Echoes of the Punk Age - by Jimmy Jazz (In the Manner of F. Scott Fitzgerald)

 Echoes of the Punk Age (SA/2026)

 

It was an age of anarchy; it was an age of art. 

It was an age of gobbing, and it was an age of safety pins.

 

 

Editorial Note

 

The release in October 1976 of 'New Rose' by the Damned was the first signal of the coming youth revolution [1]. Caroline Coon gave the British movement a name: Punk Rock [2]. 

 

In this post, Jimmy Jazz, who remembers the time and observed the subcultural changes of the era first-hand, shares some thoughts in what is essentially a pastiche of a well-known essay written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Scribner's Magazine in November 1931 [3].   

 

Endnotes have been added to provide context and clarification of terms or references that may be unfamiliar to some readers.      

 

 

*************************************** 

 

I. 

 

It is now almost impossible to write about the Punk Age with genuine enthusiasm without being suspected of senile dementia. 

 

Many punk scholars still succumb to excited nostalgia when they happen upon any of its characteristic terms or images - even though these terms and images have long become familiar forms emptied of any meaning, magic, or menace and ultimately serve the Spectacle. 

 

Having passed over into the world of pure simulation where it exists posthumously as a marketable visual code that is fixed and forever circulating in media and fashion networks, the Punk Age is as undead as any other era in which complex history is replaced by a comforting myth.  

 

And yet, despite everything, the present writer still looks back to the mid-late 1970s with a certain fondness: for in a very real sense it shaped who he is today (for better or for worse).  

 

That brief six-year period, which began when SEX first opened its doors on King's Road in the autumn of 1974, ended when - as if reluctant to grow old or witness its own recuperation - punk signalled its own spectacular demise with The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and the closure of Seditionaries in the autumn of 1980.            

 

 

II.

 

When a pair of burly policemen took Alan Jones into custody for wearing a Cowboys T-shirt and charged him with displaying an obscene print in a public space - and when SEX was subsequently raided by the porn squad, arresting Malcolm and Vivienne on indecency charges - it was the sort of measure bound to alienate the more intelligent and sexually liberated young people. 

 

We didn't know much about the history of free speech in the UK, but we did know that such fascist tyranny and harassment had to be opposed - even if, after the failure of the hippies, we were scornful of the effectiveness of passive resistance and non-violent protest. 

 

For the so-called Summer of Love left those old enough to remember cynical and disappointed rather than optimistic and it was characteristic of the Punk Age that it had no interest in Peace and Love, maaan. Theirs was the politics of boredom and the aim was to exit the twentieth century via a revolt into style; a sartorial attempt to flee the totalising logic of capital through a belief in the ruins.        

 

 

III.

 

It was an age of anarchy, it was an age of art, it was an age of gobbing, and it was an age of safety pins [4]. A cold and distant Queen sat upon the throne of the United Kingdom; her regime making morons of us all. 

 

Nevertheless, we were filled with destructive potential and, thanks to McLaren and Westwood, style belonged to us. Where once we had looked to Carnaby Street, now we assembled at 430 King's Road as the power to determine the look of music and the sound of fashion passed from one generation to another.  

 

The Bromley Contingent were by-far the best-dressed group of people in the world: who could tell them what was stylish and what was fun? They created their own look and their own pastimes. 

 

The punk revolution - even before it was called such - "created a sensation out of all proportion to its novelty" [5]. As far back as 1975, the Bowie-inspired youth of London's suburbs had discovered that to dress up so as to mess up was a form of empowerment and that, ironically, bondage straps can set free. In other words, by weaponising fetish gear, they transformed restrictive rubberwear into a sign of negative freedom.  

 

At first, punk was confined to a small underground scene, mostly consisting of the Sex Pistols and their friends and followers. Among other young people the old standards and old tastes prevailed. Long-haired hippies in their flared jeans were still regularly encountered on the high street. Only during the Summer of Hate did the Punk Age fully blossom, consigning Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the dustbin of history.  

