Chaos and anarchy are interesting, and that’s exactly where things go from here.
So, the Gores don’t always take a good picture, but the guy on the right usually did. Yes…Prince. He released an industry-changing album…
The expression…Purple Rain, did not originate with Prince. The earliest use of this expression that I have found is…
Wishin' on a falling star, watchin' for the early train,
Sorry boy, but I've been hit by purple rain.
Aw, come on Joe, you can always change your name,
Thanks a lot son, just the same.
Many will recognize the song…Ventura Highway, the best song recorded by the band America, dating back to 1972. I don’t know if Prince got the name of his album from Ventura Highway. Still, the history of the expression is not overly relevant here. Prince, or anyone else for that matter, had no idea that a song on the Purple Rain album would prompt Tipper Gore to unleash yet another attack against rock music…Darling Nikki.
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.
She said, "How'd you like to waste some time?"
And I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind.
Tipper bought the Purple Rain album for her daughter, and as they listened to the song about Nikki the Grinder, Tipper made out the lyrics, and the battle began. Congratulations to Tipper! She listened to a rock album and found sex! Who knew? Sex and rock music have been intimately intwined from the beginning. The expression…Rock and Roll, is a euphuism for sexual activity.
No particular place to go,
So we parked way out on the Kokomo.
The night was young and the moon was gold,
so we both decided to take a stroll.
Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn't unfasten her safety belt
Riding Along in My Automobile….by Chuck Berry, released in 1964.
When I was a little bitty boy,
My grandmother bought me a cute little toy.
Silver bells hanging on a string,
She told me it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling.
My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, I want you to play with my ding-a-ling!
My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, I want you to play with my ding-a-ling!
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!
Yes, I’m sure it felt beautiful. The song is Ding-A-Ling, recorded by Chuck Berry in 1972. If Tipper Gore had any Chuck Berry albums in her record collection, I’m sure she’d miss the lyrics. Chuck Berry was the progenitor of modern rock music, and the fusion of the musical style and sex was there in 1964.
Put your glad rags on and join me, hon'
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight
Rock Around the Clock, as recorded by Bill Hailey and His Comets in 1955. For many, the song is simply about dancing all night long, and became most famous for being made the opening song for Happy Days. However, there is an earlier song that is worth noting…
…female Blues artist Trixie Smith who, in November 1922, sang something somewhat reminiscent of 1954….
He put on me his magic power,
And every single hour…
My man rocks me with one steady roll,
There's no slippin' when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock and the clock struck one,
I said "Now daddy, ain't we got fun"
Oh, he was rockin' me with one steady roll.
My man rocks me with one steady roll
There's no slippin' when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock and the clock struck three
I said "Now Daddy, you a-killin' me!"
He kept rockin' with one steady roll.
My man rocks me with onе steady roll,
There's no slippin' whеn he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock and the clock struck six,
I said "Daddy, you know lots of tricks"
Oh, he was rockin' me with one steady roll.
My man rocks me with one steady roll
There's no slippin' when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock and the clock struck ten
I said "Glory, amen"
My man was rockin' me with one steady roll.
Remarkably similar to Bill Hailey’s hit song. And there’s no doubt that Trixie’s song exudes sex from beginning to end, and the woman in the song is clearly impressed by her lover’s remarkable endurance…he just, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going hour after hour. 1922? Sex figured prominently in the Blues, and it is from the Blues that modern rock emerged. As for the cover of Bill Haley’s album…
I’m sure that the silly letters say Rock, and not…Fock, though it would be funny if it did. But it is interesting that Knoebel associated modern rock music in general, and the Beatles, the Animals and the Mindbenders in particular, with violence…
The Beatles’ ability to make teenagers weep and wail, become uncontrollable and unruly, and take off their clothes and riot is laboratory tested and approved.
Dr. Salter’s statement unpacked could well contain the modus operandi for riot and revolution. The Beatles, Animals or the Mindbenders, for example, need only mass-hypnotize thousands of American youth, condition their emotions through the beat of their “music” and then have someone give the word for riot and revolt.
He references violence at performances of the Beatles and the Animals. However, one must admit that rock music has an appeal to delinquency just as much as it does to the vast majority of young people who attended rocks concerts without causing any trouble. There were, of course, as I referenced in Part One, the crowd problems at Frank Sinatra concerns.
During the performance, Elvis teased the screaming girls by saying he'd "see them backstage after the show," prompting a mad rush toward the stage and a riot that spilled into the streets. A group cornered the singer in his dressing room and tore his clothes off in their competition to grab a souvenir.
The Beatles made girls take off their clothes, or so Knoebel said, whereas Elvis Presley’s music caused girls to tear off the singer’s clothes. Oh, and probably everybody knows that seeing fans backstage is an invitation to groupies. I have located only one reference to Elvis Presley in Knoebel’s book. Speaking about the dangers to be associated with Bob Dylan, Knoebel says…
He even has the Beatles intrigued, according to the Song Folio. He’s the most popular American export over there since Elvis Presley and has received the approval of virtually everyone in the business, including the Beatles, who are acknowledging him as a great influence on their own music and on the Whole Mersey sound.
There were always crowd problems associated with Elvis’s performances.
After two April concerts in San Diego, Presley was scheduled for another one in the fall, but San Diego Police Chief A.E. Jansen told Variety, “If he puts on the same kind of show that he did last April, I’ll arrest him for disorderly conduct.” The city’s Social Service director Ed Cooley said, “We’ll give him a license here only if he cleans up his act and eliminates the bumps and grinds.”
In San Francisco, a promoter tried to book Presley into the city’s 3,300-seat Opera House; the trustees “were OK with Elvis himself, but were afraid his fans would wreck Opera House furnishings. Hence his show is banned.” In D.C., the National Guard Armory rejected all rock and roll concerts at the 6,000-seat venue as “contrary to public interest.” And Seattle Civic Auditorium nixed him, with assistant manager Don Johnson explaining, “there’s a very real opportunity for a riot with someone like Elvis Presley.”
Of course, it was likely that there would be some crowd trouble.
