Pretty Punk Vacancy Contra Sado-Libertine Apathy

The Marquis de Sade looks on as Johnny Rotten 

acts pretty vacant for the cameras

 

'I have a very strong feeling that the opposite 

of love is not hate - it's apathy.' [1] 

 

I.

 

Consult any modern reference source and you will find apathy defined as a lack of emotion, interest, and/or concern. It is presented as a state of perfected indifference; a clinical curbing of enthusiasm. 

 

More often than not, apathy is also regarded in a negative light; as a psychopathological problem that sits on the same spectrum of diminished motivation as abulia and, at the extreme, akinetic mutism. Because they lack a sense of drive and seem to have no purpose or meaning, apathetic individuals are believed to have an inferior quality of life. 

 

Expressive individuals who like to openly display their emotions and endlessly bang on about their feelings, think apathetic individuals must be suffering from depression or some other brain disorder. It's not normal - and it's not natural - to be so cold and detached. It seems to betray not only an absence of passion, but a lack of soul - which is why Christians have historically condemned apathy as a deficiency of love and devotion to God and listed it among the seven deadly sins: sloth [2].

 

The Ancient Greeks, however, thought a little differently on this matter. And so, although the modern English term apathy (first used in 1594) is derived from ἀπάθεια (apatheia), it is important not to confuse or conflate the two terms. For the Stoics, for example, apatheia signified a desirable state of indifference toward events and things that lie outside one's control (and it is still considered a virtue today within Orthodox monasticism and certain schools of Gnosticism).    

 

 

II.  

Moving on from this brief history of apathy and its etymology, I'd like to discuss the concept as developed within the work of the Marquis de Sade, contrasting this with how the idea was expressed in the scene that developed in and around 430 King's Road in the mid-1970s. 

 

My aim is to show that although there were Sadean currents within punk as conceived by McLaren and Westwood - examined at length and in detail by Matthew Worley [3] - there's a world of difference between Johnny Rotten's pretty vacancy and l'apathie of those libertines who do their philosophising in the bedroom rather than at a pervy fashion boutique. 

 

 

III. 

 

According to Matt Worley: "Punk's cultural body bore Sadean scars." [4] 

 

It's a nice line. 

 

And Worley is right to suggest that, at some level, punk was "transmitting the echoes of Sade's howl through the mediums of popular music and fashion" [5]. 

 

However, while McLaren and his young protégés may have subscribed to an ideology of sex, style and subversion coupled to a kinky aesthetic incorporating safety pins, swastikas, and fetishwear, what they almost certainly did not do was read the works of the Marquis de Sade.

 

For if they had, they would have learnt that central to Sade's transgressive philosophy was the formal concept of l'apathie ...    

 

To understand what our punk friends missed, one might look to the Fifth Dialogue of Sade's La Philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), wherein the libertine Dolmancé encourages fifteen-year-old Eugénie to systematically discard traditional moral values in favour of l'apathie. 

 

He explains how the sensations resulting from apathy are vastly superior to those born of emotional sensitivity and advocates a total shift toward cold indifference and egoistic gratification: 

 

"Ah, Eugénie, believe me when I say the delights of apathy far outweigh those of virtue; the latter have only one application, whereas the former can excite and overwhelm one's whole being." [6]  

 

Thus, far from being a secondary concern, l'apathie - derived from the ancient Greek apatheia [7] - is an ideal given primary importance by many (if not all) of Sade's philosophically-minded libertines. 

 

More than a passive lack of feeling, l'apathie is a deliberate, active mechanism with specific functions; eradicating empathy, purging all moral sentiment, and ensuring the libertine's pleasure is derived entirely from the will. Complete indifference to the suffering of the victim thereby eliminates all emotional dependency upon the amorous object. 

 

As Bataille observed in Eroticism (1957), a sadist who indulges their raw impulses simply for instant gratification or bourgeois pleasure is merely a poor doomed creature ruled by vice. True sovereignty requires passion to be strictly disciplined and compressed. L'apathie is the ingenious method used to reject spontaneous emotion, converting raw impulse into a calculating, destructive energy that allows the libertine to abandon the all-too-human aspects of his character. 

 

Deleuze further formalised this in Coldness and Cruelty (1967), arguing that Sadean apathy is fundamentally directed against sentiment. Because moral guilt or emotional pleasure represents a dangerous dissipation of mental focus, the libertine derives ultimate satisfaction from pure mathematical and philosophical reasoning. His sex, as Lawrence would say, is in his head - but that's precisely where he wants it to be. 

 

L'apathie acts as a mechanism that clears away emotional noise, transforming sex into something experienced in the mind and imagination rather than the body and its organs, thereby allowing the ego to contemplate the pleasure of negating natural instincts [8]. By maintaining zero degree coldness, the libertine becomes a machine capable not only of acts of debauchery, but violent atrocity.     

