On the Triumph of Karaoke Culture and Punk Pantomime

Poster design for Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave 

(Not exactly Jamie Reid, is it?)

 

 

I. 

 

Shortly before he died in April 2010, Malcolm McLaren bemoaned the fact that artistic creativity (which is a chaotic phenomenon that often ends in failure) was increasingly becoming impossible within what he described as a karaoke world - i.e., an ersatz society, that only provides us with an opportunity to safely revel in the past achievements of others; a life lived by proxy [1]. 

 

And, whilst I'm a little uneasy with his use of words like authenticity, McLaren was making an important (though hardly original) point: Britain's got talent; but it's lost its soul. 

 

And so it is, fifteen years on, the Dominion Theatre in London's West End and numerous other venues around the UK and Ireland are planning to stage Ged Graham's Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave ...   

 

II.

 

Ged Graham is a 62-year-old Irish writer, musician, actor, podcaster and producer; what my mother would call a jack of all trades, but, let's be generous, and say he's a multi-talented and versatile individual with a great many passions and ideas. The sort of person who, when you speak with them, always has another project in the pipeline. 

 

The sort of person also who claims to have lived through punk as a teenager and now, à la Danny Boyle, wants to turn this event into a musical stage show; a combination of pantomime, karaoke, and nostalgia for those who want to sit down and enjoy an evening's entertainment. As Graham says in an interview: 

 

"At sixty-two you don't want to be in a nightclub, watching a band on stage. You want to be sat down with a glass of wine or an £8 bottle of beer in a theatre. The old knees just don’t want to do the standing up gigs anymore ..." [2] 

 

That may be true: but not all of us have come to the conclusion that punk is now simply a family-friendly narrative that provides an opportunity to reminisce and have a good singalong; some of us don't wish to be taken on a rollercoaster ride by an incredibly talented cast of musicians, singers and dancers; some of us seriously doubt that the punk attitude can be recreated on stage (even if it can be mimicked, just as punk fashions can be knocked up by costume designers).   

 

Graham may insist in a promotional statement that Pretty Vacant is "not just a show - it's a rebellion against the ordinary!" [3] - but that, as Steve Jones would say, is a load of old bollocks.  

I don't know if Malcolm will be spinning in his grave at this latest development, or looking on with Sid and laughing. But I do know that members of the following bands who - along with many, many more - presumably gave permission for their music to be used should hang their heads in shame:

 

Sex Pistols

The Clash

Blondie

The Damned

Ramones

Buzzcocks

Sham 69

The Undertones

Tom Robinson Band

Ian Dury and the Blockheads

The Police

The Jam

Generation X

Siouxsie and the Banshees

The Pretenders

Joy Division

The Stranglers

The Rezillos

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers who are interested can click here to watch McLaren deliver his final public talk at the Handheld Learning Conference (2009). Originally entitled 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Txt Pistols', the talk is now better known by the title it appears under on ted.com - 'Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture'. 

[2] Interview with Ged Graham by Kevin Cooper on UK Music Reviews (5 March 2024): click here. 

[3] Click here to read this statement in full on the Pretty Vacant website. You can also buy tickets, visit a picture gallery, sign up to a mailing list, or watch a trailer for the show on the website. The latter can also be found on YouTube: click here.  

It Was on the Good Ship Venus ...

Sex Pistols: Friggin' in the Riggin' 

(Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

As many readers will recall, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) ends aboard the good ship Venus with the Sex Pistols reduced from flesh and blood punk rockers, who once called for anarchy in the UK, to cartoon pirates singing a bawdy 19th-century drinking song and heading for disaster on the rocks. 

 

Still, whilst the song itself may have a strictly limited appeal, the animated sequence contains many delicious moments, two of which I'd like to comment on here ...

 

 

II.

 

Firstly, there's the scene in which Rotten is made to walk the plank and is pushed into the sea at sword point by Captain McLaren, where he is quickly gobbled up by a hungry shark branded with the Virgin logo. It's très drôle.  

 

But before we discuss why the lead singer was cruelly dispatched in this manner, we might stop and ask if pirates ever really used walking the plank as a method of execution ... Apparently, the answer to this is yes, but only on rare occasions and it was practised mostly for the amusement of the crew. Nevertheless, it has become a popular pirate motif within popular culture.

 

In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1884), for example, there are several mentions of walking the plank, including the opening scene in which Billy Bones tells blood-curdling stories of the practice to Jim Hawkins. And Captain Hook and his men also had a penchant for making prisoners walk the plank in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904).

 

But, returning to the case of Johnny Rotten in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ... His symbolic execution illustrates the fact that shortly after the Winterland show in San Francisco on 18 January 1978, it was decided by Malcolm and other members of the group that he simply had to go. 

 

Not only was everybody bored with being part of a successful rock 'n' roll band, but, according to McLaren, Rotten was starting to develop certain starry pretensions and thinking about how he might develop a long-term (possibly solo) career in the music industry. In this, he had the backing of record company executives, who saw him as a valuable asset and someone whom - unlike McLaren - they could work with.

 

Further, McLaren was of the view that in order to gain everything it was necessary to sacrifice something, or someone, and Rotten - whom he now characterised as a collaborator - was the perfect candidate.     