The American Legion and the Boy Scouts denounced it. The New York Times called it “nightmarish and bloodcurdling.” And after it incited a near riot in a local theater, the city of Memphis banned it. 50 years ago, when The Blackboard Jungle hit screens across the country, the controversial opening salvo of the film was a shot of amplified fury called “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets.
Crowd trouble tended to follow Bill Haley from America to Europe. In England, crowd violence occurred at concerts, which were associated with an English Working-Class subculture known as the Teddy Boys.
Overseas, however, Haley and his band continued to be popular, touring the United Kingdom in February 1957, when Haley and his crew were mobbed by thousands of fans at Waterloo station in London at an incident which the media dubbed the "Second Battle of Waterloo".
Wow! 20,000 people died at the Battle of Waterloo. It also led to the end of Napoleon! And he…
…couldn’t escape if he wanted to.
The warning signs arrived at the end of 1956 when the Rock Around the Clock triggered riots across the country and yes, there was even a spot of bother in Norwich, when it played at The Regal on Dereham Road. They were dancing in the aisles and running down the streets banging on cars. There were reports that Teddy Boys from as far afield as Ipswich and King's Lynn had turned up for a 'spot of bother' but the police in Norwich were waiting for them.
But the standout example of crowd violence associated with Bill Haley occurred in Hamburg, Germany
Bill Haley, the rock 'n' roll icon in the days before Elvis Presley, once admitted: "Even in my wildest dreams I would never have expected that my music would become so popular." For rebellious youngsters who were speaking out against their parents' generation, rock 'n' roll and new fashions were an expression of their own feelings about life. At mass events, rock 'n' roll concerts therefore became crystallization points for young people's rebellion against the bourgeois-patriarchal society of the Adenauer era. Since outbreaks of violence by rebellious youth, exaggerated in the press, were not exactly uncommon, riots and scuffles with the police became almost routine at large rock 'n' roll concerts.
At a Bill Haley concert in Hamburg's Ernst-Merck-Halle in October 1958, young concertgoers picked a fight with guards from the Hamburg student association and then with about a hundred policemen who were trying to clear the hall; altogether, the damage amounted to 20,000 DM. When Bill Haley played at the Sportpalast in Berlin that same month, the outcome was even worse: five policemen severely beaten, six members of the audience seriously injured, and damages amounting to 50,000 DM. And it is worth noting that some of Bill Haley’s fans…
…reacted just as fans of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presly, and the Beatles.
The point is simply that rock ‘n roll attracts different types of youth, and this will include troublemakers who want to cause problems. The phenomenon of football hooligan which so plagued British soccer for decades, was covered widely in the British press. These youths were always looking to cause trouble and fight among themselves. Ex-goalkeeper David Icke, who commented on the hooligan violence that occurred in 1985 during a soccer match between Luton Town and Millwall, stated…
You could go to 50 football matches and never see any trouble.
The point he was making is that the things that make the headlines are often the wrong things. The estimated number of Millwall fans who were involved in the violence was 300. Is that a lot? The total number of Millwall fans present at the match was 10,000…thereby making only .03% of the Millwall fans responsible for the violence. Yet no one notices all the soccer matches or rock concerts, being the vast majority of these, where there was no trouble. And yes, the police in both contexts know that there will be troublemakers present at any event and will deal with the problems as they arise. That’s not to say that things can’t get out of hand, like at the concerts performed by…Frank Sinatra. And if the private lives of rock stars like the Beatles are examined and found to be objectionable, I could, though I won’t, point out that Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin. Great Balls of Fire! Rock Star Adolph Hitler became totally possessive of his half-niece…
Geli Raubal, and kept her with him at all times…until it drove her to suicide. It was ruled as such on Hitler’s orders, and many have suggested that she was murdered. But was this incest? Right now in the state of New York, a half-uncle and half-niece may legally marry.
Hitler later declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved, according to American historian William L. Shirer. Her room at Haus Wachenfeld was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her in his room there and at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.
According to William Stuart-Houston, Hitler's nephew through his half-brother, Alois, "When I visited Berlin in 1931, the family was in trouble. ... Everyone knew that Hitler and she had long been intimate and that she had been expecting a child – a fact that enraged Hitler.
And rumors that he had her killed abound, though surely, they should be dismissed. The problem may be linked to Hitler’s feelings for Eva Braun. Of course, things came out very differently for the ex-wife of Jerry Lee Lewis. And turn out better? Hitler’s first love occurred while he was quite young…
…Stefanie Rabatsch (born Isak), an Austrian Jewish woman who didn’t feel the same way about him. Above right…Hitler’s sketch of Stefanie. He had at one point said that if she didn’t come to feel the same way about him, he would commit suicide. An opportunity missed! But I can’t move on from sex, violence, and various acts of mayhem, until briefly mentioning the crowd disorder at a musical performance on…
…May 29, 1913… being the Paris premier performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet…The Rite of Spring…
…better known as the Riot of Spring.
The degree to which people take positions on a song or musician is dependent on the degree of their lack of knowledge and perception.
Why worth mentioning? The Sex Pistols next to Beethoven? Ah, the guys on your left are not the Sex Pistols. And songs aren’t always what you’ve come to expect…
Cute and reflecting a more innocent form of rock music?
Friday night and the lights are low,
Looking out for a place to go.
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing,
You come to look for a king.
Anybody could be that guy,
The night is young and the music's high.
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine.
You're in the mood for a dance,
And when you get the chance…
You are the dancing queen,
Young and sweet, only seventeen.
Dancing queen,
Feel the beat from the tambourine.
I suppose 17 is young and sweet, and older men jockeying to be the lucky king who scores the Dancing Queen, well…it’s rock and roll. The song that marked the beginning of Stevie Nick’s post-Fleetwood Mac career was…Edge of Seventeen…
He was no more than a baby then,
Well he seemed broken-hearted.
Something within him,
But the moment that I first laid
Eyes on him, all alone,
On the edge of seventeen.
