eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Music Your Parents Never Wanted You To Hear
Believe it or not, music censorship in America did not begin with Tipper Gore's horrified reaction to her daughter's Prince album. The vilification of popular music by government and individuals has been going on for decades. Now, for the first time, Parental Advisory offers a thorough and complete chronicle of the music that has been challenged or suppressed -- by the people or the government -- in the United States.
From Dean Martin's "Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am" to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar; from freedom fighters such as Frank Zappa and in-your-face rappers such a N.W.A. to crusaders such as Tipper Gore, this intelligent and entertaining book shows how censorship has crossed sexual, class, and ethnic lines, and how many see it as a de facto form of racism. With nearly one hundred fascinating photographs of musicians, record burning, and controversial cover art; illuminating sidebars; and a decade-by-decade timeline of important moments in censorship history, Parental Advisory is by turns frightening and hilarious -- but always revealing.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061976735 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 370 |
| File size: | 657 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
"Freedom of Speech"
An Overview of Music Censorship
"Censorship is the height of vanity."
--Martha Graham
Whether or not you consider yourself a fan, it's hard to argue that the Beatles rank among the most popular and influential rock acts of all time. Although the Beatles sold millions of records, their significance cannot be measured in terms of record sales alone. They are a universal band: You'd be hard-pressed to find many members of Western civilization who haven't heard of the Beatles and their music.
When I think of the Beatles, one image always pops into my head: four mop-topped young men in suits, smiling ear to ear, and stepping off an airplane for their first visit to the United States.
What image comes to mind when you think of the Beatles?
Screaming fans? Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Bedpeace?
I bet your mental picture is not the Fab Four dressed in white smocks, covered with raw, bloody meat, and surrounded by decapitated baby dolls. What makes me paint such a picture? That image was the original cover for the Beatles' Yesterday and Today album, released in June 1966.
But you'll never see that cover when you browse through the Beatles section at your local record shop. Capitol Records pulled the album cover after it had spent only a few weeks in circulation. In fact, this photo caused so much controversy that, over the band's objections, Capitol recalled every "butcher" copy of Yesterday and Today. They replaced it with a more benign photo of those four mop-topped young men. Incidentally, if you still own a copy of the album, look closely at the cover. To cut expenses, Capitol glued the new cover on top of many of the recalled albums, so the controversial -- and highly collectible -- "butcher" cover may be hiding underneath.
The problems created by the "butcher" cover pale when compared to other controversies that surrounded the Beatles that year. Three months before releasing Yesterday and Today, statements made by John Lennon regarding the decrease in Christianity's popularity with teens were misreported when printed in American newspapers. His statement -- "We're more popular now than Jesus" -- led to numerous protests, boycotts, and public burnings of Beatles records and merchandise. There were threats of violence; the band was denounced from the pulpit and the editorial page; and parents, politicos, and school officials rallied against deteriorating moral values. Many people felt that the Beatles encouraged and personified moral decline. The Reverend Thurman H. Babbs, pastor at the New Haven Baptist Church in Cleveland, vowed to excommunicate any church member who listened to Beatles records or attended a Beatles concert. The Ku Klux Klan even nailed Beatles albums to burning crosses in South Carolina.
Lennon's comments on religion, the controversy over the "butcher" cover, and the public reaction that followed severely changed America's opinion of the Beatles. The Beatles were considered "dangerous" by the mainstream.
Was this true? Of course not. Does it matter? Again, no. Often in matters of censorship, the intended context is moot. When someone believes that music represents something entirely different perception becomes reality.
The "butcher" cover was not meant to be obscene, but rather a protest against the group's U.S. label -- which they felt "butchered" their U.K. releases to make extra cash stateside. Lennon's comments were not intended to destroy Christianity, but his simply mentioning the words "Christianity" and "Beatles" in the same sentence meant that trouble was close behind.
All this begs the question: Why all the fuss over the antics of four kids playing rock music?
Throughout history many works of art and literature have been repeatedly censored. However, there seems to be an increased sensitivity when dealing with popular music. These Beatles examples illustrate one point: In matters of censorship, don't believe that content is the sole reason a work of art is censored. Actually, content makes very little difference. Censorship is less about content and much more about communication and control. This is not a new concept. As early as the third century B.C., the Chinese Ch'in dynasty recognized that one way to maintain authority and control was by prohibiting access to literature and art, even burning the imperial archives in the process.
But why the concern with pop music? Sure, music talks about sex and drugs, but so do television, movies, and the Internet. Music talks about politics and societal problems, but so do Time magazine and the six o'clock news. So why rock? It's simple. Few things are more anti-adult and anti-establishment then rock music.
Music, especially rock music, has always represented freedom to its fans. Freedom from authority, parents, or the boss. And ever since the start of rock music in the 1950s, there have always been those ready to campaign against it. But this is nothing new. Calls for censorship have come with the emergence of almost every new medium of communication: television, radio, the Internet, photography, telephones, and even the postal service. In fact, many other twentieth-century musical genres -- like ragtime and jazz -- have been met with resistance. When the saxophone was popularized in the 1920s, critics called it the "devil's flute" and thought that its low, seductive tones would cause young girls to behave immorally.
Censorship has less to do with defining appropriate expression than it does with defining appropriate people. There are those in control and those who question or threaten that control. Because music offers a sense of empowerment against authority, authority feels a need to suppress and control it, lest it be their undoing. In this paradigm, censorship cooks down to its basic ingredients: racism, classism, and elitism.
Throughout the history of rock, censors haven't really cared about Chuck Berry, Ozzy Osbourne, or 2 Live Crew. What they have cared about is what these artists represent: change.