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ARE ROCK STARS CENSORED ON TV?:
TELEVISION TALK SHOWS, MUSICIANS AND MARIJUANA DEBATES

da Flower Punk - Dec. 12, 1998
<flowerpunk@pauserecord.com>

Watching Bonnie Raitt flirt with David Letterman on television the other night, it was easy to see his double standard. Letterman often flirts with his female guests; it is all part of his shtick. When Drew Barrymore flashes her tits at him, he's thrilled. When any number of young starlets make suggestive comments to him, he either pretends to blush or he plays along. But when Bonnie made suggestive comments to him, he sat impassively and ignored them. It became clear that Letterman is ageist. Had Bonnie been ten or twenty years younger he would have been all over her, even if it was all just an act.

But then Raitt, who had just performed a song on his show, was actually an exception to the general rule that on network television, rock musicians don't even get to sit in the chair next to talk show hosts. On Letterman they are invited to play their latest songs on his show four out of five nights a week (a comedian gets the other night), but generally he walks over to them after their performance and shakes their hands saying, "nice job," and "thanks for being here" as they cut to commercials. In Raitt's case, it was obvious that the show had just run short, and Letterman had two minutes to fill, so they plopped her in the chair, uncertain of what she would say or do.

There is a reason that Letterman and Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien and the other network talk show hosts do not often let rock musicians speak -- even though ratings absolutely depend on letting them play night after night. It was precisely the unpredictability that Bonnie Raitt had exhibited. She didn't talk about her new album, she talked about sex.

Movie stars are far more predictable. Actors in major feature films tend to play by the unwritten rules of TV talk shows. First of all, with so much money riding on films, actors are virtually owned by the studios and the business. They are there to promote their latest offerings, and it is in their contracts that they will stick to certain scripts. Their interactions with the hosts have been carefully worked out in advance; questions have been cleared with agents and producers and very little is left to chance. The general outlines of both style and substance are agreed upon before the show begins. The same is true of the various TV "personalities" that populate the talk show line-ups. When they talk about sex or act in unconventional ways it is because that is part of the marketing plans their agents have devised for them.

Sports figures are similarly owned by their teams, their sponsors, their careers, and their handlers. Sports celebrities have the added burden of being expected to be role models for America's youth. It gives them very little leeway to speak openly and honestly about their real lives, their real beliefs, if they want to keep being popular and keep getting lucrative commercial spots. They are well aware of the corporate interests that their interests lie in serving; they serve them or vanish from the public eye. Politicians are even more careful to keep their images carefully crafted.

Rock artists are in an entirely different boat. Their success often hinges on the fact that they seem to stand outside that hegemonic corporate structure, to challenge it.

Examples of that are easy enough to find. When Tori Amos was invited onto the Roseanne show recently, it was clear that what made Amos talk show material for the most part was more than her music. This show is aimed at an audience of women, and Amos has founded a group dedicated to helping victims of rape and incest. But when the talk came around to how Ms. Amos explored her own mind to figure out what her own problems with relationships were, Amos explained how she had traveled to South America and used Ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic drug used by indigenous peoples there, and had learned much about the inner workings of her mind in the process. Roseanne was confused, "is that like Prozac?," she asked Amos, who replied with a laugh that Prozac was like baby food compared to Ayahuasca. Roseanne did not follow up that line of thought and quickly changed the subject.

While musicians can not be said to hold any particular monolithic sets of views on issues of society, culture, politics, drugs or anything else, there is probably more of a willingness to speak out against the current war on some drugs by musicians than among any other group of people that wind up on talk shows. At least it would seem that way if one listened to the new benefit CD for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, recently released by Capricorn Records.

The album features tracks by artists from all genres of the music industry, from hip-hop to country, from techno-industrial to rock, and from folk to alternative, all of it singing the praises of marijuana and hemp for recreational, medicinal, and industrial uses.

What kinds of debates would be stirred up on a national level if Dar Williams was allowed on television talk shows regularly to explain her view, which is shared by many, that industrial hemp production could have tremendous environmental and economic benefits. "We need to save the planet and we need to do it ourselves, because obviously it's not in anybody's marketing plan," Williams said recently. "Hemp could be a cornerstone of a lot of activity around wresting control back to things that are sustainable for the planet."

Willie Nelson agrees. "It's just so ridiculous that a product with that many uses has to be made into a political thing," Nelson says. "It's a shame. Not only could our farmers pay their bills and get out of debt, but this whole country would find a new way to environmentally protect ourselves by getting rid of all the petrochemicals that are killing us." Asked about his forty year love of smoking grass, Nelson's red eyes probably twinkle, as he grins and replies, "there's nobody alive that doesn't know how I feel about marijuana."

And the political aspects of the nation's current wave of anti-drug hysteria are also questioned by many musicians. George Clinton explains how corruption plays a key role in the international politics of the drug war. "When they have to pay $4 billion for the drug war, somebody gets that," Clinton says. His song included here makes his point even more explicit. Taking the position of a drug warrior in the cut, Clinton sings "we make more money by pretending that we're stopping it than by selling it" in "US Custom Coast Guard Drug Dog." He also in the song connects the CIA to drug sales, as many others have.

On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Vic Chestnutt, who was paralyzed in a car accident 15 years ago, explains how he uses marijuana "for medicinal purposes and creatively." It enhances the feeling left below the line of his paralysis he says, but "I hate being a criminal" for that. "I use it sometimes if I have writer's block. That's medicinal too."

Spearhead's Michael Franti argues the battles for legalization are "like civil rights." Former Minuteman and fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt argues "I want to be able to farm my own small crop for my personal use without having to be criminalized for it." Gov't Mule's Warren Haynes supports NORML as a "just cause," arguing "it's ridiculous in this day and age for somebody to go to jail for smoking pot or possessing a little pot."

The list of musicians who feel the same way goes on and on. While the lists of actors and sports figures who privately feel the same way may be just as long, their commercial success depends on keeping those views private. Is this part of why rock stars are allowed to sing but generally not to speak on TV talk shows?

If you support the reform of repressive anti-marijuana and hemp laws, you can do many things to try and make a difference. One thing that is easy to do, and will get you some very, very good music along the way, is to pick up a copy of "Hempilation2: freetheweed." Part of the proceeds go to NORML, and the voices on the disc can help raise awareness of the issues involved. On this issue, and with this set of public figures called musicians, television fails.

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