Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 1: I Got You in My Camera ...

 

Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street 

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

I. 

 

Ian Trowell's dead knot essay [a] provides a fascinating insight into how time and space are encoded in punk imagery and demonstrates how a photograph, for example, is not simply an objective or neutral representation of reality, but an artefact that is both constructed and constructive of the world as we know it.    

 

The essay analyses two visual artefacts: a photograph of the Sex Pistols from 1976 and a 30-second TV commercial for McDonald's from 2016. Here I shall reflect on the first of these, whilst in part two of this post I shall discuss the latter. 

 

 

II.

 

Ray Stevenson's famous photo of the Sex Pistols strolling along Carnaby Street in the spring of 1976 still makes smile almost fifty years later, due mostly to what Trowell terms the performative iconoclasm and punk theatricality that is here captured and preserved on film; a second of their lives ruined for life, as Rotten might say [b]. 

 

According to Trowell, whilst Paul Cook is perfectly content to eat his grapes purchased from Berwick Street Market and remain not only partially obscured but as anonymous as the brown paper bag containing his fruit - and whilst Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten are both happy to clown and pose for the camera - Glen Matlock looks uncomfortable and out of place:

 

"His comportment is akin to Wittgenstein's multi-stable rabbitduck illusion in that he is both relaxed and not relaxed at the same time. He has taken the relaxed pose of a pop star going through the motions of a publicity photograph but it clearly seems that he is out of step with the posed anti-comportment of the rest of the band." [183]

 

Matlock, with his buttoned-up jacket and persona, doesn't quite fit in with a band safety-pinned together or with the wider punk aesthetic and ethos; he's just a little too smart and sensible; the slightly nervous observer of the scene, always hanging back and looking on: 

 

"It is a disorienting picture since he appears to know his time is running out, but at the same time he gives the impression of lingering with admiration and anticipation, an adumbration of what is to come evidently with or without him." [184]

 

If, due to Rotten's "hogging of the frame" [185], locating the picture's true point of magic is made difficult, neverthless, for Trowell, it's not Rotten's ugly mug but the fastened button on Matlock's jacket that forms the pictures punctum - i.e., that troubling detail that disturbs and distracts from the more general field of interest (the photo's studium); that which pricks our attention and often moves us with a certain poignant delight [c]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Glen Matlock's button and Wittgenstein's duckrabbit aside, Trowell gives us many other interesting ideas to consider; about Carnaby Street as a subcultural epicentre; about the staging of photography; and about Rotten's performance for the camera.

 

He suggests, for example, that "Stevenson's photograph bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger Fenton's 1855 photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death" [184]. I don't quite see it myself, however, and might just as easily imagine the Sex Pistols "photoshopped into the immediate foreground" [184] of many an image containing a tapering path. 

 

For instance, here's Jones and Rotten following the yellow brick road:

 

 

 

I wasn't entirely convinced either by Trowell's suggestion that we might consider Stevenson's photograph as "a precisely posed document with the four punk musicians reminiscent of the generic crouched figures of Captain Kirk and his original Star Trek crew materializing on a hostile, alien planet with their phasers at the ready to deal with the subcultural detritus that might turn on them at any moment" [186], although it's certainly an original reading.  

 

These things aside, for the most part one agrees with Trowell's interpretations and marvels at his insights. Rotten's captioning of Stevenson's photo as forced fun at Malcolm's behest is pithy, but one needs Trowell's essay to provide the theoretical and cultural context without which it's just another snap. 

 

The band may never have had much clue as to what was going on or what was at stake, but Malcolm knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted the band to look: "The photograph tries to set out McLaren's deliberate positioning of punk as against the process of accumulation of all music genres and stylistic connotations and manifestations that have gone before." [188]

Obviously, in due course every image loses its power and becomes just another stock photo filed away in an archive: cultural fodder, as Trowell puts it. Some truly great pictures, however, retain their abilty to shock or seduce or to scandalise for decades; others, like this one, now mostly rely on Matlock's button to provide a point of interest.

 

Ultimately, argues Trowell, even the Sex Pistols "cannot escape time and space" [188] just as punk cannot escape being co-opted and commercialised by the forces of capital, as McLaren and Reid conceded in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.  

[b] Somewhat surprisingly, Trowell doesn't refer us to the following lines in the Sex Pistols' song 'I Wanna Be Me': 'I got you in my camera / a second of your life, ruined for life'.

      He does, however, refer us to John Berger who argues that the true content of a photograph is invisible as it "derves from a play not with form, but with time ... it isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum". See Understanding a Photograph (Penguin, 2013), p. 20. 

[c] Barthes's concept of the punctum raises a problem discussed by commentators such as Michael Fried and James Elkins; if it calls forth a highly idiosyncratic response on behalf of an individual viewer, then how can that experience ever be communicated and theorised? In other words, can Matlock's button ever intensely move anyone other than Trowell himself? I might understand what he says and appreciate what he writes, but is his experience of pleasure (as of pain) not uniquely his own?  

 

 

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'I Wanna Be Me', b-side to 'Anarachy in the UK' (EMI, 1976): click here.  

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

It Was on the Good Ship Venus ...

Sex Pistols: Friggin' in the Riggin' 

(Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

II.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

III.

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Screen shots from  

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

 

 

Notes

 

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

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

 

 

Johnny Vs Jimmy (Notes on a Punk Spat)

Johnny Rotten on Jukebox Jury (30 June 1979)

Jimmy Pursey on Jukebox Jury  (4 August 1979)

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

II. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Paul Slattery (July 1979)

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Alas, it wasn't to be ... 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

snapgalleries.com

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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