Wrecks and drugs and rock'n'roll

And so it goes on. A short foray into the spotlights, the briefest dance with immortality and then exit stage left in a body bag illuminated by a thousand camera flashlights. The oft-quoted mantra that the truly glamorous should live fast, die young and leave a good- looking corpse doesn't sound so funny anymore.

The sequined mausoleum of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll claimed another for its own this week with the death of Paula Yates reportedly from a fatal combination of vodka and heroin. The body of the former Tube and Big Breakfast presenter, ex-wife of Boomtown Rats founder Bob Geldof, was found in her North London home beside the ashes of second husband Michael Hutchence, the INXS vocalist who committed suicide in 1997. Having previously suffered a nervous breakdown prior to checking into the now notorious Priory Clinic and looking increasingly haggard during her final public appearances, Yates had for all appearances been finally consumed by the unashamedly high-kicking, hard-living lifestyle that has become an accepted norm in the music industry.

"Every rock and roll band since the seventies has tried to recreate the infamous 1972 Rolling Stones tour where the group were jacking up heroin, throwing televisions through hotel room windows and screwing countless groupies," says Scots impresario Alan McGee, who in Oasis and Primal Scream unearthed two of the most outspokenly hedonist bands of their generation. "It's the gorgeous end of the industry, the wild, carefree, hedonistic side. They don't show you the downside of that, the lonely nights where you're puking into a bucket or so strung out that you think you're going to die, but that's the beauty of the music business."

McGee, whose recent authorised biography - Alan McGee & the story of Creation Records - revealed a culture where the management's stated goal was "to be more rock'n'roll than the bands" and ecstasy was delivered by courier every Friday afternoon, can hardly be questioned in his assessment of how far drugs have permeated the world of music. In recent weeks Leith-born Finlay Quaye, a former Yates boyfriend, has been witnessed living through what amounts to a public breakdown, limping between sozzled appearances and public brawls after discharging himself from the Priory Clinic on the grounds that therapists were attempting to "brainwash" him into believing he is paranoid. Clydebank's own Marti Pellow, meanwhile, sobbed into the pages of Q magazine as he detailed the lows of a heroin addiction spawned by the "emptiness" of the success, fame and riches he garnered at the helm of Wet Wet Wet.

In decades past, an end such as Yates' would have been a virtual guarantee of posthumous elevation to semi-iconic status, a place in the pantheon where talents are magnified by the irony of their early demise, while Pellow's behaviour would be seen as what one would expect of any self-respecting pop megastar. Today, however, there is evidence of a growing impatience with such exploits. Nobody doubts Yates worked hard at caring for her children - she bought bathroom cleaner as well as vodka the night before her death - but the rock lifestyle jarred with her mothering role. Add to that the fact it was her four-year-old daughter who found the body, and hall of fame status just doesn't seem so appropriate.

This mounting scepticism was crystallised by Texas vocalist Sharleen Spiteri, who launched an attack upon widespread drugs use in the music industry hard on the heels of Yates' denouement which showed scant pity for the deceased: "What do they need to escape? The pressures of fame - yeah right," she told the press, declaring such cases are not deserving of public sympathy. "Someone who is freezing cold in the street who may take a drink or a drug to heat up a bit, that's really sad and pitiful, but not some f***ing pop star who is off his or her tits."

Spiteri's criticisms centred upon the easy indulgence with which the addled acolytes of her business are treated, contrasting real life with a world where sex, drugs and rock'n' roll are considered de rigueur and any problems can be staved off by checking in to an expensive rehabilitation centre. Few could argue with her after considering the other end of the social spectrum, where the experience of drug dependents commonly revolves around an existence amid poverty and rotting decay prior to checking in to the morgue, but by taking such a stance she is bucking 50 years of entrenched tradition and legend.

Ever since Ella Fitzgerald sang Wacky Dust - a thinly disguised ode to cocaine - with the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1935, there has existed an apparently symbiotic relationship between narcotics and popular music. Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday wrestled with heroin habits and the Grateful Dead consumed vast quantities of LSD while Bob Dylan and John Lennon espoused the virtues of marijuana. Then there's Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain - a list that reads like a Who's Who of melodic luminaries. Indeed, with the exception of a few revolutionaries, it is difficult to identify a single post war icon that did not meet their end due to some form of excess.

