Ian Dury and The Blockheads – Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll

After hearing this song it’s hard to get it out of your head. I’ve heard of Ian Dury and the Blockheads for years but really didn’t know much about them. I was won over by this song by the melody and the small guitar riff and his overly British delivery. I never understood the term “too British” that was placed on bands like The Kinks, Slade, and others. It cannot get too British for me.

The groove in this song is infectious. It was released in 1977 as a non-album single but didn’t chart in the UK at the time. The song was written by Ian Dury and Chaz Jankel in Dury’s flat in Oval Mansions, London. Dury stole the riff from an Ornette Coleman album. He later met the bass player Charlie Haden who played that riff (on a song called Ramblin) and he said he stole it also from an old Cajun tune.

Some say the song didn’t chart because it was at the peak of Punk music and by the title it looked like a song about excess…something that was taboo in the Punk playbook. They were signed to Stiff Records and the record company organized a tour.

Per Wiki…Stiff Records organized a joint tour for Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis, and Elvis Costello, five of their biggest acts at the time, with the intention of having the bands alternating as the headlining act. Ian Dury and the newly formed Blockheads soon became the stars of the tour (it was surmised that Elvis Costello would be the main attraction, having had chart success) and the nightly encore became “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”.

That tells you how good these guys were live back then.

Ian Dury: Sex And Drugs’ started as a mild admonishment and ended as a lovely anthem. There was a time when I got fed up with it, but it got a new lease of life. When me and Jankel wrote this song we stole the riff from a Charlie Haden bass solo on a 1960 Ornette Coleman album called Change Of The Century. I met Charlie Haden later and he told me that he’d nicked the riff too, from a Cajun folk tune! It was banned by the BBC when we released it as a single but it sold about 18,000 copies. With this song I was trying to suggest there was more to life than either of those three – sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, or pulling a lever all day in a factory.

Of course when I go out and perform the song, everyone sings along, and you can’t stop ’em! People say to me: ‘Now there’s AIDS about, don’t you think that song was awful?’ I explain it was always a question mark about those activities. And I wrote it before all these dreadful sexual diseases like Herpes and AIDS appeared. I was saying, ‘If all you think about is sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, there is something wrong.’ The title was used in headlines all over the world. I wish I’d got a quid every time that title has been used.”

Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is all my brain and body need
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Are very good indeed

Keep your silly ways or throw them out the window
The wisdom of your ways, I’ve been there and I know
Lots of other ways, what a jolly bad show
If all you ever do is business you don’t like

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is very good indeed

Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, gray is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he’s called Simon, I know it’s going to fit

Here’s a little piece of advice
You’re quite welcome it is free
Don’t do nothing that is cut price
You know what that’ll make you be

They will try their tricky device
Trap you with the ordinary
Get your teeth into a small slice
The cake of liberty

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex, drugs, rock, roll, sex, drugs, rock, roll

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

54 thoughts on “Ian Dury and The Blockheads – Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll”

  3. Amazing song and great artist. I was blessed to see Ian & the Blockheads on their lone US tour opening for Lou Reed. A few years ago I also saw the Blockheads playing in London. The lead singer was Ian’s former personal assistant – they were fab! I highly recommend Will Burch (of The Record’s fame) bio on Ian.

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  4. Fun song! One I heard a lot of in the ’80s and I always thought it was a bit tongue in cheek , as much a poke at the blokes who were too daft to really understand just as much as it was a sales pitch for that lifestyle, if you will… I mean, that line ‘my tailor, he’s called Simon, I know it’s going to FIT’, I love that and the way he delivers it. Dury later got in ‘trouble’ again with ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ which was deemed to be mocking disabled people, though he himself had had polio and had trouble walking or something like that.

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    1. Yea he had a permanent limp…so he didn’t mean anything bad.
      The song just drives it in your head…like that song you posted People Who Died…it will stick there.

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  5. That hook is impossible to ignore. If you haven’t yet, click the link to listen to Ornette Coleman. While some of his work is musically dense (Jerry Garcia played with him on one album and talked about having trouble finding his place and just learning to play that music), this is very accessible. Don Cherry on piccolo trumpet became a mentor to Peter Apfelbaum and the Hieroglyphics Ensemble (a jazz group formed out of Berkeley High), and Charlie Haden is legendary.

