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. 

God Save Joe Orton

Joe Orton anachronistically wearing a 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears T-shirt

in a photo by George Elam (1967) 

 

'The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste 

invariably have very bad taste.'

 

 

I. 

 

Remembered primarily as a playwright who came to a sticky end at the hands of his lover, Joe Orton was a gay, working class English writer who, in a brief but brilliant public career lasting from 1964 until his murder in 1967, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies, characterised by a mix of cynicism and sauciness [1].  

 

 

II. 

 

After leaving school, Orton got a job as an office junior whilst also developing an interest in the performing arts, joing a number of am-dram societies in his home town of Leicester. He obviously showed promise, as, in November 1950, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he took up the following spring.   

 

It was at RADA that Orton met Kenneth Halliwell, seven years his senior, and they formed a strong romantic relationship, moving into a West Hampstead flat together (shared with two other students). 

 

After graduating, they collaborated on a number of novels. However, as these failed to set the literary world alight (or even find a publisher), Orton and Halliwell decided it might be best to write separately, scraping by as best they could on benefits and monies earned from part-time jobs, whilst amusing themselves with various pranks; such as removing books from their local library in order to modify them (i.e., deface the covers with comically surreal images and additional text), before returning them to the shelves [2].   

 

They were eventually nicked by the police and charged with larceny and damage to property deemed to be wilfully malicious in nature. After pleading guilty at Old Street magistrates (in May 1962), each received a six-month custodial sentence (and a £2 fine). Interestingly, whilst Halliwell hated being in jail and attempted suicide, Orton seemed to enjoy himself and find inspiration. His career as a powerful and subversive writer arguably has its origins in his time behind bars and shortly after his release he wrote Entertaining Mr Sloane [3]. 

 

 

III.

 

The unduly harsh nature of the prison sentence, which Orton suspected was due to the fact that he and Halliwell were queers, brought home to him the fact that corrupt priggishness and hypocrisy still exercised its power and authority in the UK, even after the Chatterley Trial: 

 

"It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul." [4]

 

Orton's next performed work was Loot (1965); a dark two-act work that satirises social and religious attitudes to death, as well as the integrity of the police. It opened to severe criticism, but, after numerous edits and rewrites, a London production in the autumn of 1966 received rave reviews, several awards, and established Orton's reputation. He was even able to sell the film rights for £25,000 (that's over half-a-million nicker in today's money and was a record figure at the time).     

 

 

IV. 

 

Orton's final play, What the Butler Saw, was a clever modern farce that he completed writing in July 1967, one month before his death [5]. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 5 March 1969 and was met with a hostile audience reaction; boos and cries of rubbish were heard coming from the balcony and some people walked out, protesting the play's raunchy character and obvious contempt for authority.

 

There is, finally, one more work I would like to mention; Up Against It - an unproduced film script written in 1967 for the Beatles, who were then at the height of their fame. 

 

After submitting the script to their manager, Brian Epstein, it was returned to Orton following a long period of silence and without comment. It's anarchic, sexually explicit, and subversive tone was deemed too potentially damaging to the Beatles' carefully managed public image and inappropriate for a mainstream movie audience [6]. 

 

In fact, the dark and chaotic script might have better suited Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols ...

 

 

V.   

 

It's not wrong to consider Orton a defining figure (and diarist) of London in the 1960s; his work and lifestyle embodied the rebellious and sexually liberated spirit of the counterculture during that era. 

 

But, having said that, I can't help thinking of him as more of a trickster-punk than a peace-loving hippie - even if he did have a Beatles song played at his funeral. And Malcolm McLaren was a great admirer, considering Orton an inspiration for the punk aesthetic that he and Vivienne Westwood had created in their shop at 430 King's Road.   

 

Thus it is that Orton's name appears on the right side (literally and figuratively) of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up' manifesto (1974). And thus it is that, in 1979, McLaren and Westwood produced the 'Prick Up Your Ears' shirt for Seditionaries, which comes with a quotation taken from Orton's diary (I write in more detail about this shirt in a post that can be accessed by clicking here). 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, for McLaren, Orton was a "remorseless cultural provocateur" [7] and a kindred spirit; someone who drew inspiration (as he did) from the gutter and delighted in the prospect of fucking the rich up the arse.    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The comparison with Oscar Wilde is often made and it's not an unreasonable comparison to make; both used wit to expose the moral hypocrisies of their respective societies, often focusing on the absurdity of authority. Writing in the more permissive 1960s, rather than the Victorian 1890s, allowed Orton to be more explicitly transgressive than Wilde, though I'm not sure he was more anarchic or provocative.

