Marijuana-Smoking Musicians Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair Go Inward

Singer-songwriters Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair were set to tour together this summer; instead a dual interview with them was published today in the LA Times. 

The two breakthrough artists made headlines and trended on Twitter by opening up about being female in a male-dominated rock world back in the day. They also talked about how songwriting helped them navigate life, and not feel "insane."

"Not many people can sit with themselves and go inward and investigate," Phair observed. "A lot of people avoid it. But the pandemic has certainly forced people to do that."

"But for introverts and empaths, the internal world is heaven. It’s rich," Morissette replied.

Phair puffs on The Joe Rogan Experience

Phair has spoken out in favor of marijuana legalization since 1993, and smoked pot with Joe Rogan on his podcast in 2018.
"I was never much into alcohol. I prefer marijuana," she said. "Marijuana is like shining a flashlight onto your unconscious." Morissette told High Times magazine in 2009, "As an artist, there's a sweet jump-starting quality to [marijuana] for me...So if ever I need some clarity... it's a quick way for me to get to it."


In 2018, Phair's former label, Matador, released a 25th-anniversary retrospective of her debut album, Exile in Guyville. Morissette's breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill turns 25 this year, and last year a Broadway musical based on the album premiered.

"A lot of female artists back then were either masculinized, like they had to hang with the boys and do more coke than them, or they were feminized and fit the hot girl bass-player tokenism," recalled Phair.  

Morissette takes a whiff

Morissette remembered, "When 'You Oughta Know' was first sent out to radio stations, the response was, 'We’re actually playing Sinéad O’Connor, so we’re good.' Or, 'We have Tori Amos in our rotation. We can’t add another woman. Sorry.'
That changed pretty fricking quickly."

Phair: Thanks in large part to you.

Morissette: I saw that the wave was coming, and I had the surfboard. I’m like, “Let me get up there on the crest.” It was so ready to change.

Phair added, "Now, there are so many young women making music of all sorts, with their visions intact. They wear whatever they want. They make the video the way they want. They play keyboards, drums, whatever. They’re autonomous in a way that I couldn’t have dreamed of back then."

Phair said she felt "cheated" out of their tour this year. "But we're going to do it next summer," Morissette noted. "There's a lot of important work going on right now that we need to make space for."