Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)


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Whose America is This, Anyway?: Class, Identity, and the Critical Voice in Cultural Texts / Mike S. Dubose

Keywords: Media, Culture Studies, Music

Abstract: This article, by exploring an interesting and noteworthy event (a 1989 clash over identity and accusations of racism between Living Colour and Guns N’ Roses) which spanned multiple venues (from radio to magazines to the concert stage, when both bands opened up for the Rolling Stones), challenges the way scholars read and use cultural artifacts as texts, thereby creating an artificial hierarchy between "the interpreted" and those who possess "the right to interpret.

<1> In October of 1989, two rock bands shared the stage opening for the Rolling Stones. The show was more "at times like a battle of the bands⎯Guns N' Roses vs. Living Colour" instead of a mere concert (Willman F2). However, rather than becoming a “who can rock harder” competition as stereotypical of rock and roll bravado, the two bands instead engaged in a multifaceted debate centered around class, race and racism, and artistic freedom, with each group lobbing accusations of intolerance and ignorance at each other at every possible instance. This debate raged in the song lyrics, in newspaper and magazine articles, in concert reviews, and from the stage itself. This “battle of the bands” showed the potential to transcend the standard rock and roll spectacle and become an important event, one requiring the reformulation (or at least an interrogation) of the normative models of identity prevalent within both the politics and culture at the end of the decade...that is, if anyone happened to be listening.

<2> One reason why many did not hear the event's politics was that the debate took place in the world of popular music...and worse still, between two bands that played hard rock, a particularly denigrated genre. Furthermore, in America in the eighties, entertainment and politics were generally seen as, at best, separate enterprises⎯that is, when they were not enemies, at each other's throats. In his 1987 critique of American higher education The Closing of the American Mind [1], Allan Bloom portrays popular music as antithetical to intellectual engagement:

Today, a very large portion of young people between the ages of ten and twenty live for the music. It is their passion; nothing else excites them as it does; they cannot take seriously anything alien to music. When they are in school and with their families, they are longing to plug themselves back into music. Nothing surrounding them⎯school, family, church⎯has anything to do with their musical world. At best that ordinary life is neutral, but mostly it is an impediment, drained of vital content, even a thing to be rebelled against. (Bloom 68)

While Bloom's attitude is typical of much conservative mass media criticism, the idea that popular culture was antithetical to serious intellectual discovery was never exclusive to the right. The leftist historian Howard Zinn, in A People's History of the United States 1942-Present, claims the “citizenry disillusioned with politics and with what pretended to be intelligent discussion of politics turned its attention (or had its attention turned) to entertainment” (552); in Zinn's formulation, popular culture is also primarily an escapist enterprise. In short, commentators on both sides of the political spectrum viewed entertainment as an apolitical zone, and, in such an environment, there was very little chance of anyone seeing the Guns N' Roses/Living Colour debate as anything other than “only rock and roll.”

<3> The Guns N' Roses/Living Colour debate is important, however, because it showcases the very real connection cultural artifacts have to real world issues such as identity. Moreover, that this debate happened within the world of eighties hard rock demonstrates the very real critical voice mass media texts can have in explaining the culture from which they arise. Music is more than an escape from reality, a way to avoid, as Alan Bloom believes, ordinary life; like most everything else, it is very political. People may have their attentions turned to music (as Howard Zinn suggests), but that does not mean they in turn abandon politics or that the music in question is apolitical. Instead, music (along with culture in general) has the potential to be one of the sites where the true meaning of acts, thoughts, and beliefs are negotiated, and any critical take that ignores this power of cultural artifacts becomes an incomplete performance.

<4> The Guns N' Roses versus Living Colour incident particularly is exceptional because it highlights two differing interpretations of the average American identity, each of which opposes the mainstream identity of Reaganism.[2] Moreover, the debate did not limit itself to the music; instead, the clash over identity was synergistic, spread over radio, through the press, and even on the stage. Furthermore, when read for its critical voice, the alternate formations of identity present in this debate (as a synergistic cultural event) offers a nuanced understanding of identity that rivals many present in American scholarship; these understandings are more nuanced in that unlike the formal takes, they account for the very important role of cultural artifacts within identity formation, while accounting for factors ranging from economic to political to activist. Unfortunately, the critical ability of popular music is a sound which, although vital, many simply do not want to hear.

Class Equals Status

<5> That the Guns N' Roses/Living Colour debate occurred in the eighties is particuarly notable, as the era was one marked by a generally muddied understanding of identity in America. This confusion existed in many fronts, including within politics, within the society as a whole, and within much of the American academy. While this confusion was widespread, a particular area where the understanding of identity turned into a cacophony in its operational definition of class.

<6> One of these specific philosophies that drove the Reagan era was that everybody was equal. This was no true equality, however. In the eyes of Reaganism, everyone — or at least everyone important — were members of the middle class; that is, no one was too poor. Primarily, this was done in the government by defining Reaganism as explicitly as not working class or poor. Reagan's anti-working stance class was, some argue, solidified early into his first term with the firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers... thus establishing him as an anti-unionist. This mass-firing acted as warning to any potential strikers or union activists (Zinn 562), and consequently lowered any prestige associated with working class affiliation. Reagan's anti-poor status is best exemplified by the regular cuts in welfare and social services, most of which affected those well below middle-class status. During its second year, the Reagan administration proposed cutting nine billion dollars in aid for children and poor families (Zinn 598). With both working class and poor positions deemed as unfavorable (and upper-class identity still only being an ideal aspiration), middle class identity became normative.

