Bow Wow Wasn't: On Two French Masterpieces That Didn't Quite Fit the Bill for McLaren and Egan

Jean-Honoré Fragonard: Le Verrou (1777) [1]

Eugène Delacroix: La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830 / restored 2024) [2]

 

 

I.

 

Having recently viewed the extended remix of Peter Pahor's documentary about the life and work of Nick Egan - Creative Vandal (2024) [3] - I was left thinking about the design decision taken with regard to the cover of Bow Wow Wow's debut studio album. 

 

As everybody knows, See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981) features a brilliant photographic recreation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) [4].

 

But what a lot of people - including me - didn't realise before hearing Nick discuss this work was that Manet's painting was not the first or only choice: that at least two other famous French masterpieces were also considered, including Fragonard's Le Verrou (1777) and Delacroix's La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830) ...   

 

 

II.  

 

Le Verrou is one of Fragonard's most famous works. It depicts what is known as a galant scene [5]. 

 

Whether the male libertine is locking the door with consent so that he and his elegantly dressed mistress are not disturbed, or whether he is bolting the door so as to prevent her escape and what we are witnessing is an attempted rape is open to interpretation [6]. 

 

Either way, it's slightly risqué and one can see why it would appeal to Malcolm McLaren and Nick Egan, although, in my view, it would have made a much better cover for the Bow Wow Wow single 'Louis Quatorze' - which famously contains the lines: Louis, Louis's locking my door / Louis's serious, I'm delirious [7] - than for the album, so they were right to reject it.     

 

 

III.

 

La Liberté guidant le peuple is a very well-known Romantic painting by Delacroix that many people - including Egan - mistakenly believe to be a depiction of the 1789 Revolution, when, actually, it commemorates the uprising of July 1830 that toppled the short reign of King Charles X [8].    

 

Everyone loves a bare-footed, bare-breasted woman wearing a Phrygian cap while waving the tricolour and brandishing a bayonetted musket. Malcolm McLaren and his cohorts certainly did - one might recall, for example, that Jamie Reid later incorporated this Marianne image for the cover of his 1987 book Up They Rise [9]. 

 

But, again, I think McLaren and Egan wisely decided not to use this image for the cover of See Jungle! It's a bit too punk and political and doesn't quite fit with the aesthetics and ideology behind Bow Wow Wow - which was more about going wild in the country and teenage kicks than it was anarchy and bloody revolution.  

 

Delacroix's picture would have been fine for the Sex Pistols - the young boy storming the barricades is even holding two pistols - but, in relation to Bow Wow Wow, it's probably not even as strong an option as Fragonard's work. 

 

And neither match up to Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, which is the perfect choice: très moderne and still capable of causing scandal and outrage - particularly when the nude female figure is replaced by a fourteen-year-old girl.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Known in English either as The Bolt or The Lock, this painting by Fragonard is an oil on canvas measuring 73.5 x 93.5 cm. It can be viewed at the Louvre.

 

[2] Known in English as Liberty Leading the People, this painting by Delacroix is an oil on canvas measuring 260 x 325 cm. It too - of course - can be viewed at the Louvre. 

 

[3] I was fortunate enough to be invited to an evening with Nick Egan, hosted by Catalina Guirado at Karma Sanctum Hotel, in Soho, earlier this week, and there was a screening of Peter Pahor's film - as well as an exhibition of Nick's latest paintings. See the TTA post 'Live Forever / Fuck Forever' (11 October, 2026) which anticipates this event. 

 

[4] Whilst as art director Egan was responsible for the overall sleeve design and staging the photo shoot, the actual photograph was by Andy Earl. It is now part of the National Portrait Gallery collection. See the TTA post: 'Why I Love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (27 April 2017). 

 

[5] A galant scene [fête galante] is a genre of art that was particularly popular in 18th-century France, blending reality with Rococo fantasy. 

      Such scenes depicted aristocratic figures engaged in lighthearted conversation, music-making, or gentle courtship activities. While most often set in outdoor locations, such as idyllic gardens, some artists ventured into the bedroom or boudoir and works like Fragonard's Le Verrou were rather more suggestive of amorous games and illicit affairs. 

 

[6] Of course, it could be that the man is attempting to leave (perhaps post-coitally) and the woman is holding him back and trying to prevent him unbolting the door. 

 

[7] Lyrics (written by McLaren) from the Bow Wow Wow track 'Louis Quatorze' which featured on the cassette-only mini-album Your Cassette Pet (EMI, 1980), and told the story of a young girl being sexually assaulted at gunpoint (or perhaps of a teenage girl's fantasy of such). It was released in Europe as a 7" single by EMI in 1981 and then re-recorded and released in the same format for the UK market by RCA in 1982. 

 

[8] Speaking to camera in Creative Vandal, Egan twice says that Delacroix's 1830 picture depicts the French Revolution. It's a common error - one that I often made until fairly recently, probably like most people with only a vague knowledge of French history. 

      See Egan discussing his work with Bow Wow Wow at 8:28 - 11:22. His claim that nobody saw the reworking of Manet as having anything to do with sexuality whatsoever is either naive or disingenuous - either way, I could only smile when I heard this. McLaren's projects have always been stylish and subversive - always been attempts to capture the look of music and the sound of fashion - but, above all, they have always been about confronting the English public with sex.  

 

[9] See Jamie Reid and Jon Savage, Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid (Faber and Faber, 1987). A signed and numbered six-coloured silkscreen print of this work produced by Reid in 2007 can be viewed at (and purchased from) fairart.com 

 

 

This post is for Nick Egan and Catalina Guirado.

