If you want to hang out, you’ve gotta take her out, cocaine
If you want to get down, get down on the ground, cocaine
If you got that lose, you want to kick them blues, cocaine
When your day is done, and you want to ride on cocaine
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie …
– Songwriters: J. J. Cale
– Performed by: Eric Clapton
MOST artists, writers and other creative individuals are in their creative best when they are inspired by extraordinary experiences or events, usually profound, even transcendental. There are some, however, who get their inspiration from some epiphany of sorts.
But it is quite seldom, in fact very rare, that a writer gets his impetus (I prefer to use this word as inspiration would be rather an oxymoron) from stupidity.
Yes, stupidity i.e. the behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment and the quality of being unintelligent.
And this is what Moi meant by “stupidity”, excerpts from the May 23, 2019 issue of Philstar.com:
PDEA seeks to ban Shanti Dope song for allegedly promoting marijuana
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has sought to ban a song by young Filipino rapper Shanti Dope.
PDEA director general Aaron Aquino released a statement on Thursday claiming that the lyrics of Shanti Dope’s new song, “Amatz,” promotes the use of marijuana.
“It appears that the singer was referring to the high effect of marijuana, being in its natural/organic state and not altered by any chemical compound,” Aquino said in the statement.
Really, Director General Aquino, you can’t catch real drug lords, now you’re running after some rapper because of lyrics taken out of context? I’m pretty sure you have never come across the phrase “artistic license” in your entire existence.
And because of “artistic license” or your lack of it, we segue to out featured song courtesy of that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
“Cocaine” is a song written and recorded in 1976 by singer-songwriter J. J. Cale. The song was popularized by Eric Clapton after his cover version was released on the 1977 album Slowhand.
“Cocaine” was one of several of Cale’s songs recorded by Clapton, including “After Midnight” and “Travelin’ Light”. AllMusic critic Richard Gilliam called it “among [Clapton’s] most enduringly popular hits” and noted that “even for an artist like Clapton with a huge body of high-quality work, ‘Cocaine‘ ranks among his best.”
During the late ‘60s till the ‘70s when “rock and roll” was then the revolutionary musical genre that took the music industry by storm fundamental Christians and ultra-conservative Catholics condemned rock music as the work of the devil and said that if you play the record backwards you can actually hear the devil speak.
What kind of an idiot plays a record backward in the first place?
Answer: fundamental Christians and ultra-conservative Catholics and there you go.
Well I got news for the PDEA you don’t have to play “Cocaine” backwards just play it as it is supposed to be played.
From www.songfacts.com:
The lyrics are all about drug addiction something Clapton knew quite well. As he explained in his autobiography, Clapton, when he recorded this song, had kicked a serious heroin habit but he was filling his body with cocaine and alcohol.
His attitude at the time was that he could manage his addiction and quit anytime – he just didn’t want to; that’s why he could sing so objectively about a drug that was consuming him.
When he finally did get off drugs and alcohol, he had to learn how to make music while sober, which was a big transition as everything sounded very rough to him.
He also realized how damaging his addiction was to himself and others on a personal level, and became active in helping others get through their addictions.
In 1998 he opened the Crossroads rehab center in Antigua where clients go through a 29-day wellness-centred approach to treatment.
Clapton used cocaine and alcohol as a way to curb his heroin addiction and he felt that he was able to sing about it because he didn’t believe it controlled his life and he could quit whenever he wanted.
In an interview, Clapton described “Cocaine” as an anti-drug song. He called the song “quite cleverly anti-cocaine”, noting:
It’s no good to write a deliberate anti-drug song and hope that it will catch. Because the general thing is that people will be upset by that. It would disturb them to have someone else shoving something down their throat. So the best thing to do is offer something that seems ambiguous—that on study or on reflection actually can be seen to be “anti” — which the song “Cocaine” is actually an anti-cocaine song. If you study it or look at it with a little bit of thought … from a distance … or as it goes by … it just sounds like a song about cocaine. But actually, it is quite cleverly anti-cocaine.
Because of its ambiguous message, Clapton did not perform the song in many of his concerts; over the years, he has added the lyrics “that dirty cocaine” in live shows to underline the anti-drug message of the song.
Perhaps the ageing Eric Clapton mellowed down and maybe even had an epiphany himself hence the additional obvious lyrics. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
