This is M.E.
Some rock stars don’t mix music and politics. For Melissa Etheridge the two are almost interchangeable, and her experiences and opinions (always erudite, sometimes controversial) have shaped her public persona almost as much as her songs.
Take cannabis, now legalised in her home state of California and one of her more polarising pursuits. She first tried medicinal marijuana while undergoing treatment for breast cancer in 2004 and has been a firm advocate ever since – alongside gay rights activism, all-round political engagement and a successful musical career.
Today cannabis is the “filter” that her music is seen through. Recently it’s played its part in her fifteenth studio album, the none-too-coyly titled The Medicine Show, and her ownership of cannabis growers Etheridge Farms – which gets a nod in the heavy, call-to-arms title track: ‘A little remedy’ll never do you no harm, come on down to mama’s farm.’
“There’s a revolution, not just in America but in the world, to allow plant medicines to get back to where they were a hundred years ago,” she says, seriously but calmly. “This sort of idea that pharmaceutical medicine is going to cure us all, it’s not working.” She takes a