 

 

Live Forever / Fuck Forever (Nick Egan Contra Jamie Reid)

Nick Egan: Live Forever (2026) [1]

Jamie Reid: Fuck Forever (1986) [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I'm pleased to say that I've been invited to an event in London next week [3] featuring a new work by English artist and self-styled creative vandal Nick Egan [4].   

 

The piece, named after an Oasis song released back in the mid-1990s, explores questions around mortality and memory and why it is that certain figures retain their place in the pop cultural imagination, becoming both iconic and immortal.  

 

Sadly, I can't afford to buy the original piece - and I'm not sure I'll even be coughing up the readies for one of the limited edition signed prints being sold on the night - but there is something undeniably compelling about the way Egan acts as a visual archivist for punk and Britpop, capturing the specific energy of these different eras.

 

And it's always good to see Sid Vicious memorialised alongside Elvis and various other pop cultural icons, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Marc Bolan and, erm, Bobby Moore. 

 

 

II. 

 

However - and in this life it seems as if there's always a conjunctive adverb on the horizon - I do have problems with the title of the painting and the philosophy which it seems to endorse. And, if push comes to shove, then I'm still going to privilege Jamie Reid's Fuck Forever over Egan's Live Forever. 

 

For while Egan beautifully captures our obsession with cultural immortality and remembering the past, my own sensibilities still gravitate towards the nihilistic innocence of Jamie Reid’s work originally produced for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

The two artworks thus sit in fascinating tension and represent opposing impulses: Egan reminds us how icons endure and he seems to suggest (somewhat optimistically) that the creative spirit never dies; Reid, meanwhile, reminds us of the fleeting beauty of the present - the very nowness of the moment, and his Fuck Forever image is ultimately a heroic refusal to care about tomorrow. 

 

You pays your money ... and you takes your choice: memorialise the past; or forget the future. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Live Forever is a contemporary painting and exhibition piece created by Nick Egan. The work takes its title and inspiration from the Oasis single 'Live Forever' (1994), for which Egan directed one of the two official videos produced (the US version). As well as the original painting, Egan is issuing a limited number of individually signed and numbered A3 prints. The work is being shown at an event in London next week (see note 3 below). 

 

[2] Jamie Reid: Fuck Forever - this vintage folded screen print was one of a limited number produced for a 1986 exhibition at Hamiltons Gallery (London).

 

[3] The event - Sartorial Correctness - takes place at the Karma Sanctum Hotel, in Soho, on the 12th and 13th of October, curated and hosted by Catalina Guirado. The evening includes a screening of an extended cut of the award-winning documentary Creative Vandal (dir. Peter Pahor, 2024), followed by Egan in conversation with Catalina Guirado, an audience Q&A, drinks, and an exhibition viewing.

      The first night is strictly by invitation only and, unfortunately, I don't have VIP status. Nevertheless, my name is on the guest list for the second (and final) night, so at least I've avoided the humiliation of having to buy a ticket on Eventbrite. 

 

[4] The last time I saw Nick was over forty years ago, during the Duck Rock period, when he helped me land a job in the Charisma Records press office. I'm primarily attending the event to renew an old acquaintance and to express my gratitude to him (that - and the free drinks).  

 

Eight Diary Fragments from 1981 with Reference to Malcolm McLaren and My Teenage Politics

Malcolm Mclaren holding Vol. II (1981)

of The Von Hell Diaries (1980-89)

 

 

1981 was a big year for me: I turned eighteen (13 Feb); I left school (22 May); I started college in Leeds (29 Sept). 

 

But it was also the year - having become enfranchised - that I began to form a political perspective informed by situationism and that I openly declared loyalty to team Malcolm over team Johnny ... 

Sat 3 January 1981

 

Listened to Malcolm being interviewed on the radio. He was yapping on about the importance of youth grasping the opportunities offered by so-called 'high pleasure technology' and explaining how being able to have music blaring out from under your skirt wherever you went was terribly sexy and exciting. Not entirely convinced, but 'Radio G String' is a fantastic track [1].      

 

 

Sat 17 January 1981 

 

McLaren on the radio again - this time interviewed by John Walters. He insisted that punk had destroyed the star system and that kids of 13 would now rather watch Deep Throat on their home video recorders than worship a pop idol. Again, not entirely convinced about this and certainly don't think Adam Ant would agree. Pretty sure Malcolm doesn't believe it either. Ultimately, it's just a projection of fantasy in the hope that it might one day be realised [2].  

 

 

Fri 27 February 1981

 

Malcolm on Round Table. He says some clever and amusing things, but mostly just laughs a lot. Claimed that he sold all the ideas to do with pirates and Red Indians to Adam for £2000. Slagged off Richard Branson and Virgin, but was surprisingly full of praise for Joe Dolce's 'Shaddap You Face' which is presently number one in the charts [3].    

 

 

Thursday 7 May 1981

 

Having turned 18 in February, today was my first opportunity to vote [4]: so off I went with my friend Andy to the local polling station set up in a nearby school. I decided not to give my X to any of the parties - hate them all! Instead, I wrote 'Anarchy is the key - do it yourself the melody' on the ballot paper [5] - so Malcolm should be proud (even if this is merely a gesture). Disappointingly, Andy told me after that he voted for the Liberals ...!   

 

 

Saturday 1 August 1981 

 

Ultimately, I think I am more like Malcolm in spirit than Rotten. Lydon is a bit of a bore and thinks in a smaller, more selfish and more spiteful manner than McLaren who unfolds his schemes on a much larger stage and invites everyone to join in. Whenever I read an interview with Malcolm, it makes me smile - and that's not always the case with Rotten.    

 

 

Friday 14 August 1981

 

Reading two books at the moment borrowed from Romford library: The Student Revolt (1968) and Revolution (1970). Have also ordered a copy of Christopher Gray's book on situationism - Leaving the 20th Century (1974) [6]. 

      Copied out various lines including this one: 'It is better to fail disastrously through taking an uncompromising stand, than to achieve some of one's aims through taking part in the conventional process.' And this one: "Through the excitement of deep emotions, principally the emotions of hatred, one can manipulate the passions that are essential to Situationism.'

     Can now see where Malcolm got a lot of his ideas from - the 'politics of boredom', the 'comedy of outrage', 'unlicensed pleasure' as the only goal, etc.   

 

 

Saturday 7 November 1981 

 

A day in London with Kirk [7] ... First stop Carnaby Street where he bought a pair of trousers and I bought some pink spray-on hair colour. Couldn't find the bat earring that Kirk was after, however. Some skinheads gave us looks - the fact that Kirk was wearing a cape probably had something to do with it.   

      From Soho, we went to Chelsea on the bus. I bought a T-shirt with a print of Rotten's face on it from Boy on which was written: 'They're all wankers and wallies'. From Boy we went to what was once Seditionaries but is now called Worlds End. Loved the 13-hour clock with hands spinning backwards and the sloping wooden floor, but these design elements were the only interesting thing: did not think much of the clothes - not sure I want to be a pirate, Malcolm! [8]    

 

 

Saturday 14 November 1981

 

Having expressed reservations about wanting to be a pirate just last week after a visit to Worlds End, ironically went to see Bow Wow Wow playing at Leeds University [9] with my little gang - Kirk, August, Gillian, and Gaelle [10] - and I have to admit the band looked (and sounded) fantastic; particularly Annabella who, at just fourteen, is incredible [11]. If anyone can make you want to hoist the Jolly Roger it's her!

      Kirk made his way to the front of the stage: August annoyed me a little by wanting to stand way back. I stayed with Gill and Gaelle somewhere in the middle. I'm not a fan of encores, but was glad they returned to play some of the old favourites: 'Sexy Eiffel Towers', 'Radio G String', 'Louis Quatorze' - and, of course, 'C30'. It was a great evening - even if I was disappointed that Malcolm wasn't anywhere to be seen [12].        

 

 

Editorial Notes

 

[1] 'Radio G String' is a track by Bow Wow Wow (with lyrics written by McLaren) which features on Your Cassette Pet (EMI 1980). It has also appeared on various compilation albums including Girl Bites Dog (Parlophone Records, 1993): click here. 

 

[2] I would later come to appreciate that the word 'fantasy' used here is inappropriate and that I should have written desire. For whereas the latter is, according to situationist theory, a libidinal reality, the former is what capitalist society substitutes for desire and lived experience. 

      This is expressed in a famous slogan from the May '68 uprisings: Faites vos désirs réalités! and was given a little more poetry and philosophical substance in this declaration sprayed on the walls of the Sorbonne: Je prends mes désirs pour la réalité car je crois en la réalité de mes désirs (I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires). In sum: McLaren was not a fantasist. 

 

[3] See the post 'What's-a-Matter Midge? (Hey!)' published 31 July 2021. 

 

[4] Local government elections were held across England and Wales on this date. The Labour Party, under the newly appointed leadership of Michael Foot, made substantial gains while the Tories under Margaret Thatcher lost control of over 1,000 council seats and control of the GLC (enter stage left Ken Livingstone).

 

[5] This slogan appears as part of the 'Rot 'n' Roll' text designed by Jamie Reid (in collaboration with McLaren) that featured on the back cover of the Sex Pistols' single (sung by Sid Vicious) 'C'mon Everybody' (Virgin Records, 1979) - taken from the soundtrack album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). Reid's artwork can be found in the V&A Archive: click here. 

 

[6] The first of these works - The Student Revolt: The Activists Speak (1968) - was compiled by Hervé Bourges, a prominent French journalist. He put together the text by conducting a series of interviews with the main student leaders driving the May 1968 uprising, including, most notably, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. 

      It was translated into English by Ben Brewster, a Marxist intellectual who worked extensively with the New Left Review, and published in the UK as a hardcover by Jonathan Cape. It was simultaneously released as a widely distributed paperback by Panther Books.

      The second of these works - Revolution (1970) - was by Peter Calvert and published as part of a series of books on key concepts in political science by Pall Mall Press (London).  

      Finally, the book I had to request - Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Works of the Situationist International (1974) is probably now the best-known - certainly within punk circles. Edited and translated by Christopher Gray, it had iconic visuals provided by Jamie Reid (who later used the exact same aesthetic in his designs for the Sex Pistols). It was the first English-language anthology of Situationist writings and Gray hoped to capture something of the violence, madness, and dark humour of Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, and the rest of the gang. 

 

[7] Kirk Field - author of Rave New World (2023) - was my closest friend and partner in crime during the college years (1981-84) and I have mentioned him in several posts on Torpedo the Ark, including this one, for example: 'Punk Friends Reunited' (9 April 2019).  

 

[8] Obviously, I now very much regret not buying in to McLaren and Westwood's new vision. But, rightly or wrongly, I remained sartorially very much inspired by punk. For as I noted in my diary the following day (Sunday 8 Nov 1981) - following a gig at the Lyceum with Theatre of Hate (supported by Peter and the Test Tube Babies and the Meteors) - "although the so-called 'hardcore' punk look is dated, it still looks great".

      Finally, it might be noted that, amusingly, that last line about not wanting to be a pirate was later repeated by Jerry in the famous 'Puffy Shirt' episode of Seinfeld [S5/E2, 1993], written by Larry David and directed by Tom Cherones.  