 

And so, whilst throwing him overboard was an unexpected move, some might say it was also a bold stroke of genius; as was sending Cook and Jones to Brazil and recruiting the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs as the Sex Pistols' new lead vocalist, but that's another story ...  

 

 

III.

If walking the plank is a legendary pirate practice, then the idea that a sea captain must always go down with his ship is arguably a more noble maritime tradition; one that assigns to the latter ultimate responsibility for both his vessel and all who sail aboard her (crew and passengers alike). 

 

I'm not sure McLaren in his role as captain of the good ship Venus cared in the slightest about saving the lives (or musical careers) of his punk crew - in fact, having thrown Rotten to the sharks and determined to effectively skuttle the ship, Malcolm didn't give a fuck who would sink or swim and went beneath the waves standing to attention, but with a mischievous grin on his face. 

 

Nineteenth-century ideals of virtue and doing the right thing - of always following protocol and respecting tradition - were exactly what the Sex Pistols wished to destroy and McLaren prided himself on the fact that he was irresponsible and didn't manage so much as wilfully mismanage the group.  

 

 

Screen shots from  

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Friggin' in the Riggin'" - along with Sid's version of the Eddie Cochran song "Something Else" - was released as a double A-side single on 23 February 1979 (both taken from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack also released in Feb '79 on Virgin Records). It got to number three on the UK charts and sold 382,000 copies, making it the Sex Pistols' biggest selling single. To play and watch on YouTube: click here.   

[2] Animation for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was by Bill Mather, Andy Walker, Gil Potter, Derek W. Hayes, and Phil Austin (Supervised by Animation City). 

 

 

Johnny Vs Jimmy (Notes on a Punk Spat)

Johnny Rotten on Jukebox Jury (30 June 1979)

Jimmy Pursey on Jukebox Jury  (4 August 1979)

 

I. 

 

As disussed in a recent post, Jimmy Pursey - punk's self-proclaimed Cockney Cowboy - was desperate to become a Sex Pistol and assume the mantle of punk figurehead once Johnny Rotten had been unceremoniously thrown out of the band (at Malcolm's instigation) by Paul Cook and Steve Jones [1].   

 

Unfortunately for Hersham's favourite son, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For Cook and Jones soon realised that working with Pursey - an emotional geezer who always wore his heart on his sleeve - was even more demanding than working with Rotten. 

 

Further - and this was the real deal breaker - when they finally got together in the studio to write some new songs, Pursey failed to come up with the goods: "His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near." [2]    

 

Nevertheless, the three parted on amicable terms and there was never any of the intense animosity that existed between Messrs Pursey and Rotten ...

 

 

II. 

 

When or why this animosity begins, I don't know: perhaps it has origins that are now lost in the mists of punk history. 

 

Or perhaps Rotten was simply unhappy with the thought that Pursey might replace him as a vocalist in the Sex Pistols; a possibility with which he was taunted by Angelic Upstart Mond Cowie whilst appearing with his new band, Public Image Ltd., on Check It Out in the summer of '79. 

 

Describing Rotten as a terrible singer, a sell-out, and an old man, the Geordie guitarist finished his defamatory attack by saying: "I'm glad Jimmy Pursey's got his job in the Sex Pistols" [3].

 

During an interview with Danny Baker in this same period, Jimmy Pursey's name comes up in relation to the question of class and Rotten says:

 

"I certainly don't have to perform at being working class. There's so much made of it, as if the more dumb you are the more glorious you become. That's why Pursey is so well-liked, because he plays his role for everyone. It's so easy to manipulate, it fits into a nice little clichéd bracket - no threat. It's once you break that apart you become a worry to them." [4] 

 

Shortly afterwards, Rotten put in a comical appearance on Jukebox Jury, in which he did his (by then familiar, but still highly entertaining) I hate everything routine followed by a premiditated strop and early exit off set [5]. 

 

Appearing on the same show five weeks later, Pursey couldn't resist having a little dig at Rotten and doing a mocking impression of the latter, much to the amusement of host Noel Edmonds [6].  

Strangely, however, things didn't really come to a head until a quarter of a century later ...

 

In August 2005, Pursey was involved in a fight - well, let's call it a brief altercation - with Rotten whilst they were both queuing for travel visas at the United States Embassy in London. Spotting the latter, Pursey decided to let bygones be byones and went over to offer his hand - which, to be fair, is the decent (and manly) thing to do.

 

Unfortunately, Rotten by this date was well on his way to becoming a genuinely nasty piece of work [7] and he spurned the chance to kiss and make up, launching a foul-mouthed tirade and throwing a cup of coffee over Pursey, who naturally retaliated by trying to kick the fat fifty-year old Sex Pistol, before armed police intervened to calm the situation.  

 

Afterwards, Pursey attempted to make light of this slightly embarrassing scrap, whilst Rotten seemed to want to deny it had even happened, dismissing Pursey's claims in a typical manner: "All the usual lies. He's not fit to be in the same sentence as me. What do you expect from a low-rent, fake mockney, two-bob runt?" [8] 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring to the post of 17 June 2023 - 'Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)' - click here. 

 

[2] Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

[3] Public Image Limited appeared on this Tyne Tees music show on 2 July 1979. They performed the track 'Chant' from the (soon to be released) album Metal Box and were then made to watch a filmed interview with the Angelic Upstarts before being subjected to what Rotten called a "cheapskate comedy interrogation". The whole thing can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here.

 

[4] Danny Baker, 'The Private Life of Public Image', NME, (16 June 1979): click here to read the interview in full online.  

[5] Those who wish to watch Rotten's appearance on Jukebox Jury (30 June 1979), alongside Elaine Paige (seems sweet), Joan Collins (still sexy at 46), and Alan (Fluff) Freeman (a cunt in a wig), can click here.

 

[6] To watch Jimmy Pursey's appearance on Jukebox Jury (4 August 1979), alongside Rick Wakeman (a complacent hippie), Billy Connolly (unfunny Scottish bore), and Judy Tzuke (a one-hit wonder), click here. Pursey does his brief Rotten impression beginning at 8:56.  

[7] Just ask Welsh songstress Duffy, whom he reduced to tears at the Mojo Awards three years later (but that's another story ...)

[8] For a report on the incident written at the time in the Irish Examiner (24 August 2005), click here.

Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)

The Sham Pistols: Jimmy Pursey, Steve Jones, Dave Treganna, and Paul Cook

Photo by Paul Slattery (July 1979)

 

 

James Timothy Pursey - or Jimmy Pursey as he likes to be known - is the founder and frontman of British punk band Sham 69. 

 

Although initially inspired by the Ramones, Jimmy always wanted to be a Clash City Rocker; he even dreamed of one day becoming a Sex Pistol ...

 

For despite the fact that Sham 69 were one of the most commercially successful punk groups - achieving five Top 20 singles and making regular appearances on Top of the Pops - Jimmy lacked that one thing he truly desired - credibility and the respect of his punk superiors.     

 

Thus, imagine his joy when, on 30 April 1978, Jimmy was invited on stage at Victoria Park in East London, to perform alongside Joe and Mick, belting out 'White Riot' in his own inimitable mockney style, in front of a 100,000 people: click here.

 

And imagine his still greater excitement when, the following year, having kicked Rotten out of their band, Steve Jones and Paul Cook invited Jimmy to become the new voice and face of the Sex Pistols - or, more precisely, the Sham Pistols as they were (possibly) going to be known.

 

Alas, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For although Cook and Jones found Jimmy amiable enough at first and things seemed to be progressing well in the studio - in July 1979, the singer informed the NME they had recorded 10 songs and would be ready to tour by September that year - Sham 69 were still contractually bound to Polydor whilst Cook and Jones were signed to Virgin.

 

Apart from this legal issue, relations were also beginning to sour on a personal level between Jimmy and the two former Sex Pistols, coming to a head on 19 August, when the latter walked out of a recording session and Jones hilariously declared: It's worse than working with Rotten.

 

Elaborating in an interview at the time, Jones described how an overly emotional Jimmy kept crying and stuff like that. Worse, he and Cook had come to the conclusion that although Jimmy could talk the talk, when push came to shove, he couldn't walk the walk: All he wanted to do was be a Sex Pistol.   

 

Recalling events in his autobiography, almost 40 years later, Jones writes: 

 

"When me and Cookie gave Jimmy a try, it was never going to be the Sex Pistols in our minds, we always thought of it as a new group. The odd thing about it was that we liked him, but when we got together to try and write some songs in a studio out in the country, he couldn't fucking come up with anything. His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near". 

- Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

After the dissolution of the embryonic new band, Cook and Jones went on to form The Professionals and poor little Jimmy moved on to solo projects, later reforming Sham 69, with whom he still performs today, aged 68. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Natural Born Killer', a track by the Sham Pistols recorded in June 1979 (later reworked with new lyrics by Cook and Jones as 'Kick Down the Doors'): click here. 

 

Thanks to Sophie S. for her help fact checking this post. 

 

For a related post to this one, on Johnny Rotten Vs Jimmy Pursey, click here.

 

 

Get Knotted: In Praise of the Hanky as Headwear and Why I Hate the Gumbys

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy in the UK knotted hanky 

and establishing himself as the coolest Sex Pistol

 

The fashioning of a handkerchief into protective headwear on a hot sunny day by tying knots together at the corners is, sadly, a practice that has mostly died out amongst Englishmen. 

 

In fact, the last champion of this do-it-yourself look that I can think of was Sex Pistol Steve Jones, who, by coupling it with a mohair string jumper, gave it a brilliantly avant-garde punk edge, whilst remaining true to the working class tradition from which it came.

 

Partly, this look has declined due to the triumph of the ubiquitous baseball cap and other more trendy forms of headgear. But it's also due to the continuous and contemptuous mocking of British working class culture by the media, including Oxbridge educated comedians such as the Pythons. 

 

One recalls, for example, the brick-carrying Gumbys, who would wear knotted white handkerchiefs on their heads and have shirts rolled up to the elbows and trousers rolled up to the knees. They would usually behave in a violent and oafish manner and speak as if mentally retarded.

 

Even at a very young age, it was clear to me that John Cleese and his privileged friends were sneering at men of my father's generation and background. However, rather than make me ashamed of the latter, it made me despise the former and their condescending classism; the fact that they thought it funny to punch down.

 

And so, I would sincerely encourage readers next time they venture out in the sun to knot a hanky and wear it on their head with pride, à la Steve Jones - oh, and when I say a hanky, I mean a hanky (i.e., a thin cotton square) and not some poncy attempt to reimagine and refine the hanky-as-hat for which you have to pay through the nose like a tweed pig.

