Heroin (song) - References in Popular Culture

References in Popular Culture

• Denis Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son, and the film based on it took its title from the lyrics of this song.
• In an interview on the Jonathan Richman DVD, Take Me To The Plaza, he recounts trading a record by The Fugs for The Velvet Underground & Nico after hearing this song for the first time.
• The song is featured in the 1991 Oliver Stone movie, The Doors
• According to Mick Jagger, the Beggar's Banquet track "Stray Cat Blues" by The Rolling Stones was inspired by "Heroin", Jagger going as far as to say that the whole sound of "Stray Cat Blues" was lifted from "Heroin". The intros of both songs bear a distinct resemblance.
• In Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, the central character Mark Renton describes playing the "Rock 'n' Roll Animal" version of 'Heroin' instead of the original "The Velvet Underground & Nico" as 'breaking the junkie's golden rule'.
• Jeff Ott of Fifteen's acoustic song also entitled "Heroin" contains the line "I feel like a man when I stick the spike into my vein."
• Martin Amis's first novel The Rachel Papers features a scene in which the song is played in the bedroom of the novel's protagonist, Charles Highway, who calls it 'the most violent and tuneless of all American LPs'.
• The song is featured in the season 1 episode of Brotherhood 'Matthew 12:25.'