 

[9] Tickets were priced at £2.50. The band were booked by the then Entertainments Secretary of the Leeds University Student Union, Andy Kershaw, who went on to find fame as a DJ and broadcaster. 

 

[10] August Finer, Gillian Hall, and Gaelle Sherwood. As with Kirk Field, readers who are interested can find their names in Labels and from their go to posts in which they feature.  

 

[11] Actually, Annabella, born on 31 October 1966, had just turned fifteen a fortnight before this gig. 

 

[12] While McLaren masterminded the band's conception, visual aesthetic, and supplied lyrics for the songs, he left the day-to-day coordination of regional dates to tour manager Andy Corrigan. Malcolm occasionally attended some shows, but there is no record of him at the Leeds University gig on November 14th.   

 

 

Terminal Boardom: An Open Letter to Ian Trowell with Reference to His 'Holidays in the Sun' Exhibition (2026)

Ian Trowell: Holidays in the Sun: Sex Pistols, Scarborough and the Seaside 

Scarborough Library (2 - 30 May 2026) [1] 

'I do like to stroll along the prom, prom, prom! 

Where the punk band plays Tiddely-om-pom-pom!' [2]

 

 

I. 

 

In May 1976, the Sex Pistols decided to play their first gigs outside of the Greater London area and take their (nameless) subcultural revolution on the road - unaccompanied by Malcolm who was otherwise engaged - to Barnsley, Middlesbrough, and Scarborough ...

 

And this month, Scarborough's resident punk scholar, Ian Trowell, is marking the 50th anniversary of the Sex Pistols performing in the North Yorkshire seaside town with an exhibition mounted on half-a-dozen large display boards in the Community Space located at the rear of the main library.  

 

What is known by those within the Punk Scholars Network as archiving anarchy ... [3]

 

 

II. 

 

Titled Holidays in the Sun, the exhibition was designed in collaboration with Russ Bestley and gathers materials and testimony from the notorious band's visit to Scarborough in the spring of 1976, as well as their return visit as part of a secret tour in the summer of '77, by which time they had become public enemies number one. 

 

The images and artefacts are accompanied by a detailed and thoughtful narrative which helps create a startling contrast between the everydayness of Scarborough and the extraordinariness of the Sex Pistols. More broadly, the exhibition also reflects upon the intimate and enduring connections between  British coastal towns and youth subcultures. 

 

A series of planned events include a panel discussion on punk as anti-fashion and a talk led by Trowell on how punk has been written about over the last half-century, affording an opportunity to look at the manner in which history and memory are constructed through myth. 

 

 

III.  

So far, so press release-y. 

 

Here, I'll try to say something a wee bit more critical, in the form of an open letter that touches on the inherent friction between punk's chaotic origins and the orderly demands of curation. 

 

 

Dear Ian,

 

Firstly, congratulations on the exhibition, in which I know you've invested a good deal of time and effort (not to mention your own money). The boards provide an interesting mix of Sex Pistols lore, local history, and wider cultural context and I applaud most of your aesthetic choices. 

      Use of Jamie Reid's iconic Never Mind the Bollocks colour scheme, for example, is a nice touch. Not only does it make the display visually stimulating, but it succeeds in tying the exhibition together; i.e., it provides chromatic consistency and creates the intuitive flow between panels you were aiming for.   

      However, the black lettering works much better on the lemon-yellow background rather than Board 3's bubble-gum pink. I can't say I'm a great fan either of that headache-inducing razor font used for the main title. Personally, I'd have gone with the more familiar blackmail-style lettering; sometimes, the cliché is best.

      I also think your pedagogic will to inform coupled to a writer's love of word play [4] has, unfortunately, hindered rather than helped you here. Phrases such as 'subcultural sartorial markers' create an intellectual barrier as most people not only do not use language like this, but feel intimidated by it. It's a shame, I think, that the texts read less like a punk manifesto and more like something torn from the pages of a museum guide. 

      Their length as well as their complexity was also an issue. With board word counts doubling the recommended 150-word maximum, the narrative risks losing the casual observer, whose attention span is notoriously fleeting [5]. 

      It's for a similar reason I also wonder if it was the best decision to have a fixed sequence of display boards. For a majority of people like to float freely from one board to another, like butterflies going from flower to flower, depending on whatever catches their eye rather than follow a progressive narrative. And so, whilst you may wish to construct a logical order to the display allowing for a continuous historical narrative, it could be argued you are denying the viewer's agency to drift - a quintessentially punk mode of experiencing.

      Ultimately, the most anarcho-nihilistic iteration of this project would have been to have erected six entirely black boards à la John McCracken, thereby confounding visitors, referencing your own black square project [6], and suggesting also those imposing alien artefacts that catalyse cultural evolution in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [7]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Amusingly - and somewhat depressingly - the Sex Pistols (feat. Frank Carter) are due to perform at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Sunday 2 August, 2026, supported by The Stranglers and The Undertones: buy your tickets here. 

 

It would be great if they could have Trowell's boards on display in some capacity - and I really hope Ian gets some seaside punk rock confectionary made for sale on the day. 

 

 

Ian Trowell (2026)

 

  

Notes

[1] Readers who wish to know more are encouraged to visit Trowell's Substack - SUB>SUMED - where he discusses his 'Holidays in the Sun' project in a post dated 5 March 2026: click here.

      The image used to illustrate this post is a detail from Board Number 1, taken from Ian's Instagram account: click here. 

