The Surrealist Sex Pistols According to Marie Arleth Skov

 

André, Johnny & Marie 

(The Surrealist, the Sex Pistol & the Punk Scholar)

 

 

I.

 

I don't know why, but there are some people in the world I just like. 

 

And the Berlin-based Danish art historian, curator, and author Marie Arleth Skov is one such person - even though we have only met once, very briefly, a couple of years ago at a punk symposium in London [a]. 

 

Partly, the reason I feel her to be sympathisch is because her interests and mine intersect and I admire her as a writer. But I also think she has a nice face and a stylish way of dressing [b].  

 

And while Johnny Rotten tells us not to judge a book by its cover [c], D. H. Lawrence argues that if you can't judge a thing by its appearance - which is to say, by the instinctive impression it makes upon you - then you're a fool [d]. And while I'm many things, like Stinky Turner I am not a fool [e].    

 

 

II. 

 

Anyway, this is all by the by. 

 

For we're actually here to discuss Dr Skov's contribution to the recently published Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026): an essay titled 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', which examines the punk band in the light of surrealism ...

 

Skov opens her chapter with André Breton's definition of the simplest surrealist act: namely, blindly firing a pistol into a crowd (Breton, 1930). 

 

One immediately assumes, therefore, that we are going to be discussing the random shooting that ends Sid Vicious's unique performance of 'My Way' in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). However, Skov surprises us by referencing instead Johnny Rotten's declared wish to destroy the passerby, which she feels is an "echo of sorts" [f]. 

 

I have to say, that's not my interpretation of this line from 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI, 1976). 

 

For me, just as Rotten's self-description as an anti-Christ is rooted in his ethnoreligious background as the son of Irish Catholic parents - and not, alas, in Nietzschean philosophy - so too does his ambition of wanting to destroy the passerby display traces of lessons learnt in Sunday school by a good little boy in shirt and tie. 

 

Particularly, of course, the parable of the Good Samaritan, as told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (10: 25-37) [g].

 

In other words, the line echoes Christian moral teaching, rather than French surrealism. 

 

Rotten is not, unlike Breton, simply expressing his (typically modernist) political contempt for those who conform to mass society [h]. He is displaying his moral outrage with those who refuse to get involved or directly participate in events. 

 

Like early Christianity - and, indeed, like fascism - punk as practised by Rotten obliges everyone to adopt a position and take a stand; it compels us to action. There can be no passersby and no passive audience members.    

 

III. 

 

According to Skov, as movements, "both punk and surrealism merged the poetic with the political, romance with revolt" (315). 

 

I think that's true. 

 

But, the thing is, one might have hoped for a certain wariness when it comes to this aestheticisation of politics, the logical outcome of which is either the fascism of the far-right or the militant asceticism and theoretical terrorism of the ultra-left - and yet I'm sensing Skov's tacit approval. 

 

In 2026, however, we've got a bigger problem now, as Jello Biafra would say [i] ... 

 

For what's infecting politics today isn't the poetic, but the sacred; and revolt is no longer tied to romance but religion. And even if shouting Allahu Akbar before driving a car into a crowd can be interpreted as a surrealist act against global hegemony inspired by a creed of combat and sacrifice [j], I don't think we should romanticise it.

 

 

IV.

 

Skov is right to highlight the connection between André Masson and Malcolm McLaren - something I've done myself on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

 

I still think Masson's cover design for the first issue of the journal Acéphale (1936-39), featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organs should be, is one that McLaren should have got Jamie or Vivienne to adapt as a design for the Sex Pistols. 

 

And I still think Bataille's "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être" would have made a great punk slogan [k]. 

And Skov's right also to insist that when speaking of the Sex Pistols, it is vital to remember that one is not merely referring to members of the band, but also McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Jamie Reid, and Jordan - although, rather sweetly, she still insists that "music was the key" (318).    

 

 

V. 

 

Skov quotes a famous couple of lines from the Sex Pistols song 'God Save the Queen' (Virgin, 1977): 

 

We're the flowers in the dustbin  

We're the poison in your human machine.

 

But whereas she sees the first as indicating a "very fragile, tender imagination" (319) and somehow connected to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), I've always thought it simply revealed Rotten's contempt for the hippies.

 

And whereas she reads the second line as a neo-Luddite critique of relentless mechanisation, for me it's a line that lends weight to Bernard Brook-Partridge's characterisation of the Sex Pistols as the antithesis of humankind [l]. 

