Retromania: Reviewed and Reassessed - Part 2: Now (Chapters 1-5)

Simon Reynolds: Retromania 

(Faber and Faber, 2011)

 

Note that page numbers given in the text refer to the 2012 edition of Retromania. 

Part 1 of this post can be accessed by clicking here.

 

 

I. 

 

It's telling that Reynolds still thinks the crucial element of pop is the music; that all the rest is just ephemera - disappointing that he should still posit such a clear distinction between the sound and the look. 

 

Nevertheless, I share his horror of rock and pop museums and probably wouldn't visit one (unless, I suppose, it were in the name of research) and I'm pleased to see him quote Julie Birchill's line about anything that can fit into rock's rich tapestry (i.e., be conveniently and seamlessly sewn into the fabric of history) is dead at heart. 

 

This includes pretty much every genre, every band, every record, but I'm happy that Reynolds chooses to give a special mention to the Clash's London Calling (1979), which "re-rooted punk in the riches of rock 'n' roll and Americana, and was duly anointed Greatest Album of the Eighties by Rolling Stone" [10] - the kind of album your older sister buys you for Christmas [a].   

 

Apparently, "Theodore Adorno was the first to point out the similarity of the words 'museum' and mausoleum'" [11]. It's a phonetic resemblance rather than an etymological link, of course, but true to note that the former too is a final resting place for objects that have passed on and are now similar to "medieval sacred relics [... which] elicit morbid awe rather than scholarly respect" [13].

 

I understand why people defend museums and public collections of work, or why some people think it crucial to document, commemorate, archive, preserve and restore, etc. But, like Reynolds, "there's a part of me that will always thrill to, and agree with, the Futurist manifestos" [21]. Marinetti called on us to flood the museums, just as, many years later, Malcolm McLaren would insist that history is for pissing on.

 

In sum, we can all agree that there's been a massive cultural shift; from the modernist obsession with making new and leaping into the future, to our current preoccupation with heritage and the protecting of things deemed to have historic value. The problem is: "History must have a dustbin, or History will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap." [27] [b] 

 

 

II. 

 

Generally speaking, like Reynolds, I avoid band reunions. For as he notes, they are usually a "recipe for disappointment" [39]. I saw the Sex Pistols play Finsbury Park in the summer of 1996 at a friend's invitation (and insistence) and wasn't impressed.

 

As for rock 're-enactments' ... What's the point: "It seems obvious that the simulation of 'being there' fails on every level: you know there's no real danger [...] you know what the outcome is going to be" [51]. 

 

Having said that, however, Reynolds offers a fascinating and strong defence of the latter, which ultimately relies upon what Derrida terms the myth (or metaphysics) of presence and a dash of what Walter Benjamin describes as an artwork's aura: 

      

"Although they've emerged out of the art world rather than from rock culture itself, rock re-enactments resonate with a buried hunger within the music scene for a spasm like punk or rave that would turn the world upside down. On the face of it, re-enactments seem just to feed into a backwards-looking culture that's taking us ever-further from the conditions in which such total transformations and singular disruptions were possible. But perhaps the artists are onto something when they talk about failure as the goal: a goad to the audience, simultaneously stirring up and frustrating the longing for the Event." [53-54]

 

"Re-enactment art is at once an extension of and an inversion of performance art, which is event-based by definition. Performance art is all about the here and now. Its components include the bodily presence of the artists, a physical location and its duration [...] Re-enactment is like a spectral form of performance art: what the viewer witnesses never quite achieves full presence or present-ness." [54]

 

In other words, authenticity is tangible whilst the ghostly is never quite the real deal (no matter how haunting it may be).  

 

 

III. 

 

I mentioned YouTube in passing in part one of this post and Reynolds devotes a whole chapter to the question of music and memory (Ch. 2: Total Recall), describing the online video sharing platform as an "indiscriminate chaos of amateur cultural salvage" [56]. That would make a nice tagline, but I'm not sure Google would go for it. 

 

Reynolds continues:

 

"YouTube's ever-proliferating labyrinth of collective recollection is a prime example of the crisis of overdocumentation triggered by digital technology [...] the astronomic expansion of humanity's resources of memory." [56]

 

Nietzsche wouldn't like it - innocence and becoming are tied to forgetfulness, not memory - and Heidegger wouldn't like it; we remain unfree so long as we remain enframed by the essence of technology, whether we spend hours on YouTube or not.  

