Davy Graham – He Moved Through The Fair: The Complete 1960s Recordings

 

Davy Graham – He Moved Through The Fair:

The Complete 1960s Recordings

(Cherry Tree CRTREE8BX28)

CD review by Stuart Penney

Even if Davy Graham had only ever written and recorded one piece of music, his immortality would be assured, thanks to “Angi.”  This timeless guitar instrumental is as ubiquitous in folk music as “Smoke on the Water” and “Stairway to Heaven” are in the world of rock: endlessly copied, but rarely equalled.  I was almost tempted to say “This simple guitar instrumental” but that would be unfair.  Even though every budding folk guitarist must learn to play at least a basic version of “Angi” almost as a rite of passage, to perform it with the flair and dexterity Davy brought to the piece is another matter entirely. 

There are at least three different spellings of the title.  Bert Jansch recorded it as “Angie” on his 1965 self-titled debut LP and his version is arguably even more well-known and influential than Davy’s original.  Bert cleverly added a verse of Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” to his arrangement, a tune Davy had been performing onstage since his earliest days.  A previously unreleased 1961 version of “Work Song” recorded live in Edinburgh can be found here on Disc One (see also Disc Eight). 

Following the year he spent kicking around the London folk clubs, Paul Simon cemented the tune’s immortality worldwide when he recorded it as “Anji” on the 1966 Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence.  Back home, Stan Webb’s blues boomers Chicken Shack also called it “Anji” for their perfunctory electric version on the 1969 LP 100 Ton Chicken.

Starting life on the 1963 Topic EP ¾ AD shared with Alexis Korner, “Angi” fittingly, leads off this magnificent and lovingly compiled box set.  Comprising eight CDs, it claims to feature Davy’s complete 60s recordings.  That adds up to an impressive 162 tracks in all, a healthy number of which are rare and / or previously unreleased. 

Another shared EP From A London Hootenanny gave us “She Moved Through The Fair” and “Mustapha.”  Recorded live in 1963, these eastern flavoured pieces introduced Davy’s famous DADGAD guitar tuning to the folk world and are just as important as “Angi” in the Graham repertoire.  It wasn’t too long before the rock guys began to take notice.  Jimmy Page took “She Moved Through The Fair,” retitled it “White Summer” and made it his solo showcase, first with the Yardbirds and later with Led Zeppelin where it became part of a live DADGAD medley with Bert Jansch’s “Blackwaterside” (retitled “Black Mountain Side.”)  Naturally, neither Davy nor Bert received credit for Page’s appropriation (these were arrangements of traditional pieces after all) but those who knew the truth have been shouting it from the rooftops ever since.

Following five obscure demo tracks funded by comedian Bob Monkhouse (yes, really), Disc One continues with Davy’s first full album, The Guitar Player.  Released in 1963 on Pye records’ budget imprint Golden Guinea, this instrumental collection features a sometimes-uneasy mix of folk, blues, jazz and easy listening pop.  The Latin-tinged “Don’t Stop the Carnival” originated on the 1962 Sonny Rollins LP What’s New (four years before Alan Price made the song a pop hit) while classics “Take Five,” “Cry Me A River” and “Yellow Bird” are also treated to Graham’s fretboard wizardry.  

But it’s on tracks such as “How Long, How Long Blues,” “The Ruby and The Pearl,” “Buffalo” and “Blues For Betty” where things start to get really interesting.  Here we find Davy virtually inventing a style of acoustic guitar which, two or three years hence, would become the gold standard among British folk blues luminaries such as John Renbourn, Wizz Jones, Bert Jansch and others.   

Disc Two contains Davy’s debut Decca solo album and his most acclaimed work Folk, Blues & Beyond.  Released in January 1965, it established him as a major force in the folk blues guitar world.  While the playing here is truly groundbreaking, Davy’s vocals, average at best, are an acquired taste.  This was a common theme throughout his career and probably prevented him becoming a bigger star outside the folk circuit.

Nevertheless, the guitar work is astonishing, especially for 1965.  “Leavin’ Blues,” “Rock Me Baby” and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,” while rooted in the pentatonic scale, veer off into dazzling jazz improvisation using complex augmented, diminished, 9th, 11th and 13th chords and God knows what else.  Nobody in the folk world was playing with such confidence and outrageous technique at the time. 

Recorded in 1964 with Shirley Collins, Folk Roots, New Routes forms Disc Three. Clean living Shirley admits to being somewhat intimidated by Davy, who would disappear at regular intervals during recording only to reappear reinvigorated and with a spring in his step.  Before long Davy would deliberately choose to become a junkie, just as his jazz heroes had done before him. 

