Dee Snider | The Filthy Fifteen

The Filthy Fifteen

Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the PMRC Senate Hearings

Launching in the App Store on Sept 19, 2015

THE FILTHY FIFTEEN App features exclusive interviews by the artists whoseartistic freedom was directly impacted in 1985 after Tipper Gore and a groupof influential Washington housewives started the PMRC (The Parents MusicResource Center) which pressured the record labels to put “Parental Advisory”stickers on albums with explicit lyrics. filthyfifteen.com

Highlights of the App include never-before-seen images from world-renownedphotographer, Mark ”WEISSGUY” Weiss. The visual power of Mark’s iconicimages helped define the music and aesthetics of the Decade of Decadence. Weiss is proud that his photographs of THE DECADE THAT ROCKED are an integral part of music history.

The PMRC published a list called THE FILTHY FIFTEEN, which were the top 15 songs they wanted banned due to objectionable lyrics suggesting violence, sex, drugs, alcohol or the occult. They petitioned for lyrics to be printed on the album jackets and no one was safe–heavy metal acts were right there alongside the pop stars — AC/DC, Madonna, Motley Crue, Mary Jane Girls, Judas Priest, Prince,, W.A.S.P., Mercyful Fate, Vanity, Def Leppard, Cyndi Lauper and Twisted Sister all made The FILTHY FIFTEEN list. In November 1985, the RIAA agreed to put “Parental Advisory” labels on selected releases at their own discretion.

Mark Weiss was there through it all and recalls how the PMRC impacted his own creativity as a artist and photographer:

On September 19, 1985 — one year after I shot the infamous Twisted Sister album cover, Stay Hungry, I got a call from Dee Snider asking me to go with him to D.C. to document his appearance before the the PMRC Senate hearings. Dee entered the room full of suits like he owned it — wearing a cut-off t-shirt with one of my photos on it. His testimony was articulate and passionate as he defended his fellow musicians’ freedom of speech and artistic expression. I can remember feeling like he was speaking for me and my rights to choose the music I wanted to hear; and recall the buzz in the hearing room when a few of my photographs they deemed explicit, appeared on the screen.

Parental Advisory

A few months after the EXPLICIT LYRIC labels were being applied to new releases, I was hired to shoot BON JOVI’s Slippery When Wet. PolyGram Records destroyed 500,000 album covers with my photo of the large-breasted woman in the wet yellow t-shirt because they feared Walmart wouldn’t sell the album in their stores with a censored sticker. The next day Jon came into my studio– wrote Slippery When Wet on a black garbage bag and said “send that to them.” Slippery When Wet hit number 1 on the US Billboard charts and went on to sell more than 28 million records worldwide.