PMRC 30

Rolling Stone published an interview with Tipper Gore on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the infamous PMRC hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the subject of explicit subject matter in popular music.  I briefly touched on this subject in my book.

A few weeks after the hearing, Layne Staley and Johnny Bacolas – at the time members of a local heavy metal band called Sleze – were in the audience for a television talk show called Town Meeting on KOMO, for an episode about the controversy. According to a write-up of the episode in the Seattle Times, Layne – who had just turned eighteen several weeks earlier – said, “Our lyrics are all positive – we don’t use bad language or sing about drugs and sex – but I just want the freedom to write about what I want.”

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