<7> Middle class identity, as pushed in Reaganism, entailed a particular relationship to status objects. To fit into the popular perception of middle class, ideally, in the words of Barbara Ehrenreich, "a family needs not only the traditional house and car, but at least some of the regalia of the well-advertised upscale life-style [such as] beers that cost five dollars a six-pack for guests" (“Middle class” 205). In this formulation, the common understanding of class is reduced to denoting systems of status and leisure [3] (where class, quite confusingly, becomes determined solely by markers of class), while economics becomes a separate and relatively insignificant factor.

<8> This separation and ordering of class and status is similarly a common occurrence in much critical American scholarship, particularly when the scholarship discounts the importance of popular culture, and especially when the denigration of popular culture goes beyond the throwaway references of both Bloom and Zinn. For my purposes here, I will briefly examine two examples emanating from 1980s American class scholarship, namely Vanneman and Cannon's 1987's The American Perception of Class and David Halle's 1984 American Working Man. Both Halle and Vanneman and Cannon's works provide a complex understanding of the intricacies of American class structure. However, both books also compartmentalize economic and cultural life, which demonstrates the extent to which many American scholarly and popular conceptions of class were, at least in this regard, in alignment.

<9> In The American Perception of Class, Vanneman and Cannon argue that Americans believe their society has no clear class divisions because they normally mistake status for class. Status, as Vanneman and Cannon define it, really focuses on material possessions, cultural manifestations, and lifestyle choices (41). Furthermore, America is obsessed with such matters (the accumulation of status symbols in particular) since “schools and mass media use [status] as if it were the only appropriate picture of American society. 'Making it' has always been a cultural preoccupation, and 'making it' has always been evaluated by a detailed scale of social success” (46). Status, in other words, is all we think about because it is all we have been told (by the mass media) to think about, a line of thinking which assumes that the public inevitably buys precisely into the mediated images it receives and does not (or is not capable of) interpret media-received messages for itself. Class, on the other hand, refers to (according to Vanneman and Cannon) “divisions based on the social relations of production” (41). The middle class here is limited to the “self-employed (that is, the “old” middle class of storekeepers and independent farmers) and professionals and managers” (11). The middle class are people who have a specific relationship to the means of production, not just people who merely happen to display middle-class-esque consumption of leisure or status symbols.

<10> In this way of thinking, class can then only really be talked about in terms relating to one’s occupation, as occupation and (more specifically) relationship to the means of production are the ultimate determinants of all relations. Says Vanneman and Cannon: “Capital’s economic power underlies the other forms of power. Both the giving of orders and the reorganization of work depend ultimately on the fact that the job belongs to the company and not the worker...it is for the purpose of economic exploitation that...other forms of control are devised” (85). This model clearly stresses the primacy of economics and of the workplace. What goes on outside work is unimportant in regard to class except how it is caused by the capitalist structure of production. As a result, leisure activities, status, and culture are all secondary for Vanneman and Cannon, who treat the only part of life that really matters (because it is primal) is that which occurs on the clock. Cultural artifacts, in this view, are therefore irrelevant to class.

<11> The failure to grasp a correlation between leisure and one’s relationship to the means of production is also present in American scholarship focusing on life outside the workplace. In American Working Man, sociologist David Halle studied New Jersey blue collar workers and determined that while there were significant differences in the lives of assembly line workers and supervisors at work, no such differences existed in anyone’s life outside the factory. Says Halle:

leisure life...cuts across occupation and social class. Social drinking in the tavern, watching and playing sports, going out to eat, spending time around the house, raising children and following their progress at school, going to a musical on special occasions, and, especially later in life, traveling: These are activities that clearly absorb the time of many American men including those in upper-white-collar occupations…this is why the attempt to specify a “working-class” leisure is not easy (52, emphasis added).

As such, class only refers to work-related struggles to the exclusion of all leisure activity. People’s lives inside the place of employment do not relate to their lives outside of work except in income levels, and income levels are not, in this analysis, related to class.

<12> To Halle, income, not class, determines what kind of life can be led outside work, and a working-class culture (stereotypical or otherwise) essentially is a myth since class has no relation to culture. In this view, culture (as signified by cultural artifacts and class markers) is directly proportional only to income, thus making work irrelevant to the discussion and placing culture solely into the sphere of consumerism. Of course, it helps that Halle studied workers that were paid about as much as were their managers and could thus afford to adopt what was traditionally seen as middle-class culture; obviously, every working-class American is not so lucky (75).

<13> While both The American Perception of Class and America's Working Man provide relatively nuanced, complex pictures of class, one significant issue with these two analyses (and all similar scholarship) is that they treat economic life as a separate entity from social/leisure life (and, as a result, culture) when possible connections between the two are mentioned at all. The only thing which work has to do with leisure is providing the income to make it possible. These types of studies treat social and cultural existence as an inferior topic to the study of the means of production, and they spend no real effort analyzing possible connections between the two. In reality, however, economic and social life are inevitably bound in complex ways, as is any measure of identity, so the failure of these studies to account for the multiple dimensions of class means they, as a matter of course, are presenting an inadequate view of their subject. One cannot simply examine one type of identity in the absence of any other factor and expect to accurately explain anyone's existence. This is, after all, one of the main points of cultural criticism.

