The dark side of John Lennon song ‘Working Class Hero’
Arguably, some of the best songs that John Lennon ever wrote were during his post-Beatles solo career. We’re thinking of the iconic chorus in ‘Woman’, the shocking statement of Lennon not “believing in Beatles” in ‘God’, not to mention the well-worn ‘Imagine’.
Another of Lennon’s classic solo tunes is his song of the working people, ‘Working Class Hero’. The song arrived on the 1970 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and explored the notions of the left-wing political idealists of the late 1960s.
Lennon delved into his humble Liverpool roots and days at school and came out with a song that examined the strict bureaucracy that delimited the freedom of the individual, perhaps echoing Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s claim that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Whilst Lennon noted the revolutionary nature of the song, he also strangely excluded certain minority groups from listening to it. He said in 1970: “I think it’s a revolutionary song – it’s really just revolutionary. I just think its concept is revolutionary. I hope it’s for workers and not for tarts and fags. I hope it’s about what ‘Give Peace A Chance’ was about. But I don’t know – on the other hand, it might just be ignored. I think it’s for the people like me who are working class, who are supposed to be processed into the middle classes, or into the machinery. It’s my experience, and I hope it’s just a warning to people, ‘Working Class Hero’.”
Whether Lennon felt that gay people – and what we can only assume he means as single women – are excluded from joining in the conversation of the working class, as he may believe they themselves are from a different higher class altogether, remains to be seen. But what is truly unacceptable from a so-called “man of the people” is to use just derogatory terms to describe them.
Yet this was not the only controversy surrounding ‘Working Class Hero’. Twice in the song, Lennon uses the profane word “fucking”, first to give potency to the adjective “crazy” and then to deride (from the perspective of the ruling class) the “peasants”, who are the real “working class heroes.” Naturally, Lennon’s record label EMI were not best pleased with their inclusion. The words were not printed on the album’s lyric sheet.
Discussing this, Lennon said: “I put it in because it does fit. I didn’t even realise there was two in till somebody pointed it out. And actually when I sang it, I missed a bloody verse. I had to edit it in. But you do say ‘fucking crazy,’ don’t you? That’s how I speak. I was very near to it many times in the past, but I would deliberately not put it in, which is the real hypocrisy, the real stupidity. I would deliberately not say things, because it might upset somebody, or whatever I was frightened of.”
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