Return of Satan's Jesters

A monstrous red tongue coils sadistically from the label of a new rock LP called Sticky Fingers. On the jacket, the waist-to-thigh portion of a man's jeans has been caught in a moment of rakish nonchalance. In the appropriate place, a working four-inch zipper hangs invitingly. Beneath the zipper lies another waist-to-thigh photograph, this one naked save for a pair of white jockey shorts and bearing the logotype of the noted dispose-all artist, Andy Warhol (see ART). As a record-store attraction, the album is positively too dreadful to ignore.

That can mean only one thing: the return of Satan's Jesters, otherwise known as the Rolling Stones. Just in time, too, to keep rock from losing its evil leer for good. After a fairly quiescent 18 months--the Altamont tragedy sobered a lot of people, the Stones included; four deaths will do that--Mick Jagger and his fellows are back with a new U.S. distributor (Atlantic) and their own label, Rolling Stones Records.

Sneers and Snarls. With Sticky Fingers, they are also at the most critical juncture of their career. During the last year and a half, while the Stones, have rearranged their corporate lives, and moved to the south of France, rock has changed drastically. Musically it is softer now and more lyrically inquisitive. With the Beatles having broken up for good, the age of the big group is at a historical turning point. Among the surviving groups, mediocrity and sheer greed abound to such a degree that Bill Graham, sick of it all, has announced the permanent closing of both the Fillmores West and East, two houses which greatly helped rock come of age in the '60s (TIME, May 10). Facing the Stones are as many unanswered questions as Mick Jagger has sneers and snarls. Is the milieu that nurtured the Stones--a young, despairing world of violence, ugliness, drugs and an unmistakable impulse toward self-destruction--still out there waiting for the anti-heroes of old? Will the tribes still gather to enjoy the Stones' personal exhortation to reduce civilization to pot-smoking ruins?

Old and New. For now the answer is "yes." Sticky Fingers has sold a half-million copies in its first two weeks. It also shows that the Stones are masters of much more than what British Critic Geoffrey Cannon calls "roaring white rock." Bitch and Brown Sugar, as irreverent, aggressive and sexually brutal as ever, will delight old-line Stones fans. Can't You Hear Me Knocking, by contrast, is a stylistic meeting place for old and new. It begins with that familiar buzzing, distorted guitar sound and inimitable druggy sentiments ("Yeah, you've got plastic boots/ Y'all got cocaine eyes Yeah you got speed freak jive"), then shifts suddenly into a long Latin-based instrumental coda that shows how well the Stones have been keeping up with the times in general, and Santana in particular.

Then there is Sister Morphine. Rarely has rock music invoked such an invitation to hell. An electric guitar quivers menacingly, like a poised cobra. Off in the distance somewhere, the piano groans a low, dark, mournful chord. Jagger, sounding like John Lennon baring his soul, speaks from a hospital bed of the mind: "Oh, can't you see I am fadin' fast/ And that this shot will be my last."

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.

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