Broadcaster and writer Nick Bollinger has made a career of telling people about the songs they should hear. His latest series is about the songs they weren’t allowed to.
Well, on state radio anyway, where – perhaps ironically – it’s being broadcast. Behold the volume of silence: for nearly four decades, RNZ and its predecessors the NZ Broadcasting Service and NZ Broadcast Corporation kept a record of the songs it refused to play in a big crimson leather-bound book with a creaky binding. On its cover a sticker: “Banned songs”.
Inside was a handwritten record of the songs it refused to buy copies of for distribution to its commercial stations. Starting with fountain-pen inscriptions, its entries neatly recorded the decisions of the Purchasing Committee, a body nicknamed “the Dirty Records Committee”. It drew its members from various departments in Wellington’s old Broadcasting House.
They were there, says Bollinger, who also uncovered sheafs of committee memos and many of the original singles, not necessarily to act as defenders to decent society but to make sure the broadcaster didn’t upset anyone.
“I don’t want to sort of paint the people working in broadcasting then as a bunch of prudes. Some of them were actually quite progressive.” It wasn’t about appealing to the widest audience; it was about not offending the widest possible audience.”
The committee was wound up in 1987, but the book rattled around RNZ’s Wellington offices. Morning Report host Geoff Robinson did a half-hour show on it, Listen to the Banned, in 1997 for RNZ’s 75th anniversary.
Another RNZ staffer suggested the book to Bollinger as programme inspiration. So, in his five-part show songs that have never sullied RNZ frequencies before will get their first airing. There is, though, some history missing. Bollinger thinks during most of the 1960s the committee may have used another book before returning to the original. He laughs when the Listener suggests some Beatles nut possibly purloined it.
And the songs Bollinger thought would have been banned but weren’t?
Too many to count. He went looking for Dragon’s 1978 hit Are You Old Enough? and couldn’t find it.
“I guess you could argue that just by asking the question, he was demonstrating a certain degree of responsibility,” he laughs. “But most programmers would think twice about playing that now.”
His episodes run to themes such as political satire, sexual innuendo, and the moral panic of the 1950s. It’s quite the jukebox.
We asked him for six banned songs that told their own story and of the times when they were banned:
The Cheers – Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots (1954)
An early song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley’s early hits, arrived the same year as the Mazengarb Report, a government inquiry into teenage moral delinquency in an era of motorcycle-riding milk bar cowboys. The Marlon Brando biker movie The Wild One was banned here in 1953 and Sidney Holland’s government put pressure on the broadcaster to limit anything encouraging or reflecting any teenage rebellion. Bollinger’s song verdict: “It’s like a cartoon.”
Peter Cook & Dudley Moore – The Ballad of Spotty Muldoon (1965)
Robert Muldoon had only recently risen to the rank of finance under-secretary when the British comedy duo released an absurd saga of an Irishman who was “unbelievably spotty”. Despite the song having nothing to do with the future prime minister of NZ and scourge of broadcast interviewers, radio banned it. Fear of offending public figures continued into the 1980s, notes Bollinger – New Wave hit Prince Charming, by Adam and the Ants, was also banned. Said the memo: “Could be directed at Prince Charles.”
Comedy tracks appear frequently in the book, among the offenders through the eras were Benny Hill, Billy T. James and Bill Cosby. Bollinger went looking for Spanish Fly, the notorious Cosby routine on his 1969 album It’s True, It’s True about slipping an aphrodisiac into women’s drinks to see if it was banned and came up empty handed. “In the light of subsequent events, it’s very sinister ... it’s really creepy and I couldn’t find any record of that anywhere in the book.”
The Silent Majority – Let Them Go (1985)
That year, the All Blacks were set to tour South Africa four years after the nation-dividing Springbok rugby tour. As Right Left and Centre, Don McGlashan, Chris Knox, Rick Bryant and others released Don’t Go. It wasn’t banned and was fine to play so long as announcers didn’t comment. Soon, an anonymous band calling themselves The Silent Majority released Let Them Go. Bollinger says apparently Houghton Hughes, the entrepreneur behind budget label-Music World, backed it. The committee couldn’t ban it as they had allowed Don’t Go. Advice was sought from higher up. “The committee was told that while they could not ban the song for its politics, the record was nevertheless of such appalling musical quality that it could be rejected on purely technical grounds.” The episode may give the song its RNZ debut.
Bruce Springsteen – Greetings from Asbury Park NJ (1973)
The debut studio album by Springsteen was banned upon its NZ release. “I thought it was funny given that by the end of the decade you couldn’t escape him on the airwaves.” Springsteen’s lyrics with their Catholic imagery and New Jersey mean streets fell afoul of the committee. Said the “Banned Songs” entry: “We can do without these sorts of protest songs.”
Kellee Patterson – If It Don’t Fit, Don’t Force It (1978)
The sexual innuendo of the disco hit, which the committee didn’t catch on release, went right to the top, if not of the charts. Director of programmes Beverley Wakem sent a memo: “As a result of what we can only describe as a pre-Christmas aberration, we did not ban the recording If It Don’t Fit, Don’t Force It by Kellee Patterson. The Director General has drawn my attention to this recording and asked that we remove it as discreetly as possible in view of the fact that the lyrics are quite explicit in their reference to sexual intercourse. Since the recording is currently number 10 on the Top 20, the most prudent course would seem to be to slow down the rotation in your playlists until it dies a natural death within a month or so.”
Headless Chickens – Soulcatcher (1988)
Bollinger says he is still puzzled why this single from the Auckland band’s debut album was the only track that met this fate. “Lyrics a bit dark and inscrutable, maybe? But no swears … All I can assume is that it’s a bit gothic.”
Bollinger adds that earlier Flying Nun bands came under a lot of scrutiny. The Clean’s Thumbs Off was banned for drugs references (“Who’s gonna take your pills today?”) as was the Verlaines’ 10 O’Clock In Afternoon EP for its swearing and the song Pyromaniac.
The five episodes of Not for Broadcast are, yes, broadcast weekly on RNZ National from Sunday, October 5, and will be available at rnz.co.nz