug abuse. Musicians constantly seek their muse, but the pernicious trend of abusing drugs has ended or devastated the lives of artists such as those of Wilson and Stone, depriving the world of many of their gifts.
The careers of Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, born less than a year apart, resembled each other in a number of ways. Brian Wilson was a White kid from the car and surfer culture of Southern California in the early 1960s, when there was a mass national migration to the region. Wilson had a preternatural ear for music and though never a surfer himself, adopted the music of that culture and turned it into an international phenomenon.
But his genius lay in developing this music into some much deeper – a rich, complex, and unique musical style that left everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Paul McCartney in awe. The meteoric rise of the Beach Boys, the group he founded, lasted essentially only five years from 1962 to 1966, when his life unraveled, beset by family and business pressures, bouts of mental illness, and notably, extensive drug use that included ample amounts of LSD. After that, he drifted musically and was never the same. While he did perform and compose sporadically after that, occasionally with well-received work, the truth is that his later music would have been ignored but for the genius of his early career.
His 1966 masterpiece, Good Vibrations, is often recognized as drug-enhanced, but ultimately those same drugs that helped produce it soon destroyed his creativity. He acknowledged in a 2016 Rolling Stone interview, “I want people to realize that drugs can be very detrimental and dangerous. I’ve told a lot of people don’t take psychedelic drugs. It’s mentally dangerous to take. I regret having taken LSD. It’s a bad drug.”
Sly Stone, a Black kid from Northern California, grew up as a self-taught musical child prodigy who learned to play at least four instruments as a boy. He made his name as a producer and performer in the Bay Area of the late 1960s, when youth were flocking to San Francisco with flowers in their hair. Amidst race riots and the Vietnam War, the Beach Boys were by then considered passe and square.
Like Brian Wilson, Sly created a new style of music, in his case based on a racial fusion blend of rhythm and blues, funk and soul. His band, Sly and the Family Stone, gave a legendary performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, a highlight of the movie “Woodstock.” This propelled Sly to the top of the pop and soul charts.
His music profoundly influenced later Motown recordings and artists from Prince and Rick James to Public Enemy and LL Cool J.
But as a result of copious drug use, Sly’s career, like that of Brian Wilson, quickly melted down after roughly five years, 1967 to 1971. His musical gift squandered, his performances became more erratic, and he became a frequent no-show at concerts. In Chicago, his tardiness to a show resulted in the notorious 1970 Grant Park riot that turned violent and saw nearly 100 people injured. Also, like Wilson, Sly’s business difficulties and issues with bandmates followed predictably. His drug use became so bad that for a time he was homeless and lived in a camper in Los Angeles.
The story of how drugs destroyed brilliant musicians is a recurrent theme. It had happened before in the 1940s and 50s with the scourge of a heroin endemic in the jazz world. Jazz greats including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, as well as celebrated jazz singers Billie Holiday and Anita O’Day, developed habits which damaged or truncated their careers. In many cases, the artists abused alcohol, either in combination with heroin or in an attempt to wean from heroin, with subsequent harm to their music, often resulting in the artists’ premature death. Imagine how much more great jazz there could have been.
Some life lessons are hard-earned, if at all. It is somewhat surprising that Brian Wilson and Sly Stone survived into their eighties – even though they died artistically in their twenties. Others contemporary musicians were not as lucky: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Amy Winehouse (died in their twenties), Keith Moon and John Bonham (their thirties), Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston (their forties), Michael Jackson, Jerry Garcia and Prince (their fifties), and Tom Petty (his sixties).
The tale of Faust is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in order to gain knowledge and perform magical deeds but who cannot avoid eventually being consumed. For a fortunate few, perhaps like Keith Richards or Ozzy Osbourne (although, in truth, Ozzy was more a performer than a bona fide musical talent), drugs enhance their music briefly, but in virtually every case drugs ultimately erode and then destroy the creative impulse. Despite their musical brilliance, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, between them, left little more than a decade’s worth of wonderful music before their lives turned tragic and unproductive. They took drugs and eventually drugs took them.
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Dr. Cory Franklin
Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine.
Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.
In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.
Comments 17
Ozzy Osbourne was fairly instrumental in defining a genre as well.
interesting that the Beatles used them, especially John. An assassin got him. Cancer got George (cigarettes, not drugs). Paul and Ringo still going into their 80s. Paul is still creative. Ringo just topped country music charts with a new country album last year.
The Beatles invariably come up. John was a heavy heroin user in the 1970s and his music in that era pretty much shows it. Most of it not very good, unless you like Cold Turkey. Paul used LSD only a couple of times and with the exception of marijuana he is not what you would consider a heavy drug user. George’s best output was after he stopped taking most drugs and we are still waiting for Ringo’s best work.
