PART OF WHAT Stroud and so many others miss or overlook is that sex is among the 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’t merely the bold, unmistakable thrust of the music’s grinding rhythms (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 mid-1950s), but rather the way the music brought chance masses of people into potentially excitable contact. From Alan Freed’s explosive live shows to the Rolling Stones’ 1960s tours, sexual provocation, expression, and implicit interaction were the sustaining subtext of rock’s popularity. What made this message so culturally eventful was that it forged 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 mainstream) that many people regarded the rise of rock & roll as an ill omen: a sign of the coming 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 pop music that has done the most effective job of mixing and balancing these various elements—and of examining 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. Meantime, in the music of Bruce Springsteen, 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 seemed like nothing so much as a costly indulgence paid for by sexual typecasting. One has only to regard what happened to punk and new wave in the early and mid-1980s to witness this development at its most troubling. In its early stages, punk asserted itself as music that rejected the knee-jerk carnality of the pro forma 1970s rock attitude, and in time—in its brief postpunk incarnation, through 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 rapprochement. One could almost imagine it as a worthy version of a sex classified: Good beat seeks good idea, for healthful intercourse.
Then, almost overnight, as new wave and video pop joined resources to help rejuvenate the record industry, the notion of social-sexual progressivism began to fall off. Calculated, arty sex poses—from artists like Dale Bozzio, Teri Nunn, Duran Duran, or Adam Ant—seemed indivisible from sleek textures and throbbing 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 excitement that sold easy and obvious (though still fun) ideals of sensual experience.
This, then, became the quandary: How does a music that derives in part from sexual rhythm and style remain sexy without becoming a medium of exploitation or debasement? Is the sort of sexiness that was once advanced by Elvis Presley, Tina Turner, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and so many others still tenable or understandable in a time where anti-sexism and anti-pornography have become large causes? Does pop romance need to be straitlaced to prove positive? Are implicit or graphic 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 how twisted 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 manifest sexual style. Prince’s example might 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 same time, the record asserted Prince’s lionizing of sex as a means of striking back at all the tireless advocates of discrimination, avarice, inequity, and war who 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 make political, racial, and religious sense of his concerns—and while his social-sexual musings were sometimes contradictory or plain arrogant, they were also just as often edifying, not to mention provoking.
Interestingly, up through 1999, Prince’s unabashed sexual interests were hailed by most pop critics for their spunk and intelligence. But with Purple Rain—the surprise success film of 1984 about a maverick pop prodigy who must overcome selfishness and brutality to find redemption and acceptance—Prince began meeting reproof. Purple Rain’s detractors saw the film’s two male leads—Prince and the Time’s Morris Day, both playing men who contemptuously exploited the women around them for sexual and career purposes—as glorified endorsements of sexism, and also saw the cartoon-style sexiness of the female characters as a damaging 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 men who come to look on women as the prize of privilege, and not surprisingly, they attract mildly likable, willing women who have learned to wield sex as an entrée to the realm of privilege. But like any worthy dramatic portrayal, Purple Rain gave 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 environment; he hates his father for his violent tirades against the mother, but at the same time can’t even bring himself to give a fair hearing to the music of the women in his band, or allow his girlfriend the room for a pop career of her own (in fact, he slugs her when she announces her plans). At the film’s end, though, the Kid takes a small yet crucial step toward rejecting the brutality that trapped his parents, and the film puts forth a moving vision of redemption and equality as related ambitions.
But then Prince, um, climaxes the movie with an image of himself playing a guitar that literally ejaculates. Is this, as some critics insisted, an offensive image? (If so, what about Jimi Hendrix’s masturbatory displays with his guitar?) To some people, sure, that sort of imagery is offensive. It was probably even more offensive to some when Prince further celebrated orgasms by making a Top 10 single out of "Erotic City"—the first massively popular song ever to place the word "fuck" right in the heart of mainstream radio. Maybe this is a tawdry achievement, but it’s also an honest act of rejoicing. Prince may be a sensationalist and opportunist, but that doesn’t preclude him from being a serious and worthy artist: He aims to assert that a celebration of sex isn’t far removed from a celebration of life—which in the 1980s’ climate of voguish avarice and nuclear dread, could seem pretty transcendent and affirmative.