Popular Culture and Class

<14> When considered against the backdrop of the aforementioned American understanding of class, the Living Colour/Guns N' Roses incident as a whole shows the potential to present a more diverse, fully nuanced scheme of identity. To begin with, the debate between the two bands is notable because it did not partake in the assumption of a normative middle-class/status-based lifestyle. Although much of eighties American popular culture [4] assumed the stereotypical middle class existence to be a universal ideal to which everybody naturally aspires, both Living Colour and Guns N' Roses played hard rock, a style of music that, while maybe mainstream in terms of its level of media saturation throughout the decade [5], had a very definite working class orientation. Reebee Garofalo believes that rock and roll in general is categorized by "its urban orientation, focus on youth culture, and appeal to working-class sensibilities, and its relationship to technology and African American musical influences and performance styles" (165). Hard rock and heavy metal [6] are particularly not middle class; the majority of eighties heavy metal purchasers were, according to Billboard magazine, most highly concentrated in "the blue-collar industrial cities of the continental U. S." (McCormick, 19). Additionally, heavy metal bands members themselves were more likely than not to come from working-class backgrounds (Weinstein 75).

<15> This led to a style of music which, in spite of severe dismissal from the mainstream entertainment media business which pushed it [7], contained an inherent political point of view, albeit one not generally expressed explicitly. Heavy metal regularly was accused of being apolitical, such as when Rolling Stone called the genre "Lite punk: it smells and tastes like rebellion but without that political aftertaste" because its politics were not usually spelled out (Handelman 36). In general, metal lyrics did not target specific causes, instead opting for (in the words of metal critic Robert Walser) “explor[ing] the 'other,' everything that hegemonic society does not want to acknowledge, the dark side of the daylight, enlightened adult world. By doing so it finds distinction in scandalous transgression and appropriates sources of communal empowerment” (162). This is still political, but in an implicit rather than explicit sense. Heavy metal's politicality comes not from explicitly championing specific causes but from building up an alternative to the mainstream, typical, and (in this case) Reaganist middle class world as a critique implicit within the form. As such, heavy metal’s suggested identity is counter-hegemonic even when not stated within an explicit agenda.[8]

<16> This is no bland, monolithic alternative, however. Instead, heavy metal operates as an active political resistance in its ability to critique normative notions of society by including a multiplicity of specific viewpoints emanating from a shared stylistic and ideological ground. In spite of the widespread use of standard genre conventions, heavy metal is a tremendously diverse genre of music, covering everything from poppy glam metal bands like Poison to thrash bands like Slayer. Furthermore, in spite of audiences sharing similar demographics, metal fandom also shows a tremendous diversity. Each band had a dedicated but very specific following, and each group of fans developed a hierarchical status structure and places themselves either better (higher) than or worse (lower) than fans of other bands; Slayer fans, for instance, clearly see themselves as superior to Poison fans (Walser 3). This diversity in both musical stylings and in fandom, operating within the overarching conventions of heavy metal, is also mirrored in the multiple nuanced politics emanating from heavy metal's complex counter-hegemonic political nature.

The Great Living Colour/Guns N' Roses Identity Debate

<17> One of the sites where 1980s heavy metal's complex politics (particularly in terms of identity) surfaced was, interestingly enough, on the bill of a rock band from a different generation. During 1989, the Rolling Stones were in the middle of their first tour in seven years. The tour was wildly successful; the Stones played to sold-out arenas nation-wide, gathered significant critical acclaim, and became one of the top grossing artists of the year. For the opening act throughout the tour, the Stones chose the hard rock band Living Colour. Living Colour had made a splash on MTV with the release of their video for "Cult of Personality," and multi-platinum [9] sales of their debut 1988 album Vivid resulted from the video play. By the time of the Stones tour, Living Colour was a burgeoning name act and a draw in their own right, and it was their popularity that made them an ideal addition to a successful tour. However, as well as giving Living Colour a shot at a larger audience, the Rolling Stones/Living Colour team-up also clearly put politics on the stage.

<18>Living Colour's inclusion on the bill immediately led to inherent assumptions about identity. Rather than seeing them as a popular band or as a hard rock band [10], music writers tended to describe Living Colour first and foremost as black, politically active New Yorkers. The press saw race as especially important in the group’s public image, as the band performed what was stereotypically considered white music. This perception was ingrained in both the white and black community and affected their potential fanbase; Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid admitted that “Black people, too, in a lot of ways see it as white music, and aren’t really open to it” (qtd. in Perry 84). The music industry was similarly affected, refusing to promote Vivid to black radio, “because to promote a record at black radio is to stigmatize it past all repair in the eyes of AOR [album oriented rock, i.e. white radio] programmers” (qtd. in Perry 88). While the band members would admit their race had an impact on their music, Vernon Reid in particular wanted to move beyond just being considered a black band: "The fact that we're African Americans has a lot to do with what's on the record and what we see in our lives, but all our problems aren't generated by the fact we're black." (qtd. in “100 best…” 117). Furthermore, their blackness did not have much to do with the audience they garnered. Most of their shows were played to predominantly white audiences, and one fan quite plainly summed up the crowd’s general feeling by saying that "most people don't give a shit about the color of their skin…As long as they can rock, no one cares" (qtd. in Michael Goldberg 24).

