The
Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an
American
committee
formed in 1985 by four women: Tipper
Gore, wife of Senator and
later Vice
President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of
Treasury
Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar,
wife of Washington
realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of
Washington City
Council Chairman John Nevius. They were known as the
"Washington wives" – a reference to their husbands' connections
with the federal government. The Center eventually grew to include
22 directors.
Background and formation
In October 1984, the
National Parent-Teacher Association, (PTA), sent a letter to 30
record labels and to the
Recording Industry
Association of America, (RIAA), proposing the music industry
label records that contained "explicit lyrics or content", in order
to "take the element of surprise out of buying an album". However,
initially none of the record companies agreed to the PTA's
proposal. A response letter from RIAA President, Stanley Gortikov,
stated that: "There are wide variations, company to company, within
our industry in respect to artists, contractual relationships,
marketing considerations and product services."
The formation of the PMRC began in 1984 after Tipper Gore, along
with her daughter Karenna, heard
Prince's song "
Darling Nikki." This track, which appears on
the soundtrack to the film
Purple
Rain, contains references to
sex and
masturbation ("I knew a girl named
Nikki/I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a
hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine").
Gore watched other rock
music videos and
concluded: "The images frightened my children, they frightened me!
I am frightened! Way frightened! The graphic sex and the violence
were too much for us to handle." Susan Baker became alarmed when
she heard her seven-year-old daughter singing along with
Madonna songs that Baker considered
"suggestive" Gore and Baker, along with Howar and Nevius, formed
the PMRC in May 1985.
The PMRC claimed that the change in rock music was attributable to
the decay of the
nuclear family in
America. Gore asserted that families are "haven[s] of moral
stability" which protect children from outside influence, and that
without the family structure rock music was "infecting the youth of
the world with messages they cannot handle."
Rap Music of the mid to late 80s, especially artists that were
deemed violent, particularly Ice-T and Run DMC furthered the PMRC's
influence in American Politics.
Ice-T was personally accused by Tipper Gore with support from the PMRC for the
increasing rates of violence against police officers in East
Los
Angeles
in the Late 1980s.
Actions
As a method of combating this alleged problem, the PMRC suggested a
voluntary move by the
RIAA and the music
industry to develop "guidelines and/or a rating system" similar to
the
MPAA film rating system.
Additional suggestions from the PMRC that appeared in an article in
the
Washington Post included:
printing warnings and lyrics on album covers, forcing record stores
to put albums with explicit covers under the counters, pressuring
television stations not to broadcast explicit songs or videos,
"reassess[ing]" the contracts of musicians who performed violently
or sexually in concert, and creating a panel to set industry
standards.
This article led to the removal of rock music
and magazines from American stores including Walmart
, J. C.
Penney,
Sears and
Fred Meyer.
The PMRC also released the "Filthy Fifteen", a list of the fifteen
songs they found most objectionable:
The PMRC also advocated against supposed subliminal
backmasking in records, and accused bands
including
Iron Maiden,
Styx,
Rush,
Pink Floyd,
Van Halen,
Kiss and
Queen of backmasking to promote Satanism and/or
drug use.
Senate hearing
In August 1985, 19 record companies agreed to put "Parental
Guidance: Explicit Lyrics" labels on albums to warn of explicit
lyrical content. However, before the labels could be put into
place, the
Senate agreed to
hold a hearing on so-called "porn rock". This began on
September 19 1985, when
representatives from the PMRC, three musicians--
Dee Snider,
Frank
Zappa,
John Denver--and Senators
Paula Hawkins and
Al Gore testified before the
Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on "the
subject of the content of certain sound recordings and suggestions
that recording packages be labeled to provide a warning to
prospective purchasers of sexually explicit or other potentially
offensive content."
Supporting witnesses
Paula Hawkins presented three record
covers (
Pyromania by
Def Leppard,
W.O.W. by
Wendy
O. Williams and
Animal by
W.A.S.P.) and the music videos for "
Hot for Teacher", by
Van Halen, and "
We're Not Gonna
Take It", by
Twisted Sister,
commenting: "Much has changed since Elvis' seemingly innocent
times. Subtleties, suggestions, and innuendo have given way to
overt expressions and descriptions of often violent sexual acts,
drug taking, and flirtations with the occult. The record album
covers to me are self-explanatory."
Susan Baker testified that "There certainly are many causes for
these ills in our society, but it is our contention that the
pervasive messages aimed at children which promote and glorify
suicide, rape, sadomasochism, and so on, have to be numbered among
the contributing factors." Tipper Gore asked record companies to
voluntarily "plac[e] a warning label on music products
inappropriate for younger children due to explicit sexual or
violent lyrics."