Seventeen seems to be particularly popular. So sex was there from the beginning, at every stop along the way, and is there today. It’s just that it’s more obvious today, and so Tipper Gore was able to find sex in a rock song. And so, we have…
…yes, Tipper Gore and her army of fuddy-duddies desperate to do something about Rock music. And so the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) rose its ugly head in 1985, and became memorialized in pop art…
…well, maybe not. The PRMC was led by the Washington Wives who were the driving force…Tipper Gore, Susan Baker, Pam Howar, and Sally Nevius. Think big! What was the end goal?
1. Develop a rating system equivalent to the rating system used for movies.
2. Printing warnings and lyrics on album covers.
3. Mandating that records with objectionable cover art be kept behind the counter, where they could sit
beside a pile of Hustler magazines.
4. Forcing stations to not play songs or videos that Tipper didn’t like.
5. Drop contracts with bands who perform violent or sexually graphic concerts.
6. Establish a panel to set industry standards.
The testimony at the hearings was somewhat interesting, including Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, Frank Zappa, and John Denver, the latter having been accused of promoting drug use in the 1970s. The inevitable issue of freedom of speech, and who gets to determine how artistic endeavors are to be treated from a cultural and societal perspective, and many such things came to play. Of course, one is reminded of what Voltaire once said…
I disagree with what you have to say, sir, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it.
The PRMC’s research into something they had no way of understanding resulted in the…Filthy Fifteen…
…geeky kids were never in any danger from rock music. But reflecting on the Filthy Fifteen, the list is bizarre. Clearly, the PRMC was hung up about sex, with the Mary Jane Girls, Cyndi Lauper, Vanity, Sheena Easton, and Madonna all being popular with girls, and one might argue that the PRMC saw Darling Nikki as having the same audience.
And as far as Cyndi Lauper’s Ode to Masturbation goes…well…Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!
And if this is disturbing to you, and you’ve lived under a rock your whole life, one could say that your kids had already beaten Cyndi Lauper to it. But what can you say about bopping?
She bop, he bop, we bop
I bop, you bop, they bop
Be bop, be bop, a lu bop
Oh, that. I guess everyone bops. And Cyndi did give all boppers a warning…
Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar?
Yeah, I wanna go south and get me some more,
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine,
They say I better stop or I'll go blind
Oop, she bop, she bop.
Of course, that leaves me somewhat unsure how this relates to…
…the Big Bopper, who famously said…You know what I like. Rock musicians not taking themselves too seriously goes as far back as one can remember. Bopper? What about boppers…teeny-boppers?
A whole magazine dedicated to teen bopping. Far right…I added an arrow pointing to the Queen of Bopping…Cyndi Lauper. And to emphasize the seedy side of bopping…
…The Teeny Boppers, the R-rated equivalent to the X-rated Teenage Sex Report. Classy stuff. And it would seem that the intelligence community got in on it too…
What would you expect from the CIA? Not just underpants. Still, the concerns about bopping have been around in the Looney Right for a long time…
…so there is, apparently, a cure. The origin of this thinking?
An unfortunate book produced in 1712, written anonymously…I wonder why…called…Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution. This anti-bopping book would set off a long history of demonizing masturbation.
The entire premise is based on an obvious misunderstanding of Genesis 38: 8-10.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
For some reason, people have habit of misunderstanding these verses, despite the fact that the pericope says exactly what Onan was doing.
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.
Deuteronomy 25: 5-10. The bit about the sandal is interesting, but the meaning is clear.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
Onan is attempting to not impregnate his brother’s wife by resorting to…Coitus Interruptus. In fact, the meaning of the texts is so clear that I would level the charge of intentionally deceiving readers of this and others as part of an overbearing Christian view of sex.
And oh what jokes!
Fast forward, or back, to 1834 when the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham took up the anti-boping balls and ran with them. He was also a temperance supporter, and Graham seemed to combine alcohol consumption and bopping as stemming from the same moral defect. So he invented… Graham Crackers, which he believed would sap sexual energy and thus minimize self-pleasure.
Busy bodies? Is that what we’re trying to avoid? Food!
William and John Kellogg, who in 1894 developed…
…intended to stymie masturbation. But don’t you just love a good double entendre? Perhaps it is the weird effects of Corn Flakes that lead to domestic violence. John Kellogg was a sadist. Being a dedicated proponent of terrible techniques to stop bopping…
In Plain Facts, Kellogg suggested anesthesia-free circumcisions for masturbating adolescent boys because “the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.” And if circumcision wasn’t an option? He recommended parents have their son’s foreskins sewn onto the shaft of their penis with a metal wire so that every erection is met with blinding pain and shame. For girls, he advised parents to apply carbolic acid to their daughter’s clitoris, writing that this method provides an “excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.”
When he wasn’t chemically melting clitori, mangling penises or making people too gassy to jerk off, Kellogg resorted to bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, cutting off girls’ labias and applying electrical shocks to their nether regions. Any of this would qualify Kellogg as a complete psychopath by today’s standards, but remember, back then, people thought he was helping them. By preventing them from masturbating through any means necessary, he was healing them of what they considered to be an “abominable” disease.
And…
Mr. Kellogg had also come up with numerous other methods to stop masturbation. For boys, he suggested piercing, and threading silver wire through the foreskin. He believed that this would cause extreme pain when the male subject obtained an erection. His belief was that once a boy felt the pain caused by an erection, he would never make the decision to become erect again.
Kellogg invoked yet another so-called expert, Dr. O.W. Archibald, superintendent of the Iowa Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children, who recommended sewing the foreskin shut over the penis in order to make an erection impossible.
John Kellogg was a sexual sadist who so feared sex to the point that he never consummated his marriage. This sadism runs through the works of similarly minded people. But Mark Twain was on the bandwagon…
Teach your boy that when he handles or excites the sexual organs, all parts of the body suffer. This is why it is called “self-abuse.” The sin is terrible, and is, in fact, worse than lying or stealing. For, although these are wicked and will ruin the soul, self-abuse will ruin both soul and body. This loathsome habit lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis, and heart disease. It makes many boys lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide.
