Beatles freaks love milestones, and when it comes to the big one—what moment portended the group’s demise?—there’s no shortage of possibilities. Was it the phone call Paul received chez the Maharishi informing him that the Beatles’ business guru had died of a carbitral overdose? The half-baked Magical Mystery Tour project, Paul’s money-hemorrhaging power-grab that Bob Spitz says “provided the first signs of their fallibility”? John’s first meeting with Yoko Ono in 1966 (after which, John told Jan Wenner, “I decided to leave the group”)? Any of the handful of times a Beatle traipsed out of the Let It Be sessions, swearing off the group forever, only to return?

…or, as numerous rock critics as well as the PR wing of Shout! Factory would have us believe, was it the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival in September, 1969?

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“Trying to show a link between rock stars and drugs is like trying to make a link between mouths and tooth decay,” writes R.U. Sirius—the nom de fume of 10 Zen Monkeys‘ Ken Goffman. This is but one of the many mangy comparisons that frontload Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs*, and when you skim the book’s list-heavy 200+ pages, tooth decay starts to sound like an attractive alternative. OK, maybe that’s not entirely fair—there’s some funny writing amid the run-on analogies, and a few of the anecdotes are worth their weight in angel dust. Hell, it’d probably make a nice coffee table book, if you’re David Crosby.

To save you the buyer’s remorse, here are our favorite factoids, trivia, apocrypha, or whatever:

Read More “Ted Nugent is a Pussy: The CliffsNotes to Everybody Must Get Stoned” »

…is the name of the new Glassjaw song (first one in six years). Stream it from the homepage, but beware the noisy, drum-laden wait (totally worth it).

It’s heavy as a motherfucker, the screaming made me cry, and there’s not a smidgeon of electronica.