Remember In the 1980s, The Parents Music Resource Center, an organization co-founded by Tipper Gore and the wives of several other Washington power brokers, launched a political campaign against pop music, hoping to put warning labels on records that promoted Sex, Violence, Drug and Alcohol Use. Taking aim at heavy metal bands from the 80s -- namely, Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, W.A.S.P., Def Leppard, Black Sabbath & more.
Above, you can watch Twisted Sister's Dee Snider appear before Congress in 1985 and accuse the PMRC of misinterpreting his band's lyrics and waging a false war against metal music. The evidence 30 years later suggests that Snider perhaps had a point.
A study by psychology researchers at Humboldt State, Ohio State, UC Riverside and UT Austin "examined 1980s heavy metal groupies, musicians, and fans at middle age" -- 377 participants in total -- and found that, although metal enthusiasts certainly lived riskier lives as kids, they were nonetheless "significantly happier in their youth and better adjusted currently than either middle-aged or current college-age youth comparison groups." This left the researchers to contemplate one possible conclusion: "participation in fringe style cultures may enhance identity development in troubled youth." Not to mention that heavy metal lyrics don't easily turn kids into damaged goods.
You can read the report, Three Decades Later: The Life Experiences and Mid-Life Functioning of 1980s Heavy Metal Groupies here.
Rock on!