      For a critical essay on this pair of queer iconoclasts, see John Bull, 'What the butler did see: Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde', in Francesca Coppa (ed.), Joe Orton: A Casebook (Routledge, 2002), pp. 45-60. 

 

[2] In their defence, Orton and Halliwell were protesting what they regarded as an appalling selection of books; endless shelves of rubbish, as they put it. See Ilsa Colsell's Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013). 

      And see also the excellent article by Jonathan Jones titled 'Joe Orton's defaced library books and the death of rebellious art', in The Guardian (14 Oct 2011): click here. Jones argues that their amusing (if somewhat juvenile) defacement of library books was "a glorious rejection of the austerity and ordinariness that still set the British tone in 1962" and anticipated the manner in which the Sex Pistols scandalised a moribund nation in the following decade.  

      Amusingly, the book covers Orton and Halliwell vandalised have since become a valued part of the Islington Local History Centre collection and some are exhibited in the Islington Museum (i.e., they have been recuperated by the Spectacle). A collection of the book covers is also available online at the Joe Orton Gallery: click here.  

 

[3] Joe Orton (1964) as quoted on joeorton.org: click here. 

 

[4] The three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane premiered at the New Arts Theatre (London) on 6 May 1964, produced by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage, with one critic for The Times declaring that it made his blood boil more than any other British play in the last decade. The play was transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End at the end of June and then to the Queen's Theatre in October, and Orton was hailed as a promising new talent. 

 

[5] On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home in Islington with multiple hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. It seems likely that Orton had wanted to terminate their relationship (albeit not in such a literal fashion). 

 

[6] The screenplay was filled with what was termed outlaw sexuality and it should be recalled that homosexuality had only (partially) been decriminalised in July of 1967. Paul McCartney would later admit that the Beatles didn't wish to do the film because it was gay and they were not.  

      Interestingly, in 1979, John Lydon initiated a High Court case against Malcolm McLaren and his management company, Glitterbest. While the primary goal was to reclaim misappropriated royalties and the rights to the Sex Pistols name, Rotten also wanted to make clear his objection to the salacious and immoral elements contained in the script upon which the film that eventually became The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) had been based. Arguing that the script portrayed him and other members of the band in a defamatory and harmful light, Rotten also made it clear that he had no wish to be associated with infamous figures including Jack the Ripper, Myra Hindley and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Nor, indeed, did he approve of any scenes involving extreme sexual and violent content. 

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.  

  

 

To read a sister post to this one - God Save Jean Genet (2 Feb 2026) - please click here. 

 

Bonus video: a short clip of Joe Orton being interviewed on The Eamon Andrews Show (ABC Weekend TV, 23 April, 1967): click here. A decade later, Andrews' co-presenter on the Thames TV show Today, Bill Grundy, would interview the Sex Pistols, who weren't prepared to play along in such a charming manner as Orton.  

 

 

God Save Jean Genet

Sex Pistols ft. Jean Genet (SA/2026)

Photo credits: Sex Pistols by Bob Gruen (1976) 

and Jean Genet by Brassaï (1948)   

 

Beauty is the projection of ugliness and to achieve harmony in bad taste 

is the height of style ...

 

 

I.

 

Jean Genet (1910–1986) was a seminal French writer and political activist whose life was defined by his transition from a marginalized outcast to a celebrated avant-garde icon. 

 

Born to a prostitute mother and placed into foster care, he spent his youth banged up in reformatories and prisons for crimes including theft and vagrancy [1], before joining the Foreign Legion at eighteen, from which he was dishonourably discharged on grounds of indecency (that is to say, well, I think we can all imagine what he was caught doing). 

 

After this, Genet stole and slept his way round Europe as a tea leaf and rent boy, before ending up in and out of prison in Paris; experiences that served as the primary inspiration for his lyrical debut novel, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1943) [2].

