What would rock be without pot? For High Times' Second-Annual Rockers for Pot special report, we interviewed more than a dozen musicians. Opinions varied as widely as the styles-alternative, grunge, metal, punk-these musical activists represent. But all agreed that it's high time to legalize it!

MEAT PUPPETS' Curt and Cris Kirkwood

Too High to Die (London) marks a return to the ingenious psychedelic punk-hillbilly sensibility that characterized the Meat Puppets' best work in the mid-'80s - Meat Puppets II. Up on the Sun, Mirage and Huevos, to name a few. The following interview took place at CBGB in New York, during the club's 20th anniversary celebration.

High Times: Too High to Die - how'd you come up with the name?
Curt Kirkwood: Dave, our soundman, said it should be the name of the album.

HT: Which do you prefer - mushrooms or acid?
Curt: I like them both.

HT: Have you tripped on stage?
Cris Kirkwood: Yeah, that's one of the better places to do that shit-on stage
Curt: You can drop a hit of acid and have it out of your system in a hour and a half on stage.
Cris: It's like a hyper-trip. You purge it right out of your eyeballs.

HT: So you'd recommend it?
Curt: I wouldn't, because the neck of the guitar starts to flex uncontrollably in your hand. And yo uhave to develop the strength in you r forearm to hold it straight, because the thing'll try and bend over backwards and strike you in the face. It'll try and tie a knot with itself and your arm. It'll grow simulated necks and arms. It takes a lot of strength to move twenty sets of hands.

HT: Why do you think so many people are supporting hemp and other political movements now?
Curt: People's motivations are as much a mystery as why the stars shine. Maybe the motivation is a media thing. I'm sure this is just a passing phase. It will blow over. In a way, I'm more interested in the motivation of psychotic slashers or rock climbers, things that I have trouble relating to.
-Chauncey McKuen
 

BUTTHOLE SURFERS' Gibby Haynes

Gibby Haynes took his maiden mescaline trip while shopping with Mom at the mall, and later lost a basketball scholarship after a college pot bust. In 1981, he co-founded the sicko-psychedelic thrash Butthole Surfers with Paul Leary. We tracked him down at home in Austin, Texas.

High Times: Have you ever been busted?
Gibby Haynes: We've has all sorts of shit happen to us as far as cops are concerned. One time I got the shit kicked out of me by five federales in Tijuana. After the show they arrested us, broke my ribs and took eight hundred dollars. That was cool.

HT: What about border hassles?
GH: One time I urinated on the Swiss border and they got real upset. The Swiss are bogus. But it was really cool in Amsterdam to wake up in the morning and go down to the coffee shop and just light up a big fat joint and look at goofy Europop on TV while cops walked right in front of you. But I really don't smoke pot anymore, which is weird, after twenty-two years.

HT: Why is that?
GH: If you smoke every day - which is what I was doing, waking up and smoking like twenty bong hits - you can get kind of deadheaded. But if you only use it occasionally, it's almost like tripping - you're really hyper-aware. Last week I was in Hawaii, watching, watching the sunset on top of a gigantic volcano, and in a situation like that, I just had to [smoke]. It was really psychedelic. Thousands of ideas!

HT: What are you ideas about legalization?
GH: It definitely ought to be legalized. Then everybody would be growin' it. We'd have the sea of green! IT's pretty obvious to me that if they legalize drugs and tax churches, then we wouldn't have any debt. And there would be less abuse. No more lure of the forbidden. But you know what I'm really into? That pot would cure our fossil-fuel problems. I like the hemp movement.

HT: Anything else you'd like to say?
GH: Neil Young is not the Godfather of Grunge. Truly the Godfather of Grunge is David Clayton-Thomas (former lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears). Just his vocals alone, they're totally Seattle. Also, Kennedy interviewed me for MTV and I grabbed her breast and she slugged me real hard. I like that in a woman. Gibby wants to perform cunnilingus on Kennedy.
-Cree McCree