It's been a while since I did one of these. My infamous mixtape had a number of songs on it that were kinda extolling the joys of marijuana but not really. In the music business, there seemed to be a cognitive dissonance — there must be a better term for it than that — with regard to "drug" songs. Various stations and TV shows would say they would never air anything that glorified drug use but once a record was "high" on the charts, they'd decide it wasn't really about drugs. They'd opt for the more wholesome meaning of the double entendre and look askance if someone suggested there was another.
I was and remain against recreational drugs but that's just for me. You do you, as they say. If a song was catchy enough, I didn't care what it was about. Most of the hits of the day weren't really about anything…or if they were, they weren't seriously about it. "Grazing in the Grass" was a hit in 1968 for Hugh Masekela but nobody paid much attention to it because it was an instrumental and you could argue that the "grass" in the title was the kind people have in their front lawn.
In 1969 though, The Friends of Distinction recorded a version with lyrics and the meaning of its "grass" was inarguable. The original members of the group were Floyd Butler, Harry Elston, Jessica Cleaves and Barbara Jean Love. Mr. Elston wrote the lyrics and was lead singer, and I was amused by the part that went, "Rock it to me, sock it to me, rock it to me, sock it to me," etc. The rest of the lyrics included…
Sure is mellow grazin' in the grass
(grazin' in the grass is a gas — baby, can you dig it?)
What a trip just watchin' as the world goes past
(grazin' in the grass is a gas — baby, can you dig it?)
There are too many groovy things to see while grazin' in the grass
(grazin' in the grass is a gas — baby, can you dig it?)
Flowers with colors for takin', everything outta sight
(grazin' in the grass is a gas — baby, can you dig it?)
That same year, Ed Sullivan had them on to perform it as per below. The story is that shortly after they performed it on his show, Ed was on some local talk show and the interviewer challenged him for putting a "drug song" on his program. Ed, who was famous for not having any range of facial expressions whatsoever, said with that straight puss of his, "Oh, that song's not about using marijuana. It's about lying in the grass, looking at how beautiful the clouds in the sky are."
Whatever it meant, it was on my mixtape so here it is, as performed (which is to say, lip-synced) on the Sullivan show on December 27, 1970…