National PTA Vice President for Legislative Activity Millie
Waterman related the PTA's role in the debate, and proposed
printing the symbol "R" on the cover of recordings containing
"explicit sexual language, violence, profanity, the occult and
glorification of drugs and alcohol," and providing lyrics for
"R"-labeled albums.
In
addition, Dr. Joe Stuessy, a music
professor at the University of Texas at San
Antonio
, spoke regarding the power of music to influence
behavior. He argued that heavy metal was different from
earlier forms of music such as
jazz and
rock and roll because it was
"mean-spirited" and "had as one of its central elements the element
of hatred." Dr. Paul King, a child and adolescent
psychiatrist, testified on the
deification of heavy metal musicians, and to
the presentation of heavy metal as a religion. He also stated that
"many" adolescents read deeply into song lyrics.
Opposing witnesses
During his statement, musician and
producer Frank
Zappa asserted that "the PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived
piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to
children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not
children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing
with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in
the proposal's design." He went on to state his suspicion that the
hearings were a front for H.R. 2911, a proposed
blank tape tax: "The major record
labels need to have H.R. 2911 whiz through a few committees before
anybody smells a rat. One of them is chaired by
Senator Thurmond. Is it a coincidence that
Mrs. Thurmond is affiliated with the PMRC?" Zappa had earlier
stated about the Senate's agreement to hold a hearing on the matter
that "A couple of
blowjobs here and there
and Bingo! — you get a hearing."
Folk rock musician
John Denver stated he was "strongly opposed to
censorship of any kind in our society or anywhere else in the
world", and that in his experience censors often misinterpret
music, as was the case with his song "
Rocky Mountain High". In addition,
Denver expressed his belief that censorship is counterproductive:
"That which is denied becomes that which is most desired, and that
which is hidden becomes that which is most interesting.
Consequently, a great deal of time and energy is spent trying to
get at what is being kept from you." Incidentally, when John came
up to give his speech, many on the PMRC board expected him to side
with them, thinking he would be offended by the lyrics as
well.
Dee Snider,
frontman and
lead singer
of
glam metal band
Twisted Sister, testified that he "[did] not
support [...] Mr. Gortikov's unnecessary and unfortunate decision
to agree to a so-called generic label on some selected records".
Like John Denver, Snider felt that his music had been
misinterpreted. He defended the Twisted Sister songs "
Under the Blade", which had been
interpreted as referring to
sadomasochism,
bondage, and rape, and "
We're Not Gonna
Take It", which had been accused of promoting violence. Snider
said about "Under the Blade", a song Snider claimed was written
about an impending surgery, that "the only sadomasochism, bondage,
and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore." He stated, "Ms.
Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage, and she found it.
Someone looking for surgical references would have found it as
well." Snider concluded that "The full responsibility for defending
children falls on the shoulders of my wife and I, because there is
no one else capable of making these judgments for us."
Notable snippets of audio from the hearing found their way into
Zappa's audiocollage "Porn Wars", released on the
Frank Zappa Meets
the Mothers of Prevention album. Senators
Gore,
Hollings,
Gorton,
Hawkins, and others appeared. The album cover
featured a parody of the RIAA warning label. The
LP included a note to listeners to send to
Zappa's
Barking Pumpkin
Records for a free
" Z-PAC", a printed information package that
included transcripts of the committee hearing, and a letter from
Zappa encouraging young people to register to vote.
The Tipper Sticker
On
November 1,
1985,
before the hearing ended, the
RIAA agreed to
put "
Parental Advisory" labels on
selected releases at their own discretion. The labels were generic,
unlike the original idea of a descriptive label categorizing the
explicit lyrics.
Many
record stores refused to sell albums containing the label (most
notably Wal-Mart
), and others
limited sales of those albums to minors. The label became
known as the "
Tipper sticker" .
Some politicians attempted to criminalize the sale of explicit
records to minors, while others attempted to completely ban such
records. One of the albums to receive the "Parental Advisory"
sticker was Frank Zappa's Grammy-winning album
Jazz From Hell, presumably as punishment
for his testimony in opposition to the PMRC, even though as a
collection of instrumental pieces the album contained no lyrics at
all.
Many musicians have criticized or parodied the PMRC and Tipper
Gore:
- Danzig's 1988 song "Mother" scored a top 40 hit as the most
famous song about the PMRC labeling and its inherent problems. This
is still one of the only songs about Tipper Gore and the PMRC to
reach a wide audience.
- The song 'Rock You To Hell' from the album of the same name by
heavy metal band Grim Reaper is a protest song against the
PMRC's attempts to censor music.
