Mind Your Language! A Short History Of Swearing In Music

 

by Stuart Penney

Watching the 2023 series (or “season” as the Americans prefer) 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 (GPS) 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 priest (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 slip by virtually undetected today. 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” (ie "cow") in the sit com Till Death Us Do Part. But we rarely witnessed any genuine profanity on British TV in the 60s and 70s.  

One of Alf’s favourite insults “Randy Scouse Git” (aimed at his on-screen son-in-law Mike, played by Anthony Booth) so alien to American ears then (and now), was hijacked by Mickey Dolenz for the seemingly random title of a 1967 Monkees single. It was the first track written by Dolenz to be commercially released, reaching #2 in the UK charts.

The idea for the song originated during a party the Beatles threw at the Speakeasy nightclub in London. All the Monkees except Davy Jones were in attendance and the lyrics referenced the Beatles (“The four Kings of EMI,”) Mama Cass Elliot and Dolenz’s future wife, the model and Top of the Pops presenter Samantha Juste.

Perversely, the phrase “Randy Scouse Git” was still deemed rude enough to offend British audiences at the time and the UK arm of RCA records refused to release the 45 unless it had an alternate title. Dolenz took them at their word and in a bizarre turnaround, the record was issued simply as “Alternate Title” in Britain. Even stranger, although “Randy Scouse Git” appeared as a single with either title (or often both) in territories as diverse as Australia, South America and the Philippines (pictured below), it was not issued as a 7” in America, although it did appear with that title on the US version of the Monkees’ album Headquarters. The UK version of the album still listed the track as "Alternate Title." Confused?

While it may have meant very little to the Americans, in this context “Randy Scouse Git” was fairly self-explanatory to the Brits: Randy (oversexed), Scouse (Liverpudlian), Git (worthless person). Harmless enough and borderline TV friendly in the late 60s. The slang term “git” originated circa 1946 as a southern variant of the Scottish insult “get,” meaning “illegitimate child” (ie “bastard”) or “brat.” “Get” is thought to derive from the word “beget.”

“Get” is also preferred over “git” in the north of England and in 1968 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.”

Another Alf Garnett-ism can be found in John’s song title “Yer Blues,” also from the “White Album.” Working class Tory Alf was fond of the possessive adjective “yer” (your) - often used with maximum sarcasm or disdain - e.g “It’s yer darlin’ Harold (Wilson) to blame.” So, since the British Blues Boom was in full flower at the time, Lennon came up with the tongue-in-cheek title “Yer Blues.”

Some of Garnett's expressions became so ubiquitous in 60s/70s Britain that Till Death Us Do Part creator Johnny Speight even had the personalised number plate “MOO 16” on his Rolls-Royce in tribute to Alf's “silly moo” insult. Ironically, Speight's script originally had Garnett calling wife Else a “silly mare”, but Warren Mitchell forgot his lines and ad-libbed “moo” which became one of the show's most memorable phrases. 

In 1971 Till Death Us Do Part was reimagined in America as All in the Family starring Carroll O’ Connor as bigoted Archie Bunker and the recently departed Rob Reiner as his wastrel son-in-law “Meathead.” It was hugely successful, running for nine seasons and 205 episodes. By comparison the UK original managed only 54 episodes plus a few specials.

Dandy Nichols, who played Alf Garnett’s long-suffering wife Else in Till Death Us Do Part, appeared, uncredited, as the “neighbour” in the 1965 Beatles' movie Help! As she watches the Fabs enter their communal house, her only line was "Still the same as they was before they was." Not only that, Warren Mitchell himself also had a cameo role in Help! as Abdul the turbaned jewel thief. With delicious irony he appeared in blackface, naturally.

Liverpudlian actor Anthony Booth (1931 - 2017) was married four times and had eight daughters by five women. Following the wedding of his eldest daughter Cherie, he became the real life father-in-law of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. So, perhaps Alf’s jibes were not so far off the mark, after all. But that’s another story.