 

[2] Lyrics (with one minor change) from the popular British music hall song 'I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside', written by John H. Glover-Kind in 1907 and made famous by music hall singer Mark Sheridan, who first recorded it in 1909. It was composed at a time when yearly visits by the British working class to the seaside were booming. Click here to play on YouTube. The Sex Pistols incorporated this song into their act in 2007, as a segue into 'Holidays in the Sun' - click here for their gig at the Brixton Academy (10 November 2007).

 

[3] I'm not entirely hostile to this process; of the three ways that the spirit of punk is exorcised - commodified by capital; Disneyfied by cunts in the media; absorbed into cultural history by academics - the latter is probably the least objectionable. See the post 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024): click here. 

 

[4] By his own admission, keeping text within a tight word count isn't Trowell's strong point; "I like to waffle, to draw in interesting tangents, and to play with language". See his Substack post linked to above. 

 

[5] It has been calculated that, on average, a visitor to an exhibition will only spend 10-15 seconds reading, before moving to the next thing on view. 

 

[6] I discuss Trowell's black square project in the post titled 'But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...' (24 March 2024): click here. 

 

[7] As far as I remember, the featureless black monoliths in 2001 are highly advanced, multi-purpose machines built by an unseen race of aliens with very precise dimensions in a strict 1:4:9 ratio.

And God Save Ronald Biggs

Jamie Reid promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 

'No One is Innocent' (Virgin Records, 1978)

 

Ronnie Rotten - he never sang for Scotland Yard, but he burst his lungs for the Sex Pistols ...

 

  

I. 

 

If you want to understand the Sex Pistols, then it probably helps to conceive of them more as an adolescent criminal gang, led by former art student Malcolm McLaren, who peddled anarchy and fetish fashion from their hideout on the King's Road, rather than simply a punk rock band fronted by Johnny Rotten [1]. 

 

Instead of chasing chart success and pop stardom, the idea was to generate cash from chaos, aestheticise evil, and celebrate the outlaw à la Jean Genet [2] who recognised in the ruthlessness and cunning of murderers and thieves a sunken beauty.  

 

Thus, for example, one of the earliest shirts sold at SEX featured the leather mask of the notorious Cambridge Rapist. And so it was that when Rotten was thrown overboard for collaborating with the record companies so as to establish a long-term, professional career in music, he was replaced not by some hopeless teen wannabe, but by Great Train Robber and fugitive Ronnie Biggs ... [3]  

 

 

II. 

 

Biggs, who had daringly escaped from Wandsworth Prison fifteen months into his thirty year sentence, was still wanted by the British authorities, but had immunity from extradition, having fathered a child in Brazil, where he had been living since 1970.

 

He and the two remaining Sex Pistols - Paul Cook and Steve Jones - got on well, writing and recording a new track together, entitled 'No One is Innocent' [4], which was released as a single on 30 June 1978, coupled with Sid's unique version of 'My Way'. Despite a (predictable) BBC ban, it reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart [5]. Biggs also recorded a version of 'Belsen Was a Gas', which was included on the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack (1979) [6]. 

 

I know many people - including fans of the band - were either perplexed or pissed-off by McLaren's decision to replace Rotten with Biggs as the new singer with the Sex Pistols [8], but I tend to agree with Jamie Reid that it was a brilliant (and necessary) move which demonstrated an idea crucial to the pluralistic politics of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, namely, that anyone can be a Sex Pistol [9].

 

 

III.

 

In February 1978, McLaren joined Cook and Jones in Brazil. Filmmaker Julien Temple was also there to shoot the scenes with Biggs for the Swindle, including an expensive riverboat sequence to promote the new song, which had been recorded at a local 16-track studio with overdubs later added back in London at Wessex Studios, by audio engineer Bill Price. 

 

The thing is - and I think this is something even those who dismiss the track as simply a cynical attempt to stir controversy and grab headlines will admit - it does sound like a Sex Pistols track; even without Rotten on vocals. Thanks to Jones's distinctive guitar and Cook's solid work as always on drums, it has typical swagger and a huge amount of energy. 

 

And for those who, like me, appreciate the absurd anarchy of the Swindle rather than the austere monarchy of Never Mind the Bollocks, it's a fantastic single. 

 

To play 'No One is Innocent' (audio only) click here. 

 

To play (with official video using footage from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)), click here.

 

 

Sex Pistols (sans Rotten and Vicious): 

Jones / Rowland / McLaren / Cook /Biggs (1978)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] I think it's important to acknowledge that the key figure in the band was never really Rotten; it was Steve Jones, a semi-professional tea leaf with more than a dozen criminal convictions; someone described by Glen Matlock as resembling a character from a book by Jean Genet. 

 

[2] See the post 'God Save Jean Genet' (2 Feb 2026), in which the French writer is considered in relation to the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

[3] Whilst I cannot go into too much detail here, I thought readers who are unfamiliar with the name and the robbery with which Biggs is forever associated, might appreciate a few lines of explanation ...

      Ronald Biggs was a petty criminal from South London who helped plan and carry out the Great Train Robbery on 8 August 1963 (his 34th birthday). Whilst in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) he is portrayed as the legendary mastermind behind the robbery, he actually had a very minor role. 

      The gang got away with £2.6 million (equivalent to around £70 million today), so a considerable sum of money then as now and the holding up of a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London was an enormous story in the British press, dominating headlines for weeks afterwards and remaining in the cultural imagination ever since. For some people it still remains the crime of the century and, despite what happened to the train's driver, Jack Mills, the robbers are often regarded as folk heroes who got one over the authorities. For even though Biggs and eleven other gang members were arrested just three weeks after the robbery and received long prison sentences, most of the money was never recovered.