 

Scarcely had the normally staid citizens of the UK calmed down after the Bill Grundy Incident and the media storm that followed, before the wildest of all generations - the generation which had been too busy playing with their dolls to know about the Summer of Love - brusquely shouldered anyone over twenty-five out of the way and pogoed into the limelight. 

 

This was the generation who dramatised themselves as anarchists, the generation that wanted to fuck the rich up the arse and eventually self-destructed less through a lack of ability and intelligence than through a lack of caring about long-term success. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Arguably, the Sex Pistols topping the charts with 'God Save the Queen' in June 1977 and playing on a boat on the Thames outside the Houses of Parliament was the highpoint of the Punk Age. 

 

For though the era continued even after the band split up in January 1978 [6], it became less and less an affair of rebellious youth and was now renamed (and repackaged) as the New Wave by the elders of the music business looking to regain control over punk's disruptive chaos and make money by promoting big-selling acts acceptable to the US market. 

 

New Wave was like an orgy staged by the impotent at the Cambridge Rapist Hotel tired of missing out on the action and ready to feast on young flesh. As MAMIE record boss Ed Bird informed Steve Jones: 

 

"The Sex Pistols are finished, over! We don't take risks in this business anymore - we don't need to. Anarchy has dropped out of the Top 20 - punk is dead! Rock 'n' Roll can mean anything we want it to mean - peace, love, bringing people together. It can get rid of politics - it can be art, big money, the normal promotion of records. And it's fun!" [7]

 

By 1980, New Wave itself was old hat - say hello to the post-punk world of New Romanticism! Even McLaren and Westwood decided that pirates excited more than rockers and that having gold dust in one's hair was preferable to gel.   

 

The hardcore punks who, in their black leather jackets with 'Punk's Not Dead' defiantly written on the back, refused to quietly fade away or accept that the world had moved on - who rightly pointed out that all the same forces of reaction and stupidity remained in place - soon became as boring as the old hippies that they used to sneer at (and perhaps even more pathetic). 

 

The fact is, once the hacks of Fleet Street made punk headline news the game was nearly over and when the glossy magazines started to celebrate it punk had long ceased to even be news. The songs and the fashions of the Punk Age had changed everything whilst at the same time changing nothing.    

 

 

V.

 

The cooler, more creative, more experimental members of the Punk Age - those who had been to art school and liked wearing makeup - divided into a wide variety of new post-punk subcultures. The more aspirational started wearing expensive suits and were assimilated into the corporate machine where they carved out well-paid professional careers in the media (some of these cunts are still on our TV screens today). 

 

Others, however, just settled back into the normal world; got a job, got married, bought a house, had kids, took up hobbies, and one day looked in the mirror and found they were fat and bald and would no longer dare say bip-bam-boogie and a booga rooga to a policeman [8]. Many of these people now go to punk nostalgia fests and retro events in the vain attempt to relive their younger days, or satisfy their longing for a past they never actually experienced first hand [9]. 

 

 

VI.

 

But what about poor Sid? 

 

That is often the refrain I hear from concerned liberals today. Poor Sid, allowed (and encouraged) to disappear into the dark maw of drug-addled violence. Charged with murdering Nancy (12 October 1978), Vicious found himself in jail on Rikers Island and then, released on bail and awaiting trial, fatally overdosing on heroin supplied by his own mother: too fast to live, but not, it turned out, too young to die (2 February 1979).  

 

Malcolm once said if the Punk Age had continued it would have become much more brutal and destructive and many don't approve of his (rather fanciful) terrorist posturing [10]. But I don't care for their retrospective moralising. 

 

It was fantastic to be young, pretty and vacant in such a nihilistic time: when the apple cart was up-ended just for the pleasure of seeing which way the apples would roll; to not give a shit about anything said by parents and teachers and to think criminals and other notorious figures were more inspiring than second-rate pop stars and boring politicians.  

 

To those who look back in horror on the follies of youth and the excesses of the Punk Age - I give two fingers: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" ... and it seemed only a matter of time before the Grundy generation would step aside "and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were" [11]. 

