October 20 – The Other Elvis Who Annoyed TV Censors

Elvis Presley pushed the limits of what was considered “appropriate” for TV in the ’50s with his suggestive hip wiggling. Two decades later, another Elvis would test the boundaries. One of the more storied songs of the ’70s came out as a single on this day in 1978, by which time it was already well-known on both sides of the Atlantic. Although that didn’t mean radio stations would altogether embrace the Elvis Costello song, “Radio Radio”.

It came from the angry yet nerdy Brit new waver’s second album, This Year’s Model , being the third single after “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea” and “Pump it Up.” Yet for many Americans, it was the first song they heard by him.

That’s because he appeared on Saturday Night Live at the end of ’77. Viewers might’ve been surprised, as if they looked in their TV Guide it would have told them the notorious Sex Pistols were that week’s musical guests. As it turned out, the notoriety and arrest records of the Pistols made it impossible to get into the country and into New York in time, so NBC scrambled to find a replacement act. Their first choice was The Ramones, who wouldn’t have far to travel, geographically or musically, to fill in, but they turned the offer down. So the call went out to Elvis Costello. All was set and he was supposed to perform the song “Less than Zero”. However, the bespectacled one didn’t think it was an especially strong example of his music nor one with lyrics that would resonate in America (apparently they were directed at a crooked Brit politician.) So in a moment of enduring TV fame or infamy, “live from New York”, he started into the song he was slated to sing, then stopped a few seconds in, apologized and said there was no reason to do that song and ripped into “Radio Radio.” The show’s producer, Lorne Michaels , and his bosses at NBC were not amused. Not only did Costello break script, he did so with a provocational tune ripping commercial radio and its blandness. Not a message NBC, at the time a major radio broadcaster as well as TV, wanted to hear. Costello was banned from the show for over a decade, although he probably raised his profile considerably more than if he’d played the song the network wanted.

The Nick Lowe-produced single expressed Costello’s disappointment/anger at the state of radio which he thought was being run by too few people and offered too little choice: “they don’t give you any choice, ‘cuz they think that it’s treason!”

The single got to #29 in the UK, despite an apparent limited amount of radio play.

What is amazing though, is that Costello felt that way over forty years back! Because radio then was considerably different than radio today. If Elvis felt P.O.’d at the increasing mergers reducing numbers of actual broadcasting companies and limited playlists then we can only imagine what he feels now.

September 17 – Couldn’t Get Much Higher…Ratings?

The Beatles got a major kickstart to their careers on this side of the ocean with their appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. On this day in 1967, arguably the same benefit was bestowed upon The Doors.

Although they’d shown up on some lesser-known shows like She-bang and a CBC production in Toronto before, they’d lacked a major national showcase. That changed this day as they appeared on Ed’s show 56 years ago today, but unlike the Fab Four, their one appearance would be their last, because Mr. Sullivan was miffed to say the least by the band. They performed “Light My Fire”, a #1 hit the previous month, but the show had demanded that the lyrics be changed so as not to use the word “higher” (as in “girl we couldn’t get much higher”). The Doors apparently agreed to sing something like “better” instead. Of course, ever the renegade, Jim Morrison made a point of singing “higher” on live TV.

Years later, Ray Manzarek talked about the group decision and how censorship was commonplace back then. Sullivan canceled six future appearances booked for the Doors on the show but they’d gotten what they wanted – notice and notoriety. At the time, Ed was the 13th most-watched show on American TV , averaging more than 10 million viewers a week. We don’t have specific ratings for that night, but given how much they skyrocketed for the Beatles, and before that, Elvis Presley, one might imagine that there were far more than 10 million tuning in (which doubtless was why Sullivan kept booking rock acts when he apparently couldn’t stand rock music!).

“Light My Fire”, by the way, spent three weeks at #1 and was the biggest-selling single of their career. Guess they couldn’t get much higher after all!

July 20 – For Paul, This Bird Had Indeed Flown

We’ve heard of “reality TV”, but on this day in 1968, TV might have been too real for Paul McCartney…he was having a nice night in watching the telly when he was dumped by his fiancee Jane Asher live on air! Oops! No word on if it made him spill his cuppa…nor on how his girlfriend on the side, Francie Schwartz reacted while watching with him!

