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Dazed and Confused: 10 Classic Drugged-Out Shows VIDEOS

“I haven’t done heroin,” Bill Maher once said. “I wouldn’t recommend heroin. But it hasn’t exactly hurt my record collection.” Maher might be going a little far there (heroin is an evil drug), but his point stands that if no artist had ever done an illegal drug, music might be pretty boring. Bob Dylan wrote many of his greatest songs on speed, and when he introduced the Beatles to marijuana, it forever changed their approach to music.

That’s not to say that musicians should be stoned 24/7, though. Concerts are rarely great when the performers are fucked up beyond belief. Here’s a look at 10 famous performances when we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the person onstage was stoned or impossibly drunk.

1. Santana at Woodstock, 1969 – Mescaline

2. Neil Young at ‘The Last Waltz,’ 1976 – Cocaine

 

 

3. Blind Melon at Woodstock, 1994 – LSD

4. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash at Cardiff, 1966 – God Knows What

5. Keith Moon at the Cow Palace, 1973 – Horse Tranquilizers and Brandy

6. Van Halen, 1983 US Festival – Booze and Coke

 

7. George Harrison, 1974 Tour – Cocaine

8. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Wembley Stadium, 1974 – Cocaine

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s 1974 tour is one of the most notoriously coked-fueled tours in rock history. All four of them were doing insane amounts of the stuff, and the shows suffered as a result. The tour was largely confined to America, but it wrapped up at London’s Wembley Stadium on September 14th, 1974. Stephen Stills was so far gone at this point that he reportedly believed that he fought in Vietnam, signing autographs “Stephen Stills, U.S. Marine Corps.” The Wembley show was filmed for posterity and it recently popped up on YouTube.

“Everybody was so heavy into the cocaine trip, and that stuff [that was copped had] to be cut with borax,” tour guest Joni Mitchell said. “People were shovelin’ it in and you couldn’t get high off it. Before we went on, everybody had nosebleeds.”
9. Poison at MTV Video Music Awards, 1991 – Cocaine

10. Green Day in Las Vegas, 2012 – Booze and Prescription Pills

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