Sly (Sylvester Stone) produced the Beau Brummels tune Laugh, Laugh and Just a Little before he had Cynthia and Jerry tell ” All the Squares, Go Home!”
Being around the “artist” community for the last 40 years, I see how hard the every day interactions can be, It’s hard to see the world as no one else seems to see it. Many start with a glass of wine to calm them, which in turn gets upped and in may cases tragically. Very few seem to be immune from the social anxiety or confusion of being and thinking differently. Maybe they do go hand in hand. Most don’t make it to the hard plastic chairs in the church bazemint.
Off topic, is this killer of husband and wife(Devil’s Den killings) named Andrew James McGann from the southside of Chicago related to Andrew James McGann from the funeral home with the same name?
Christ, I hope not.
It appears not. He was a teacher in Oklahoma before showing up in Arkansas. A 4th grade teacher at that. Wonder how the kids he taught will end up ?
A gifted diagnostician, Dr. Franklin even diagnoses popular culture expertly. He also has a good doctor’s talent for delivering even bad news with calm and wisdom, as he does in this column. You could wish that he — rather than “dark side” doctors — had been there to consult with those self-destructive musicians; many from Brian to Elvis could have benefitted.
Franklin mentions one musician whose tragedy haunts me, the greatest jazz artist Miles Davis. Miles fought through his early bout of addiction to record the greatest jazz album ever, “Kind of Blue.” His descent a decade later into caterwauling jazz “fusion” reflected two widespread contagions: recurrence of addiction and rock distorting so much music from jazz to country.
The accurate Comment on the Beatles by Jeffrey Carter is augmented by Dr. Franklin’s on John Lennon’s dismal post-Beatles music. It hurts to recall a great talent like Lennon influenced by certain “muses” during the same period.
Great column! Thanks
We lost John Bonham to drink. Same for Keith Moon.
Moon’s story is even more telling in that had he been born 40 years later, the ADHD that inspired his frenetic drumming would have been drugged away…
Great column, Dr. Franklin. If you’ve never seen it, search YouTube for “the Beach Boys lost footage.” It’s the Good Vibrations coming together in a jam session. So good.
Playing small venues and barely scraping by early in your career, it is hard to pass up a free drink, cocaine, or something else that your ‘friends’ give you for free
Degenerates, all of them. Made millions on cheap, repetitive mind numbing noise. Won’t say music bcuz music is Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Shostakovich, Debussy, Satie, Saint Saens, Roussell, Granados, Falla, Britten, Bernstein, Barber, Copland, etc.
Simple single cell amoebas like rock since it doesn’t require a brain.
Thomas, you’re being a little blinded simply by your taste in music, which is fine.
I don’t necessarily agree with your entire statement because it groups too many into a class. There are plenty as you describe but lumping the all is a little unfair as there are some talented people out there. Elitist, maybe, self-centered, perhaps, but still talented.
That said, your comment, in general, brought back something an aunt of mine always used to say, “no talent – talent”, or “no talent bum”. This of course was not watching Lawrence Welk, but more likely someone like Ed Sullivan, who would showcase the rock stars early on.
Ken
Your comment is accepted and appreciated.
But most Rock musicians are degenerates.
Y0u make a solid argument. Don’t forget the infamous 27 club (musicians like Kurt Cobain and others who either could not stand the fame or whose touring stress resulted in hard drug use). It seems musicians, and I was one for a while, playing clarinet and then in college and after rapping. Then I found GarageBand a great release and must have made hundreds of songs until I realized NSA quants were examining the mathematics behind the music and physicists were experimenting in compressed and decompressed patterns behind it.
Music, the supposed gift of Apollo, comes with his fiery sun in tow. Wilson, I believe, was more so influenced by a Svengali therapist than burned out by LSD. And while Sly’s “Everyday People” will be an anthem stored in my temporal lobes forever, in the Summer of Soul documentary, he is seen under the effects of some wild type of psychedelic.
It’s a shame that the amazingly talented Chris Cornell overdosed on opiates, as did Scott Weilland; Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love shot him on heroin; rappers Mac Miller, Juice WRLD, Old Dirty Bastard died of overdoses.
And Eddie Vedder, the much maligned grunge band leader, whose mental issues and daddy issues and self esteem issues at being disliked by more popular bands, only drank and smoked pot and is with us today. In his undeniably poignant dirge “Brother the Cloud” I hear the pent up sadness over the dead musicians of his day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bMAg3juSPY#ddg-play
Yes, drugs help people become creative, as they change our consciousness from normal wakeful alpha and beta brain waves. Theta waves, the brain state of dreaming, and delta waves, those of deep relaxation, are more conducive to exiting this normal plane for a while and entering the chariot of Apollo, following his lute and lyre.