- As an early parody of the PMRC "explicit lyrics" warning
labels, many prints of Metallica's 1986
release of their album Master Of
Puppets sported a sticker on the front in the shape of a
stop-sign saying:
"THE ONLY TRACK YOU PROBABLY WON'T WANT TO PLAY IS
"DAMAGE, INC." DUE TO THE MULTIPLE USE OF THE INFAMOUS "F"
WORD. OTHERWISE, THERE AREN'T ANY "SHITS," "FUCKS,"
"PISSES," "CUNTS," "MOTHERFUCKERS," OR "COCKSUCKERS" ANYWHERE ON
THIS RECORD"
F is for fighting, R is for red
Ancestors' blood in battles they've shed
E, we elect them, E, we eject them
In the land of the free and the home of the brave
D, for your dying, O, your overture
M, they will cover your grave with manure
This spells out freedom, it means nothing to me
As long as there's a P.M.R.C.
- In addition, in the music video for the song "In My Darkest Hour", from the same album,
as well as the Megadeth portion of the 1988
rockumentary The
Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years,
bassist David Ellefson can be seen
with a sticker on his bass that says "Fuck The P.M.R.C".
- Glam metal band Quiet Riot's 1986 single The Wild And The
Young is a hymn to youth and freedom. The accompanying video
shows an Orwellian future, where rock'n'roll is battled and finally
wiped out by totalitarian militarists. The video ends with a
reference to the PMRC that compares the Tipper stickers to the
fictive dystopia.
- Ice-T's 1989 album The
Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say
contains many criticisms of the PMRC. One song in particular,
"Freedom of Speech", is an extended attack on Tipper Gore:
Yo Tip, what's the matter? You ain't gettin' no
dick?
You're bitchin' about rock'n'roll, that's censorship, dumb
bitch
The Constitution says we all got a right to speak
Say what we want Tip, your argument is weak
- In his book The Ice Opinion, Ice-T wrote, "Tipper Gore
is the only woman I ever directly called a bitch on any of my
records, and I meant that in the most negative sense of the word".
On "You Shoulda Killed Me Last Year", his spoken-word outro to his
album O.G. Original Gangster , he curses the
CIA, the LAPD, FBI
, George Bush Sr. and Tipper Gore.
- The liner notes of Sonic Youth's
1990 album Goo include a
cartoon with the caption "SMASH THE PMRC".
- The song Shelter
Me, from glam metal group Cinderella's 1990 album Heartbreak Station, contained a lyric
which mockingly noted that "Tipper led the war against the record
industry/She said she saw the devil on her MTV."
- In 1990, thrash/hardcore group Suicidal Tendencies released a song
called "Lovely" on their Lights...Camera...Revolution!
album, which has a mockingly clean/positive atmosphere to it and
even addresses Tipper Gore by name. Also addressing the PMRC on the
album was "You Can't Bring Me
Down."
- In 1990 the industrial band
Ministry released the live album
In Case You
Didn't Feel Like Showing Up with a cut out version of the
parental advisory sticker. On the inside they urged fans to cut it
out and send it to the PMRC in protest. Also on the track
"Stigmata" the lead singer, Al Jourgensen, rants about Tipper Gore
as well as George H.W. Bush and others.
- Alex Vitoulis, ACPM of Billboard Magazine, tattooed the phrase
"Sugar Walls" above his left buttock as a statement and response to
the controversy.
- A minute-long track tagged onto the end of Warrant's 1990 Cherry Pie was titled "Ode to Tipper
Gore" and featured nothing but various swear words recorded in
rapid-fire order from past concerts.
- US Thrash Metal band Flotsam and Jetsam recorded the
song "Hard On You" on their 1988 album No Place for Disgrace which deals
openly with the topic and accuses the PMRC of limiting their
artistic right without mentioning the PMRC or Tipper Gore directly.
Lines like "One that's young sees the circled "R", does he buy it?"
and "If your committee is so damn right, why did we write this
song?" leave no room for misinterpretation though.
- In 1992, The first music video released by Tool, "Hush", promoted their dissenting views
about the then-prominent Parents Music Resource Center and its
advocacy of the censorship of music. The video featured the band
members naked with their genitalia covered by parental advisory
stickers and their mouths covered by duct tape.
- The Ramones' 1992 album Mondo Bizarro contained the song
"Censorshit", which proposes that the sticker is "just a smoke
screen for the real problems. S&L deficit, the homeless, the
environment."
- Anthrax's "Startin' Up a Posse",
from their 1991 release Attack of the Killer B's,
states that "These seven words you're trying to take / Shit, fuck,
satan, death, sex, drugs, rape / Right or wrong it's our choice to
make". The song also mentions about stopping the P.M.R.C. while the
band throws insults.
Let's kill the cops, the C.I.A.
