Because Ivan Jirous believed that English was the lingua franca of rock music, he invited Paul Wilson, a Canadian who had been teaching in Prague, to teach the band the lyrics of the American songs they covered and to translate their original Czech lyrics into English. Wilson served as lead singer for "the Plastics" from 1970 to 1972, and during this time, the band's repertoire drew heavily on songs by the Velvet Underground and the Fugs. The only two songs sung in Czech in this period were "Na sosnové větvi" and "Růže a mrtví", both of which had lyrics written by Czech poet Jiří Kolář. Wilson encouraged them to sing in Czech. After he left, saxophonist Vratislav Brabenec joined the band and they began to draw upon poet Egon Bondy whose work had been banned by the government. In the following three years, Bondy's lyrics nearly completely dominated PPU's music. In December 1974, the band recorded their first "studio" album, "Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned" (the title being a play on The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), which was released in France in 1978.