 

IV. 

 

Early punk was to a large extent defined by a rhetoric of boredom, blank generational indifference, and pretty vacancy. The Sex Pistols explicitly stated that they didn't care and Rotten boasted of the fact that he had no feelings for anybody else (only his beautiful self) [9]. 

 

However, like almost everything else, this was merely a defensive (and stylistic) pose against systemic disappointment. The majority of punks, bless them, wanted to have fun, and to feel, and to have a rosy future full of career opportunities. Theirs was a form of faux apathy and feigned indifference - the fact that Rotten would often berate his audiences to get off their arses gives the game away. All too often punk was an expression of sincere moral outrage and a frustrated desire for change.     

 

V. 

 

In conclusion: punk's relationship with Sade remains purely superficial, transactional, and aesthetic and, as a form of Romantic idealism, punk has opposing goals to Sadism [10].  

McLaren and Westwood may have exploited aspects of Sade's work - mostly the tits and bums - just as they borrowed from numerous other sources in order to fuck the rich up the arse and generate cash from chaos, but, ultimately, they were more interested in anarchy and the politics of boredom than apathy and la philosophie dans le boudoir. 

 

 

Photo of Jordan (the first Sex Pistol) 

by David Parkinson (1975) [11] 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Leo Buscaglia, Love (Charles B. Slack, 1972), p. 112.  

 

[2] The word sloth comes from the Old English term slǣwþ, simply referring to pace meaning as it did slowness. But by the late 12th century, the term now written as slewthe or slouthe, had developed a markedly moral connotation and shifted to mean indolence. It was applied specifically to those who avoided their duties and neglected their responsibilities. 

      In the 14th century, it was finally adopted as the English translation of the Latin term acēdia (a state of spiritual apathy) and listed among the seven deadly sins. Thus, in Catholic theology, sloth is more than mere laziness; it's a culpable lack of effort to do good and a willful refusal of the joy that comes from purposeful living and divine goodness. To put this in punk terms, the slothful individual is vacant to the point of no longer caring about their status or condition (the original Greek term - ἀκηδία - literally meant an inert state without pain or concern).  

      Although I here wish to write primarily of apathy, I hope at some future point to return to the concept of acedia (sometimes written as accidie). I am particularly interested in how as it has been used in more modern times by figures including Aldous Huxley, who wrote an essay on the subject in 1923, and Walter Benjamin who in The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1925), describes acedia an 'indolence of the heart' that can lead to the ruin of great figures. Some readers might recall that I have previously said something on acedia in my 'Mourning Post' (25 April 2023). 

 

[3] Matthew Worley, 'Whip in my valise: British punk and the Marquis de Sade, c. 1975-85', in Contemporary British History, 36 (2), pp. 277-321. 

      In brief, this essay argues that punk was an attempt by McLaren and Westwood to fuse youth and sexual subcultures in order to provoke a dominant culture believed to be repressive. Worley examines the Sadean influences on this project conceived at 430 King's Road in the mid-1970s, suggesting that the Divine Marquis had a seminal impact on the punk movement. 

      The essay is available as a pdf at https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/104006/  

 

[4] Matt Worley ... p. 303.

 

[5] Ibid., p. 305.  

 

[6] Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir, trans. Meredith Head (Creation Books, 2004), p. 94. 

 

[7] Sade explicitly borrowed the structural technique of l’apathie from ancient Greek philosophy, describing it in Juliette (1797-1801) as an outstanding example of the benefits that one gets from studying Stoicism. Like the Stoics, Sade believed in the sovereignty of reason, rigorous self-discipline (askesis), and independence from external distractions or stimuli (self-sufficiency). 

      However, Sade radically inverted the ethical purpose of Stoicism based on his fundamentally opposing view of existence. For example, the Stoics saw Nature and the Cosmos as essentially harmonious and benevolent. Sade, on the other hand, saw Nature and the Cosmos as destructive and chaotic. The Stoics also wished to eliminate the negative emotions (rage, fear, lust) in order to cultivate a healthy, happy human being. Sade was more interested in suppressing moral feelings (of pity and remorse, for example) so as to engineer a monster of coldness and cruelty who views others merely as disposable objects.  

      Ultimately, Stoic apatheia is about freedom from emotional turmoil in order that one can lead a good life; Sade's model of libidinal sovereignty sees l'apathie as a means to detach oneself from conscience and all human feeling in order to consummate nihilism. As Blanchot says, it's a shocking inversion of values.  