 

Because we have instant access to the past, "the presence of the past in our lives has increased immeasurably and insidiously" [57]. And this erosion of the here and now is probably not great for our well-being: we become unable to live in the moment; incapable of focusing on work, or fully immersing ourselves even in the things we enjoy:

 

"Attention-deficit disorder is the name of this condition, but like  so many ailments and dysfunctions under late capitalism, the source of the disorder is not internal to the sufferer, nor his or her fault; it's caused by the environment, in this case the datascape." [73]

 

Amusingly, Reynolds confesses that he's now nostalgic for an era of boredom contra this time of total distraction and a million-and-one possibilities; "a cultural economy of dearth and delay" [74] and an experience of tedium so intense "it was almost spiritual" [74]. Technology has even robbed us of this.          

 

IV.

 

"This is one of the big questions of our era: can culture survive in conditions of limitlessness?" [77]

 

The short answer is: it depends on what Nietzsche terms the plastic power of a people; i.e., their capacity to incorporate the past and the foreign and to balance an overwhelming amount of knowledge with the need for action and forgetting. A strong, healthy culture possesses high plastic power and is able to use history for life rather than allowing the past to become the gravedigger of the present [c]. 

 

Unfortunately, I'm not sure ours is a strong, healthy culture. But maybe my post-Nietzschean pessimism and Reynolds's cultural anxiety will prove mistaken ... 

 

For maybe the digital environment is that rhizomatic utopia that Deleuze and Guattari term a plane of immanence; i.e., a non-hierarchical virtual field of pure connectivity, where all concepts and forms emerge through, and are defined by, their speed, movement, and intensity. 

 

Or, to put it another way, maybe the internet is an open, unmediated, and self-organising space that exists without fixed structures or transcendent rules, making it a fantastic place for creating new possibilities. 

 

But then again, maybe not: maybe it's a kind of hell to which we are damned for all eternity.

 

 

V. 

 

Chapter 3 of Retromania is on record collecting and provides a fascinating psycho-philosophical insight into the phenomenon, with references to all the usual suspects - Freud, Benjamin, Baudrillard, et al.

 

Having said that, one can't help wondering at times if Retromania might have benefitted from a ruthless edit; I'm sure I'm not the only reader to find it a bit meandering at times. I understand it's a work of critically-informed journalism and not an academic text, but, even so, a sharper analytic focus would've been nice [d]. 

 

Anyway, as someone who doesn't collect records, has never downloaded or file shared music, and doesn't own an iPod or an MP3 player, this chapter doesn't particularly interest. Though I do like this observation: 

 

"First music was reified, turned into a thing (vinyl records, analogue tapes) you could buy, store, keep under your own persona; control. Then music was 'liquified', turned into data that could be streamed, carried anywhere, transferred between different devices." [122]

 

Should we, then, demand the return of objects? As an objectophile and object-oriented philosopher, readers will probably be able to guess my answer to this. 

 

 

VI. 

 

Chapter 4 is on the rise of the curator - and that does excite my interest. 

 

For, in a sense, I feel myself to be the curator of Torpedo the Ark; someone who doesn't merely connect ideas and images, but reimagines and recontextualises them; someone who - most importantly - cares as well as creates (etymologically, the word curate comes from the Latin cura, meaning to care or safeguard, as Reynolds rightly reminds us).    

 

Moving on, here's another line that seems indisputably true: 

 

"Once, rock 'n' roll was a commentary on adolescent experience; over time, rock itself became that experience, overlapping with it and at time substituting for it entirely." [135] 

 

I get the impression Reynolds feels that this results in ersatz emotion and cliché; "songs aren't torn from the soul so much as lovingly pieced together" [139]. But is he really defending the "rock ethos of blustery authenticity" [139] here ...? 

 

It certainly feels like it when he takes a pop at The Darkness and describes their amusing take on metal as malignant; "a tumour of not-really-meaning-it that eroded any actual power that metal still possessed" [140]. That's more than a bit harsh or histrionic; to write of the cancer of irony that has "metastasised its way through pop culture" [140] has unpleasant echoes of Nazi rhetoric [e]. 

 

Again, one is obliged to ask: is it really so terrible if a band assembles their identity "within a kind of economy of influences" [141], rather than "drawing from deep within their personal life" [141]? I don't think so. Art doesn't have to be inhuman, but there's always an impersonal element to it otherwise its just an emotional expression of the individual and a washing of dirty laundry in public.   