 

Genet's later work - which includes novels such as Journal du voleur (1949) [3] and plays such as Les Bonnes (1947) [4] - is renowned for its stylised (but uncompromising) exploration of power and the beauty of evil, as well as the subversion of social hierarchies and the transgression of traditional morality (often giving iconic status to outlaws and outcasts, punks and queers).   

 

 

II.

 

Genet was championed by both Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre [5] and, in his later years, following the events of May '68, he became increasingly active politically, advocating for all kinds of oppressed groups and radical causes and participating in various demonstrations. 

 

In 1970, Genet spent three months in the United States at the invite of the Black Panthers, before then spending six months visiting Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan [6]. He also became pally with Foucault during this time and, in his experimental text Glas (1974), Jacques Derrida contrasted Genet's ideas on crime, homosexuality and all the reste with Hegel's philosophy, in order to deconstruct traditional concepts of the law, family, and the ideal of Wholeness (or the Absolute) [7].   

 

Like Joe Strummer, Genet expressed solidarity with the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof Gang); a militant far-left group designated as a terrorist organisation by the West German government, publishing an article titled Violence et brutalité in Le Monde (2 Sept. 1977) [8]. 

 

Whilst Strummer was, of course, simply posing in a T-shirt - the Clash specialised in radical chic - Genet was driven by a deep-seated hatred for Western imperialism and French bourgeois society in particular; in 1985, the year before his death, he informed a shocked interviewer from the BBC that he loathed France so much that he had even supported the Nazis when they invaded Paris. 

  

 

III. 

  

Whilst Genet never collaborated with the Sex Pistols - nor ever refer to them in his writings or interviews - it's tempting to imagine that he would have found McLaren and Westwood's tiny shop at 430 King's Road a conceptual space very much to his liking, promoting as it did anarchy, sexual deviance, and the kind of transgressive behaviour that he seemed so excited by.

 

And if we define the denizens of 430 King's Road as Peter York once famously defined them - "the extreme ideological wing of the peculiars" [9] - or, alternatively, recall the description of them from the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - "a kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [10] - then it's possible that Genet would have identified with the Sex Pistols and acknowledged how his legacy found youthful expression via punk [11]. 

 

But, again, just to be clear - there is no evidence of a direct relationship between Jean Genet and the Sex Pistols and I don't remember Malcolm ever mentioning his name, whereas he would often refer to other poets and playwrights he admired, such as Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The speculative connection suggested here is largely based on the fact that both McLaren and Genet understood style as a form of refusal and aligned themselves with the counterculture. 

 

On the other hand, however, it's worth noting that while Genet may have appreciated the SEX and Seditionaries aesthetic, by the mid-1970s he had become increasingly cynical about art and theatrical rebellion and so it's possible that he would have dismissed punk as just another fashion and commercial commodification, rather than something genuinely subversive or dangerous - who knows? 

  

 

Notes 

 

[1] Genet's mother raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption (one likes to believe she did so with good intentions and was putting the child's interests first). According to his biographer, his foster family was loving and attentive. Neverthless, his childhood involved numerous attempts to run away and incidents of petty criminality (even whilst the obviously bright boy got good grades at school). Eventually, aged fifteen, Genet was sent to a brutal penal colony, where he spent three unhappy years. 

 

[2] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frechtman, was published as Our Lady of the Flowers in 1949. 

 

[3] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frectman, was published as The Thief's Journal (1964).

 

[4] This work was again first translated into English by Bernard Frechtman and was published as The Maids by Grove Press in the United States (1954), and by Faber in the UK (1957). A famous film adaptation, dir. Christopher Miles and starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York, was released in cinemas in 1975.

 

[5] When Genet arrived in Paris, he sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau and the latter, impressed by his writing, used his contacts to help get Genet's first novel published. 

      Later, in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a life sentence after notching up ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. In gratitude - and perhaps realising there was more money to be made from art than crime - Genet stayed on the straight and narrow after this (or, at any rate, he avoided being caught doing anything that might return him to a prison cell).

