Jamie Reid: sleeve artwork for 'God Save the Queen'
by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977)
I.
Celebrations to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee are set to take place over a special four-day bank holiday weekend from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 June 2022.
Seeing the Union Jack bunting and hearing all the Gawd bless 'er majesty bullshit reminds me very much of the Silver Jubilee back in the fateful summer of 1977 - the summer of hate as it is sometimes known; i.e., the summer of punk ...
II.
Although not old enough to have partied with the Sex Pistols on their notorious jubilee boat trip along the Thames, I was old enough in 1977 to have woken up and realised what side of the bed I was lying on - and it wasn't the side with the red, white and blue sheets.
As far as I recall, I was pretty much the only Essex schoolchild who refused to attend (or have anything to do with) the street parties being held on my estate that June.
And my sense of alienation - combined with a long hatred for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal family - meant that I now aligned myself with the Sex Pistols (what this meant in practice was keeping press cuttings about the band, taping 'Pretty Vacant' off the radio [1], and doing my best to perfect a Rotten persona).
The Sex Pistols were the flowers in the dustbin and they were the poison in the human machine, but it was precisely their uncompromising nihilism that made them so attractive; that, and the way they looked [2].
III.
Finally, while we're on the subject of the Sex Pistols ...
Tonight sees the start of Danny Boyle's six-part TV series Pistol - a Disneyfied punk pantomime loosely based on Steve Jones's memoir, in which a kamikaze gang of foul-mouthed yobs is reimagined by a cast of impossibly middle-class actors [3].
Were he still with us, I'm sure Malcolm would regard this as a prime example of what he termed karaoke culture [4] - i.e., one lacking in authentic sex, style or subversion.
So, rather than sit through Danny Boyle's load of old bollocks, why not click here to watch a new version of the video for 'God Save the Queen' - one which combines footage shot by Julien Temple at the Marquee in May 1977, with footage of the Thames river boat party (a fun day out which resulted in eleven arrests, including Malcolm's).
Notes
[1] I couldn't record 'God Save the Queen', of course, as it was banned from the airwaves. Famously, it was also prevented from getting to number one in the official UK singles chart, although it was the highest selling single during the jubilee week.
[2] I loved the songs too, but the music was always secondary to
the politics, the clothes, and the artwork - which is why I soon came
to appreciate that Malcolm was the fabulous architect of chaos and
Rotten just another juvenile Bill Grundy. Indeed, he's now something of an admirer of the Queen it appears.
[4] Readers who are interested in this can watch McLaren's TED Talk of October 2009 on authentic creativity versus karaoke culture: click here.