 

  

Hooray for Male Hosiery

Men's tights by Gerbe 

(the famous French hosiery manufacturer, est. 1895)

 

I. 

 

There are not many advantages to being diagnosed with superficial vein reflux (and associated varicosties) in your leg and then having endovenous surgery to address this. 

 

Indeed, the disadvantages and risks are clear; lumps, bumps, bruises, scarring, pain and discomfort, not to mention possible sensory nerve damage (causing numbness) and the danger of deep vein thrombosis.

 

However, once the layers and layers of mummy-like bandaging and protective gauze are removed 48-hours after the operation, one is afforded the opportunity to parade around in full-length elasticated black stockings and that at least affords a frisson of pleasure. 

 

One can even pretend to be Paul Morel, who famously found it thrilling to pull on a pair of Clara's stockings when alone in her bedroom [1]; or Steve Jones, at the end of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, holding up Malcolm's ten lessons inscribed on tablets of stone, like a punk Moses, whilst wearing black rubber stockings [2].

 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, whilst men wearing stockings is today mostly seen as either comic or kinky, historically this practice was the norm for long periods; from the Middle Ages until the mid-late 16th century men wore hose and proudly displayed their legs (whilst covering their groin with a cod piece).

 

After this date, the fashion was for separate breeches and stockings, but men still loved to show a shapely calf and members of the nobility would wear stockings made of expensive silk or the finest wool (rather than the coarser fabrics worn by the lower classes).

 

Now, sadly, male legs are either hidden under trousers, or bare and exposed in shorts and it is only ballet dancers, super-heroes, and drag queens who get to regularly and openly wear tights [3].

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Chapter XII of D. H. Lawrence's, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 381. 

 

[2] Actually, I have misremembered this scene; Jones wears a black rubber (or PVC) cape with bright red PVC thigh boots; not stockings. See The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

[3] Thankfully, at least women are increasingly wearing hoisery once more, as the fashion for bare legs wanes and coloured tights are bang on trend for 2023. And there are some who fly the flag for male legwear; see for example the blog Hoisery for Men: click here.     

 

Submission

Sex Pistols: 'Submission' (1977) [1]

 

I. 

 

According to Rotten's recollection, it was Malcolm who suggested the band should write a BDSM-themed song with the title 'Submission' - they were, after all, called the SEX Pistols, although only guitarist Steve Jones seemed to have an eye for the ladies, Rotten once famously dismissing the act of love as merely a couple of minutes squelching [2].

 

So perhaps no surprise that Rotten would decide to interpret the word submission as sub-mission, i.e., a submarine mission and write a song that is less about kinky sex of the sort McLaren fantasised and more about an immersive experience with a mysterious girl and her watery love [3].   

 

Reflecting on the song years later, Rotten said that whilst he and other band members enjoyed the punning humour of 'Submission', Malcolm failed to see the joke and, as a result, didn't ever attempt to suggest or shape the lyrical content of a song again, which, if true, is a shame; for Malcolm was clearly the guiding spirit and intelligence of everything that came out of 430 Kings Road, including the Sex Pistols [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

One assumes that McLaren was hoping Rotten might come up with something simlar to 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground, a track inspired by Masoch's famous novel of that title published in 1870 [5]. 

 

Unfortunately, however, Rotten is no Lou Reed and, as noted, kinky themes of sadomasochism, bondage, and submission mean nothing to him - or, at most, they provide an opportunity to mock those who do take these things seriously. Sex, style and subversion may be central to McLaren's philosophy and aesthetic, but Rotten is all about sarcasm, scorn and sneering. 

 

In a sense, Malcolm might have been better off kicking Rotten out of the band earlier than he did and bringing in another talented young singer-songwriter, namely, Adam Ant, who immediately quit the pub rock outfit Bazooka Joe (for whom he played bass) after seeing the Sex Pistols in November 1975 [6]. 

 

Adam soon fell in with key figures on the London punk scene, including Jordan, who famously worked at SEX, and, unlike Rotten, he was more than happy to explore the pervy world of fetish, producing some fantastic songs on the subject, such as 'Whip in My Valise' and 'Beat My Guest' [7]. He even coined a motto for his band Adam and the Ants which read: Ant music for sex people. 

 

Unfortunately, it would be two years after the breakup of the Sex Pistols, in January 1980, before McLaren finally paid attention to Adam and agreed to manage - or, more accurately, mentor - him for a month, receiving a flat fee of a £1000. It was from Malcolm, that Adam got his pirate-Apache look and the Burundi drum sound - so a bargain, really, although it also cost him the loss of his band, who left with McLaren to form Bow Wow Wow ... but that's another post.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1977) was originally released as an 11-track album, but included 'Submission' as a one-sided 7" single. It was soon added to the album and the 2012 remastered version can be heard by clicking here.

 

[2] See Charles M. Young's feature on (and interviews with) the Sex Pistols - 'Rock is Sick and Living in London' - in Rolling Stone (20 Oct 1977): click here. 

      Asked if he shares Sid's view that sex is boring, Rotten replies: "Love is two minutes and fifty seconds of squelching noises. It shows your mind isn't clicking right." It was a quote greatly appreciated by the writer Aubron Waugh.