      Biggs subsequently became notorious for his escape from prison in July 1965, living thereafter as a fugitive in foreign exile (and with a new identity) for thirty-six years. The money - as it always does - soon ran out (mostly on legal fees and other expenses relating to his exile, although £40,000 also went on plastic surgery), so Biggs was obliged to do whatever he could to secure and income - including the selling of his soul for punk.  

      In 2001, feeling increasingly homesick - telling friends that he longed to walk into an English boozer once more and order a pint -  he announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK. Still having twenty-eight years of his sentence left to serve, he was aware that he would be detained upon arrival in Britain and spend time in prison: which he did. However, due to his health rapidly declining, he was (eventually) released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 (two days before his 80th birthday and having served a third of his original sentence). 

      Biggs died in a North London nursing home on 18 December 2013. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 3 January 2014. The coffin was covered with the flags of the UK and Brazil (and a Charlton Athletic scarf). An honour guard of British Hells Angels escorted his hearse to the crematorium.

 

[4] Before Virgin vetoed the idea, the track was originally to be called 'Cosh the Driver', tastelessly referencing the fact that during the robbery the driver of the intercepted train, Jack Mills, was blugeoned with an iron bar. Mills never fully recovered from his serious head injuries - nor overcome the trauma of what he had experienced - although he died of an unrelated cause (leukaemia), in 1970. 

      The 12" single - which I bought along with the 7" - came with a different sleeve, featuring a still from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) in which the American actor Henry Rowland (dressed as Nazi on the run Martin Bormann; a role he had played in a number of Russ Meyer movies) is shown playing bass alongside Jones on guitar, Cook on drums, and Biggs on lead vocals. It also came with a different title: 'The Biggest Blow - A Punk Prayer by Ronnie Biggs' (Virgin Records, 1979).  

 

[5] The single was not released in the US and failed to chart in other overseas territories. 

 

[6] Readers might be surprised to learn that this was not Biggs's first outing as a recording artist. For Biggs, an avid jazz fan, had previously collaborated in 1974 with three musicians to make a musical narrative of his life entitled Mailbag Blues. The album was finally released in 2004 (whatmusic.com) and is "a fusion of experimental jazz, blues and funk, with echoes of Brazilian styles such as tropicalia and bossa nova" and although Biggs doesn't actually sing on the record, he is credited as inspiration and storyteller. See Alex Bellos, 'Ronnie Biggs: the album', in The Guardian (1 Sept 2004): click here. To listen to the title track - 'Mailbag Blues' - please click here. 

      Biggs also had a post-Pistols recording career; in 1991, he provided vocals for the songs 'Police on My Back' and 'Carnival in Rio' by German punk band Die Toten Hosen, and two years later Biggs sang on three tracks for the album Bajo Otra Bandera by Argentinian punk band Pilsen. You can find some of these songs on YouTube, but, frankly, I'd not bother.

 

[7] McLaren's original plan was for the group - including Rotten - to fly down to Rio de Janeiro after the final US show in San Francisco, so that they could be filmed performing with Biggs. Paul Gorman writes: "The combination of the UK's most wanted felon cavorting with the world's most hated group amid the favelas during Carnival was too good an opportunity to let pass, McLaren believed." 

      But Rotten wanted nothing to do with the idea and his refusal to comply with McLaren's latest scheme effectively brought the curtain down on his career as a Sex Pistol. Interestingly, Gorman is sympathetic to the singer here: 

      "With justification, Lydon viewed Biggs as a charmless nerk rather than an anti-hero deserving of glorification, not least since the train driver in Biggs's gang crime had suffered severe brain damage from injuries inflicted upon him during the raid."

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 386 and 388. 

 

[8] Jamie Reid would later explain:

      "'One of the things we were aware of was the need never to remain still, never to become stagnant. After three or four records have come out there begins to be a typical punk fan, who identifies with the band the way fans always do. When Rotten left and we put in Ronnie Biggs, they couldn't understand. It seemed a good idea to us.'"

      Quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm Mclaren, p. 402. 

Flogging a Dead Reindeer

Image posted to Instagram on 24 Dec 2025 

by $teve Jone$ @jonesysjukebox

 

 

I. 

 

Marx famously predicted that within modern capitalism all values would be reduced not to zero, but resolved into one final, fatal value; i.e., commercial or exchange value. 

 

Thus it is that bourgeois society does not efface old structures and insititutions - including punk rock bands - but subsumes them. Old modes do not die; they get recuperated into the marketplace, take on price tags, become commodities.

 

And so it is we witness three ex-Pistols and a grinning wannabe Johnny Rotten hawking their merchandise via social media even on Christmas eve. This includes a 'God Save the Queen' seasonal jumper which they model in the above photos [1].    

 

 

II. 

 

This shouldn't surprise anyone: Malcolm - in collaboration with Jamie Reid and Julien Temple - warned what would happen in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) and the grim reality of the fate that awaited the band was made explicit in the album titles Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (1979) and Flogging a Dead Horse (1980).  

 

And I have written several posts on this subject; see, for example, the post dated 12 June, 2015 in which I discuss the issuing of a Sex Pistols credit card on Virgin Money (in two designs): click here.  

 

But, even so, I still find it sad and depressing to see the Sex Pistols - now a punk rock brand - selling Never Mind the Bollocks Christmas baubles (at £18 each) [2]. 

 

And it makes me despise an economic system which, on the one hand, equalises and makes everything the same, whilst, on the other hand, encouraging all modes of conduct and permitting all manner of thinking, providing they are economically viable and turn a nice profit. 

 

I am not a Marxist: but, in as much as capitalism leaves no other nexus between people than naked self-interest and cash payment [3] - and in as much as it infects every sphere of activity (including the arts) with the same greed and vulgarity - I do find myself experiencing (à la Ursula Brangwen) a feeling of "harsh and ugly disillusion" [4]. 

