Pre-80s uses of ‘fuck’ on mainstream major label albums

I just caught the “don’t give a fuck about anybody else” on Steely Dan’s Showbiz Kids for the first time which caught me off guard, ‘73 seemed early to have such a casual use of the f-bomb on a major studio release. Of course Star Star came out the same year, and the Stones had “fire the fuckin’ feed” a year earlier as well, but it would still be several years before the Who would stir up the airwaves with their “who the fuck are you?”. While the topic is admittedly juvenile, I’m actually interested in other examples of this now. I thought serious profanity was still kind of discouraged on big name releases until the late 70s if not later but could be wrong.

From Al Stewart's Wiki page:

Love Chronicles (1969) was notable for the 18-minute title track, an anguished autobiographical tale of sexual encounters that was the first mainstream record release ever to include the word "fucking".

A particularly famous example is Lennon's "Working Class Hero", 1970.

... or '71, Don't ask me.

Obvious one: the Jefferson Airplane's "We Should Be Together" (1969). Earliest use I can think of wasn't a major label: the Fugs' "Carpe Diem" from '66 (ESP-Disk, showed up as an alternate track on a later reissue of The Fugs' Second Album).

And on the "The End," Jim Morrison wanted to "phluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuug" his mom.

Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers, 1969. The album provoked even more controversy with lyrics such as "Up against the wall, motherfucker," which appeared in the opening song, "We Can Be Together". The offending word was mixed lower on the 45 RPM release of that track to partially obscure it, but it was still audible. However, the word "motherfucker" was censored on the album lyric sheet as "fred".[9]

Dammit xp!

Grateful Dead "Wharf Rat" from their self-titled 1971 live album.

Half of my life, I spent doin' time for some other fucker's crime

Nilsson, “You’re Breaking My Heart” from 1972

There are probably more than a few debatable examples, i.e. "Apeman" by The Kinks, in which the air pollution is either a-foggin' or a-fuckin' up poor Ray's eyes.

also, "kick out the jams, motherfuckers!"

lol the fugs. they were terrible. i guess that was the point?

i don't have any contributions, just a funny anecdote: when i worked in a record shop, a guy came in looking for "the first time anybody said fuck on vinyl" and he was absolutely convinced it was mc5. i don't even know why he bothered to ask anybody about it because it seemed like he just wanted to say the phrase, "KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHERFUCKERS!" as much as possible. didn't buy anything either >=\

I was listening to a radio show a few months ago that identified this as the very first use on a commercially distributed recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbA_qkf1BBI

Love the Fugs...

this stretches a point, given the OP: lucille b recorded several versions, of varying degrees of explicitness, this version evidently committed to wax some time in the mid-30s; tho not released "officially" until the mid-70s and semi-hidden away on scholarly compilations, certainly never on a "mainstream major label: but it was nevertheless very likely available to be played private parties and such from the outset -- ppl knew about it! (the stones quote "make a dead man cum" in the run-out to start me up, in like 1981?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8d4uwZqA7A

lol the fugs. they were terrible. i guess that was the point?

On the contrary, they were great.

the fugs were great

On the Who's "Doctor Jimmy" from Quadrophenia: "Her fella's gonna kill me? Oh, fuckin' will he."

In a sly vein there was also “King of Fuh” by Brute Force, on Apple in 1969

"old man mose" is awesome, she gets into it! O_O

Another Fugs: "CIA Man" ("Fucking-A' man, Fucking-A CIA"), 1967

Country Joe & The Fish: "Fish Cheer" Live At Woodstock ("Gimme An F! Gimme A U..."), 1970

"Motherfucker" is also on the original cast recording of HAIR from 1968 (not sure which track), which was released by RCA, and was cited as precedent by Jefferson Airplane when the same label tried to block the release of "We'll Be Together" the next year.

at the end of "Who Are You?" by the Who, Daltry ad libs "who the fuck are you?" which weirdly seem to escape the FCC and was regularly played unedited on my local classic rock station for years

Johnny Winter: "Still Alive And Well", 1973 ("Let's cut this fucker..." before the song starts)

I think the song from Hair is called “Let the Sunshine In, Motherfuckers”

re: "Who Are You," there's also a "who the hell are you?" version (that I only ever heard once, on the radio, about five years ago).

Morrison doesn't sing "fuck you" on the s/t album recording of "The End", much to 16 year old me's disdain

They did some Pro-tools hoo-ha on some 21st century reissue/remixes of the first Doors album, with the 'fuck' getting added back to "The End" and the word 'high' restored to "Break On Through".

Mott The Hoople: "The Moon Upstairs", 1971 ("We ain't bleeding you we're feeding you but you're too fucking slow")

this thread reminds me of the old jazz joke about singing 'Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries' in 5/4

"Fuckin' long, innit?"

(The Clash, "The Magnificent Seven"; 1980 and so just outside the scope, but still one of my favorite uses of the F bomb in a song.)

Also, plenty of comedians used "fuck" in their routines, including on record--Cheech and Chong and of course George Carlin come to mind. I still remember how scandalized my mother was when I played "Rebuttal: Speaker Ashley Roachclip" from Big Bambú. Even funnier was that it was my dad's record.

Joni Mitchell, Woman of Heart and Mind

After the rush when you come back down
You're always disappointed
Nothing seems to keep you high
Drive your bargains
Push your papers
Win your medals
Fuck your strangers
Don't it leave you on the empty side

From 1972.

Also, Jimmy Webb from 1972's Letters

I’ll cut you a track that’s truly truckin’
If you want me to, I’ll sing about fucking
Sing about it fast, sing about it slow
Wanna hear it in the radio, though

Jimmy Webb was one of the first artists in history to include the word “fuck” in a record. He told the general story in his book The Cake and the Rain.