 

In other words, it's not the "rejection of a societal system that [...] crushes dreams" (319), and nor does it essentially correlate with "fighting the (dystopian) future" (319). Rather, it echoes the nausea expressed by D. H. Lawrence who wrote: "The very words human, humanity, humanism make one sick." [m]

 

VI.  

 

I like that Skov brings up the subject of alchemy. I would argue that the slogan cash from chaos can be read as an alchemical formula.

 

However, before getting too carried away, it's important to remember the crucial scene in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in which Steve Jones defecates on a gold disc presented to Johnny Rotten to recognise sales of Never Mind the Bollocks in what is an explicitly counter-alchemical gesture (i.e., the turning of gold back into base matter). 

 

As the female A&R executive with ants crawling on her face in the Swindle says, the Sex Pistols have a "sort of negative Midas touch - everything they touch turns to shit" [n].  And after dumping on the golden disc, Jones credits Malcolm with knowing how to bring out the punk in him - i.e., one who desires to destroy success. 

 

I rather worry at times that Skov's reading of the Sex Pistols is just a tad too upbeat and positive; did they really dance in the dirt in order to create glory? Or did they not seek to degrade the idealist pretensions attached to the latter? 

 

 

VII. 

 

It's true that McLaren and Westwood subscribed to a radical politics of desire that weaponised sex. 

 

But it's also true that this was because they were quite naive and old-fashioned in their thinking, subscribing, for example, to the repressive hypothesis that would be so brilliantly exposed by Foucault in the same year that the Sex Pistols entered public consciousness (1976).  

 

And just as we no longer find it so appealing to romanticise surrealist acts of terrorism, we are no longer nostalgic enough to cling to ideas of sexual revolution, whether inspired by Sade, Reich, or Marcuse (not when we live in a world after the orgy). 

 

Having said that, Skov's ideas on the body in punk and corporeal aesthetics remain fascinating and I really liked her discussion of posture - particularly the idea of slouching as nonconformity.

 

I'm grateful also to learn of Leo Dohmen's surrealist photocollage titled Revanche de la nuit (1958), which features a steel safety pin pierced directly through the lips of a woman - a work about which I knew nothing before reading Skov's essay. 

 

 

VIII.      

 

In the final section of her essay, Skov writes this: 

 

"Of course, the political implications of the Sex Pistols are difficult to pin down [...] Being ambiguous and paradoxical was part of punk's DNA." (323) 

 

And again, that's true as far as it goes, although the politics of boredom or radical negativity as expressed by the Sex Pistols are not entirely beyond our conceptual grasp: beneath the ambiguity lies a fairly simple message after all. 

 

Namely, that politics as traditionally understood and practiced is no longer possible in a transpolitical era and that in order to survive our engagement with nihilism we need to become a little more ironic, a little more insouciant, and a little more intelligent. 

 

In a word, more playful ... 

 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,  

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,  

don't do it in deadly earnest, 

do it for fun.

 

Above all: 

 

Don't do it because you hate people, 

do it just to spit in their eye. [o] 

 

 

Notes 

 

[a] See the post titled 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024). 

 

[b] I wouldn't normally comment on someone's looks. But as Dr Skov is someone who writes on the visceral history and rhetoric of the punk body and challenges dualism, I'm assuming she will appreciate that one cannot divorce the intellect from its physical embodiment and stylisation. Without wishing to resurrect and fully endorse the ancient Greek notion of καλοκαγαθία (Kalokagathia), which aligns beauty and virtue, as a Nietzschean, I find the idea still strangely resonates. 

 

[c] I'm referencing the lyrics to 'E.M.I.', by the Sex Pistols, on Never Mind the Bollocks ... (Virgin Records, 1977). 

 

[d] I'm referencing Lawrence's essay 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192. 

 

[e] Stinky Turner (aka Jeff Geggus) is the lead singer with the Cockney Rejects. 'I Am Not a Fool' was a single on EMI Records, released in 1979. It would be hard to find any trace of surrealism in the Rejects. 

 

[f] Marie Arleth Skov, 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols, ed. Mike Dines, Gabriela Gelain, Paul Graves-Brown and John Schofield (Routledge, 2026), p. 315. All future page references to this work will be inserted directly in the main text.

    It might be noted that Skov does, in fact discuss Sid's 'My Way' performance later in her text and assumes that Breton "would have loved it" (p. 320). 

 

[g] See the post 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby: Notes on Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan' (28 May 2020). 