      By this date, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality. In 1952, Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's existential development (from vagrant to writer), entitled Saint Genet. Profoundly affected by Sartre's analysis, Genet did not write for the next five years, during which time he became emotionally attached to Abdallah Bentaga, a tightrope walker. Following Bentaga's suicide in 1964, Genet entered a period of depression and attempted to end his own life.

 

[6] A memoir detailing his encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers was published posthumously; see Un captif amoureux (Gallimard, 1986). Translated into English by Barbara Bray and with an introduction by Edmund White, it was published by Picador as The Prisoner of Love (1989).      

 

[7] The English translation of Derrida's book, by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, was published by the University of Nebraska Press, in 1986. A more recent translation, by Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills, was published with the title Clang by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021. 

 

[8] This Le Monde piece can be found in Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Albert Dichy, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 171-177. 

      According to the blurb for this book, Genet affirms a heroic politics of protest and revolt with "an uncompromising outrage". In other words, it's that depressing mix of militant asceticism and pathological narcissism that I genuinely despise. In fact, the only thing I hate Genet for more is his reported sexual abuse of the eleven-year-old daughter of his friend and fellow writer Monique Lange. Viewers interested in knowing more about this should see the unconventional docu-drama Little Girl Blue (2023), written and directed by Mona Achache, and starring Marion Cottilard: click here to watch the trailer.

 

[9] This wonderful description of McLaren and company was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976). It was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

 

[10] Click here to watch the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980); the film that incriminates its audience. The narrator is the famous BBC newsreader John Snagge.

 

[11] Of all the Sex Pistols, I think it would have been guitarist Steve Jones whom the Frenchman would have found the most appealing. For as Glen Matlock once rightly observed, it was Jones who was the true spirit of the band and "like a character out of Jean Genet book [...] a real livewire scoundrel, unabashedly so".   

      Matlock was speaking in an interview with Matt Catchpole; see 'Trigger Happy - Sex Pistol Glen Matlock on Life as a Solo Performer and New Album Good To Go' (26 June, 2018): click here. Matlock later repeats this observation in an interview with Dave Steinfeld; see  'Glen Matlock - Truth or Consequences: Talking with the original Sex Pistol about politics and punk rock', on the website Rock and Roll Globe (18 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

  

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'L'Anarchie Pour Le UK', from the album The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group: click here. The vocalist is Loius Brennon and he is backed by his merry band of street musicians on accordian and fiddle.  

 

The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: a Postscript

The Velvet Underground (Sterling Morrison / Maureen Tucker / Lou Reed / John Cale) 

Photo by Gerard Malanga (1966)

The Sex Pistols (Steve Jones / Glen Matlock / Johnny Rotten / Paul Cook)

Photo by Peter Vernon (1976) 

 

I. 

 

As conceded in a recent post contrasting 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground with 'Submission' by the Sex Pistols [1], the former song is undoubtedly the more interesting of the two. However, that's not to say I would agree with this which arrived in my inbox in response:   

 

Quite why anyone would choose the scuzzy little marketing joke of Sex Pistols over the catastrophic beauty and kinetic mystique of The Velvets is beyond me . . . 

 

 

II. 

 

It's a peculiarly affecting line of criticism; one that could only have been written by a fan of the latter - note, for example, the use of the shortened band name to indicate intimacy and insider status (although there was also an early 1960's doo-wop group called The Velvets and one is tempted to feign confusion just to be irritating). 

 

Clearly, the writer prioritises artistic complexity over what they see as crude commercialism. But what is also clear from the sentence structure and grandiloquent language employed, is that this critic is something of an intellectual and cultural elitist - catastrophic beauty ... kinetic mystique - who uses phrases like this without wishing to signal their superiority? 

 

By dismissing the Sex Pistols as no more than Malcolm McLaren's scuzzy little marketing joke, they also position themselves as someone who can see through popular cultural trends such as punk; trends that lack the depth, authenticity, and high aesthetic value of the kind of avant-garde pop (or art rock) produced by the Velvet Underground. 

 

 

III.

 

Of course, this subjective and judgemental style of writing is one that many music journalists have experimented with and, to be fair, it can be entertaining (even if some readers may find it a tad pretentious) [2]. And one is reminded also of a letter written by a teenage Stephen Morrissey to the NME critiquing the Sex Pistols for their shabby appearance and 'discordant music' with 'barely audible' lyrics [3]. 