It was a rare week for the Beatles when they didn’t have an American top 40 hit and it had been five months since they’d topped album charts. But that was a minor setback they might not have even noticed; they’d just released the Yellow Submarine film and were finishing up what would be “the White album.” McCartney shouldn’t have been surprised by being dumped but by most reports was anyway.

He’d met Jane at one of their concerts in London in 1963. She was 17 at the time, but he only 21. Both were already famous, he for obvious reasons but she had been a famous child actress in Britain for over ten years. They hit it off quickly and before that year was over, he’d moved into her parents Wimpole St. home in London. There he met her brother Peter, who’d record one of Paul’s songs (“A World Without Love”) and make it a hit as part of Peter & Gordon and would later become a Beatles chronicler and music manager who helped Linda Ronstadt and others to stardom.

Jane’s mother was musically-inclined and a music professor which was bound to help- especially because the Asher’s had a piano in the house. Paul, with help from John Lennon, wrote many a song on that piano including “She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah.” McCartney was smitten with Jane for some time, writing several songs for her including “And I Love Her” and “You Won’t See Me.” In ’66 he moved out into his own place and she went with him.

But, as one can imagine, there was no shortage of females looking for a little Beatles attention in those days. And McCartney would later say “we had a good relationship,” but added “to tell the truth, the women at that time got sidelined… (The Beatles) are four miners going down the pit. You don’t need women down the pit, do you?”. But they were nice to have around when they came up for air!

Francie was an American writer. She’d written a play which she thought The Beatles might turn into a musical or film so she ventured over to London to pitch it to them. They didn’t bite, but Paul obviously liked her and they hired her on to work for their new Apple Records. Before long they were having an affair, even while Paul had Jane accompany him and the band to their Indian retreat to study under the Maharishi Yoga early in the year. Asher came home one day unexpected and found she got the unexpected surprise – she found Paul and Francie in bed together. She stormed out and called her mom to go get her belongings. Somehow though, Paul might not have realized that the engagement (which they’d agreed on the previous Christmas) was done. So imagine his surprise when he tuned into the Dee Time show (named for host Simon Dee) and she appeared and said “I haven’t broken it (her engagement to Paul) off, but it is broken off. Finished!” although she added she still loved Paul but “it hasn’t worked out. Perhaps we’ll be childhood sweethearts and meet again and get married when we’re about 70.”

That never happened. She married Gerald Scarfe in 1982 and remains with him. But both say they are still friends and still talk and Paul has publicly thanked her parents for taking him in all those years ago and introducing him to some good people.

As for Schwartz, it would seem she didn’t stay the apple of Paul’s eye any longer than Apple itself did. He had already met his future-wife Linda Eastman by the time Jane announced her split with him and as Get Back shows, by early in ’69 they were a couple who’d stay together until her untimely death in 1998..

February 19 – Now Ozzy Will Remember The Alamo

Jim Croce once sang “you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that ol’ Lone Ranger and you don’t mess around with Jim”. He might have added you also don’t mess around with the state of Texas and most definitely do not pee on the Alamo. Ozzy Osbourne found that out this day in 1982.

Oz was in Texas to do a concert on his appropriately-named Diary of A Madman tour. The album had been out for about three months and was rising up the charts, on its way to going triple-platinum in the States, largely on the strength of the single “Flying High Again”, which made it to #2 on rock radio charts. The former Black Sabbath main man was drunk in his hotel, hours before the concert and apparently wanted a bit of fresh air it would seem.He stumbled out into the streets, wearing “his girlfriend’s (now his wife, Sharon) green evening dress” and found nature called. The city’s Express newspaper later said “he paused in front of what he thought was an old wall …and publicly urinated in Alamo Plaza.” He was promptly arrested for Public Intoxication and carted off to Bexar County Jail.

He was bailed out by the promoter for $40 in time for him to make his show; he left the jail with Sharon, grinning and telling reporters he’d achieved “a lifetime goal. I pissed on the Alamo! The White House is next!”. Technically, it was pointed out it wasn’t on the Alamo itself. Rather he relieved himself on a cenotaph in the Alamo grounds honoring those who died in the battle there. Which probably didn’t make Texans any more chuffed with him.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the concert went off with a hitch. It broke out into a riot and two dozen more people were arrested, all making the front page of the then-daily paper in San Antonio, The Light, which had a sub-caption quote from Ozzy himself : “If I had a kid, I wouldn’t let him go to my show.”

The Oz-man wasn’t sent back to jail, but he did find that people in Texas remember the Alamo…and people who use it for a makeshift bathroom. The furious city council banned him from performing there again or setting foot on any city property. Which might be more of a blow than it sounds, when recognizing it is a city of over a million people that has a large hard rock-loving community.

In the end, ruffled feathers were smoothed. Osbourne returned to San Antonio a decade later, apologized and donated $10 000 to the Daughters of the Republic, who at the time looked after the historical site. Once again he could play shows near the Alamo.

Oh, and if you were wondering why he was in a green dress? Well, turns out it wasn’t to shock the locals, nor to make some kind of pro-LGTQ kind of statement. It was simply because Sharon had gotten into the habit of hiding all his clothes if he got drunk in his hotel room. “So there was no way I could leave and get into trouble unless I was prepared to walk down to the lobby stark, bollock naked!” he explained. Only she didn’t think to hide all her clothes! And thus, the rest is Texas – and rock and roll – history.

May 27 – Buckingham Palace Was Not Amused

Oh the humanity! It wasn’t punk rock’s start, but it was the start of it being noticed and frightening parents far and wide. After months of notoriety and an astonishing 125 000 pounds (about $700 000 in today’s funds) paid to just “go away” from EMI and A&M Records, the Sex Pistols finally release their first record for the Virgin label. “God Save the Queen”, arrived this day in 1977.

True, the Clash and the Stranglers (and in the U.S., the Ramones) had all put out albums by then, even the Pistols themselves had a prior, minor hit with “Anarchy in the UK” on EMI Records. But it was this 7” single really defined “punk” for the masses and caused a ruckus. Radio stations in the UK banned it, many record stores refused to stock it, the band were beaten up by monarchists (mind you, performing the sneering song saying the queen “ain’t no human being” on a boat near the palace on the day of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee had to be known to be a wee bit provocational!) …but it sold 150 000 copies in the first week, probably hit #1 – the first punk single to do so – and helped the band, in their short career make people ranging from Siouxshie Sioux (enjoying her 64^th birthday today) to Peter Hook to Morrissey decide to start bands.

So, why did we say “probably” hit #1? Well, the chart compiled by influential music publication the NME put it at #1 that week. However, the BBC – which banned the song for “gross bad taste” – had it at #2 on their own chart, behind Rod Stewart. If that seems a bit fishy, consider that for that week or two, and those weeks only, the chart refused to count sales from stores which owned record labels… ie, the copies sold at the large Virgin stores in the UK, didn’t count. That particular rule was dropped as soon as Sid Vicious and the boys had fallen out of the limelight.

Years later, Johnny Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) said of the song, “you don’t write a song like that because you hate the English race, you write it because you love ’em and are fed up with them being mistreated.” That said, he wasn’t in favor of a re-release of the single to coincide with the Queen’s golden anniversary in 2002. He called that a “circus” and “totally undermines what the Sex Pistols stood for.” It came back out anyway, and made it back up to #15. Controversy notwithstanding, or perhaps because of it, the song lives on like an anthem for the late-’70s disaffected. Rolling Stone list it among their 200 greatest songs of all-time (curiously enough right behind another hit song from that year, but from an entirely different point of view – Abba’s “Dancing Queen”) while Q magazine once declared it “the most exciting song” ever. What would be quite exciting indeed would be to come across a legitimate A&M Records copy of “God Save the Queen.” They never officially released it, and had the Pistols on their roster for a very short time. But in that short time, they began pressing copies of the single, which they withdrew quickly when they dropped the band. However, a few executives and other types around A&M in England held on to a copy or two, and now the few that do show up regularly fetch over 10 000 British pounds in auction.

September 21 – Not Nothing, But Lots Of Money From It

It was working…it’s way up the charts. And it hit its peak 35 years ago. Dire Straits‘ great “Money for Nothing” hit #1 in the U.S. this day in 1985. It was the second single off their groundbreaking Brothers in Arms album that would quickly lift them from the ranks of moderately popular bands to the elite rarified air of the superstars of the music world.

Like the band’s previous big hit, “Sultans of Swing”, “Money for Nothing” came about simply from Mark Knopfler paying attention to his surroundings. The former was a close to real life recounting of him walking into a bar with a second-rate band on a rainy night; this hit was born when he was in the States in a big box store. He recalls that they had a wall of TVs, all tuned to MTV. “A guy (employee) in a baseball cap, plaid shirt and workboots” was unloading boxes, watching the videos and was complaining to his co-worker with phrases like “he’s banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee” and “that’s not working – play the guitar on your MTV!”. Knopfler knew he was onto something and the song began to take shape in his mind. “I borrowed a piece of paper and started to write” before he left the store.

The band was in Monserrat recording the album; Knopfler decided to imitate ZZ Top in the guitar sounds since ZZ Top at the time were at the top of the MTV game and probably one of the bands that store clerk was referring to. Billy Gibbons of the Texas band says of the Dire Straits sound on the song”he didn’t do a half bad job considering I didn’t tell him anything.” The coup de grace of the song happened coincidentally. While they were recording there, Sting was nearby, finishing up his Dream of the Blue Turtles album and relaxing in the waters. He dropped by the studio to visit.

Sting remembers listening to the demo of the song and telling Mark “you’ve done it this time, you bastard!”. They both laughed but Sting felt it could use a little something extra. He suggested the “I want my MTV” catchphrase, and sang it in a falsetto, eventually becoming one of the song’s most distinctive features and getting a co-writing credit for it!

The song was a long one the way the band meant it to be heard, 8:22 in fact. That’s the full-length version that appears on the CD (Brothers in Arms was recorded digitally and among the first albums actually designed to be a CD ), but to manage to fit the album onto an LP, it was shortened, as were a couple more songs. Vinyl purchasers got a seven minute version, while it was edited down more for the 7” single (4:38”) and video.

Speaking of the video…what a video! While perhaps looking a little kitschy or primitive by today’s standards, at the time it was a ground-breaking one using pixelated computer-animation of the little workmen installing microwaves and so forth. It won the Video of the Year at the MTV Awards, but almost didn’t happen. Knopfler wasn’t a fan of the concept of music videos and found it a bit hypocritical perhaps to have a song which lampoons the people staring at them publicized by one. However, Warner Bros. were rather adamant that it needed one and eventually Knopfler’s girlfriend won him over to the idea.

The song would go on to spend three weeks at #1 in the U.S., dethroning another of the decade’s biggies “St. Elmo’s Fire” from the top. It became the band’s biggest hit, also rising to the top in Britain, Canada, Australia and most other “Western” markets, helped along not only by the video but by a stellar performance on the biggest stage of the year, Live Aid, just a few weeks earlier. And along with songs like “So Far Away” and the title track, it helped Brothers in Arms top 30 million in sales and become the biggest record of the ’80s in their UK. Of course, that success didn’t come without a little controversy.

Among the lyrics, Knopfler twice refers to “that little faggot” (“with the earring and the makeup…he’s a millionaire.”) This of course was pretty much another direct quote of what he’d heard the store employee saying. “The guy is a real ignoramus. Hard-hat mentality,” the singer explained, noting the worker “has a grudging respect for the rock stars…he sees it in terms of ‘well he’s not working and yet the guy’s rich. That’s a good scam.” But rather than seeing it as a knock on such closed-minded thinking or a simple representation of a common way of thinking back then, critics piled on. First, they objected strenuously to the word itself, thinking it taboo and insulting. Secondly, they didn’t detect the fact that the singer was talking about guys who “install microwave ovens” and “move these refrigerators” and rather was describing his own feelings towards other musicians, and gays as well. Letters of complaint started pouring in to the band, the record label and radio stations almost as soon as it came out.

The problem was somewhat nullified by the edits; the 7” and most radio edits simply cut out the offending phrase (as well as many other things) to shorten it to a more “radio-friendly” length. However, some rock stations played the full version, and in 2011, the division of the Canadian government which regulates broadcasters banned the album version saying “faggot is one word even if entirely or marginally acceptible in earlier days is no longer so.” Most stations began playing the 7” version or digitizing the offending word out, but at least two stations played the full, unedited version for an hour straight to protest. Later in the year, the agency reversed itself, still saying it was inappropriate and should be avoided but leaving it up to the individual broadcasters to decide.

Being a little bit controversial didn’t seem to offput the oft-Conservative Grammy Awards; they gave the song the award for Best Rock Performance by a Group or Duo the next year.

January 16 – Wings High Over Japan

Not one of Paul McCartney‘s finer hours 40 years ago.

Arriving with his band Wings in Tokyo this day in 1980 to kick off what would have been an 11-show tour of Japan culminating with 4 concerts at the famous Budokan Hall, he was arrested at the airport with almost half a pound of marijuana. He recalls that the security officer “looked more embarrassed than me” and says in retrospect he had no idea how stern Japanese laws regarding drugs were. He was whisked away to jail and spent over nine days in a small cell before being released and deported.

It wasn’t the first time “Mac” had troubles from his love of pot; he’d been fined in Sweden in 1972 for it and in Scotland in 1973 for growing it and his wife Linda was charged at L.A. airport in 1975 for trying to bring some into the country.

Although the Japanese didn’t press charges in the long run, they did briefly ban all of his music from their radio and TV and the Wings tour was canceled, resulting in a costly refund for over 100 000 tickets. Coupled with bad reviews for the 1979 Back to the Egg album (Rolling Stone called it “the sorriest grab bag of dreck in recent memory”) it was supposed to promote, the band got their noses out of “joint” and soon after broke up. Denny Laine, ex of the Moody Blues and Wings’ guitarist (and sometimes additional bassist to Paul as well) had put out a solo record by year’s end and soon McCartney would be doing the same.

November 25 – Girl, You Know It’s (Not) True

The ’80s were the decade when image sometimes trumped the sound when it came to music. Never was that “MTV effect” more true than 30 years ago when one of the hottest acts in the world would end up causing one of pop music’s biggest scandals. Milli Vanilli were at #1 – yet again – on this day in 1989 with “Blame it on the Rain”. It was their third chart-topper of the year in the U.S., good going for a relatively unknown newcomer! Of course, the problem was they were more unknown than we knew…

Milli Vanilli was a German act put together by Frank Farian, who’d been the main man in Boney M earlier on. We saw the videos to their lightweight Europop dance tunes and saw the singing duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who “were” Milli Vanilli. They’d been introduced to Europe in 1988, with the album All or Nothing which had gone gold in their native Germany. Clive Davis’ Arista Records picked it up for North American release and put it out early in ’89 with a slightly different song configuration as Girl You Know It’s True. Davis spends about six pages of his autobiography explaining how despite being such a “hands-on” record exec, he never dreamed anything was amiss with these guys he barely even was aware of…

The album quickly put out two #1’s in the States, “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Baby Don’t Forget My Number”, and then this third one got there as well. “Blame it on the Rain” was written by up-and-coming writer Diane Warren who’d written Laura Branigan’s hit “Solitaire” and would later write Aerosmith’s “Don’t Want to Miss A Thing” and win Golden Globes for movie music work in over 60 films. It might be the best of the singles on the album allmusic describe as being “hardly far removed from…peers (like) Paula Abdul, Debbie Gibson or even the more substantive Janet Jackson.” They also “raved” about Farian’s synthesizer-playing, suggesting “it’s hard not to listen to (the album) and not marvel at the level of Farian’s studiocraft…it sounds like the machine wrote it on its own accord.”

All would have been well and good, if that and the Grammy they won as Best New Artist the next year was the end of the story. But of course it wasn’t. Somehow, someone figured out that the presumably ordinary-looking John Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw (“backing vocals” according to the liner notes) sounded a lot more like Milli Vanilli than Morvan and Pilatus, whom no one even recalled showing up in the studio. The handsome pair were both professional models and dancers… but had no experience singing. Farian didn’t think they needed to as long as they could lip-synch for the videos. Soon the truth came out – the pair the public had been led to believe “were” Milli Vanilli were just actors who looked good and the real group were more or less anonymous types not seen in videos or credited much by the record company.

When it turned out that they weren’t the real singers, all hell broke loose. The Grammys revoked their award and asked for the trophy back. Despite the album being 6X platinum in the U.S., Arista retired it from their catalog and offered anyone who’d bought it a refund! (Which makes you wonder — really? It was an audio album not a video… does listening to it now suffer because the guys on the cover aren’t singing?) It was a scandal that lives on to this day with cheaters at times being referred to as “Milli Vanillis”.

Sadly, the pair actually recorded a record, Rob and Fab in 1998. It sold in the range of 2000 copies worldwide. Weeks later, Pilatus was dead from a probable intentional OD. He’d spent time in jail for robbery and assault before that, never quite recovering from having his name forever tied to “phony” . Blame it on the brain… of Frank Farian.