Aliens, Drugs and Rock and Roll (also Environmentalism and Expanded Consciousness)

I just found a really interesting blog post about how so many rock musicians:
1) have had UFO experiences or believe in them
2) used powerful mind-altering drugs
3) are strong environmentalists


The great Neil Young song "After the Gold Rush" is an interesting example:

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming, saying something about a queen.

There were peasants singing and drummers drumming and the archer split the tree.

There was a fanfare blowing to the sun that was floating on the breeze.

Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies.

Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies.

I was lying in a burned out basement with the full moon in my eyes.

I was hoping for replacement when the sun burst thru the sky.

There was a band playing in my head and I felt like getting high.

I was thinking about what a friend had said I was hoping it was a lie.

Thinking about what a friend had said I was hoping it was a lie.

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver space ships flying in the yellow haze of the sun.

There were children crying and colors flying all around the chosen ones.

All in a dream, all in a dream, the loading had begun.

They were flying Mother Nature's Silver seed to a new home in the sun.

Flying Mother Nature's Silver seed to a new home.

From the blogpost:

Young has stated that he did not know what After the Gold Rush message was. We know this because when Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt recorded it in 1999 for their collaboration trio, they got some unique insight into the song from the man who wrote it. Parton said, "When we were doing the Trio album, I asked Linda and Emmy what it meant, and they didn't know. So we called Neil Young, and he didn't know. We asked him, flat out, what it meant, and he said, 'Hell, I don't know. I just wrote it. It just depends on what I was taking at the time. I guess every verse has something different I'd taken.'" 

Young (as did many of the top rock and roll stars) therefore admitted he was doing drugs when he wrote the song and came up with the lyrics. The question therefore is where did the alien and environmental messages come from? 

He is not the only one. Jerry Garcia, who like Young was a big environmentalist working to save the rainforest talked about a DMT (known as the spirit drugs because people are often greeted by alien of spirit type beings) experience in which he encountered insect type humanoids. Garcia struggled with drugs his whole life, and in fact died in a drug rehab unit. It was one of his DMT experiences that he came up with the name “Grateful Dead” for the band during an DMT experience. He described his alien DMT experience as follows, 

I had some very weird experiences. My main experience was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic, space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences. After I came out of my coma, I had this image of myself as these little hunks of protoplasm that were stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that you could snap off. (laughter) They were run through with neoprene tubing, and there were these insects that looked like cockroaches which were like message-units that were kind of like my bloodstream. That was my image of my physical self and this particular feeling lasted a long time. It was really strange.[1] 

Sting from the band Police tells almost the exact experience. During an ayahausca experience in Brazil he recounts his hallucinogenic experience in the Brazilian rainforest back in the 80's. He says he had an experience of playing a frightening game of chess with a sensual beautiful insect like "humanoid" being, who played very aggressively. Sting was beaten badly and went on to form the rainforest foundation and has now saved an estimated 28 million acres of rainforest from clear cut destruction.[2]

Some whole bands even report being abducted by aliens, such as the Moody Blues.

Really fascinating stuff, overall.

The whole piece is worth a read, as well as other stuff at the site.