 

Of course the Punk Age seems "rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more" [12].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'New Rose' was released on 22 October 1976 on Stiff Records, and is acknowledged to be the first UK punk single. The debut single from the Sex Pistols - 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - was released by EMI the following month (26 November). 

      Whilst it's impossible not to love Brian James's punk-pop ditty, the latter track, written by Cook, Jones, Matlock and Rotten, is in a different league: a genuine call to action rather than simply a song belonging to an exciting (but in many ways conventional) music genre. Click here for the astonishing live performance of 'Anarchy' on So It Goes (broadcast 4 Sept 1976).  

 

[2] Caroline Coon is widely credited with helping popularize the term 'punk rock' via her pioneering music journalism (although she didn't coin it). After attending early performances by the Sex Pistols in 1976, Coon recognised a revolutionary shift in youth culture was taking place. Coon is also credited with coming up with the name 'Bromley Contingent' for the stylish early followers of the Sex Pistols (which included Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol). 

 

[3] A reference to Fitzgerald's essay 'Echoes of the Jazz Age', which analysed the socio-cultural conditions that gave rise to a fascinating form of hedonistic youth culture in the 1920s. Tap on the link provided to read the essay online as a Project Gutenberg Canada ebook (2014).   

 

[4] This is a reworking of the famous opening line of Fitzgerald's essay: "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, it was an age of satire."   

 

[5] A direct quote from Fitzgerald's 'Echoes of the Jazz Age' (1931). 

 

[6] The Sex Pistols played their final show on 14 January 1978 at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco. 

 

[7] Dialogue from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). The scene set at the (fictional) Cambridge Rapist Hotel is highly provocative to say the least, exposing how the music business exploits young flesh. The MAMIE record boss is played by actor Johnny Shannon.  

 

[8] This echoes the line in Fitzgerald's essay that reads "one day in 1926 we looked down and found we had flabby arms and a fat pot and couldn't say boop-boop-a-doop to a Sicilian". Obviously, the line suggests that he and his contemporaries had suddenly grown old and culturally irrelevant. 

      'Boop-boop-a-doop' was the playful baby-talk catchphrase of Helen Kane, the 1920s singer who inspired cartoon character Betty Boop. It symbolises the carefree, frivolous, and bubbly pop-culture slang used by the flappers of the Jazz Age. As for the phrase 'to a Sicilian', this refers to a tough, hard-working and down to earth breed of people - i.e., just the kind of people who were scorned by the Bright Young Things. 

      The phrase has been updated in the post by incorporating a line from the Bow Wow Wow song 'C30 C60 C90 - Go!' (EMI 1980) and replacing the Sicilian with an authority figure; the policeman who is shrugged off and ignored in the song by the teenage punk pirate.    

 

[9] In 2012, the writer John Koenig coined a neologism for this pseudo-nostalgia for a cultural era or historical period one didn't actually live through: anemoia. While it's not a clinically recognised psychological state, it refers to a genuine feeling experienced by a growing number of individuals - thus the growing interest in older music, vintage clothing, classic films, etc.

      Readers who are interested might like to see The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig (Simon & Schuster, 2021), or visit his official website of this name: click here.   

 

[10] In a piece by Michael Watts in Melody Maker (June 1979), McLaren said this when asked how things would have developed if the Sex Pistols had stayed together: "They'd have created serious mayhem. They'd have been an awful lot more brutal and evil. In the end it wouldn't have been puking at airports - it would've been much more to do with burning down buildings." 

      Commenting on this, Simon Reynolds says it is fanciful: "Punks were far more likely to be the victims of violence than its perpetrators. They were merely pretending to be monsters and psychopaths as part of their campaign of symbolic warfare." 

      Reynolds continues: "But the parallels with terrorism are there: escalating shock tactics, goading the authorities into repressive measures. The typical punk move was to commit some kind of outrage, through clothes, language or imagery, and then scorn the revulsion they had sought and achieved." 