As for Mary Whitehouse (1910 - 2001) she became a household name in Britain. A hugely polarising figure who attracted praise and hate in equal measure, she was immortalised in the Pink Floyd song “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” from their 1977 album Animals. Written by Roger Waters, the lyrics read, in part:

Hey you, Whitehouse, haha, charade you are

You house-proud town mouse, haha, charade you are

You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street

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 story became a famous meme, frequently spoofed in the letters page of Britain’s favourite adult comic and bastion of all things sweary, Viz. 

Interestingly, while it was the swearing which caused most of the upset, no one seemed to notice that a member of the Pistols' cheer squad, positioned behind Johnny Rotten in the studio, was openly sporting a Nazi swastika armband. Or if anyone did notice, it went largely unremarked at the time.

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:  

If anyone's counting, there were only seven swearwords unleashed during the Bill Grundy incident (three "fuckings," one "fucker," plus two "shits" and a "bastard.") and yet the MSM acted like the sky had fallen in. Compare this to any of the family friendly Richard Curtis movies from just a few years later. There were more "fucks" heard during the first 10 minutes of, say, Four Weddings and a Funeral than happened during the entirety of the Today show. 

The Grundy ruckus 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 records since the 1920s at least.  This spilled over into British popular music too and a few of George Formby’s songs were banned by the BBC.  These included the euphemism 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” in this context meaning they were excellent musicians.  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 and most beloved 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 (see below for the full lyrics).  

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 spoofs Two Virgins 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 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.  Between the original 1975 release and 2007 reissue, the single went on to sell over 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 aforementioned 1970 album John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. 

Some were moved to express their displeasure 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 and right-wing blowhard 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 notorious 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, except maybe in Japan, where anything is possible.

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.

A year before Lennon's death Marianne Faithfull covered “Working Class Hero” on her masterpiece comeback album Broken English. If anyone was shocked, they probably reserved their outrage for the track which followed it, “Why’d Ya Do It.” Here was a song so venomous it made "Working Class Hero" seem like a kids' nursery rhyme.

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. And don't even get me started on recent events at Glastonbury. 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

In Praise Of Strawberry Fields Forever

Nothing To Get Hung About - The Day My Beatles Single Almost Caused A Riot

"The Beatles are turning awfully 'funny', aren't they?" - HRH Queen Elizabeth II to EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood, October 1967.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” will be 56 years old in February of 2023.  As we approach the Emerald (+ 1) anniversary of the Beatles’ landmark 14th UK single Stuart Penney remembers buying the record on the day of release and the unexpectedly hostile reception it received from some of his peers.

I heard “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the radio today.  It came up on one of those set-and-forget oldies stations and, as always, I stopped what I was doing and listened to all 4 minutes and 7 seconds of it from start to finish.  To encounter this most weirdly magnificent Beatles’ track in such a place came as something of a surprise, I don’t mind admitting.  It’s one of those songs I never grow tired of hearing, and yet it seemed somehow inappropriate to find it rubbing shoulders with prosaic “classic rock” staples by the likes of Billy Joel, Meat Loaf and Buckingham-Nicks era Fleetwood Mac.  

They often play Beatles’ records on the radio station in question, of course they do, but rarely does “Strawberry Fields” get an airing.  Even now, over half a century after it was released, it’s a record that demands the listener’s attention from the very first note.  56 years later it still sounds weird, otherworldly and unsettling, yet infuriatingly catchy at the same time.  It’s quite unlike anything else that made it to the top of the charts at that time.  And before you pedants jump in, I’m fully aware that “SFF” was cruelly kept off the UK number one spot by Engelbert Humperdinck’s sappy “Release Me,” thus interrupting the Fabs’ unparalleled run of 11 straight chart toppers.  But that little nugget of trivia only adds to the mystique.  It may make for a great pub quiz factoid, but after this slight blip the Beatles went on to effortlessly score six more UK number ones as if nothing had happened. 

But if “Strawberry Fields” with Paul’s wonky Mellotron intro (played on the “flute” setting, fact fans), John's heavily processed vocals and George Martin's dreamlike string and brass arrangement still seems eerie and captivating now, imagine what it sounded like in February 1967 when it first arrived.  We tend to think of the song as emblematic of the psychedelic era but together with its equally wonderful joint A-side “Penny Lane,” recording actually began in late 1966, making it one of the earliest records of its kind.  As with almost everything else they turned their hands to, the Beatles got there first.

