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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