The drug scene really wasn’t Shirley's world, yet the unlikely collaboration was a triumph: her pure traditional folk voice meshing perfectly with Davy’s virtuosic folk blues guitar, the like of which had never been heard before.  In fact, it was the first time many of these traditional English folk songs had been recorded with a guitar backing.  It’s all tremendous stuff, but “Nottamum Town,” “Hares on the Mountain” and “Love Is Pleasing” are the stand outs, along with two dazzling solo instrumentals from Davy, “Rif Mountain” and “Blue Monk.”

Disc Four sees Davy drawing material from many styles for Midnight Man, his 1966 fourth LP.  Here we find songs by the Beatles (“I’m Looking Thru You”), Herbie Hancock (“Watermelon Man”), Elvis (“Money Honey”) and Rufus Thomas (“Walkin’ The Dog”) along with the usual helping of blues standards (“Stormy Monday,” “Fire In My Soul” etc).  Only the aforementioned underwhelming vocals prevented this from being a major work at the time, but as always Davy’s guitar playing saved the day. 

Disc Four ends with 10 tracks from the CD Live at St. Andrews Folk Club, 8th May 1966.  This set remained unreleased until 2007 and unlike some other live material which has been unearthed in recent years, it’s top-quality stuff.  Both the audio quality and Davy’s performances are excellent.  The remaining 10 tracks from the St. Andrews CD are spread over Discs Six and Seven.

On Disc Five we find After Hours At Hull University 4th February 1967 a 14-track collection, recorded on a Philips domestic tape recorder by Davy’s lifelong friend John Pilgrim in his quarters at Hull University.  Pilgrim (1933-2020) achieved fame, if not fortune, as the washboard player with 50s skiffle band The Vipers, before becoming a journalist, bookseller, jazz and blues expert and many other things besides.

Given the circumstances the audio quality is pretty good, and this recording finds Davy at his most relaxed, chatting between songs and delivering material such as “She Moved Through The Fair” (here titled “She Moved Through The Bizarre,”) “Cocaine,” “Jubilation” and “How Long Blues.”  His playing is superb throughout and the party atmosphere only adds to the enjoyment.  It sounds like only a handful of people were present, so this is what it must have sounded like having Davy play in your front room.

These recordings remained unreleased until 1997 when they appeared on Rollercoaster Records.  I initially thought we’d gained a bonus track here, until I noticed the original 1997 Rollercoaster CD has a typo on the sleeve, listing track 13 twice.

1968’s Large As Life And Twice As Natural arrives on Disc Six.  Featuring the stellar line-up of Danny Thompson (upright bass), John Hiseman (drums), Dick Heckstall-Smith (sax) and Harold McNair (flute) this was the first (and probably only) one of Davy’s major label LPs to be released on both sides of the Atlantic, hinting that some kind of US commercial success might be in the wind.  It was not to be, however, although a raga-jazz interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s then-current “Both Sides Now” (released as a single in October 1968) was a bold attempt. 

Elsewhere it was business as usual with material by Lead Belly (“Good Morning Blues,”) Fred McDowell (“Freight Train Blues”) and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (“Beautiful City”) sitting comfortably alongside traditional songs “Bruton Town” and “Babe, It Ain’t No Lie.”  Davy also contributed some of his finest original material to date including the instrumentals “Blue Raga” and “Tristano” (this was also released as the B-side of the "Both Sides Now" single).  Overall, this was regarded as his best album since Folk Blues & Beyond. 

The remainder of Disc Six comprises eight more tracks from Live at St. Andrews Folk Club, continued from Disc Four.

The ever-reliable Danny Thompson turns up again on Disc Seven for the 1969 LP Hat.  This features a strange mix of contemporary pop material.  After a somewhat odd interpretation of the Sgt Pepper track “Getting Better,” we get a brace of Paul Simon songs “Homeward Bound” and “I Am A Rock” plus Dylan’s “Down Along The Cove.”  All are enjoyable enough, but once again, Davy’s vocals are found wanting.

Much better is the blues material, especially a pair of Willie Dixon numbers made famous by Muddy Waters: "Hoochie Coochie Man” and “I’m Ready.”  The final two tracks from Live at St. Andrews Folk Club are tacked on at the end of this disc.

And so to Disc Eight and Davy’s final major label albums The Holly Kaleidoscope and Godington Boundary, both from 1970.  Recorded with Holly Gwynne (his wife at the time) on vocals, The Holly Kaleidoscope was his sixth and last album for Decca.  It has the usual high points - “Blues At Gino’s,” “Sonnymoon For Two,” “Fingerbuster,” “Ramblin’ Sailor” and “Charlie” are all excellent - but two covers each by Paul Simon (“Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall”) and Paul McCartney (“Blackbird” and “Here, There & Everywhere”) are less successful.  Holly appears on just a few tracks, but her crystalline vocals (sounding not unlike Joan Baez) make all the difference. 

