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. 

 

 

Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on Chapters 6-8

Russ Bestley: Turning Revolt Into Style (Manchester University Press, 2025)

Stephen Alexander (à la Jamie Reid): God Save Russ Bestley (2025)

 

 

I. 

 

I have my own tale to tell in relation to the theme of Chapter 6 - 'Industry and the Individual' - or punk vs the closed shop. 

 

In 1982, I worked for six weeks at 19 Magazine in the features department, on an attachment as part of a degree course. I arranged and conducted an interview with Vivienne Westwood at her West End studio. The fashion editor at 19 wasn't happy - as I’d not sought her permission - and the NUJ rep wasn't happy either, as I wasn't a member nor even a paid employee. And so, even though the features editor loved the piece I wrote on Westwood, it went unpublished. 

 

I hate the bosses and the management. But, despite "intersecting concerns regarding class" [a] and worker's rights, I hate the unions and their restrictive practices too.

 

 

II.

 

"By the late 1970s, the original punk scene in the United Kingdom had been largely commercialised through the rebranding of new wave and post-punk ..." [200] 

 

That's true: but we should also recall that "some of the movement's more successful exponents" [200] were more than happy to collaborate in this and to assume elevated positions within "a revised and updated professional arena" [200]; i.e., to build careers and to make something of their lives.    

 

In other words, there were ambitious and aspirational individuals who wanted to get ahead had no issue with transforming from punks into yuppies and celebrities:

 

"The entrepreneurial spirit of punk [...] afforded entry to the fields of journalism, popular music, film, photography and design for those who chose to take the opportunity and run with it." [200] 

 

Some may still have pretended they wanted to 'smash the system' or 'disrupt it from the inside', but we all know most simply wanted to feather their own little nests and, whilst wearing their designer suits, turn rebellion into money.   

 

"To some critics", writes Bestley, "it was like punk had never happened" [200] [b]. 

 

Or, rather, I would say, it was as if the Sex Pistols had never existed.

 

 

III.

 

On the other hand ... 

 

I don't much care either for those who continued to cling on to a "stereotypical model of punk [...] despite the proliferation of new styles and the fragmentation of post-punk in myriad new directions" [201]. To paraphrase Jello Biafra: 'you ain't hardcore 'cause you spike your hair / when a [stuckist] still lives inside your head [c].     

 

Like Bestley, I'm less than impressed by hardcore punks in the early 1980s who "seem fixated on death, destruction and war, with little of the humour or self-awareness of the previous punk generation" [202]. 

 

And the hardcore punk designers were less than imaginative too, giving us "illustrations of stereotypical 'punk' figures replete with studded leather jackets and mohican hairstyles" [202] which have helped to establish "a set of generic graphic conventions that unfortunately still resonates across global punk scenes today" [202].

 

Bestley concludes: 

 

"Unlike the first wave of punk designers, who quickly moved on from what were fast becoming stereotypical visual symbols - such as the swastika, safety pin and razor blade - this punk generation seemed stuck in a time loop (or doom loop) of its own making." [202]

 

 

IV.   

 

Away from the hardcore dinosaurs, "punk and post-punk dress styles shifted [...] to the more flamboyant and expressive end of the dressing up box" [204], as a colourful new romanticism replaced punk nihilism; in 1980, McLaren and Westwood closed Seditionaries and opened Worlds End; out with the black bondage trousers and in with the gold striped pirate pants. 

 

Ultimately, writes Bestley, "the punk 'revolution' was to prove largely ineffective in its ambition to move away from pop music traditions and long-standing business practices, with many artists [...] falling into line as the industry took control" [204]. 

 

Rather irritatingly, Bestley (like so many others) seems prepared to let Rotten off the hook and give him far more credit than he deserves:

 

"Seeing the winds of change, Sex Pistols vocalist Johnny Rotten quit the band at the end of a disastrous North American tour in January 1978. Going back to his real name, John Lydon, he quickly established a new group, Public Image Ltd., with the explicit intention to turn the image of the rock performer upside down and to critique the exploitative practices of the music indusry from the inside." [204]

 

Firstly, Rotten didn't 'quit the band'; he was thrown overboard by McLaren with the agreement (or, if you prefer, connivance) of Cook and Jones who didn't like the fact Rotten was behaving like a prima donna, if not actually morphing into Rod Stewart [d].

