WARNING
"In order to accurately portray the Disney Company," the authors warn, "we have had to include material that is unsuitable for children and that some adult readers many find offensive."
For more than 70 years, the Walt Disney Company was an almost unquestioned icon of family entertainment. Recently, however, Disney has come under attack from family and religious organizations for a variety of activities by the company and its subsidiaries, including smut-filled rock records and controversial movies.
Has Disney really last its way? Investigative Journalists Peter Schweizermedia fellow at the Hoover Institution and coauthor, with Caspar Weinberger, of The Next War--and Rochelle Schweizermedia consultant with experience in both the radio and TV industries-set out to discover the answer after moving to Florida with their young son. They talked with former employees, looked at internal company documents and pored over law enforcement records. They were shocked to find what they call the tragic story of a great American institution corrupted by greed and perverted by the lust for power-and even more perverse vicesthat puts children at risk.
In Disney: The Mouse Betrayed (Regnery, 1998), the Schweizers tell how, after Michael Eisner became CEO of Disney in 1984, the company was transformed form a folksy studio into a cash machine, where, among many other scandals, executies allowed their theme parks to have an injury rate twice the national average while they covered up rampant pedophile and sexual abuse problems. In the chapter from Disney: The Mouse Betrayed excerpted below, the Schweizers discuss one amazing Disney company, Hollywood Records, which produces some of the raunchiest, violent, pro-suicide and pro-Satan music in the industry.
When Ricky Vodka arrived at Disney's commissary, he was hungover and in a nasty mood. The lead guitarist for the hardcharging, punk-rock band Humble Gods was visiting Disney's Hollywood Records, located in the old Disney "imagineering" division. "In this building," says one Hollywood Records executive, "they built the first Disneyland-the teacups, the whole thing." But these days it houses a division dedicated to heavy-metal and punk-rock bands that sing about suicide, Satan, and sex with the Virgin Mary.
Hollywood Records has signed Humble Gods to a contract, the band's first with a major record label. Amidst streets named for Disney characters and walls decorated with posters of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, trash/punk bands seem totally out of placeat least they used to. At the new Disney, they seem to fit right in.
"To put it bluntly," says Hollywood Records in its promotional material, "Humble Gods are not for the faint of heart.
As a barometer of each gig, success is measured in terms of sweat, hurtling bodies, and collisions-per-song."
Guitarist Doug Carrion concurs. "We're a pretty confrontational band. It's not some lovey-dovey fun thing."
This isn't merely promotional hype. Ricky Vodka counts among his friends the late serial murderer John Gacy, who killed at least 33 boys and young men, and buried most of them under his home near Chicago.
Ricky found that intriguing and one day decided to write the mass murderer, who was on death row. They began an active correspondence in late 1991, and, over the course of several dozen letters and phone calls, the two became friends. In May 1994, seven days prior to Gacy's execution by lethal injection, they finally met at Stateville Prison in Joliet, III.
"What Gacy did was horrible," says Vodka rather matter-of-factly. "But I wanted to meet him so I could form my own opinion about what a serial killer is actually like. I expected to meet a monster, and instead I met a chubby man who was capable of being very charming and funny; kind of like your dad's buddy who tells corny, dirty jokes."
Humble Gods drummer Lou Gaez has his own stories to tell. One of them involved a federal offense. In the fall of 1996, while boarding a plane to a performance, Gaez found himself "kind of pissed off" by the way a stewardess handled the bag that contained his camcorder. So he claimed it might be a bomb and had to be forcibly removed from the plane by airport security.
The group formed in the summer of 1994 and was named by member Brad X after he read a poem about the apocalypse. Doug Carrion (whose mom played a bit part in the science fiction film Soylent Green) is the band's visionary. "It seems like one of us gets injured at every gig," Doug laughs. "I've always liked bands that fly by the seat of their pants, where, at any moment, the stage could collapse, and guitars could snap, and everything could blow up."
Sometimes it goes beyond injury. Bassist Jason Thirsk took his own life during the recording of "No Heroes," Humble Gods' first album for Hollywood Records.
Punk reviewers note that Humble Gods' songs are "fierce, fast and cutting. They're filled with all the usual punk angst and distaste for authority." One Humble God's song, "Lied and Cheated," goes like this:
Tie you to the railroad tracks.
Have Lizzy Borden give you forty whacks. Push you off the plank, feed you to the sharks
Bathe you in gasoline with lots of sparks.
Humble Gods was not exactly a household word when Disney signed them. In fact both the band and much of the industry were surprised when Disney offered a contract.
Clearly it's more than the band ever expected. "This bad seed of an idea has grown out of control," laughs Doug. "We're signed to a label, for godsakes [sic]." The "No Heroes" CD also features dark lyrics and lashes out at just about everything and everyone. Songs include "Paralyzed" and
"F____ Up."
"Paralyzed"
Paralyzed
You gatta be a mean motherf___
When you'er taking the hill
gotta be a fierce motherf____
Be willing to kill
you gotta be ready motherf___
In this game called life
keep it real Motherf___
They'll take you for a ride.
Paralyzed, Paralyzed, Paralyzed "F___up"
F___up
Drunk
Outta tune again...
Nobody sins, nobody wins.
No one's my friend, and no one knows it
better than me.
Everyone's high,
everyone lies,
everyone dies,
and no one knows it better than me.
Ricky Vodka when will you learn
your world spAns as your head turns?
If I left it all up to you
we'd be a wrecking crew.
Bored boys with nothing to do.
Drunk
Drunk
Outta tune again
Disney obviously believed the cocktail of violence and aggression would sell to the youth of America. Disney's marketing of the group plays up the band's violent image. "So let the sweat drip where it will; let the fists fly where they will," the company declares in recent promotional material.
Walt Disney Records has been producing children's music for years and is the biggest company in the kids' music business, with more than 50 platinum albums. Walt saw the company as an opportunity to sell songs from Disney movies to children, songs of innocent fun.
Disney Chairman Michael Eisner formed Hollywood Records in 1989, believing an adult music company would add a new revenue stream to Disney's diverse collection of entertainment companies. Hollywood Records performers are consistently on the outer limits of mainstream pop music. Humble Gods isn't an exception; it's typical. "The Great Malenko," by Insane Clown Posse, a Disney group from Detroit, was filled with lyrics like these:
He gets buck naked,
and then he walks through the streets winkin' at freaks
with a two-liter stuck in his butt cheeks.
That CD stirred such controversy that Disney pulled it from shelves just six hours after its June 1997 release-and shortly after the Southern Baptist Convention announced its boycott of Disney.
But those who might have hoped this motion suggested Disney was cleaning up its act were quickly disappointed. Far more offensive Disney material stayed in release or was released afterward.
What explains Disney's bizarre choices at Hollywood Records? Not corporate ignorance. Michael Eisner has been heavily involved in the company and knows precisely what the company is producing. He regularly reviews the music and even now attends the weekly staff meetings.
In 1995 Eisner had the record company moved onto the Disney Studio Lot so he could be more deeply involved in running the company. Disney attorneys review all of their contracts and albums, and Joe Roth, chairman of Disney Studios, has taken an active role in managing Hollywood Records' affairs by listening to each album prior to its release.
Disney clearly knows what Hollywood Records is producing. In fact, groups like Insane Clown Posse and Humble Gods fit in well with their roster of acts.
Joe Roth claims that "The Great Malenko" was pulled because he found it "foul and offensive." He says that he doesn't want "music that's about abusing women or encouraging violence." But some bands on the current Hollywood Records roster make Insane Clown Posse seem relatively benign.