Godington Boundary originally appeared on the President label, a London-based independent notable for hits by the Equals and Eddy Grant.  This is not one of Davy’s best albums but, as always, the playing is worth the price of admission alone.  He even used an electric guitar on parts of this record. Holly provides vocals on five tracks, including a decent cover of the Incredible String Band’s “Everything’s Fine Right Now.”

Yet again the stand-out tracks are the instrumentals, especially “Forty Ton Parachute,” “Round Midnight” and “Work Song.”  This last was written by Nat Adderley but the sleeve notes mistakenly credit it to his older brother Cannonball Adderley.  These were the last records Davy would make before a growing heroin dependency curtailed his career for a number of years. When, finally, he did return to low key recording and performing in the mid-70s he had changed his name to Davey Graham and the glory years were well and truly over. 

Original vinyl copies of Davy's 60s albums now change hands for huge money and although all have previously been available on CD, most are now out of print (and not all are on Spotify), so it’s good to see them all together in one place at last and with a handful of unreleased bonus tracks too.  Cherry Red have done their usual excellent packaging and design job with a 28-page booklet and attractive card sleeves in a chunky CD-sized box. The in-depth and informative sleeve notes are by David Suff. 

Track Listing

DISC ONE

The First Recordings and The GUITAR PLAYER

1. Angi

2. Davy’s Train Blues

3. 3 ¾ AD

4. Worksong +*

5. Saturday Night Shuffle +*

6. Angi +*

7. God Loves His Children, Brother +*

8. Hey Bud Blues +*

9. She Moved Through The Fair

10. Mustapha

11. Careless Love

12. Hallelujah, I Love Her So

13. Sunset Eyes

14. Southbound Train

15. Take Five

16. Don’t Stop The Carnival

17. Sermonette

18. Take Five

19. How Long, How Long Blues

20. Sunset Eyes

21. Cry Me A River

22. The Ruby & The Pearl

23. Buffalo

24. Exodus

25. Yellow Bird

26. Blues For Betty

27. Hallelujah, I Love Her So

DISC TWO

FOLK, BLUES & BEYOND

1. Leavin’ Blues

2. Cocaine

3. Sally Free And Easy

4. Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair

5. Rock Me Baby

6. Seven Gypsies

7. Ballad Of The Sad Young Men

8. Moanin’

9. Skillet

10. Ain’t Nobody’s Business What I Do

11. Maajun (A Taste of Tangier)

12. I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes

13. Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

14. My Babe

15. Goin’ Down Slow

16. Better Git It In Your Soul

DISC THREE

FOLK ROOTS, NEW ROUTES

1. Nottamun Town

2. Proud Maisrie

3. The Cherry Tree Carol

4. Blue Monk

5. Hares On The Mountain

6. Reynardine

7. Pretty Saro

8. Rif Mountain

9. Jane, Jane

10. Love Is Pleasin’

11. Boll Weevil, Holler

12. Hori Horo

13. Bad Girl

14. Lord Gregory

15. Grooveyard

16. Dearest Dear

DISC FOUR

MIDNIGHT MAN plus 

1. No Preacher Blues

2. The Fakir

3. I’m Looking Thru’ You

4. Hummingbird

5. Watermelon Man

6. Stormy Monday

7. Money Honey

8. Walkin’ The Dog

9. Fire In My Soul

10. Lost Lover Blues

11. Neighbour, Neighbour

12. Jubilation

13. Rags And Old Iron

14. Jelly Roll Baker

15. Jubilation *

16. Travelling Man *

17. Sally Free & Easy *

18. I’m Ready *

19. Work Song *

20. Rock Me *

21. No Preacher Blues *

22. The Preacher *

23. Sweet Home Chicago *

24. The Cat Came Back *

DISC FIVE

AFTER HOURS, Live at Hull University, 4th February 1967 

1. Work Song*

2. Cocaine*

3. Buhaina Chant*

4. Grooveyard*

5. Bourée In E Minor*

6. Gavotte or Bourée from the D Minor Suite*

7. How Long Blues*

8. She Moved Thru’ The Bizarre / Blue Raga*

9. Miserlou*

10. Hey Bud Blues*

11. Buffalo*

12. Jubilation*

13. Louisiana Blues

14. Afro-Blue

DISC SIX

LARGE AS LIFE & TWICE AS NATURAL plus

      1. Both Sides Now

2. Bad Boy Blues

3. Tristano

4. Babe, It Ain’t No Lie

5. Bruton Town

6. Sunshine Raga

7. Freight Train Blues

8. Jenra

9. Electric Chair

10. Good Morning Blues

11. Beautiful City

12. Blue Raga

13. Better Git It In Your Soul*

14. Neighbour, Neighbour*

15. Panic Room Blues*

16. Skillet Good & Greasy*

17. Buhaina Chant*

18. Money, Honey*

19. Maajun*

20. Miserlou*

DISC SEVEN

HAT plus

1. Getting Better

2. Lotus Blossom

3. I’m Ready

4. Buhaina Chant

5. Homeward Bound

6. Love Is Pleasing

7. Hornpipe for Harpsichord Played Upon Guitar

8. Down Along The Cove

9. Hoochie Coochie Man

10. Stan’s Guitar

