Month: February 2024

BANNED AID – A guide to the banning of music – GENDER

Previous posts:

Future Posts:

  • Part 5 – Religion

As in previous posts, I have not censored any quoted lyrics or song titles. You have been warned.

There are songs (far too many) that are in your face sexist, some of which encourage the listener to behave violently toward women. They should all probably be banned. The songs that are subtle about their misogyny are harder to get people to condemn because some people miss their point, an easy thing to do. There are also homophobic songs that perhaps should be banned, as well as songs simply about the joy of sex. There is a wide variety to choose from.

However, there are pros and cons, nuance and uncertainties, when it come to the banning of music. These matters are discussed at some length in Part 1 of this series of posts.

SHEEZUS (Lily Allen)

The multi-talented Lily Allen intended to release this song as a single but her record company wouldn’t let her because it contains references to menstruation. It also references Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Lorde. Here is the track, delivered in Allen’s wonderful offhand way –

LYRIC CHANGES

When it comes to changing gender-related lyrics rather than banning them, in 1959 Judy Garland recorded the song FOR ME AND MY GAL and didn’t change any of the lyrics. Whether or not she should have is debatable. MAD ABOUT THE BOY was written by Noel Coward in 1932 and he was secretly gay at the time. Many women have recorded the song from Eartha Kitt to Marianne Faithfull. So have gay activists Adam Lambert in the US and Tom Robinson in the UK. Yul Brynner sang the song in drag in the film ‘The Magic Christian’. There are at least three other cases of songs originally intended for one gender recorded by the opposite gender with any requisite lyric changes made – I AM A MAN / MAID OF CONSTANT SORROW (Bob Dylan, Judy Collins), RESPECT (Otis Redding / Aretha Franklin) and DEVIL IN HIS / HER HEART (The Donays, The Beatles). I discussed these in more detail in my series on cover songs. Here is MAD ABOUT THE BOY performed by Adam Lambert, and two very accomplished dancers – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrat9qskTYU&ab_channel=BBCStrictlyComeDancing

ALICE’S RESTAURANT (Arlo Guthrie)

In this song Guthrie tells us that if you say “you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant” to a psychiatrist at an induction centre you might not be inducted. Furthermore, “if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them”. The story is disjointed, puerile and boring, but Guthrie probably didn’t need to use the word ‘faggot’ in that context. It’s hard to tell. In some places this track is very popular, but one would have to sit through a long rambling tale before coming to this line.

AMERICAN TRIANGLE (Elton John)

This is John’s song about the homophobic torture and killing of Matthew Shepherd (1976 – 1998), a young Wyoming man who was tortured and killed because he is gay. The murder led to legislation and the incident inspired a number of films, novels, plays, songs and other works. Elton John is himself gay and the song contains the line “God hates fags”. In the Nazi concentration camps a prisoner sent there simply because he was gay was forced to wear a pink triangle identifying him as gay. Perhaps the lyric to this song should not be changed, lest we forget.

MONEY FOR NOTHING (Dire Straits)

This song was a big hit for Dire Straits in the 1980’s, and the song’s clearly homophobic conservative narrator sings the following about a rock star: “See the little faggot with the earring and the make-up? / . . . That little faggot got his own jet airplane / That little faggot, he’s a millionaire”. Should the song be banned? In concert the band’s lead singer, Mark Knopfler, replaces the word ‘faggot’ with the word ‘queenie’. Here is the track (with a contribution from Sting), from the early days of music videos – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0&ab_channel=DireStraitsVEVO

TONY (Patty Griffin)

Griffin used the word ‘faggot’ in her sympathetic song about a high school classmate of hers who committed suicide because of the harassment he endured as a gay boy. The line goes like this: “He looked in the mirror and saw / A little faggot staring back at him”.

TREES (McCaferty)

The indie rock band McCaferty uses the word ‘faggot’ sympathetically in their song ‘Trees’ about the struggles of Nick Hartkop (the band’s lead singer) in coming to terms with his sexuality.

SAME LOVE (Macklemore)

American rapper Macklemore used the word ‘faggot’ in the song SAME LOVE but he used it when describing how homophobic slurs were used in cyberbullying.

