Night Beat (44 page)

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 assertion 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.”

NOT MUCH LATER, the PMRC pretty much got their way. After a series of congressional hearings, the record industry announced that it had reached a compromise agreement with the PMRC: Record companies would begin 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 music—which made a kind of perverse sense, given 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 classical music—weird, considering just how much murder and betrayal you can find in the stories told in opera.

So, some new releases were stickered. In a way, little changed—at least at first. Some artists kept making “offensive” music, and some of that music sold in the millions. And rock & roll remained a force of controversy—a music that (as Ronald Reagan termed it) was about “violence and perversity.” But rock & roll also remained music that is a call to freedom, a music about
not
shutting up, about not staying quietly in one’s place, and about not having to accept the dominant social order’s safe-minded morality. As Prince told
Rolling 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 system wasn’t enough for some people—and that brings us to the last skirmish of this present story, though certainly not the last one that rock & roll and other forms of popular music will ever have to endure or combat.