Was any kind of official ban on swearing on records lifted at any point?

Throw Some Girls in that mix. Still can't believe I heard it UNCUT 3 times before the "F" bomb was noticed back in the 70's. The current state of music now - can't believe how songs can be played for 30+ years and now, either bleeps or dead space happen: Money(Pink Floyd), Jet Airliner(Steve Miller Band) just to mention a few.......

I've always said I want to make a disc or discs of stuff that is either not played anymore on radio or edited. More I think about it, more disks will be filled!

 

I don't think there was ever any particular determination of law made, I think what happened was they just quit trying to prosecute after numerous legal precedents were set.
I suppose at some time someone took a case to the supreme court who upheld freedom of speech.
And I would imagine that the big even that pressed the issue to the point of making a legal precedent involved Lenny Bruce.

 

Or George Carlin, whose "Seven Words" was released in late '72. (Though by then there seemed no problem with putting it on record-- playing it on the radio was a different story).

While Lenny Bruce was renowned for swearing live, I don't think any of that material made record till the 70s.

 

Well... there is an F-bomb in the Kingsmen but not in the lyrics. Listen close when the drummer drops his stick.

 

Out of morbid interest, when was the last time the Stones performed Rocks Off uncensored?

 

No. It was well before then. Much of what Red Fox recorded was well before George Carlin.
George Carlin and and other comedians of that time were benefiting from the battles that Lenny Bruce fought with the legal system.

 

Makes sense...There were also a bunch of '60s "party records" by Redd Foxx and the like.

I would say that David Peel's "Up Against the Wall" was the first occasion of the F-word (as a clearly sung part of the lyric) on a readily available pop record, though. That was 1968.

 

Lots of early R&B relied on juke boxes exclusively for promotion, so they were more lascivious than pop records, but it was still mostly double entendre stuff, rather than straight out profanity. Stuff like Rotten ****suckers' Ball was never intended for pressing or release.

In segregation era white person's world there were those lewd albums with nude covers that came with stickers over the boobies so they could be sent through the mail. I've got one with a pretty good rendition of "Friggin' In The Riggin'" on it.

 

As a kid, I remember being mortified by the bleeped out profanity on Queen's Live Killers. I can't imagine an album doing the same now.

 

Actually, it appears on the Kingsmen version too, not as part of the lyrics, but, rather, when the drummer looses the beat.

 

They bleep out "piss" on Tull's Live, Bursting Out. Seems like that term is deemed more vulgar in the UK than here.

 

Made me think of Steve Miller "Funky Kicks" was on the radio version of "Jet Airliner", and Charlie Daniels "Son of a gun" was also used for the radio version of "Devil Went Down to Georgia".
Also, it was Al Gore's wife, Tipper who was one of the big names behind a push to put warning labels on albums because the lyrics were becoming age inappropriate
for much of the target audience.
Things really went downhill for language in the USA after the movie "Scarface" was released. Hollywood writers have had some huge mental block since then and can't come up with anything more original than the standard four letter words. At least when there was some concern for what kids heard, there was more originality. I even find the edited for TV versions of movies more enjoyable because they have to substitute something close sounding (often hilarious) for something vulgar.

 

Just like nudity and other censorable situations, it fluctuates. Nudity in early black and white movies was not unusual, then came the outcry and people demanding it be censored, then gradually back to fairly tolerant societies.
There were probably plenty of "blue" records available in the 40s, with no government involvement.
Society in general is fickle. The proverbial pendulum and all that.

 

Didn't those lyrics eventually surface in the A Day in the 'Hood rap remix?

 

And hell, the Raiders recorded "Crisco Party"-- No naughty words per se, but it may be the single filthiest thing released in the '60s!

 

Keep it down, kids...you don't want me to call TIPPER, do ya?

 

Early 1970's.

Ask RCA about expletives and suggestive lyrics. They wrote the book on how to censor them

 

...Which they likely threw out in time for the 1972 release of "Son of Schmilsson."

 

Are you ready to hear my simplistic, easy assumption?

I think it happened around the time the Parents Music Resource Center committee slowly faded into insignificance, possibly due to a number of factors - politicians on the Hill generally stopped kowtowing to them, as polled voters voiced greater concerns about other societal issues that actually affected their lives more directly.
The PMRC's byproduct, the "Expicit Language" sticker had become a desirable badge of honor for some artists and labels; because it actually had an inverse effect on the tagged CD's and increased sales.
That, or the general explosive proliferation of obscenities in music made the PMRC heads' implode.

 

RCA put out the original broadway cast album of Hair in 1968.

 

If that one counts, then surely John Lennon saying "F#!@!n ell!" in Hey Jude also counts?

 

True, and I think that may have preceded the David Peel album too. So that was the groundbreaker, and I guess being a Broadway soundtrack made it acceptable.

 

Are you sure they bleeped out that word (on the original LP set at least)? I would have said the line "Of course I wasn't singing about some other -------!", whatever that word was...

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Money" by Pink Floyd. That song still gets the one line censored on a lot of stations.

 

"The Berkeley Concert" came out in February 1969, on Frank Zappa's Bizarre label. I ignore if it contains swearing though.