<19> A more likely justification for their appeal came from common working-class concerns, albeit those from an activist position, and it was this assumed activism which distinguished Living Colour from much heavy metal. Living Colour generally assumed that its audience were interested in taking active steps to correct flaws in the world around them. As such, the resulting lyrics were generally explicitly political. Moreover, the lyrics on Vivid mirrored the observations and concerns of the average rock and roll listener, meaning they generally revolved around working class concerns. In their debut album, Living Colour included several songs that did not contain explicit politics (“I Want to Know” and “Broken Hearts” are, for example, respectively about the start and end of a relationship). However, the band was more likely to sound off on specific causes. Yet nowhere on Vivid did Living Colour explicitly mention race. The single “Open Letter to a Landlord,” both a “scathing indictment” of slumlords and a call to action for downtrodden tenants, could apply to any member of the working class, since one of the defining factors of the working class was the lack of home ownership (and thus reliance on a landlord) (Levithan 26). “Funny Vibe” specifically attacked prejudicial assumptions based on image (“No, I'm not gonna beat you/No, I'm not gonna rape you/So why you want to give me that Funny Vibe?”) and could have applied equally well to the long-haired, leather clad heavy metal youth who scared authority figures as to the African American who scared authority figures.

<20> On Vivid, however, Living Colour directly critiques both the American class system and the pervasiveness of depictions of normative identity in the media. In the song “Which Way to America,” Living Colour specifically focuses on the disparities between actual life and life as depicted in the mass media. The narrator of the song struggles to come to terms with the wide gap between his life and the lives he sees portrayed on television:

I look at the T.V.
Your America's doing well
I look out the window
My America's catching hell

As the song continues, the narrator’s search becomes more and more desperate. The narrator’s singing turns into plaintive screams as he becomes increasingly frustrated over the unattainability of this televisual ideal. As “Which Way to America” makes clear, Living Colour believes that American society (particularly as depicted by the mass media) places an undue amount of importance on the acquisition of material wealth. When the song’s narrator expresses discontent over his life, his dissatisfaction lies primarily in his lack of status objects, wondering “Where's my picket fence? My long, tall glass of lemonade? Where's my VCR, my stereo, my T.V. show?” It is important to note that this song is not necessarily an indictment of the fictive situations presented by entertainment but instead of the real world; before the last verse, when the song includes samples of someone flipping between television channels, news and financial updates are what the narrator angrily blows past.

<21> It is also notable, though, that when Rolling Stone magazine brought up “Which Way to America,” the class-conscious aspects of “Which Way to America?” was lost. Instead, the song instantly became "an aggressive demand by a young black man for his piece of prosperity pie," though as if the failure to attain a true middle-class existence was solely an African American concern (Fricke, “Back in black” 66). Yet the disillusionment with mass media and critiques of acquisition-based status are clearly matters of class first and race second. Living Colour's activist politics and critical voice are definitely on display in these lyrics. However, by focusing on the band's ethnic background, the mainstream press whitewashed over the band's class-centric critical politics.

<22> Living Colour's politics were thrown into sharp relief when, in the middle of their tour, the Rolling Stones played four sold-out shows in Los Angeles and the LA hard rock band Guns N' Roses was added to the bill. Guns N' Roses's first album, 1987's Appetite for Destruction, had (like Living Colour's record) made quite a splash after MTV began playing videos for "Welcome to the Jungle" and the ballad "Sweet Child O' Mine." Even heavier album sales resulted, and by the time of the Rolling Stones shows, Guns N’ Roses’s album had been certified octuple platinum.[11] A second release, an EP entitled Lies, was, along with Appetite, holding down a slot in the top 5 album chart at the time of the concerts. In the eyes of Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger, "they're [both] proven people's groups. They've come up not because of music industry flogging, but on their own, because they hit a populist nerve" (in Hilburn, “Guns N’ Roses…” calendar 76). Living Colour, though, championed specific political causes such as material wealth and slumlords, while Guns N’ Roses’s politics were more indirect and described the hopeless reactions of the underclass. So in fact, each group ended up hitting a different populist nerve, connecting with different philosophical strains, each of which ran counter to the culturally-dominant Reaganism.

<23> Much like Living Colour, outsider perceptions of Guns N' Roses yielded a one dimensional image that hid the band's politics; in the latter case, that image was of punky troublemakers. When the press covered Guns N Roses, they liked to continually focus on the band’s supposed punk-rock hybrid. Mark Rowland, writing in Musician, claims that Guns N’ Roses have “been heralded as avatars of ‘80s rock, pop, heavy metal and even punk, inasmuch as punk was always...an attitude” (Rowland, “If Guns N’ Roses…” 64). Hand in hand with the punk judgment, the press also featured Guns N’ Roses’ penchant for controversy. A 1988 Rolling Stone cover story cataloged the band’s run-ins with trouble, including their singer W. Axl Rose's arrest in the middle of an Atlanta show, guitarist Izzy Stradlin and bassist Duff McKagan beating up a drummer in a rival band, several lawsuits, and numerous fights (Tannenbaum, 64-66). New Yorker writer Elizabeth Wurtzel believed that “in a world where — for fear of being called racist, sexist, or in some other way bigoted...Guns N’ Roses seem blissfully ignorant of such concerns” (117), and this obliviousness to the norms of society was supposedly the root of the band’s incredible popularity