 

[8] The question of nature is not straightforward in Sade. On the one hand, he would agree that the deliberate destruction of all human feeling is unnatural. But, on the other hand, he would argue that by achieving complete insensibility to the suffering of others the libertine frees their passions from moral law and mimics the destructive indifference of Nature herself.   

 

[9] See the posts on the Sex Pistols' songs 'Pretty Vacant' and 'No Feelings' published on TTA on 30 July 2018 and 19 April 2023 respectively. 

 

[10] The 18th-century Romantic poet Novalis declared that the goal was to cast off apathy and to live a life full of passion and feeling; burning like a flame on the edge of ecstasy - and that sounds closer to the punk ideal of living fast and dying young than the Sadean ideal of l'apathie in which one puts the heart on ice and lives a life that is both unnatural and inhuman. See the post 'On Phlegm, Philosophy, and Apathy' (25 April 2023). 

 

[11] This famous photo by David Parkinson of Jordan (Pamela Rooke) modelling a red-rubber outfit from McLaren and Westwood's King's Road store, SEX, featured in a six-page article titled 'Sado Sex for the Seventies', written by David May, in the adult magazine Gallery International (Vol. 1, No. 4, 1975). 

      A copy of the magazine has thankfully been preserved by cultural historian and McLaren's biographer Paul Gorman in his archive. For more information - and to purchase your very own copy of the above in excellent condition (priced $300) - visit recordmecca.com  

 

    

No More Heroes 1: Malcolm McLaren - Stuckism and the Quest for Authenticity

No More Heroes (Malcolm McLaren)

(SA/2026) 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things said by Johnny Rotten that has stuck with me for fifty years is his response to Janet Street-Porter's question about who he admires: "I don't have any heroes - they're all useless." [1]

 

Ironically, his anti-hero stance instantly made him a hero to me. However, my affections and loyalty later shifted to Malcolm McLaren once it became clear that he was the conceptual genius behind the Sex Pistols [2]. 

  

And I have continued to name McLaren - along with Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, and Larry David - as a primary influence on my thinking. However, I'm not sure I would call them heroes. And, if I'm honest, each has disappointed in some manner. 

 

Here, and in the posts that follow, I will attempt to explain why. Let's begin by raising concerns around what might be called the ideological stuckism of my punk mentor, Malcolm McLaren.      

 

 

II.

 

To be clear: when I say Malcolm was a stuckist, I am not suggesting he had any involvement with the international movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art [3]. I am simply referring to the fact that McLaren was trapped in his past like a spider in its own web [4].

 

His entire career was an endless (if brilliant) recycling of the memories, radical ideas, and obsessive fixations drawn from his 1950s childhood and his 1960s art school days. Forever associated with the Sex Pistols and defined by the role he played in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), McLaren was stuck in a self-made loop of his own youthful mythology and his desire to live yesterday tomorrow [5].   

 

 

III.

 

Apart from the childhood tales told to him by his grandmother to do with Peter Pan and pirates and Dickensian street urchins, the first thing to really make a terrific impression on McLaren were the great balls of fires projected into popular culture by Jerry Lee Lewis and his fellow rock 'n' rollers. 

 

He loved the records and he loved the clothes and spent his entire life trying to perfectly recreate the look of music and the sound of fashion (a conceptual phrase coined by McLaren that he repeated in interviews and public lectures until his dying day). 

 

He may have experimented with many kinds of music in his career, but at heart he remained a rocker and it was the raw authenticity (and sheer fun) of the records he heard in the '50s that he wished to inject into his own projects and the various incarnations of the little shop at 430 King's Road, from Let It Rock to Worlds End. 

 

Ultimately, punk wasn't really an attempt to look forward - it was, rather, an attempt to strip rock 'n' roll of its bloated, progressive bullshit and recapture the excitement, danger and innocence of his childhood.      

 

 

IV.

 

If, on the one hand 1957 was a crucial year for eleven-year-old Malcolm McLaren [6], then so too was 1968 for the then twenty-two-year-old art student. For although not directly involved in the événements de mai [7], McLaren - the would-be revolutionary and Francophile - now fell under the influence of Guy Debord and the Situationists. 

 

Radical ideas to do with the société du spectacle and the staging of events in order to shatter such, thereby rescuing people from the boredom and inauthenticity of everyday life, remained important to McLaren throughout his life. A volatile character and natural born troublemaker, he was always attempting to mix the perfect Molotov cocktail: two parts art theory; one part political ideology; and one part cultural terrorism.  

 

It's certainly difficult to understand the Sex Pistols project without reference to McLaren and Jamie Reid's belief in the ruins, demand for the impossible, and wish to steal back happiness.  

 

The problem, however, is that avant-garde political theories relying on Marxism and surrealism don't adequately address the problems that emerge in a post-68 world. The revolution that happened was technoliberal in character and seems to allow not only no alternative but no outside space from which one might form a critical perspective or offer resistance. 

