- Jello Biafra: I was totally blown away the minute I saw it, I thought: ‘Wow! That is the Reagan era on parade. Right there!
That shows how Americans treat each other now.’ He captured it in a
nutshell.”(http://www.wired.com/2010/02/hr-gigers-cyborg-horror-merges-sex-tech-legend/7/)
- Jello Biafra:I first saw it in late summer or early fall of 1985 when a friend
showed me Giger’s work in a magazine and said, ‘You really gotta look at
this guy. Look at this work!'(http://www.wired.com/2010/02/hr-gigers-cyborg-horror-merges-sex-tech-legend/7/)
- Jello Biafra: It occurred to me that I hadn’t finished recording all the vocals for Frankenchrist,
and if I tweaked the lyrics here and there, its songs might fit more
together as a concept album. I’m not sure that would have clicked in my
mind if I hadn’t had that spark of inspiration from seeing Giger’s work
for the first time. (http://www.wired.com/2010/02/hr-gigers-cyborg-horror-merges-sex-tech-legend/7/)
- Michael Dauphin: My buddy Rev. Norb offered some talking points going into this
interview. He mentioned that you have said that you found Giger's
"Penis Landscape"featured in the Frankenchrist insert in an old issue of Hustler. He was curious whether you remember any other "articles" from that particular magazine?
Jello Biafra: I remember seeing a feature on Giger's work and I was totally blown
away even before I turned the page and saw that piece. I thought he
was the most amazing artist I had ever seen since Hieronymus Bosch. And
then I saw that picture and was like, "Wow. What a perfect metaphor for
Reagan America." You know, the way Americans treat each other on a
daily basis right there on the page.
Michael Dauphin: I think the best art of any kind, if its music or painting or something
you read or something you watch. The best kind is the kind that just
gets the brain whirling and swirling and all these other ideas start
popping into your head, weather they're related to the original art or
not.
Jello Biafra: That's what happened when I saw Giger's work and I realized, "Holy shit, I didn't even realize that Frankenchrist
is almost a concept album and on the same subject. If I tweaked a word
here and there in the lyrics I haven't recorded yet, it would stitch
it all together." Which made me want to use that picture even more. My
original concept was to have it on the outside of a gatefold sleeve,
where you'd have Giger's picture on the outside with Frankenchrist
and cursive candy cane writing across the top, and then you open up the
gatefold and find the Shriner parade on the inside. With no
explanation or artist name or song titles or anything. You just have to
deal with it.(http://www.punknews.org/article/36891/interviews-jello-biafra)
- Jello Biafra: And it was right when Tipper
Gore and her religious rights zealous friends like Susan Baker, James
Baker's wife was on the board of directors of Focus On The Family and
they had backdoor connections with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyllis
Schlafly's The Eagle Forum,
all of them, launched their carefully planned attack on music. They
needed a pigeon, they needed somebody to actually charge with a crime.
Little did I guess it would wind up being little old me and the
prosecutor Michael Guarino,
even admitted I was chosen because he felt as quoted, as a cost
affective way of sending a message, in other words, they wouldn't have
to pay them money to fight lawyers for Prince or Ozzy Osbourne or Judas
Priest or some of the other high profile targets, they didn't play the
race card and go after hip hop until a little bit later.
So
Frankenchrist wound up becoming the first album in American history,
prosecutor, you know it was me and one other defender were prosecuted,
we were the first people prosecuted over an album in American history,
this was three years before Two Life Crew, and the excuse was the Giger
poster, but it was clear they were after me, Dead Kennedys and my and
the band's while legacy, but ultimately of course the jury deadlocked,
seven to five in favour of acquittal and when a jury of a criminal case
deadlocks, it means a mistrial, and the ju... prosecutor merely filed
for a new trial, the judge denied it on the grounds of there had been
enough playing with the law for one case and distribution of harmful
matter, it'd only recently come on the books and it had never been used
in court, it may never have been used again, and that was, and and
then, of course, no I didn't go to jail, I didn't get fined, I didn't
get convicted, but in the market place, it meant that Dead Kennedys and
Alternative Tentacles were kicked out of a lot of er, chainstores
because the McCarthy style chill factor that they wanted actually
happened, but this also meant that er, er, you know, the silver linings,
there are a few in there was getting to meet and hang out with Frank
Zappa, that was one, er, my spoken word shows were being pole-vaulted
from coffee house readings of alleged poetry to er talking at
universities about censorship and I never looked back.
And the
other one was getting to know Hans Rudi Giger and his agent Les Barany
who had been very helpful in the legal situation and knew enough to not
to try and fly Giger in from Switzerland as his own expert witness, I
mean when the cops were raiding my house, they were trying to get
Giger's address off of me and I said "No, he's in Switzerland"
and I thought I was about to get my jaw broken because it was the LAPD,
but thankfully they didn't go quite, they didn't go that far. (www.alternativetentacles.com/batcasts/batcast 14th May 2014)
- Jello Biafra: There
you go, the reason for the emergency podcast was trying to avoid
getting er you know, too many interview requests with all the same
questions, although Rolling Stone and LA Times have already found me
apparently and I'm grateful they would even consider er, wanting my
input on er, Hans Rudi Giger. Er, many people know him mainly for both
the monster and the sets of er, Alien, but of course his work is much
wider and he was mainly a painter and sculptor and in my opinion the er,
the best one I had seen was when I was first exposed to his work since
Hieronymus Bosch. Er, Jon Greenway, the old er, friend who I grew up
with who wrote the original lyrics to California Uber Alles and my
parents kept trying to get me to not hang out with him any more or even
in grade school because he, they were blaming him for getting me into
trouble all the time although it takes two to tango and cause trouble, I
had a nose for it anyway thus, we bonded so well and sure enough, it
happened one last time when John and I were living together in San
Francisco and he opens up a magazine and shows me, er " look at this artist, H R Giger."
And I looked at it and I was absolutely flawed, best stuff I'd seen
since Bosch, and then I got to a piece that was called Landscape number
twenty in roman numerals, where we're going, which many people
mislabeled Penis Landscape, and now you know which one I'm talking
about, the one that wound up getting used for Dead Kennedy's er,
Frankenchrist album as an insert poster, and the reason I wanted to use
it at all was because the impact it had when it first hit me, my
favourite kind of artist, the kind that stimulates the brain, you know,
and you know and that, that goes for visual art, journalism, music,
film, you name it and erm, and it just got my brain spinning, full of
energy, full of ideas and it occurred to me, "hey,
wait a minute, we're in the middle of recording the Frankenchrist album
and this picture is like Reagan America on parade, and that's what the
album was about too, and I haven't finished recording the lyrics, and if
I tweaked a word here and there in all these different songs, it would
be a concept album", and I'm not sure I even would have even
flashed on that if I hadn't seen the Giger painting, and so I thought,
naturally this should be the front cover, and er, not everybody agreed
with that, Ruth Schwarz of Mordam our distributor said "do you realise, no store will stock this, if that's the front cover",
so then we looked at having the er, super dark shrink wrap that Roxy
Music used in country life and Pink Floyd had used I think on Wish You
Were Here originally, the blue shrink wrap, proved prohibitively
expensive and then after initially humouring the idea and saying we
thought it was okay, the other members of Dead Kennedys freaked out
about the picture after we secured the rights and everything, so big
quarrel ensued and we finally agreed to put it on the inside which er,
took care of the stores and everything as an insert poster instead of
the original concept of having it as a wraparound gate fold with
Frankenchrist candy kane lettering and nothing else on the front, and
you open it up and the inside was a infamous Schriner picture and
nothing else on the inside, no explanation whatsoever, that's what I
wanted and didn't work out that time, and so , of course so, we know the
rest, there was a sticker that that that there's an insertion
containing a picture by Giger that may... some may find shocking of
offensive, life can sometimes be that way. (www.alternativetentacles.com/batcasts/batcast 14th May 2014)
PAUL FELDMAN: Epitome of Smut, Prosecutor Says of Punk Rock. The
prosecutor in the pornography trial of Dead Kennedy's lead singer Jello
Biafra told jurors Wednesday that a controversial poster inserted in
the punk rock band's "Frankenchrist" album epitomized the essence of
prurient appeal.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, is what harmful
matter looks like," said Deputy City Atty. Michael Guarino, as he
displayed a copy of the 20-by-24-inch poster during his closing
argument. "You want the definition? Then look at the poster."