11. Pretty Polly

12. Bulgarian Dance

13. I Am A Rock

14. Oliver

15. She Moved Through The Fair*

16. Bulgarian Dance*

DISC EIGHT

THE HOLLY KALEIDOSCOPE and GODINGTON BOUNDARY

1. Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall

2. Wilt Thou Unkind

3. Blackbird

4. Blues At Gino’s

5. Since I Fell For You

6. Sunny Moon For Two

7. Fingerbuster

8. Here, There And Everywhere

9. Ramblin’ Sailor

10. Mary, Open The Door

11. I Know My Love

12. Charlie

13. Bridge Over Troubled Water

14. Little Man You’ve Had A Busy Day

15. I’m A Freeborn Man (Of The Travelling People)

16. The Preacher

17. All Of Me

18. Afta

19. On Green Dolphin Street

20. Dallas Rag

21. ‘Round Midnight

22. Work Song

23. Joe Joe, The Cannibal Kid

24. Everything’s Fine Right Now

25. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

26. Mother Nature’s Son

27. Grooveyard

28. Forty Ton Parachute

29. Nadu Silma

* live recording

+* previously unreleased recording

Mind Your Language! A Short History Of Swearing In Music

 

by Stuart Penney

Watching the 2023 series (or “season” as the Americans call them) of the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, I was startled to hear creator Larry David employ that most jarring and unattractive of swearwords “cunt” several times in succession.  Larry was, it seems, getting frustrated with the sat nav system in his expensive new BMW, hence the unseemly outburst.  It’s rare enough to hear an American drop the C-bomb in anger at the best of times, but even more unusual to find them attempting to shoehorn the word into a comedy routine.  I winced involuntarily at the scene while thinking “Steady on there, Larry!” 

Now, I’m no prude and unless watching TV with my maiden aunt or the parish vicar (an unlikely contingency, I grant you), I generally have no problem with swearing, especially when used comedically.  But this Basil Fawlty-meets-Derek & Clive style display of expletive fury seemed a crass and unfunny overreaction to what was, after all, a minor inconvenience.  Yet, there it was front and centre in one of the most lauded TV comedy shows of recent times.  It gave me pause to reflect just how far we’ve travelled down the highway of sweary acceptance in recent years.

Swearing in the media - on records and TV in particular - is now so ubiquitous we hardly notice it.  The times certainly have a-changed and, as Larry demonstrated, even the strongest curse words now slip by virtually undetected.  Every modern TV cop drama, talk show and situation comedy is infused with swearwords galore which were once seldom, if ever, heard on the small screen.

This is a comparatively new phenomenon, however.  Decades ago clean-up TV zealot and perennial misery guts Mary Whitehouse may have got her bloomers in a knot over Alf Garnett’s frequent use of the words “bloody,” or “silly moo” in the sit com Til Death Us Do Part, but we rarely witnessed any genuine profanity on our television sets in the 60s and 70s.  Incidentally, Alf’s catch phrase “Randy Scouse Git,” so alien to American ears then and now, was hijacked by Mickey Dolenz for the seemingly random title of a 1967 Monkees single.  Perversely, the phrase was still deemed rude enough to offend British audiences at the time and so, in a bizarre turnaround, the record was released simply as “Alternate Title” in the UK. Even stranger, "Randy Scouse Git" was not issued as a US single although it did appear on the Monkees' album Headquarters. 

The British slang term “git” originated circa 1940s as a southern variant of the Scottish word “get,” meaning “illegitimate child” or “brat.” “Get” is thought to derive from the word “beget.”  “Get” is also preferred over "git" in the north of England and John Lennon slipped it into the “White Album” song “I’m So Tired” with the line “And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get” as a very Lennon-esque rhyme for "cigarette."

Writer Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980), then literary manager of the National Theatre, is credited with uttering the first four letter expletive heard on British TV when he said “fuck” during the live BBC late night satirical show BBC3 in November 1965.  To put it in context, Tynan was asked whether he would allow a play to be presented in which sexual intercourse was represented on the stage.  For the first time a word which had previously been deemed deeply offensive, if not entirely taboo, was heard in millions of homes across the land.