The PMRC is just a later, more modernized offshoot of this long trend, which goes all the way back to…
…Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BC – 50 AD). Sometimes there are modern mishaps…
60-year-old Italian woman loses key to chastity belt, calls firefighters for help.
What a drag! Perhaps the whole thing was staged to get a little firefighter action. What’s the point if you have the key to your own chastity belt? I seriously doubt that Dr. Moritz Schreber wouldn’t question it. William Kellogg invented Corn Flakes cereal because he believed that it would cure people of the need to masturbate. When he proposed adding sugar to the cereal, his brother John Kellogg refused to agree, believing that the sugar in Sugar Frosted Flakes would result in a masturbation frenzy.
So, clearly, one must admit that the PRMC did not actually create the fear associated with bopping. And what about Vanity’s song…Strap on Robbie Baby is, without doubt, an ode to self-bopping. Vanity is an easy target given the strong sexual elements in her songs, and one might suggest that the song…Pretty Mess, would be a better song to put in the Filthy Fifteen. The song is about what one could…
…very clever.
It’s strange that rather than Darling Nikki making the list, Prince’s song…Sister, did not. This song was brought up in the hearings, and Prince was accused of promoting incest. There is no doubt that the song is about incest, Prince claiming in the song that when he was 16, an older sister seduced him…a sister twice his age. If this age is accurate then his sister would have been 32. Prince had two older sisters and one of them was 32 when Prince was 16. However, a song about incest is not necessarily a song condoning incest. And on the question of age, 16 is the Age of Consent in many states, and if he lived in one of those states, statutory rape would be off the table. Since Prince grew up in Minnesota, where the Age of Consent is 16 years old. But in the United States, a half-sibling has an average DNA share rate of 25%. The Prohibited Degree of Kinship rule states that a rate of 25% or more is the definition of incest. So, if Prince had a sister who seduced him when she was 32, technically it would be incest. However, since 25% is the base starting pointing, and statutory rape is not involved, it may well prove very hard to actually convict someone at this starting point. In other words, the situation found in Prince’s song is the lowest possible age, with a 24% meaning sexual contact is not incestuous. I think the lyric…
Oh, sister,
Don't put me on the street again.
Oh, sister,
I just want to be your friend.
…is particularly relevant. Prince tells his sister that he only wants to be friends, thereby denying that he really approved of what happened to him.
I was only sixteen and only half a man,
My sister didn't give a goddamn,
She only wanted to turn me out.
One interpretation here is that Prince didn’t really want a sexual relationship with his sister, but he was bullied into it. The line…
Incest is everything it's said to be.
Has also caused critics to accuse Prince of promoting incest. That conclusion does not make any sense. What is it that incest is everything it’s said be? Something terrible that can scar a person for the rest of lifetime. That’s the truth. Admitting that something like this has happened to a person takes a lot of courage to do.
On the other hand, sexual content for songs listened to by young males, was identified in songs by WASP and AC/DC. Basically, those who bought these albums tended to be adolescent males, and our society has always been far more concerned about females than males. However, Let Me Put My Love Into You is obviously sexual, and in a crass manner. However, that song was filler…it took up space on the record. The PRMC should have noted a song on the same album called…You Shook Me All Night Long. This was one of the band’s biggest songs, and it would appear that the PRMC couldn’t make heads or tails of songs appearing on an AC/DC album. WASP? The PRMC was guilty of Bottom Fishing…modern rock has always had twisted, sick and demented manifestations floating around the periphery of the rock music universe. One thing that distinguishes this dark zone is the fact that most rock fans have never heard the songs, or even recognize the name of the bands. Venom and Mercyful Fate are examples of Bottom Fishing. WASP? They were a joke. I saw KISS play, oh…a long time ago, and WASP was the warm-up band. But things turned cold as soon as WASP began their set, with the floor crowd shouting at the band that they should get off the stage and let KISS come on. I remember that Blackie Lawless, the clown behind WASP, threw posters of himself into the crowd, only to have the crowd throw them back at him. And I would note that…
Please! The decency of it! Hey, if you had a Filthy 15, and someone gave you another Filthy 15, what would you have? Yes! A Dirty Thirty. Joseph McCarthy? Blackie Lawless of WASP stated that the PMRC were…Joe McCarthy in drag.
WASP was the essence of what rock and roll was meant to be? Someone has an over-inflated view of himself.
Venom was a Satan-worshipping band on the fringes of heavy metal, where they belonged. The most significant examples of Bottom Fishing, although discussed, the band never made it into the Filthy 15, was a band named…The Mentors…
This band wrote ridiculously over-the-top disgusting lyrics, and in the decades over which I listened to hard rock and heavy metal, I never heard of this band. After reading that Pastor Jeff Ling quoted lyrics from the songs…My Erection Is Over…Herpes Two…and…Clap Queen, that I looked them up and quickly realized why I had never heard of them. Nor did anyone else I know. The songs quoted by Ling were on the album…
Tacky, to say the least. However…
Hardly original…eh? And probably a copyright violation. Of course, the Kiss album actually certified platinum before it was available for purchase, and is now triple platinum. The Mentors?
Another instance of Bottom Fishing were the conversations concerning…
Impaler? Too bad they didn’t name themselves…Vlad III Tepesh. How seriously did they take themselves?
And another band I had never heard of…
…Bitch…a terrible name, and one that’s been used by other bands. Yes, the album cover on the far left has a goofy S&M look. Listening to them, they don’t sound like heavy metal…they sound more like power pop. No doubt…
…this was the best, and most likely the only, advertising Bitch ever got. What about…
…Savage Grace? Like Bitch, there was another band named Savage Grace…
Take a play from Black Sabbath’s playbook. Their original name was…Earth, but when they learned that there was already another band named Earth…
…they changed their name to Black Sabbath. I’ve never seen pictures of Ozzy Osbourne where he looks so young. The point? Don’t adopt a name that another band is using.
Now for a moment of clarity…
The Rods…
…seriously? No name bands who are suddenly being mentioned in Senate hearings? Yes, their album sales must have increased. Obscure bands? I went to Google and searched obscure bands…I found a list of more than one hundred. There are, and were, a lot more than that.
