Chasing the Dragon

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

In her autobiography, Cathy Smith attempts to exonerate herself from the charge of John Belushi’s murder by tracing her experiences in the rock-drug world. To her, Belushi’s death was part and parcel of drug-taking: some people couldn’t handle drugs, some overdosed. She says she avoided these people when they proved themselves inept. Heavy drugs, booze, sex with anybody, and chasing rock stars characterize Smith’s life from her first encounter with The Band at age 16 to her final visit with Belushi at 35. The tone of the book is pride: look at me, I slept with Levon Helm, Hoyt Axton, Gordon Lightfoot, Richard Manuel, etc. etc. etc. With remarkable memory, she records in intimate detail her associations with the stars: Jack Nicholson “popped an amyl nitrate capsule” during sex, Lightfoot had a “non-specific urethritis,” during an argument Lightfoot “pushed my head into the upstairs toilet.”

“I want to tell my side of things as honestly as I can, in the hope that someone might learn from my experiences. Because the point of my story is that what happened to me could happen to anyone.” “What happened” could not happen to anyone; it could only happen to other mindless, drifting, irresponsible groupies. Smith, a veteran groupie of 20 years, was incapable of exerting herself to look after her daughter, whom she “couldn’t handle at all” (no wonder: she worked all day and partied all night), or to assume responsibility for herself and her actions. She followed where her idols the rock stars led: took their drugs, slept in their beds, swept their floors. “Small fish working in the Big Pond,” she notes; but for her being a small fish was far superior to being out of the Pond altogether.

Her story is told in a chatty conversational style, documenting, with a very narrow and biased point of view, who took what drugs, who partied where with whom, and who lived with or slept with whom. It is a story of total irresponsibility, degradation, egotism and self-abuse. After reading it, you feel in need of a bath on a breath of fresh air. No one could learn from Smith’s experiences, mostly because there is no experience — just futile, drug-filled drifting. There is no moral or lesson to learn because Smith is too proud of her role as “Sounding Board for the Stars.”