There was an instant and unprecedented uproar.  The BBC switchboard was jammed for days (to be fair the Beeb apparently had only one telephone line at the time), letters of complaint flooded into the newspapers and for a while Tynan became the most notorious man in Britain. 

Oxbridge graduate and son of the Lord Mayor of Warrington, Tynan may well have been the first to drop the F-word on live TV, but he came from the educated upper middle classes and, as everyone knows, posh people really can’t swear properly.  Consequently, it was left to Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones to become probably the first truly working-class person to claim the live TV cursing award. 

On December 1, 1976, early evening viewers of Thames Television’s Today show were treated to the Sex Pistols repeatedly swearing and generally behaving badly during a shambolic live interview with the hapless Bill Grundy.  It was riveting TV and a genuine Roman spectacle.  Although the programme was broadcast only in the London area the fallout was immediate and far-reaching.  It became national headline news, sending the tabloids, and seemingly the entire country, into meltdown.  One memorable complaint came from a lorry driver who claimed to have smashed his TV screen in protest, after which he apparently sent the bill to Thames TV.  True or not, the lorry driver story has become a famous meme, frequently spoofed in the letters page of Britain’s favourite adult comic and bastion of all things sweary, Viz. 

The Pistols’ appearance on the Today show immediately passed into rock legend and for almost 50 years has been discussed nonstop in books, magazines, films and on TV.  Best of all, in March 2013 the BBC TV comedy programme It’s Kevin lovingly recreated the incident literally word-for-word and gesture-for-gesture with all protagonists dressed as, wait for it, members of the Amish community.  It’s genius - watch it here:  

Lest we forget, the Bill Grundy incident happened almost a year before the Sex Pistols’ only real studio LP Never Mind the Bollocks was released.  The title of that album also caused widespread consternation, with a Nottingham record store raided by police and the manager charged with “displaying indecent matter” for showing the LP sleeve in his shop window.  Eventually the case was, if not exactly laughed, then at least sniggered out of court after defending QC John Mortimer (author of the Rumpole of the Bailey books and TV series) produced an expert witness who established that “bollocks” was a perfectly legitimate Old English term meaning, among other things, “nonsense.”

That was just about the last time I recall anyone getting upset about what we used to call bad language.  Today such fuss seems inconceivable, especially when, with one vowel change, “fecking this” and “fecking that” are now heard with tedious repetition on comedy programmes of Irish origin such as the otherwise excellent Father Ted and the eternally execrable Mrs Brown’s Boys.

In 1975 Billy Connolly lampooned the Tynan affair in the song “A Four-Letter Word” on his live album Get Right Intae Him.  Connolly based his satire on the 1952 Roy Rogers’ song “A Four-Legged Friend” written about Roy’s horse Trigger, thus continuing the tradition of art imitating life, imitating art, in this case with a pronounced Scottish accent.  Ironically, although certainly no shrinking violet himself when it came to effing and jeffing onstage, Connolly did not swear at all on this track.  Trivia fans will surely delight in the knowledge that “A Four-Legged Friend” was the first record the wonderful Richard Thompson ever owned, on a 78rpm shellac disc, naturally.  

Sexual innuendo, smut and vulgarity (if not outright profanity) had been around in the world of jazz and blues since the 1920s at least.  This spilled over into British popular music too and a few of George Formby’s records were banned by the BBC.  These included the innuendo laden “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock,” “With My Little Ukulele In My Hand,” and “When I’m Cleaning Windows.”

But when did actual bona fide swear words start to appear in popular music?  Back in the mid-60s Frank Zappa sneaked more than a few surreptitious four-letter zingers onto his early albums (and, via an assiduous re-issue programme, he continues to do so today from beyond the grave).  In fact, just as Frank’s mid-60s contemporaries The Fugs took their name from a euphemism for “fuck” found in Norman Mailer’s book The Naked and the Dead, so the name of Zappa’s band The Mothers was an abbreviation of America’s favourite curse word “Motherfuckers.”  Frank's record label Verve-MGM was having none of this in 1966, of course, so the band name was amended to the more palatable and psychedelic-sounding Mothers of Invention, although the last two words were quietly jettisoned by the early 70s.

In August 1969 Country Joe McDonald delighted the Woodstock generation with an updated potty-mouthed live version of “The Fish Cheer” (“Gimme an F, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K - what's that spell?" etc,) while during the same year proto punks the MC5 ran into problems with their Elektra album Kick Out the Jams which contained the line “Kick out the jams motherfuckers.”  A major US record store chain refused to stock the LP and, as the situation escalated, said store boycotted Elektra’s entire catalogue for good measure.  As a result, the MC5 were promptly dropped from the label.  Swear all you like lads, but business is business seemed to be the moral of the tale.