 

And, further more, reference is not always deference; nor indeed is citation merely a "form of showing off or connoisseurial conceit" [141]. It can be. But it doesn't have to be. For the most part, it's an acknowledgement of the fact that Romantic ideals of originality, authenticity, and genius are just that and all creation takes place within an intertextual context. To some extent, we are all monsters made from multiple parts and dead tissue and even the good doctor Frankenstein himself was basically a Promethean plagiarist playing God.   

 

   

VII. 

 

I mentioned earlier - a couple of times I think - the importance of forgetting. And so I'm pleased to see Reynolds write this: 

 

"Maybe we need to forget. Maybe forgetting is as essential for a culture as it is existentially and emotionally necessary for individuals." [159] 

 

But there's not much chance of forgetting in the age of the cathedralesque box set ... in which the past is repackaged and remastered and made Whole; "the box set is where an old enthusiasm goes to die: a band or genre you loved frozen into an indigestible chunk [...] bloated with out-takes [... and] impossible to listen to all the way through" [161] [f]. 

 

 

VIII. 

 

Apparently, Japan is not only the land of the rising sun, but also the empire of retro:  

 

"No other country on Earth [...] has dedicated itself so intensively to archiving the annals of Western popular, semi-popular and downright unpopular music. And no other music-producing nation has blurred the border more thoroughly between creation and curation." [162]

 

And that gives me yet another reason to love Japan apart from the cherry blossom, the literature, the beauty of the women, and the fact that - as noted by Barthes - it's a place in which symbols and signs play freely rather than begging to be interpreted or seeking to impose meaning. 

 

The thing with the Japanese fans is they have learnt not only the first rule of punk - do it yourself - but the equally important (but often forgotten) second rule - do it properly - and Reynolds rightly notes that what is striking about the Japanese take on Western pop forms is the fact they get everything so spot on thanks to "the unstinting attention to stylistic detail" [164]. 

 

The Japanese don't produce cheap copies, but perfect simulations; more real than the real thing and "liberated from the anchors of geography and history" [170] - it's the smile without the cat! I can't say I'm a fan of Shibuya-kei, but I certainly don't feel its practitioners and adherents are postmodern imperialists "whose fundamental mode of operation is the reprocessing of culture" [170] and who undermine the vitality and expressive power of genuine musical genres such as reggae, rap, and folk. 

 

"Once music is a reflection of esoteric knowledge rather than expressive urgency, its value is easily voided." [170] 

 

That is quite a claim. But whilst it's far from being merely an empty assertion - Reynolds has already assembled a good deal of evidence to support it - I'm still not entirely convinced by what remains ultimately a subjective claim and turning Japanese is not the worst fate that might befall a people. 

 

 

IX. 

 

Chapter 5 closes on quite a melancholy note:

 

"When I look back at the development of pop and rock during my lifetime [...] what perplexes me is the slow but steady fading of the artistic imperative to be original [...] from the mid-eighties onwards, gradually but with increasing momentum, that changed into an impulse to create something very much heard before, and moreover to do it immaculately, accurate in every last detail ..." [176]

 

This is what Reynolds means by the phrase turning Japanese - but as I say above, that's only an issue if you wish to continue valuing the ideals of originality; an ideal which, even in the West, was a relatively recent invention (as Reynolds well knows) [g]. 

  

"In some ways, pop music could be said to have held out against the onset of postmodernism the longest [...] the first decade of the twenty-first century is truly when the tide decisively turned Japanese. The cycles of recycling have a senseless quality, uncoupled from History [h] or a social reality beyond music [...] culture can be played for laughs [...] But it's the kind of slightly hysterical mirth that could easily turn to tears." [179]

 

Hopefully, Mr Reynolds can dry his eyes in time for Part Two of Retromania - 'Then' - which I will discuss in part 3 of this post ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The history of the Clash can be bookended by two events: signing to CBS in January 1977 and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2003. They were always the only band that mattered - to the music industry! 

      Reynold's writes of the band's meek compliance and recalls seeing Mick Jones going up on stage at the award ceremony and looking like a "stoop-shouldered clerk shuffling to the podium to receive his retirement gift for forty-five years' loyal service to the firm" [10]. Ouch!

 

[b] Reynolds later expands on this line of thought: "History is a form of editing reality; for a historical account to work it requires a filter, otherwise the sheer sludge of information silts up the narrative flow." [28]

 

[c] See Nietzsche's essay 'On the uses and disadvantages of history for life', in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 57-123. 

