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 sketch.
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 seemed a crass and unfunny overreaction to what was, after
all, a minor inconvenience. Yet, there
it was 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. Times certainly have 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 seldom 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 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. Strangely, "Randy Scouse Git" was not issued as a US single but did appear on the Monkees album Headquarters.
Writer Kenneth Tynan, 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.
In December 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 stuff. 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, this
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 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 number 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 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. Predictably, in
Australia and some other far-flung territories, New Boots and Panties was emasculated and “Plaistow Patricia” appeared on the LP 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 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 Love Chronicles under our arm back in the day.
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 post-Beatles 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 UK mono copy 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 at
least 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.
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 phone-in 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 probably 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 came in
the wake of 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 EMI’s 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 solo 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 heard 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" dirty rap ilk, 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
