Crasses et Voluptés

Acid for the Children

LSD was good to me. Opening me up to another dimension, it helped me see what life was for, and the purpose of my yearnings. I made many of the wisest decisions of my life while on acid or psilocybin mushrooms—I’ll get to those later. It gifted me a higher vision with which I could see the vibrant movement of the invisible. In a conscious way, it stripped away my fear of being criticized and freed me from the petty judgments I often doled out. Dissolving my ego, it magnified what was truly important, and unmasked those things that sapped my vital energy and distracted me from the path of divine beauty. Though I often acted the fool and misused it, was too young, forgot my lessons quickly, and could have used some mature guidance from a wise shaman, it guided me profoundly into my highest self and helped me access the superb wealth of my subconscious.

Psychedelics; LSD and psilocybin mushrooms are a great gift to humanity. However, they are not for everybody, are not to be taken lightly, and should be researched thoroughly and soberly before experiencing.

Like the time a few years later, on Easter day in 1981 when I went to see a band I’d never heard of, Echo & the Bunnymen. I think I was with Anthony and our friend Skood when we dropped some purple microdot and headed out to the Whisky a Go Go. I was just coming on to the L, peeing in the dilapidated and graffiti’d-up backstage bathroom when I noticed next to me, under a mop of teased-up hair, a thin handsome man in the coolest suit I’d ever seen, applying lipstick and eye makeup in the mirror. The guy was fascinating.

I was fully blazing on the acid, watching from the balcony, when the Bunnymen appeared onstage in all their muted black and gray post-punk splendor. I realized the lipstick dude was the singer Ian McCulloch.

From the first note, everything and everyone in the packed club disappeared into the big nothing. Only the band existed, their vibrating bodies channeling the music and glowing with the color of the sound. They were just about to put out the record Heaven Up Here, and were playing the stuff live for the first time. The bass and drums locked into hypnotic rhythms, building tension, then shifting grooves mid song, to drop into a new beat section in a magik way that made my heart burst open. The guitar strumming of the singer dug in hard, brittle, and terse, and the lead guitarist countered him, answering with melodic strumming patterns of his own, and then he started layering the most ethereal and haunting melodies over the churning rhythms, and I started to float. The drummer Pete de Freitas was the one I couldn’t take my eyes off though. He played like an animal, but with the poetic arc of a sensitive artist. It rocked so fucking hard, but embraced me with a nurturing warmth. Man. I’ve shamelessly copied their concept of play (with my own sense of rhythm of course) for my whole career. It wasn’t just the hallucinogens. The acid opened the door, but the truth of the music was there to carry me away. Throughout their gig, I was one with god.

After the show, I spoke to the kind and thoughtful drummer Pete. I asked him about his favorite drummers, telling him mine was Tony Williams. He replied, “I don’t care how good a drummer is, only if he serves the music in his band.” That got me thinking.

People often ask me about my electric bass influences, ready to hear about the great players like Jaco, James Jamerson, Stanley Clarke, Willie Weeks, Bootsy, and Larry Graham. Of course all those guys have impacted me deeply, but I’ve stolen shamelessly from Les Pattinson of the Bunnymen, and Jah Wobble again and again. I also wore my belt like Ian McCulloch for years, the end of it sticking out too far through the buckle from under my shirt.

Rest in peace, broken through to the other side, Pete de Freitas.

Many years passed before I learned of other ways to access the healthy and limitless part of my mind that psychedelic drugs had opened in my youth. In 2001, deep into a Vipassana course, a few days into silence and ten hours a day of meditation, I found myself in a psychedelic state. My body had become nothing but light, I was one with the universe and anything I could imagine was possible. I was a rock in an Alaskan stream purified by the freezing water rushing over me as a massive beautiful brown bear lumbered by. I looked up to see an intricate geometric pattern of shapes in motion in the air above; changing and unfolding, the most beautiful vivid and sharp color combinations to make Josef Albers cry with joy. I realized a profound simplicity of purpose, my focus crystal clear, I saw the beauty in all, and was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for all the joy and pain in my life.

In that moment, I learned that no drug was ever necessary for a mind-opening experience.