Nuzum - Parental Advisory

Issues In Music Censorship

Freedom of Speech An Overview of Music Censorship

Banned In the USA The PMRC and Music Labeling

Happiness Is a Warm Gun Violence

Cover Me Album Cover Art

I Want My MTV MTV and Music Videos

Ebony and Ivory Race

Dear God Religion

Comfortably Numb Drugs

I Want Your Sex Sex

Whats So Funny Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? Politics and Protest

I Fought the Law and the Law Won Law

Censorshit From the Mouths of the Censors

The Chronology of Music Censorship In the United States

Before the 1950s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000

Probably the most difficult portion of this book to write is the part you are reading right now. I have struggled over many drafts of this preface. In those rejected pages, I shared information about my life, thoughts, and feelings about everything from bumper stickers to gun control to church road signs. But nothing seemed to fit. And thats why Im sitting at my computer right now, putting the finishing touches on this book, and trying hard to prepare you to begin your process of reading it.

All I really wanted to do was share my own process of transcendence.

In the three years I spent writing and working on this book, I changed. I tested some long-held beliefs about right and wrong. Some of those tenets survived the process, others did not, and new ones were born along the way.

I hope this book has the same effect on you.

Enjoy.

Eric Nuzum

Kent, Ohio

October 2000

http://ericnuzum.com/parentaladvisory

E-mail: letters@ericnuzum.com

W hether or not you consider yourself a fan, its 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: Youd be hard-pressed to find many members of Western civilization who havent 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. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band? Bed-peace?

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 youll 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 bands 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 controversialand highly collectiblebutcher 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 Christianitys popularity with teens were misreported when printed in American newspapers. His statementWere more popular now than Jesusled 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.

Lennons comments on religion, the controversy over the butcher cover, and the public reaction that followed severely changed Americas 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 groups U.S. labelwhich they felt butchered their U.K. releases to make extra cash stateside. Lennons 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, dont 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 Chin 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 oclock news. So why rock? Its 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 genreslike ragtime and jazzhave been met with resistance. When the saxophone was popularized in the 1920s, critics called it the devils flute and thought that its low, seductive tones would cause young girls to behave immorally.1

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.