Powerless against the technology?


This month's date tie-in doesn't really commemorate much, but perhaps it bears significant witness to the influence we assume various technologies exert over our lives. Though these tie-ins usually try to shed light on lesser known milestones on the road to the internet and better information acquisition, the LP, the CD, radio and related technologies often hold strong sway over us, and deserve their moment in the sun as well.

It was on this day that a teenager, John McCollum, committed suicide, apparently while listening to the Ozzy Osbourne song "Suicide Solution". McCollum's parents brought suit against Osbourne, charging that the song's lyrics aided their son's suicide. Judges, in both the original case, and on appeal, ruled that there was insufficient evidence that the song itself (or its "masked" lyrics that weren't printed in the album) encouraged suicide. Osbourne, and his lyrics, were protected as freedom of expression.

I'm not a fan of Ozzy Osbourne (though actually, I've never listened to him enough to form an opinion), and I certainly wouldn't see him as a hero or role model, either for youth or adults. Be that as it may, it seems clear that the judges in this case made the right call. We have to make pretty exaggerated conspiratorial assumptions to believe that Osbourne might have been encouraging suicide with his lyrics (not to mention that it would be counter-productive for him - were he to encourage it, who would still be around to buy his future records?).

Still, assumptions of that sort are occasionally made. One evangelical site carries a lengthy report on the Osbourne family that also "examines" the McCollum family case against Osbourne. That report quotes an in-depth structural analysis of "Suicide Solution" by Robert Walser, a UCLA musicologist:
"'Suicide Solution' is very carefully crafted to produce an AFFECT OF DESPAIR AND FUTILITY. The song is built around a syncopated power chord riff, played at a morose, plodding tempo. Pulsing bass notes propel each square phrase inexorably into the next, while Osbourne's whiny voice, double-tracked to blur its pitch, repeats sneering, descending lines. Other chords slide inevitably back to the power chord on A; in spite of their syncopated energy, they can never escape. In the bridge section of the song, brutal, unexpected punches form an irrational, disorienting pattern, accompanying the lines 'Cause you feel life's unreal and your living a lie'…The harmonic motion of the guitar chords again is a struggle up away from the tonic pedal which is always defeated…the chords are always forced back to the tonic, accompanied by screams and moans…The fact that there are no guitar solo's in 'Suicide Solution' represents a significant exception to the rule, for heavy metal songs almost invariably have them…The solo allows the listener to identify with the controlling power without being threatened, because the solo can transcend anything. 'Suicide Solution,' however, gains in impact by frustrating this norm; there is power and intensity of existence but no freedom. The song depicts a situation (which the text attributes to alcoholism) of frustration, OF INTENSE NEED BALKED BY NO OPTIONS FOR ACTION SAVE SUICIDE. 'Suicide Solution' also ends unusually; indeed, I do not know of another song with a comparable ending…Near the end, the bass line finally changes, MOVING TO A HEARTBEAT PATTERN. The guitar's activities are reduced to demented noise, crazed sounds from all over sonic space. A cry from the guitar is stifled at the very end. The ending suggests neither continuing forever through a standard fade-out nor assertive closure, the metal norm; IT ENDS UNCOMFORTABLY, SNUFFING ITSELF. Throughout the song, the Timbre of Osbourne's voice is ironic, mocking. His vocals move sometimes quickly across the stereo field, from left to right and back again, A SCARY, DISORIENTING EFFECT, ESPECIALLY ON HEADPHONES. Other metal songs, and other kinds of music, too, have made such use of space to construct a paranoid's experience of persecution."
It's enough to make a reader change his opinion of Ozzy Osbourne. We get the impression of a consummate artist at work. Which somewhat distresses the authors of the page who certainly want to find Osbourne guilty of inciting to suicide, but not of being such a capable musician. They find a solution to this problem in a rather logical root cause:
Granted, Ozzy Osbourne is probably not intelligent enough to have orchestrated such a demonically disorienting assault as 'Suicide Solution' but this only goes to deepen our understanding of the satanic forces that are using such rock stars.
So maybe it's not the technology ... it's simply the devil.



Go to: In health and in sickness