 

If McLaren had bothered to keep up with his reading - some Baudrillard perhaps - he might have understood that although the beach does indeed lie beneath the paving stones, it too is a constructed (artificial) reality that merely provides the illusion of depth and the false promise of authentic freedom [8].

 

As the conceptual artist Michal Martychowiec has shown, what were once believed to be natural grains of sand are actually cold and lifeless glass crystals ... [9] 

 

 

V.

 

If, then, McLaren retained a fixed model of style based on the look of music and the sound of fashion and a fixed politics that relied for the most part on subversive pranks and the technique of détournement [10], so too did he hold on to the same concept of sex throughout his life - one closely tied to his radical politics. 

 

Influenced by thinkers such as Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, McLaren was of the view that liberating libidinal energies would outrage bourgeois society and threaten a culture founded upon sexual repression.

 

Thus, like so many other sex radicals and countercultural theorists, McLaren sought to weaponise desire, using pornographic images printed on T-shirts and a range of fetishwear sold in SEX and Seditionaries, for example, to provoke public outrage and incite his young clientele to insurrection.  

 

McLaren was (naively and mistakenly) convinced that by dragging the forbidden into the open, he was striking a blow against the state. However, this politics of desire relied entirely on what Michel Foucault famously termed the repressive hypothesis - i.e., the flawed belief that power functions primarily through prohibition, censorship, and denial. 

 

What McLaren failed to realise - and what Foucault brilliantly demonstrated [11] - is that modern power does not repress sex; it incites it, categorises it, and manages it. By remaining stuck in a sixties model of liberation, McLaren's radicalism was easily co-opted. He believed he was unleashing a dangerous, and authentic energy, when in reality, he was merely pioneering a highly profitable new market and the pornification of society.  

 

Decades later, he was still talking about bondage trousers with their zipper crotch with the exact same pseudo-academic earnestness and revolutionary zeal of a soixante-huitard [12]. 

 

 

VI. 

 

If there is one word that comes to define Malcolm McLaren's thinking, it's not sex, nor style, nor even subversion - it is rather authenticity. That's the thing that most intrigued him and which he set out to discover - authenticity in an age of artificiality and what he termed karaoke culture [13].

 

In an interview in 1999, McLaren describes authenticity as something dirty, horrible, and disgusting; something which "is to be found in the ruins" and involves "reclaiming the past"; something which is complex and "has built into it this uncomfortable idea of chaos"; something which contrasts with everything valued today as success [14].    

 

He certainly makes it sound attractive and almost has me sold on the idea. But then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid (or at the very least politically naive); "the authentic is something that isn't as easily assimilated by capital" [15] - something that can't conveniently be packaged and sold. 

 

At that point, one realises that ultimately McLaren is still a romantic idealist at heart who has failed to fully learn the crucial (Situationist) message at the centre of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). Namely, that even something like punk is very quickly recuperated - no matter how authentic it may be [16]; that even the most radical ideas and images can be stripped of their danger and turned into products or harmless forms of entertainment.    

 

 

VII.

 

So, to conclude ...

 

McLaren disappoints because of his inability (or refusal) to recognise that his ideals of sex, style, and subversion, had been rendered null and void by a radical neoliberal shift in the 1980s. 

 

His political and aesthetic strategy relied on a set of mid-century conditions that no longer existed, including a rigid, easily shocked, top-down Establishment that could be genuinely threatened by countercultural activity involving the look of music and the sound of fashion.

 

What Mark Fisher terms capitalist realism thrives on the revolutionary rhetoric and authenticity McLaren championed - the pursuit of individual expression, personal branding, constant reinvention, etc. 

 

During his Duck Rock and Nostalgia of Mud phase, McLaren operated under the optimistic delusion that paganism and primitivism were wild forces external to the market. He would insist that a man on a mountain side tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound than all the musicians playing electric instruments or programming their synthesisers. But the sound of two sticks can be just as easily commodified as techno-pop (file it under world music and allow it to be sampled by others).    

 

The fact is, in the twenty-first century, there is no Outside from which to launch an attack and desire is no longer (if it ever was) a wild revolutionary force; it is an entirely synthetic product engineered by the market. Capitalism does not repress our libido - it structures it through algorithms, infinite digital feeds, and consumer niches, pre-formatting what we want long before we even know it. 

 

Ironically, when McLaren made his critique of karaoke culture, arguing that young people had become timid consumers of an endlessly recyled past, he failed to realise that this digital landscape was the monstrous offspring of his own '60s ideology and that youth today are not lazy or complacent - many are acutely aware that things are fucked up - but they feel powerless to act (what Fisher terms reflexive impotence) in a way that McLaren's post-War generation of baby boomers were not. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The interview took place in late 1976 at the Denmark Street studio where the band used to rehearse and essentially squat. It was broadcast on the London Weekend Show, hosted by Janet Street-Porter, on 28 November 1976. It was one of the very first television features dedicated to the underground punk scene. To watch a clip on YouTube, click here. 