[3] It's possible, of course, that Rotten has, in fact, penned an erotic number - even if it was primarily designed to annoy McLaren. Repeatedly singing about going down, for example, suggests an interest in oral sex and when Rotten refers to her undercurrent flowing one can't help but imagine that the song references either female ejaculation or golden showering. Ultimately, whilst I have no idea if Rotten has a penchant for urophilia, it's undeniably the case that he enjoys taking the piss. 

[4] Rotten would like the world to to believe that he almost singlehandedly wrote the songs, only begrudgingly admitting the role played by other band members. But it's hard to imagine that he would have come up with 'Anarchy in the U.K.' without McLaren putting ideas in his head and 'Pretty Vacant' was almost certainly written at the latter's instigation after he was inspired by Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation' (I discussed this in an earlier post that can be accessed by clicking here).   

 

[5] 'Venus in Furs', by the Velvet Underground - a band managed by McLaren's artistic hero Andy Warhol - was originally released on the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico. Readers who wish to listen can click here.

 

[6] In fact, the Sex Pistols - playing their first ever show - opened for Bazooka Joe at Saint Martin's Art College on 6 November, 1975.   

 

[7] 'Whip in My Valise' originally featured as the B-side of the Adam and the Ants single 'Zerox', released in July 1979. It was also added to the 1983 re-issue of the album Dirk Wears White Sox.

      'Beat My Guest' would eventually turn up as the B-side of 'Stand and Deliver', a single released in May 1981, and on the compilation album B-Side Babies (1994) Click here for the first of these tracks and here for the latter. 

Reflections on Another Jubilee (There's Still No Future in England's Dreaming)

Jamie Reid: sleeve artwork for 'God Save the Queen' 

by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977) 

National Portrait Gallery (NPG D48055)

 

 

I.

 

Celebrations to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee are set to take place over a special four-day bank holiday weekend from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 June 2022. 

 

Seeing the Union Jack bunting and hearing all the Gawd bless 'er majesty bullshit reminds me very much of the Silver Jubilee back in the fateful summer of 1977 - the summer of hate as it is sometimes known; i.e., the summer of punk ...

 

II.

Although not old enough to have partied with the Sex Pistols on their notorious jubilee boat trip along the Thames, I was old enough in 1977 to have woken up and realised what side of the bed I was lying on - and it wasn't the side with the red, white and blue sheets.

 

As far as I recall, I was pretty much the only Essex schoolchild who refused to attend (or have anything to do with) the street parties being held on my estate that June. 

 

And my sense of alienation - combined with a long hatred for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal family - meant that I now aligned myself with the Sex Pistols (what this meant in practice was keeping press cuttings about the band, taping 'Pretty Vacant' off the radio [1], and doing my best to perfect a Rotten persona). 

 

The Sex Pistols were the flowers in the dustbin and they were the poison in the human machine, but it was precisely their uncompromising nihilism that made them so attractive; that, and the way they looked [2]. 

 

III. 

 

Finally, while we're on the subject of the Sex Pistols ...

 

Tonight sees the start of Danny Boyle's six-part TV series Pistol - a Disneyfied punk pantomime loosely based on Steve Jones's memoir, in which a kamikaze gang of foul-mouthed yobs is reimagined by a cast of impossibly middle-class actors [3].

 

Were he still with us, I'm sure Malcolm would regard this as a prime example of what he termed karaoke culture [4] - i.e., one lacking in authentic sex, style or subversion.  

 

So, rather than sit through Danny Boyle's load of old bollocks, why not click here to watch a new version of the video for 'God Save the Queen' - one which combines footage shot by Julien Temple at the Marquee in May 1977, with footage of the Thames river boat party (a fun day out which resulted in eleven arrests, including Malcolm's). 

 

 

Notes

[1] I couldn't record 'God Save the Queen', of course, as it was banned from the airwaves. Famously, it was also prevented from getting to number one in the official UK singles chart, although it was the highest selling single during the jubilee week.  

[2] I loved the songs too, but the music was always secondary to the politics, the clothes, and the artwork - which is why I soon came to appreciate that Malcolm was the fabulous architect of chaos and Rotten just another juvenile Bill Grundy. Indeed, he's now something of an admirer of the Queen it appears.

 

[3] For earlier thoughts on Danny Boyle's Pistol click here and here. 

[4] Readers who are interested in this can watch McLaren's TED Talk of October 2009 on authentic creativity versus karaoke culture: click here. 

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration

Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as portrayed by Anson Boon and Louis Partridge

 

Director Danny Boyle irritated me in 2012 with his ludicrous opening ceremony for the London Olympics, featuring a twenty-minute tribute to the NHS, so when I heard that he was making a six-part TV series about the Sex Pistols (based on Steve Jones's Lonely Boy memoir), I began to prepare for a heavily sentimental take on the story.   

 

But, having now read further details of the project - including who's cast to play Rotten and company - and seen images released from on set, I fear what we are about to be offered is a revision of the past that exchanges sneering nihilism for an uplifting tale of smiling punks in touch with their feelings and struggling to live up to their bad boy image, whilst dealing with issues of abuse, deprivation, and addiction 

 

Even the title of the series - Pistol - speaks of castration; of a band rendered sexless and transformed from cocky young 'erberts with an eye for fashion into sensitive boys crying out for attention and who only wanted to be accepted by society and loved as people.*   

 

Still, as a friend of mine said, you never know; the project might be redeemed by a brilliant script (co-written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Craig Pearce) and some excellent performances from the young cast. I doubt it. But we'll see when the series airs next year.   

