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

I don't so much want to discuss what was the first rock record to contain a swear as it's been debated many times before and there's never been a definitve answer. I'm more interested in what led swearing to become much more prevelant on rock LPs around the turn of the 60s into 70s decade. There are no real cusses on The Beatles albums but John lennon drops the F bomb on his first album. Similarly, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the Stones and Who don't swear on any offically released songs until the early 70s. I know this is a bit ridiculous, but it always seems to me that some kind of offical edict must've been passed around that time freeing up the language that would be permitted on an album by a mainstream rock artist. Anyone any ideas?

 

Not sure but it's pretty much a free for all these days

 

Try and get Star Star on the radio. Job for life.

 

In the wake of horrors like Viet Nam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, Selma and Birmingham, ghettos on fire, etc., American society began growing up.

By the late '60s, a lot of the taboos of the preceding decades began lifting as boundaries in popular culture were being challenged. Once a group with a name like "the Fugs" were able to release a record, it was pretty much game over!

 

Yeah, I realise that increased swearing was a consequence of the changing times along with the many other social upheavals of the mid-late 60s, but it is interesting to me it becomes a lot more prevelant in the early 70s, reflecting to me more the nasty cynicism of the the post-60s comedown than the freedom associated with the hippy era. Put it this way, there weren't many mainstream rock records in 1967 that featured outright swearing. I don't count The Fugs as they were intially on an underground label for their first few albums. Even Zappa, whose 60s records certainly hinted at the seamier side of life, didn't use outright obscenities until the Flo and Eddie era. * it just seems there was this huge increase in swearing around the turn of the decade.

*it's interesting that in 1968, Zappa had to back-mask the F-word on 'Mother People' but just a few years later he's swearing freely on record.

 

Taboos are not broken overnight. At first, few of the bolder folks snuck in a "hell" or "damn," then a four-letter word was uttered by someone else, and then a few more did it (and maybe some of them were popular enough to get heard by the masses), and then it just became more and more prevalent until it was downright "acceptable" and "normal."

I'd be curious to know what the first mainstream pop record with a dirty word was. The earliest that I can think of is "It's All Over Now" by the Rolling Stones, although did Mick sing "half-assed games" or "high class games" as the official lyrics show?

 

it was a like a trickle in the 60s, then with the turn of the decade the floodgates seemed to be blasted open. I wonder if The Beatles has an unofficial no swearing on record rule? It just seems conspicuous the John Lennon whips out the big swears on his first solo album. If Lennon/McCartney had really wanted, from an artistically justified pov, to say 'I'd love to f**k you up' instead of 'turn you on' in 'A Day In The Life', would they have been permitted to do so?

 

Festival Records in Australia censored a whole lotta albums in the late 70s, New Boots and Panties, Secondhand Daylights, Join Hands etc so us Aussies were deprived of swearing until the 80s.

 

I've read that radio stations censored "crap" in Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" at first (1973) and eventually started letting it through.

 

When the first Pretenders album came out AM radio played the hell out of it (even the dirty songs). I reckon that was the album that broke down the barriers.

 

for some reason "kick out the jams brothers and sisters" just needed a bit of refining.

 

Swearing should be permanently banned recorded or otherwise. Have a nice day.

 

Christie says in the opening of the album:"Why don't you F$@@$ START IT????"

 

There was no official edict, but artists and labels were more than aware that profanity on a record would kill airplay and thus sales. The FCC had big ears when it came to that kind of thing -- witness the government uproar over "Louie, Louie," a record that, it turned out, contained no swearing at all.

Standards about profanity in lyrics relaxed at about the same pace as standards about profanity in movies. Gradually it just became OK. Nonetheless, there's only a handful of rock songs from prior to 1977 or so that contain the F word in the lyrics.

 

For the record, Zappa inserted the full, uncensored F-word on "Mother People" in the version of this song from his self-produced compilation album, "Mothermania", in the spring of 1969 (on the Verve label).

 

This is a funny one I noticed the other day - "E" is censored at 2:31



The song title was asterisked on the original album ("F * * k Me Pumps") - for the single they shortened the name to just "Pumps". "E" was left intact.

Vevo have it ass backwards.

 

What about the Airplane, Up againist the wall mother****ers? or steal, rob, deal, **** etc

 

Kick Out The Jams Mother....

 

The local MOR AM station here in Philly (WIP) did just that.

 

I always thought the first F-bomb on a popular record was on "Rocks Off" on Exile on Main Street.

 

"God **** the pusher" was pretty wild stuff back in '68. In Kay's book he tells of one concert I believe in North Carolina where a guy who was running for office threatened to shut the show down if they used those words, so when it came time to play it Kay announced to the crowd "unbeknownest to you all, there is a guy here who had threatened to shut us down if we sing certain words in the Pusher. Now some of you are of voting age so you might want to remember this guy....and we made the promise, but you didn't promise anything", so of course when the time came the words you now had 8,000 people screaming it at the top of their lungs. The show went on.....

And also there was one priest who actually "got it", that what they meant was that God should damn (punish) the pusher for his wrongdoings, it just wasn't "slang".

 

A few songs preceded it, including "Working Class Hero" and "Mother People" (already mentioned) along with Al Stewart's "Love Chronicles," Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together" and, depending on what your ears tell you, Pink Floyd's "Candy and a Currant Bun."

 

Before Beatlemania, on the Beatles With Tony Sheridan recordings, Tony said g--d--- near the end of "Take Out Some Insurance On Me,Baby." It was left in on the album but edited out on the single.

 

Ha! You're right. I had to go back and listen to it but now I hear it. It's *buried* there but yeah.

 

As noted, "Up Against the Wall" and "Kick Out the Jams" came first-- notably both were on Elektra, which was one of the looser labels at the time (but not loose enough to let the first Doors album get out intact).

Before that it was on a couple ESP Disc releases, notably the Fugs song "Wet Dream"-- but of course ESP was a different kind of label.

And the F-word DID appear in "Louie Louie," but not the Kingsmen version. Mark Lindsay has confirmed that he says "Does she F#%k? Oh yeah!" before the solo in the Radiser version.