 

Secondly, the North American tour may have been ill-starred, but it was not 'disastrous' in the sense that I think Bestley means. Rather, it was the consummation (or perfecting) of the nihilism that always lay at the heart of the Sex Pistols project and should be celebrated as such. Rotten's was a necessary sacrifice; just as Sid's death, which secured his tragic and iconic status, is a promise of life and its eternal recurrence [e].         

Thirdly, whatever his 'intentions' we all know 'Lydon' [f] signed an eight album record deal with Virgin and received a £75,000 advance from Branson [g] soon after exiting the Sex Pistols, with the latter promising to promote PiL at the forefront of the post-punk scene.   

 

And we all know the abject figure Lydon is today [click here and here].  

 

 

V.

 

This is true enough - and a good thing, I think:

 

"The new post-punk scenes moved away from focusing purely on music and lyrics to far more visual expressions of style and taste, along with a wider range of philosophical and aesthetic concerns ..." [207]

 

I'm not sure that references to oblique postmodern theory by music journalists such as Paul Morley necessarily makes them pretentious, however. And, besides, surely we might question the supposed moral merits of humility? The dreary utilitarianism (and realism) of the English intellectual tradition is not something I would wish to defend.  

 

After all, pretension is a form of pretending and, as my friend Thomas Tritchler likes to remind me, pretending is a vital and productive act of the imagination [h]. 

  

 

VI. 

Anyone for electronic music ...? 

 

No thanks: I don't care about (or care for) the Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Ultravox, Gary Numan ... et al. 

 

As Malcolm always said: 'A man sitting on a mountain top tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound than all the electronic music of today.' 

 

And who really wants to see pop stars standing behind synthesisers like clerks behind the counter of a hightstreet bank?     

 

 

VII. 

 

Bestley closes Chapter 7 with a couple of paragraphs that essentially summarise the book and so merit being quoted at length:

 

"Graphic design and commercial art have a long-standing relationship with both advances in technology [...] and artistic or cultural trends. While this book has argued that much punk graphic design was heavily impacted - or even driven - by access to materials and technology, punk's visual provocations clearly also had antecedents in Dada, Surrealism and the Situationist International, together with Pop Art and its inherent critique of the distinction between fine art and the commercial arena ... But those connections were often indistinct, serendipitous and stylistic, rather than formal - and the same can be said of the similarities between post-punk or new wave music graphics and the new styles emanating from American and European designers in response to postmodernism." [230]

 

"As all these converging themes illustrate, the historical relationships between punk, art history and design are highly complex, with punk and post-punk graphic approaches drawing upon earlier visual conventions while they themselves helped to inspire a new generation of design professionals working outside the subculture. Whether that fits the model of postmodernist theory or not is something of a moot point, since punk's historical moment intersects so closely with wider changes in the arts, media and politics that it is almost impossible to separate causes from consequences." [230-31][i]   

 

 

VIII. 

 

"Popular music has changed irrevocably in the past forty years." [233] 

 

Well, that's true - but then everything has changed, hasn't it? Change is the only constant (becoming is ironically stamped with the character of being, as Nietzsche might say) [j]. 

 

One of the things that has significantly changed for Bestley is the fact that popular music no longer plays such a crucial role in the lives of the young: "The  notion of music as a core element of personal identity and (sub)cultural capital seemed to fall away in the 1990s, a process that accelerated in the new millennium." [235]

 

When Bestley and I were teenagers, the first question we would ask of anyone was: What bands d'you like? And that pretty much determined the relationship (or lack of relationship) going forward. 

 

But young people today pick 'n' mix from a variety of music genres and have a much wider range of interests; "from film to fashion, celebrity culture, sports, literature and the arts" [235]. They don't care about shared communal identity so much as their individual right to like what they like and share selfies on social media.   

