- The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- In the Quest of Gallican Remnants in Gregorian Manuscripts: Archaisms in the Masses for the Holy Cross in Aquitanian Chant Books
- The English Kyrie
- Governmental Interference as a Shaping Force in Elizabethan Printed Music
- The Sounds of Indigenous Ancestors: Music, Corporality, and Memory in the Jesuit Missions of Colonial SouthAmerica
- “We Should Not Sing of Heaven and Angels”: Performing Western Sacred Music in Soviet Russia, 1917–1964
- A Strident Silencing: The Ban on Richard Wagner in Israel
- HARPOCRATES at Work: How the God of Silence Protected Eighteenth-Century French Iconoclasts
- Sex, Politics, and Censorship in Mozart’s <i>Don Giovanni</i>/<i>Don Juan</i>
- The Depoliticized Drama: Mozart’s Figaro and the Depths of Enlightenment
- The Curious Incident of <i>Fidelio</i> and the Censors
- “Years in Prison”: Giuseppe Verdi and Censorship in Pre-Unification Italy
- Micronarratives of Music and (Self-)censorship in Socialist Yugoslavia
- Popular Music as a Barometer of Political Change: Evidence from Taiwan
- Music and Censorship in Vietnam since 1954
- Miguel Ángel Estrella: (Classical) Music for the People, Dictatorship, and Memory
- A Case Study of Brazilian Popular Music and Censorship: Ivan Lins’s Music during Dictatorship in Brazil
- Alban Berg’s “Guilt” by Association
- Slow Dissolves, Full Stops, and Interruptions: Terezín, Censorship, and the Summer of 1944
- Selling Schnittke: Late Soviet Censorship and the Cold War Marketplace
- Curb that Enticing Tone: Music Censorship in the PRC
- Censorship and the Politics of Reception: The Filmic Afterlife of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock
- Pete Seeger’s Project
- Government Censorship and Aaron Copland’s <i>Lincoln Portrait</i> during the Second Red Scare
- “A Day in the Life”: The Beatles and the BBC, May 1967
- Composing in Black and White: Code-Switching in the Songs of Sam Lucas
- Exploring Transitions in Popular Music: Censorship from Apartheid to Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Rap Music and Rap Audiences Revisited: How Race Matters in the Perception of Rap Music
- Deaths and Silences: Coding and Defiance in Music about AIDS
- Teaching Silence in the Twenty-First Century: Where are the Missing Women Composers?
- Veiled Voices: Music and Censorship in Post-Revolutionary Iran
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter examines the issue of censorship in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s controversial decision to ban the final track, “A Day in the Life,” from the Beatles’ album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 due to its oblique reference to drug use. More specifically, it analyzes the factors underlying the BBC ban within the context of the cultural environment in which company executives interpreted the recording. The chapter also discusses the BBC mission and its “Green Book,” the BBC Variety Programmes Policy Guide for Writers and Producers, which establishes Britain’s standards for taste in broadcasting.
Keywords: censorship, British Broadcasting Corporation, ban, A Day in the Life, Beatles, Green Book, Britain, standards, broadcasting
Gordon Thompson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Skidmore College.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- In the Quest of Gallican Remnants in Gregorian Manuscripts: Archaisms in the Masses for the Holy Cross in Aquitanian Chant Books
- The English Kyrie
- Governmental Interference as a Shaping Force in Elizabethan Printed Music
- The Sounds of Indigenous Ancestors: Music, Corporality, and Memory in the Jesuit Missions of Colonial SouthAmerica
- “We Should Not Sing of Heaven and Angels”: Performing Western Sacred Music in Soviet Russia, 1917–1964
- A Strident Silencing: The Ban on Richard Wagner in Israel
- HARPOCRATES at Work: How the God of Silence Protected Eighteenth-Century French Iconoclasts
- Sex, Politics, and Censorship in Mozart’s <i>Don Giovanni</i>/<i>Don Juan</i>
- The Depoliticized Drama: Mozart’s Figaro and the Depths of Enlightenment
- The Curious Incident of <i>Fidelio</i> and the Censors
- “Years in Prison”: Giuseppe Verdi and Censorship in Pre-Unification Italy
- Micronarratives of Music and (Self-)censorship in Socialist Yugoslavia
- Popular Music as a Barometer of Political Change: Evidence from Taiwan
- Music and Censorship in Vietnam since 1954
- Miguel Ángel Estrella: (Classical) Music for the People, Dictatorship, and Memory
- A Case Study of Brazilian Popular Music and Censorship: Ivan Lins’s Music during Dictatorship in Brazil
- Alban Berg’s “Guilt” by Association
- Slow Dissolves, Full Stops, and Interruptions: Terezín, Censorship, and the Summer of 1944
- Selling Schnittke: Late Soviet Censorship and the Cold War Marketplace
- Curb that Enticing Tone: Music Censorship in the PRC
- Censorship and the Politics of Reception: The Filmic Afterlife of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock
- Pete Seeger’s Project
- Government Censorship and Aaron Copland’s <i>Lincoln Portrait</i> during the Second Red Scare
- “A Day in the Life”: The Beatles and the BBC, May 1967
- Composing in Black and White: Code-Switching in the Songs of Sam Lucas
- Exploring Transitions in Popular Music: Censorship from Apartheid to Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Rap Music and Rap Audiences Revisited: How Race Matters in the Perception of Rap Music
- Deaths and Silences: Coding and Defiance in Music about AIDS
- Teaching Silence in the Twenty-First Century: Where are the Missing Women Composers?
- Veiled Voices: Music and Censorship in Post-Revolutionary Iran
- Index
