Part 10 (2/2)

SKIRMISH THREE: OF sex, VIOLENCE, PRINCE, MADONNA, SATAN, MURDER, METAL, AND THE NEW PARENTS

Does rock & roll threaten the morals of its most susceptible fans? Can it foment debauchery, cultural dissipation, sexism, even violence? These questions, in some form or another, have been the subject of repeated and passionately unresolved debates, stretching back as far as Elvis Presley's first unabashedly sexy nationwide TV appearance-an event nal of the degeneracy of postwar Ae and its refutation have become a fixed and venerable part of the rock tradition for virtually every American and British parent and child (or censor and libertine) who have felt the volatile fluctuations of pop culture, from the initial jolt of Presley to the purposeful nihilise But the continual controversy has also beco unseeressives In the 1960s, y of parents and older siblings who had acted out the surface gestures of rebellion with Elvis but were angered by the social liberalism of the Beatles and the San Francisobnds and repelled by the sexual bravura of the Rolling Stones By the saents (the tiring ”Big Chill” generation) resisted the punktheir own once-daring but now enervated (or, more accurately, now abandoned) ideals

I as really aren't that much different [nor are they different in 1997, as I revise this piece] I aeneration's inalienable right (if not obligation) to disturb or offend the status quo, and sad because it invariably seems that so many of yesteryear's iconoclasts, while they remain pious about their own periods of rebellion, end up disparaging the worth of any later upheavals or progressions Sometimes it seems as if the children of '56, '67, or '77 feel they have a patent on legitie or disruption was the last cultural discovery worth sanctioning The truly confounding part of this is that, with the rapid turnover these days in pop styles and values, it doesn't take long for old-fogyism to creep in For example, consider all the late-1970s punks who turn up their noses at anything that gives off even a whiff of techno-pop

But the real subject here, of course, is the moral content ofthem is freelance journalist Kandy Stroud, who in a 1985 Neeek ”My Turn” coluraphic rock” Stroud (who professes to ”being so of a rock freak,” by which sheaerobics to it) was incensed when she discovered her fifteen-year-old daughter listening to Prince's ”Darling Nikki,” with its glaring reference to a woazine” After that, Stroud's neakened ears found filth all over the place-in Madonna cooing ”Feels so good inside” in ”Like a Virgin”; in Frankie Goes to Hollywood singing of gay sex in ”Relax”; in Sheena Easton extolling arousal in (Prince's) ”Sugar Walls” Clairades and corrupts its listeners, and noting that most parents don't have the time or ithal to monitor what their children listen and dance to, Stroud proposed that the tis-either by self-imposed restraints from the radio and record industry or by the enactislation

Stroud finished her article with this thought: ”Why can't musiciansensure that America's own youth will be fed a diet of rock ood to dance to but healthy for their hearts and minds and souls as well?” Welcome to the new parents: rock fans who demand that the enerations were once free to reject

Well, I guess Stroud's question is fair: Why can't rock stars produce music that is ”healthy for hearts and , of course, rockmusic that nurtures our souls and hearts, but here is the better answer to Stroud's question: Because they don't have to, nor are they ed to American and British artists are free to assume any perspective-even to exalt or to deride another person's beliefs Remember ”freedom of expression”? It extends even to rock & roll upstarts

PART OF WHAT Stroud and sothe causal impulses of rock & roll (Of jazz too, for that matter; remember the old rumor that the word jazz was derived from ”jism” or ”jizz”?) It wasn'trhythms (a trait inherited from the pulse of blues and R & B) or the often prurient text of the lyrics (the sort of salty stuff that got songs like ”Work with Me Annie” and ”Sixty Minute Man” banned in some places in the ht chance masses of people into potentially excitable contact Fro Stones' 1960s tours, sexual provocation, expression, and i subtext of rock's popularity What ed inseparable facts out of youthful bravura and racial declaration Of course, it was for this very feature (and for bringing undiluted black and hillbilly sounds into the pop arded the rise of rock & roll as an ill o of permissiveness and liberality in America Fortunately, it was exactly that

In the epoch since that initial eruption, everything and nothing have changed Certainly rock & roll has consciously aspired to more overtly artistic and political (and even mystical) ambitions, just as art and politics (and yes, mysticism too) have aimed at more openly sexual concerns Still, it is popand balancing these various ele hard questions about how these matters relate in our daily lives

In the music of Elvis Costello, for example, one finds an uncommonly deft examination of how some sexual-romantic interactions often resemble acts of social tyranny Meantisteen, one finds accounts of erotic playfulness (such as ”Pink Cadillac” and ”Fire”) juxtaposed alongside harrowing portrayals of how sexual fear can fuel debilitating isolation (”Dancing in the Dark,” ”Downbound Train,” ”I'm on Fire”) and even sudden meanness (”You Can Look”)

Of course, all this sexual obsessiveness is also a two-edged knife: What once worked as a personally and politically liberating influence in some ways turned back on itself, until the liberation itself seeence paid for by sexual typecasting One has only to regard what happened to punk and neave in the early andIn its early stages, punk asserted itself as music that rejected the knee-jerk carnality of the pro forma 1970s rock attitude, and in tih such bands as Au Pairs, Gang of Four, Young Marble Giants, and Delta 5-the music went on to consider questions of political friction and sexual rapprocheine it as a worthy version of a sex classified: Good beat seeks good idea, for healthful intercourse

Then, alht, as neave and video pop joined resources to help rejuvenate the record industry, the notion of social-sexual progressivisan to fall off Calculated, arty sex poses-from artists like Dale Bozzio, Teri Nunn, Duran Duran, or Ada beats In its rush to find wide acceptance, the new music had been reduced to a token of sexual manipulation-transformed into an easy version of exciteh still fun) ideals of sensual experience

This, then, became the quandary: How does a music that derives in part fro a medium of exploitation or debasement? Is the sort of sexiness that was once advanced by Elvis Presley, Tina Turner, Jaer, David Bowie, and so many others still tenable or understandable in a tiraphy have becoe causes? Does pop romance need to be straitlaced to prove positive? Are iraphic portrayals of sexual relations in rock (or pop culture in general) necessarily oppressive? Are vivid testimonials to lust essentially sexist?

If you want to see just hoisted these questions can get, consider the widely popular (at least in the mid-1980s) music of Prince and Madonna-two ambitious Minnesota-raised pop stars who made indelible content out of a ht seem more substantial He won his first bout of serious fame and acclaim with the 1980 album Dirty Mind, which presented unmistakable accounts of incest, infidelity, oral sex, and implicit bisexuality At the sa of sex as aback at all the tireless advocates of discrimination, avarice, inequity, and ho had helped hem in the world that the artist came up in By the time of Controversy (1981) and 1999 (1982), Prince was already striving to ious sense of his concerns-and while his social-sexual ant, they were also just as often edifying, not to h 1999, Prince's unabashed sexual interests were hailed by ence But with Purple Rain-the surprise success fily who must overcome selfishness and brutality to find rede reproof Purple Rain's detractors saw the film's twomen who contemptuously exploited the wolorified endorsements of sexism, and also saw the cartoon-style sexiness of the fe stereotype

What these critics seemed to miss is that the sexism of the Prince and Day characters runs pretty true to form for much of the pop scene That is, the Prince and Day characters are mildly likable, unctuous e, and not surprisingly, they attractwomen who have learned to wield sex as an entree to the reale But like any worthy draave these characters more depth than simple villain and victim delineations In Prince's case, the character he plays (”the Kid”) is self-interested and ungenerous as the result of a brutal family environainst the ive a fair hearing to the irlfriend the roos her when she announces her plans) At the filh, the Kid takes a s the brutality that trapped his parents, and the fil vision of redemption and equality as related ambitions

But then Prince, uuitar that literally ejaculates Is this, as soe? (If so, what about Jiuitar?) To soery is offensive It was probably even asle out of ”Erotic City”-the first ht in the heart of mainstream radio Maybe this is a tawdry achieve Prince may be a sensationalist and opportunist, but that doesn't preclude hi a serious and worthy artist: He aims to assert that a celebration of sex isn't far removed frouish avarice and nuclear dread, could seem pretty transcendent and affirmative

Madonna, too, is a sensationalist Frory leer and her beed some pop-leftists who believe that such manifestations of sexiness further objectify the cultural i feminism at a politically precarious moment In other words, Madonna isn't what some folks call a ”sister”

As a result, in perhaps an even reat divider in modern pop Either you like her (not a simple affair, since for many of us it involves an appreciation for irony and a belief that feminism and lustful sexiness can be reconciled), or you revile her And to a surprising extre ways-such as a 1985 Village Voice review that labeled her as ”whorish,” and nuazines and newspapers that described her with the word sleazy, as if ih to ot into the act: Los Angeles' Tower Records on Sunset carried Madonna's ”Like a Virgin” in its racks under the title ”Like a Slug”) All this for a brazen belly button and an (at worst candid but e? If Madonna stands condelad that Eartha Kitt and Julie London got to make the best of their bedroohtenment”-and I'm amazed that Tina Turner's wonderful raunch (both past and present) has gone unscathed

It's also possible that Madonna's critics just haven't got a very good sense of huht to a brazen sexuality in the saht about that,” Madonna once told me ”He was certainly just as sexually provocative, if nothead”) Could the real e of these critics be that if a woman aspires to bold or cocky achieveher standards than her male counterparts? If that's so-if this is the e truly care to e-then is it really she who is guilty of the greater crime of sexism?