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    1. The first time I heard of Ornette Coleman was through a book about the Dead…but yes I like his music…I wrote this when I was early to work one day and I have some of his music on my playlist on youtube….I listen while I work a lot. I listen to jazz a lot like that.

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    1. That would have been exciting to see and hear Paul. The more I’ve read about their live show the more I wish I could have seen them. During that stretch… 77-83 …a lot of great acts.

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    1. I was ignorant of them earlier…that makes it all the better listening to all of their music for the first time. I love finding old/new music.

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  8. A couple guys from one of favourite bands of the ’70s (and still) … GLENCOE … joined The Blockheads.
    (Ian’s son, Baxter, has built a great reputation in his own right, also. You can hear a similarity at times.) 🙂

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    1. I remember seeing a picture of him in the early 2000s with him at the mic…I thought it was Ian at first. I’ll check him out…thank you!

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      1. Well, there was a personal reason for Dury: he had polio at the age of seven and spent two years in the hospital. Ian Dury remained disabled until his death in March 2000. Small in stature and seeing himself as a cripple longing with this song: that even a physically imperfect person has the right to a fulfilled life.

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    1. Ever since I wrote this (in April or May) I’ve been listening to Ornette Coleman while I work…some cool stuff…love the bass of course.

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      1. Charlie gets around. If you dig deeper you’ll find his hillbilly roots. I think Fox surprised me with that info. I should never be “surprised” by the creative paths musicians take but this one did catch me off guard. You bass guys have to stick together.

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  13. Ian personifies the “beige is blah” attitude. You won’t believe this but just this morning I went back to reading Bono’s book and he mentions this very song. It was 1980 right around the time of their first tour of London, for “Boy.”

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  14. Great write up and loads of informative comments. If they want to call this punk, OK, but it is listenable AND you can hear the lyrics, which was (s)not always the case wiv the punk stuff.
    And it sounds like a lovely home address, Oval Mansions, London. Having read something a long time ago or having a bit of an inkling that might not be so, I read a bit of Wiki info- a bit of a squatters paradise then.

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    1. Thanks Obbverse…yes the comments were great today. A nerve was hit with Dury.
      It does sound like a nice address…back then you never know. I saw something on how wide spread squatters were in the 70s.

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  16. “Geil”, as was popular to say when we were young lads back in Germany in the ’80s. There was a silly song dedicated to German tennis player Boris Becker: “…Boris is geil, g-g-g-g-geil, Boris is g-g-g-g-geil…” I don’t think there’s a direct English translation. Basically, “geil” means cool. And this tune definitely falls into that category. The groove is infectious and the dude singing it is g-g-g-g-geil! 🙂

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      1. Germany became tennis-obsessed when Boris Becker and Steffi Graff were on top of their games. You simply couldn’t escape tennis. It was kind of the music equivalent of The Beatles. Many young kids learned playing tennis and joined local club. But not lazy Christian who instead decided to torture his parents with music all day and all of the night, all day and all of the night!

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      3. Jimmy who? Just kidding!!

        As I believe you know, I’m pretty much totally ignorant when it comes to sports! 🙂

        That said, because of Boris and Steffi, I know a bit about the famous tennis athletes at the time. I always enjoyed when John McEnroe lost his temper! 🙂

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      4. Yes McEnroe was a winer lol… he was a good entertainer for sure and a great tennis player… oh and Bjorn also… I loved that generation of tennis players.

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      5. Ivan Lendl. Or on the women’s side Martina Navratilova. There was also one lady who was known for exhaling heavily when hitting the ball. Was that Gabriella Sabatini? In the US, they also had Tracy Austin and, of course, Billie Jean King! See, I know my tennis players! 🙂

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      6. LOL yes you do…I haven’t heard Lendl’s name in a while! Chrissie Evert was big also. Tracy Austin…yes I forgot about her! I’m not sure about hitting the ball.
        King I’ll never forget

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      8. Yes she was! Her and Jimmy Connors dated for a long time…it was in the news everywhere. Sorry for the delay…Bailey and I were given tickets to the “Nashville Grand Prix” …a Franchisee I know gave us the tickets….in a suite with drinks and food…all you could eat while in a cool place watching comfortably.

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      10. We really did…it was a fun thing to do for us. Jennifer is in Ohio with her mom because her mom is getting both knees replaced…if I told you already I’m sorry!

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