THERE WERE blurry images of a balding, overweight man published by the music press in the early Eighties.Sometimes he was seen with a shopping bag on the streets of Cambridge. Otherwise, Syd Barrett had made no impact on the public consciousness since he retired from music in the early Seventies, tired and permanently frazzled by the drugs he had taken in the late Sixties.

The drugs had enabled his group, Pink Floyd, to realise a psychedelic masterpiece in Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) but precious little else. It is hard to picture how Pink Floyd would have sounded without acid: early demos sound like decent garage R&B, nothing more. The sadness felt by Barrett’s fans at his death this week is deep. There will never be an artistic relaunch and re-evaluation as there has been for that other famous acid casualty, Brian Wilson.

It is impossible to imagine the history of 20th-century music without narcotics. Hank Williams gave birth to country music on quantities of morphine that left him dead at 29. Then there is reefer-mad Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. Spanning the drug spectrum, there’s the Beatles.

The fizz and thrill of the early records of the Beatles owed plenty to amphetamines. The bulk of the 14 songs for A Hard Day’s Night were written in France over a weekend — and that was between gigs. Speed gave the whole Merseybeat boom its momentum and even gave second-stringers such as the Searchers a clean, razor-sharp edge. Their Sweets for my Sweet is roughly twice the speed of the Drifters’ original and sold at least ten times as many copies. The unschooled ire of the Sex Pistols was also honed and made manageable by speed.

For the Beatles, drugs provided a continuing adventure, a sense of discovery. Pot was the source of Rubber Soul. It was initially intended as a comedy album — think of Drive My Car and Norwegian Wood, both dreamt up in a fit of giggles. Some of the songs (You Won’t See Me, Nowhere Man) don’t just lack the energy of A Hard Day’s Night, they audibly slow down before they end. All of this is exactly what you would expect of stoned songwriters. The Beatles though, being in the vanguard, weren’t to know this. If the doors of perception haven’t been opened, you don’t know what the drug will do. Everything is possible.

For this reason, almost always, it’s the drug du jour that has opened up creative avenues. Samuel Taylor Coleridge would not have written Kubla Khan without the opium he obtained from his Highgate chemist; Van Gogh’s absinthe made everything a little swirly. For the beat writers, then Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett and the Beatles, it was acid. Wilson wanted to encapsulate the story of America, something he pretty much did with Smile, but in the process he destroyed his confidence and his muse. The Beatles, with Sergeant Pepper’s references to Blackburn and music hall acts, were more parochial but still painted their childhood with brilliant colours. Barrett made asides on Piper at the Gates of Dawn (“I’ve got a cloak, it’s a bit of a joke”) that were part Lewis Carroll, part E. L. Wisty. All three albums clearly reflected the personalities behind them. Acid simply took them up on to a level they previously had no idea about.

Then sometimes, often, the drugs don’t work. John Lennon had to go and spoil it all by dabbling in heroin (Yer Blues, Cold Turkey, Mother), which made him sound shrill and whiny, and cocaine (much of his solo output), which left his music loud and empty. You could argue that Lou Reed was a lot wittier and a whole lot more fun before he took smack (Cycle Annie, The Ostrich) than after, but then we would never have heard the mind-cleaving solo on I Heard Her Call My Name. Coke, however, has rarely given us anything more than airbrushed bombast. The tell-tale signs of a cocaine album are that it sounds very similar to a previous, highly successful work, only all the good bits have been subtly extracted, leaving an illusion of quality. Be Here Now by Oasis is an unlistenable example. Coca may have helped Freud and Ibsen, but for rock’n’rollers it doesn’t even begin to.

If the ideas aren’t already there, drugs will not be able to release them from the subconscious. If they are, giant steps can be made. You can look at Aldous Huxley and draw parallels with the Beatles: Crome Yellow and Those Barren Leaves were his breakthrough Merseybeat books, Point Counter Point was his Revolver, with The Doors of Perception his full-blown Sergeant Pepper trip. Like the Beatles, Huxley had so many ideas in his head that it was natural he would want to expand and experiment. What drugs provided for them both was not escape, but re-evaluation. Rigidness and organisation melted away; their consciousness was given new forms.

The drug experience is all down to environment and perspective. Today, musicians can take drugs such as Prozac just to feel normal. Aldous Huxley took no more than ten trips in his life, one on his deathbed, but it would have been an intensely personal experience.The ability to get that experience across is what makes The Doors of Perception, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Day in the Life such achievements. Without that ability, drugs cannot make great art.

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