<24> Rather than simply seeing themselves as escapists, however, Guns N’ Roses saw their main drawing power in their ability to mirror the disintegration of society and provide catharsis; in other words, their draw was political, albeit from an implicit stance. Guitarist Slash explicated this feeling best in a 1988 Musician interview:

there’s always a need for release, to get out—which is what rock ‘n’ roll is about.... I think we’re a pretty decent mirror for what kids and young adults go through…For people who have spent time on the street or have family problems, alcohol problems, we’ve voiced some opinions about what we were going through. And some of the reason we did so well is that a lot of kids relate to that (Rowland, “Appetite for Reconstruction” 67).

Guns N’ Roses believed that the reason they were successful, in short, was that their songs specifically resonated with their audience because the audience included everyone who did not fit in with the typical portrait of a mainstream, middle class individual. Elsewhere, Slash specifically contrasts his music with Reaganism culture, calling his band “the antithesis of the bland, safe, predictable shit of the eighties” (“Rocky Horror” 8).

<25> Where Living Colour was explicitly political (in that their lyrics provided direct calls to action), Guns N’ Roses was definitely non-activist. Lyrically, Guns N' Roses' songs usually chronicled elements of their lives while not hiding "the fact that they're confused and screwed up" (Tannenbaum 64) or suggesting solutions. Songs on Guns N’ Roses’ first album Appetite for Destruction came with lyrics dealing with such un-Reaganist topics as alcohol abuse ("Nightrain"), heroin addiction ("Mr. Brownstone"), and rampant paranoia ("Out Ta Get Me," albeit played for laughs). Moreover, none of these lyrics came close to offering solutions. These songs were of course political implicitly in the manner described by Walser above, as they analyzed and explicated elements of identity which is clearly counter-hegemonic, yet, as they did not advocate specific responses, did not use the activist politics of Living Colour.

<26> While Guns N’ Roses did not indulge in explicit politics in their songs, they had no trouble condemning mainstream society. For example, the narrator of “Paradise City” is an outcast from Reaganism-era America:

Just a' urchin
Livin' under the street
I'm a hard case
That's tough to beat
I'm your charity case
So buy me somethin' to eat

The narrator here is self-identified as a member of the underclass and is consequently bitter, homeless and property-less, and unable to sustain himself. He is also marginalized from middle class Reaganist America, and the only relationship with mainstream society of which he can even conceive is parasitic. Lest the listener assume the narrator’s social fall is an anomaly, however, the song continues: “Captain America's been torn apart. Now he's a court jester with a broken heart.” The low societal position of the narrator is not an isolated incident but instead is shared with a cross section of the populace, from the underclass to the heroes.[12] Disillusionment with the Reaganist American Dream, in other words, was widespread among the band, its fans, and the populace at large.

<27> If Guns N’ Roses dwelt in the lower fringes of society, they did occasionally dream of escape. In “Paradise City,” this escape was to a pastoral version of America, “where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.” It should be noted that whether this pastoral escape was a viable option is open to debate; singer W. Axl Rose did preface a live performance of “Paradise City” with “There’s no need to look for a fuckin’ paradise city ‘cause none exists” (Sugarman 4). It is also important to note that the optimism of “Paradise City” is unique on the album (with the exception of two love songs). More frequently on Appetite for Destruction, the desired escape is carnal in nature; in “It’s So Easy,” and the aforementioned songs “Mr. Brownstone” and “Nightrain,” the only evasion from reality is carnal and involves either sex, heroin, or liquor respectively.

<28> Guns N’ Roses portrayed a life which was far removed from that of mainstream, stereotypical middle class society. The band lived the life they portrayed on their album, and it was common knowledge that most songs were autobiographical: “Mr. Brownstone,” for example, was written by guitarist Izzy Stradlin while shooting up heroin (Sugarman 118). Many felt that the resulting honesty and immediacy was a primary cause for the band’s mass success. Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn, for example, believed “the band examines the temptations and consequences of fast-lane behavior with convincing authority and emotion” (“Guns N’ Roses…” Calendar 69), and Guns N’ Roses fans felt a kinship with the band as a result. Guns N' Roses' politics, then, was both implicit and active, in that it stemmed from their descriptions of often-real life non-normative behavior in their lyrics.

<29> As practitioners of the implicit style of politics prevalent in heavy metal, Guns N' Roses' penchant for living out their lyrics gave them an aura of authenticity and contributed to their bad boy personae (which is always a selling point in a form of music known for its resistant image). When, with the release of the ep Lies, the lyrics made the transition from implicit lifestyle description to explicit critique, however, they caused an enormous controversy. Much of this uproar centered around the song "One in a Million,” which described the reaction of someone from a small town to the diversity of Los Angeles; with Guns N' Roses' penchant for autobiographical lyrics, this was most likely Rose himself. This reaction to diversity, however, is mostly marked by commentary that took the lyrics out of the realm of the typical of heavy metal reactions against mainstream society. Instead, “One in a Million” more closely resembled reactionary anti-minority hate language, with references to “Police and Niggers,” and lyrics such as:

Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
They come to our country
And think they'll do as they please
Like start some mini Iran,
Or spread some fuckin' disease

As with much of the band's lyrics, Rose claimed “One in a Million” simply mirrored the disintegration of society; in this case, the disintegration in question was the “downtown-L.A. Greyhound bus station,” where “[i]f you haven't been there, you can't say shit to me about what goes on and about my point if view” (James 44). “One in a Million,” however, clearly goes beyond critiquing the mainstream version of society attacked in “Paradise City,” and as such, signal an entirely different political approach.