PHYSICAL (Olivia Newton-John)

Olivia Newton-John’s hit song Physical was initially banned by MTV because of the lines: “There’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally”. But it gets worse. The video accompanying the song has John singing in a gym surrounded by male body builders she finds physically attractive, but in the end two pairs of particularly good looking male body builders each walk off hand in hand ignoring her, much to her amusement. MTV wasn’t happy with that. Here’s the clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz9VN40nCA&ab_channel=OliviaNewtonJohnVEVO .

ONE IN A MILLION (Guns ‘N’ Roses)

Guns ‘N’ Roses released this song with lyrics containing the word ‘faggot’ intentionally used in a negative way. The song’s composer, singer Axel Rose, refused to apologize for the lyric and he has also defended the song’s racism (using the N-word) and xenophobia. The band’s guitarist Slash hated the song.

PICTURE TO BURN (Taylor Swift)

Some people do / say inappropriate things inadvertently. Then when it’s pointed out to them they can either double down, rationalize or make excuses so that they don’t have to admit their transgression, or else they can admit what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Most people in the first group are what we call narcissists and bigots. The people in the second group are referred to as adults, i.e. mature and open to improvement. Beyoncé, much to her credit, demonstrated her maturity when she changed the lyrics in her song ‘Heated’. The Rolling Stones have never apologized for their racist and misogynistic lyrics. Axel Rose has never changed his homophobic, racist and xenophobic lyrics.

In the Taylor Swift track ‘Picture to Burn’ we hear the lyric: “So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine that you’re gay, by the way”. Later, realizing that she had used ‘gay’ as a derogatory term, she changed the line to “That’s fine, you won’t mind if I say ‘by the way’ “. All credit to Taylor Swift for doing that. If one isn’t a Swifty one might not realize that Taylor Swift released her first album almost two decades ago (in 2006). Here she is knocking them dead back in 2008 performing Picture to Burn – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OwNnBohin0&ab_channel=TaylorSwiftEvolution

FALL and RAP GOD (Eminem)

Eminem used ‘faggot’ perjoratively in his 2018 song FALL and when he received negative feedback he apologized and back-masked the word. In the music video accompanying the song the word ‘faggot’ is omitted completely. Eminem also used the word negatively in his 2013 song Rap God.

COCKSUCKER BLUES (The Rolling Stones)

At one point The Rolling Stones were legally obligated by their record company to come up with one more single, which was guaranteed to make a lot of money as the Stones were in their prime. However the Stones submitted a song that the company could never profit by because the song was so obscene that it could never be released. The song, COCKSUCKER BLUES, is quite graphic, but it is sympathetic toward the gay protagonist.

MISERY BUSINESS (Paramore)

The group Paramore used the word ‘whore’ in the lyric to this song but later regretted it and for awhile no longer performed the song in concert.

O CANADA

The original words of the Canadian national anthem, written by Robert Stanley Weir, included the line “True patriot love Thou dost in us command”. Over a century ago, during World War One, this line was changed to “True patriot love in all they sons command” as a way of encouraging men to join the army and fight during the war. However, in 2018, the gender bias in that line was addressed and the line was officially changed to “True patriot love in all of us command.”

I was very glad to see this change. About twenty-five years ago when I was teaching a Special Education class at a very challenging inner city school, whenever I sang this anthem I loudly sang these recently sanctioned words (“in all of us command”) and so did my kids (I told them they didn’t have to if they didn’t want to), and no one ever complained. Then when I took over the school’s Special Learning Centre I was also put in charge of the opening exercises over the school’s public address system. Every morning I started with a reading of some sort before the announcements. The readings I used included readings from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, pagan, atheist and many other doctrinal sources, and I made sure that each source had the same number as every other source (e.g. the atheists received as many readings as the Christians). The school administration was fine with this, and no parent ever complained. We did have some Buddhist students who had been among the Vietnamese Boat People who fled Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War. They thanked me for the Buddhist readings.

It is also important to note that the book from which I took the readings came from the Ministry of Education – i.e. this practice was government sanctioned, and other schools were doing the same thing. Twenty-five years ago. I only mention this because I live in a small city in Canada. There are places in the world where I’d probably be getting death threats for doing those readings now.

