Fighting For Our Right to Sing: Music and the Freedom of Speech

            The Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast Sunday evenings on CBS from June 20, 1948 to June 6, 1971, was the most significant entertainment show in the United States reaching approximately forty million viewers each week.  On September 17, 1967, the Doors were set to perform their number one single, “Light My Fire.”  However, due to censor concerns regarding drug references, producer Bob Precht asked the band to change the line “girl, we couldn’t get much higher.”  The band acquiesced and even replaced the offending word “higher” during rehearsal.  Then the Doors performed the song live, maintaining the word “higher” and going so far as to emphasize the offending word.  Precht was livid and the Doors would never again appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Musicians have long been targeted by the attempts of major institutions, and later their own government, to blame music for everything from individual massacres to influencing behavior and the debasement of society.  The Columbine High School massacre of 1999 saw various groups and reporters including Bill O’Reilly of Fox News blame violent influences in entertainment and specifically the music of Marilyn Manson for the event.  The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” and what are lyrics but speech put to music?  However, the American government has consistently singled out and attempted to censor music and lyrics which might be considered offensive or controversial.  Despite the governments repeated attempts to exclude music and lyrics from the free speech clause of the First Amendment, it is essential that these art forms are protected under our fundamental rights.

            It is true that the earliest forms of censorship in the United States can be traced back to the times of the colonies.  As American judge Robert H. Bork points out, “From the earliest colonies on this continent over 300 years ago, and for about 175 years of our existence as a nation, we endorsed and lived with censorship.”  Bork notes that some examples of censorship during these times were actual laws, while others were more casual, singling out the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) introduction of the film rating system.  It seems, though, that in the last fifty years there has been a significant rise in the number of items which are deemed offensive.

            During the decade of the sixties, the government did not play a very significant role in censorship.  Instead, instances like the interference by The Ed Sullivan Show in the Doors’ performance took place in front of an American audience and forewarned future performers that the power of censorship was the property of the establishment and not the artists.  Sullivan showed the ability to grant or deny publicity on a national platform, while the artists had to come up with creative ways to work within the system.  80’s pop-icon Robert Palmer notes, “rock ’n’ roll has . . . been described as “dangerous” . . . to racists, demagogues and the self-appointed moral guardians of the status quo.”  For example, on May 12, 1963 Bob Dylan was set to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show to perform “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues” and opted to walk out rather than perform a different song as instructed by the show-runners.  Defense attorney Ian Inglis writes, “[‘Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues’] satirized the extreme right-wing, anti-Communist organization, comparing its policies to those of Hitler.”  So it stands to reason that the general public, which was certainly more conservative at the time, might have been inclined to change the channel rather than watch Dylan’s performance.  In an effort to better inform consumers to an album’s potentially controversial content, retailers like Lynn Batcheck, executive Vice President of Record & Tape Outlet and CD & Tape Outlet, suggest a rating system similar to that of the MPAA.  Similar rating systems have also been suggested by other pro-censorship groups as reported by Rhoda Rabkin, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

            One of the most significant arguments in favor of censorship is that it is beneficial in protecting our youth from hearing something that would alter or affect their behavior.  Rabkin reasons, “One should not assume that music with lyrics featuring profanity, violence, casual sex, drug use, and so on is itself the cause of negative behaviors.”  But, Rabkin continues, “On the other hand . . . some troubled teenagers focus on music with morbid, aggressive, profane, or vulgar lyrics because it seems to legitimize their impulses.”  This implies the image of the impressionable youth whose behavior may be influenced by everything he or she touches, smells, sees, or hears.  Librarian Carolyn Caywood adds, “the underlying presumption is that the teenage listener or viewer cannot think critically about the messages expressed in music and will be hypnotized by them.”  Bork goes a step further suggesting that it is not just the youth, but society as a whole that has degenerated, and that the artists of today, while reflecting today’s society, pale in comparison to pre-World War II artists in terms of their message, complexity, and musicianship.  Billboard magazine writer Bill Holland notes that several states have gone so far as to introduce legislation making the purchase or distribution of albums with “explicit sexual or violent content” a crime.  This would take the accountability of labeling these albums accordingly out of the hands of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and place it into the hands of our government.