 

[2] Years later, during McLaren's Charisma Records period (1982-85), that love and loyalty paid off when he placed me inside the label's press office (acting as a kind of spy). I have written several posts about my time at Charisma: click here.  

 

[3] The name Stuckism was coined in January 1999 by Charles Thomson in response to a poem by Billy Childish in which the latter relays that his former girlfriend, Tracey Emin, had repeatedly said he was stuck with his art, writing and music. 

      After exhibiting in small galleries in Shoreditch, London, the Stuckists' first show in a major public museum was held in 2004 at the Walker Art Gallery, as part of the Liverpool Biennial. It was titled 'The Stuckists Punk Victorian'.  

      By 2017, the initial group of thirteen British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries and although painting is the dominant artistic form of Stuckism, artists using other media such as photography, sculpture, film and collage have also joined, and share the Stuckist opposition to conceptualism. 

      I would like to say more, but this is probably not the right time or place - I will endeavour to publish a post on Stuckism in the near future. 

 

[4] Interestingly, however, the first Stuckist manifesto issued by Childish and Thomson in 1999, opens with the line: "Stuckism is a quest for authenticity" [3] and that is something that McLaren fundamentally endorsed, frequently contrasting it with what he called karaoke culture, as we shall discuss.

      However, the manifesto also emphasises the value of painting as a medium and opposes what is seen as the superficial novelty and nihilism of conceptual art and postmodernism and McLaren, who often styled himself an artist without portfolio and whose final works were audio-visual in nature, would laugh at the statement: "Artists who don't paint aren't artists." I also like to think that, unlike the Stuckists, McLaren would always choose irony over sincerity, viewing art as a material practice rather than a form of spirituality. 

      The first Stuckist manifesto (1999) can be found on their website: click here.  

 

[5] To be fair, this idea of living yesterday tomorrow is not simply an exercise in bogus nostalgia and can be tied to Mark Fisher's thinking on retrofuturism and hauntology and the reclaiming of what he calls lost futures. In notes written in 2000, McLaren discussed how history might be reclaimed (and not merely pissed on): 

      "The question I find most interesting is how you reclaim history. This is a very different thing from repackaging it. It's not about nostalgia, which is basically dead tissue. Living yesterday tomorrow should be about reclaiming history then reversing it into the future. If you can discover how to do that, you are probably doing everything an artist genuinely wishes to be involved in. One must aim to use ceratin disruptive practices to challenge the dominant cultural forms and relax the grip of authority."

      Quoted by Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 718-719.   

 

[6] An end-of-term Christmas concert in 1957 "provided the eleven-year-old with what he would later describe as 'an epiphanic moment'. Among those selected to provide entertainment was a young male teacher who performed an enthusiastic rendition of Jerry Lee Lewis's rollicking 'Great Balls of Fire'." McLaren, who had never seen or heard anything like it, was understandably blown away. 

      Not long afterwards, his older brother took him to see Buddy Holly & the Crickets and Malcolm was fascinated with rock 'n' roll subculture for the rest of his life. See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 30.  

 

[7] McLaren failed to get to Paris in May '68 due to ongoing French rail and air strikes. He did, however, visit the French capital at the end of June and his political imagination was excited by the literature and graphics of the Situationist International (even if he couldn't read much French). 

      Back in London, and friends by this point with Jamie Reid and Fred Vermorel, McLaren got involved with the SI's (unofficial) British offshoot known as King Mob. See my post titled 'It Was Meant to Be Great But It's Horrible: Christmas with Uncle Malcolm and the King Mob' (21 Dec 2025): click here.     

 

[8] See the essay by Nataliya Atanasova, 'We Dreamt a Beach and Found a Desert: What It Means to Live in Post-Situationist Reality', Sofia Philosophical Review (1): 70-85 (2026). This essay can be downloaded as a free pdf via Academia.edu.   

 

[9] Sous les pavés, la plage! was a solo exhibition by Polish artist Michal Martychowiec, held at the De Sarthe Gallery in Beijing (16 July to 13 August, 2017). Creating a deceptively inviting beach setting, Martychowiec replaced natural sand with industrially produced glass crystals, in order to critique capitalist realism. For more details visit his website, michalmartychowiec.com 

 

[10] Détournement is a Situationist technique by which familiar images and texts are recontextualised or amusingly altered in some fashion, forcing people to question the original ideological meanings embedded within them. 