      See his review of Paul Gorman's The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), titled Serious Mayhem in - London Review of Books, Vol. 44, No. 5 (10 March 2022).

 

[11] The first phrase lifts from the famous opening of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859). The closing sentiment reworks a line from Fitzgerald's 'Echoes of the Jazz Age' (1931). 

 

[12] This is the final, poignant sentence of Fitzgerald's essay, presented almost exactly as written. It serves as the ultimate admission that the magic of any youth subculture is fatally tied to the transient intensity of youth itself.

 

 

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. 

Destroy Success

Based on an original design by Jamie Reid (1979) [1] 

 

I. 

 

It's hard to believe that November next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' 

 

But there you go - time flies and soon, just like Malcolm, Vivienne, Jamie, Jordan, and poor old Sid pictured above, we'll all be brown bread. 

 

The funny thing about the Sex Pistols' debut single is that it ends with the instruction to get pissed, destroy, but it's never made quite clear who or what is to be destroyed other than the passer by [2] and, as a matter of fact, one has to wait until The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle to discover that success is the main target marked for destruction. 

 

This is anticipated in the magnificent statement released by McLaren on behalf of Glitterbest after the band fell apart at the end of their US tour:  

 

"The management is bored with managing a successful rock 'n' roll band. The group is bored with being a successful rock 'n' roll band. Burning venues and destroying record companies is more creative than making it." [3]  

 

A statement which caused much embarassment for the Virgin press officer asked to explain whether it was meant to be taken seriously.  

 

One recalls also McLaren's equally well-known line, often repeated in interviews, that it is "better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success" [4]. 

 

For Malcolm, these words essentially define punk rock and daring to fail was not just romantic and heroic, but the only way to create great art [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, McLaren wasn't the only one to despise the notion of success; the early 20th century English novelist D. H. Lawrence - whom I would characterise as the first Sex Pistol (seen as a provocative and amusing analogy by some, but I'm being perfectly serious) - also hated success ...   

 

In his final (and most controversial) novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), for example, the Lawrentian narrator sneers at the figure of the young Irish playwright Michaelis, who had a Mayfair apartment and "walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman" [6]. 

  

Sir Clifford may admire and envy his success - "for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also" [7] - and even Connie may sleep with him, but we, as readers, are encouraged to find Mick contemptible (a bit doggy).    

 

Elsewhere, in his essays, Lawrence also makes clear his dislike for those who chase success - whether that's in the arts or in industry and the world of business. His mother may look down from heaven and feel chagrined at his lack of real success:

 

"that I don't make more money; that I am not really popular, like Michael Arlen, or really genteel, like Mr Galsworthy; that I have a bad reputation as an improper writer [...] that I don't make any real friends among the upper classes: that I don't really rise in the world, only drift about without any real status." [8] 

 

But Lawrence doesn't care; he has punk indifference to what others think of him - even his dead mother - and doesn't give a shit about getting on and becoming a great success in the eyes of the world. He thinks the bourgeois beastly - "especially the male of the species" [9] - hates the Oxford voice [10], and calls for a revolution "not to get the money / but to lose it all forever" [11]. 

 

And that's why, in part, I regard him as a Sex Pistol ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on original artwork by Jamie Reid for a full page ad in the Melody Maker promoting the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). 

      It depicts a cartoon version of Sid Vicious, who provided the vocals for the track and who, unfortunately, had died three weeks prior to the single's release. Although I have removed most of the other text added to the design, I have left the slogan destroy success which McLaren and Reid had adopted as their strategy following the firing of Johnny Rotten. 

      The original image can be found in the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.   

 

[2] See the post titled 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby (Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan)' dated 28 May, 2020: click here.  

 

[3] This statement, dated 20 January, 1978, is quoted from The Guardian archive: click here. 

 

[4] McLaren repeats this phrase in an interview with Amy Fleming published in The Guardian (10 August, 2009): click here.  

