The Deep Purple song inspired by a salacious sex act
Led Zeppelin were at it. AC/DC were at it. Even the most innocent-seeming bands were at it, whether or not you want to accept that fact. Virtually every band from the 1960s onwards has written about sexual acts in a way that they thought could go unnoticed by the uptight citizens of the world, and in some cases, those risky depictions of taboo subjects have indeed managed to fly under the radar. For Deep Purple – who were also at it – their attempt was perhaps a little too blasé in its descriptiveness of the sex act they tried to shoehorn into a hit single.
There are probably more examples than one where the hard rock act managed to sneak a risqué line or two past censors, but the famous example of Deep Purple trying their hand at second-guessing what was overstepping the line came with the release of their 1986 single, ‘Knocking At Your Back Door’. Now, not to want to spell things out for you, but the ‘back door’ in question has been referenced in many a rock song, and both The Doors and Howlin’ Wolf were pleased to announce that they were ‘back door men’ in songs, referring to an acquired taste for anal sex.
With Deep Purple’s effort to enter the back door Hall of Fame, they chose to give the track the setting of a strip club, and in their eyes, the song was seen as an effort to deliberately try and get radio stations to play a song that was not so subtly about a controversial topic. The Who had previously engineered a similar stunt with ‘Pictures of Lily’, which was their 1967 effort at trying to one-up the censorship board with a song about masturbation. Their effort peaked at number four in the UK chart but wasn’t immune to criticism from fans and the general public.
‘Knocking At Your Back Door’, on the other hand, was not quite as successful, failing to reach the top 60 in both the UK and US charts, although it’s probably less to do with the salacious subject matter that it didn’t manage to emulate the Who’s success. Deep Purple had recently reformed with their ‘Mark II’ lineup for their first material in 13 years, but their drab attempt to jump on the hair metal trend of the ‘80s was received poorly and was seen as being little else other than a feeble cash-in.
However, poor chart performance didn’t mean that they were completely unsuccessful in their mission, as the song managed to get a decent amount of play on rock radio stations across the US. Frontman Ian Gillan recalled later on how a host named Redbeard from an independent radio station in Texas had called him to ask whether the song was indeed about what he thought it was about, and after Gillan confirmed, he reportedly shared his shock at how the crass lyrics had managed to slip past other hosts.
“It’s amazing,” the host told Gillan. “Every radio station in America is playing a song written about anal sex and they don’t even realize what’s going on.” Gillan found it amusing but declared that it wasn’t ever meant to be obvious. “It’s not in-your-face anal sex,” the singer responded, “It’s just a joke. It just came about with the lyrics. It’s no big deal. But it’s a humorous thing and not meant to be offensive. And I think it was just an afterthought. It certainly wasn’t what inspired the song.”
While Gillan might have protested his innocence at the song’s deliberate sexual references, it’s quite clear that the band knew exactly what they were doing, and for anyone else who didn’t realise exactly what it was about, perhaps a sense of naïvete allowed them to think the band had maybe lost their spare keys. For anyone familiar with rock music’s prior love of back doors however, the song does very little to cover up its true meaning. Mission (sort of) accomplished.
