Golden Condoms and Sex Acts: The three most erotic concerts in music history
Eroticism is close to the core of rock ‘n’ roll. Even when things seem stately and buttoned-up, there is an undercurrent of liberation in the mix that extends to sexuality. Elvis Presley might not be presently seen as the most subversive force in culture, but back when he first burst onto TV screens, CBS issued a prompt decree that he could henceforth only be filmed from the waist up.
With ‘the pill’ just recently available, Paul McCartney picked up on this new age when he landed in America, too. Philosophically, The Beatles’ bassist mused: “Although we had no perspective at the time, we were, like the world, experiencing a sexual awakening. Our parents had fears of sexual diseases and all sorts of things like that, but by the middle of the 60s, we’d realised that we had a freedom that had never been available to their generation.”
In fact, the whole world was experiencing an awakening and rock ‘n’ roll was the mode that crystallised that. Meanwhile, in the literary world, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious became the uber-salacious and provocative best-seller that thrust sexual liberation into the living rooms of the masses. Of course, there had been countless precursors to this, but for the first time, the movement seemed to be escaping the clutches of niche subcultures and beginning to seed into society at large—when that happens, invariably, the demimonde shifts further into the margins while simultaneously the less daring elements of the movement become accepted and engulfed into the mainstream.
So, in one fell swoop, the world went from Elvis being a strictly waist-up entity to patently sexual songs snatching the number one spot without too many people flinching. Liberated by this notion, a string of acts started to make eroticism a key feature of their shows. None more so than the forthright folks and the daring displays they put on gathered in the list below.
The Ladybirds
A year before The Ladybirds arrived, the most momentous leap forward occurred. The Planned Parenthood Act of Connecticut in 1965 brought the pill into people’s lives. Suddenly, the stilted days of the 1950s were shaken up as though humans had invented fire for the second time. You could finish work, rush into town, hear an entirely new genre of music pumping from some sparkling thing called a jukebox, pick up a fellow, a gal or both, head home and listen to the brand-new Van Morrison record in crisp hi-fidelity sound, and get it on without any fear of parenthood putting a stop to all the fun.
The times weren’t a-changing, they had already changed. In some ways, The Ladybirds were a perfect embodiment of this. Their act was a smash hit in the California scene. They went with the tagline “the world’s first all-girl topless rock band” (even though there were others, even a Danish incarnation, who were also called The Ladybirds). Eventually, their pinnacle arrived when they starred in the film The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield.
Wendy O Williams
Sex was central to punk. Whether it was Vivienne Westwood’s shop, Sex, the pistols thereof, or the lurid bravura of bands like Television who helped to kick the whole thing off. Eroticism had escaped the flowery world of prog-rock and folks like Wendy O. Williams were determined to bring it back. With her punk and heavy metal hybrid band the Plasmatics, she did just that.
In fact, she did it to such an extreme that she was even arrested by undercover police in Milwaukee. They had already been tipped off that she might have been bearing more than her soul as a frontwoman when they attended the gig. So, when Williams began simulating that she was penetrating herself with a sledgehammer while wearing a fishing net so spare that even a caught cod would’ve felt self-conscious, they quickly slapped the cuffs on her—an act that she probably rather enjoyed. Fans feared that the wild ways of the Plastomatics would sadly become a thing of the past after this.
They needn’t have worried. A few shows further down the line, she was up to her old tricks to such an extent that she was arrested once again after the whipped cream covering her breasts did what whipped cream will do and melted, simply leaving some slightly milky and sticky chesticles on full display. Punk most certainly had its erotic pinnacle in full swing.
Rockbitch
On Rockbitch’s official website, there is a pivotal opening statement: “If you search engine Rockbitch you get a lot of untruths and erroneous interpretations about who we were, what we did and why. This site is to put the record straight.” Nevertheless, they do not go on to denounce the on-stage sex acts, the famed golden condom, or any backstage orgies. It is merely the political intent behind their message that they feared might often be missed.
They wanted to make a statement about sexualisation vs sex itself. They were political to an nth and keen to elucidate the fact that many things about eroticism were portrayed as contradictory but were actually very clear. A paradigm for this is the famed ‘golden condom’. The band were clear that extreme sexual liberation and safe sex were far from mutually exclusive, so they set about showing this in a bizarre way. Towards the end of their rock sets, they hurled a golden condom into the crowd. Whoever caught this was then invited backstage to have sex with the band. That should give you a sense of what their shows were like.
