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). 

 

 

If You Only Palpitate to Murder / No One is Innocent

Jamie Reid: God Save Jack the Ripper (1979)

One of a series of posters designed by Reid for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)

For more information visit the Victoria and Albert Museum website: click here. 

Some interesting emails have arrived in my inbox concerning a recent post by Símón Solomon on Charles Manson: click here.

Several people professed no interest in the case; others voiced their concern that, in publishing the post, I am helping to further mythologise Manson and his Family when such vile individuals should be starved of the oxygen of publicity and allowed to fade from the collective memory as soon as possible.

However, whilst I agree with D. H. Lawrence that "if you only palpitate to murder" it quickly becomes boring and results, ultimately, in "atrophy of the feelings" (i.e., like the sexual excitement generated by pornography, the sensational thrill of violent crime is subject to a law of diminishing returns and one must therefore seek out an ever more lurid level of explicit detail), I don't think we can simply ignore negative limit-experiences.

Like it or not, figures like Charles Manson are indelibly part of the cultural imagination and undoubtedly have something important - if disturbing - to tell us about ourselves. As Símón rightly argues, it's virtually impossible to exaggerate (or expunge) Manson's enduring impact and whilst some might need to think him beyond the pale, he was "very much a product of American post-War popular culture and a toxic body politic".

Similarly, in the UK, figures ranging from Dick Turpin and Jack the Ripper to Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, are as British as fish 'n' chips and will continue to haunt our cultural imagination for as long as we continue to consume the latter (even though he's horrible and she ain't what you'd call a lady).

This was perfectly understood by Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid, the latter of whom designed the provocative series of God Save ... posters that the former pasted up in Highgate Cemetery in the famous 'You Needs Hands' scene of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) - a scene which I have discussed elsewhere on this blog: click here.      

Reid's artwork - much like the Sex Pistols' 1979 single featuring Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs on vocals - advances the challenging theological idea that, thanks to original sin, no one is innocent - i.e. we are each of us, as fallen beings, corrupt at some level and capable of committing acts of atrocity. Similarly, we are all of us - no matter how evil and depraved - capable of redemption; for we are all God's children (not just those who attend church and say their prayers).

Was punk rock, then, simply a disguised form of moral humanism founded, like Christianity, on a notion of forgiveness ...? Was its nihilism merely a pose?     

See: D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI: March 1927-November 1928, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 600.

Play: Sex Pistols, No One Is Innocent (Virgin Records, 1978): click here.

Jagger is a Punk

Mick Jagger as a Rolling Sex Pistol

One of the more interesting facts surrounding the death of Nancy Spungen in October 1978 and the immediate arrest of her boyfriend, Sid Vicious, who was charged with her murder, is the fact that it was Mick Jagger of all people who stepped up to pay for the Sex Pistols' legal fees and helped assemble a defence team.

Or at least that's so according to Johnny Rotten, who, I suppose, has no reason to lie, although he does use the revelation made in a 2013 press interview not only as an opportunity to praise the Rolling Stones frontman, but to take another predictable swipe at Malcolm, whom he remembers as being clueless and ineffectual at providing the necessary support (which might be true, but what, pray, did you do for your best friend Mr Lydon?).     

I suppose it shouldn't be that much of a surprise to discover that Jagger felt sympathy and affection for Vicious, as he is himself something of a punk at heart and responsible for writing one of the great nihilistic pop anthems in Paint it Black (1966).

Indeed, such was Jagger's fascination with the Sex Pistols that he even wore a Seditionaries Destroy shirt, as designed by McLaren and Westwood, whilst on tour with the Stones in America in the summer of 1978 and it's amusing to imagine what might have been if, after Rotten was exposed as a collaborator and thrown overboard, Malcolm had enlisted Jagger as the new lead singer instead of Ronnie Biggs ...


Afternote

I've been advised by Paul Gorman, McLaren's biographer, that Rotten's account of things isn't entirely accurate; that whilst Jagger did contact Malcolm with an offer to help financially, it was in fact never taken up. Further, Malcolm met with several lawyers and worked hard on Sid's behalf during this time. More details can be found by clicking here: paulgormanis.com 

As for the Destroy shirt, it was originally bought by Anita Pallenberg as a gift for Keith Richards. He refused to wear it, however, so Mick appropriated it into his own wardrobe. Again, many thanks to Paul Gorman for this titbit.