 

[d] Of course, it could be argued that the sprawling, over-documented, and often repetitive nature of the book is itself an ironic reflection of the indiscriminate chaos of the digital era that Reynold's describes.  

 

[e] Of course, I'm not suggesting Reynolds is a crypto-fascist, but, at the time of writing Retromania, he does display a conservative (almost reactionary) desire for affective realness and is clearly contemptuous of what Bob Harris famously called mock rock (with reference to the New York Dolls) in 1973. He also cites Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1918) and revives that hoary old dichotomy of culture versus civilisation (see page 170). 

      Ultimately, his rhetoric in Retromania is histrionic - and that's his term - because he treats the end of musical innovation as a cultural catastrophe and defends the idea that a people must move forward into the future - must progress - in order to remain healthy. 

      I'm told by someone who knows, that Reynolds explicitly frames his 2024 book Futuromania as a corrective to the cultural pessimism of Retromania and posits the idea that if you only find new ears with which to listen you can hear tomorrow's music today.   

 

[f] Of course, box sets aren't meant to be listened to; they are made for "ownership and display, as testaments to elevated taste and knowledge" [161] and monuments to the past. 

 

[g] Traditionally, there was no shame in copying and in fact copying the great masters was seen as crucial to the creative process. The modern concept of originality emerged primarily during the late 18th century, driven by the Romantic movement which championed individual genius and self-expression over imitation. 

      What surprises me is that Reynolds knows this, but still can't quite get over his "old modernist-minded post-punk" [173] prejudice - still remains a Romantic at heart who thinks it a sign of moral weakness or vital deficiency to not want to resist influence and produce original work; to find their own voice. "Not only has the anxiety of influence faded away," write Reynolds, "so has sense of shame about being derivative." [178]       

 

[h] Note the capitalisation of the term history - how very Hegelian! For most of us, history is simply a common noun referring to a chronological record of random events. But those who speak of History imagine the rational unfolding of Geist toward a specific goal. 

 

 

If You Want to Change the World, Start By Making Your Own Fucking Bed!

Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Maria de Soledade Alves 

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (25 March 1969)

Photo by Charles Ley 

 

 

I. 

 

Although there are things that one might admire about John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, I can't say I'm a fan. Indeed, if pushed, I would have to admit that any trace of affection is blotted out by a good deal of animosity and suspicion. 

 

Mostly, that's due to Malcolm Mclaren having taught my generation to never trust a hippie - particularly those who are working in the arts and music business. For when you look beneath the long hair and countercultural bullshit, you soon uncover a crucial (and hypocritical) disconnect betweeen the utopian vision we are asked to imagine and their own lavish lifestyles, often involving enormous wealth and celebrity.

 

 

II. 

 

That was certainly the case with John & Yoko [1] and, for me, no photo brings this home better than the one reproduced above showing the honeymooning couple waiting for a housekeeper to change the sheets on their bed at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, so that they can continue with their Bed-in for Peace protest [2] against the evils of war, injustice, and capitalist exploitation.      

 

The photo, by Charles Ley, was originally published in the Daily Mirror (26 Mar 1969) with the headline 'Beatle John and Yoko are forced out of their £20-a-day bed by Maria, the hotel maid', and went on (in mocking tones) to explain how a Portuguese maid, named Maria de Soledade Alves, had interrupted Day Two of the revolutionary happening held in a flower-scented presidential suite, in order to change the bed linen [3].

 

After watching her complete her duties - and without lifting a finger to help - the 28-year-old Beatle and his 34-year-old wife hopped happily back into bed and continued their protest. 

 

 

III. 

 

When Johnny Rotten was asked why he didn't want to accompany the Sex Pistols to Brazil and perform with the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs [4], he explained that he disliked the romanticised narrative surrounding the whole affair and particularly objected to the fact that the train driver, 57-year-old Jack Mills, was seriously injured during the robbery: That could have been my father.

 

And that's pretty much how I feel when I look at this photo: That could have been my mother [5] - obliged to make the bed in front of two long-haired, hippie layabouts and laughing members of the press.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] By the time of Lennon's death in 1980, his estate was valued at approximately $200 million (that's closer to $800 million in today's money). This fortune was largely amassed from music royalties, but Yoko - who came from a wealthy Japanese banking family - had also made some astute investments in NYC real estate and modern art.   

 

[2] In 1969, John & Yoko staged a unique form of protest called the Bed-ins for Peace, which, as the name indicates, involved staying in bed all day, growing your hair, and giving interviews to the world's media. 