Defense
attorneys, meanwhile, countered that Biafra, 29, is a socially
conscious artist who has sought through his lyrics and album packages to
combat racism, sexism and the over-mechanization of society, often by
shocking his audience.
Citing the lyrics to such "Frankenchrist"
songs as "Soup is Good Food," "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" and
"Jock-O-Rama, " Biafra's attorney, Phillip A. Schnayerson, contended:
"These are not purveyors of smut. . . . You've got to be a madman to
think that."
At
day's end, the 12-member jury began deliberating on the single-count
misdemeanor case against Biafra, a San Francisco resident whose real
name is Eric Boucher, and Michael Bonanno, 27, the general manager of
Biafra's Alternative Tentacles Records firm that distributed the
recording. They are accused of distributing harmful material to minors.
If
convicted, they face maximum one-year jail terms and $2,000 fines,
although Guarino has indicated outside of court that he does not intend
to seek jail time. Before the trial began last week, Guarino dropped
charges against three other co-defendants.
The trial has been
termed important by the defense because of its potential impact on
freedom of speech by artists. Guarino, on the other hand, has
categorized the prosecution as an attempt at "regulating businesses"
that sell materials to minors.
The case was filed after the city
attorney's office received a complaint from the mother of a teen-age
girl who bought the 1985 album at a Wherehouse music store in the
Northridge Fashion Mall. They were called as prosecution witnesses last
week, although outside the courtroom afterward, the daughter, Tammy
Scharwath, 15, said she thought the poster "was gross--it wasn't
harmful."
At issue is a reproduction of a surrealistic painting
entitled "Penis Landscape" by a Swiss artist, H.R. Giger, who shared an
Academy Award for best visual effects for the science-fiction horror
film "Alien." The painting depicts 10 sets of male and female genitals
engaged in sexual acts.
The recording, which has sold more than 50,000 copies, no longer contains the poster.
The
poster was displayed repeatedly in the courtroom by Guarino and defense
attorneys during the three-day trial, before a packed courtroom which
included several fans under 18. After the jury retired, two youngsters
stared at what appeared to be Guarino's copy of the poster as Los
Angeles Municipal Judge Susan E. Isacoff sat several feet away.
Isacoff,
through her court clerk, said she had no comment about minors viewing
the allegedly offensive poster in her courtroom. Guarino said he did not
realize anyone was looking at his copy of the poster.
Although
the album cover stated that the poster inside might be seen by some as
"shocking, repulsive or offensive," Guarino termed it a "smart-aleck
warning."
At one point, Guarino went so far as to compare Giger to
alleged Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, saying they both view "people as
objects. . . . It's OK to hurt them."
Outside the courtroom,
Schnayerson termed the reference to Ramirez, who has not yet been tried
in connection with a string of 14 Los Angeles County murders,
"ridiculous."
The
defense also cited the opinions of three art and music experts whom
they had called to testify this week. The experts said the painting,
even if ugly, was legitimate art.
Biafra, in a last-minute
decision, did not take the witness stand himself. A one-time San
Francisco mayoral candidate who was dressed in a three-piece suit,
Biafra outside the courtroom called the prosecution "a sham." (http://articles.latimes.com August 27, 1987, )
-
Be lated Apology From Attorney Who Prosecuted Dead Kennedys, by Gil Kaufman
A lot of good it does him now, but former Dead Kennedys’ leader Jello
Biafra said he’s “ecstatic” — well at least as ecstatic as the punk
cynic is going to get –to hear that the man who made his life so
miserable nearly 10 years ago has changed his tune.
The gentleman
in question, former L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, has
recently acknowledged that prosecuting Biafra, the Alternative Tentacles
label and the Dead Kennedys was a mistake. The 1986 obscenity trial
took Biafra and the Kennedys to task (and, ultimately, broke up the band
and nearly drove his label Alternative Tentacles out of business) over a
graphic H.R. Giger (Aliens) poster of penises included in their 1985 album, Frankenchrist.
In
fact, Guarino, whose son is a big fan of Biafra, said he now
appreciates a lot of what the punk poet has to say in his spoken-word
rants.
“In retrospect,” Guarino, the Director of Clinical Programs
at JFK University in Orinda, Calif., told ATN last week, “I think it’s
more important for (District Attorneys) offices and US Attorneys offices
to focus on the tremendous amount of conflict of interest at the top,
the accountants, the lawyers, the politicians, and get out of the area
of freedom of expression.”
The 1986 case, which resulted in a
creepy scene that had Biafra’s San Francisco apartment raided by nine
police officers on April 15, 1986, searching for a copy of the poster —
an infinite-loop rendering of alien penises engaged in sexual activity —
that had been included in every copy of the album, was the beginning of
a long and ultimately failed attempt to prosecute Biafra, Alternative
Tentacles and the Dead Kennedys on what Guarino now calls “junior
varsity obscenity” charges, those dealing with distribution of hard-core
material to children.
As the story goes, the poster fell into the
hands of a concerned mother who complained to the attorney general of
California, who, in turn, sent the complaint to the L.A. city attorney’s
office. Smelling a juicy, headline-grabbing stand against an
already-controversial (but marginal) group — a scenario in lock-step
with Parent’s Music Resource Center’s (headed by Vice President Al
Gore’s wife Tipper) attempt to censor rock in the ’80s — Guarino said a
higher-up in the office designated the young attorney to follow the
trial.
“Obscenity laws dictate that you can’t distribute material
that meets the established definition of prurient, and that you can’t
distribute hard-core material to children,” said Guarino, who now runs
criminal prosecution clinics. “At that time I agreed that the Giger
insert was inappropriate for distribution to kids, and I assumed the
jury would be asked to decide that question. The judge saw fit to
include the content of the album, the lyrics, in conjunction with the
poster and whether those two things were inappropriate for children,
which was inconsistent with existing federal and state case law."
“At that point,” Guarino said, “I knew the case wasn’t worth following.”
The case was ultimately tossed out due to a hung jury, but not before Biafra and his label were done irreparable damage.
“He (Guarino) told the L.A. Weekly
at the time,” said Biafra of his tormentor, “that they had an entire
file full of dossiers on musicians that they were intending to go after
once they won this case, which of course they never did.”
Although
not quite ready to fully extend the hand of peace, Biafra did gladly
accept Guarino’s apology and said he’d love to “shove it in the face of
every would-be Tipper Gore and Jesse Helms,” who are trying to prosecute
and jail “innocent artists, poets and musicians for their work,
especially rappers.”
“I think they assumed I was some Sid Vicious
idiot who would plead guilty and pay a $50 fine and then they could use
that precedent against major-label artists,” said Biafra, of what he
sees as the legal system’s misunderstanding of his tenacity. “He called
it a ’cost-effective way of sending a message’ on TV at the time. In
other words, let’s bash a small independent in hopes of getting rid of
Ozzy, Judas Priest and Prince. History is never on the side of the
censor, just ask Allen Ginsberg or Socrates.”
In one of life’s
great ironies, Guarino said his teenage son “idolizes” Biafra and
constantly listens to the punk poet’s CDs of spoken-word rants. “I keep
trying to tell him that there’s much more to all of this than what Jello
talks about, but he is definitely right about a lot of stuff,” Guarino
said about Biafra’s conspiratorial rants. “He’s an interesting guy, but
he only sees what he’s in a position to see and he can’t get beyond a
quarter-inch or so of what’s going on. In some cases, it’s much worse
than he could ever imagine.”
As if that wasn’t enough purgatorial
torture, Guarino said that on his first day of teaching at JFK a student
recognized his name from the trial, ran out to her car, and came back
with a 40-minute Biafra spoken-word tape about the failed prosecution
that he then played for his class. (http://www.mtv.com/ 7/7/1997)
Singer's Trial on Nudity in Album Begins Today
By ALJEAN HARMETZ, Special to the New York Times
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 9— Jello
Biafra, the founder and lead singer of the Dead Kennedys rock band,
goes on trial Monday on charges of violating a California statute that
makes it illegal to distribute, exhibit or send harmful material to a
minor.
