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

I believe Al Stewart's Love Chronicles was one of the first mainstream albums, in the UK at least, to include 'f$%#ing' in the lyrics, but it's buried in the 18 minute title track so maybe no one ever noticed. That was late 1969.

 

Wasn't that edit bleep (on "Death On Two Legs") actually cutting out the person's name and not a swear word, or was it another song?

 

Since it was part of a long ambitious track by someone who wasn't (yet) part of the pop world, it probably fell under the "artistic license" category.

I think this was where he identified the subject as Queen's former manager.

 

Yeah, he said it about David Palmer being off stage during the introductions. Later, he said, "Ah, David's back. Did you give it a good shake?" Which is kind of ironic, in retrospect...

Every copy of Morris On I've ever heard also bleeps the word, though in that case it was as a slang for drunk rather than pee.

 

I swear it's censored more now than it was twenty years ago. Same for "Walk On The Wild Side."

 

It's been censored for f$^%%@ years, absolutely years.

 

Our local AOR station used to play almost everything (Money, Who Are You, Jet Airliner, The Devil Went Down To Georgia, etc.) uncensored but have within the last couple of years switched to "clean" versions.

 

You heard "Precious" on AM?! I DJ'ed for my left-of-the-FM-dial college station and I think that song was "Do not play before 8pm".

 

Think they bleeped that to make it funnier!

 

I remember we couldn't believe it when we heard Barry McGuire sing the word "hell" in the song "Mr. Man on the Street - Act One" on the "Eve of Destruction" album in 1965.

I never heard the song on the radio, however.

 

And Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing" in 1967. Listen 45 seconds or so into "A Small Package of Value...". It's clearer on the mono LP.

 

Apparently John drops the F-bomb in the song "Hey Jude," but in the hundreds of times I've heard the song I never noticed it (apparently it's pretty buried).

.

 

It's there, but I doubt anyone heard it before Geoff Emerick's book pointed it out.

 

Once you've heard it for the first time, you will never miss it again.

It's about 2 minutes 59 if I remember rightly, just before the "better, better, better, waaaahhh!!!!" part, it goes like this, with John's swear in brackets said at the same time as Paul starts "begin"-

"Remember, to let her under your skin, then you (F%^in' 'ell!) begin, to make it better, better, better....."

It seems a little more prominent to me in the stereo version, but still clearly audible in mono.

 

For years and years I had thought it was someone shouting "Come on!" to the crowd, for the singalong out-chorus.

 

I've always wondered what was said there. I've always heard something, but I'm still wondering what it is. I don't think it's the F bomb.

 

I heard it uncensored everywhere on the air for at least a couple of decades after release... Perhaps always, over here...

Anyone into CHOM-FM (or "CHOM-FM-tolerant" enough, at least...) here who came confirm or infirm this?

 

I always heard Money with a word replaced with "tish" , it sounds like they just did a a splice and flipped it around backward.
As if, somehow, nobody would be able to figure out what "bulltish" is.

 

I agree, not that it should be banned but what I really think you are saying is it needn't be spoken. These days you can't be in public without some idiot using the F word, no matter who's around, kids, etc. I think the young 16-24 year old generation has a lot of folks that think it's just a word like crap and use it regularly. Dumbf@#ks!

 

Yeah, by the time he got to that lyric, the drugs had typically really started to kick in for the listener. Or else they'd left the room for a pee break.

 

"We Can Be Together" by Jefferson Airplane.
Gets played on 102.3 FM here and the profanity is said so rapidly I don't thing the station management( or the average listener) even notices.
Saw a dvd with the Airplane playing this song on The Dick Cavett Show in '69 and you can hear the song fully lyrically intact on the broadcast tape.

 

"There are no such things as bad words, only bad intentions." - George Carlin

 

It was a SHOCK to hear that he DID get the 'F'-word in on "Freak Out!"
It was said near the end of"Monster Magnet" with all the 'chipmonk' voices, and you can hear it, slowed down, on the "Project/Object" version of "FO!"

 

"A Boy Named Sue" was recorded in 1969 or thereabouts by Johnny Cash.
It contains the line "son of a b****" but I believe it was censored on the radio,
at the time at least.

 

It was censored on record too. The only way to hear it at the time was to watch the TV special.