      They held two week-long protests; the first at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and the second at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, during which they invited several famous friends to drop by, including the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and psychedelic psychologist Timothy Leary. It was here, on 1 June 1969, that they also recorded the song 'Give Peace a Chance'.   

      The events were filmed, of course, and readers who wish to learn more might like to watch the documentary Bed Peace (1969), starring John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and shared on YouTube: click here. 

 

[3] Readers who wish to read the article in the Daily Mirror in full, can find it reproduced on the website Vintage Everyday: click here. 

      When asked later whether he and Yoko were irritated by the fact that the press, for the most part, didn't take the Bed-in seriously, Lennon replied that he wasn't; that in fact he and Yoko didn't want to be taken seriously. Fifty years after the event, Yoko Ono stood by the central message being preached, but conceded that it was naive to think you could change the world from the comfort of one's bed. 

 

[4] See the post 'And God Save Ronald Biggs' (5 Jan 2026): click here.  

 

[5] My mother wasn't Portuguese, but she did work, briefly and part-time, at a Trust House Forte hotel, where she had the exhausting job of making the beds in the morning.   

 

 

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. 

God Save Joe Orton

Joe Orton anachronistically wearing a 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears T-shirt

in a photo by George Elam (1967) 

 

'The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste 

invariably have very bad taste.'

 

 

I. 

 

Remembered primarily as a playwright who came to a sticky end at the hands of his lover, Joe Orton was a gay, working class English writer who, in a brief but brilliant public career lasting from 1964 until his murder in 1967, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies, characterised by a mix of cynicism and sauciness [1].  

 

 

II. 

 

After leaving school, Orton got a job as an office junior whilst also developing an interest in the performing arts, joing a number of am-dram societies in his home town of Leicester. He obviously showed promise, as, in November 1950, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he took up the following spring.   

 

It was at RADA that Orton met Kenneth Halliwell, seven years his senior, and they formed a strong romantic relationship, moving into a West Hampstead flat together (shared with two other students). 

 

After graduating, they collaborated on a number of novels. However, as these failed to set the literary world alight (or even find a publisher), Orton and Halliwell decided it might be best to write separately, scraping by as best they could on benefits and monies earned from part-time jobs, whilst amusing themselves with various pranks; such as removing books from their local library in order to modify them (i.e., deface the covers with comically surreal images and additional text), before returning them to the shelves [2].   

 

They were eventually nicked by the police and charged with larceny and damage to property deemed to be wilfully malicious in nature. After pleading guilty at Old Street magistrates (in May 1962), each received a six-month custodial sentence (and a £2 fine). Interestingly, whilst Halliwell hated being in jail and attempted suicide, Orton seemed to enjoy himself and find inspiration. His career as a powerful and subversive writer arguably has its origins in his time behind bars and shortly after his release he wrote Entertaining Mr Sloane [3]. 

 

 

III.

 

The unduly harsh nature of the prison sentence, which Orton suspected was due to the fact that he and Halliwell were queers, brought home to him the fact that corrupt priggishness and hypocrisy still exercised its power and authority in the UK, even after the Chatterley Trial: 

 

"It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul." [4]

 

Orton's next performed work was Loot (1965); a dark two-act work that satirises social and religious attitudes to death, as well as the integrity of the police. It opened to severe criticism, but, after numerous edits and rewrites, a London production in the autumn of 1966 received rave reviews, several awards, and established Orton's reputation. He was even able to sell the film rights for £25,000 (that's over half-a-million nicker in today's money and was a record figure at the time).     

 

 

IV. 

 

Orton's final play, What the Butler Saw, was a clever modern farce that he completed writing in July 1967, one month before his death [5]. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 5 March 1969 and was met with a hostile audience reaction; boos and cries of rubbish were heard coming from the balcony and some people walked out, protesting the play's raunchy character and obvious contempt for authority.

 

There is, finally, one more work I would like to mention; Up Against It - an unproduced film script written in 1967 for the Beatles, who were then at the height of their fame. 

 

After submitting the script to their manager, Brian Epstein, it was returned to Orton following a long period of silence and without comment. It's anarchic, sexually explicit, and subversive tone was deemed too potentially damaging to the Beatles' carefully managed public image and inappropriate for a mainstream movie audience [6]. 

 

In fact, the dark and chaotic script might have better suited Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols ...

 

 

V.   