 

[h] I'm aware that his defenders will say my reading of Breton's famous, provocative passage in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism is crass and all-too-literal. I'm afraid, however, that I agree with Camus writing in The Rebel (1951). 

      By fantasising a blind act of violence against a random crowd, Breton reveals a terroristic level of contempt for the public whom he thinks have been debased and crétinised by the System and so deserving of whatever they get. Like so many other modernist intellectuals who claimed to love the People and wish to liberate them, Breton was frustrated and resentful when they preferred the safety and stability of bourgeois lives over the revolution he was offering. 

 

[i] Jello Biafra was the lead singer with the Dead Kennedys. 'We've Got a Bigger Problem Now' is a reworked and updated version of their classic track (and debut single) 'California Über Alles' (1979). It can be found on the EP In God We Trust, Inc., (Alternative Tentacles, 1981). 

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing Michel Foucault who famously characterized the Iranian uprising not as a traditional revolution, but as a collective outburst of political spirituality outside of secular liberalism and the ideals of the Enlightenment. He rightly faced accusations of romanticising anti-modern religious fundamentalism and largely remained silent or evasive regarding the regime's subsequent human rights abuses. 

      See the post 'Foucault's Islamic Folly' (14 Aug 2014). 

 

[k] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often, however, the French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'. 

      The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, on p. 180. 

 

[l] Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory member of the Greater London Council and, as this interview shows, he was not a fan of punk rock in general, but had a particular loathing of the Sex Pistols. The interview was included by Julien Temple in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

[m] D. H. Lawrence, 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 255. 

 

[n] This two-minute scene at MAMIE Records - which Skov would, I'm sure, describe as surreal - can be watched between 34:56 - 36:54 in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. The role of the A&R executive is played by Jean Warren. Sex Pistols aficionados will recall that a gold disc version of Never Mind the Bollocks with a plastic dog turd on it is featured on the back of the compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980). 

 

[o] I quote these lines from D. H. Lawrence's poem 'A Sane Revolution', Pansies (1929) and discuss them in my own essay in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026); see 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Swindle: Or, Why I Still Believe in the Ruins', pp. 180-191.  

 

 

  

Spiders & Snails Versus Starmer & Reeves

A distinguished jumping spider (Attulus distinguendus) 

A pair of whirlpool ramshorn snails (Anisus vorticulus)

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves (Homo politicus) amused by the thought of habitat destruction 

and species extinction in the name of housing development and economic growth

 

 

I. 

 

There are many reasons to despise the present British government and - to echo the immortal words of Bernard Brook Partridge - one would like to see Starmer and his entire cabinet dropped down "a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole", in the belief that the UK would be "vastly improved by their total and utter non-existence" [1].

 

To give but one of these reasons - discussed at length in an article by George Monbiot in The Guardian [2] - the government's new planning bill is tearing down environmental protections to benefit developers, and that is something I vehemently disapprove of. 

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear: I am always and forever on the side of bats, newts, snails, and spiders; all creatures that have been blamed by successive governments (not just this one) for getting in the way of urban expansion and economic growth. 

 

Earlier this year, for example, Starmer called for the extermination of an extremely rare species of jumping spider [3] which, according to him, had prevented an entire new town being built in Kent, thereby denying the dream of home ownnership to thousands of families. 

 

This turned out to be a misleading oversimplification of a complex issue [4]: 

 

"What developers were seeking to build on the peninsula was not homes, but a theme park. But Starmer, making it up as he went along, had reduced the issue to spiders v people." [5]

 

Rather than apologise, however, a spokesperson for the prime minister simply repeated that the government was committed to going further and faster with its mad ambition to concrete over what remains of the UK's natural habitat.  

 

And just last week, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, proudly informed an audience of corporate executives that she had given permission for a large housing development in Sussex that had previously been prevented by "'microscopic snails that you cannot even see'" [6].  

 

What Rachel from accounts doesn't seem to know or care about is the fact that this very rare little creature - known as the whirlpool ramshorn snail (Anisus vorticulus)- is "an indicator of fresh water not affected by sewage pollution" [7], so serves a vital role alerting us as to the state of our rivers and streams.  

 

And what the public have not been told is that a new housing development will lead to excessive water abstraction and that this could not only damage or destroy the highly protected wetlands in which the snails live, but threaten the future wellbeing of people in the south-east of England as groundwater supplies in the region become increasingly polluted and ever-depleted.       

 

 

III. 

