Number One for five weeks from 6th June 1981 - 4th July 1981
It’s hard to imagine from this distance, but cussing and graphic descriptions of sexual activity on records in the early eighties – whether on hit singles or otherwise – was still deemed to be pretty damn controversial. Times have changed and we now live in an era where numerous singles featuring the f-word have scaled high in the national charts, and while it might make for a funny aside at the end of the week’s chart news, it rarely causes uproar.
The eighties are deemed by some to be the beginning of a much more permissive society, but the reality is that 1981 was only a few short years on from “Never Mind The Bollocks”, and the fact that album wasn’t withdrawn from sale didn’t mean that the public gave up and changed their minds about crudity overnight. Tony Harrison’s epic and distinctly non-punk poem “V” was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and caused outrage merely for quoting the work of vandals who had grafittied gravestones in the graveyard where his parents lay. Gratuitous swearing was harder to defend than that, particularly if delivered by young people with loud guitars who probably didn’t have any intellectual aspirations or sensible advice for young people in mind.
Punks knew only too well the power it still had and gravitated towards it. The movement may have been somewhat stale in mainstream terms by 1981, but the eruptions created by The Sex Pistols in particular had left scores of people hungry for further establishment baiting. This single was a huge juicy worm on a hook for that set, causing horror in record stores – the group responded to this by supplying concerned stockists with a sticker over the f-word, reading “Caution: You are the victim of yet another stodgy retailer afraid to warp your mind by revealing the title of this record so peel slowly and see...”
Which potentially makes this a lovely tabloid thunderstrike in a Charles and Di mug, but in retrospect, “Too Drunk To Fuck” feels like one of the least jagged uses of the f-word in pop and rock. If you don’t hear it mentioned often in relation to controversial uses of naughty words, it’s probably because it’s not exactly “Fuck The Police”. In common with a lot of punk and hardcore punk singles of the period, it takes a dire, shitty situation and amps it up for both satirical effect and disgust – “You give me head/ it makes it worse/ take out your fuckin’ retainer/ put it in your purse” growls Jello Biafra over a chugging rhythm.
Radio banned the song – do I even need to write that? - but it nuzzled the lower reaches of the National Top 40 at number 36 regardless, causing panic at the Beeb about whether the Top 30 rundown on “Top of the Pops” would eventually need to mention the unmentionable. In the meantime, Tony Blackburn dodged the issue while delivering the Sunday chart rundown by referring to it as “Too Drunk” by The Kennedys, and a nation’s easily corruptible youth were saved from indecency once again (note – some versions of this story state that Tony Blackburn said ‘the single at number 36 is by a group calling themselves The Dead Kennedys’ before promptly moving on. If anyone actually has a recording of this rundown I’d really like to hear it).
The song became a staple of mixtapes and party tapes for years afterwards. Before I knew a damn thing about The Dead Kennedys friends of mine snuck it on to C90 cassettes as a neat slice of subversion to put between other noisy offerings. The fact it’s never been embraced by oldies or alternative radio means it remains one of those rare examples of a hit single (however minor) you had to buy, or have a friend tape for you, to actually hear in the pre-internet era. I saw it quoted in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles as a kid and was immediately intrigued, asking my Dad if he knew anything more about it while pointing towards the entry with my index finger. My Dad just spluttered with laughter and said “Probably a punk record. Shouldn’t imagine it was played anywhere”.
I had a long wait to discover what it sounded like, and when I finally heard it on a compilation tape a friend made for me, I was slightly disappointed. The long build-up had been too much and left me as disappointed as Jello Biafra’s sexual partner. So this was it? A demonic chugging riff beneath some lyrics about a limp penis? And what, I suppose, really did I expect? My Saisho music centre to splinter into fragments on impact with it?
The spirited defences for this single are obvious, of course, and I had one friend who adored it, pointing out that it was one of the only truthful (and funny) songs about sex he could think of which identified that it could be a regretful, disappointing, messy, embarrassing and disspriting experience; that not every sexual encounter you have in your adult life is even going to be enjoyable, never mind romantic or poetic, and that getting fucked up in the process to obtaining a fuck is often the worst combination of events. To his mind, this meant that the record contained both humour and an important truth teenagers needed to hear - that sex isn’t necessarily the shining beacon on the horizon, even if their hormones are screaming at them that it’s the Big Everything.
“The only salvation is/ I’ll never see you again” sings Jello Biafra, and that, for my friend, was the key line. The desire for sex can lead you into situations you want to run away from, situations which still cause cringeworthy memories (and even painful ones) to come flashing across your mind years and even decades later. In “Too Drunk To Fuck”, Jello Biafra is the anti-Barry White, and indeed also unravels a core idea/lie embedded deep in rock music; that sex, especially sex with the singer of the band, is always a desirable and transportive event. He sets himself up as a hopeless failure in bed which is arguably one of the most honest and charitable things a lead singer can do for his fans. If only he’d put it more delicately, Mary Whitehouse would probably have been proud.
I like this viewpoint, but the track feels unquestionably desperate to shock in a very straightforward, uncomplicated way as well, and as such seems a bit hokey by 21st Century standards. That’s not it’s fault – timelessness in rock music is a very difficult thing to design and probably the furthest thing from an eighties punk band’s minds. It also feels slightly like The Dead Kennedys “novelty hit” in the UK; not big or well known enough to be an albatross, but a high water mark in sales terms which doesn’t give the casual listener a fair impression of their best work. They produced records which were far more acerbic and powerful than this one, but it was easier to get the media offended with this song title than “Kill The Poor”.
Not that it matters much. They remain a highly respected punk band and deeply influential in the US in particular. That they charted in the UK rather than the US at the time was really just indicative of the fact that the groundwork had already been done for them over here by fellow potty-mouthed scenesters, whereas in America, a few more years of struggle would be necessary.
They continue to tread their own peculiar and unpredictable path, though these days their focus is primarily on reissues and heritage acts. Barely a week seems to pass without Cherry Red dropping an a reissue of a hit album by a 60s, 70s or 80s artist whose work is strangely absent from record store racks, whether that’s Mel & Kim or Stavely Makepeace.
Iain McNay is also notable for being the inventor and instigator of the published Independent Charts, meaning without him, I may not be writing this.
Wire hover around the charts for a bit with their first post-EMI single “Our Swimmer”. Released on Rough Trade, the record both looks and sounds low budget and feels like a step backwards, being a slightly more skeletal and hollow affair than their preceding work with producer Mike Thorne. It does feature a far too frequently overlooked B-side in “Midnight Bahnhoff Cafe”, though, and is worth the price of entrance for that alone.
Cult sixties psych band The Misunderstood make good with a reissue of their single “Children Of The Sun” on Cherry Red, which is still a frequent feature on psychedelic compilations and box sets to this day – belated and deserved work for a record which sold close to nothing on its first release.
Punks knew only too well the power it still had and gravitated towards it. The movement may have been somewhat stale in mainstream terms by 1981, but the eruptions created by The Sex Pistols in particular had left scores of people hungry for further establishment baiting. This single was a huge juicy worm on a hook for that set, causing horror in record stores – the group responded to this by supplying concerned stockists with a sticker over the f-word, reading “Caution: You are the victim of yet another stodgy retailer afraid to warp your mind by revealing the title of this record so peel slowly and see...”
Which potentially makes this a lovely tabloid thunderstrike in a Charles and Di mug, but in retrospect, “Too Drunk To Fuck” feels like one of the least jagged uses of the f-word in pop and rock. If you don’t hear it mentioned often in relation to controversial uses of naughty words, it’s probably because it’s not exactly “Fuck The Police”. In common with a lot of punk and hardcore punk singles of the period, it takes a dire, shitty situation and amps it up for both satirical effect and disgust – “You give me head/ it makes it worse/ take out your fuckin’ retainer/ put it in your purse” growls Jello Biafra over a chugging rhythm.
Radio banned the song – do I even need to write that? - but it nuzzled the lower reaches of the National Top 40 at number 36 regardless, causing panic at the Beeb about whether the Top 30 rundown on “Top of the Pops” would eventually need to mention the unmentionable. In the meantime, Tony Blackburn dodged the issue while delivering the Sunday chart rundown by referring to it as “Too Drunk” by The Kennedys, and a nation’s easily corruptible youth were saved from indecency once again (note – some versions of this story state that Tony Blackburn said ‘the single at number 36 is by a group calling themselves The Dead Kennedys’ before promptly moving on. If anyone actually has a recording of this rundown I’d really like to hear it).
The song became a staple of mixtapes and party tapes for years afterwards. Before I knew a damn thing about The Dead Kennedys friends of mine snuck it on to C90 cassettes as a neat slice of subversion to put between other noisy offerings. The fact it’s never been embraced by oldies or alternative radio means it remains one of those rare examples of a hit single (however minor) you had to buy, or have a friend tape for you, to actually hear in the pre-internet era. I saw it quoted in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles as a kid and was immediately intrigued, asking my Dad if he knew anything more about it while pointing towards the entry with my index finger. My Dad just spluttered with laughter and said “Probably a punk record. Shouldn’t imagine it was played anywhere”.
I had a long wait to discover what it sounded like, and when I finally heard it on a compilation tape a friend made for me, I was slightly disappointed. The long build-up had been too much and left me as disappointed as Jello Biafra’s sexual partner. So this was it? A demonic chugging riff beneath some lyrics about a limp penis? And what, I suppose, really did I expect? My Saisho music centre to splinter into fragments on impact with it?
The spirited defences for this single are obvious, of course, and I had one friend who adored it, pointing out that it was one of the only truthful (and funny) songs about sex he could think of which identified that it could be a regretful, disappointing, messy, embarrassing and disspriting experience; that not every sexual encounter you have in your adult life is even going to be enjoyable, never mind romantic or poetic, and that getting fucked up in the process to obtaining a fuck is often the worst combination of events. To his mind, this meant that the record contained both humour and an important truth teenagers needed to hear - that sex isn’t necessarily the shining beacon on the horizon, even if their hormones are screaming at them that it’s the Big Everything.
“The only salvation is/ I’ll never see you again” sings Jello Biafra, and that, for my friend, was the key line. The desire for sex can lead you into situations you want to run away from, situations which still cause cringeworthy memories (and even painful ones) to come flashing across your mind years and even decades later. In “Too Drunk To Fuck”, Jello Biafra is the anti-Barry White, and indeed also unravels a core idea/lie embedded deep in rock music; that sex, especially sex with the singer of the band, is always a desirable and transportive event. He sets himself up as a hopeless failure in bed which is arguably one of the most honest and charitable things a lead singer can do for his fans. If only he’d put it more delicately, Mary Whitehouse would probably have been proud.
I like this viewpoint, but the track feels unquestionably desperate to shock in a very straightforward, uncomplicated way as well, and as such seems a bit hokey by 21st Century standards. That’s not it’s fault – timelessness in rock music is a very difficult thing to design and probably the furthest thing from an eighties punk band’s minds. It also feels slightly like The Dead Kennedys “novelty hit” in the UK; not big or well known enough to be an albatross, but a high water mark in sales terms which doesn’t give the casual listener a fair impression of their best work. They produced records which were far more acerbic and powerful than this one, but it was easier to get the media offended with this song title than “Kill The Poor”.
Not that it matters much. They remain a highly respected punk band and deeply influential in the US in particular. That they charted in the UK rather than the US at the time was really just indicative of the fact that the groundwork had already been done for them over here by fellow potty-mouthed scenesters, whereas in America, a few more years of struggle would be necessary.
Trivia
Cherry Red were, and remain, one of the UK’s most powerful and efficiently organised independent labels. Formed by Iain McNay in 1978 as a home for the esoteric and occasionally the unfashionable, it sucked in a wide array of astonishing artists in the process, from Felt, The Monochrome Set, Everything But The Girl and Edward Barton.They continue to tread their own peculiar and unpredictable path, though these days their focus is primarily on reissues and heritage acts. Barely a week seems to pass without Cherry Red dropping an a reissue of a hit album by a 60s, 70s or 80s artist whose work is strangely absent from record store racks, whether that’s Mel & Kim or Stavely Makepeace.
Iain McNay is also notable for being the inventor and instigator of the published Independent Charts, meaning without him, I may not be writing this.
Away From the Number One Spot
Cult sixties psych band The Misunderstood make good with a reissue of their single “Children Of The Sun” on Cherry Red, which is still a frequent feature on psychedelic compilations and box sets to this day – belated and deserved work for a record which sold close to nothing on its first release.
Girls At Our Best managed a top five placing with “Go For Gold”, as did Pete Wylie aka Wah with “Forget The Down”, but late into the Dead Kennedy’s period at the top of the charts a future novelty hit in the form of “Wikka Wrap” by The Evasions started to make some serious inroads as well. It wasn’t all punk rock, you know.
Otherwise the upper reaches of the charts are dominated by Toyah (still), Pigbag (still), UB40 on their way down and the next number one on its way up. The stagnant nature of the upper end of the chart signalled the fact that a small handful of indie acts were getting commercial success that the lower placed artists were never going to come close to achieving, and this uneven playing field was a common feature of the chart for some time.
Otherwise the upper reaches of the charts are dominated by Toyah (still), Pigbag (still), UB40 on their way down and the next number one on its way up. The stagnant nature of the upper end of the chart signalled the fact that a small handful of indie acts were getting commercial success that the lower placed artists were never going to come close to achieving, and this uneven playing field was a common feature of the chart for some time.
The complete indie charts for this period are available at the UKMix forums.
Number Ones In "The Real World"
Adam & The Ants - "Stand And Deliver" (CBS)
Smokey Robinson - "Being With You" (Motown)
Michael Jackson - "One Day In Your Life" (Motown)
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