Re: debauchery = success

[Brad Goldman <brad@jimmy.harvard.edu>]

Of the top of my head, a few reasons why debaurchery = success. 

1) If you're a success, you have the means.  You got the money to get
the girls and the drugs and the beer and there's always friends around
and people who seem to like you, etc...  An awful lot of us would be
great hedonists if we had the werewithal to pull it off.
2) Particularly in music, there is an ethos not to play by societies
rules.  Geniuses make their own rules, right?
3) For the creative person in a band, you spend a lot of time trying
to break rules.  Damnit, I don't want to write another I IV V song!  I
don't want to use this same chord voicing again, etc...  It seems
natural that the struggle to find new ways to do things would lead one
to not be very constrained by society's mores.
4) In particular, drugs can be seen as a way to induce creativity, or
at least find different ways of thinking, so there's a natural pathway
to mind-altering drugs.

It's stupid to think that debauchery leads to success, but there's any
number of reasons why especially the creative person in a rock n' roll
band might be led toward debauchery.

-- 
- Brad Goldman
 (Brad@jimmy.harvard.edu)