 

 

Notes

 

* John Lydon - who has already spoken out against Boyle's project - mocked this idea of poor misunderstood punks on 'Fodderstompf', the closing track of the first Public Image Ltd. album (Virgin Records, 1978): click here.  

 

For a related post to this one in which I discuss the relationship between acting and authenticity and address the question of whether anyone can be a Sex Pistol, click here. 

Banksy

Banksy: Girl with Balloon (London, 2002) 

 

(Note the chalked message on the wall; if that doesn't make you want to 

vomit, pop the balloon and shoot the artist, I don't know what would.)

 

 

I. 

 

There's a rather poignant moment in his interview with the Sex Pistols when Bill Grundy mourns the passing of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms. Classical composers mocked by Rotten as wonderful people whom, as Steve Jones reminds us, are long since dead [1]. 

 

It's as if Grundy realises that his time too is over and that the world he knows and loves - in which the majority shared his values and musical preferences - is coming to an end. 

 

Strangely, I felt something similar when I recently discovered that Britain's favourite artwork (according to a poll of 2,000 people conducted in 2017) is Girl with Balloon (2002) by Banksy ... 

 

Turner, Constable, Blake and Bacon have all died and no longer turn anybody on it seems, apart from a few old farts, myself included, and it's just our tough shit if tastes have changed and people now want banal (because immediately accessible) images and naive political clichés - which, let's be honest, is mostly what Banksy trades in - instead of complex, challenging works.

 

 

II. 

 

Now, just to be clear, I've nothing against a former public school boy making millions from the art world with his (sometimes amusing) stencilled designs whilst posing as part cultural prankster, part urban guerilla. And if people want to regard him as a folk hero and put his prints on their walls, that's fine by me. 

 

But, having said that, I do tend to agree with Alexander Adams, who argues that when one compares Banksy with, for example, Jean-Michel Basquiat - "another artist who started in the streets and moved to art galleries" - we soon discover the former's limitations: 

 

"Basquiat's art is alive because we see the artist changing his mind, discovering, adapting and revising. We see the art as it is being made. While Basquiat's art is palpably alive, Banksy's is dead - it is simply the transcription of a witty pre-designed image in a novel placement. There is no ambiguity or doubt, no possibility of misinterpretation. There's no fire and no excitement." [2]

 

Ultimately, concludes Adams - himself an artist, as well as a critic and poet - "Basquiat's art is so much richer and more inventive than Banksy's, which by contrast seems painfully limited and shallow" [3].

 

I'm not sure I agree, however, that a century from now people will still be viewing Basquiat and will have forgotten Banksy. And, as regular readers of Torpedo the Ark might appreciate, I have a lot of problems with several of the terms used here:   

 

"Banksy lacks most of the characteristics of a serious artist: originality, complexity, universality, ambiguity, depth and insight into human nature and the world generally." [4]

 

Indeed, reading this almost makes me want to embrace Banksy and tell Adams to keep his opinions to himself. 

 

One also wonders if Adams isn't just a tad jealous of an artist who, like Damien Hirst, has achieved such astonishing fame and fortune (speaking personally, I know that I would love to wield even a fraction of Banksy's influence over the popular imagination and envy both his talent for graphic design and flair for self-promotion).   

 

But, then, just when I'm starting to feel a certain fondness and admiration for Banksy, I think again of the above image and its message of hope and realise that Adams is right to ultimately brand him nothing but a "cosy culture warrior and peddler of pedestrian homilies" [5].     

 

Notes

 

[1] Bill Grundy's infamous interview with the Sex Pistols on the Today programme took place on 1 December, 1976: click here to relive the moment on YouTube - one which is as significant and as memorable for those of the punk generation as the Kennedy assassination was for those who witnessed events in Dallas on 22 November, 1963.

 

[2] Alexander Adams, 'Banksy and the triumph of banality', essay in The Critic (Jan 2020): click here to read online. Adams is quoting here from an earlier article of his which appeared on the Spiked website comparing Banksy and Basquiat.   

 

[3-5] Ibid. 

 

 

I'll Put a Knife Right In You: Notes on the Case of Sid and Nancy

Sid and Nancy indulge in a little knife play for the camera
Photos by Pierre Benain (1978) 

snapgalleries.com

 

 

Sex Pistol Sid Vicious had a fetishistic fascination with knives: he loved to play with knives: he loved to pose with knives. And, if The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is to be be believed, he was happy to threaten the good citizens of Paris with a knife if they got in his way whilst he was out cruising the boulevards and arcades looking for trouble.

 

Sid also liked to cut himself, both on and off stage. And his penchant for self-harm and violence was something he shared with his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who was a troubled (some might even say wayward) young woman. 

 

Diagnosed with schizophrena at fifteen, Nancy left home two years later and worked as a stripper and prostitute in New York, before moving to London in 1977, where she met Vicious, with whom she began an eighteen-month relationship. The star-crossed lovers were as devoted to one another as they were addicted to drugs and self-destructive behaviour.        