 

However, before my anonymous correspondent gets too excited by this - for if he loves the Velvet Underground, he's bound to love Morrissey -  he should note that Morrissey also praises the punk band for knowing how to get their audience dancing in the aisles and compares them favourably to his beloved New York Dolls (another scuzzy group managed briefly by McLaren which, I imagine, my correspondent hates just as much as the Sex Pistols). 

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, whilst belonging to two very different eras, the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols were both seminal bands and it is beyond me why we should be forced to choose between them. 

 

Having said that, my love and loyalty remains with the peculiars of 430 Kings Road rather than Andy Warhol's Factory and I prefer the comic anarcho-nihilism of the Sex Pistols to the dark poetic surrealism of the Velvet Underground.      

 

  

Notes

 

[1] See 'The Velvet Underground Versus the Sex Pistols: Venus in Furs Contra Submission' (6 Jan 2026): click here.

 

[2] I am sympathetic to Thomas Tritchler who calls for a rethinking of the term 'pretension'; see the third and final part of his post 'On the Malign/ed Art of Faking It' (27 Dec 2014): click here.

 

[3] Morrissey's letter was published in the NME on 16 June, 1976. It was written in response to the Sex Pistols' gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, in Manchester, on 4 June, 1976. To read the letter on Laughing Squid, click here. See also Alice Vincent's article on the letter in The Telegraph (23 July 2013): click here. 

 

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. 

 

 

Flogging a Dead Reindeer

Image posted to Instagram on 24 Dec 2025 

by $teve Jone$ @jonesysjukebox

 

 

I. 

 

Marx famously predicted that within modern capitalism all values would be reduced not to zero, but resolved into one final, fatal value; i.e., commercial or exchange value. 

 

Thus it is that bourgeois society does not efface old structures and insititutions - including punk rock bands - but subsumes them. Old modes do not die; they get recuperated into the marketplace, take on price tags, become commodities.

 

And so it is we witness three ex-Pistols and a grinning wannabe Johnny Rotten hawking their merchandise via social media even on Christmas eve. This includes a 'God Save the Queen' seasonal jumper which they model in the above photos [1].    

 

 

II. 

 

This shouldn't surprise anyone: Malcolm - in collaboration with Jamie Reid and Julien Temple - warned what would happen in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) and the grim reality of the fate that awaited the band was made explicit in the album titles Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (1979) and Flogging a Dead Horse (1980).  

 

And I have written several posts on this subject; see, for example, the post dated 12 June, 2015 in which I discuss the issuing of a Sex Pistols credit card on Virgin Money (in two designs): click here.  

 

But, even so, I still find it sad and depressing to see the Sex Pistols - now a punk rock brand - selling Never Mind the Bollocks Christmas baubles (at £18 each) [2]. 

 

And it makes me despise an economic system which, on the one hand, equalises and makes everything the same, whilst, on the other hand, encouraging all modes of conduct and permitting all manner of thinking, providing they are economically viable and turn a nice profit. 

 

I am not a Marxist: but, in as much as capitalism leaves no other nexus between people than naked self-interest and cash payment [3] - and in as much as it infects every sphere of activity (including the arts) with the same greed and vulgarity - I do find myself experiencing (à la Ursula Brangwen) a feeling of "harsh and ugly disillusion" [4]. 

 

And so, I'm almost tempted this Christmas to invoke that exterminating angel dreamed of by Deleuze and Guattari; the one who will consummate capitalism by fucking the rich up the arse and transmitting "the decoded flows of desire" [5]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers can purchase this synthetic knitted jumper (it's only 8% wool), priced £60, from the Sex Pistols official website store: click here. 

 

[2] Again, head to the official Sex Pistols website shop: click here. 

 

[3] I am paraphrasing from memory what Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto (1848).  

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 403. 

 

[5] Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 35.  

 

 

Xmas bonus: Julien Temple's hour-long documentary Christmas with the Sex Pistols (2013), featuring footage from their last UK concert on Christmas Day, 1977: click here. It was first shown on BBC Four on Boxing Day 2013.   