 

It's not wrong to consider Orton a defining figure (and diarist) of London in the 1960s; his work and lifestyle embodied the rebellious and sexually liberated spirit of the counterculture during that era. 

 

But, having said that, I can't help thinking of him as more of a trickster-punk than a peace-loving hippie - even if he did have a Beatles song played at his funeral. And Malcolm McLaren was a great admirer, considering Orton an inspiration for the punk aesthetic that he and Vivienne Westwood had created in their shop at 430 King's Road.   

 

Thus it is that Orton's name appears on the right side (literally and figuratively) of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up' manifesto (1974). And thus it is that, in 1979, McLaren and Westwood produced the 'Prick Up Your Ears' shirt for Seditionaries, which comes with a quotation taken from Orton's diary (I write in more detail about this shirt in a post that can be accessed by clicking here). 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, for McLaren, Orton was a "remorseless cultural provocateur" [7] and a kindred spirit; someone who drew inspiration (as he did) from the gutter and delighted in the prospect of fucking the rich up the arse.    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The comparison with Oscar Wilde is often made and it's not an unreasonable comparison to make; both used wit to expose the moral hypocrisies of their respective societies, often focusing on the absurdity of authority. Writing in the more permissive 1960s, rather than the Victorian 1890s, allowed Orton to be more explicitly transgressive than Wilde, though I'm not sure he was more anarchic or provocative.

      For a critical essay on this pair of queer iconoclasts, see John Bull, 'What the butler did see: Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde', in Francesca Coppa (ed.), Joe Orton: A Casebook (Routledge, 2002), pp. 45-60. 

 

[2] In their defence, Orton and Halliwell were protesting what they regarded as an appalling selection of books; endless shelves of rubbish, as they put it. See Ilsa Colsell's Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013). 

      And see also the excellent article by Jonathan Jones titled 'Joe Orton's defaced library books and the death of rebellious art', in The Guardian (14 Oct 2011): click here. Jones argues that their amusing (if somewhat juvenile) defacement of library books was "a glorious rejection of the austerity and ordinariness that still set the British tone in 1962" and anticipated the manner in which the Sex Pistols scandalised a moribund nation in the following decade.  

      Amusingly, the book covers Orton and Halliwell vandalised have since become a valued part of the Islington Local History Centre collection and some are exhibited in the Islington Museum (i.e., they have been recuperated by the Spectacle). A collection of the book covers is also available online at the Joe Orton Gallery: click here.  

 

[3] Joe Orton (1964) as quoted on joeorton.org: click here. 

 

[4] The three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane premiered at the New Arts Theatre (London) on 6 May 1964, produced by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage, with one critic for The Times declaring that it made his blood boil more than any other British play in the last decade. The play was transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End at the end of June and then to the Queen's Theatre in October, and Orton was hailed as a promising new talent. 

 

[5] On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home in Islington with multiple hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. It seems likely that Orton had wanted to terminate their relationship (albeit not in such a literal fashion). 

 

[6] The screenplay was filled with what was termed outlaw sexuality and it should be recalled that homosexuality had only (partially) been decriminalised in July of 1967. Paul McCartney would later admit that the Beatles didn't wish to do the film because it was gay and they were not.  

      Interestingly, in 1979, John Lydon initiated a High Court case against Malcolm McLaren and his management company, Glitterbest. While the primary goal was to reclaim misappropriated royalties and the rights to the Sex Pistols name, Rotten also wanted to make clear his objection to the salacious and immoral elements contained in the script upon which the film that eventually became The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) had been based. Arguing that the script portrayed him and other members of the band in a defamatory and harmful light, Rotten also made it clear that he had no wish to be associated with infamous figures including Jack the Ripper, Myra Hindley and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Nor, indeed, did he approve of any scenes involving extreme sexual and violent content. 

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.  

  

 

To read a sister post to this one - God Save Jean Genet (2 Feb 2026) - please click here. 

 

Bonus video: a short clip of Joe Orton being interviewed on The Eamon Andrews Show (ABC Weekend TV, 23 April, 1967): click here. A decade later, Andrews' co-presenter on the Thames TV show Today, Bill Grundy, would interview the Sex Pistols, who weren't prepared to play along in such a charming manner as Orton.  

 

 

Notes From the Gutter on Joe Orton's Fur Coat and the Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears Shirt

Joe Orton's fur coat and the 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears shirt [1]

   

I. 

 

In January 1967, Joe Orton's theatrical agent, Peggy Ramsay [2], bought him a dark grey faux fur coat designed by Hardy Amies for Hepworths [3]. 