Ultimately, as Monbiot says, the new planning and infrastructure bill is a full-scale assault on nature; one that will "enable developers to bulldoze precious wild places" [8] and see irreplaceble ecosystems sold for cash.   

 

And shockingly, "the big nature groups - the RSPB, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts - with their combined membership of 7.5 million, are mute. They accepted a series of government amendments in return for agreeing not to campaign against the bill" [9]. 

 

England, my England in 2025 ...  

 

Instead of raising the colours, those who call themselves patriots should be raising bloody hell against this government and protecting this green and pleasant land and the creatures that inhabit it. Rewilding, not flag waving, is what we urgently need to see; fewer people, fewer houses, fewer cars and more birds, beasts and flowers.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Bernard Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory who served as chairman of the Greater London Council's arts committee (1977-79). He famously described punk rock as "disgusting, degrading, ghastly, sleazy, prurient, voyeuristic and generally nauseating". The words I use here with reference to the current Labour government were originally said with reference to the Sex Pistols, whom he found particularly ojectionable. 

      Click here to watch Brook-Partridge voicing his opinion on camera in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

 

[2] George Monbiot, 'Wage war on nature to build new homes: that’s Labour's offer, but it's a con trick', The Guardian (16 Oct 2025): click here.  

 

[3] The distinguished jumping spider (Attulus distinguendus) is one of Britain's rarest spiders, found only in two locations in the south-east of England: Thurrock Marshes in Essex and Swanscombe Marshes in Kent. It is a tiny species, just a few millimeters in size, with excellent vision and leaping ability, which it uses to hunt rather than spin webs. The spider is considered a conservation priority due to its endangered status and the threat posed to its habitat by development.   

 

[4] See the report on the BBC news website by Helen Catt (14 March 20205): click here.  

 

[5] George Monbiot, op. cit.

 

[6] Reeves quoted by Monbiot. 

 

[7]  George Monbiot, op. cit.  

 

[8] Ibid. 

 

[9] Ibid.

 

 

Russ Bestley: 'Turning Revolt Into Style' (2025): Notes on Chapters 3-5

Russ Bestley: Turning Revolt Into Style 

(Manchester University Press, 2025)

 

 

I.

 

It's true that although UK punk began in London, it soon spread elsewhere; that it was neither a uniform nor static phenomenon; that it was "subject to rapid and dramatic change over time, particularly as local scenes sprang up across the country" [a]. 

 

But whereas Bestley, like most other punk scholars, is interested in the way in which "punk's evolutionary diaspora was as much geographical as it was temporal and aesthetic" [103], I have to admit that my own interest tends to begin and end at 430 King's Road. 

 

And whilst I wouldn't dismiss the punk scene as it developed in Leeds, or Manchester, or even Penzance [b] as part of the "'incorporation and containment'" [c] of McLaren's project, I do think that the Sex Pistols were something distinctly different, as recognised by Bernard Brook-Partridge [d].

 

In brief, whether we choose to think of them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [e], or as a group of Dickensian yobs looking to swindle their way to the top of the music industry whence they could shit on their own success, they were not a punk band merely offering us, in Rotten's words, a bit of a twang, a giggle ... [f].           

 

 

II. 

 

Post-punk: an aesthetic and stylistic expansion, which, to be fair, did result in some great records and previously unknown pleasures. 

 

And I'd concede the point that one cannot stay forever at the level of the ruins, like those "sections of the original punk scene ossified around a set of fixed aesthetic conventions" [106]. Ultimately, one has to "build up new little habitats, have new little hopes"[g] and even McLaren and Westwood ditched punk for piracy in 1980 and set off in search of new sounds, new looks, and new adventures.   

 

But, on the other hand, I'm extremely wary of those who think Metal Box is more fun than The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, or more radical than Your Cassette Pet - and I'm sorry to say that seems to include Bestley, who describes the former as ground-breaking and thrills to the album's dub rhythms and "Lydon's leftfield, poetic lyrics" [105], whilst not once mentioning either of the other two albums.     

 

 

III. 

 

Extreme punk politics: from puritanical anarcho-hippies Crass, to fascist morons Skrewdriver - what can one say? 

 

Punk, as I understood it, rejected political asceticism of all varieties; it had no time for "the sad militants, the terrorists of theory, those who would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourse" [h]. 

 

Punk was not apolitical; but it was transpolitical ...

 

 

IV.  

