"Sweet Gene Vincent" remained in Ian Dury's set list for almost his entire career, even after other faster paced songs like "Plaistow Patricia" and "Blackmail Man" had been dropped because of the singer's worsening health and was played at his final concert at the London Palladium in February 2000.

Curiously Dury constantly denied that identification with the singer, also crippled and forced to wear a leg brace, was in any way an attraction.

Dury chose Vincent's first single, "Woman Love" as one of his 8 songs when he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs show.

Ian Dury spent six weeks researching his lyric and read two biographies of Gene Vincent before finishing it and handing it to the song's co-writer, Chas Jankel.

Suggs, the lead singer of Madness and a fan of Dury, included several references to the lyrics of "Sweet Gene Vincent" in his tribute song to Ian Dury, "Oranges and Lemons", which he recorded with Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra for the Small World, Big Band Volume 1 album.

The song's B-side, "You're More Than Fair", was written some years before its eventual release while Ian Dury was a member of his pub-rock band Kilburn & The Highroads where it was a live favourite and was frequently in their set.

The song features Ian Dury singing in a mock-Jamaican accent (such as, for instance, the Kinks' "Apeman") to a reggae tune and tells the amusing story of a couple having sex as they move through the house, with foreplay beginning in the hall and the song ending with the male's ejaculation on the roof.

Earlier versions of the song, recorded with Kilburn & The Highroads feature different lyrics that do not keep up the 'sexual act in a location in the home' theme and replace 'clitoris' with the more crude term 'fanny' (in Britain fanny is used to mean the vagina, rather than the backside as it is in America).

The backing track to Sweet Gene Vincent (that is, an instrumental version) has recently been released on Edsel Records' 2-Disc re-issue of New Boots and Panties!!.

The bit before the first chorus is sung by Andy Serkis in the ending of the Ian Dury biography film Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.