I remember listening to it on FM radio back in the 70s and thinking ‘how can they get away with that f-bomb?’ (while not minding in the slightest, of course).
Whatever the US equivalent of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is, why wouldn’t they have immediately pulled the song from airplay?
And were Fagan & Co. the only ones to pull off an f-bomb in regular radio airplay?
For those who don’t know - cued up to the spot:
I don’t know that I remember this particular Steely Dan song on the radio. But, being a teen in the 80s I thought Steely Dan was boring old person music. By the time I got to my 30s I realized how wrong I was. So much I saw them play at Red Rocks. This is a great song.
The other example I am aware of is the Who’s “Who Are You?”, although I’ve noticed the local iHeart Media classic rock station has edited that section out.
I love this song because it does the exact opposite of what Steely Dan always does: they limit themselves to exactly one chord. Instead of their usual rich harmony, it’s the poorest possible harmony. They’ve imposed a strict constraint, around which other creative possibilities (rhythmic, lyrical, etc.) have flourished, as they will do when channeled like that. It’s brilliant.
I guess I haven’t woken up yet - for the life of me I can’t find the f-bomb. I just now read that it’s in the second chorus, which I’m pretty sure I gave a good listen to, and didn’t catch anything, so, may I trouble you to indicate the time that it appears, here?
Forgot to mention it was at this concert I bought myself a Steely Dan t-shirt. It was outrageous.
Note that the FCC did not monitor the airwaves for obscenities. They responded to complaints.
If no one complained, they don’t have any reason to act. So if the audience wasn’t bothered by it, they wouldn’t investigate. Either that, or no one who might complain didn’t hear the lyric.
It appears to have been edited out of the video you posted.
However, in the following version, it’s around the 5:43 mark.
Ah, indeed!
Thanks.
ETA:
heh, just relistened to my link, and it’s at 5:40. 
I had just started high school when this song (“Who Are You”) was a hit (and Keith Moon died). The local stations ALWAYS played it with f-bomb intact, and we’d gather around the radio just to hear it. LOL
A local corporate station when I was in college in the early 1990s occasionally played what we now call Deep Tracks, and I was quite surprised to hear this, uncensored no less.
So it is!
My hearing sucks, obviously.
Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” contains the phrase “Up against the wall, motherfuckers.” They just slid it on by, it’s not easy to parse out.
One of my favorite Steely Dan songs, and since I’m a Dan fan that’s saying a lot.
This was an album track, so it was much easier to get away with than a single. Nobody was very much troubled by a word on an album slated for FM even in 1973.
Cite.
Thanks for the list.
Never heard that Harry Nilsson tune before - impressive, catchy!
Thanks.
A good set-up, that way. Whole lot less headaches on both sides that the FCC isn’t panopticonning the situation.
If this started to include s-bombs (the more I’m racking my brain on this)…
Unless I missed it on that list, the only John Cougar Mellencamp song I can tolerate (actually, also the “The Wall” pretty well rocks) is “Play Guitar”, which has an s-bomb about being macho.
With headphones, you can catch Carl Palmer dropping an s-bomb at 0:13…
UGH I always hated that album cover. 
More than Love Beach? 
Many of the ones I remember being played uncensored on late 70s/early 80s FM rock radio are on that list… The Who’s “Doctor Jimmy”, Pink Floyd - “Money”. KMET-FM would regularly play Jefferson Starship’s “Stairway to Cleveland” with the a capella refrain “Fuck you! We do what we want!” uncensored.
It seems like the censoring greatly increased in the 90s, which is the same time all the consolidation happened and most radio stations went from being locally owned to being owned by the same 3-4 mega corporations. In the 80s, rock stations regularly played the album version of Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing”. I haven’t heard the second verse (“the little faggot…”) on the radio in over three decades.
I was a young DJ on an AM Top 40 station when this album was released, and I played “Show Biz Kids” off the album during my shift several times before I caught the obscenity. I was the night jock, so no big deal, right? But this was on a Sunday afternoon. I heard that and thought my career was over, but no one called or complained, and I never played it again. The station in general played the edited single.
Oh, there was an edited single? I’ve never heard that. Though, I did think Show Biz Kids was the first single.
I’ve heard people complain and blame the disappointing sales of Countdown on Show Biz Kids being the first single. Who knows? But, that’s a FUCKING great song.
At the very end of the fade out of The Babys’ “Midnight Rendezvous”, John Waite sings “All I really wanna do. Oh I really wanna fuck you.” Pretty sure most stations would have potted it down before it came on the air.
On a slight tangent, I was wondering if Larry William’s “Bad Boy” (1958) might be one of the first songs with a lyric that mentions a bowel movement (“Well he worries his teacher 'til she’s ready to poop”)
Oh, I’m sure he meant it in a “poop out” sense. But of course any juvenile hearing it would snicker 'cause he snuck a bad word in.
A very subversive song.