“Take peyote and puke”: How spiritual drugs crafted the Eagles’ songwriting
There’s a fine line between nonsense and genius. But to quote every fitness influencer filming themselves at the start line of a marathon, you have to push yourself as far to the edge to find out where the limit exists. As the 1960s bled into the 1970s, there were a fair few musicians who committed themselves to finding that limit. While some say The Beatles did it without too much danger, the likes of Syd Barrett and Jim Morrison took things elsewhere.
The latter artist, in particular, was one member of a very healthy alumni of California-based experimentalists. Los Angeles became a hotbed for psychedelic exploration. While Joni Mitchell and Crosby Stills and Nash were dancing in the hills of Laurel Canyon to the beat of cocaine and marijuana, Jim Morrison headed into the deserts to explore the creative power of hallucinogens.
But these consumption habits weren’t prejudiced and exclusive to musicians of the creative edge. Oh no, pretty much everyone from the top of the charts to the bottom of the record crates was fuelling their creative endeavours on some sort of substance. Perhaps the greatest symbol of that paradox were LA natives, the Eagles.
Despite their free and easy West Coast sound that had enough edge to interest your teenage child but equal amounts of softness to play at the parents’ dinner party, they were the sort of band many labels would have rushed to have neatened up and commercialised within an inch of their lives. After all, what’s more marketable than five good-looking Californians singing flawless harmonies?
While their harmonies were, of course, placed in something more catchy and at times poppy, there was a spiritual undercurrent to them, as there is with all harmonies. And so, in their pomp, the LA troubadours would funnel ancient methods of spiritualism into their songwriting, namely the consumption of peyote.
Much later, in 2001, Don Henley was asked about the methodical differences in the bands’ approach from the more free-thinking ‘70s. Along with self-assurance, experimental consumption is one major difference.
He said: “We can write good songs. I feel – we all feel – more enthusiastic about this right now than we have since probably the mid-70s. While we can’t go back and create those fabulous desert days of yore, when we were the hip young LA cowboys, I think musically speaking we’ll be all right. A good song is a good song. And we can produce them in a way that will be contemporary – without destroying the essence of whatever it is that people like about us. I don’t think we’ll have to go out into the desert and take peyote and puke, like we did in the old days.”
On the front covers of classic rock albums, where our idolised rockers sport handlebar moustaches and aviators, we are robbed of the truthful reality that they aren’t impervious to hedonistic embarrassment and can also fall victim to the powers of hallucinogens. Maybe somewhere in the liner notes are some pictures of the truth? Luckily for Don Henley, there isn’t, as the bravado shown in his next quote may have been debunked and he too would have been found wanting like the rest of his bandmates. So, Don, Peyote makes you puke, does it?
“Well, it didn’t make me puke, but some of the other guys puked for all of us. These Indian tribal rituals we did with peyote, they were beautiful, sacrificial. I’ve got pictures of us puking.”