THREE MORE FROM THE ROLLING STONES

Their song UNDER MY THUMB contains these lines: “It’s down to me . . . The way she does just what she’s told . . . The way she talks when she’s spoken to . . . the change has come / she’s under my thumb”. The reason for challenging this old one recorded in 1965 is obvious. Their song MIDNIGHT RAMBLER romanticizes a violent rapist with these lines: “I’m called the hit-and-run raper in anger, the knife-sharpened tippie-toe . . . Well he’s pouncing like a proud black panther . . . I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, baby”. Finally, their song STRAY CAT BLUES encourages sex with an underage girl of fifteen.

HE HIT ME AND IT FELT LIKE A KISS (The Crystals)

This was a big hit for the ‘girl group’ The Crystals in 1963. Lana Del Rey’s song ULTRAVIOLENCE also quotes this song title but she omits the reference when she sings the song in concert – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f20Oz9Yr_So&ab_channel=BebeLeStrange .

NOTHING SUBTLE HERE

  • Eminem – the song KILL YOU – with this lyric: “Blood, guts, guns, cuts / Knives, lives, wives, nuns, sluts / Bitch, I’mma kill you”
  • the band Cannibal Corpse – the song STRIPPED, RAPED AND STRANGLED
  • the band Combichrist – three songs: ENJOY THE ABUSE, SHUT UP AND SWALLOW, CHAINSAW ABORTION

SOMETHING SUBTLE HERE

Frank Loesser – BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE – This won an Oscar in 1949 as Best Original Song, but it is now banned in parts of the US and banned completely in Canada. The lyrics are creepy. Some would argue that this is more dangerous than the songs in the previous entry.

SONGS WHICH ARE JUST TOO SEXUAL FOR SOME

  • Rita Coolidge – SUPERSTAR which contains the line: “I can hardly wait to sleep with you again” (The Carpenters changed the line to “I can hardly wait to be with you again” when they recorded the song)
  • Lady Gaga – LOVE GAME
  • The Rolling Stones – SATISFACTION (banned on the American television show Shindig because of the line “Trying to make some girl”
  • Van Morrison – BROWN-EYED GIRL (banned in 1967 for the line “Making love in the green grass”)
  • Donna Summer – LOVE TO LOVE YOU, BABY (banned from many radio stations)
  • Britney Spears – IF U SEEK AMY. This was overlooked at first but then it was banned when somebody repeated the title several times quickly.
  • Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg – JE T’AIME . . . MOI NON PLUS (i.e. I Love You . . . Me Neither) was banned by radio stations in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for its sexual explicitness. As you watch this video keep in mind that Jane Birkin died less than a year ago (July 16, 2023) at the age of 76 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHWxwajQL0&ab_channel=SamHudson

SCANDALOUS (Jimmy Boyd)

This is the final example – hang on to your hats. Back in 1952 a thirteen year old named Jimmy Boyd recorded this song and The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston banned the song from the radio as being too risqué. Within a week of its release it had sold two and a half million copies. Here is the song – watch this if you dare – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76K5UU0ihow&ab_channel=HeroesLegendsIcons . The joke of course is that the song’s narrator doesn’t realize that his father is impersonating Santa.

DRAGON

No post this week. Instead this.

FAFNIR – A DRAGON FROM NORSE MYTHOLOGY

My partner and I have spent the last seven years with a complex, multi-faceted, inquisitive, utterly fascinating consciousness named Fafnir. He was almost ten years old (best guess) when we first met him. This was no cute kitten and it looked like he wasn’t going to survive much longer but we adopted him anyway. He could not walk in a straight line but could only spin constantly, and he panicked when picked up. He had only three of his original thirty-two teeth, and a mouth full of sores. He had to have surgery on both eyes. He weighed slightly over three kilograms. He was tough and canny (he had to be to survive as a feral cat for ten years). It took a long time, and the construction of carefully designed labyrinthine structures, but we rehabilitated him and even taught him how to play. He loved to curl up next to me while I enveloped him with one arm and massaged his back and head with the other for long periods of time (I have conduction headphones). He survived seventeen years but he is gone now.