 

This doesn't bother me as much as it bothers Bestley, who bemoans the fact that pop music is once again "simply a form of light entertainment or background noise" [235] and that rock music was also sent into sharp decline by "banal television 'talent' shows and the return of the pop music Svengali in the odious form of Simon Cowell" [235]. 

 

As for punk? Well, punk "became recuperated [...] through the cementing of a set of visual and musical tropes that could be picked up and regurgitated in the affectation [...] of a generic 'punk' identity" [235].

 

Indie, meanwhile, is dismissed as "the bastardised offspring of the original independent post-punk scene, combined with a postmodern, sometimes ironic and often conceited form of self-reflection in musical approach, dress style and design" [236]. 

 

And, finally, don't mention the post-punk revival of the early 2000s; because that was merely a commercial pastiche "with highly successful groups adopting some of the gestures and signature styles of their late 1970s forebears, though often with little of the wit or intelligence" [236].

 

Ouch!  

 

Even today's reinvigorated interest in music graphics is greeted with more sorrow than joy: 

 

"Sadly, this interest is often linked to home decor and interior styling, with 'album art' displayed on bookshelves or in purpose-made frames hung on the wall - a marker of the owner's cool taste and cultural capital, rather than an object with a function and purpose." [236]

 

Again, all this is absolutely true, but I simply don't feel his pain. 

 

As for themed live events and corporate festivals ... the answer is: don't go! 

 

I wouldn't dream of heading up to Blackpool for the Rebellion Festival, although, funnily enough, I wouldn't mind visiting the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas that Bestley mentions; "a massive former warehouse building in the Arts District. now dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of punk rock while offering guided tours led by ageing pop punk musicians" [237] - and a gift shop!

 

Like it or not, this is who we are today; not fans in the old (authentic) sense, but consumers in search of a simulated (or ersatz) experience they can be posted about on Instagram or uploaded to YouTube [k]. 

 

Malcolm McLaren decried such toward the end of his life as a karoake culture - i.e., one which lacks substance and originality and relies upon pre-existing ideas and old styles constantly being recycled and repackaged - and, to be honest, I'm a little disappointed Bestley didn't refer to McLaren's TED Talk on this topic [l].  

  

IX.   

 

Returning to his theme (not quite like the proverbial dog to its vomit, but like someone with an itch that they simply have to scratch, even if it causes irritation to do so), Bestley writes:

 

"Punk's visual conventions [...] were appropriated, mimicked and blatantly copied by a rampant branding and marketing industry that is always on the lookout for material that might communicate an elusive sense of authenticity and agency. From trainers to power tools, credit cards to hamburgers, punk graphic conventions have been milked for all they are worth in the pursuit of profit. [...] Meanwhile, identikit, cosplay 'punks' around the globe adopt outfits lifted directly from the stylistic dead end of 1980s hardcore punk, in a desperate search for subcultural legitimacy." [237]

 

Again, all of that is true, but one wonders why Bestley cares so much (to the point, indeed, of writing a 250 page book about it)? I suppose it's because he believes that just as beneath the paving stones lies the beach, so there is "much more" [238] beneath the surface of punk and post-punk graphic design than meets the eye. 

 

What would this hidden punk substance "beyond stylistic gestures and visual tropes" [238] be one wonders? And why should it have priority over the latter? 

 

I suspect, for Bestley, this (metaphysical) substance consists of content, function and purpose and is what guarantees that the superficial (material) expressions of punk possess value and meaning. 

 

I have to admit, I find that a little odd coming from a graphic designer. One might have expected him to remain courageously at the surface, affirming forms, tones, and words; i.e., the world of appearance [m] (which is perhaps the only world that exists for us).  

 

Unfortunately, we do not have time to enter here into a philosophical discussion about "punk as a concept and its manifestation" [247] in physical form (a statement almost Platonic in its dualism which makes me wonder if punk wasn't simply another form of idealism all along).    