 

Whether intended as a belated Christmas gift, or simply an act of mid-winter kindness, it's a fabulous-looking thing that I would be more than happy to wear, knowing as I do that twenty years later the coat was worn by Gary Oldman playing the part of Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987) [4]. 

 

And knowing as I do too that previously the coat was mentioned on a Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood designed shirt for Seditionaries (one which also borrowed its name from John Lahr's definitive biography of Orton).

 

 

II. 

 

I have to confess, the gay orgy scene depicted - which McLaren adapted from an image found on a T-shirt he purchased from a sex shop in LA [5] - is not really my cup of tea, but, as Miss Brodie would say in her best Edinburgh voice, for those who like that sort of thing - and regard the word 'ears' as an anagram - then that is the sort of thing they like.

 

More exciting to me than the image - to which McLaren added a splash of colour and a few other minor details in order to punk it up - is the fact that underneath the scene is a short text in the form of a dialogue reproduced from Orton's diary which reads:   

 

"'You look very pretty in that fur coat you're wearing', Oscar said as we stood on the corner before going our separate ways. I said, 'Peggy bought it me. It was thirteen pounds fifteen.' 'Very cheap,' Michael White said. 'Yes, I've discovered I look better in cheap clothes.' 'I wonder what the significance of that is?' Oscar said. 'I'm from the gutter,' I said. 'And don't you ever forget it because I won't.'" [6] 

 

As Paul Gorman notes in his reading of this text: "Orton's response to White, thought McLaren, expressed punk attitude to a T." [7] 

 

Wilde was probably right to say that some look at the stars (i.e. aspire to the highest ideals and have the capacity for hope), but others, like Orton, and McLaren, and so many other artists, draw inspiration from the gutter itself and the base materials found therein that are "external and foreign to ideal human aspirations" [8]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I think I'm right in saying that Joe Orton's fur coat was last given an outing as part of retrospective exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of his death and featuring a collection of his personal belongings. Entitled 'Ortonesque', the exhibition was held at Leicester's New Walk Museum and Art Gallery (March 3 - May 7 2007). The coat was eventually sold at auction, on behalf of the Orton Estate, in June 2022, for £2,295. The image used here is taken from the Bonhams website: click here, but an alternative image can be found on joeorton.org: click here. 

      The long-sleeved white muslin shirt, designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westood for sale at their King's Road store Seditionaries in 1979, known by the title borrowed from John Lahr's 1978 biography of Orton features a graphic print of a homosexual punk orgy and includes a text taken from Orton's diary (9 January, 1967). The shirt shown here was sold by Julien's Auctions, in June 2021, for $576: click here.

 

[2] Peggy Ramsay represented many of the leading dramatists to emerge from the 1950s onwards, including Alan Ayckbourn, Eugène Ionesco, J. B. Priestley, Stephen Poliakoff, and David Hare. 

      After discovering Joe Orton, then living on National Assistance, she persuaded producer Michael Codron to stage his play Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964). Ramsay represented Orton, and then his estate, for the rest of her life. 

 

[3] Hardy Amies was a British fashion designer and one of the first to venture into the ready-to-wear market when he teamed up in 1959 with another iconic British brand, Hepworths, to produce a range of stylish but essentially conservative men's clothing.  

 

[4] Prick Up Your Ears (1987), dir. Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Alan Bennett (based on the 1978 biography of that title by John Lahr), starred Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell and Vanessa Redgrave as Peggy Ramsay. 

      The fur coat makes its first appearance in an early scene when Oldman visits Ramsay's office to show it off to her (6:00) and is seen twice more later in the film; once after an awards ceremony (1:18:28) and once in an episode set in a public convenience (1:18:50). Click here to find the scenes and watch the entire film on YouTube. Oldman's excellent performance in this almost makes me forgive his portrayal of Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986). 

 

[5] The store was (and still is) called The Pleasure Chest and is located at 7733 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. It wasn't the first time that McLaren found inspiration here and borrowed - Paul Gorman's word is hijacked - a design for use on one of his pieces produced in collaboration with Westwood; he visited the original New York store, based in the West Village, in the period when his shop at 430 King's Road was called SEX.  

 

[6] There seems to be some discrepencies between the text on the shirt and the actual diary entry; for example, the first speaker is referred to on the shirt only by his first name, Oscar, and not his full name Oscar Lewenstein (a British theatre and film producer); and whilst the price of the coat is given on the shirt as £13 19s, in the diary it is priced at £13 15s (i.e., four bob less). 