As any fan worthy of the name will tell you, “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” were the first two songs recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album sessions.  It had been six months since their last single "Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby" and in an era when four singles and two LPs a year (plus maybe a couple of EPs as well) was the norm, the Fab Four were starting to look like slackers.  Also, it was the first time since 1963 they hadn’t had the number one Christmas single (Tom Jones claimed it in 1966 with “Green, Green Grass Of Home”).  So, because the album was taking longer than usual to complete, the two songs already in the can were rushed out as a single to keep the public happy.  

There’s something typically British about that.  Two of the finest pop songs of the sixties were hurriedly put out together on the same single, meaning that one of them was, in purely commercial terms at least, effectively wasted.  Until the Beatles came along to turn them into an art form, B-sides were not considered terribly important.  They were traditionally makeweight, disposable songs, often written by the artist (or someone close to them, such as their producer) in order to secure a share of the composer royalties via the back door (the writer of the B-side received the same royalty rate as the A-side composer).  

They could quite easily have made two singles out of “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” with a couple of existing LP tracks as B-sides and both would have been equally huge hits.  But the Beatles didn’t work like that.  They didn’t care to make people pay twice for the same songs so, in Britain at least, their singles generally comprised brand new songs and not recycled album tracks, as routinely happened in America.  This egalitarian approach meant that those two magnificent songs ended up together as possibly the greatest double-sided pop 45 of all time.  As the Ferrero Rocher advert once famously said “Ambassador, you are really spoiling us.” 

News of the single first appeared in Melody Maker on January 14, 1967, barely two weeks after recording was completed.  In a short news item on page one under the headline “Beatles Record” it read (using strangely mangled tense) The Beatles had recorded several tracks of their new LP at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London by the end of last week.  Brian Epstein told the MM: “Any track could be the next single, but it won’t necessarily come from the LP.  The third track would make a great single for anyone else, but the next Beatles single must be supreme.  The record might be released in February.  One rumoured title is “Strawberry Fields Forever.”  The story went on to cover news of a proposed Beatles TV spectacular and a one million dollar offer by American promoter Sid Bernstein for the group to play two shows at Shea Stadium. 

It’s not clear what song Epstein was referring to when he said “the third track” but, according to Mark Lewisohn’s book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (Hamlyn 1988), “When I’m Sixty-Four” was recorded concurrently with “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” during December 1966, so it could have been this. 

On January 28 the Melody Maker front page headline announced, in giant 54-point typeface, New Beatles Record – You Can Buy It On Feb. 17.  The story went on: The Beatles new single is “Strawberry Fields Forever” – as exclusively named in the MM two weeks ago.  The other side (there is no A or B side) is “Penny Lane.”  The Single will be released on February 17.  Both are Lennon-McCartney compositions.  

The first 250,000 copies of the single will be sold in a colour presentation sleeve specially prepared by EMI.  This is the first Beatles single since “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine” was released on August 5 last year. 

Just the first quarter million copies came in a picture sleeve, then?  In this age of downloads and streaming, 250,000 physical copies of any record is an undreamed-of amount, but such were the Beatles’ sales figures in 1967 when each new release filled warehouses across Britain.  And after the picture cover copies were sold out, the record probably went on to sell a similar amount in a generic Parlophone company sleeve.

With scant regard for factual accuracy, plus a certain amount of guesswork, the story continued “Strawberry Fields Forever” is about a Liverpool reform school for girls.  “Penny Lane” is the name of a road in the northern part of Liverpool – near the areas where John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison lived.  

“Strawberry Fields Forever” is very much a John Lennon composition.  It has none of the lyrical McCartneys [sic] qualities.  It’s a medium tempo number and doesn’t tell a connected story in the way that “Eleanor Rigby” does.  The words are rather bleak.

The group are continuing to work on their next LP and may do a TV spectacular based on the tracks on the album when it is released.  No release date has been set.