To move forward, we find…
…Senator Paula Hawkins, with apparently nothing better to do than to tell the world that she doesn’t like Wendy O. Williams. My Friend Sue Baker, wife of the former Treasury Secretary James Baker…
…doesn’t either. If Wendy were alive today, she’d probably say that she doesn’t like Sue Baker. Now if you want to find sex in rock music, Wendy’s an excellent choice. She was originally in the band…The Plasmatics, sang relentlessly, and often crassly, about sex. And in reality, Sue’s least favorite album was actually a pretty good one. There is, of course, nothing objectional about the cover. Make what you will of the sexual content, but let’s be clear…girls did not buy this album, it was guys who bought her albums. But I will give Senator Hawkins a better album cover to hold up…
…and I’ll give you a…
…Butcher Baby. And I have something for Noebel to club the Beatles over the head with…
…the original cover of the Beatles album, Yesterday and Today, released in June 1966. The album contained songs we all know and love…Nowhere Man…Yesterday…We Can Work It Out. But the cover, said to be a protest of the war in Vietnam, drew immediate outcry. As a result, Capitol records recalled the distribution of the album, and replaced the cover by pasting a different one on it…
Copies of the album with the…Butcher Cover, are rare. But, interestingly, the record company, with stacks and stacks of records, 60,000 in use in the U.S. alone, took the photographic image of the new cover and simply pasted it over the original. And many owners of the record with the new cover attempted to remove it to find the original…
Hey! Darla and Annabelle have a copy of the album. And after seeing this, they decided to see if their copy has the Butcher Baby cover, underneath the current cover, so they began peeling away at it. This left a copy of the album that Noebel would like…
…the Obliteration of John Lennon! It does seem to be an obvious thing that the album cover would provoke outrage, and I’m at a loss as far as the Beatles and Capital Records are concerned, as to why they didn’t foresee what a problem this would become.
Still, I wonder how Sue, Tipper, and Paula got their hands on these albums. If they bought them, then, in a metaphorical way, they are as guilty as the rest of us. I would quote…
…Nikki Sixx, bassist and song writer, for Motley Crue…
…Tipper Gore has probably sold more records for us than all the tours we could ever do combined.
But that’s not what was supposed to happen!
However, it would appear that pressure had been brought to bear on the Crue. The intended version of the album as envisioned by Sixx was…Shout With the Devil. But this was subsequently changed to…Shout At the Devil…
…we can’t always get what we want, can we?
And it’s at this point that I owe much to Tipper and Sue. It’s so very easy to misunderstand someone. Wendy made some good songs, and her performances were, to say the least, over-the-top. That’s something one can take or leave. But thanks to Tipper, Sue, and Paula, I took a second look at Wendy O. Williams. And what I found was something that caused me to look long and hard at myself. She was certainly someone who was hurting inside. After two prior suicide attempts, she finally succeeded on April 6, 1998. However, she left a note that transcends our perception of why people end their own lives. I’ve always credited myself as quite insightful…self-aware. I read the note and found out that I really wasn’t, but I think now that I’m a little bit more so. It wasn’t her final decision, which I don’t condone, that matters. It was the reason she gave. It is short, so I give it here in full…
I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.
There is no…poor me. Absolutely no one is blamed. And she doesn’t blame the world. That is highly significant. There is no self-pity…and apart from the act itself, feel about it however you may, there is nothing that I can see in the note that I consider depressive. For a person who experienced a lot of hurt and pain…there is no reflection of this in her note. Had I not read the note, I would have continued in my lack of insightfulness and self-awareness. Had I read the note not knowing it was Wendy’s, I would never have guessed that she could have written it. And that makes me just another person who can’t see past the façade that people spend so much time constructing, myself more than anyone, however successful, or unsuccessful, the results may be. But the reason why she did what she did raises, in my mind, the question about how one sees the truth about reality…
For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.
To the vast amount of people, to some extent, the world makes sense. But one might be inclined to question whether that’s an artificial construct. And so it comes down to reality, and which reality is really…real. During her time of deep and thoughtful reflection, she is able to do what I couldn’t…see things as they really are. It made me wonder whether some of the people who commit suicide every year have, although I seriously doubt that many could know or express it like Wendy did, have the same realization about why they feel the way they do. All the psych meds and all the counseling in the world can make one feel better, and that’s important. But nothing can be done to help someone to see sense in the world around them, when, in fact, there isn’t any. And it’s hard to live in a place that makes no sense. Don’t misunderstand, it’s important to find a way to do just that. But I can say that if the world makes no sense, one might increasingly find the idea of transcending the self to find a place where it does make sense…a calm and peaceful place where, as I will put it, a whole new life begins. The difference lies in whether one can transcend their transcendence and find a way to leave to God the final outcome. After all the deep and thoughtful reflection Wendy went through, she could not. I think it’s important that we do. But there is a great amount of catharsis in seeing the world as it really is…without facades, constructs, and all the trying that one may try. And it may seem trite or overly emotional, but I think those two lines of her note helped me understand more than I did before. And I feel a little bit better than I did before. Creative people see a different world, one that makes sense to them. If the world doesn’t make sense, then one should stop trying to make it make sense and face the challenges that come with seeking calm in the nonsense around them.
Apart from an album cover and some over-the-top song lyrics, Wendy O. Williams was never a significant player in Tipper’s game. But opening oneself to the humanity of those we are quick to condemn, I think we all may become better people. So, it’s not necessarily the case that depression is the problem. Perhaps depression is a symptom of something more substantial…whether the world makes sense, and for those who work with depressed and suicidal people, perhaps it’s worth stepping back and looking for that real cause. It’s a very simple question to ask.
Black Sabbath will come up later in this essay, but they did find a way to make it into Filthy Fifteen, though the song that got them there was the universally panned…Born Again. The cover was very controversial at the time. However, the designer had to fend off accusations of producing a parody following Ozzy and Sharon’s fall out with Sharon’s father…
The cover is a rip-off of Depeche Mode’s single…New Life. That in turn, was inspired by a magazine called Mind Alive (1968)…
The denials made by the guy who did the “artwork” for Black Sabbath, simply stole the cover of Depeche Mode’s single. Why? New Life = Born Again, that’s obvious. Then he made it look absolutely ridiculous with horns, fangs, and claws. One wonders whether the artist expected this to be tossed out. He even screwed up the lettering, making it look very unprofessional. Geezer Butler, the bassist, did not like it. But Dan Arden did! So, Geezer agreed. However, when it was shown to Ian Gillan, the vocalist who followed Ronnie James Dio after he left the band, he stated…
I looked at the cover and puked.
But isn’t this what happened with their first album, when the band didn’t know about the inverted cross? You would think they would have learned a lesson…but apparently not. The Black Sabbath album is a practical joke by someone who didn’t think it would ever be adopted. But the band had become a joke since Dio left. Gillan did not see himself as a viable candidate for the position of vocalist…
Iommi told Hit Parader magazine in late 1983 that Gillan was the best candidate, saying "His shriek is legendary." Gillan was at first reluctant, but his manager convinced him to meet with Iommi and Butler at The Bear, a pub in Oxford. After a night of heavy drinking, Gillan officially committed to the project in February 1983. The following morning Gillan had no memory of joining the band and claimed he didn't even like Black Sabbath's music, but the deal had already been struck.
This only goes to show how stupid Black Sabbath had become. You sign a singer to be your vocalist, despite the fact that he doesn’t even like your music?
The issue was, once again, once we got out on tour with Ian [Gillan], we found that he didn't bother to learn any of the lyrics to the old Sabbath tunes. I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, if you're gonna go out on tour with us, give it your all, or maybe get a monitor or something.
Get a monitor? Your new singer hates your music so much, that although he goes on tour with you, he can’t be bothered to memorize the song lyrics? Instead, he carried pieces of paper on stage with the lyrics written on them. And then another mishap occurred…
Gillan's solution to this problem was to write the lyrics to Sabbath's song on paper and put them in a plastic folder on the stage floor, turning the pages with his feet. Unfortunately for Gillan, he didn't anticipate the reported six buckets of dry ice that engulfed the stage in mist, making it impossible to read the lyrics as he had planned. This resulted in him awkwardly peering over his microphone to sing a few lines and then disappearing beneath the mist to read the next few lines during concerts.
But it only got worse. One of the songs on the album was…Stonehenge. The decision was made to use models of the Nine Travellers at the real Stonehenge as the on-stage props for their concerts. And so another hilarious breakdown occurred…
…this can’t really be the props they envisioned. But we can go one step further, and in doing so, we will readily recognize a very funny movie that made fun of the rock music industry in general, and Black Sabbath in particular.
As the week was drawing to a close a dwarf turned up and was promptly dressed in a red leotard and given little yellow fangs to cap his teeth. At the final day’s dress rehearsal the dwarf was placed astride the highest stone and as the music reached a crescendo a pre-recorded scream rang out and the dwarf fell backwards off the henge onto a pile of mattresses that were discretely placed out of sight of the audience. At which point bells start tolling, roadies dressed as monks start crawling across the front of the stage and the wistful tones of Sabbath’s 1970 classic War Pigs began….. “Hello, MONTREAL!”
Yes, This is Spinal Tap, a movie that features a fictional heavy metal band in a hilariously disastrous tour. When the band chose a Stonehenge monument as a stage-set, they mistakenly indicated the dimensions in inches, rather than feet…
Instead of a twelve-foot prop descending to the stage, a twelve-inch prop did. Then dwarves appeared on stage to dance around the monument…
…taking care not to step on it. And to take a shot at Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin…
Ah, yes…his best gimmick.
Hey! You’re not famous until people make fun of you. But in short, Born Again, along with the song Trashed, which sounds like unoiled gears meshing together, was Sabbath’s greatest failure. I’m sure they wished they had prevailed against Dan Arden’s opinion, issued the album without the name of Black Sabbath on it, and then opted out of a world tour. This was the only Black Sabbath to date that did not certify gold.
When the band heard the final product, they were horrified at the muffled mix. In his autobiography, Iommi explains that Gillan inadvertently blew a couple of tweeters in the studio speakers by playing the backing tracks too loud and nobody noticed. "We just thought it was a bit of a funny sound, but it went very wrong somewhere between the mix and the mastering and the pressing of that album...the sound was really dull and muffly. I didn't know about it, because we were already out on tour in Europe. By the time we heard the album, it was out and in the charts, but the sound was awful."
A single it was…a hit it was not. Many Black Sabbath fans will not recognize the song, much less the title. As a fan of the Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio manifestations of Black Sabbath, the Born Again album was the end of the group. Worthless albums followed in its wake, without certifying again until 2013, when the album…13…was issued. Ah, yes! Did anything important happen to reverse the failing albums? Yes…Ozzy returned. So in a certain way, the PRMC was Bottom Fishing again.
Def Leppard’s High N’ Dry?
The album was released in 1981, and it had one song that got rotation on MTV, but it was totally dwarfed by the album Pyromania, released in 1983. I’ve always been a big fan of Def Leppard, but I had to pull up the silly High N’ Dry song on YouTube because I had never heard it before. And what can you say about an album with a song titled “No No No”? It sounds more like a six year-old throwing a temper tantrum. Senator Paula Hawkins…
…nevertheless held up a copy of the Pyromania album cover, though, again, no songs were found on the record that merited inclusion in the Filthy Fifteen. So, she’s holding up the wrong album. Still, you gotta love a hard rock band with a one-armed drummer. The album Hysteria, featuring Rick Allen with a specialized drum-kit, is, or so I think, Def Leppard’s best endeavor. But one must also ask the question…was Def Leppard, to put it simply…a group of prophets?