 

 

A Cheap Holiday ...

Sex Pistols: 'Holidays in the Sun' 

(Virgin Records, 1977) [1]
 

 

I. 

 

I don't know why - perhaps because I'm a little naive and trusting of his lyrical ability - but I always believed that Rotten had penned the memorable opening line of the Sex Pistols' fourth single: A cheap holiday in other people's misery.

 

It turns out, however, that it's borrowed from the Situationists who used the line during the events of May '68 to attack mass tourism, taking particular aim at Club Med; a French travel and tourism operator headquartered in Paris, who specialise in all-inclusive holidays. Founded in 1950, Club Med today owns or operates nearly eighty resort villages in locations around the world (although the company itself is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate).  

 

 

II.

 

The Situationists, led by the brilliant (but troubled) figure of Guy Debord, viewed mass tourism not as an opportunity for working-class people to travel to foreign lands, but as a manifestation of the Society of the Spectacle (i.e., a sociey in which authentic experience and real events are replaced by mere representation and one's relationships are increasingly mediated by images).

 

A package holiday is - as the name suggests - perfectly commodified and serves only to reinforce capitalist control and intensify the holidaymaker's alienation via the illusion of happiness; you think you're having fun, but actually you're having your soul sucked out of you and being prevented from actively engaging with your environment or knowing real pleasure.

 

What's more, mass tourism forces the local population to prostitute themselves and make their towns, cities, even whole countries attractive for visitors over and above their own needs. At first, everyone thinks it's great and tourism is a huge boost to the economy, but then, one day, they wake up inside a theme park and their traditional way of life has been rendered null and void.

 

Recently, in European cities including Barcelona and Venice, there have been anti-tourism protests; local residents finally deciding to try and resist their homeland and culture being turned into a consumable product by the Spectacle. One suspects, however, that these protests are in vain; too little, too late when the whole world has been Disneyfied and we are all tourists now [2].    

 

 

III.

 

Jean Baudrillard - who was a bit of a situationist himself - didn't quite say that tourism and terrorism are one and the the same thing, but he did argue that they are inextricably linked phenomena arising from the process of globalisation and that tourism is itself a form of terror as an avatar of colonisation and a viral infiltration of traditional cultures by foreign capital and alien values [3]. 

 

Like it or not, as you sit at the airport waiting to fly off for some winter sun, tourism imposes a universal and commodified experience upon the world and incites (sometimes violent and symbolic) acts of resistance from those who don't wish to see their singular experience Disneyfied and consumed by tourists; who understand that any culture that loses its singularity dies.     

 

Like it or not, no matter how much you paid for your trip and how much you love the locals and try to respect their way of life, you are still just enjoying:

 

 

 

Notes

 

 [1] 'Holidays in the Sun' was released on 14 October 1977 as the fourth single by the Sex Pistols. It reached number 8 in the UK charts. It also serves as the opening track to the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols which was released two weeks later (Virgin Records, 1977). To play the track and watch the official video on YouTube, click here. 

      Jamie Reid's artwork hijacked images from a Belgian holiday brochure and added speech bubbles with lyrics from the song. Unfortunately, the tourist company sued and the record sleeve (along with promotional materials that made use of the artwork) had to be withdrawn. Over 50,000 singles were recalled and re-issued in plain sleeves, although not before an estimated 5,000 had already been sold (one of which I bought). 

      Anyone with £2000 to spare can buy a 'Holidays in the Sun' poster from the London-based bookseller Peter Harrington: click here for details.  

  

[2] See the post titled 'Travels in Hyperculture with Byung Chul-Han 1: We Are All Tourists Now' (30 Jan 2022): click here.  

[3] I'm paraphrasing what Baudrillard writes in 'Where Good Grows', an essay written in 2005, which can be found in The Agony of Power, trans. Ames Hodges (Semiotext(e), 2010), p.102.    

 

 

Reflections on a Punk Jesus

Fig. 1: Jesus: Punk or Cunt?  

 

 

I.

 

We all know, thanks to the Ramones, that Jackie is a punk (and Judy is a runt), but Jesus ... can the Nazarene really be conceived as such? 