            Bork, a noted conservative, places blame squarely on the shoulders of liberals.  “American popular culture is in a free fall, with the bottom not yet in sight.  This is what the liberal view of human nature has brought us to.”  Bork recounts a story where head of the National Political Congress of Black Women D. DeLores Tucker and former secretary of education and drug czar William Bennett visited Time Warner in protest of distribution of explicit content.  Tucker distributed lyrics to “Big Man with a Gun” by Nine Inch Nails to each executive and requested the lyrics be read aloud, but none of the executives did.  Upon reciting the lyrics, the Tucker-Bennett assembly asked if anyone considered the lyrics offensive. Bork then comments, “The discussion included such modern liberal gems from Time Warner as ‘Art is difficult to interpret,’ ‘What is art?’ and ‘Who decides what is pornography and what isn’t?’”  Bork argues that “the public acting through its designated representatives can decide [what pornography is].”  Bork also asserts that racial and misogynistic motivations in society may contribute to the uprising in explicit lyrics.  Bork argues:

It is possible to think these songs reflect a generalized rage, particularly rage against social authority . . . That may also explain the fury directed at women in this music.  In that part of the black community where men are absent from the home, women are often figures of considerable power.  White adolescents, with similar rebellious impulses, may resent the authority figures of mothers and female teachers, and the domineering whining feminists.

Bork further argues that the lack of religion contributes to the debasement of society contending, “With the decline of religious influence, the moral lessons attenuate as well."  Again, Bork suggests that morality and virtue must be legislated to the people rather than the people deciding on their own individual values by emphasizing, “We tend to think of virtue as a personal matter, each of us to choose which virtues to practice or not practice . . . But only a public morality . . . can long sustain a decent social order and hence a stable and just democratic order.”  However, we are warned that defending the freedom we hold so dear means also defending the rights of those we do not agree with.  An article in The New Republic asserts, “To defend freedom, you must also defend foulness.”

            Songs about violence have been a staple of American tradition for years.  Artists ranging from Bob Marley to Eric Clapton to Woody Guthrie to Johnny Cash have glorified violence and even murder in their songs.  Eric Clapton (covering a song written by Bob Marley) sings, “I shot the sheriff,” and no one cries out in disgust.  Woody Guthrie writes a song about 1930’s bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd killing a deputy sheriff and no one thinks twice.  Johnny Cash sings, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” and is celebrated as a folk hero.  Now it is clear that the artists in question did not commit these crimes, but how are these songs any different than “Cop Killer” by Los Angeles rapper Ice-T?  Attorney David Hershey-Webb posits whether the attention given to “Cop Killer” is “another reflection of the racial bias that Ice-T and other rappers denounce in the legal system?”  Hershey-Webb suggests that “Cop Killer” is a protest song not unlike any number of protest songs from the past and is a reflection of the changing times, observing, “If the anger is more extreme than in other protest songs, it is because the wrongs that have provoked such anger are more extreme.”  There is also a precedent set by country music and the connection to politics.  Country music is by far the most popular musical style in the United States, with over 43 million people listening to country radio stations each week.  The Simmons Study of Media and Markets notes that country fans are better educated and wealthier than those listening to other styles of music, declaring, “36 percent of country music fans have a postgraduate degree . . . Forty percent of individuals with annual incomes over $40,000 listen to country music, as do a third of individuals who earn over $100,000 a year.”  Still, country music shares a common note of protest and violence with these other music styles.  Authors Jimmie N. Rogers and Stephen A. Smith point out, “Customary among recent [country music] songs which refer to the government and its actions is the theme that those who propose and enact the laws . . . are viewed with skepticism and cynicism set to music.”  Country music also writes regularly about “crimes of passion” such as the song “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks which tells a story of a woman who poisons and murders her physically abusive husband, or “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood where she sings about vandalizing the vehicle of an unfaithful significant other.  Where is the public outcry?  Where is the backlash?

            Again, the argument seems to circle back to the mental stability, race, or class affiliation of certain types of music which continually find themselves in the crosshairs of censors.  Writers Jill Leslie Rosenbaum and Loraine Prinsky observe, “Minors on probation in California are sometimes required to comply with a list of ‘Rules to De-punk or De metal.’”  Rosenbaum and Prinsky also relate a story where a researcher posing as a father called multiple mental health facilities describing a fictional teen with “no symptoms of mental illness, drug abuse, criminal behavior, or even bad grades, but who dressed like a punk, kept his room a mess, and listened to heavy metal music.”  Eighty-three percent of these facilities recommended admission of the teen.  Caywood further notes, “The idea of brainwashing has entered pop psychology to bolster the supposition that, while the older generation’s favorite music did no harm, what teens enjoy now is dangerous.”  Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis recounts a violent confrontation between rap group N.W.A. and the Los Angeles police, prompting N.W.A. to write and record their song, “Fuck tha Police.”  DeCurtis argues, “They are presumed to be too primitive to understand the distinction between words and actions, between life and art.  Their reward is organized boycotts and FBI harassment.”  DeCurtis further notes a similar parallel from the 70’s when the Nixon administration attempted to deport John Lennon due to his “activism and the political content of his music.”

