The Rolling Stones – C*cksucker Blues
The story behind the rather radio-unfriendly Rolling Stones song, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ -- sometimes referred to as ‘Schoolboy Blues’ -- is slightly more interesting than the purposely offensive curio itself.
In 1970, between the releases of Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones, looking to go it alone and handle their own business affairs, finished with both their record company Decca and their manager Allen Klein. The contract with Decca required the band to deliver one more single.
‘Cocksucker Blues’ was the result.
The very deliberate decision to submit something that would have consigned Mary Whitehouse to an early grave, in some alternate universe where explicit first-person accounts of a rentboy’s misadventures in London could get airplay, was a vintage piece of Jagger mischief-making. They owed a single and so they delivered one. The fact that it was not only unfit for broadcast but also open to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act should Decca have taken leave of their senses and released it, was neither here nor there. The fact that it would’ve enraged the stuffed-shirt executives of the record company was everything.
The song was locked away until 1983 when it was issued on a West German Stones compilation The Rest of the Best, before being quickly withdrawn. It’s existed as a bootleg ever since.
The two versions of the song I have are markedly different. One is a longer, extremely rough take, possibly recorded further into the ’70s, with an extended slide guitar jam in the middle; the other a shorter, polished version, which I think is just Mick and Keith and is probably the one they gave Decca the option to put out.
The song itself -- particularly the longer version -- is a slow-burning blues number; the sort that should carry a health warning. Lyrically it’s completely childish and guaranteed to send your nan into an irreversible state of shock should she hear it prior to the Sunday roast being carved. Nevertheless, the little charm the song can muster resides in the overall sound -- the Stones at their lowest, downest and sleaziest -- not the puerile shock tactics.
Below is the shorter, ‘single’ version.
WARNING As can probably be surmised by the title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ is no ‘As Tears Go By’. If offended in anyway by explicit sexual references and the sort of language that would make an Irishman blush then don’t play it.
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