 

And so, I'm almost tempted this Christmas to invoke that exterminating angel dreamed of by Deleuze and Guattari; the one who will consummate capitalism by fucking the rich up the arse and transmitting "the decoded flows of desire" [5]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers can purchase this synthetic knitted jumper (it's only 8% wool), priced £60, from the Sex Pistols official website store: click here. 

 

[2] Again, head to the official Sex Pistols website shop: click here. 

 

[3] I am paraphrasing from memory what Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto (1848).  

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 403. 

 

[5] Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 35.  

 

 

Xmas bonus: Julien Temple's hour-long documentary Christmas with the Sex Pistols (2013), featuring footage from their last UK concert on Christmas Day, 1977: click here. It was first shown on BBC Four on Boxing Day 2013.   

 

 

A Cheap Holiday ...

Sex Pistols: 'Holidays in the Sun' 

(Virgin Records, 1977) [1]
 

 

I. 

 

I don't know why - perhaps because I'm a little naive and trusting of his lyrical ability - but I always believed that Rotten had penned the memorable opening line of the Sex Pistols' fourth single: A cheap holiday in other people's misery.

 

It turns out, however, that it's borrowed from the Situationists who used the line during the events of May '68 to attack mass tourism, taking particular aim at Club Med; a French travel and tourism operator headquartered in Paris, who specialise in all-inclusive holidays. Founded in 1950, Club Med today owns or operates nearly eighty resort villages in locations around the world (although the company itself is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate).  

 

 

II.

 

The Situationists, led by the brilliant (but troubled) figure of Guy Debord, viewed mass tourism not as an opportunity for working-class people to travel to foreign lands, but as a manifestation of the Society of the Spectacle (i.e., a sociey in which authentic experience and real events are replaced by mere representation and one's relationships are increasingly mediated by images).

 

A package holiday is - as the name suggests - perfectly commodified and serves only to reinforce capitalist control and intensify the holidaymaker's alienation via the illusion of happiness; you think you're having fun, but actually you're having your soul sucked out of you and being prevented from actively engaging with your environment or knowing real pleasure.

 

What's more, mass tourism forces the local population to prostitute themselves and make their towns, cities, even whole countries attractive for visitors over and above their own needs. At first, everyone thinks it's great and tourism is a huge boost to the economy, but then, one day, they wake up inside a theme park and their traditional way of life has been rendered null and void.

 

Recently, in European cities including Barcelona and Venice, there have been anti-tourism protests; local residents finally deciding to try and resist their homeland and culture being turned into a consumable product by the Spectacle. One suspects, however, that these protests are in vain; too little, too late when the whole world has been Disneyfied and we are all tourists now [2].    

 

 

III.

 

Jean Baudrillard - who was a bit of a situationist himself - didn't quite say that tourism and terrorism are one and the the same thing, but he did argue that they are inextricably linked phenomena arising from the process of globalisation and that tourism is itself a form of terror as an avatar of colonisation and a viral infiltration of traditional cultures by foreign capital and alien values [3]. 

 

Like it or not, as you sit at the airport waiting to fly off for some winter sun, tourism imposes a universal and commodified experience upon the world and incites (sometimes violent and symbolic) acts of resistance from those who don't wish to see their singular experience Disneyfied and consumed by tourists; who understand that any culture that loses its singularity dies.     

 

Like it or not, no matter how much you paid for your trip and how much you love the locals and try to respect their way of life, you are still just enjoying:

 

 

 

Notes

 

 [1] 'Holidays in the Sun' was released on 14 October 1977 as the fourth single by the Sex Pistols. It reached number 8 in the UK charts. It also serves as the opening track to the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols which was released two weeks later (Virgin Records, 1977). To play the track and watch the official video on YouTube, click here. 

      Jamie Reid's artwork hijacked images from a Belgian holiday brochure and added speech bubbles with lyrics from the song. Unfortunately, the tourist company sued and the record sleeve (along with promotional materials that made use of the artwork) had to be withdrawn. Over 50,000 singles were recalled and re-issued in plain sleeves, although not before an estimated 5,000 had already been sold (one of which I bought). 

      Anyone with £2000 to spare can buy a 'Holidays in the Sun' poster from the London-based bookseller Peter Harrington: click here for details.  

  

[2] See the post titled 'Travels in Hyperculture with Byung Chul-Han 1: We Are All Tourists Now' (30 Jan 2022): click here.  

[3] I'm paraphrasing what Baudrillard writes in 'Where Good Grows', an essay written in 2005, which can be found in The Agony of Power, trans. Ames Hodges (Semiotext(e), 2010), p.102.    

 

 

Never Ever Say Hey Ho! Off We Go: Why I'm Sceptical of the Work Ethic

       

linkedin.com 

 

 

I've expressed my contempt for those professional network hippies and Silicon Valley fascists at LinkedIn before on Torpedo the Ark - click here - but their Open to Work feature launched in 2020 (which has only just come to my attention) really takes the biscuit ...

 

Designed to let recruiters and potential employers know that you are available for new job opportunities - the feature works by securing a green-coloured slave collar round your profile picture - they may as well have asked members to hold up a cardboard sign with the words willing to work scrawled on it!

 

The primary issue, then, is that the feature makes a job seeker appear desperate: even some career experts agree with this and suggest it may warn off some employers - those who prefer to discreetly headhunt talented candidates, for example - whilst leading others to make derisory salalry offers [1].     

 

But the deeper issue, for me at least, has to do with the philosophy behind such a feature; for it echoes, does it not, those terrible words written on the gates of Auschwitz: Arbeit macht frei ...

