"Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass"

[scramjet]

I have three Blondie CDs: Parallel Lines, Best of Blondie, and Blonde and Beyond, all of which contain the above line in "Heart of Glass" rhyming with "and it was a gas". I don't remember those words being in the song when it was on the radio. I'm sure, at age 14, I would have noticed and been amused. I doubt a song with those lyrics could have got the massive airplay "Heart of Glass" did back then.

So - There must have been a "clean" version back then that has been overrun by the now-ubiquitous "dirty" version.

Does anyone know the history on this?

Does the "clean" version exist anywhere?

[savethewave]

There WAS a radio-station only copy of the 45, which had the album version on one side, and the "clean" version on the other.

By the way, that's the version Blondie performed on the "Mike Douglas Show" in 1979. God, I wish I had that one on video, and

[cubby]

Actually, I remember people making a big stink about this back in 1979. I had the 45 version and it was definitely the "clean version". When the song hit big, there was a sticker put on the Parallel Lines that said something like "Contains the uncensore

[skinnytie]

The "pain in the ass" version was played on the radio here. I remember my mother going off on using "that language" on AM radio (little did she know I had the album for a couple of months already). Personally, I didn't see what the big deal was; Pink Fl

[Kingofpain]

and roger daltrey singing "ahhh who the fuck are you!" which to this day still gets massive airplay on the classic rock stations