This Is Not A Love Song - "Crossing Over Into Free Enterprise" With Johnny And PIL

John Lydon found there was a future after all in 1983 - in free enterprise!

Cally Asks:

In the 1983 PIL song This Is Not A Love Song, I thought John Lydon sang: "I'm crossing over into free enterprise/big business is very wise". But I keep reading on lyrics sites that it was "e-enterprise". This makes no sense as E's were not big business then - lol! Which is it?

It's free enterprise, of course. The mantra of the 1980s. Good song that, even though it wasn't a bit like Spandau Ballet's big 1983 hit, True. But then it certainly wasn't a love song! :)

Back in 1983, the internet was unheard of by the vast majority of us (in fact it was still coming into being) and, as the World Wide Web would not even be invented until 1989 and was not up-and-running until the early 1990s, that's how things remained. The "on-line" experience was a far rarer - a far geekier and nerdier - experience back then.

However, the phrase "Free Enterprise" was everywhere in the 1980s, even the ferry tragedy of 1987 contained it. The ferry's name? Herald Of Free Enterprise of course!

But no "e-enterprise" We simply didn't have the technology to get selling on-line, although computing came on in leaps and bounds during the decade, including the arrival of the first commercial computer mouse, the invention and release of the first versions of Microsoft Windows, plus the likes of the ZX Spectrum and the Apple Mac.

However, John Lydon may have updated his lyrics in more recent renditions of This Is Not A Love Song.

Bless 'im.