 

 

II.  

 

This infamous slogan originated from a popular 19th century novel by Lorenz Diefenbach, the title of which - Die Wahrheit macht frei (1873) - refers to the phrase used by Jesus: 'And the truth shall set you free' (John 8:32). However, the book reimagines this as 'work makes free' and that's what really struck a chord with the Nazis and other advocates of an ultra-strong work ethic. 

 

Following their coming to power in 1933, the Nazis first utilised it in programmes designed to combat mass unemployment in Germany. But it is now forever associated in the cultural imagination with the concentration camps and forced labour carried out in the most atrocious conditions imaginable; the only freedom being death.      

 

Interestingly, the Nazis seemed to have used the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz neither with the intention to mock the inmates nor provide them with false hope. It was employed, rather, in the sincere belief that endless labour and self-sacrifice does result in a form of spiritual freedom. 

 

In other words, it illustrates their idealism, not their cynicism; just as 'Open to Work' doubtless illustrates the good intentions of the good people at LinkedIn and is not an attempt to humiliate and make members look needy.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For a discussion of whether you should (or should not) use LinkedIn's 'Open to Work' feature, see Elizabeth Perarson's article in Forbes (Sept 2024): click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Bow Wow Wow, 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)', (EMI, 1981): click here for the extended 12" remix. This track, with lyrics written by Malcolm McLaren, is an amusing rejection of the work ethic. The sleeve, designed by Jamie Reid, also makes clear of how such an ethic can become malignant and fall into the black hole of fascism: 

 

 

 

Destroy Success

Based on an original design by Jamie Reid (1979) [1] 

 

I. 

 

It's hard to believe that November next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' 

 

But there you go - time flies and soon, just like Malcolm, Vivienne, Jamie, Jordan, and poor old Sid pictured above, we'll all be brown bread. 

 

The funny thing about the Sex Pistols' debut single is that it ends with the instruction to get pissed, destroy, but it's never made quite clear who or what is to be destroyed other than the passer by [2] and, as a matter of fact, one has to wait until The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle to discover that success is the main target marked for destruction. 

 

This is anticipated in the magnificent statement released by McLaren on behalf of Glitterbest after the band fell apart at the end of their US tour:  

 

"The management is bored with managing a successful rock 'n' roll band. The group is bored with being a successful rock 'n' roll band. Burning venues and destroying record companies is more creative than making it." [3]  

 

A statement which caused much embarassment for the Virgin press officer asked to explain whether it was meant to be taken seriously.  

 

One recalls also McLaren's equally well-known line, often repeated in interviews, that it is "better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success" [4]. 

 

For Malcolm, these words essentially define punk rock and daring to fail was not just romantic and heroic, but the only way to create great art [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, McLaren wasn't the only one to despise the notion of success; the early 20th century English novelist D. H. Lawrence - whom I would characterise as the first Sex Pistol (seen as a provocative and amusing analogy by some, but I'm being perfectly serious) - also hated success ...   

 

In his final (and most controversial) novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), for example, the Lawrentian narrator sneers at the figure of the young Irish playwright Michaelis, who had a Mayfair apartment and "walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman" [6]. 

  

Sir Clifford may admire and envy his success - "for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also" [7] - and even Connie may sleep with him, but we, as readers, are encouraged to find Mick contemptible (a bit doggy).    

 

Elsewhere, in his essays, Lawrence also makes clear his dislike for those who chase success - whether that's in the arts or in industry and the world of business. His mother may look down from heaven and feel chagrined at his lack of real success:

 

"that I don't make more money; that I am not really popular, like Michael Arlen, or really genteel, like Mr Galsworthy; that I have a bad reputation as an improper writer [...] that I don't make any real friends among the upper classes: that I don't really rise in the world, only drift about without any real status." [8] 

 

But Lawrence doesn't care; he has punk indifference to what others think of him - even his dead mother - and doesn't give a shit about getting on and becoming a great success in the eyes of the world. He thinks the bourgeois beastly - "especially the male of the species" [9] - hates the Oxford voice [10], and calls for a revolution "not to get the money / but to lose it all forever" [11]. 

 

And that's why, in part, I regard him as a Sex Pistol ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on original artwork by Jamie Reid for a full page ad in the Melody Maker promoting the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). 

      It depicts a cartoon version of Sid Vicious, who provided the vocals for the track and who, unfortunately, had died three weeks prior to the single's release. Although I have removed most of the other text added to the design, I have left the slogan destroy success which McLaren and Reid had adopted as their strategy following the firing of Johnny Rotten. 

      The original image can be found in the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.   

 

[2] See the post titled 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby (Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan)' dated 28 May, 2020: click here.  

 

[3] This statement, dated 20 January, 1978, is quoted from The Guardian archive: click here. 

 

[4] McLaren repeats this phrase in an interview with Amy Fleming published in The Guardian (10 August, 2009): click here.  

      See the post titled 'Better a Spectacular Failure ...' dated 5 June, 2013: click here. Note how McLaren's son Joe misremembers the line spoken by his father; replacing the word flamboyant with spectacular. 

[5] McLaren took to heart the words of one of his early lecturers at art school who told him that it was only by learning how to repeatedly fail that one would ever become an artist of any note: 'Don't think success will make you better artists.' 

      As McLaren's biographer notes: "The impact of this statement on McLaren was immediate and profound." And he quotes the latter saying: "'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in so doing, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'"  

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 48-49.  

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 21.

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Getting On', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 32.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'How beastly the bourgeois is', in The Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 373. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Oxford voice', The Poems Vol. I., p. 376.

 

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'O start a revolution', The Poems, Vol. I., p. 392.