 

"A significant part of the emerging punk aesthetic was driven by enthusiastic followers and amateur producers ..." [124] 

  

Sadly, it seems to me that amateurism is, in this professional era, increasingly looked down upon (with the possible exception being that of amateur porn; the erotic folk art of our digital age). 

 

Which is a pity: for I tend to be of a Greek persuasion and consider the amateur as a virtuous figure; open minded, devoted, and full of passion for their discipline regardless of whether this brings public recognition or generates an income. 

 

Ultimately, as Roland Barthes notes, the true amateur is not defined by inferior knowledge or an imperfect technique, but, rather, by the fact that he does not not identify himself to others in order to impress or intimidate; nor constantly worry about status and reputation. 

 

Also, crucially, the amateur unsettles the distinction between work and play, art and life, which is doubtless why they are feared by those who like to police borders, protect categories, and form professional associations.  

 

Having said that, the fact remains that the "history of punk graphics in the United Kingdom starts [... and I'm tempted to say finishes] with Jamie Reid" [124], whose work for the Sex Pistols captured what they were about with a high degree of skill and style.   

 

Obviously, there were many other design practitioners and graphic artists who emerged at the time of punk and contributed to it. But, other than Winston Smith - who was associated with the American punk band the Dead Kennedy's - and Nick Egan, who worked in partnership with McLaren in the post-Pistols period, I can't think of any whose work ever really excited my interest.  

 

I know a lot of people rave, for example, about Peter Saville's cover for the first Joy Division album (Unknown Pleasures, 1979) and Mike Coles's cover for the eponymous debut album by Killing Joke (1980) [i]. However, whilst they're both vaguely interesting works, neither really means anything to me, whereas Reid's Never Mind the Bollocks cover still makes smile almost 50 years later.    

 

 

V. 

 

Chapter 4 concludes on a slightly depressing note (but true, of course):

 

"Despite the rhetoric of the punk 'revolution', little changed at the major labels [...] The recorded music industry was founded on the core principles of innovation and novelty, at least in relation to identifying new artists that could be moulded and exploited to generate popular appeal. The commercially viable areas of punk and new wave were rapidly absorbed, just like the at-the-time radical music and youth scenes that preceded them." [151]

 

Similarly, while some of the "new breed of punk-inspired graphic designers set themselves apart from the traditional art departments [...] many of the more successful practitioners joined the ranks of the commercial studios as time went on" [151].

 

In brief, never trust a punk [j] and remember - to paraphrase Nietzsche writing in the Genealogy - no one is more corruptible than a graphic artist ... [k]   

 

 

VI. 

 

I think the main takeaway from Bestley's book is that amateurs and professionals need one another and that both types of producer "informed the wider punk aesthetic and reflected common visual conventions that were emerging as the new subculture made a nationwide impact" [154].

 

Those who lack education, skills, and material resources but who still attempt to do things for themselves should not be looked down on. But inverted snobbery aimed at those who are professionally trained and talented and do have access to the very latest technologies [l] is also unwarranted. 

 

 

VII.   

   

Whilst I'm not particularly interested in the "range of processes chosen by punk and post-punk designers for the origination and print reproduction of record sleeves, posters and other visual materials" [155], there are passages in Chapter 5 of Turning Revolt Into Style that caught my attention and in which Bestley's analysis is spot on. 

 

For example, I agree that the reason many punk visual tropes and techniques work so well is because they not only "drew upon a much longer tradition of agitprop art and design" [157], but unfolded within "a new context that extended into mainstream culture resulting in [...] a more powerful impact" [157].

 

In other words, things such as record sleeves, posters, badges, etc., "were not fine art objects to be appreciated by connoisseurs in galleries and exhibitions; they were examples of mass-produced printed ephemera that conveyed a sense of identity and subcultural capital" [157].

 

Of course, today, many of these same objects are in fine art galleries and museums and cultural capital is now big business. 

 

Thus, for example, a copy of the one-off official Sex Pistols newspaper, Anarchy in the U. K., produced by Jamie Reid in collaboration with Sophie Richmond, Ray Stevenson, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and featuring a striking photo of Soo Catwoman on the cover, may have had a cover price of 20p when it was sold on the Anarchy Tour in 1976, but it will now set you back £2000 if you wish to buy it from Peter Harrington in Mayfair: click here. 

 

Cash from chaos, as someone once said ...

 

 

VIII.   

 

Bestley mentions many of the more successful punk fanzines; Sniffin' Glue, Ripped & Torn, Chainsaw, etc. - and several of the fanzines produced outside of London which "reflected the development of scenes well beyond punk's stereotypical epicentre" [172].