            In 1985 Tipper Gore founded the Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC) upon discovering a lyric about masturbation in the Prince song “Darling Nikki.”  DeCurtis asserts, “Rock & roll was the first target in the war on the arts that would soon escalate.”  Rabkin argues that the PMRC’s avocation of censorship “was a straightforward issue of consumers’ rights that parents know about references to sex, drugs, alcohol, suicide, violence, and the occult in their children’s music.”  DeCurtis adds, “The drive to place warning stickers on albums was underway.”  DeCurtis argues that the two primary musical styles singled out by the PMRC were rap and heavy metal.  DeCurtis observes, “It is impossible not to see elements of racial and class prejudice in that development . . . the core audience for rap is still black and the core audience for metal still consists largely of working-class whites.”  Rabkin singles out John Denver’s testimony that his song “Rocky Mountain High,” which is a song celebrating nature, had been unjustly black-listed by radio in an effort to appeal to the anti-drug crowd.  Author Mary DesRosiers comments that a compromise was reached in 1989 between the PMRC and the RIAA to place Parental Advisory stickers on albums containing offensive content and ushered in the era of self-censorship.  Rabkin admits, “The RIAA created no guidelines or recommendations and left the use of the labels to the discretion of the individual recording companies,” but it is safe to assume that the system is working.  Hastings Books, Music & Video, based in Amarillo, Texas, has an in-house stickering policy, but at least one manager believes that the RIAA system is more than adequate and the in-house sticker is a redundancy.  Even further, artists themselves are censoring their own content in exchange for radio play and marketing advantages, just to name a few benefits.  They are working within the system, much like the artists performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.  In the case of Ice-T, DeCurtis grants, “Ice-T rescinded the song voluntarily” amidst boycotts and protests by law-enforcement groups.  Rolling Stone writer Matt Diehl reports that rapper Xzibit rerecorded an entire verse of the song “Front 2 Back” in order to have it played on the radio.  Dan Seliger, Vice President of Marketing at Rawkus Records argues, “For radio, the amount of editing depends on how much airplay you’re getting.”  Somali-born artist K’Naan, now based in New York, admits to being instructed by his team to write for his American-based audience.  K’Naan comments, “When I write from the deepest part of my heart, my advisers say, I remind people too much of Somalia . . . My audience is in America, so my songs should reflect the land where I have chosen to live and work.”  Despite the successful voluntary system in place, legislators continue to pursue stricter censorship laws.  Lawmakers in Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, Washington, and Michigan are considering bills that would make buying or selling recordings that contain “explicit sexual or violent content” a crime.  Yet as long as there are legislators willing to tread on the First Amendment, there will be groups willing to stand up and fight back.  Randy Lee Payton, founder of Rock Out Censorship, argues, “Provocative rock lyrics are in the same category as comic books and adult materials, which makes them the most vulnerable to attacks.  This is the front lines of freedom of speech in America.”  Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, argues against chains such as Wal-Mart refusing to stock CD’s with the Parental Advisory sticker.  Morello argues, “Particularly in small towns where people have limited choices about where to shop for their music, the practice of stores restricting sales of stickered product literally keeps our music away from kids who want to hear it.”

            The battle lines have been drawn.  On one side is the conservative right trying to tell listeners what they are allowed to listen to.  On the other side is the liberal left telling listeners that all lyrics, no matter how vulgar or explicit, are art.  It is a slippery slope that requires a hard stand if citizens are to protect the Freedom of Speech as well as the other freedoms afforded by the First Amendment.  DeCurtis argues that “yielding to censors is a strategy that never works in the long run.”  The RIAA and PRMC agreement should have put an end to continued legislation, but the situation has gotten worse.  If the recording industry backs down in the face of legislators, how long before the same legislators become emboldened and wage war on the press, or religion?  Rabkin acknowledges, “What cannot be achieved by the heavy hand of the law can be achieved by industry self-regulation—but this requires the cooperation of the regulated.”  The solution seems clear.  The RIAA continues to sticker albums, and if the people, as responsible consumers, don’t like it they don’t have to listen to or buy it.  Allowing the government to regulate what people are allowed to listen to pushes society further toward Fascism where citizens are told what can be said and even what can be thought.  Therefore, it is vital that artists fight for the right to free speech, for the right to free thought, and for the right to express those words and thoughts in song.  It is a battle they cannot afford to lose.