      It was outlined by Guy Debord and Gil Wolman in their Mode d’emploi du détournement, which originally appeared in the Belgian surrealist journal Les Lèvres Nues #8 (May 1956). An English translation by Ken Knabb can be found in the Situationist International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, PM Press, 2024).     

 

[11] See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998). 

      Foucault persuasively argues in part two of this work that what most perversely characterises modern societies, "is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" (p. 35).   

 

[12] See the episode of Being Malcolm (Canal Jimmy, 2000) titled 'How To Make Subversive Trousers' in which McLaren discusses the design for bondage trousers, created in 1976 and sold in Sex and Seditionaries, the shops he operated at 430 King's Road with Vivienne Westwood. It was uploaded to YouTube by the Malcolm McLaren Estate in 2015. 

 

[13] McLaren first unveiled his Karaoke Culture thesis in an essay titled '8-Bit Punk' published in Wired (November 2003) He spent the final decade of his life expanding this concept, giving a 2010 TED Talk titled 'Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture' shortly before his death.

      The manifesto is founded upon the idea that contemporary culture is a kind of desert of the real and that young people today are incapable of generating authentic and original art, prefering to 'mouth the words to other people's songs' - i.e., surrendering agency and living by proxy, whilst chasing instant celebrity and success (afraid of struggle and failure). Karoake culture, argued, McLaren, built a risk-free environment (or safe space) - the antithesis of 430 King's Road. To combat this, McLaren championed a romantic return to creative authenticity and real sex with real bodies in order to discover real pleasures, which had to be better, he said, than 'fucking an inflatable doll'. 

 

[14] Jefferson Hack, 'A Malcolm McLaren Moment', Another Magazine (7 May 2013) - revisiting an interview originally conducted in 1999. 

 

[15] Ibid.

 

[16] Récupération is the situationist term for the co-option and commercialization of radical ideas. Formulated by Guy Debord and the Situationist International in 1960, it describes the process by which subversive concepts are twisted and absorbed into mainstream consumer culture as harmless, innocuous commodities. 

 

 

Part two in this series - 'Nietzsche - The Man Who Failed to Die at the Right Time' (15 July 2026) can be read here.

 

 

In Anticipation of the Forthcoming Book 'Punk & the Animal' (Intellect Books, 2026)

(Intellect Books, 2026)
 

 

I. 

 

One of the forthcoming books I'm looking forward to this autumn is Punk & the Animal: Ethos, Ethics and Aesthetics, ed. Laura D. Gelfand and Angela Bartram [1]. 

 

And the reason I'm curious is because apart from the fact that Sid Vicious was named after Rotten's aggressive pet hamster, I can't really think of any alignment or intersections between a subcultural movement that originated in the 1970s and multicellular organisms belonging to the biological kingdom Animalia [2]. 

 

In fact, one of the things that lyricist and lead singer with the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, insisted upon was that he was not an animal [3] and the punk movement as I remember it was an urban experience (The Clash) with a deliberate sense of its own artificiality (X-Ray Spex) [4].  

 

And so, it will be amusing to see how, for example, Kieran Cashell approaches the idea of punk as enactive animality (i.e., a form of nonhuman behaviour). And it will be fun to discover what rodent-loving Russ Bestley has to tell us about the rat in punk lore [5].

 

 

II.

 

If I'd been asked to contribute to the above volume - which I wasn't - I suppose I may have discussed the division of animals into three main categories made by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus [6]:

 

(i) Oedipal animals - particularly pampered pets with which people form sentimental attachments. It's popularly believed that dog owners come to resemble their mutts, but, unfortunately, it's more often the case that domesticated creatures reflect the all-too-human neuroses and petty personal histories of their owners.  

 

(ii) State animals - i.e., archetypal (sometimes mythological) creatures affiliated with fixed territories and molar classifications; noble beasts that symbolise the power and history of a nation, such as the lion and the unicorn as seen on the UK's Royal Coat of Arms.  

 

(iii) Pack animals - i.e., demonic creatures that must be conceived collectively, such as wolves, bats, and rats. Deleuze and Guattari are also fond of animals that typically swarm - particularly insects - as they conveniently illustrate the idea of a multiplicity (a large, self-organising body or assemblage). 

 

No prizes for guessing which category they were most excited by. 

 

And no prizes either for what my argument would have been; namely, that we might also describe these pack animals as punk animals and examine how forming a molecular alliance with these creatures may enable a becoming-animal of the human being [7].  

 

 

 

 Stuffed punk rat made by mbcreature

etsy.com 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more details of this text due to be published in October - including a list of contents - please visit the Intellect website: click here.  

