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.