Music: Return of Satan's Jesters

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Taken literally, Sister Morphine is so frightening that it can hardly be regarded as a pro-drug song. Yet it has a posturing whine likely to appeal to the self-dramatizing young, including twelve-and 13-year-olds who will buy the record, just as they are already listening to Brown Sugar on radio.

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Sticky Fingers may well plunge the Stones into a controversy over rock lyrics now raging between the Federal Government and American radio stations. In March, after a 5-to-l vote, the Federal Communications Commissioners pointedly reminded stations that broadcasting songs "promoting" or "glorifying" the use of drugs could endanger station licenses. The lone dissenter was Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, who regarded the FCC warning not only as ambiguous and difficult to enforce but as a clear step toward censorship. In a series of four-minute tapes distributed free to radio stations, Johnson has played some of the songs his fellow commissioners may have had in mind, and personally analyzed the lyrics, drawing conclusions highly critical of the commission action.

Among the typically ambiguous drug-related lyrics that Johnson cites are Arlo Guthrie's permissive reference to "a couple of keys" (kilos), the Grateful Dead singing "What in the world became of sweet Jane/She lost her sparkle/ Living on reds, Vitamin C and cocaine." There is also Red Sovine's confession "I'm taking little white pills and my eyes open wide." Asks Johnson: "Well, what is the poor broadcaster to do? Do you think the lyric encourages the use of drugs, discourages it, or takes no position one way or another? The invidious thing about this whole effort is that once you start messing around with art, you really are in very serious trouble." Trying to prevent the artistic community from discussing drugs, adds Johnson, "is unconstitutional and I presume at some point some broadcaster will test that proposition."

Whether the FCC warning and its implications are unconstitutional will, indeed, have to be decided in the courts. Johnson, however, though somewhat wordily, has made a basic point. Any Government body that wants to control lyrics that promote or glorify drugs will have to establish—and make stick—sensible standards for deciding just what does or does not constitute promotion.