The Equals aren’t considered one of the best music groups of the 1970s but they are still talked about, both for their music and because they were one of the first racially integrated bands.
Founded in North London, the band consisted of two brothers of Jamaican ancestry (Derv and Lincoln Gordon), two white Londoners (Pat Lloyd and John Hall) and a Guyanese-British guitarist Eddie Grant, who subsequently had hits as a solo singer in the 1980s with “Electric Avenue” and “Romancing the Stone.”
It was Grant who wrote their 1971 song “Black Skin, Blue Eyed Boys,” which fused a plea for interracial harmony with anti-Vietnam War sentiments. Judge for yourself, the lyrics to the song include: “You see, the black skin blue-eyed boys, they ain’t gonna fight no wars/ They ain’t got no country/ They ain’t got no creed/ People won’t be black or white/ The world will be half-breed.”
” Black Skin, Blue Eyed Boys” is an ode to a biracial world. In 2011 The Guardian dubbed the song a “hymn to diversity,” while Pitchfork described it last summer as no less than “a glorious prophecy for the human race.” A relatively catchy antithesis to racism.
And yet last month the BBC Radio 2 program Pick of the Pops, which replays classic UK singles charts, wouldn’t play “Black Skin, Blue Eyed Boys” on air on the grounds that its title was too racially insensitive.
Pick of the Pops presenter Paul Gambaccini told the Word in your Ear podcast: “On Pick of the Pops last Saturday we were not allowed to play “Black Skin, Blue-Eyed Boys” by The Equals—can you dig it?—because of racial content.” He added that when it came to ethnic nervousness, “some people who are even ahead of me and are extending it into realms we might consider ludicrous.”
Is this a classic case of the BBC—whose political correctness knows no bounds—drawing the wrong conclusion from the song’s title for fear of attracting misguided complaints?
Lloyd Bradley wrote in his 2013 book Sounds Like London: “Black Skin, Blue Eyed Boys” was the first recognizably black British statement—a song that saw itself as being [English] in both words and music, and announced that London’s indigenous black soul music was entirely self-sufficient.”
Pitchfork noted that back in 1971 “Black Skin, Blue Eyed Boys” ran afoul of the BBC for completely different reasons than now: “When [beloved BBC TV music show] “Top of the Pops” asked Grant to change the lyrics to something a little less revolutionary before allowing the Equals to perform the song on television, he refused.
“After years of letting their name and biracial lineup speak for themselves, the Equals finally owned their identity. With a vengeance.”
The wheel has turned full circle, and the BBC has now taken The Equals’ identity away from them. Eddy Grant, whose other hits include anti-apartheid late-80s anthem “Give Me Hope Joanna,” is especially likely to take a dim view of the BBC’s PC zealousness.