The misdemeanor charge stems from a
poster in the band's 1985 album, ''Frankenchrist.'' A reproduction of a
painting by H. R. Giger, a Swiss surrealist, the poster showed 10 sets
of male and female genitalia. Charges were brought in June 1986, after a
California woman, Mary Sierra, sent the poster to the California
Attorney General's office with a complaint that her daughter, who was 14
years old, had bought the record.
A Los
Angeles Deputy City Attorney, Michael Guarino, said the case against Mr.
Biafra, as the owner of the record company Alternative Tentacles, and
four other distributors of the record was intended to test ''where the
lines ought to be drawn'' in the availability of sexually explicit
material to minors. New York Case Cited
He
said the California statute under which Mr. Biafra is being prosecuted
followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in the
case of New York v. Ginsburg over the sale of a men's magazine to a
minor. In that case, the court held that the state had a compelling
interest in the protection of children in matters that would not be
obscene in regard to adults.
Violation of
the California statute is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and
a $2,000 fine, but Mr. Guarino said it was highly unlikely he would ask
for anything but a suspended fine if he won the case.
An
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, Carol Sobel, who is one of Mr.
Biafra's attorneys, said, ''You don't have to like the painting, but if
everybody agrees the material is O.K. for adults to have, it's
inconsistent to criminalize it because it was bought by a minor.''
Mr.
Biafra's chief lawyer, Philip Schnayerson, said the prosecution of Mr.
Biafra was an attempt to set a precedent in liability. ''Traditionally,
you don't prosecute the beer manufacturer because a bartender sells to a
minor,'' he said. ''Mr. Biafra and the record companies had no control
over who the record was going to be sold to.''
Mr.
Biafra said the Dead Kennedys had been chosen for prosecution rather
than more prominent rock artists because they had fewer monetary
resources and because their records make political points. He said Mr.
Giger's poster was included because it heightened the record's subject
matter: ''The vicious circle we find ourselves caught in when we exploit
each other in today's me-generation consumer culture.'' Warning Labels
on Records
Under pressure from Parents
Music Resource Center, a group formed by Tipper Gore, wife of Senator
Albert Gore Jr., a Tennessee Democrat, the major record companies have
agreed to put warning labels on records that contain visual material or
lyrics that might be harmful to minors. Mr. Biafra described
''Frankenchrist'' this way: ''The inside foldout to this record cover is
a work of art by H. R. Giger that some people may find shocking,
repulsive, or offensive. Life can sometimes be that way.''
The
Dead Kennedys, who disbanded last spring under the pressure of the
court case, were a politically oriented San Francisco-based punk band
best known for their songs ''Holiday in Cambodia'' and ''California Uber
Alles.'' The Los Angeles Times described their final album, ''Bedtime
For Democracy,'' as their ''usual exhilarating blast of politically
oriented thrash punk'' and Mr. Biafra, whose real name is Eric Boucher,
as ''one of rock's intelligent spokesmen.'' Among the subjects of Mr.
Biafra's songs on ''Bedtime for Democracy'' are toxic waste and United
States immigration policy, while the cover of ''In God We Trust,'' an
album that attacked the religious right, depicts Christ, crucified on a
cross of dollar bills, as a bowling trophy.
A
friend of Mr. Biafra, Suzanne Stefanac, a co-founder of his defense
fund, said $30,000 had been collected ''from fans of the Dead Kennedys
and people concerned with censorship.''
Mr.
Biafra said, ''The punishment has already been meted out very severely
because I've had a year of my life completely disrupted and I've been
unable to perform any more music.'' Recently he has spoken his lyrics in
clubs and at universities, including the University of California
campuses at Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
Mr.
Giger shared an Academy Award for visual effects in 1979 for his
creation of the aliens and their disturbing environment in the movie
''Alien.'' The painting on which the posters were based has been
exhibited in European museums. ( http://www.nytimes.com/ August 10, 1987)
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