<30> Where Guns N' Roses' obliviousness to the norms of society previously made them media darlings, the reaction to “One in a Million” was much more combative, and the band's singer spent a large amount of interview space for the year or so after the ep's release trying to justify the lyrics. Argumentatively, these attempts at justification tended to betray a certain amount of obliviousness, such as when Rose justified the use of the word 'nigger' by wondering “[w]hy can black people go up to each other and say, 'Nigger,' but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big putdown? I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say” (James 44). There was even dissension over the lyrics within the band; half-black guitarist Slash admitted "I can't sit here with a clear conscience and say "It's OK that it came out." I don't condone it" (qtd. in Putterford 17).

<31> The controversy over “One in a Million” really came to a head, however, when both Living Colour and Guns N' Roses were openers for the Rolling Stones in Los Angeles. The conflict began to heat up before the concerts even began. Living Colour members Vernon Reid and bassist Will Calhoun were asked about the offensive lyrics in the Guns N’ Roses song “One in a Million” during a live interview. Reid recalls: “we basically said we didn’t dig it because the labeling of people is not cool…it reduces people” (qtd. in Fricke, “…time is now” 57). However, Reid’s relatively mild radio statement, combined with a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Behind the Guns N’ Roses Racism Furor,” caused Guns N’ Roses frontman W. Axl Rose to take the debate to the concert stage. The first night, Rose launched into a tirade before even launching into the first song. He said he was sick about the controversy about "One in a Million," denied he was a racist, and "suggested that selective use of the words⎯against members of those groups who offend you⎯is acceptable" (Hillburn, “Still the Greatest…” F18). [14]

<32> Rose’s attempted apology did not appease many people. Los Angeles Times critic Richard Cromelin said that Rose's appeal to social realism "once again revealed a profound obliviousness to the inflammatory nature of the language" (F6). Circus writer Lou O'Neill Jr. commented "negative stereotypes were only reinforced...talk about digging your own grave and jumping in to boot!" (106). Guns N' Roses's management firm's statement, "it is an artist's right to comment with honesty on both the beautiful and the ugly" (Goldstein 68), also did not earn much in the way of sympathy. The next night, Vernon Reid (Living Colour guitarist) took the debate back to the stage by offering this rebuttal: "If you don't have a problem with gay people, don't call them [fagots]. If you don't have a problem with black people, don't call them [niggers]. I haven't met a [nigger] in my life" (in Cromelyn F6). Upon hearing this, "large sections of the Coliseum crowd stood on their seats and cheered and whistled" (Wall 89).

<33> The argument drug on in the music press for some time. Oddly enough, however, by the middle of 1991, the philosophical positions of W. Axl Rose and Vernon Reid had come closer to converging. Reflecting on the “One in a Million” controversy, Rose still was mostly unapologetic about his lyrics. However, Rose had considered the role his words had played in opening a debate on race in America:

“One in a Million” brought out the fact that racism does exist so let’s do something about it. Since that song, a lot of people may hate Guns N’ Roses, but they were thinking about their racism now. And they weren’t thinking about that during “We Are the World.” “We Are the World” was like a Hallmark card. (qtd. in Barat 42)

Rose still did not admit his lyrical choices were inappropriate. However, he finally showed some awareness of the power of lyrics and saw the resulting dialog as a positive result of his music. By focusing on the resulting dialog on race, Rose recontextualized the song “One in a Million” into an explicitly political statement; by opening discussions on racial relationships, the lyric in fact became a force for societal change…at least as read by Rose.

<34> On the other hand, Vernon Reid still often stated his continual objections to Rose’s lyric. However, Reid, in a 1991 Melody Maker article, showed a certain appreciation for social realism in art, even if that realism happened to be offensive:

There’s a stream in modern art right now...that actually embraces the horror of modern life, fully embraces it. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that the creators of that art support the horror. It’s just that they don’t pretend that the horror doesn’t exist and, in a lot of ways, to not pretend that the horror does not exist is a healthy thing…Yeah, a lot of times, in talking about violence and sexuality and the real extremes of experience, we get so caught up in the fact that there are dirty words or there’s something violent, that we don’t realize that that necessarily doesn’t mean the art isn’t any good. (in Sutherland 45)

Vernon Reid was not talking specifically about Guns N’ Roses in this article. Nevertheless, he does show an appreciation for implicit politics absent from his previous comments. By admitting that simply describing the ugliness of life can be both emotionally and artistically “healthy,” Reid actually comes close to admitting the value of the Guns N’ Roses philosophy (as stated by Slash) of underclass depictions and catharsis.