He had suffered from a terrible spinning condition years ago and had been able to keep it under control until about a week ago. It returned with a vengeance, accompanied by vertigo and most likely some degree of pain. He couldn’t understand what was happening and we couldn’t make it go away, he couldn’t find a pain free position to lie down in. He quickly entered a state of almost constant panic and confusion. Over the years he had spent many a night curled up safely with my partner, and she used to have ‘rough and tumble’ sessions with him which he loved, being the feral cat that he was. But things got very bad very quickly, and they were not going to get any better by all indications, despite meds and vet visits, and he no longer recognized my partner. He gave us countless hours of joy – all we could do in return was put an end to his terror and confusion – he was euthanized on February 17, 2024.

A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN 60 YEARS

(BANNED AID – a guide to the banning of songs Part 4 – GENDER will appear in one week). This began as a quick acknowledgement of a happy though rather superficial event that took place exactly sixty years ago though back then the world wasn’t a very happy place. However, this post has morphed into something a little longer. In 1964 many of us thought we’d all be dead from a global nuclear conflagration within a few years. People were building fallout shelters and we had drills at school showing us what to do in a nuclear attack. Over the last sixty years things have swung back and forth positively and negatively, but we’ve always somehow survived. Since the greatest enemy of progress is cynicism and despair, I’ve decided to turn this into a paean to sixty years of progress and renewal, and we’ll see what happens over the next sixty years.

Sixty years ago today The Beatles made their first appearance in the U.S., and I vividly remember watching the show with the rest of my family; I can even recall where everyone was sitting in our rec room sizing up this new confident, exotic, British band everyone was curious about (this was before anyone had heard of all the British bands to follow) – but this post is not about The Beatles. It is about other people, and the events, many of them surprises, which have occurred over the last sixty years.


TAYLOR SWIFT 2007
By minds-eye – Taylor Swift, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3214601

In 1964 the world had almost come to an end a year and a half earlier (The Cuban Missile Crisis) but the Cold War was still cold. The Russians were way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to space exploration. The Vietnam War was on and African-Americans were under attack as the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Despite the shadow of nuclear war, and the cowards and fools who have commandeered the corridors of power, we have coped with a recession and a pandemic, global food production is up and poverty is down, we have made some great scientific advances, there is more democracy in the world than there was sixty years ago and we have Taylor Swift.

In 1964 I was an inveterate science fiction fan who read stories set in a future that featured flying cars, time travel and colonies on Mars. Oh well. Perhaps the most important development that was overlooked completely by most science fiction writers was the emergence of the personal computer, and the Internet. In the last sixty years we have also created email and cell phones and social media. We now have YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Wikipedia, and bloggers and apps galore. We also have electric vehicles, wind farms, robots and drones. We have completed the Human Genome Project, cloned animals, found the Higgs boson, discovered thousands of exoplanets, and even taken a few steps into the realm of teleportation.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Our most daunting challenge is climate change, and though some of us were talking about environmentalism in the sixties our long term fears were mocked and dismissed by most people. There are still scientifically illiterate climate change deniers in positions of power – I would have predicted that we would have learned our lesson long since. There are also the billionaires who are quite aware of climate change but still resist in the name of prioritizing personal profit over the lives of their descendants along with everyone else on the planet. But there’s always hope – we certainly have the means to deal with the problem.


INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 2010
By NASA/Crew of STS-132 – https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/s132e012208/s132e012208~orig.jpg(https://images.nasa.gov/details-s132e012208), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10561008

