Tipper Gore Widens War on Rock

Two years after beginning a campaign against sexually explicit and violent lyrics on record albums, Tipper Gore has moderated her tone but expanded her scope to include music videos, television programming and video cassettes.

She and her husband, Senator Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, met with members of the recording industry in Los Angeles in late October to discuss her record-labeling campaign. Few of the meeting's participants expected to find common ground.

While Mrs. Gore said the meeting was ''a chance to clear the air,'' she said she was under no illusion that it would change the opinion of industry officials, some of whom have said her campaign is tantamount to censorship. A New Platform for Views

Some entertainment officials said the Los Angeles meeting was an attempt by Senator Gore to make peace as he campaigns for the Democratic Presidential nomination. In fact, Senator Gore's campaign has given his wife a new platform for her views. ''It's a marvelous opportunity to make the statement I want to make,'' Mrs. Gore said recently in a telephone interview from her home in Washington.

''The Gores sought to put the most moderate and benign face on her activities,'' the president of Gold Mountain Records, Danny Goldberg, said in an interview from his Los Angeles office, ''but it didn't sway anybody.''

The meeting, requested by the Gores, was organized by the chairman of M.C.A. Records, Irving Azoff; Norman Lear, the television producer, and Don Henley, the former drummer of the Eagles rock group. Admits Making a Mistake

Mrs. Gore told the participants that the widely publicized Senate hearings in 1985, at which she called for a rating system for record lyrics, were a mistake. ''The hearings gave the misperception that there was censorship involved,'' she said.

More recently, Mrs. Gore has been on the road promoting her first book, ''Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society,'' published by Abingdon Press, a religious publishing house. The book, which explores depictions of violence against women and children in entertainment, touches on the influence of music vidoes.

The change in emphasis came after the Parents' Music Resource Center, a Washington-based organization started by Mrs. Gore and the wives of other Government officials, successfully lobbied the recording industry to print potentially offensive lyrics on the album covers, where parents could determine their suitability for children, or to place warning labels on the album jackets themselves.

Although the group, which is now devoting most of its efforts to educating parents rather than lobbying for legislation, has not taken an official position on videos, Mrs. Gore has lobbied the Music Television Network, or MTV, to cluster violent or sexually explicit vidoes during evening hours.

''It's the youth market they're going after,'' she said. ''We're talking about the impact on young children and pre-teens.''

Mrs. Gore and other Parents' Center officials first met last fall with executives of MTV, the dominant cable-music channel, to propose clustering explicit videos, a suggestion that has not been accepted by MTV. 'Exceptional Savagery'

Mrs. Gore said videos by heavy-metal rock groups, such as Motley Crue and Twisted Sister, frequently feature what she called ''exceptional savagery with special effects that leave nothing to the imagination.''

The Parents' Center group sponsored a symposium in October in Washington at which the Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, and other health officials warned that explicit sexual and violent imagery in music videos exerts a dangerous influence on children and adolescents, and could lead to suicide, satanism, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Dr. Koop said many videos ''are a combination of senseless violence and senseless pornography to the beat of rock music.''

The senior vice president of MTV, Marshall Cohen, said videos already pass stringent standards before being broadcast. ''We think if they make it through standards, they should be on MTV,'' Mr. Cohen said. He added that videos were bound to spark protest because ''rock-and-roll has always been somewhat rebellious and on the edge.'' Companies Adopted Proposal

Mrs. Gore's record-labeling campaign has been considerably more successful. The Recording Industry Association of America, whose members include CBS, Atlantic, Warner and Elektra-Asylum Records, adopted her proposal in November 1985, stipulating that the companies would decide which lyrics were potentially offensive.

The president of the association, Jay Berman, said all member companies were adhering to the agreement.

Although at first disappointed, Mrs. Gore more recently said the agreement was working well. ''We're running up against a more cooperative spirit,'' she said, speaking of the period since early this year. 'Explicit Lyrics'

Mrs. Gore noted that even some independent labels, such as Geffen and Enigma, have begun using the labels, which read: ''Explicit Lyrics -Parental Advisory.''

Mr. Goldberg, however, said the record-lyric campaign was losing momentum, weakened by changing political currents and reduced news coverage. ''Their attempt to scare the living daylights out of parents has reached a dead end,'' he said.

''There was an addictive quality to the press coverage they got during the Senate hearings,'' Mr. Goldberg said, ''but the climate of the country changed after 1986.'' Record companies no longer feel pressure from Mrs. Gore's campaign, he said. Next Target: Movies on Cassette

Citing dozens of inquiries a week to the Parents' Center from concerned parents, Mrs. Gore said support for the campaign has never been stronger. ''The interest in this is widespread and grass roots,'' she said.

Mrs. Gore said she was stung by the entertainment industry's image of her as, in her words, ''an uptight woman who wants to censor music.'' But that has not stopped her from making video cassettes her next target.

Mrs. Gore said she advocates a rating system for video cassettes modeled after that system used by the Motion Picture Association of America to rate motion pictures for theatrical release. She said parents could then judge the content of films in video-rental stores even when they were not rated by the film association.