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Russ Bestley, Turning Revolt Into Style: The process and practice of punk graphic design (Manchester University Press, 2025), p. 190. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Writing in the following chapter of his study, Bestley notes: 

      "Even the arch Situationist behind punk's original graphic provocations, Jamie Reid, found a creative home in the mid-1980s, taking up the offer of a studio at Assorted Images to develop his art practice. While Reid never did make the leap to the commercial graphic design industry, he did continue to collaborate with musicians, artists, filmmakers and political activists, embracing the potential of new print reproduction tools to create a new aesthetic." [215] 

 

[c] The paraphrased line is from the Dead Kennedy's track 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off', written by Jello Biafra, and found on the EP In God We Trust, Inc. (Alternative Tentacles, 1981). It was also released as a single in November of that year.   

 

[d] For more on Rotten's dismissal from the band in January 1978, see the post entitled 'It Was on the Good Ship Venus ...' (4 March 2024): click here. 

      As indicated here, 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 (see note g below). 

 

[e] See the post 'Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified' (3 Feb 2024) - click here - where I explain what I mean by this.  

 

[f] On being told that 'Johnny Rotten' was a name owned by the Sex Pistols management company (Glitterbest), John Lydon reverted to his birth name.  

 

[g] Lydon also enjoyed a very nice, all expenses paid 'working holiday' in Jamaica, staying at the Sheraton hotel, accompanied by Richard Branson and others in the first three weeks of February 1978. In addition, Virgin agreed to pay for the rehearsal facilities and studio time for the new group Lydon planned to get together.  

       Later that same month, Lydon also flies to LA for a meeting with executives at Warner Bros. and to solicit further support for his (still unformed) new band. They eventually pay him £12,000 and Lydon uses the cash to buy a flat at 45 Gunter Grove in Fulham, West London. 

      Finally, let it be noted that when Lydon takes McLaren and Glitterbest to court in 1979, Virgin - supposedly neutral and in favour of an out of court settlement that will allow both the Sex Pistols and Public Image Limited to peacefully coincide on the same label - are clearly more in Lydon's camp than McLaren's. 

      The public school hippie Richard Branson - "four years younger [...] but by far the smarter businessman" - was arguably motivated by a degree of personal animosity towards McLaren; not least because he disliked the derisive nickname, Mr Pickle, that the latter coined for him. When Cook and Jones were offered a record deal of their own by Branson, the former Sex Pistols switched sides and Glitterbest's case (such as it was) pretty much collapsed. 

      Note: the line quoted is from Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 355.

 

[h] See the third part of Tritchler's post on the malign/ed art of faking it (27 Dec. 2014): click here.   

 

[i] One wonders if Bestley has ever considered the possibility that there are no causes and consequences - i.e., that the theory of cause and effect is a convenient and conventional fiction that we impose on reality in order to simplify and understand the complex chaos of events and which enables us to posit concepts such as free will and moral responsibility.  

 

[j] See §617 of The Will to Power, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 330.  

 

[k] As Bestley later notes: 

      "Viewed from a contemporary vantage point, 'spectacular subcultures' such as punk, that centered on tribal affiliations and subtle (or not so subtle) visual tropes, appear to have come from another age. The internet, personal blogs, influencers, social media and search engines have redefined modes of discovery, criticism and taste-making." [247] 

 

[l] See McLaren's TED Talk on the topic of authentic creativity contra karaoke culture (October 2009): click here. 

       I have to admit, McLaren rather surprises - and rather disappoints - with this return to highly suspect notions of authenticity, originality, substance, etc. Here was a man who once celebrated style and, as an artist, understood the importance of the surface (see note m below). 

      It pains me to say it, but one wonders if, in this final public presentation, it's fatigue, and age and illness that speaks (McLaren died six months afterwards, aged 64, from a form of asbestos-related lung cancer (mesothelioma)).    

 

[m] I'm half-quoting and half-paraphrasing from section 4 of Nietzsche's 1886 Preface to The Gay Science, written in praise of those artists who, like the ancient Greeks, knew how to be superficial out of profundity.   

   

Notes on the Introduction to Russ Bestley's Turning Revolt Into Style can be read by clicking here. 

 

Notes on Chapters 1 & 2 of Russ Bestley's Turning Revolt Into Style can be read by clicking here. 

 

Notes on Chapters 3-5 of Russ Bestley's Turning Revolt Into Style can be read by clicking here.