 

After all, Johnny Rotten campily affirms a cod-Nietzschean position vis-à-vis the Son of God in the opening line of the Sex Pistols' debut single: I am an anti-Christ [1]. 

 

And in case there should still be some doubt regarding this matter, the infamous Destroy shirt designed by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries, features (along with a swastika) an inverted crucifix [2] - could that be any more sacrilegious, as Chandler Bing might say.   

 

Despite this, however, there's recently been talk in certain punk circles around the need to enthuse the diverse global subculture that has emerged from what was once simply a sound and a look born of 430 King's Road with a form of Christian spirituality (or faith) [3] - and I for one don't like it! 

 

For as my friends in Cradle of Filth once succinctly put it, Jesus is a cunt [4].  

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, even Nietzsche recognised Christ as someone in revolt against social hierarchy, writing: 

 

"This holy anarchist who roused up the lowly, the outcasts and 'sinners' [...] to oppose the ruling order [...] was a political criminal, in so far as political criminals were possible in an absurdly unpolitical society." [5]

 

So perhaps the idea of a punk Jesus is not so absurd as it seems at first (whilst remaining profoundly problematic). 

 

Or perhaps we might instead understand punk as merely another unfolding of the slave revolt in morality [6]; the marginalised, the disprivileged, and the talentless - driven by ressentiment - attempting to invert the value system of the music business and overthrow the pop elite: No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones ... [7] 

 

 

Fig. 2: Johnny Rotten: Anti-Christ / Photo by Barry Plummer (1976)   

Fig. 3: Destroy shirt by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (1977)  

  

Notes

 

[1] Sex Pistols, 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI Records, 1976). The track also features on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to play and watch the official video on YouTube. 

      As one critic writes, the opening line of this song has become one of the most famous in rock history: "As a simple declaration, these words possess an immediate shock value familiar in the themes of transgression and iconoclasm that helped define rock and roll." 

      See Benjamin Court, 'The Christ-like Antichrists: Messianism in Sex Pistols', in Popular Music and Society, Volume 38, Issue 4 (2015), pp. 416-431.

 

[2] The figure of Christ on the Cross was adapted by McLaren from Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16). 

 

[3] In November 2019, for example, Francis Stewart and Mike Dines of the Punk Scholars Network, organised a two-day in person and online symposium on the theme of 'Punk and the Sacred': click here for details. 

      The peer-reviewed academic journal Punk & Post-Punk (ed. Russ Bestley) has also published several articles on punk spirituality; see, for example, Ibrahim Abraham's 'Postsecular punk: Evangelical Christianity and the overlapping consensus of the underground', in Volume 4, Issue 1, of the above (Mar 2015), pp. 91-105, which argues that "the negotiated inclusion of religiously diverse social actors in punk scenes can inform ongoing debates about diversity and inclusion ..." Abraham also edited Christian Punk: Identity and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020).

      This attempt to give punk a religious gloss doesn't always involve a Christian makeover, however; there have also been attempts to blend punk with Buddhist and Hindu practices and beliefs, for example. If not exactly hostile, let's just say - as an anti-theist [click here] - I'm suspicious of this creeping religiosity; I don't want punk philosophy and art to be corrupted by theologenblut.

 

[4] This line was written on the back of the Vestal Masturbation T-shirt; a controversial item of Cradle of Filth band merchandise, originally printed and distributed in 1993 (the front of the shirt features an image of a masturbating, semi-naked nun). As with several of the early McLaren-Westwood shirt designs, it garnered much controversy and resulted in some fans being arrested for wearing it. 

 

[5] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), § 27, p. 150.

 

[6] See sections 10-12 of the first essay in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887).

      It's important to note that this slave revolt is not merely a politics of class war and revenge; it also, crucially, introduces into history the idea of a free-willing human subject (the modern individual) whose existence is conceived in moralistic terms (i.e., as good or evil). Thus, Nietzsche does not simply condemn the triumph of this revolt nor seek to reverse it: "Such an exercise, even if desirable, would be pointless because slave morality has become an essential part of what we are." 

      See Keith Ansell-Pearson, editor's introduction to On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. xv.

 

[7] Lyrics from '1977', by The Clash; B-side to 'White Riot', their debut single (CBS Records, 1977).