      See the post titled 'Better a Spectacular Failure ...' dated 5 June, 2013: click here. Note how McLaren's son Joe misremembers the line spoken by his father; replacing the word flamboyant with spectacular. 

[5] McLaren took to heart the words of one of his early lecturers at art school who told him that it was only by learning how to repeatedly fail that one would ever become an artist of any note: 'Don't think success will make you better artists.' 

      As McLaren's biographer notes: "The impact of this statement on McLaren was immediate and profound." And he quotes the latter saying: "'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in so doing, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'"  

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 48-49.  

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 21.

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Getting On', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 32.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'How beastly the bourgeois is', in The Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 373. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Oxford voice', The Poems Vol. I., p. 376.

 

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'O start a revolution', The Poems, Vol. I., p. 392. 

 

 

Do You Know What's Funny? Do You Know What Really Makes Me Laugh? I Used to Think That Sid's Death Was a Tragedy, But Now I Realise It's a Fucking Comedy

Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008)

and an early visualisation of the character 

based on Sex Pistol Sid Vicious 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Malcolm McLaren, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) would have been a great film were it not for the incompetence of the director Julien Temple. But that's a little harsh, to be fair.

 

For in extremely trying circumstances, Temple managed to assemble (and edit) a car crash of a movie that continues to fascinate cinephiles and symphorophiles alike. And, as Malcolm himself often said, better a spectacular failure than any kind of benign success. 

 

Where I do agree with McLaren, however, is that one of the things that the film doesn't quite convey is the dark humour underlying the story of the Sex Pistols and there are those who still think of it as an unreliable documentary rather than an artistic reimagining of events; i.e., po-faced moralists obsessed with factual accuracy and what they, like Lydon, call the truth. 

 

The film should provoke laughter, but it appears to invite sorrowful reflection or remorse. 

 

This is particularly so when it comes to the case of Sid Vicious; the British Board of Film Censors insisting that the ending of the film be changed to include a real press report of his death, thereby undermining the film's disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and that any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

 

This is done solely with the intent to induce feelings of shame, guilt, and deep regret for ever having found the Sex Pistols amusing. They - the censor-morons - want us to think that Sid's death was nothing but a tragedy, when - as Arthur Fleck would surely recognise - it was a fucking comedy all along ... [1]  

 

 

II.   

Funnily enough, the above connection made between Arthur Fleck and Sid Vicious is not the only time the latter has found himself discussed in relation to the Joker ...

 

For it turns out that Heath Ledger based his unforgettable portrayal of this DC Comics character - in part at least - on the spiky-haired Sex Pistol in The Dark Knight (2008); this having been confirmed both by the film's director, Christopher Nolan, and Ledger's co-star Christian Bale (who played Batman).   

 

And once you know this, then you understand (and maybe even appreciate) the Joker's anarcho-nihilistic sense of humour a little better, as well as his fascination with chaos and violence. One finds traces of the same mirthful malevolence in Sid's performance in the Swindle (particularly, of course, on stage at the  Théâtre de l'Empire, in Paris, singing his version of  'My Way') [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

Now, I know there are those out there - including many punk scholars - who hate Sid Vicious: 

 

"He is, after all, to blame for embodying one of the 20th century's most exciting art movements in the form of a drooling, talentless junkie in a swastika T-shirt" [3]. 

 

Similarly, there are critics who hate the character of the Joker as portrayed both by Ledger and Phoenix. 

 

In an age of mass shootings and terrorist atrocities, it is, they argue, highly irresponsible to glorify anti-social and criminal behaviour carried out by individuals who clearly have serious mental health issues.  

 

To which one can only reply: Why so serious?  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix) became notorious in Gotham City as the clown-faced killer and aspiring stand-up comic called Joker in Todd Philips's fantastic film of that title (2019). 

      The scene in which he says the lines I have used in the title to this post (making one key alteration; replacing the words 'my life' with 'Sid's death') takes place in a hospital room, just as Fleck is about to murder his mother: click here.  

      Interestingly, