When the Dead Kennedys almost broke the UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart was not prepared for punk rock. The onslaught of bad behaviour and establishment-destroying rhetoric didn’t quite sit well with the official chart compilers and the BBC. Censorship was still a major concern for television and radio at the time, and the first wave of punk rock was doing its best to take down those walls in real-time.
The Sex Pistols certainly struck a blow when they appeared on the Bill Grundy-hosted programme Today, with both John Lydon and Steve Jones using expletives on the show (Lydon more tepidly, and Jones more enthusiastically). When ‘God Save the Queen’ began threatening to take over the number one spot on the singles chart in 1977, some alleged colluding put Rod Stewart’s ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ at the top spot instead.
By 1981, punk had largely returned to the underground in the UK. Most of the first wave of punk bands had either broken up or evolved past the form. In their place, a new generation of musicians began playing a much faster and more aggressive version of punk rock. Hardcore punk, as it came to be known, was even more anarchic and boundary-pushing than its predecessor genre, and it continued to cause problems for brands like the UK Singles Chart.
In America, hardcore punk started to kick off at the start of the 1980s. Both Los Angeles and San Francisco had dedicated hardcore scenes, and in a city where the Grateful Dead had once staged acid-infused be-ins, the Dead Kennedys were now staging politically-charged punk shows. Lead singer Jello Biafra always had an eye for kicking back at the establishment through absurdism, and his most direct challenge nearly caused a crisis within the British record industry.
That’s because the Dead Kennedys’ 1981 single ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ was becoming a hit. Despite (or perhaps fuelled by) the song being banned by the BBC, ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ was flying off of record store shelves. The song hit number one on the UK Independent Singles chart and was making a B-line for the top 40. That’s when things went nuclear: if a song appeared in the top 30, it was guaranteed a mention on Top of the Pops.
Whenever the song had to be mentioned on the BBC, presenter Tony Blackwell obscured the title and the band’s name by referring to the record as ‘Too Drunk’ and calling the band simply “The Kennedys”. British retailers asked the band to supply a sticker to cover up the expletive in the song’s title. They agreed, but they also insisted on supplying the wording that would be included on the label.
In a reference to The Velvet Underground’s debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico, the sticker on the ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ single read, “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…” Luckily for the BBC, ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ peaked at number 36 on the UK Singles Chart, six places below a spot that required a mention on Top of the Pops.
Check out ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ down below.