In reality Strawberry Field (there is no "s" at the end) was a Gothic Revival style mansion set in extensive grounds just a few hundred yards from John Lennon’s childhood home "Mendips" in Menlove Avenue, Woolton.  Built circa 1870 as a private residence, it was acquired in 1934 by the Salvation Army and converted to an orphanage (for both boys and girls).  The house itself was demolished in 1973, after which the children’s home continued until 2005 in new buildings constructed within the grounds.  The original wrought iron gates at the entrance were stolen in 2000 and sold to an antiques dealer who later returned them after he realised where they had come from. Strawberry Field was opened to the public in September 2019.

On his death in 1980 Lennon left a donation in his will to the children’s home and a few years later Yoko Ono gifted £50,000 towards the upkeep of the orphanage.  As for Penny Lane, the street lies well to the southeast of Liverpool city centre, not the north as the Melody Maker story reported.  

I was in my second year at college in Chesterfield when “Strawberry Fields” was released on Friday, February 17, 1967.  As with virtually every Beatles single since “She Loves You” four years earlier, I bought the record on the day of release.  Whether by accident or design (I never discovered which) for several years during the 60s British 7” singles sold for six shillings and eight pence each (that’s 33p in new money).  It sounds like an odd amount today, but thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the pre-decimal monetary system, it meant you could get three 45s for exactly one pound, something that has always struck me as a wonderfully neat and symmetrical thing.  But I digress.  

I handed over my 6s/8d at Hudsons record shop in the Chesterfield Market Hall during my lunch break and hurriedly took the single (Parlophone R5570) back to the college common room where we had a standard issue Dansette mono record player.  

As Melody Maker had predicted, the record came in an attractive picture sleeve, which was most unusual for UK singles at that time.  Countries in mainland Europe had been issuing their 45s in picture covers for years, but this didn’t become standard practice in post-austerity Britain until the late 60s/early 70s.  One side of the sleeve showed the Beatles in their new psychedelic garb set within an elegant picture frame, while the other featured childhood photos of the four.  We’ve seen those pictures reproduced many times since in books and the like, but in early 1967 they were a revelation, especially the modern photo showing their brand-new image. 

No longer the cuddly mop tops, all four now had moustaches and George was sporting a goatee beard.  John’s National Health wire spectacles were in evidence for the first time while George was wearing a long Nehru jacket of Indian design.  Paul and Ringo, meanwhile, simply looked cool in dark suits, double-breasted jackets and scarves or cravats. Spotlights were positioned alongside each band member and aimed directly at the camera.

The Dansette sat on the floor at the far end of the common room and a group of students gathered round in expectation as I placed the single on the turntable.  As “Strawberry Fields” began to play, we listened in silence, trying to make sense of this curious record.  Then, as it reached the end, we began to hear the first rumblings of dissent. 

Chesterfield College of Technology, as it was then called (it became simply Chesterfield College in 1984), housed a range of students.  Some, like me, were full-time scholars who fancied themselves as wannabe bohemian university types, but there was also an intake of part-time day-release students, many of whom came in from the nearby rural areas of Derbyshire a couple of days a week to study for apprenticeships in engineering, building work, animal husbandry and the like.  There was an uneasy dynamic between the two disparate groups and as Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1892, never the twain shall meet.  But on the rare occasions when they did cross paths, it sometimes ended badly.

It was one such red-faced farm boy who initially complained about the music.  Just as the strange backwards ending of “Strawberry Fields” began to drift back in, he came striding purposefully across the room and, elbowing his way through the gaggle of students around the Dansette he demanded, in his flat North Derbyshire vowels, “Turn that bloody rubbish off!”  Thus emboldened, some of his mates then joined in.  “I’ve never heard owt like it”, spluttered one, shaking his head.  Eventually one of the day-release boys reached down and unceremoniously ripped the tone arm from the record, causing a dreadful screeching sound as the stylus raked across the vinyl.  It’s the one sound every record buff has learned to fear above all others. 

