Sex and drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

“If you remember the ‘Sixties, you weren’t really there…” Most Internet sources claim it was Paul Kanter of the American band Jefferson Airplane who said that. He, apparently, believed in the use of ‘mind-expanding’ drugs, which may explain the origin of the expression. According to Kanter, you weren’t really “there” if you were not in an illegal state of mind.

Well, I was there. I played regularly in a band in clubs and dance halls between 1961 and 1966, and there were virtually no drugs, and precious little sex but plenty of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Drugs cost money, and we didn’t have any. And even when I played in a Rome nightclub for two months in the summer of 1965 and did have money, no-one ever offered me drugs. The other members of the band wouldn’t even let me drink alcohol, because a small glass of wine would send me to sleep…