 

None of these facts, however, means that Sid murdered Nancy on that fateful night in October 1978. And it certainly doesn't mean that an unfairly vilified twenty-year old girl deserved such a horrible fate; lying semi-naked and bleeding to death on a cold bathroom floor, having received a single stab wound to the abdomen.*

 

The established facts of the case are well-documented. But we'll probably never know the truth of what actually happened; was it unintentional homocide ... was there another party involved ...?

 

Vicious was charged with second-degree murder, but died of a heroin overdose whilst out on bail and just days before he was due to go into a studio with Paul Cook and Steve Jones to record an album of popular standards in order to raise funds for his legal defence, including, at Malcolm McLaren's (amusing if tasteless) suggestion, Mack the Knife ...

 

 

* Note: According to the police report, Miss Spungen was stabbed with a Jaguar Wilderness K-11 folding knife and not a 007 flick knife as is often claimed. 

 

Musical bonus: The Misfits, Horror Business (Plan 9 Records, 1979): click here. 

      This classic punk single was inspired by the murder of Nancy Spungen and Hitchcock's Psycho (Marion Crane, as fans of the film will know, also meets her bloody end in a bathroom). 

      It's interesting to note that Jerry Only - bassist with the Misfits - was one of the small group of friends with Sid at his new girlfriend's apartment on the night he took his fatal overdose (1 Feb 1979) and that there was talk of the band backing Vicious on a proposed solo album.  

 

For an earlier post on piquerism and knife play, please click here.       

Autobiographical Fragment: This is the Nine O'Clock News from the BBC

Fig. 1: Jazz and Kirk (1983): the anti-stewards

Back in the early-mid 1980s, students were always protesting against something - though mostly against those things that might negatively impact upon their own lives or future prospects; education reforms, youth unemployment, nuclear armageddon, etc.

And so, when a couple of buses were booked to transport would-be demonstrators down to London for a march organised by the NUS, it seemed like a good idea to my friend Kirk and me to get on board. Not that we were interested in the planned event, you understand, we simply wanted a day out in the capital. 

It wasn't that we were apolitical, so much as politically irresponsible; more anarcho-nihilistic, than socially progressive. We hated the Tories (obviously) - but so too did we hate the grey misery of the Labour Party. In fact, we pretty much hated everyone - left, right, or centre - and favoured a strategy of accelerating the processes already at work, regardless of the consequences. In other words, we had no interest in political reform, but simply wanted (à la Steve Jones) to make things worse. 

When we arrived in London and got off the coach, officials from the students' union - including Simon Skidmore, a fat fucking hippie with a high-pitched voice and a Pink Floyd t-shirt - immediately pulled on stewards armbands to show that they were in charge and everyone should obey their orders and follow the designated route, chanting pre-approved slogans: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! - Out! Out! Out! 

Of course, we weren't having any of that - so we swiped a couple of armbands - which we wore upside down (see fig. 1 above) - and then proceeded to misdirect as many people as possible, issuing instructions to spend the day shoplifting, getting drunk, and trying to be arrested. Whether anyone actually listened to us I don't know, but it's nice to think that one or two went on a nicking spree ...

          

At some point, Red Ken - then leader of the GLC - addressed the crowds and I remember going up to him afterwards and telling him that if he wanted to be a revolutionary icon like Che Guevara, then he needed to ditch the raincoat as it made him look more like a dirty old man about to flash a group of schoolgirls. I don't think he was very happy to receive my unsolicited fashion advice, particularly as he was trying to chat up a pretty young journalist at the time (see fig. 2 below).

I ended the day posing in front of a thin blue line of policemen, provocatively kicking a traffic cone in an attempt to solicit a response; wisely, they just kept smiling, as press photographers opposite were ready to record any brutality (see fig. 3 below).

Of course, like idiots, Kirk and I missed the bus back. Fortunately, however, we were able to hitch a ride with some students from Leeds Poly. When we finally arrived home, friends were excited to tell us that we had been on the BBC Nine O'Clock News - mistakenly identified as two student demonstrators, when, really, we were just a couple of punks having a laugh ... 

Fig. 2 trying to annoy Ken Livingstone 

Fig. 3 trying to provoke the filth

Young Flesh Required: Notes on Punk and Paedophilia

A banned promotional image for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

Designed by Jamie Reid (1979)

I. Cash from Chaos

Some of Jamie Reid's most provocative images produced during the Sex Pistols period came after the group itself fronted by singer Johnny Rotten had imploded and McLaren's management company, Glitterbest, had passed into the hands of the receivers.    

This includes, for example, the above artwork designed to promote the fabulously ambitious project known as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle; a project which set out to paradoxically mythologise and demythologise the Sex Pistols whilst also exposing the greed, cynicism and corruption at the heart of a music industry that ruthlessly exploits young talent as well as the loyalty of fans.  

Based on the design of the American Express credit card,* the Sex Pistols are identified as being the Artist (or Prostitute). Of course, anyone's name could be inserted here, providing they have what it takes to generate income for the Record Company (or Pimp), which controls every aspect of the Artist's career and uses the monies earned to increase their power and diversify their business (perhaps even starting their own airline).

The Swindle, ultimately, is nothing other than the operation of the free market itself; for what's more anarchic (and amoral) than the unrestricted flows of capital? We all get cash from chaos - but particularly those who have resolved all values into commercial value and found a way to co-opt even the most radical and revolutionary of forces.