SOME MOMENTOUS SURPRISES SINCE 1964

  1. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union collapse.
  2. The speed with which we landed on the moon (and the unfortunate politicization of that event).
  3. The easily avoidable Challenger disaster, and the effective abandonment of space exploration. At least we also have the International Space Station.
  4. The release of Nelson Mandela and the end of Apartheid.
  5. Québec has decided not to separate.
  6. There has been no global nuclear conflagration despite the nuclear arms race.
  7. I’m not surprised at the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. There are anti-democratic features of American society that go back to the founding of the nation, and unregulated capitalism itself is anti-democratic. Various studies in the realm of Political Philosophy have surfaced lately in an attempt to analyse this decline of democracy in America with a view to reversing it. Other studies have attempted to argue that democracy is not a good thing to pursue. Too many of these studies suffer from a lack of knowledge of the works of Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Paine, Marx, Rawls and others. The thing which is a surprise is the speed with which the acceleration of authoritarianism has occurred in our neighbour to the south ever since Bush stole the election in 2000.
  8. Boris Johnson’s majority conservative win as Prime Minister of Great Britain was also a pretty nasty surprise. But then they got rid of him before too long, so that was good. I’d rather not think about Marine Le Pen.

PRIME MINISTER PIERRE TRUDEAU WITH TEN-YEAR-OLD JUSTIN IN 1982.
By PBA Lille – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99588417

SOME MOMENTOUS PREDICTABLE EVENTS SINCE 1964

  1. The COVID 19 Pandemic was bound to happen sooner or later. Some nations handled it better than others. More than a million died in the U.S., many unnecessarily, but vaccines were developed and distributed at record speed and things are under control. When will the next pandemic hit?
  2. The 2008 Recession was unsurprising. Economic disasters are built into capitalism. It was surprising that those responsible were not held accountable by Obama.
  3. The simultaneous rise of the conservative triumvirate was unfortunate but not surprising – Brian Mulroney (Canada), Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom) and Ronald Reagan (United States).
  4. Nine Eleven was tragic and dramatic but there are a lot of people who hate the United States, with good reason, so it’s not all that surprising that Nine Eleven happened. There were also warnings ahead of the event provided by American intelligence but ignored by the powers that be.
  5. The patriation of the Constitution in 1982 by Pierre Trudeau was an important landmark in the political evolution of our nation but it was not particularly surprising. No regressive originalist nonsense here, thank you very much.
  6. The rise of the European Union was a predictable result of past political processes.
  7. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of armed conflict has played out (e.g. the Troubles, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Six Day War, the Gaza-Israeli War, the Rwanda Genocide, the War in the Congo, War in Syria, the Cold War, the Dirty War, the Russian invasions of Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and so on) but none have escalated into nuclear war.

ANGELA DAVIS ON A POSTER IN 1971
CALLING FOR THE FREEDOM OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
By Wikipedia:Rupert García – https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/libertad-para-los-prisoneros-politicas-116610, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97922730

THE CULTURE DIMENSION

  1. Gay rights have advanced (e.g. legal same sex marriage) but now trans individuals are being targeted. Just the recognition of the existence of transgender individuals was extremely rare in 1964.
  2. There was Frank Sinatra in the 1940’s and Elvis Presley in the 1950’s. The Beatles achieved much greater acclaim and influence than either Sinatra (a mobbed up singer) or Presley (a sad and confused right wing puppet), and the Rolling Stones have sold a lot of units too. The 1980’s were dominated by Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2 and Duran Duran. More recently Beyoncé, BTS and Taylor Swift are head and shoulders above everyone else. The periodic musical dominance by one or two individuals or groups is to be expected and welcomed.
  3. African-Americans have been in the forefront of some of the greatest music on the planet, creating and excelling at blues, gospel, jazz, soul, rhythm and blues, and funk. In the last sixty years we have also seen the rise of Hip Hop.
  4. In the 1980’s music videos came along, many quite elaborate, subtle and expensive. They often gave musical tracks a new dimension but their dominance has waned somewhat. However one still sees excellent music videos from time to time. Two examples – first an elaborate take on Alice in Wonderland by Tom Petty, with a ghastly ending (note Dave Stewart of Eurythmics playing sitar near the beginning) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8&ab_channel=TomPettyVEVO . Then, a video full of fascinating details all over the place, from Elton John – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABSXJiYQFuI&ab_channel=EltonJohnVEVO .

SOME AMAZING PEOPLE

Some people who have been around at some point since February 1964 (can you spot my biases?):

  • Greta Thunberg, Rachel Carson, David Suzuki
  • Glenn Gould, Yuja Wang, Vladimir Horowitz – Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson – Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Billie Holiday – Jon Lord, Matthew Fisher, Steve Winwood – Robbie Robertson, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen – Ravi Shankar, Rachid Taha, Natacha Atlas
  • Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg – Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova – Rocket Richard, Bobby Orr, Vladislav Tretiak – Pelé, Marta, David Beckham – LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell – Roger Bannister, Abebe Bikila, Brigid Kosgei – Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead
  • Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud – Richard Burton, Tom Courtenay, Ian McKellen – Julie Christie, Kate Hepburn, Diana Rigg – Natalie Portman, Jonny Lee Miller, Idris Elba
  • Michael Palin, Peter Cook, Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock
  • M.C.Escher, Charles Santore, Robert Bateman
  • Philip Pullman, Ursula LeGuin, John Wyndham
  • Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Angela Davis
  • Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, Bertrand Russell
  • Gloria Steinem, Naomi Klein, Taslima Nasrin

THE HAT
By Cmglee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129867716

SIXTY YEARS OF MATHEMATICS

  1. I never thought I would ever see a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem. It has been attacked unsuccessfully from every angle by the greatest mathematical minds of the last several centuries, but finally Andrew Wiles proved the damn thing in 1995. He worked on it in secret for seven years, and the proof is incredibly difficult and has opened up new vistas of mathematical research.
  2. As recently as 2022 the search for a proto-tile which tesselates the Euclidean plane non-periodically was finally ended (this was known as the Einstein problem – it’s a German pun). Finally a single tile, called The Hat, was discovered by David Smith and confirmed by Craig S. Kaplan, Joseph S. Myers and Chaim Goodman-Strauss.
  3. The Clay Mathematics Institute offered a reward of one million dollars for anyone who could solve any one of a series of incredibly difficult mathematical problems which the institute had compiled. The most difficult problem was the Poincaré Conjecture but, much to the astonishment of everyone, it was the first one to be solved, in 2003 by a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman. But he turned down the million dollar prize! There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics so the highest award one can be given in the discipline of Mathematics is the Fields Medal, which was awarded to Perelman for his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. But Perelman turned that down as well!

FULL CIRCLE

Sixty years after The Beatles first performed in the U.S. in 1964 they released a new single in the UK (in November 2023) and it made it to the Number One position in the charts (at about the same time the Rolling Stones released an entire album of new material). Back in 1964 I would never have guessed that that was possible. The new Beatles single, called ‘Now and Then’, featured all four Beatles even though the de facto leader of the group, John Lennon, was murdered forty-three years ago, and the lead guitarist, George Harrison, died twenty-three years ago, two events which were also quite unexpected. I wonder what the next sixty years will hold. It isn’t time to get the Molotov cocktails out yet but it has been a hard day’s night.

(Which events and people have I left out?)


PAUL McCARTNEY, GEORGE HARRISON and JOHN LENNON (L to R) OF THE BEATLES, 1964
By Omroepvereniging VARA – 64228-KB-34.png Beeld en Geluidwiki – Gallery: The Beatles, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9832115

BANNED AID – a guide to the banning of music – ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES

Previous BANNED AID posts:

“If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, cocaine” is a line from the track COCAINE written by J.J. Cale, performed here by Eric Clapton for whom it was a hit – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFEPIH4Iq58&ab_channel=AyoubBelkhiri . Would you ban this song?

Imagine that an underage listener comes across the track HEROIN recorded by the highly successful charismatic Lou Reed and Velvet Underground with these lines in the lyric – “it makes me feel like a man when I put a spike into my vein . . . Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life”. If the listener then tries heroin and becomes addicted, is it the fault of the song? If you have done a responsible job as a parent, raised a child who is loved and feels secure, and who you can still communicate with in reasonable and non-judgmental ways, then chances are that child is not going to listen to what Lou Reed or anyone else says on a recording and ignore what is said by an understanding, reasonable parent who has lived with them all their lives, who respects them, who has their best interests at heart, and who loves them.

Drug addiction is generally caused not by songs but by the insecurity (economic and / or psychological) or anger that comes from having parents who neglect or abuse their kids (emotionally and / or physically), often leading to the desperate need of those kids to bow to peer pressure. Of course not all familial relationships are as great as those I have just described so one must still be careful. A drug song extolling the virtues and ignoring the dangers of illegal drug use might be just enough to lead to drug experimentation on the part of a neglected child who then becomes a victim through no fault of their own, a victim sometimes to the point of dying. In that case the song is just the final straw, however, not the sole or primary cause.

REEFER MAN

There is a long history of songs extolling the pleasures of the use of illegal drugs. In the 1930’s and 1940’s some of the popular songs were in fact drug songs which only a few people recognized as such because the songs used slang or suggestion, so no lyric changes were demanded. The highly-talented bandleader / singer / dancer Cab Calloway was the first African American to sell a million singles, and the first to have his own radio show. He also recorded songs with drug references using slang not widely known outside the musical community at the time. His song REEFER MAN from 1933 was about using marijuana (a reefer being a marijuana cigarette). His song KICKING THE GONG AROUND was about frequenting an opium den and the phrase ‘kicking the gong around’ was itself slang for using illegal drugs ( watch him carefully at the 1 minute 35 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnt6zCDO73M&ab_channel=SbrPL ).

GIMME A REEFER

The great blues singer Bessie Smith, nicknamed ‘Empress of the Blues’, at one point was the highest paid black entertainer in the United States. She also recorded the song GIMME A PIGFOOT in 1933 which contains the line ‘Gimme a reefer, and a gang of gin’.

Jazz musicians were known to use alcohol and illegal drugs from very early days. Many died young and drug use was often a contributing factor in their death. However many also abused alcohol as well (which was illegal during Prohibition) and suffered from heart attacks. Their bodies just gave up in many cases after years of miscellaneous abuse. Saxophonist Charlie Parker was addicted to heroin and died at the age of 34. Singer Billie Holiday used heroin and she died at the age of 44. Saxophonist Paul Desmond used cocaine, amphetamines and LSD and died at the age of 52. Trumpeter Chet Baker was addicted to heroin and he died at the age of 58. Saxophonist Sonny Stitt was a heroin user and he died at the age of 58 as well. But drug addiction is not necessarily a death sentence. Musical genius Louis Armstrong used cannabis almost daily and he made it to 69. Whether one survives hard drug use may also depend on an individual’s personality, or on circumstance (e.g. do they have loved ones supporting them when they quit their habit?). Trumpeter Miles Davis used heroin and made it to 65, saxophonist Gerry Mulligan used heroin and made it to 68, Drummer Art Blakey used heroin and made it to 71, trombonist J.J.Johnson used heroin and made it to 77.


MILES DAVIS 1991 SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH
By Peter Buitelaar – Miles Davis "The Man with the Horn", CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3944634

In the rock era the ages at death from drug use dropped precipitously, many dying in their twenties. Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose, Jimi Hendrix died of a barbiturate overdose, Amy Winehouse used heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine. All three died in their twenties. Keith Moon of The Who used amphetamines and ketamine, and died at the age of thirty-two. The Doors released the song Crystal Ship which was about many things, including crystal methamphetamine use. The lead singer, Jim Morrison, used LSD and heroin and he died at the age of 27. Here is Crystal Ship, which as far as I know was never banned – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imcHmSUVEvk&ab_channel=215Days .

Things started to get controversial in the early 1960’s when groups released drug songs disguised as safe songs so that they wouldn’t get banned from radio play which would significantly cut into their record sales. The song WALK RIGHT IN released by the Rooftop Singers back in 1962 was later perceived as a drug song because of these lines: “Walk right in, sit right down / Daddy let your mind roll on . . . Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout a new way of walkin’ / Do you want to lose your mind?’ However, the song was co-written by Gus Cannon and recorded by Cannon’s Jug Stompers in 1929 so it may or may not have been a drug song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qiC1jynmc&ab_channel=SmurfstoolsOldiesMusicTimeMachine .

EIGHT MILES HIGH was released by The Byrds in 1966 and when some perceived it as a possible drug song The Byrds denied that it was. Later, however, two of the song’s composers, Gene Clark and David Crosby, admitted that it was indeed inspired by illegal drug use. I CAN SEE FOR MILES was composed by Pete Townshend and was released by The Who in 1967. Some saw it as a drug song, others didn’t. It was not banned.

Once the counterculture kicked in bands began releasing songs encouraging illegal drug use openly and no one seemed to be particularly offended. There were many drug songs, and many rock stars getting arrested or dying from illegal drug use. Some famous drug recordings which were not banned and whose lyrics have remained intact:

There have also been some anti-drug songs released by counterculture bands who began to see the down side of illegal drugs, for example: SISTER MORPHINE (The Rolling Stones – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCnx2kjk8T4&ab_channel=Fritzes007 ), THE PUSHER (Steppenwolf), and THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE (Neil Young). Young wrote this song when the guitarist in his backup band Crazy Horse, Danny Whitten, became heavily addicted to heroin. Not long after the song was released Whitten died of a drug overdose at age 29 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd3oqvnDKQk&ab_channel=neilyoungchannel

RAINY DAY WOMEN #12 AND 35

Bob Dylan uses a pun on the word ‘stoned’ as the basis of this song and of course the Rainy Day Women are the illegal drugs the narrator is using.

LIGHT MY FIRE

The Doors were invited to perform their big hit Light My Fire on The Ed Sullivan Show as long as they changed the lyric “Girl we couldn’t get much higher”, an obvious drug reference. The lead singer, Jim Morrison, promised to change the lyric, but the show was live so when Morrison performed the song without changing the line Sullivan was furious. However he couldn’t do anything about it except ban the group from future shows. But the Doors had just appeared on the show and thus gained the national exposure they sought, so they just laughed at the idea of never being invited back to the show. Here’s the clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKd6yarfkxA&ab_channel=Remasteredvideos .

THE SONG THAT WAS AND WASN’T A DRUG SONG

LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS, written and recorded by The Beatles, according to one of its two composers, John Lennon, was not a drug song but was inspired by a painting drawn by Lennon’s son Julian in nursery school. Such a painting by young Julian does in fact exist, and it was in fact an inspiration for the song. Lennon has also said that he loved the book Alice in Wonderland as a child and was trying to create a feeling of Wonderland in the song’s lyrics. However, years later the song’s other composer, Paul McCartney, said that it was in fact designed to simulate an LSD trip as well as being inspired by the painting. Note the initials of the main words in the song’s title.

THE DRUG SONG THAT WASN’T A DRUG SONG

PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON was a big hit for the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. However in the paranoiac eyes of United States Vice President Spiro Agnew the words ‘puff’ and ‘magic’ set off alarm bells and he got the song banned. It wasn’t a drug song.

A FINAL THOUGHT

There are also those who blame an individual’s violent behaviour on songs describing violence, so they want to ban violent songs, even songs that describe but also condemn violence. These critics want us to believe that years of upbringing can be erased in five minutes. A million people can listen to a song describing or even endorsing violence and if three of those people react by acting out violently the song gets blamed. What about the other 999 997 people who were exposed to the song as well and did not react violently? Violent people sometimes like violent songs but that’s because they are violent people. It’s not the songs that make them violent – make sure you have the arrow of causation pointed in the right direction. Some violent songs. Be careful –

Many people who behave violently do so because:

  • they were emotionally neglected as children and find it hard to view others with empathy
  • they were the targets of violence or they witnessed violence growing up (e.g. spousal abuse) so that is the only way they know how to deal with the world
  • they are angry victims of racism, sexism or homophobia / transphobia
  • they grew up in poverty in a society where self-worth is equated with affluence

If we want people to respond non-violently to violent lyrics and images (and we want people to be able to reject songs praising hard drug use) perhaps we need to put all our efforts not into banning songs, but into:

  • reducing / abolishing poverty and economic inequity
  • making sure contraception and abortion access is available to women so that children are not born into poverty or dysfunctional families
  • getting serious about preventing or eliminating domestic abuse and sexual predation by coming down hard on the abusers so children witnessing the abuse don’t learn that violence is the way to deal with life
  • setting up non-violent conflict resolution programs in schools
  • reducing racist, sexist and anti-LGBT behaviours