Is it possible I was trying to do too much on a simple phonograph record? If true then I paid the price for it. There was a rumor Mr. Sinatra wasn’t happy about the four-letter word I had put on “his” label. I was adamant about including the word “fuckin'” on the pressing in spite of a real pushback from Warner. I needn’t have worried. The future of foul language in pop music was in safe hands.

Perhaps a stretch, but Little Richard's use of "ball" as a euphemism for "fuck" in 1956 was pretty daring.

The Mott The Hoople album is alternately profane and demure; on "Death May Be Your Santa Claus", they sing, "I don't give a ... anyway".

Pink Floyd, "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", plus a few instances on The Wall.

Getting into the late '70s, all bow down to the last verse of "Bodies" by the Sex Pistols.

The Jam, “Time For Truth” (1977): “You're just another red balloon with a lot of hot gas. Why don't ya fuck off?”

There's lots of punk examples tbf.

I'm more interested in any others from the 1968-69 era, so far it looks like MC5/Hair/Al Stewart are the earliest

The Mothers Of Invention's "We're Only In It For The Money" (1967) has a censored "fuck" ("shut your fuckin' mouth about the length of my hair") that iirc wasn't restored until the CD version

The Jimmy Webb lyrics remind me of “Everybody’s Truckin’” by the Modern Mountaineers (apparently released by Bluebird Records in 1937):

Everybody's dancin' and truckin' (truckin')
Everybody's swingin' and fuckin' (fuckin')
Truckin' (truckin') fuckin' (fuckin')
Everybody's doin' it now

The song was also performed, with altered lyrics but uncensored f-bombs, by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in 1973.

The Mothers Of Invention's "We're Only In It For The Money" (1967) has a censored "fuck" ("shut your fuckin' mouth about the length of my hair") that iirc wasn't restored until the CD version

uncensored version appeared on the mothermania comp which i think was 69?

Earliest use I can think of wasn't a major label: the Fugs' "Carpe Diem" from '66 (ESP-Disk, showed up as an alternate track on a later reissue of The Fugs' Second Album).

that alternate recording was part of the unreleased lp they recorded for atlantic before they went to reprise iirc

there is the morse code f-u-c-k on pearls before swines' miss morse from 67 (esp-disk again, so not a major)

i've heard this "urban legend" a few times from different places —maybe someone here can add some further context?— that on a lot of old rock'n'roll records when they would say the word "rock" (or "rockin" as was most often the case) it was in place of "fuck." because obviously that sort of profanity wasn't really allowed or encouraged at the time. is there any truth to this?

(one version i heard posited that the new wave era "rockabilly revival" was very much `in the know` about this theory and subsequently overused it on purpose; "rock this town" and whatnot. idk. probably just an old playground myth.)

(the stones quote "make a dead man cum" in the run-out to start me up, in like 1981?)

...and Tom Waits used it in "Pasties and A G-String" in '76.

Can we count Hey Jude (ofc found on same name comp and the blue album)?

A retired Welsh seaman named William Fender can be heard singing the phrase "rock and roll" when describing a sexual encounter in his performance of the traditional song "The Baffled Knight" to the folklorist James Madison Carpenter in the early 1930s, which he would have learned at sea in the 1800s

gonna fuck gonna fuck around the cluck tonight

(meanwhile the turn of the 80s is presumably when the C word makes it first appearance on major label music, right? with regards to the Beat [on Sire in the US] and the Police reserving the word for far-right, um, cunts).

"Fucking hell, thirsty work innit?" - Public Image Ltd, Fodderstompf ('78)

XP ^^Marianne Faithfull: "Why D'Ya Do It?", 1979.

Re:Floyd, there's also "I've been mad for fucking years"

xp ah yes, overlooked that totally

A retired Welsh seaman named William Fender can be heard singing the phrase "rock and roll" when describing a sexual encounter in his performance of the traditional song "The Baffled Knight" to the folklorist James Madison Carpenter in the early 1930s, which he would have learned at sea in the 1800s
― Kim Kimberly, Saturday, March 4, 2023 7:19 PM

thank you for this. adds some validity to the myth lol.

First 'fuck' on a Pink Floyd record = Candy and a Currant bun

If you include "Hey Jude" then you'll have to include Dave Davies yelling "fuck off" at his brother before the guitar solo on "You Really Got Me".

One of the Kingsmen shouts an audible "Fuck!" after a mistake on "Louie Louie".

xp some discussion about that one here: What is the first example of using the word/verb "fuck" in a pop/rock song?

(Pink floyd)

The Al Stewart song with "fucking" is from September 1969 but the Brute Force song with the audibly identical "Fuh king" is from May 1969

Honorable mention to the studio banter between Sonny Boy Williamson and Leonard Chess leading into “little village” on the 1969 album bummer road:

Leonard: Go ahead we're rolling, Take 1. What's the name-of this?

Sonny Boy: Little Village. A Little Village, motherfucker! A Little Village!

Leonard There's isn't a motherfuckin' thing there about a village you son-of-a-bitch! Nothing in the song has got anything to do with a village

Sonny: Well, a small town

Leonard: I know what a village is!

Sonny: Well alright, goddamn it! You know, you don't need no title. You name it up, you, I got-get through with it, son-of-
a-bitch. You name it what you want to. You name it your mammy, if you want to.

Leonard: Haha! Take 1 roll it!

Lou Reed's Street Hassle, 1978

"When someone turns that blue
Well, it's a universal truth
Then you just know that bitch will never fuck again"

also includes the use of "cunt"