 

[2] Cynics might suggest that this volume is primarily an example of academic trend-merging; a hybrid book born of two increasingly exhausted sub-genres - Punk Studies and Animal Studies - as publishers, editors, and authors all desperately seek novel areas of research.

 

[3] I'm referencing the track 'Bodies', which can be found on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here. 

 

[4] I'm aware that the second wave of punk in the early 1980s became concerned with animal rights, anti-vivisection, and vegetarianism. But this anarcho-hippie variant (typified by bands like Crass) wasn't something I was involved in or cared about.

 

[5] Dr Kieran Cashell is a lecturer and researcher at the Limerick School of Art and Design, within the Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland. His chapter is titled 'Nonhuman Behaviour: Punk as Enactive Animality' and opens Punk & the Animal (2026). 

      Dr Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). His chapter immediately follows and is titled 'Rattus rattus: The Rat in Punk Lore'.

 

[6] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988). See the section '1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible ...' (pp. 232-309). 

      Note that Deleuze and Guattari also allow for exceptional animals that can't always be categorised; animals such as Moby Dick, for example, or the Cheshire Cat. Russ might like to be reminded also that they make frequent reference to rats - including the large and highly intelligent rat named Ben, star of the 1971 American horror movie Willard (dir. Daniel Mann).

 

[7] I really don't wish to go over the concept of becoming-animal again at any length, as I have discussed and referenced this idea in several earlier posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

      Let it suffice to say that it describes a dynamic and experimental process whereby a subject detaches from fixed, normative identities and enters a continuous, molecular flow of traits, speeds, and affects shared with the non-human world. It does not mean mimicking, imitating, or literally transforming into an animal - and it involves more than merely using an image of rat, for example, as a band logo à la The Stranglers.

 

 

See the neo-Landian follow up to this post published on 27 May 2026 - reflections on a dead rat - click here. 

 

 

She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours: The Story of Who Paid Sid's Bail

She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours (feat. Sid Vicious) 

Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood 

Seditionaries (1978)

 

 

I. 

 

Created in the sixteen-week period between Nancy Spungen's murder in October 1978 and Sid's death in February 1979, the 'She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours' shirt was one of McLaren and Westwood's final designs for Seditionaries. 

 

Showing Vicious surrounded by dead red roses (that give the impression of blood splatter), the design was often printed on white cotton T-shirts, but featured also on long-sleeved muslin tops [1]. 

 

For some, it reflects the tragic (if seedy) romanticism of punk. For others it shows an appalling lack of taste and human decency - even the website Punk77 feels obliged to note: 'It's not even shocking anymore, just a bit sad.' [2]      

 

At the time, however, the shirt was hurriedly produced for a practical purpose; namely, to raise funds for Sid's bail and future legal fees (Vicious was accused of inflicting the single knife wound from which 20-year-old Miss Spungen died). 

 

 

II. 

 

The oft-repeated claim that Mick Jagger secretly stumped up the cash - spread by Rotten many years after the event in order to portray McLaren as uncaring and unwilling to help - is essentially false [3]. As a matter of fact, Virgin Records paid the bail [4] and Malcolm did what he could in the circumstances (even though, technically, he was no longer managing the former Sex Pistol). 

 

It was Malcolm, for example, who immediately flew to New York upon hearing of Sid's arrest and it was Malcolm who hired a lawyer to represent Vicious at the arraignment. Not Jagger - and not Rotten, who was busy promoting his new band's debut single, released the day after Spungen's murder [5]. 

 

Even when McLaren's assistance to Vicious is acknowledged, "it is often interpreted as being not only exploitative [...] but opportunistic, in that keeping Vicious alive and out of jail would maintain what remained of the Sex Pistols' viability" [6].

 

That interpretation, says Paul Gorman, does Malcolm a great disservice. For "the strenuousness with which McLaren attempted to establish Vicious's innocence and survival belies a human resolve" [7] to do the right thing by Sid and display a virtue rarely associated with punk - compassion [8].  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] An example of such can be found in the MET Collection: click here. 

 

[2] Quoted from the page devoted to Seditionaries on the long-running independent website Punk77 operated by Paul Marko: click here.  

 

[3] In a 2013 interview with the Daily Record, Rotten claimed that Jagger had generously paid the legal fees. However, any offer of financial help that may or may not have been made by Jagger never materialised. Unfortunately, the story has been widely repeated and entered into punk legend. The full interview can be read here. 

[4] Mo Ostin, the boss of Warner Records - the Sex Pistols' American label - refused to help and, in fact, "used the murder case to terminate the recording contract with Vicious, Jones and Cook", whilst maintaining a good working relationship with Rotten. 

      McLaren also asked Billy Meshel, the group's US music publisher at Arista, but he too declined to cough up the cash. Left with no other choice, McLaren turned to Richard Branson and the Virgin boss agreed to pay the $50,000 bail (as a kind of advance on delivery of the soundtrack to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle). 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 407.

