Heaven 17 - (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang 12"

In 1981, the BBC banned Heaven 17’s debut single “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” on the grounds the song’s lyrics were possibly libellous to President Ronald Reagan. The couplet that caused the Beeb’s legal eagles such wrinkled brows was contained in the song’s third verse:

Reagan’s president elect… A fascist god in motion?

Now, this may all sound like the kind of poetry exercise Rick from The Young Ones might have concocted in his overheated imagination; indeed try saying the lyrics in your best Rick the People’s Poet voice and you’ll see what I mean… Let’s not forget, this was the 1980s, when the drum machine was king and the fictitious “Rick” was far closer to how many on the Left actually behaved than most would care to admit.

Even the language of student rebellion had changed little since the late 1960s: everyone was a “fascist,” “the pigs” were in charge, “the man” had his finger on the nuclear trigger and Armageddon was imminent. If you don’t believe me, just pick up any review, by say Angela Carter, from back then, and you’ll be hard pushed to get through more than a few paragraphs before the woe-is-me hand wringing fears of Baby Boomer nuclear annihilation is apparent.

“(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” was very much of its time, with the lyrics containing the expected tropes on racism, fascism, Adolf Hitler, nuclear war, cruise missiles and a call to “unlock that funky chain dance.” And to a man the nation asked, “Why hadn’t we thought of this before? Unlocking our funky chain dance to stop nuclear war?”

The BBC has always had a strange relationship with pop music. In 1969, they banned The Kinks’ song “Plastic Man” because it contained the word “bum,”. Just a few years later in 1972, they were happily piping out Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” with its lines about “giving head” to the Beeb’s Radio 2 grey-haired Daily Mail-reading middle aged listeners.  Now, they were quaking that The Gipper might possibly, maybe, well you just never know, sue the bum off the Corporation for some rather juvenile political pop posturing? What would Rick have said?

Borrowed from “Dangerous Minds”

Now that wasn’t much of a review, was it? There may be some comparisons to the current key holder of the White House, Mr Trump, but what is that going to change? Nothing.

So did it live up to all the hype...Hell yes! This was one of the songs to own in 1981. Lifted from the funky Penthouse and Pavement album, Fascist Groove Thang indicated an altogether different direction both musically and socially from the prevailing New Romantic movement of the day. Precious little had suggested that Heaven 17’s first single would be a corking little number like this. Perhaps it hasn't weathered as well as it might, not least because the band raided the chart listings for the hip phrases of the day, so that it’s hard not to smirk slightly at lines like “hot your arse, I feel your power”, “come out your house and dance your dance”, and the very peculiar references to “brothers”, “sisters”. From the intro whipping up like a dervish into the lean, propulsive bass-line over which Glenn Gregory intones the pithy, sometimes hilarious lyrics, it's a great call to (dis)arms and a dynamite dance-track too. Still, you have to hand it to the boys for managing somehow to filter radical 70’s funk through their early 80’s Sheffield synth lab and come up with something this stirring.

Ripped from a lovingly restored 12” single posted on Burning The Ground to MP3

Heaven 17; (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Grove Thang

A.      (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang

B.     The Decline Of The West