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New music documentary Cover Your Ears drafts in members of Twisted Sister, Judas Priest and Rotting Christ to discuss music’s relationship with censorship
COVER YOUR EARS is anew documentary bringing together luminaries such as Dee Snider, Jello Biafra, Chuck D, Judas Priest’s Ian Hill and Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ to explore how censorship has affected music over the decades. Canadian director/co-writer Sean Patrick Shaul’s original focus was the ‘dirty blues’ of the 1920s-50s, those pioneering naughty ditties that inspired AC/DC’s love of lewd innuendo. But the deeper Sean dug, the more he discovered how much censorship has shaped our favourite music.
“We realised there’s a direct correlation between the dirty blues and The Rolling Stones, and a direct correlation between the Stones and heavy metal,” he says. “So the story just kind of unravelled itself.”
Among others, the film examines the concerns of the Parents’ Music Resource Centre, a 1980s pressure group headed by Tipper Gore who went to war with anything they perceived as being anti-family values. At its peak, bands like Judas Priest and Twisted Sister were dragged into court and even in front of the senate, accused of everything from promoting sexual immorality to including subliminal messages in their songs urging fans to harm themselves.
Today, their fears seem quaint in a world where Cardi B’s liquescent fanny tops the charts and scoops awards. Are censors less troubled by music nowadays?
“They’re still troubled, but they are lost in the noise of everyone being troubled by everything now,” ponders Sean.
“At that time it was on the rise with MTV –these videos were broadcast into your house on cable, so parents weren’t exposed to what W.A.S.P. were up to until suddenly it’s in your living room. Music still upsets people, but the game’s different now. It’s impossible to ban something because you can always find it somewhere.”
To some extent, the phenomenon has shifted from top-down authoritarian stricture to a more insidious censoriousness, where artists are shut down by anonymous activists rather than government agents.
“We didn’t have the term ‘cancel culture’ before –I personally hate that term, but that’s what censorship is now 90% of the time,” reckons Sean. “Before it would be picket signs outside a venue – ‘Down With Satan’ or whatever. Now those people don’t leave the house, they band together online, contact venues, labels and streaming services and try to get bands pulled. Which makes it harder to fight against; there’s no one you can point to, it’s these faceless avatars who can cause a huge amount of damage to an artist’s career. For better or worse.”
