Working Class Hero
December 6, 2010
“There’s room at the top they are telling you still…but first you must learn how to smile as you kill.”~ Lennon
I thought I would cover my favorite John Lennon song for the 25th anniversary of his death. This dark classic seems fitting. I recorded this in one take and was the first time ever playing it. This is as 1 take as it gets and will probabaly regret not redoing 
“Working Class Hero” is a song from John Lennon’s first post-Beatles solo album, 1970′s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
The song is a take on the class split of the 1940s and 1950s, and of the 1960s in which he was famous. The song appears to tell the story of someone growing up in the working class of capitalism. According to Lennon in an interview with Jann S. Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine in December 1970, it is about working class individuals being processed into the middle classes, into the machine[1].
The refrain of the song is “A working class hero is something to be”.
In 1973,[3] U.S. Representative Harley Orrin Staggers heard the song–which features the line “But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see”–on WGTB and lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The manager of the station, Ken Sleeman, faced a year in prison and a $10,000 fine, but defended his decision to play the song saying, “The People of Washington [D.C.] are sophisticated enough to accept the occasional four-letter word in context, and not become sexually aroused, offended, or upset.” The charges were dropped.[4] Other U.S. radio stations, like Boston’s WBCN, banned the song for its use of the word “fucking”.[5] In Australia, the album was released with the expletive removed from the song and the lyrics censored on the inner sleeve.[6]
