PIERS MORGAN: I’m getting no satisfaction from seeing the Stones surrender to the woke brigade

When the Rolling Stones appeared on the Ed Sullivan show back in 1967, lead singer Mick Jagger changed the words to their smash hit ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ to ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together.’

This was because the original sex-hinting lyric was deemed too offensive for ultra-conservative American TV viewers to endure.

It was even reported that puritanical host Sullivan told the band, ‘Either the song goes, or you go’ before they agreed to change the line.

In the end, Jagger did censor himself – the Sullivan show sold more records than anything else on TV at the time – but rolled his eyes witheringly as he sang the new wording

This all seems incredible now, right?

In an era when rap lyrics are riddled with not just hardcore sexual content but also vile misogyny, sexism, homophobia, rape fantasies and violence including entreaties to kill the police, such concern over something so relatively tame seems laughable.

In an era when rap lyrics are riddled with not just hardcore sexual content but also vile misogyny, sexism, homophobia, rape fantasies and violence including entreaties to kill the police, such concern over something so relatively tame seems laughable.

But it’s now been revealed that the Stones have stopped performing one of their biggest ever hits, Brown Sugar, due to complaints that it, too, is unacceptably offensive.

This is a big deal.

The 1969 song has been a staple part of their live shows all over the world at least 1,136 times.

In fact, it’s the second most played song in the entire Rolling Stones catalogue after Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

But not anymore.

When asked by the Los Angeles Times this week why they hadn’t played the song during their new tour, Jagger made it all sound perfectly innocent, replying: ‘We’ve played ‘Brown Sugar’ every night since 1970, so sometimes you think, we’ll take that one out for now and see how it goes. We might put it back in.’

But it was clear from the response of Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards, who co-wrote Brown Sugar, that this was no casual decision and had in reality been taken after complaints that the song’s lyrics were offensive because they reference slavery and are therefore racist.

Richards was mystified about the backlash.

‘I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is,’ the 77-year-old guitar legend said. ‘Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.’

The 1969 song has been a staple part of their live shows all over the world at least 1,136 times.

The 1969 song has been a staple part of their live shows all over the world at least 1,136 times.

Then, in words of surrender that made my skin crawl from a man who’s never submitted to anyone about anything, he added: ‘At the moment, I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this s***. But I’m hoping that we’ll be able to resurrect the babe in her glory somewhere along the track.’

Really, Keith?

You no longer have the stomach to stand up for yourself and fight for what’s right?

You were the guy who also co-wrote Street Fighting Man for god’s sake!

How deeply depressing.

Given this cowardly climbdown, let me make the case for the defense on the Stones’ behalf: there is nothing racist about Brown Sugar.

It’s a song, as Richards says, that highlights the appalling historical reality of slavery, not one that celebrates it.

It depicts female slaves being sold, whipped and raped in America’s south.

Most people know and understand this, not the least the two men who actually wrote it in the first place and who have famously championed black music artists more than any band in history.

In fact, according to Bill Wyman, the song was inspired by a black backing singer named Claudia Linnear who was Jagger’s girlfriend at the time he wrote the song and who did a photo shoot for ‘Playboy’ magazine in 1974 titled ‘Brown Sugar’.

Given this cowardly climbdown, let me make the case for the defense on the Stones¿ behalf: there is nothing racist about Brown Sugar.

Given this cowardly climbdown, let me make the case for the defense on the Stones’ behalf: there is nothing racist about Brown Sugar.

Though another of Jagger’s exes, a black woman named Martha Hunt, later claimed it was about her.

Whatever the truth, Brown Sugar is demonstrably a song aimed at defending and supporting black women, not one that seeks to denigrate them or make light of slavery.

But the woke-fueled narrative will now be that the song IS racist, so the Stones are therefore racist, and they’ve abandoned performing it because they accept these assertions.

What utter nonsense.

As with so many of these woke campaigns, my guess is that it will massively backfire.

Most reasonable people don’t share this incessant hysterical desire for cancelling everything and everyone that’s even vaguely contentious or ‘problematic.’

When ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ was banned several years ago, in the maelstrom of the #MeToo movement, for supposedly promoting sexual assault – which it doesn’t – and ‘Saint’ John Legend pathetically rewrote the lyrics to suck up to the world’s equally irritating virtue-signalers, the public reacted how I hoped they would and sent the song roaring back to the top of the charts.

Just as when Gillette abandoned their pro-men branding to suddenly make all men feel ashamed about being male, their sales collapsed.

As a result, I now confidently predict that Brown Sugar will be bought in big numbers due to this crazy ‘ban’ and the Stones will soon start performing it again due to huge public demand.

But there is a bigger picture here and it concerns the ridiculous double standard being applied to what is acceptable in music lyrics.

Nobody dares go after rappers for fear they would be considered ‘racist.’

Yet ironically, many rapper lyrics are themselves appallingly racist.

Grow a pair, Mick (no apologies to any wokies offended by this phrase), stand up to the woke bullies, and sing Brown Sugar loudly and proudly at the rest of your shows.

Grow a pair, Mick (no apologies to any wokies offended by this phrase), stand up to the woke bullies, and sing Brown Sugar loudly and proudly at the rest of your shows.

After the death of a teenager at the hands of a Korean store employee in 1991, Ice Cube released a song called Black Korea that contained this lyric: ‘So don’t follow me up and down your market/ Or your little chop-suey ass will be a target/ Of the nationwide boycott/ Juice with the people, that’s what the boy got/So pay respect to the Black fist/ Or we`ll burn your store right down to a crisp/ And then we`ll see ya/ Cause you can’t turn the ghetto into Black Korea.’

The lyrics remain uncensored or edited.

Rappers also spew incredibly offensive lyrics about women.

Snoop Dogg sang: ‘B*itches ain’t sh*t but hoes and tricks, lick on these nuts and suck the d*ck.’

Kanye West sang: ‘I know she like chocolate men, she got more n*ggas off than Cochran.’

Eminem sang: ‘Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore, til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more.’

And as for Pharrell Williams’ Blurred Lines collaboration with Robin Thicke, he’s since admitted the lyrics including ‘I hate these blurred lines, I know you want it’ were ‘rapey.’

Where are the woke campaigns against these guys?

It’s very disappointing to see Mick Jagger of all people bow to the PC mob like this.

He made no secret of his derision back in 1967 when he was ordered to censor ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ by Ed Sullivan.

Yet now, he’s capitulating in a far worse way.

The whole point of the Stones was that they defiantly pushed boundaries and challenged conventional thinking, not behaved like timid little scaredy-cats every time someone sobbed ‘Boo hoo, I’m so offended.’

Grow a pair, Mick (no apologies to any wokies offended by this phrase), stand up to the woke bullies, and sing Brown Sugar loudly and proudly at the rest of your shows.

Or Gimme Shelter from the Satisfaction you’ve given the woke brigade who are out there today chanting ‘Under My Thumb’ about you.

This may be the new rock’n’roll, but I don’t like it.

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk