Cover by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' single 'Silly Thing'
released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
(Virgin Records, 1979) [1]
I.
Those elderly punks who maintain that Never Mind the Bollocks is the only true Sex Pistols album are clinging desperately to an ideal of authenticity that is central to what has become known as rockism.
II.
This neologism, coined in 1981 by the musician Pete Wyley, soon became a pejorative used enthusiastically by music journalists such as Paul Morley [2], who were sick and tired of the idealistic fantasy that rock music matters - and matters more than other genres of popular music - because the performers really mean it man and just 'one great rock show can change the world.' [3]
Perhaps my favourite definition of rockism was provided by the critic Kelefa Sanneh, in 2004:
"Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend
(or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk
while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the
music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the
lip-syncher." [4]
III.
In contrast to the above, there are those think pop music - even at its most commercial and ephemeral - is just as worthy of serious consideration as hard and heavy rock.
Now, whilst I wouldn't describe myself as a poptimist - and don't particularly worry about progressive values of inclusivity, etc. - my sympathies increasingly lie with those who prefer music that makes happy - makes you want to dance and singalong - to music that is overly earnest and makes miserable.
IV.
Funny enough, one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren disliked Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury (2000) was because in its downbeat revisionism it made the Sex Pistols' story seem a very sombre affair:
"'I don't remember punk rock being like that. [...] I always remember it as a ticket to the carnival for a better life.'" [5]
No wonder that The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle takes us to Rio de Janeiro and explores many different musical styles; from disco and punk pop to bawdy drinking songs. Whatever people like to think about McLaren, he was never one to take things too seriously.
V.
And yet, paradoxically perhaps, McLaren always retained a notion of authenticity; as something to be found beneath the ruins of culture in a similar manner that the beach is to be found beneath the paving stones.
It's a non-ideal model of authenticity, however, invested with chaos and which, in his words, is dirty, horrible, and disgusting [6].
Notes
[1] The single version, released on 30 March 1979, features Steve Jones on vocals; the album version, however, recorded in the spring of 1978, has Paul Cook on vocals. Click here to play the former, which reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart. Or click here to see the unique interpretation given to the song by Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops (BBC1 12 April 1979).
[2] See Paul Morley's article 'Rockism - it's the new rockism', in The Guardian (25 May 2006): click here. Interestingly, Morley warns here that when poptimism simply becomes another form of proscriptive ideology, it's little different from rockism.
See also Michael Hann's article 'Is Poptimism Now As Blinkered As the Rockism It Replaced?' for The Quietus (11 May 2017): click here.
[3] I'm quoting a line by the character Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, in School of Rock (dir. Ricard Linklater, 2003).
[4] Kelefa Sanneh, 'The Rap Against Rockism', in The New York Times (31 Oct 2004): click here. Unfortunately, it's difficult to argue with Sanneh's claim that rockism is ultimately "related to older, more familiar prejudices" of racism, sexism, and homophobia.
[5] Malcolm McLaren speaking with Geoffrey McNab, 'Malcolm McLaren: Master and Servant', Independent (31 May 2002): click here. Cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable 2020), p. 718.
[6] See the 1999 interview with Malcolm McLaren by Jefferson Hack; 'Another Malcolm McLaren Moment', in Another Magazine (7 May 2013): click here.
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