The Osbourne case, like the Judas Priest trial, rests on a claim that the victims fell under the spell of subliminal messages embedded in the song.
It’s a description of a pathetic state of mind, not an endorsement of that mind’s tormented logic. Far from advocating suicide, the song sardonically portrays a booze-addled protagonist for whom the bottle becomes an instrument of self-destruction ( solution, in the song, means a liquid-namely whiskey-as well as a way to end a problem). Prosecuting Osbourne for “Suicide Solution” seems particularly unjust. If harm comes to us from that interaction, the fault lies not in our pop stars, but in ourselves. But at the point of impact, it’s no longer the artist, but the beholder, who becomes the active agent: How we’re affected by a song depends on how we imagine, interpret and respond to it. Those extremes also carry the greatest emotional impact. If he were writing in contemporary America, Goethe probably would be defending himself in court for an episode like that.įrom Goethe to Ozzy Osbourne (admittedly quite a qualitative leap), art gravitates toward extremes of feeling and experience, because that is where human behavior becomes most vivid and interesting. And there were copycat suicides, like the one recounted by Goethe biographer Richard Friedenthal, in which a Werther fan opened the book to the death scene, invited others to watch, then dispatched himself with a pistol. Other writers began churning out their own versions of the “Werther” story. Scenes and characters from the novel turned up as decorations for knickknacks, souvenirs and household items. Young men throughout Germany began wearing the blue waistcoat in which Goethe had garbed his unfortunate hero.
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