 

One that he doesn't mention and won't know of - one that probably only me and one other person in the world remember - was Yourself which was a single photocopied page of A4, printed on both sides, and freely distributed amongst the student body of a small Catholic college which, at that time (1981) was affiliated with the University of Leeds. 

 

The subtitle read: 19 and young - 20 and old (ageism was a defining feature of punk as I remember it back in the day) and the text called for a rejection of all authority, particularly beginning with the letter 'P' (parents, priests, and policemen, for example). 

        

 

IX.

Ultimately, as Bow Wow Wow once informed us, it's T-E-K technology - not punk rock or other forms of subcultural activity - that really brings about fundamental change in society; demolishing patriarchal structures and creating greater degrees of A-U-T autonomy [m]. 

As Bestley notes in his closing remarks to Chapter 5, "changes in the social and technical practices of design blurred the boundaries between amateur and professional production" [178-79]. He continues:

"Changing technologies and the culmination of an ongoing restructuring of the labour market [...] enabled more control along with creative freedom for a new generation of designers ..." [179]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Russ Bestley, Turning Revolt Into Style: The process and practice of punk graphic design (Manchester University Press, 2025), p. 103. All future page references to this text will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] See Simon Parker's PZ77: A Town a Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), for a nostalgic look back at the punk scene in Penzance in 1977. And for my thoughts on this work, see the post entitled 'Punk History is for Pissing On' (21 Sept 2025): click here. 

      In brief: I don't like it. Bestley seems to approve of punk bands acknowledging their roots and paying homage to their locality and that of their friends, family, and fans; singing about "the issues that affected their local community" [113]. But that kind of folksy provincialism doesn't really appeal to me (not even when it's the Clash singing about West London). 

      In part, the is due to my own intellectual background in schizonomadic philosophy; home is made for coming from, it's not somewhere to idealise (or even dream of going to). Punk, at it's best, is headless and homeless (one might do well to recall the destination of the Sex Pistols bus as well as Poly Styrene's problematising of identity). Remember kids: civic pride is simply a form of micro-nationalism.

 

[c] Gary Clarke, quoted by Russ Bestley in Turning Revolt Into Style, p. 103.

 

[d] Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory who served as chairman of the Greater London Council's arts committee (1977-79). He famously described punk rock as "nauseating, disgusting, degrading, ghastly, sleazy,  prurient, voyeuristic and generally nauseating". 

      Singling out the Sex Pistols as the worst of the punk rock groups, Brook-Partridge labelled them as the "antithesis of humankind" and suggested that "the whole world would be vastly improved by their total and utter non-existence". 

      Malcolm so-loved this, that a filmed recording of Brook-Partridge uttering these words was included in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). As far as I recall, no other punk (post-punk, or new wave) band ever solicited such a vitriolic response. Click here to watch on YouTube.

 

[e] Peter York, 'Them', Harpers & Queen (Oct 1976), quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.  

 

[f] Of course, Rotten himself would eventually collaborate with Virgin Records and build himself a long term career in the music business. 

 

[g] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 5. 

 

[h] Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, tran. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1984), p. xii.

 

[i] Bestley discusses Cole's Killing Joke sleeve on p. 141 of Turning Revolt Into Style. 

 

[j] Jamie Reid came to the same conclusion and in 2007 he issued a limited edition giclee print with this title; an ironic inversion of the 'Never Trust a Hippy' slogan from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.  

 

[k] See Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III. 25. 

      For Nietzsche, the artist, as a creator, should actively invest and transform the world; not simply represent it by holding up a mirror to the times. Or, failing all else, the artist should be prepared to return the world to its chaotic character and become a great destroyer.

      Unfortunately, Nietzsche was obliged to accept that the becoming-decadent of even our greatest artists is far more likely than their becoming-untimely.  

 

[l] Often, knowledge of and access to new technology was what mostly "separated the professionals from the amateurs, the commissioned from the vernacular" [170]. 

 

[m] I'm quoting from the lyrics to the Bow Wow Wow single 'W.O.R.K (N.O. Nah No My Daddy Don't)', written by Malcolm Mclaren and released on EMI Records (1981). 

 

To read the first post in this series - Notes on the Introduction - click here. 

 

To read the second post in this series - Notes on Chapters 1 & 2 - click here. 

 

To read the fourth and final post in this series - Notes on Chapters 6-8 - click here.