Page 24 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019
life
bass guitarist Flowers, 81, admits he
is bewildered by the row that was
triggered by a single complaint to
Ofcom about the song’s broadcast
on golden oldies radio station Gold.
‘I suppose we were just rather naïve
musicians. Racism and sexism were
not part of our consciousness then,’
he says.
‘I don’t think it occurred to any of
us there was anything wrong with it.
People didn’t say “what terrible lyrics”,
they thought it was rather catchy.
‘Of course, I can see why it wouldn’t
be very acceptable now, but as it is
there are far worse things played on
Radio 1 these days, songs full of
obscenities and violence.’F
OR FLOWERS, the dispute
resembles a similar row over
the Lou Reed song, Walk On
The Wild Side, on which he
played and which was banned from
the airwaves because of its references
to ‘coloured girls’.
‘I think there are far more impor-
tant things to be worried about these
days than musical lyrics, such as the
speed lorries drive through our
village and the lack of a zebra
crossing,’ he says.
In the summer of 1969, Herbie, who
played his first instrument during
nine years’ service in the RAF, joined
other session musicians to form Blue
Mink. They were keyboard player
Roger Coulam, classically trained
guitarist Alan Parker, who went on
to write scores for Hollywood films
and TV shows, and drummer Barry
Morgan, who learned his trade on
cruise ships and played on many of
Tom Jones’s biggest hits.
Initially the group was meant to be
an instrumental band, but they
decided to bring in not one but two
vocalists, African-American former
gospel singer Madeline Bell and
Roger Cook, who’d penned the
Fortunes No 2 hit, You’ve Got Your
Troubles with his songwritingpartner, Roger Greenaway. At the
time, there were few British pop
groups with a female singer and even
fewer where the singer was black. If
the band had a novelty feel, then
that may have been deliberate.
Until then Madeline, who was a
backing singer for Dusty Springfield
and sang on Joe Cocker’s cover of
The Beatles’ With A Little Help From
My Friends, had enjoyed limited
success. Melting Pot changed all
that. Its optimistic lyrics imagine the
creation of a single human from(^) people of many races.
‘Take a pinch of white man, wrap
by Richard
Kay
O
NE summer’s day in 1969,
musician Herbie Flowers and
fellow members of the newly
formed pop group Blue Mink
were finishing a recording
session when singer-songwriter
Roger Cook sat at the piano and
played a song he had just written.
It was called Melting Pot and the rest of the
band loved it. Within 20 minutes they had
recorded it and studio bosses were convinced
they had a first hit on their hands.
By November it had reached Number Three
in the Top 20 and with 15 weeks in the charts
was one of the biggest-selling 45rpm records
of the year.
Even by 1969 standards, the lyrics about
racial harmony were pretty silly. Yesterday, it
was revealed that almost exactly 50 years
after Blue Mink said the world’s problems
could be solved by ‘a great big melting pot’,
their debut hit has been banned by regulators
as being ‘offensive’.
Ofcom said references to ‘curly Latin kinkies’
and ‘yellow Chinkies’ were too extreme for
modern audiences.
The media watchdog said ‘Chinky’ was an
unacceptable anti-Chinese slur and was
exacerbated by the use of the word ‘yellow’.
Other words deemed unfit for the ears of
easily offended modern listeners included
‘Red Indian boy’ and ‘coffee-coloured people’
because of the risk of hurt to minority groups.
Sitting at his home in Ditchling, East Sussex,
D A M N A T I O N
SO PERVERSE
Their cult hit
Melting Pot
sang of a
gloriously
multicultural
world. But
now it’s been
banned — oh
the irony — for
being ‘racist’
... after ONE
complaint.
No wonder
the band
are in a spin
OF A
by Christopher
Har t
THE irony is hard to avoid. A drippy
hippy song about racial harmony
has incurred the wrath of the
arbiters of public taste thanks to, of
all things, its ‘racism’.
As anyone who has heard Melting
Pot knows, and as its name suggests,
it is a Utopian anthem to people of
all races getting along.
Yet a single complaint from one
outraged listener was enough to
convince regulator Ofcom that the
song is racist.
In today’s hysterical climate, that
was enough for the station to feel
obliged never to play it again.
Ofcom is supposed to be the wise
and sober judge of our culture and
communications media. It is not
supposed to react to every com-
plaint from single-issue members
of the public with all the dignity of a
startled goose. And yet, after the
quango’s joyless busybodies
decreed that the passage of time
did not mitigate the song’s offen-
siveness, Gold has now removed
Melting Pot from its playlists and it
will not be heard again.
The miserable saga proves what I
have long suspected: that Ofcom,
and too many similar organisations,
are more interested in pandering
to today’s knee-jerk offence culture
than doing their jobs. Contained
EDITOR AT LARGE