Madonna, too, is a sensationalist. From the start, with her hungry leer and her bemusedly mercenary view of romance, Madonna outraged some pop-leftists who believe that such manifestations of sexiness further objectify the cultural image of women, thereby undercutting 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 more enticing way than Prince, Madonna had proven a great 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 h
er. And to a surprising extreme, many of Madonna’s detractors vilified her in dehumanizing ways—such as a 1985 Village Voice review that labeled her as "whorish," and numerous items in other magazines and newspapers that described her with the word sleazy, as if image and repertoire alone are enough to merit such a verdict. (Even record stores got 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 more likely satiric) "boy-toy" image? If Madonna stands condemned under this sort of narrow-headed puritanism, I’m only glad that Eartha Kitt and Julie London got to make the best of their bedroom-and-furs bit before our current era of "enlightenment"—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 humor, and also aren’t willing to afford a young woman the right to a brazen sexuality in the same manner they allowed Prince. ("I thought about that," Madonna once told me. "He was certainly just as sexually provocative, if not more than I was. I wasn’t talking about giving head.") Could the real message of these critics be that if a woman aspires to bold or cocky achievements, she must measure up to higher standards than her male counterparts? If that’s so—if this is the way we truly care to measure and condemn Madonna’s image—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 might be times when I also would worry about how my kids hear and assimilate some of pop culture’s images. Perhaps the closest I ever came to this was in the late summer of 1985, when I received a package of releases from the Important and Combat labels, representing the music of new heavy metal bands from around America. Here was a collection of all the vile vogues that alarmists had warned us about during the years: songs like "Kill Again," "Necrophilia," "Deliver Us to Evil," and "A Lesson in Violence," about rape, carnage, suicide, and devil worship, from bands with such names as Venom, Impaler, Exodus, Savatage, and Abattoir (which means "slaughterhouse"), some packaged in album jackets sporting clear images of bloody and nauseating misogyny and campy cannibalism.
Even more troubling were 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 from an Exodus song: "Get in our way and we’re going to take your life/Kick in your face and rape and murder your wife/Plunder your town, your homes they’ll burn to the ground/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 some young rock fans who find a sense of valor and meaning 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 murder to their obsession with the image 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 uncomfortable knowing that some rock music actually exalts these sentiments.
So, what should one do? Make this music illegal, prohibit its sales to minors? (Don’t worry about limiting airplay; it gets damn little.) Compose legislation 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 films?
Well, I hope not, and not simply because I regard freedom of expression as sacrosanct. These would be cosmetic solutions to serious symptoms, syndromes that don’t so much create attitudes and cause damage as they reflect certain realities of society and subcultures from which they spring. It’s too easy to blame Madonna, Prince, and half-witted devil rock bands for fomenting sexism, pornography, and violence, and it is too simple-minded to assume that by silencing these musicians’ messages, one has eliminated any causes or problems, or even any real unpleasantness. Anyway, just because I’m not crazy about the subjects that some of these bands sing about doesn’t empower me to gag them. I can rail against 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 timelier—or worse—turn of events.
For weeks, a Washington, D.C., group of powerfully connected "concerned citizens" (inspired in part by Kandy Stroud’s Newsweek 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 storm over the sexual and violent imagery of rock music and videos, with the aim of pressuring record companies and national broadcasters into a collective exercise of self-censorship. Pop had gotten out of hand, they claimed, and because much of its audience is young and presumably impressionable, that music possesses a startling 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 most provoking songs yanked off the airwaves—and if the music industry wouldn’t cooperate, the PMRC warned, perhaps Congress would take the matter under control.
During the same period that this movement was gathering force, a killer was traversing Southern California—raping, bludgeoning, murdering people in their sleep, leaving a vast community angry 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 that made hedonistic music with occasional menacing overtones. As it develops, the hat wasn’t so much a clue as a foretoken of media hysteria. Following the arrest of Richard Ramirez, the man who was accused, tried, and convicted of the “Night 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 most reports put it) by a song called “Night Prowler,” a horror-movie-type account of nocturnal crime. Unfortunately, this fact was made to carry more significance than was warranted: 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 crimes. Some reports went further: “Could a song like this push somebody over the edge?” asked one TV reporter.
What was particularly galling about all this was the surprising misinformation spread in many of the reports. If anything, it was an example of the news media reading the surface of a medium—rock & roll—they have little understanding for. Thus AC/DC—an over-the-hill but respectably rousing heavy metal outfit—became a “Satanist” group because of such album titles as Highway to Hell and a photo depicting one member in showy devil’s horns. The truth is, beyond a display of sinister bravado (a commonplace of heavy metal style), there isn’t anything genuinely menacing or satanic in either the group’s stance or repertoire, and reporters could have discovered that by doing more than cribbing each other’s sensationalistic coverage, or by simply examining the band’s work a little more carefully.
But perhaps the most asinine as well as damaging example of misrepresentation was the widely reported assertio
n that the group’s initials stood for “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Child” or, according to another source, “After Christ, the Devil Comes.” Well, get ready, because here’s the hard truth: AC/DC is an electrical term; the band’s logo even includes an electrical volt; these guys play loud and powerful electric music—indeed, electricity is the lifeblood of heavy metal. AC/DC means high-voltage electricity—get it? The group has never hinted at any other possible interpretation—not even the obvious bisexual reference that the initials also sometimes stand for.
There are a number of bad side effects to this kind of reportage 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 some heavy metal rife with violent imagery and it’s fair to question such work. But it is a great leap to divine that such music endorses or might actually inspire murder, and it is a terrible thing to suggest that AC/DC or any other group is responsible for the dementia of its fans. How many parents came away from all those news reports fearing heavy metal as much as they had feared the Stalker? It must have seemed to some as if a terrible evil was already within their homes.
This, of course, is the very message that the PMRC wanted America to believe at the time: that much rock has become a dangerous influence and should be more actively scanned by concerned parents and by the industries that profit from it. When questioned by the Los Angeles Herald Examiner about the Night Stalker case, a PMRC spokesman said: “It’s a little early to say whether we’ll be citing it, but we’re certainly watching the case with interest.”
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