In 1972 Harry Nilsson encountered similar trouble with the song “You’re Breaking My Heart” from his album Son Of Schmilsson.  Even though it contained only four examples of the word “fuck” this was enough to see Boots the Chemist, then a major UK record retail chain, refuse to stock the LP.  In Harry’s defence he was almost certainly drunk at the time, as he was throughout most of the 70s. 

To my mind, the award for the finest display of swearing on a pop record should go to Ian Dury for the song “Plaistow Patricia” from his 1977 LP New Boots and Panties.  Containing five of the juiciest swearwords in the English language unleashed back-to-back, the opening line of this track is so thoroughly, eye-wateringly rude that even now, almost 50 years later, it will almost certainly never be heard in full on the radio.  Hell, I'm loath to repeat it even here. Predictably, in Australia and some other far-flung territories, local pressings of the album were emasculated, and “Plaistow Patricia” appeared minus that all-important introductory opening line.

Vulgarity on record seemed to reach its hedonistic peak (or its nadir, if you prefer) with Derek & Clive and their albums Come Again (1977) and Ad Nauseum (1978) released on Virgin records, plus their 1976 LP (Live) on Island.  But although they were certainly bought (and requoted, ahem, ad nauseam by rock fans, these were predominately spoken word comedy records which, for our purposes, hardly counts. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  The earliest example of profanity on a UK record I can recall was a much gentler affair than Dury’s smorgasbord of vulgarity.  It came in September 1969 at the end of the interminable 18-minute title track of Al Stewart’s second album Love Chronicles.  Even though it featured guest appearances by rock heavyweights Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones (then still working as session players), Al’s somewhat fey use of the F-bomb (find it in verse 38 of 40 if you have the stamina) flew almost unnoticed under the censor’s radar, causing barely a ripple of discontent at the time.  

This was possibly because Love Chronicles was bought mainly by folk music types with a high tolerance for such language.  In any case, Stewart probably escaped censure by employing the expletive in a quasi-romantic context, vouchsafing that “It grew to be less like fucking and more like making love.”  If you say so, Al.  Speaking as one of those wannabe bohemian folkies, how sophisticated we imagined ourselves to be walking around with a copy of this album under our arm back in the day. 

It's worth noting that Love Chronicles narrowly beat Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers album into the shops. The opening track on the Airplane LP "We Can Be Together" was an early adopter of the F-bomb in late 1969, but Al won the swearing race by just a few weeks. However, on August 19 (the day after Woodstock), the Airplane became the first to swear on US national TV when they performed "We Can Be Together" on the Dick Cavett Show complete with the line "Up against the wall motherfuckers."

All of which brings us neatly to John Lennon.  He may have been part of the greatest band the world has ever seen, but without the steadying hand of his erstwhile songwriting partner Paul McCartney reining him in, John’s solo catalogue has always had a whiff of the curate’s egg about it: superb in parts, but wayward and misguided elsewhere. 

If we ignore the trio of experimental LPs Lennon made with wife Yoko: Two Virgins, Life with the Lions and Wedding Album (as all but the most rabid Beatle completists were perfectly happy to do), plus the ad hoc Live Peace In Toronto, side two of which few have ever confessed to playing more than once, chiefly because it consists of Yoko howling over guitar feedback for 15 straight minutes, his debut solo album John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band didn’t arrive until December 1970.  This is where we find the track which inspired me to write this piece, “Working Class Hero.” 

A totally solo performance recorded with bare bones production featuring only John and his acoustic guitar, the tune was loosely borrowed from Dylan’s “Masters of War,” itself liberated from the traditional English folk song “Nottamun Town.”  But it was the lyrics of “Working Class Hero” which made the song controversial.  For a start it contained not one but two instances of the word “fucking.”  No big deal now, perhaps, when expletive use in popular music is everywhere, but unusual for 1970.  

After all, it was not something people expected to hear from an ex-Beatle, not even a loose cannon such as Lennon who had recently frightened the horses by posing bollock naked with Yoko on the cover of the aforementioned Two Virgins LP.  Fun fact: Unlistenable it may have been, but an original 1968 UK mono pressing of Two Virgins will now cost you in excess of a week’s wages so, to paraphrase Alan Partridge, who had the last laugh?