The relationship between punk and capitalism is an interesting one: I'd like to think that the former is a genuinely decoded flow of desire and not ultimately identical with capitalism's own game of deterritorialization. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely convinced of this; too many punks - like too many hippies before them - went on to make too much money and establish successful (and seemingly interminable) careers.


II. Servicing the Fetishes of the Pop World  

Jamie Reid's punk Amex card isn't simply making a point about the exploitative nature of the music business from a financial perspective, however. It also hints - in fact, it explicitly suggests with its language of pimping and prostitution - that there's also a sleazy, sexually abusive game being played by those in positions of power (including rock stars, DJs, and record company executives).

At the time, I don't remember anyone being particularly concerned about this; there was the same jokey, nudge-nudge, wink-wink attitude to paedophilia as there was to rape. Either that, or people simply turned a blind eye to what was going on. It's precisely this aspect, however, that resonates most strongly with many people today in the era of the #MeToo movement and Time's Up campaign.

Thus, when watching The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle now, one of the more unpleasant and truly shocking scenes takes place at a brothel based at the Cambridge Rapist Hotel, where Steve Jones encounters a record boss awaiting trial on a child molesting charge. Whether this was intended to alert people to the perverse underbelly of the entertainment industry, or simply amuse viewers of the film, is debatable.

It's worth noting, however, that McLaren was not adverse to exploiting young flesh himself in order to create a stir; from his use of a picture of a naked boy posing with a cigarette on an early t-shirt design, to his attempts to embroil members of Bow Wow Wow - including their 14-year-old singer, Annabella Lwin - in a sex scandal, via a photographic recreation of Manet's Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. 

In the end, no one is innocent ...


Notes

Perhaps not surprisingly, American Express were not best pleased with Reid's artwork and claimed copyright infringement. An injunction was issued and the graphic immediately withdrawn by Virgin.

For those who are interested, the writer Paul Gorman provides more details of the smoking boy t-shirt designed by McLaren on his very wonderful blog devoted to all aspects of visual culture: click here. 

See: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, dir. Julien Temple (1980): click here to view the trailer.  

Why I'm a Sex Pistol Rather Than a Clash City Rocker

A Seditionaries Destroy shirt 

McLaren and Westwood (1977) 
Victoria and Albert Museum Collection

According to Mick Jones, speaking in an interview with GQ in 2011, there were two types of punk: those who wanted to destroy and those who wanted to create ...

Clearly, the Sex Pistols wanted to destroy; they announced the fact on their first single and on the shirts that Uncle Malcolm and Auntie Vivienne designed for them. They were into chaos, not music. And when asked what he intended to do about the rapid post-War decline of the UK, I'll always remember with a smile Steve Jones saying: Make it worse.

Like Nietzsche, the Sex Pistols wanted to consummate nihilism by accelerating the process; to kick over that which was already rotten and threatening to fall; to go still further in the schizonomadic direction of decoding and deterritorialization. Certainly for McLaren, the most revolutionary of strategies was to unleash all kinds of forces and flows and push things to the extreme, which is to say, their exterior and absolute limit. 

The Sex Pistols, we might say, are rock 'n' roll's anarchic promise brought to fulfilment; and they are also the exterminating angels who came to destroy rock 'n' roll once and for all, exposing its complicity with capital and the manner in which the music business ultimately serves to keep young people under control.

Their final great act was not their astonishing self-immolation on stage at the Winterland, but the destruction of their own legend in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - a project that incriminates everyone, including the fans.  

The Clash, in contrast, were typical type two punks: "trying to create something better for everybody", as Mick Jones says. Social justice warriors with zips and safety pins; or nice middle-class boys pretending to be outlaws, as Sebastian Horsley memorably described them.

The problem is that those who speak about initiating a new wave, often secretly wish to shore up the old order and establish successful careers within it. Thus it was, for example, that for all their anti-American posturing and talk of phoney Beatlemania having bitten the dust, the Clash were desperate to make it big in the US and soon fell into all the usual rock star clichés. Indeed, they even ended up opening for the Who at Shea Stadium:

And all the young punks looked from Joe to Roger and from Mick to Pete; but already it was impossible to say which was which ...

Finally, in 2003, the surviving members of the Clash were all present and correct to meekly accept with gratitude their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of fame - an institution which Rotten amusingly branded a piss-stain on humanity.

Of course, it's true that - eventually - we have our fill of destruction and must turn again to the task of creation; that once all the old forms are shattered and all the old icons toppled, we need to find a new way of living beneath the open sky. Only an idiot mistakes the ruins as an end goal.

But - and it's an important but - we should be extremely wary of those idealists who appear overly keen to start building the New Jerusalem; especially when using the same old tools and materials.   

Notes

To read the interview with Mick Jones, by Alex Pappademas, in GQ (2 Nov 2011): click here. 

To watch the Sex Pistols performing Anarchy in the UK during their final show (Winterland, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978), click here. They tweak the lyrics, but the message remains the same: Destroy. 

To watch a 7 min promo film for the Clash Live at Shea Stadium album (Epic, 2008), click here. The actual show took place on 13 Oct 1982. 

For Sebastian Horsley's take on the difference between the Sex Pistols and the Clash, click here.