BACK TO KANDY STROUD and her questions about rock's obligations I admit, there are no easy answers to these concerns If I were a parent like Stroud, there ht be times when I also would worry about how es Perhaps the closest I ever came to this was in the late sue of releases fro the music of new heavy metal bands froues that alars like ”Kill Again,” ”Necrophilia,” ”Deliver Us to Evil,” and ”A Lesson in Violence,” about rape, carnage, suicide, and devil worshi+p, froe, and Abattoir (which ed in albuwere the actual contents of the songs-none of that kid's stuff that Ozzy Osbourne served up, nor the phony posing of the death punk bands This was the cry of the real punks Consider this verse fro to take your life/Kick in your face and rape and murder your wife/Plunder your town, your horound/You won't hear a sound until my knife's in your back” Most of the other records also brandished themes of murder, relentless hate, sacrifice, the abyss of life, the inferno (and morbid allure) of death, and an apocalypse that would cleanse the world of religion and virtue In a word, yikes! Mean, where are these kids' moms and dads?

Obviously, not all these horrific proclamations were meant to be taken as the literal values of these bands, just as few (if any) stalk-and-slash flicks reflect the real world views of their writers and directors Still, there are clearly so in the fearful iconography of the more violent-minded brands of heavy metal-some who, as a matter of record, have even tied acts of e and music of some bands While this kind of behavior is, of course, damn rare, one can understand why many folks of all social and political persuasions feel unco that some rock music actually exalts these sential, prohibit its sales to ets daislation that would allow victims to sue the bands that ”cause” or ”inspire” Satanist crime? And does one then penalize those who make similar-minded horror filard freedom of expression as sacrosanct These would be cosmetic solutions to serious symptoms, syndroe as they reflect certain realities of society and subcultures fro It's too easy to blame Madonna, Prince, and half-witted devil rock bands for foraphy, and violence, and it is too si these es, one has eliminated any causes or problems, or even any real unpleasantness Anyway, just because I' about doesn't eainst them if I like or choose not to support their music, but if push comes to shove, and any of these pop stars are threatened with repression, well, I've been a rock fan too long not to side with the profligates and upstarts

VERY SHORTLY AFTER I wrote the words above, push did come to shove-and it never stopped Also, in the fall of 1985, an incident occurred that only made matters worse Even if you had scripted it, it would be hard to come up with a titon, DC, group of powerfully connected ”concerned citizens” (inspired in part by Kandy Stroud's Neeek column), who called themselves the Parents Musical Resource Center (the PMRC-led by Tipper Gore, married then to Senator Al Gore, who is now the vice-president of the United States) had been raising a storery of rockrecord companies and national broadcasters into a collective exercise of self-censorshi+p Pop had gotten out of hand, they clai and presu potential (in fact, predilection) for corrupting the morals of its fans Consequently, the PMRC wanted all pop music perused and rated (”X” for profane, ”V” for violent, ”O” for occult), plus they wanted the s yanked off the airwaves-and if the music industry wouldn't cooperate, the PMRC warned, perhaps Congress would take thethe sa force, a killer was traversing Southern California-raping, bludgeoning, ry and terrified There were few reported clues to this person's identity or personality-except that at the scene of one crime he had left a hat emblazoned with the symbol AC/DC: the name of an Australian rock band thatovertones As it develops, the hat wasn't sothe arrest of Richard Ramirez, the ht Stalker” murders, reports came fast and hard that Ramirez had indeed been an AC/DC fan-and that he had been particularly affected (”obsessed” was how ht Prowler,” a horror-movie-type account of nocturnal crinificance than arranted: Los Angeles newspapers and newscasts carried features detailing the song's lyrics, as if they were searching this evidence for an explanation to the Stalker's horrible cri like this push soe?” asked one TV reporter

What was particularly galling about all this was the surprising , it was an exa the surface of afor Thus AC/DC-an over-the-hill but respectably rousing heavy roup because of such albu one member in showy devil's horns The truth is, beyond a display of sinister bravado (a coenuinely roup's stance or repertoire, and reporters could have discovered that by doing e, or by si the band's work a little more carefully

But perhaps theexample of misrepresentation was the widely reported assertion that the group's initials stood for ”Anti-Christ/Devil's Child” or, according to another source, ”After Christ, the Devil Coet ready, because here's the hard truth: AC/DC is an electrical teruys play loud and powerful electric music-indeed, electricity is the lifeblood of heavy roup has never hinted at any other possible interpretation-not even the obvious bisexual reference that the initials also sometimes stand for

There are a nue and speculation, including that it tends to simplify the real, complex, and more awful reasons a man like Richard Ramirez would commit such atrocities But because I am a pop critic and a pop fan, I have a partisan interest in the matter: I think it bad-raps rock & roll, distorts its content and aims, makes it seem like a nefarious secret world with an unhealthy, maybe deadly effect Obviously, as I noted earlier, there is soery and it's fair to question such work But it is a great leap to divine that such ht actually inspire est that AC/DC or any other group is responsible for the dementia of its fans Howheavy metal as much as they had feared the Stalker? It must have seemed to some as if a terrible evil was already within their hoe that the PMRC wanted America to believe at the tierous influence and should be more actively scanned by concerned parents and by the industries that profit froeles Herald Exaht Stalker case, a PMRC spokes it, but we're certainly watching the case with interest”

NOT MUCH LATER, the PMRC pretty s, the record industry announced that it had reached a coin a voluntary labeling effort, as a way of warning parents that some records contained ”offensive” content The settlement pertained only to rock and black pop records and not to country iven that Al Gore was the senator from Tennessee at the time, and was understandably sensitive to the temperament of the Nashville music industry The stickers also would not be affixed to classicaljust how much murder and betrayal you can find in the stories told in opera

So, soed-at least at first So ”offensive” music, and some of that music sold in the millions And rock & roll rean termed it) was about ”violence and perversity” But rock & roll also remainedup, about not staying quietly in one's place, and about not having to accept the dominant social order's safe- Stone: ”I wish people would understand that I always thought I was bad I wouldn't have got into this business if I didn't think I was bad”

But this first step toward a ratings systes us to the last skirh certainly not the last one that rock & roll and other forms of popular music will ever have to endure or combat

SKIRMISH FOUR: OF RAP, porn, WITCHES, TRIALS, AND REFUSED FLAGS

Nineteen-ninety was another year when pop fans were forcibly reminded that rock & roll is, after all, still rock & roll: a disruptive art foruardians and with outright animosity by many conservative ard A coalition of fundae of A obscenity, subversion, and blasphemy But no other art fororously as pop music-and in the end, this atmosphere of peril e than any event in years

The first indication that 1990 was to be a contentious year came in March, when Neeek ran a cover story entitled ”The Rap Attitude” Though the otry and sexish the storyracial attitudes of white rock & rollers like Guns n' Roses' Axl Rose-Neeek saved its greatest disdain for rap: a azine's estimation, aly s out on a different block-cops, other races, women, and homosexuals” The article proved a remarkably misrepresentative view of a complex subject While it is true that there are rap perforyny and hoe, rap addresses questions about race, coedy of violence in intelligent and probing ways, and that it does so with a degree of musical invention that no other popular forer picture, and settled for a surprisingly alarmist view of rap and its practitioners that dismissed both as a ”repulsive” culture

The Neeek article was perhaps theindicteneration, but it was only the opening salvo of a difficult season That saious patriarchs, Roation at New York's Saint Patrick's Cathedral that he believed that rock music was ”a help to the devil” O'Connor seemed to have heavy metal in mind when he claimed that certain kinds of rock could induce demonic possession and drive soe had been leveled Three tier Ozzy Osbourne for the purported influence of his song ”Suicide Solution” on the deaths of their sons, and at the ti the lethal use of subliainst Judas Priest These were gri; that it could deliver them to dark forces and darker ends-and suddenly they seeal plausibility

The most dauntless of rock's foes was the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)-the powerful watchdog organization founded in 1985 by Tipper Gore Though the group claims that its primary aim is simply to e that characterize much of today's rock, the PMRC has in fact courted both the media and lawmakers as it has relentlessly pressured record labels to i systems on their artists Indeed, the PMRC had been runed itself with ultraconservative outfits like the Eagle Foruether, these factions have been decisive in bringing about the rising view that rock has become a force for moral and social disorder, and that the music's themes and effects should be more closely monitored As a result, the PMRC would become the most effective adversary that rock & roll has ever faced

By early 1990, anti-rock sentied nationalof controversial pop recordings