Despite the fact she is swimming against the tide in an industry where premature death is regularly glorified, support for Spiteri's outburst has come from the US in the form of Al Aronowitz, a retired Rolling Stone reporter who documented the beat movement and is credited with introducing the Beatles to both Bob Dylan and cannabis in a Manhattan hotel room in 1964. He argues that the casualties of yesteryear must be distinguished from the hedonistic stars of the present as they were at least in possession of a genuine agenda, being social revolutionaries who used the psychotropic properties of their favoured narcotics to open up new ways of thinking.

"When you first try it, marijuana immediately seems so enlightening and possesses such liberating qualities that those it liberates often turn into messianic Johnny Appleseeds. That happened to Neal Cassady, that happened to Allen Ginsberg, that happened to me and, in a more cosmic way, that is what ultimately happened to the Beatles, who had the power to spread psychedelia to all of contemporary culture.There was no doubt about it; Dylan had given them a key that opened a door to a new dimension, and they took the youth of the world across the threshold with them.

"People like these will live forever, they will endure as gods of tomorrow because they dared to declare the gods of our past to be obsolete."

It is Aronowitz's contention that during the four decades that spawned the great counter cultural movements of jazz, rock and roll, psychedelia and punk, recreational drugs were perceived to be weapons of the social revolution, battering rams to free long suppressed emotions and desires. Comparing these to the music business of today, an era when the revolution has been won and pop culture is mainstream culture, he forcefully argues that these weapons are no longer required, and that their use in rock has become mere self- indulgence. Set against a societal backdrop where the reality of narcotics abuse is an ugly one, their continued glorification seems beyond the pale.

The sad stories of this past month, after all, did not concern legends. Yates was famous for being famous, Quaye has produced one moderately successful album and Pellow is a honey-toned crooner whose biggest hit was a cover version. These are peripheral figures, and when the backwash of the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll orthodoxy begins destroying the acolytes along with the epicentre, Aronowitz believes it is time for the music industry to cut its umbilical cord to the pharmaceutical mothership.

One who supports him is Sir George Martin, still active in the music business at 74. Although he believes that with a few notable exceptions, pop's problems have been overstated, the Beatles' original producer says major labels should declare a ban on artists using drugs.

Sir George, with other esteemed commentators such as Bill Clinton, would subscribe to the opinion that Yates has been another victim of heroin chic, the perceived glamorisation of opiates abuse that put the pale, glassy-eyed stares of super-thin models on everything from Calvin Klein ads to Packard-Bell commercials and promoted the deliciously louche prospect of a life spent elegantly wasted through films such as Killing Zoe, The Basketball Diaries and Pulp Fiction. It is a tempting argument, but one that has been damaged by studies such as the 1997 survey of relationships between popular music and drug use among Scottish youth by Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research.

Researchers found little evidence to suggest that adolescents who follow a particular act are likely to emulate their drug use or be influenced by pro-drug lyrics. This was particularly the case with contemporary pop stars that had frequently been accused of having such an influence.

"No direct link between anti-social behaviour and exposure to any form of artistic expression has ever been scientifically established," says Solange Bitol, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who has been fighting attempts by Congress to have compulsory content and age ratings applied to musical output. "Scapegoating artistic expression as a cause of social ills is simplistic. How can covering children's ears solve social problems like violent crime, racism or suicide? If suppressing creative expression were the way to control anti-social behaviour, where would you stop? The source of inspiration most frequently cited by criminals has long been the Bible."

It is impossible to say why drugs seem to attract such a high proportion of musical shooting stars, just as we cannot fathom why so many of the 20th century's great writers embraced alcohol as their muse. Alan McGee believes some drugs aid the creative process, but adds he has seen many talents ruined on the horns of addiction. For him, however, music is a medium that mirrors the world, reflecting the mores and aspirations of its young. Only once narcotics have been legalised, he believes, and the associated problems dragged out into the open, will the death toll lessen.

"It's a cop-out to say this is just a music business problem. Name any famous pop junkie from Elvis Presley to Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie and I can show you 17-year-olds walking the streets that are more rock'n'roll than those guys ever hoped to be. We're living in a Presbyterian civilization that's taken a moral tone on drugs which is ineffective because people have taken stimulants since the dawn of mankind If you really want to do something about the problem, then you have to accept the reality of the situation and start making radical changes soon."

Paula Yates was found last Sunday in her Notting Hill flat, allegedly surrounded by substances including vodka and heroin. She had suffered from depression since Michael Hutchence's death in 1997. Sharleen Spiteri, lead singer of Texas, gave a scathing interview on Thursday in which she called partying celebrities who take drugs "sad b******s" who don't deserve public sympathy".

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