You Can't Always Sing What You Want

It’s about time the Rolling Stones played in China; according to the Associated Press, the biggest musical event in that nation last year was “a televised ‘American Idol’-style song contest, Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl.” I am not making this up.

Right before Mick Jagger took the stage in Shanghai for the first date of the Stones’ landmark tour last week, he answered a few questions for the press. Though the hot topic of the international press was the official ban of several of the raunchier Stones songs in the Middle Kingdom, the two biggest newspapers in Shanghai didn’t even cover the show.

The utter absurdity of ticket prices compared to the salary of the average Chinese worker led Jagger to quip that he was “pleased the Ministry of Culture is doing so much to protect the morals of expatriate bankers and their girlfriends.”

But apparently his lyric “Come on baby make sweet love to me”—from “Some Girls’” “Beast of Burden”—didn’t appeal to the morality of those stuffed-shirt mandarins at the Ministry who are most famous for putting the “culture” in Cultural Revolution (before informing on it and packing it off to Upper Manchuria). But perhaps there was a more ideological basis for their concerns.

The Stones’ 1968 hit, “Sympathy for the Devil,” told in the first-person as Lucifer himself, links Beelzebub with Russia’s communist October Revolution. Not exactly the most endearing track to play for a bunch of ostensibly Maoist Chinese. “Under My Thumb,” on the other hand, might appeal to foot-binders and other social conservatives.

“Street Fighting Man,” from “Beggars Banquet,” further elucidates this revolutionary theme. An answer to the Beatles’ “Revolution,”—which urged non-violent resistance—the Stones’ track exhorted the id-like primacy of “fighting in the street” with the refined sensitivity of the professional hooligan.

Of course, without street fights there would be no Communist China (nor a United States of America, for that matter), but authoritarian regimes birthed amidst the rubble of revolutions tend to be eminently capable of overlooking this aspect of their conception.

It’s tempting to point our democratic finger at Big Bad Red China, especially since they often make it so easy. After all, this is the country whose government plans to shut down Beijing’s factories for a month to stop the omnipresent smog for the 2008 Olympics, and who issued a law governing the amount of hours their citizens can play online videogames per day.

But while they may corner the market on this refreshingly blatant disregard for property rights, the Chinese don’t have a monopoly on the subtler manipulations of artistic censorship.

When the Stones performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1966, their rendition of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was bowdlerized to suit a conservative broadcast audience who had no desire to hear about “girlie action” over their TV dinners.

Was this the last gasp of a dying generation of anti-rock philistines? Hardly. As recently as this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, NFL planners arranged with the Stones beforehand to mute their microphones on “inappropriate” parts of their hits “Rough Justice” and “Start Me Up.” After inadvertently glimpsing part of a grown woman’s nipple two years ago, this country wasn’t taking any chances.

Most disturbingly, after the Sept. 11 attacks, radio broadcasters across the country engaged in a similarly proactive form of self-censorship, as Clear Channel compiled a list of “songs with questionable lyrics” that stations should not play. Only if they wanted to stay on the air though—no pressure at all.

On this list, next to no-brainers like R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” and Rage Against the Machine’s entire recorded oeuvre, sits the innocuous Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday.”

Why list this song, which contains nothing more controversial than Jagger’s plaintive “Still I’m gonna miss you”? Seems as appropriate a response as any. Did the hijackers perhaps wolf down some hastily-microwaved BBQ ribs at everyone’s third-favorite chain restaurant—after Outback and Fuddrucker’s—before boarding those fateful flights?

Alas, nothing quite so subtle. Upon closer inspection by a crack team of Crimson interns, it has become apparent that Sept. 11 was...(drum roll)...a Tuesday.

This explains the banning both of “Ruby,” and of Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone,” another song not likely to ruffle any feathers.

U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was on the list as well, seemingly more in the name of thoroughness than to implicate the titular day of the week, or the IRA, in the World Trade Center attacks.

But if the fact that the atrocities happened on a particular day of the week is enough to merit a ban, why stop there?

The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” is not only their worst single by a good measure, it’s blatantly insensitive to the numerous wars, revolutions, genocides, murders and such which have occurred on Fridays through the centuries.

All this carnage, and Robert Smith and company are in love? Alas, this impetuous insensitivity still runs rampant on American airwaves. Don’t even get me started on T.G.I. Friday’s.

If we can’t effectively handle censorship in-house, maybe we should take a hint from the industrial sector and outsource to China. I hear the Ministry of Culture does great work

—Staff writer Will B. Payne can be reached at payne@fas.harvard.edu.