Just playing the record

"On New Year's Eve, 1977, we were invited to meet with Grace Jones at Studio 5 but she didn't leave our name at the door and the doorman wouldn't let us in. Studio 54 was that kind of place. Our music might be playing inside, but the place was packed for New Year's Eve and this was early in our career. Anyway, my apartment happened to be one block away, so Bernard and I went there to sort of quell our sorrows. We grabbed a couple of bottles of champagne from the corner liquor store and then went back to my place, plugged in our instruments and started jamming."

"And since we were feeling bad, we played music to make us feel good. We started jamming on the now-famous riff — It was just something that happened.So I incorporated a little linear lick and we started singing, 'f**k off!' [Repeats the lick.] 'Aaaaahh, fuck off!'

"So 'Fuck Off' was a protest song, and we actually thought it was pretty good — 'Aaaaahh, f**k off!' It had a vibe. I was thinking 'This could be the anthem of everybody who gets cut off on the street by a cab driver or any kids who want to say this to their parents.' You know, 'Hey, I wasn't saying it, man! I was just playing the record.'"