Ah, I see. Twisted Sister? This one’s a head-scratcher. They are best known as, in my opinion, rock music’s greatest buffoons…
I must admit to having this cassette back in the 1980s, and it had some good songs on it, but…We’re Not Gonna Take it…wasn’t one of them. And the band’s habit of looking like bumbling drag queens prompted me to pull the cover out of the cassette case and throw it away. Tipper was objecting to the video, a silly and comical tale of an overbearing, nasty adult being outwitted by a boy who listens to Twisted Sister, who also joins in the fun. I’m not sure which is more childish, the video, or the idea that anyone could take it seriously. However, although it may have seemed like a good idea to have Dee Snider testify at the hearing, the PMRC soon realized that they shot themselves in the foot…
I’m married and I have a 3-year-old son. I was born and raised a Christian, and I still adhere to those principles. I do not drink, I do not smoke, and I do not do drugs.
Ouch! How many drinkers and smokers were there among the people Dee went up against that day? Sure, based on his stage persona, he seemed the perfect guy to testify. But things don’t always go the way we want. Hey! Maybe do a little research before you let rockers testify at your hearings. This was, in effect, a terrible blunder on the part of the PMRC, and went a long way to showing that the PMRC really didn’t know what they were talking about. Case in point, Senator John C Danforth introduced Dee Snider as singing for the Twisted Sister Freefall Talent Group. What Mr. Dadforth seems to be ignorant of is that the Freefall Talent Group was the band’s management. But, Dandforth was a member of the unitedstatessenate.
But then there’s the case of Motley Crue’s song…Bastard, which is definitely violent, but it’s also their best song. On the same album is the song…Ten Seconds to Love, which appears to be about sex in an elevator. That one was passed over. But another Motley Crue song at least made it into the discussion…Live Wire.…
…there’s the album on Tipper’s desk. The song Live Wire is about violent sex suggestive of brutal rape, and, in this case, I will give the PMRC credit…
I'll either break her face or take down her legs
Get my ways at will
Go for the throat, never let loose
Goin' in for the kill
Take my fist, break down walls
I'm on top tonight, no, no
Crappy song, crappy lyrics, and crappy album all around. So why didn’t Live Wire make it into the list? Judas Priest’s Eat Me Alive, a good song from a great album, perhaps took its place…
Into your room,
Where in deep sleep.
There you lie still,
To you I creep.
Then I descend,
Close to your lips.
Across you I bend,
You smile as I sip.
Now you are mine,
In my control.
One taste of your life,
And I own your soul.
Softly you stir,
Gently you moan.
Lust's in the air,
Wake as I groan.
…the lyrics from Eat Me Alive? No, that song was not one of the three songs released as a single from the Defenders of the Faith album. Those are the lyrics to the song…Love Bites, which was a single from the album. It seems odd that the PMRC strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel. Tipper quite rightly focused in on the following lyrics from Eat Me Alive…
Sounds like an animal panting to the beat,
Groan in the pleasure zone and gasping from the heat.
Gut-wrenching frenzy that deranges every joint,
I'm gonna force you at gun point.
To eat me alive,
Eat me alive.
True, kudos to the PMRC on this one. Still, Rob Halford never attempted to conceal his appreciation for S&M…
Two things. First, Rob Halford is gay. So any of the sex acts envisioned would probably not involve females anyway. The second thing that never seemed to occur to people is that the lyrics to this song may be describing a sexual fantasy, not sexual reality. One can readily reference various types of sexual fantasies which, when carried out by consenting adults, are perfectly fine if they are simply sex-play, rather than something intended to be carried out in a real-life context. S&M is the number one sexual fantasy and is generally labelled as roleplay. It almost always utilizes things such as…safe words…so those involved know when to stop. The lyrics in the two Judas Priest songs noted above may simply be descriptions of the singer’s sexual fantasies.
It's interesting that Ozzy Osbourne didn’t make the list, especially given the fact that…
…he appears in a pile of naughty albums. The album on the above right is the Scorpions’ album …Blackout. But as far as the PRMC’s beef with the Scorpions goes, it seemed to be linked to the lyrics of the song…Rock You Like a Hurricane. However, that song was on the album…
…Love at First Sting, released in February 1984. Still, the song did not appear in the Filthy Fifteen. And this is not the only time that the album cover got mixed up with another Scorpions’ album. Erich Barger discussed his objections to the album…Love At First Sting…
Their album Love at First Sting exposes a woman's thigh being tattooed by her lover. Of course, the tattoo is that of a scorpion. The seductiveness of this and countless other album jackets should tip us off to the content of the message in the grooves. The video "Rock You Like a Hurricane" employs girls in cages steeped in a very strange and surreal setting. The lyrics say… "What is wrong with another sin?"
Once again…You’re showing the wrong album. Tipper notes her objection to the video for Rock You Like a Hurricane…
The Scorpions’ Rock you Like a Hurricane showed a man tied to the walls of a torture chamber and a singer being choked by a woman. These images frightened my children; they frightened me! The graphic sex and the violence were too much for us to handle.
There are several things I would point out. First, I grant Tipper that the video is terrible, though for different reasons. However, seeing how pedantic I am, I would point out that…
…this is not the singer (Klaus Meine)…it’s Matthias Jabs, lead guitarist. And if you hated the Scorpions, wouldn’t the sudden demise of the singer be a good thing? I would also say that it’s a stupid song, something the Scorpions excelled at making. It took the band 20 years to finally make a hit song, so you should give them begrudging kudos for patience in an industry which rarely shows any patience. There’s a large list of musicians who rose to the top because of MTV, with the videos a band made really being advertisements for their albums...including the Scorpions. It seems strange that Tipper forced her kids to sit and watch MTV so she could gauge the level of fright they experienced. Obviously, Tipper’s kids didn’t normally watch the type of videos that she made them watch, and they only did so because their mother forced them. Isn’t that a problem? I venture to say that fans of Prince weren’t likely to be fans of the Scorpions, and the other way around. But I would be pedantic once again…
…it’s the band who is in a cage, not the women. Now Barger made a good point, and one the PMRC seems to have missed. The discussion of the album covers presented below is for historical commentary only. The images are cultural works, and widely available on the internet, including Google search results and Wikipedia. What did Barger note that the PMRC didn’t?
…Virgin Killer is a lousy name. If you looked in your kid’s record collection, and you actually found this album in it, the goofy cover images are what you would find. But that’s not the original front cover…
Yes, a young girl who shouldn’t be on an album cover. You don’t actually see anything, and the broken glass effect helps as far as that goes. But there are other ways to modify the cover, other then creating a new album cover, if you wish to sell it…
I found one with the PMRC’s sticker on it! And it being the internet age…
Guitarist Ulrich Roth later made a comment about the original album cover…
Looking at that picture today makes me cringe. It was done in the worst possible taste. Back then I was too immature to see that. Shame on me—I should have done everything in my power to stop it. The record company came up with the idea, I think.
This wasn’t the first time this happened. There is the famous cover for the first, and only, album by Blind Faith, featuring Eric Clapton, released in 1969…
There was an alternative cover (middle image). When I checked my copy, I found the original front cover and the alternative cover as the base template for the back cover.
Bob Seidemann made the cover image and said…
The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. The beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl?
She’s right here…a few years later. And it being the age of the internet, this album wasn’t hard to parody…
There are, of course, many ways to censor an album cover…
Finally, I would note…
…Led Zeppelin’s…Houses of the Holy, a truly great album. It was a fold-out album, so the shot on the left is the front folded out, whereas the image on the right is the inside cover folded out. The front was shot at the…
…Giants’ Causeway, located in Antrim County, Northern Ireland. The scene on the inside cover was shot at the ruins of…
…Dunluce castle. There were only two children in the shot, with additional images made from those photos. The children were said to be based on the children in the novel…Childhood’s End, where, at the end of the book, the children are given their own continent and no longer need adults.
Yes, there are bare bottoms. And inevitably, the same people made the same complaints that they still do today. And so…
…Facebook, the social media platform that twists and bends in their overwhelming need to kowtow to every complaint from people who don’t have a single creative bone in their bodies. They banned uploading the album cover, though they did back-track, stating that…
Facebook has reversed its ban of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy album cover from the platform, saying the artwork’s cultural significance overrides policy on images of nude children. The site had been removing posts containing the image—originally created by the designer Aubrey Powell—citing community standards, according to reports that emerged this week. The lift of the ban will come into effect in the coming days, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.
"As our community standards explain, we don’t allow nude images of children on Facebook," a spokesperson told Ultimate Classic Rock. "But we know this is a culturally significant image. Therefore, we’re restoring the posts we removed.”
Congratulations! Standing up to the Moral Minority!
And that, even given Jimmy Page’s dislike for the cover…
“When the proofs for the album came back, they didn’t look anything like the original artwork,” Page said, according to Led Zeppelin FAQ author George Case. “Again, we were on a deadline, and there wasn’t much to be done. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”
Internet Age and spoofs…
Underpants aside, I like the one with the kittens best. As far as the Scorpions are concerned, it wasn’t the only time that a record label screwed things up with ridiculous imagery. And in this case, it dramatically affected the band’s entire career…
…the front and back covers of Black Sabbath’s first album. When the band was shown this idea, they readily agreed. However…
…these are the inside covers. And so there it is. But, the band’s drummer, Bill Ward, later spoke about the inverted cross…
Black Sabbath didn’t approve of the inverted cross used in the artwork for their debut album, according to former drummer Bill Ward.
Ward hints it may have been used as a “promotional ploy” by their label Vertigo and says though the band were “morbid” and “rebellious,” the Satanic symbol didn’t represent who they were.
In an archive interview from 2010, which has recently surfaced, Ward tells Banger TV: “The cover was something that was presented to us, and being our usual morbid selves, we were all instantaneously attracted to that.
“But the inside cover, none of us liked. We didn’t like it at all because it had an inverted cross in it.”
He adds: “I think there were some wise guys who deliberately put that together as a ploy – as an advertising, promotional ploy, or who had seriously misgauged us as a band. There was no collaboration, so I don’t know who was responsible for it. I guess someone thought it would be a good idea and thought that was what we represented.”
Calling the artwork a “bad taste call,” he adds: “Ozzy Osbourne’s father had given us these crosses – the original Sabbath crosses, there was nothing upside-down about those.
“He gave us those as he believed in a higher power, he believed that the crosses might help us on our many journeys. He was concerned about making sure we were all safe and sound.”
So, a record label added imagery that they liked, but the band didn’t, and thus Black Sabbath would be known for lousy inverted crosses and devil imagery. How stupid can a record label be? Ask Ozzy…
…Ossie Osborne? Or is it…Ozzy Osbourne? Or maybe…
Fozzy Ozbourne? At any rate, the record label couldn’t even spell Ozzy’s name right. But as far as the Scorpions go, it would seem that the PMRC knew nothing about the banned album cover, or it would have been among the album covers that Senator Paula Hawkins so ridiculously held up for the cameras. And although Barger did do his research on the question of the Scorpions’ imagery, he states, commenting on the Virgin Killer album…
The Scorpions’ album Virgin Killer was sold in Europe in a different cover than that which is found on American record store shelves. The U.S version shows the band with fists raised against authority. In Europe, the cover detailed a little girl being violated sexually.
Although I found the original cover, it does not show a little girl being violated sexually. Although I found the original cover, it does not show a little girl being violated sexually. It was, and is, controversial, as I discussed earlier. So why do it? I think there is a clear answer…the band was not making it big at the time, particularly in the US, so just do something controversial to get people to notice you. You might sell some albums.
In the end, sorrows are everywhere. It’s not always easy to know how to escape them, or whether one should escape them at all…
You said, "The cinders are falling like snow." There is poetry in despair, and we sang with unrivaled beauty, bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence…of blue and grey. Strange, we ran down desperate streets and carved our names in the flesh of the city. The sun stagnated somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon and the darkness is a mystery of curves and lines. Still, we lay under the emptiness and drift slowly outward, and somewhere in the wilderness we found salvation scratched into the earth.
Sorrow can lead us to salvation if we can endure the darkness along the way. Bending down, he wrote something in the ground…words unknown yet transcending condemnation and the fire that goes with it…bringing the salvation that is beyond us. Words that ring loud and clear to an inner ear can lead to peace.
“Truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.