Private Eye spoofed the Two Virgins LP in October 1968

Adding insult to injury, another John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band track “I Found Out” featured the delightfully Byronesque line “Some of you sitting there with your cock in your hand.”  And to think, this was only seven years since mop top Lennon had sung “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The inner sleeve of the album contained the song lyrics.  On UK copies the offending swearwords were replaced by an asterisk, with a footnote reading “Omitted at the insistence of E.M.I.” just in case there was any doubt who Lennon blamed for the censorship.  But the full unexpurgated version could be heard by playing the record, in Britain at least. 

This was not true in some other countries such as Australia where (presumably) the local branch of EMI physically (not to say outrageously) took a razor blade and snipped the swearing from their copy of the master tape, causing the two songs to skip half a beat and lose tempo in places.  The censored version continued to be used down under for more than a decade, meaning those clumsy edits could be heard as late as 1981 on the Aussie eight LP box set John Lennon released after his death.  They could easily have requested a new copy of the John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band master tape from EMI in London, but it seems they simply didn’t think it necessary.  It was only pop music, after all.

I don’t remember “Working Class Hero” causing too much of a stir in the UK at the time.  It may have ruffled a few feathers, but tucked away on side one, track four of the LP, the song was ignored by many and out of harm’s way. 

Billboard, November 1970

All that changed with Lennon’s death in late 1980.  Whenever a famous musician shuffles off to Buffalo, their back catalogue, sometimes moribund for years, invariably springs back to life.  People develop an urgent need to hear their music again, creating an upswing in sales.  Book and magazine tributes are hastily written and the serious newspapers commission reverential obituaries from esteemed music journalists.  Not for nothing is it said that death can often be a good career move.

John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band 

Pop stars didn’t come any bigger than Lennon and following his untimely demise we saw several of his records jump into the UK charts with almost indecent haste.  The recently released Double Fantasy album and its accompanying singles “(Just Like) Starting Over” and “Woman” all reached number one, while “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” “I Saw Her Standing There” (a live duet with Elton John), “Watching the Wheels” and the decade old “Give Peace A Chance” also crept into the lower reaches of what we once called the Hit Parade.

None of these records sold as well or had the same emotional impact as “Imagine,” however.  The title track of Lennon’s second solo album, it was first released as a US single in October 1971 with “It’s So Hard” (also from Imagine) as the B-Side.  This was not the case in the UK.  No singles from the album appeared in Britain until October 1975 when “Imagine” was released on 45 to tie in with Lennon’s hits compilation Shaved Fish which went on sale the same month. 

More than any other, “Imagine” is the one song we associate with Lennon’s post-Beatles work, so it was no surprise to see it rush-released yet again immediately following his death.  The single went on to sell almost 2 million copies in the UK alone and consistently makes various “greatest song” lists around the world.

In early 1981 as the re-released posthumous “Imagine” single began its climb to the very top of the UK charts, a curious thing happened.  People started to notice the song lurking like a ticking time bomb on the B-side.  That song was “Working Class Hero” a track possibly unfamiliar to the fair-weather fans who had arrived at Lennon’s solo catalogue after his death via the radio-friendly Imagine album, or perhaps his banner-waving singles.  And it turned out that some people didn’t particularly like what they heard. 

In retrospect this was undoubtedly the worst possible choice of song to issue as the B-side of such a huge selling anthemic single.  The kind of people who buy such things, usually on a nostalgia driven basis, just weren’t ready for it.  For a start, unlike the A-side, it didn’t feature on the hits compilation Shaved Fish (although the sleeve notes on the "Imagine" single kind of implied it did), so that was odd to begin with.  In fact, the only other UK appearance of the song on record thus far had been on the 1970 album John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. 

Some were moved to express their dismay via talkback radio.  In the months following Lennon's shooting there was much debate surrounding US gun control and “Working Class Hero” was soon dragged into the discussion.  Angry callers rang the London news station LBC to express their shock and dismay, claiming it was “disgraceful” and “unacceptable” to hear such language on the back of their newly purchased “Imagine” single, which some claimed to have bought for their children. 

Veteran LBC talk show presenter George Gale (1927-1990) was more than happy to indulge this outrage.  Known to be fond of a drink, erstwhile tabloid journalist Gale was the inspiration behind the Private Eye satirical characters "Lunchtime O'Booze" and "George G. Ale."  He was also apparently a supporter of right-wing politician Enoch Powell, and among other crackpot notions, he would later call for the re-criminalisation of homosexuality in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.  So, to reactionary old George, 53 at the time and probably largely unaware of Lennon’s solo work, the “Working Class Hero” furore was simply grist to his old school conservative mill. 

Some years earlier over in America, Democrat member of the US House of Representatives, the wonderfully named Harley Orrin Staggers heard the song played on WGTB, a student-run station based in Georgetown University, Washington DC and in 1973 lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.  The manager of the station, Ken Sleeman, faced a year in prison and a $10,000 fine, but defended his decision to play the song saying, "The People of Washington DC are sophisticated enough to accept the occasional four-letter word in context, and not become sexually aroused, offended, or upset."  The charges were subsequently dropped.

