Ever since the dawn of man, humans have been looking for ways to make themselves feel better. Going beyond food, shelter and clothing…humans enjoy feeling good. Music, perhaps beating on a log with a stick, has long been one of the methods of soothing the savage beast.
Another soothing method, of course, has been drugs in their many forms. Hundreds of songs about alcohol and marijuana, “hootch” and “grass,” respectively, have been written. The song “Feelin’ Good,” recorded by Ry Cooder, has the lyric “Feelin’ good, feelin’ good…all the money in the world spent on feeling good.” That about sums it up, no?
Kids have been dealing with pot, and parents have been dealing with their kids and their pot for years. Recently, even Sonoma City Council members have been dealing with pot. They have a cannabis issue in front of them at their meeting next week.
Musicians deal with devil weed by writing about it. In recent years, from the Beatles to Black Sabbath, from Willie to Winehouse, songs about ganja have been sung, hummed, recorded and covered. Famous bandleader Cab Calloway sang about it. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, too.
In 1967, a young kid named Lawrence “Stash” Wagner wrote a song while sequestered in a room with another guitar player. This other guitarist was Elliot Ingber, who had been in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. The two young musicians were in a band called The Fraternity of Man. The song was called “Don’t Bogart Me.” Better known as “Don’t Bogart That Joint,” the first line of the chorus, it is one of the great marijuana songs.
The affable and loquacious Wagner has connections to the Sonoma Valley, but he’d rather not talk about them publicly, preferring to let sleeping joints lie. But he did freely recount the tale.
Wagner was reached by phone from his home in the Philippines where he has been living since the ‘90s, raising a new family and living the easy life of an ex-pat. His new hometown, Wagner said, “is a small, hillside community of approximately 250 people, about one mile from the beach and below an active volcano.”
During the mid and late 1960s, Wagner lived in the Beechwood Canyon area of Los Angeles. There was music in the air. “I lived next door to Linda Ronstadt. Timothy B. Schmidt (Eagles) lived across the street, and Warren (Zevon) lived in the house on the other side,” Wagner said.
“Before Beechwood, I was living in the band house in Laurel Canyon, a house that was built by (early western movie actor) Tom Mix. It was a trip, this house. There was a bowling alley in the basement. Our manager locked the band in the vault with a couple of joints to get ready for rehearsal. I was smoking and talking and taking too long, and Elliot turned to me and said, “Don’t Bogart that thing, man’, Wagner said.
In “about 2 minutes,” Wagner said, they had the song. Despite their being a rock band, Ingber wanted the song to have a country feel, “so they won’t see us coming.” They recorded it and it was included on their self-titled album released in 1968.
One of the unique aspects of “Bogart” was the way Wagner sang the first word of the second verse. “Rolllllllllll another one,” it starts. When asked how that phrasing came about, where the inspiration came from, Wagner said, “Drugs.” He then added, “All I remember about that was that is seemed right at the time.”
“Don’t Bogart Me” received some airplay, but its big break came with its inclusion on the “Easy Rider” (1969) soundtrack.
Wagner elaborated, “Dennis (Hopper, who directed the movie) included several popular songs on the working soundtrack as he was in the process of editing the film. He had gotten the music from Pete’s (Peter Fonda, producer and co-star) collection. During the process of cutting the film, Dennis and Pete realized the songs sounded real good.” They decided to keep the ersatz soundtrack as the real one, and the song became an international hit.
The “Easy Rider” soundtrack holds an unusual place in movie history. As mentioned, the working film had popular music laid underneath it as the movie was in process. When Hopper decided he liked it with the temporary tracks, rights to those songs were sought out. The resultant soundtrack became the first from a Hollywood film to use a curated playlist of non-original songs. The soundtrack peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts in September of 1969.
Moving on to modern day marijuana tales, the Sonoma City Council has marijuana and cannabis dispensaries on its agenda for their Nov. 17 meeting. Let’s hope they make a decision that reflects the will of the people, and don’t just “pass it over” to the next meeting or next group of council members.
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