 

[5] Rotten's new group, Public Image Ltd., who were signed to Virgin, released their first single, 'Public Image' on 13 October, 1978. Their debut album, Public Image: First Issue followed in December of that year. 

      For all Rotten's professed sadness and guilt over what became of his friend, he actually did nothing to help - essentially writing Vicious off as a lost cause. His claims that he was prevented by McLaren from helping are, one suspects, a lot of baloney.  

 

[6] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 406. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] Obviously, I'm aware that, for McLaren, human tragedy and brilliant branding were never mutually exclusive and that while it's legitimate to credit him for showing up in New York when others didn't, we should be careful not to mistake his actions as pure compassion. 

      If, on the one hand, he seemed to genuinely care for Sid and want to keep him out of prison, on the other hand he was not above making the most of events for his own artistic and commercial ends.   

 

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. 

The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: Venus in Furs Contra Submission

The Velvet Underground: Venus in Furs (Verve Records, 1967) [1]

The Sex Pistols: Submission (Virgin Records, 1977) [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Back in November 1977, I was one of the few who purchased the 11-track pressing of Never Mind the Bollocks, with 'Submission' included as a bonus 7" (later, this song would be included on the actual album) [3]. 

 

As I disliked the song, however, regarding it as one of the weakest of the thirteen tracks written by Jones, Matlock, Cook and Rotten, I very rarely bothered to play it.   

 

Funnily enough, I still dislike it now; whereas, in contrast, I have grown to increasingly love 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground, a song which forms an interesting point of comparison ... 

 

 

II.

 

Written by Lou Reed and originally included on The Velvet Underground's debut album in 1967, 'Venus in Furs' was inspired by the novel of the same title by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1870). And like the book, the song explores themes to do with BDSM. 

 

It's a great track: featuring Reed on vocals and lead guitar, the disturbing and decadent sound of John Cale's electric viola, and a tambourine played by Moe Tucker, it is rightly considered one of the band's most perfect songs.  

  

 

III. 

Whether Malcolm McLaren had a particular liking for 'Venus in Furs' I don't know. But he was certainly inspired by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and it was McLaren who suggested to Matlock and Rotten that they attempt to come up with a song entitled 'Submission', celebrating the kinkier aspects of human sexuality.  

 

Of course, Rotten being Rotten - more puritan than libertine and ever-ready to display his sophomoric sense of humour - there was no way he would (or could) write a lyrically sophisticated pop song along the lines of Reed's 'Venus in Furs'. And so we get a piss-take song in which the suggested title and theme of submission is taken literally as a 'submarine mission', which is kind of clever and mildly amusing, but not that clever or amusing [4].   

 

McLaren's thoughts on the end result (if he even bothered to listen to the song) are not recorded, but I can't imagine him being impressed with Rotten's little joke. 

 

 

IV.  

 

In sum: the Velvet Underground's 'Venus in Furs' and the Sex Pistols' 'Submission' contrast in their approach to a shared theme; whilst the former is a seductive art-rock exploration of BDSM, the latter is a punk-rock parody that subverts the intended meaning of the title suggested by their manager (I believe this is known as malicious compliance). 

 

In the end, I suppose, it's up to listeners to decide between shiny shiny boots of leather and an octopus rock and whether they favour the atmospheric and experimental music of the Velvet Underground, or the raw but ultimately more conventional sound of the Sex Pistols.  

 

Nine times out of ten, I would choose the latter; but not in this case.  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] This artwork, by Dave Lawson, inspired by the Velvet Underground song 'Venus in Furs', is available to buy from Indieprints: click here. 

 

[2] This is label of the one-sided 7" single 'Submission' given away with copies of the 11-track version of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). See note 3 below. 

 

[3] Apparently, the 11-track edition of Never Mind the Bollocks with the 'Submission' single was the result of Virgin rushing to get the album released before a competing version was released in France on the French label Barclay Records, with whom McLaren had legitimately negotiated a separate deal. 

 

[4] It has been suggested by one commentator that the song does, in fact, retain a covertly sexual meaning and describes an act of cunnilingus. See 'The Story Behind the Song: "Submission" by the Sex Pistols', on the music website Rocking in the Norselands (10 March, 2025): click here.  

 

 

For a related post to this one - a post that I hadn't remembered writing or publishing until reminded by a torpedophile with a much better memory than mine - click here. And for a postscript to this post on the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols, click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus 1: The Velvet Underground, 'Venus in Furs', from the album The Velvet Underground and Nico (Verve Records, 1967): click here. 

 

Musical bonus 2: The Sex Pistols, 'Submission', from the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here.