      Readers who are interested can check things for themselves by consulting The Orton Diaries, ed. John Lahr (Methuen, 1986), p. 54. Just to add a little further confusion into the mix, Paul Gorman identifies the Oscar figure as Oscar Beuselinck, the showbiz lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect; see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.      

      As for the third speaker - Michael White - he was a prominent theatre and film impresario and a champion of Orton's work.   

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 426. 

 

[8] Georges Bataille, 'Base Materialism and Gnosticism', in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 51.

 

 

For a related post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

 

In Praise of the 1% Who Don't Fit in and Don't Care

Anarchist Punk Gang muslin shirt 

McLaren & Westwood (Seditionaries, 1979)

Image via bonhams.com 

 

 

I. 

These days, the 1% typically refers to an economic, social and political elite; i.e., the wealthiest and most powerful segment of the population who own, control, and consume an ever-growing share of the world's resources.

 

The phrase is often used by those who wish to critique such inequality on the grounds that it is both grotesque and immoral. Members of the Occupy movement, for example, would often chant: We are the 99% as a unifying slogan that expressed their commonality. 

 

All this rather amuses me as an old punk; for I remember a time when the 1% referred metaphorically to a subcultural minority who prided themselves on not fitting in; members of an anarchist gang who created hell and got away with it; queer extremists aware of their own mortality, but death-defiant ...    

 

II. 

 

One of the final designs by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries, the Anarchist Punk Gang shirt - aka the One Per Centers shirt - is not one of their better known pieces, but it is perhaps one of their most memorable once seen (and will still cost you a considerable sum should you wish to buy an original) [1].

 

By the spring of 1979, the shit, as they say, had truly hit the fan; Sid Vicious was dead, the Sex Pistols as a four-piece band were long over, and even the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was losing steam [2]. 

Following an acrimonious court case brought against him by Johnny Rotten (with the backing of Richard Branson), McLaren sought refuge in Paris, and so it was left to Westwood to keep things ticking over on the home front as best she could and it was Vivienne who was mostly responsible for the above shirt (even if Malcolm approved the design).  

  

The central image of a skull is surrounded by the well-known phrase: As you were, I was; as I am, you will be. As Westwood was romantically involved with a biker at this time, it seems likely that she might have read (or re-read) Hunter S. Thompson's classic study of the Hell's Angels, where this memento mori is used as a chapter title [3]. 

One of the flagpoles on the design has the figure of 1% written above the description anarchist punk gang; the other flagpole, in contrast, carries the line made famous by Sid: 99% is shit [4].  

It's another detail on the shirt, however, that has been intriguing me for the past few days: written underneath the skull design are the following lines: 

The barrier between friend and foe is thin. At certain times of day there are only us.

I was pretty sure it had to be a quote: McLaren and Westwood often incorporated lines of text from admired authors into their designs, but I couldn't locate the source of this until it was suggested to me that it might also have a biker connection - and, yes, sure enough, it turns out the lines are from a book published in '79 by a former organised crime investigator, Raymond C. Morgan, called The Angels Do Not Forget.

 

Below, I reproduce the cover of the book's second edition (2014), alongside a photo of Soo Catwoman [5] wearing the T-shirt version of McLaren & Westwood's late Seditionaries design (which, because of its biker connection, rather nicely returns us to the pre-punk days of Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die [6]).    

  

Notes

 

 [1] The famous London auction house Bonhams sold an 'Anarchist Punk Gang' shirt in November 2023 for £1,280. Click here for details. 

[2] The album of this title had been released on 23 February 1979 (Virgin Records); the film of this title, dir. Julien Temple, was finally released in May 1980. 

      Jamie Reid's final artwork for the Sex Pistols project was for the sardonically named compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980); a follow up to Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols, released by Virgin in July the previous year. 

[3] Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson, was published in 1967 by Random House.    

[4] See the post titled '99% is Shit' (2 Dec 2019): click here. 

 

[5] Image of Sue Lucas (aka Soo Catwoman) is taken from a restored photo on the Instagram account seditionaries1977 (posted on 26 Jan 2026): click here.  

 

[6] Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die was the second incarnation of Mclaren & Westwood's store at 430 King's Road (after Let It Rock, but before SEX). It specialised in biker gear for rockers and was intended to be all about speed, danger, and death. 

 

 

Thanks to Jennifer Davis Taylor for help with this post.