The F.B.I., the P.T.A.
The N.F.L., the P.M.R.C.
Let's kill you and let's kill me
- On a live album, Live...In the
Raw, W.A.S.P. dedicated their song
"Harder, Faster" to the Washington Wives, a "branch" of PMRC. The
PMRC said that WASP stood for "We Are Sexual Perverts".
I've been reading an awful lot in the newspapers, and
magazine's about me and my boys here.
And I was reading one article in particular, about an
organization, you might of heard of them before... they're called
"the PMRC", well I read...
I read that they said, that they think that "We Are
Sexual Perverts!"
Now this is coming from an organization called "The
Washington Wives".
Now I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like
some sort of, God damn, Hollywood fuckin' Jackie Collins novel if
you ask me!
Well this is for that whole bunch, because they can
suck me, suck me eat me raw....this is "Harder Faster"
- On the 2001 Dead Kennedys' live
album Mutiny on the Bay, during
their song "M.T.V. - Get off the Air", lead singer Jello Biafra tells the audience to "buy a
homemade [record] instead, before the PMRC closes the stores down
that sell 'em". Biafra had earlier been brought to trial on charges
of "distributing harmful matter to minors" in an incident involving
the 1985 Dead Kennedys' album Frankenchrist, which featured an insert
of H R Giger's Penis Landscape and a parody sticker on the
front cover reading:
- "WARNING: The inside fold out to this record cover is a work of
art by H.R. Giger that some people may find shocking, repulsive or
offensive. Life can sometimes be that way."
- The artwork on Clawfinger's album 'Life Will Kill You' parodies
the 'tipper sticker' by replacing 'Parental' with Life Will,
'Advisory' with Clawfinger and 'Explicit Lyrics' with Kill
You.
- Other groups that have mentioned the PMRC or Tipper Gore
include Aerosmith ("F.I.N.E."), Body Count
("KKK Bitch"), Cinderella
("Shelter Me"),
The Dead Milkmen ("Do the Brown
Nose"), Eminem ("White America"), The Fad ("P.M.R.C."), Frank
Zappa ("Porn Wars"),
Fishbone ("Pray to the Junkiemaker"),
KMFDM ("Sucks"),
Manic Street Preachers
("IFWHITEAMERICATOLDTHETRUTHFORONEDAYIT'SWORLDWOULDFALLAPART" and
"Tennessee"), Mojo Nixon ("Burn Down the
Malls"), Pinkard & Bowden
("Censor Us"), Reset ("Go Away"),
Todd Rundgren ("Jesse"), Warrant ("Ode to Tipper Gore"), and
The Bouncing Souls ("PMRC").
German Metal band Running Wild,
on their live album Ready for
Boarding, dedicated the song 'Purgatory' to the PMRC.
Releases by
independent, non-RIAA
labels may not carry the sticker (often proudly). Still, the RIAA
encourages the labeling of any album containing explicit
lyrics.
It is uncertain whether the Tipper sticker is effective in
preventing children from being exposed to explicit content. Some
suggest that the sticker actually increases record sales.
Philip Bailey stated that "For the most part
[the sticker] might even sell more records in some areas - all
you've got to do is tell somebody this is a no-no and then that's
what they want to go see." Ice-T's "Freedom of Speech" states that
"Hey PMRC, you stupid fuckin' assholes/The sticker on the record is
what makes 'em sell gold./Can't you see, you alcoholic idiots/The
more you try to suppress us, the larger we get." And the
Furnaceface song "We Love You, Tipper Gore",
from 1991's album
Just Buy It, suggests that the label
"only whets my appetite ... only makes us want to hear it that much
more".
- Rap group Insane Clown Posse
had a fight with the P.M.R.C and Hollywood Records in 1997 due to that
their album The Great Milenko was
pulled off the shelves six hours after the release of the CD due to
unclean lyrics referencing rape, murder, child abuse and
sex. Rapper Violent J said "We went to the guys
at Hollywood Records and showed them the lyrics sheet months prior
to the release, they OK'd it and we recorded it. The last minute
they pull it off the shelves and say what we do is bad".
See also
References and external articles
Citations and notes
- Short history of the PMRC by Censor This
- United States Senate (1985): Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation. United States Senate, Ninety-ninth
Congress, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of
Records (September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
- Snider's testimony is also available at VH1.
- www.MEGADETH.com » Scorpion Archive
- Ice-T: The Ice Opinion, page 98
- http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/lp/lp08h.jpg
- Micallef, Ken (March 1996), Rage Against The Machine's Brad Wilk,
Modern
Drummer. Retrieved February 17, 2007.
- Alternative Tentacles - Bands
- BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Spotlight on
explicit lyrics warning
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