<35> Yet the very real differences between Guns N’ Roses and Living Colour persist. Living Colour believed that their music should be expressly political. In this, the band embodied what Susan Faludi described as the Ernie Pyle model of masculinity:

Manhood of this sort rested on something more than tools, productivity, or authority: it wasn’t the handiwork that was essential so much as the whole idea of having skills that could be transferred to work critical to society and acknowledged for its public value. By this version of manhood, making things and serving the community were one and the same. (86).

Living Colour’s mission then was to provide tools to its audience so that they may seek to make better the world. The band’s lyrics were polemics, and its audience crusaders to overturn the misdeeds of mainstream society.

<36> Guns N’ Roses, on the other hand, never formally adopted an expressly political style. Yet they did not simply embody the children of Donna Gaines’s Teenage Wasteland, who come from tattered pasts where they dreamed simply of being spectacularly successful (150-151). Instead, Guns N’ Roses made every effort to present their underclass status in as honest and authentic of a manner as possible. While the songs of Guns N’ Roses were certainly not polemical, neither were they apolitical. The politics of Guns N’ Roses instead came from their straightforward representation of the lives of those who existed outside of Reaganism. It was when they changed their target of their resistance from the norm to other similarly subaltern groups that their rebellion changed from charming to problematic.

Aftermath

<37> In the end, the controversy neither made or broke either Guns N' Roses or Living Colour. Living Colour broke up in 1995 after MTV quit showing their videos and sales of their third album Stain subsequently dropped off. They eventually reformed, releasing Collideøscope in 2003 and The Chair in the Doorway in 2009; neither album, however, reached anywhere near the sales of their predecessors. After following up Lies with 1999's Use Your Illusions I and II, Guns N’ Roses virtually imploded after a bizarre run of lineup changes⎯with Axl firing every single member of the band one by one and taking thirteen years to record Chinese Democracy, which only sold a fraction of that of its predecessors when finally released in 2008. In short, while both bands are still around, neither has the level of cultural significance they had at the time of their debate. Similarly, the Living Colour/Guns N' Roses debate itself as a historical event is more or less forgotten, not even mentioned in either group's Wikipedia page.

<38> If the Living Colour/Guns N' Roses debate is unimportant as a historical artifact, it becomes valuable when taken as a critical event. First off, the debate demonstrates the problematized nature of the relationship between cultural events and societal issues. While both bands were clearly mainstream in terms of their popular saturation, both acts espoused politics which clearly did not fit into and in fact actively critiqued mainstream assumptions on class identity; as such, both bands were simultaneously mainstream and resistant, albeit in different manners. Both acts examined in their lyrics the relationship between societal issues and cultural artifacts, as evident in the direct mentions of television in “Which Way to America?” and the more oblique references to the Captain America mythos in “Paradise City.” That this examination is itself taking place within cultural artifacts is also notable, because it highlights that media productions should not be ignored as a critical force.

<39> Moreover, the politics of the two bands shows the diversity of viewpoints existing within subaltern politics centered on how to handle resistance. While Living Colour's explicitly avowed activist politics, Guns N' Roses favored an approach that was, in its stressing of first-person reportage and carnal release, more literary than activist. When the two sides (and approaches) came into direct conflict on the Los Angeles Coliseum stage, Living Colour's activist politics seemed to carry more critical weight in the press. However, if their higher level of sales, popular reaction, and critical adulation (ranging from the standard music press up to the New Yorker) are any indication, Guns N' Roses wins, suggesting that implicit politics hold an edge over activism, at least in terms of popular palatability.

<40> Furthermore, the conflict between the bands indicates the exaggerated importance assumptions about identity play within cultural resistance. In spite of lyrics which were as much about class as anything else, Living Colour could not escape associations with race; the music press particularly focused on the band's ethnicity, particularly when describing the band itself or their lyrics. Guns N' Roses, on the other hand, was celebrated for their non-politically correct attitudes and their rebellion toward mainstream culture, particularly as the group emanated from (or at least presumed the image of) an underclass position. However, they quickly moved from being media darlings to undergoing heavy critique when they shifted the aim of their lyrical focus on societal disintegration from mainstream culture to other subordinate groups. This also suggests a very narrow societal tolerance for politically incorrect views.

<41> Acknowledging the critical voice inherent within much popular culture can thusly offer real benefits and insights. When read as a critical event, the Guns 'N Roses/Living Colour debate yields real insight into the problematized connections between cultural artifacts and societal issues, into the diversity of subaltern strategies regarding implicit and explicit politics, and into the exaggerated role of assumptions about identity play within cultural resistance. In short, coming to terms with culture's potential for criticism can lead to a more fully nuanced understanding of how identity as a whole operates, an understanding which is missing in much American thinking in the eighties.

<42> To be fair, much more comprehensive and inclusive scholarship investigating the intersections of identity and culture did exist and indeed thrive during the eighties. Vanneman and Cannon's aforementioned conception of how the public interprets the lessons of status within the media is directly challenged by the more nuanced understanding of audience reception by Stuart Hall in the seminal article “Encoding/Decoding.” Furthermore, the rampant assumption of the normative nature of middle class identity discounts the voluminous work of British Culture Studies scholars, most notably E. P. Thompson's The Making of the British Working Class.