Together with George Harrison’s impressive triple set All Things Must Pass (November 1970) John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band was arguably the strongest of the Fab Four’s debut solo records.  With its “Don’t believe in Beatles” refrain on the iconoclastic song “God” attracting the most attention, Lennon’s post-Beatles’ career probably peaked with this album (along with the stand-alone singles “Cold Turkey” and “Instant Karma”) then promptly plateaued with the big-selling follow-up Imagine, from whence it began a steady but inexorable decline in quality and loss of focus.  Following his move to America the law of diminishing returns soon kicked in, with each new release proving more disappointing than the one before it. 

Those who recently shelled out a week’s wages or more for the Super Deluxe multi disc Mind Games box set will not thank me for reminding them that Lennon’s fourth solo outing sold relatively poorly on release back in late 1973 (a situation not helped by some ghastly cover artwork) after which sales rapidly tailed off. 

Mind Games followed the unloved and politically overcooked Sometime in New York City double set, an album so problematic in today’s climate that during Yoko Ono’s recent Tate Modern exhibition of her work Music of the Mind (Feb-Sept 2024) the sleeve had to be displayed face to the wall to hide a song title and lyrics containing the “N” word.

Ultimately, only a week before John’s death in 1980 Mind Games suffered the indignity of being re-released on the budget Music for Pleasure label.  For such a major artist, this was a sad state of affairs indeed.  Having your records appear on what was, in all but name, EMI’s graveyard label was always a clear indication that they had run their course and were no longer marketable at full price.  The following year Mind Games was joined in the MFP bargain bin by Rock ‘N’ Roll, a record Lennon had cobbled together (often under duress) with Phil Spector purely in order to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit from the publisher Morris Levy who pointed out (not unreasonably) that John had purloined parts of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” for the Abbey Road track “Come Together.” 

Despite the inevitable sales boost these records received in the wake of John’s death, interest in the Fab Four (and especially their solo work) had virtually collapsed at this time.  In 1980 Capitol Records in America reported that sales of the Beatles’ catalogue had slumped to an eight-year low.  The very day Lennon was killed I spoke to a young chap in the office where I worked at the time.  “Tragic news about John Lennon” I mused, sadly.  He shrugged and said, “I don’t know too much about the Beatles, mate” before walking off.  This from someone who, I estimated, was born around 1960.

Ringo’s Blast From Your Past and Ringo albums were also relegated to Music for Pleasure budget status, as were George’s Dark Horse and The Best Of George Harrison.  Things reached a pretty pass in 1980 when the Beatles compilation Rock & Roll Music, originally released as an ill-conceived double set in 1976, was bizarrely reissued as two individual MFP volumes, where it was joined in 1984 by The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl.  Those last two titles have since been virtually disowned by all concerned and significantly, have never officially appeared on CD.

As the fabbest of the Fab Four, Paul escaped demotion to the bargain bin a while longer than the others.  But it didn’t last.  Toward the end of the 80s even some of Macca’s slower-selling titles appeared on the cut-price Fame label (an MFP offshoot) albeit with something close to their original artwork.  The final ignominy came in 1984 when even John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band was also reissued by Fame.

Other than the accidental “Fucking hell!” he let slip during the recording of “Hey Jude” (find it buried in the mix at 2:55), Macca never really went in for bad language on record.  There was “We haven’t done a bloody thing all day” on “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” from the 1971 Ram album but that was considered charming, rather than offensive (and John had already given us “Stupid bloody Tuesday” in “I am the Walrus” anyway).  Paul did find himself on the receiving end of BBC bans for the 1972 singles “Give Ireland Back To The Irish” and “Hi, Hi, Hi” but that was for political content and misheard smut respectively.  In parts of God-fearing America, the Beatles single “The Ballad of John & Yoko” was also censored with the line “Christ, you know it ain’t easy” edited for radio play.

Today we live in a very different world and the shock value of swearing on record has all-but evaporated.  In recent years we’ve experienced Rage Against the Machine with their F-bomb loaded “Killing in the Name Of,” the strange world of Cardi B and her "now wash your hands" brand of dirty rap, not to mention Dave Grohl and his Tourette’s-like use of “Motherfucker” every second word during onstage announcements.  It’s a very long way indeed from 1969 when they beeped out “son of a bitch” on the Johnny Cash single “A Boy Named Sue.”

As for “Working Class Hero,” it all came full circle when, in October 2005 a John Lennon double CD compilation was released with that very title.  As far as I’m aware, no one has yet phoned their local radio station to complain.

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me