From there the situation escalated into an unseemly slanging match with insults flying and both sides getting heated.  There was even some pushing and shoving amid the verbal abuse, but it thankfully never developed into real fisticuffs.  Just as well, really.  We were the ineffectual, long-haired students and they were, for the most part, brawny farm boys and factory workers.  Had violence eventuated, it would have been a one-sided contest, I fear.  We had by far the better vocabulary, though, and batted away their crude expletives with what we fondly imagined to be witty, Wildean rejoinders.

One of my college classmates at the time was none other than John Tams, soon to become properly famous in the world of folk music and acting.  He recorded with the Albion Band in the late 70s and appeared in the 90s TV series Sharpe where he played rifleman Daniel Hagman alongside Sean Bean as the eponymous star of the show.  It was Tams who introduced me to acoustic folk music and blues with records by Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Tom Paxton, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and others.  In May 1966, together with some other student friends, Tams and I went to see Bob Dylan at the Gaumont cinema in Sheffield.  I wrote about that momentous day here: LINK

Always the level-headed one, it was John Tams who eventually calmed things down that February lunchtime, and both sides drifted away amid muttered threats and insults.  But the fact that a humble pop record (albeit an extraordinarily good one) could provoke such intense feelings and conflicting emotions among what were, after all, a bunch of teenagers seems quite astonishing today.  It really was a textbook case of two very different worlds colliding.

Every new Beatles’ single was a huge deal, of course, but “Strawberry Fields” was a massive leap forward even for them.  They had been re-writing the pop music rule book with each new release since 1963 and this record took things to levels undreamed-of, setting the scene for the Sgt Pepper album which arrived a few months later in May 1967.  If they weren’t already unassailable, from this point on they had surely staked their claim for music immortality.

As for me, I was left feeling disgruntled with bruised pride and a nasty scratch across my brand-new copy of “Strawberry Fields.”  It was years before I managed to replace it with another and the clicks and pops on the original forever reminded me of that memorable ruckus in the student common room at Chesterfield College of Technology. 

Hudson's record store sadly closed its doors in 2012 after trading in Chesterfield for an incredible 105 years. I'm told it was the oldest family run record store in the world.

Seven Interesting Facts About Strawberry Fields Forever

1. Recording began on November 24, 1966 and was completed on December 29.  The finished version stitched together two different recordings of the song (takes 7 and 26), one slowed down and the other speeded up, so they exactly matched each other in pitch and tempo.  Take a bow George Martin.  The edit comes at exactly 60 seconds into the released single after the line “Let me take you down ‘cause I’m going to…”  Spot it if you can. 

2. In February 1967 “Strawberry Fields Forever”/ “Penny Lane” peaked at #2 in the UK singles chart but barely made the top ten in America.  It reached number one in Australia and several countries across Europe, however.

3. Although “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” weren’t heard in the Magical Mystery Tour film, their first appearance on album came when both were included on the US version of the MMT LP released at the end of November 1967.   

4. On January 30 and 31, 1967 the Beatles shot a promo film clip for “Strawberry Fields Forever” at Knole Park in Sevenoaks, Kent.  A week later they filmed part of the promo for “Penny Lane” at the same location.  

5. In March 1976 “Strawberry Fields Forever”/ “Penny Lane” re-entered the UK singles chart, reaching #32 as part of EMI’s Beatles reissue programme. Then, between 1982-1990 all 22 of the Beatles’ UK singles were reissued once again on the 20th anniversary of their original release.  “Strawberry Fields Forever”/ “Penny Lane” reached #65 in February 1987.  All their UK Parlophone and Apple singles were also made available as 7” picture discs during this time.  

6. In the backwards coda section of the record, John is heard to say "cranberry sauce." In America this was misheard as "I buried Paul" providing an early so-called "clue" in the risible "Paul is dead" rumour of 1967.

7. Many unreleased versions and remixes of “SFF”, from John’s home demo to the finished released version and all points in between, have appeared on the Beatles’ albums Anthology 2 (1996), Love (2007) and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 50th Anniversary Box Set (2017).

   

   Hudsons record shop, Chesterfield, pictured circa 1969