<43> The critical power of music, however, was a sound which was, more often than not, unheard in America. Instead, music (along with popular culture in general) was generally seen, a la both Bloom and Zinn, as a realm solely dedicated escapism. This led to a disconnect between culture and identity, one which permeated much of American society and exacerbated a monolithic view of class. When listened to closely, music indeed has a deep critical voice, albeit one that's often implicit, and, if we want to benefit from the lessons it offers, it is our duty as scholars to cut through the distortion and listen closely. If we ever want to fully grasp culture, we must look for meanings and insights wherever we may find them, and we must realize the process of understanding any cultural trend will involve a synthesis of these multiple points of view. Taking seriously cultural texts as critical takes on our society is one important step. In other words, we must remember that it's never “only rock and roll.

Works Cited

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Barat, Babu. “There’s A Riot Going On: Axl Rose Defends His Actions.” Musician Sept. 1991: 35-44, 94.

Bloom, Alan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

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Fricke, David. “Back in black.” Rolling Stone Sept. 24, 1987: 64-66, 149-150.

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Notes

[1] The Closing of the American Mind was in fact a major player in the debate over the relationship between multiculturalism, popular culture, and higher education, which is referred to as “The Culture Wars.” For more on the Culture Wars, see James Davidson Hunter's Culture Wars: the Struggle to Define America, Gerald Graff's Beyond the Culture Wars, Fred Whitehead's Culture Wars: Opposing Viewpoints, James L. Nolan, Jr.'s The American Culture Wars, and Gregory S. Jay's American Literature & the Culture Wars.

[2] I am using the term “Reaganism” to refer to the dominant philosophies, mores, and the ideal identity of the Reagan era. Politically speaking, it is a modernist, nationalistic identity which combined numerous elements of both the neoconservative movement and the New Right.

[3] I am loosely using the term leisure to designate simply all non-work related aspects of a person’s life.

[4] The films of John Hughes, for example, portrayed characters either (in Home Alone) abandoned in, or (in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles) desperately trying to return to their suburban, white homes (and lifestyles). Large “center-door colonial [houses] on landscaped lots in comfortable, northern, suburban neighborhoods” are central locations in such Hughes films as, among others, Pretty in Pink (1986), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Home Alone (1990) (Nadel 144-146) For a more complete analysis of John Hughes’s films, see “Home and Homelessness Alone” in Alan Nadel’s Flatlining on the Field of Dreams (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).

[5] Heavy metal sold particularly well in the eighties, with albums from Quiet Riot (1983’s Metal Health), Def Leppard (1983’s Pyromania), Motley Crüe (1984’s Shout at the Devil), and countless other bands each occupying high slots in the sales charts.

[6] While there may in fact be genre distinctions between heavy metal and hard rock, the two terms are treated as equivalent as often as not. Therefore, I am not distinguishing between heavy metal and hard rock for the purposes of this essay, particularly because both terms were regularly applied to Living Colour and to Guns N' Roses.

It should be noted that most of the early scholarship on eighties heavy metal is relatively limited in its view of both the music and the fans. Weinstein's Heavy Metal, Gaines's Wasted Youth, and Arnett's Metalheads all focus on the alienated, outside-of-the-mainstream version of heavy metal listeners (most commonly drugged-out teenage males) and express regular disdain for the music; Arnett particularly trashes the genre, saying “there is nothing about it that is elevated or refined” (57) and dismisses claims of performer virtuosity with a largely irrelevant Vladimir Horowitz quote (65). Robert Walser's Running with the Devil is a refreshingly open and intricate analysis of both the music and the subculture, and the more recent metal scholarship (such as Brad Klypchak's 2007 Performed Identity) continues this trend of unbiased, more advanced heavy metal scholarship.

[7] Bob Pittman, the chief of MTV (arguably the network behind the popularization of heavy metal) called the music “a quick, crass, easy buck for record companies” (in Graham, “Heavy Metal on the Outs at MTV” 15), while Rolling Stone (perhaps the most prominent music magazine) referred to metal as "bogs of sonic gruel" ("Music Yearbook 1985" 19). For more on the complex factors behind the rise of heavy metal in the eighties, see the “Heavy Metal in the 1980s” in Walser's Running with the Devil. For a discussion of the role of MTV in heavy metal’s push, see “A Televisual Context: MTV” in Goodwin, Andrew. Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

[8] It should also be noted that all heavy metal limited itself to implicit politics. Many groups, including Megadeth and Twisted Sister, adopted an oppositional standing after attacks from churches and the government (during the PMRC hearings), and as a result became an “ideological battlefield upon which struggles for power, values, and identity take place” (Garofalo 15).

[9] Exact sales figures are notoriously hard to verify, as most music labels keep their exact figures secret. I have verified gold and platinum sales awards through the web site of the Recording Industry of America Association’s web site (“Gold & Platinum”).

[10] While Living Colour did regularly push conventions by including elements of funk, rap, and other genres, their repeated use of distorted guitar, virtuoso solos and aggressive timbre clearly associate them with hard rock.

[11] The RIAA would eventually certify Appetite for Destruction platinum eighteen times as of 1 Sept. 2009 (“Gold & Platinum”).

[12] For a full analysis of the changing role of heroes and Captain America in the eighties, please see DuBose, “Holding Out for a Hero.”

[13] This was not Rose’s only tirade of the night, however. During the course of the show, he both accused fellow band members of doing heroin and threatened to break up the band; later in the set, he actually fell off the side of the stage (Hilburn “Still the Greatest,” F18).

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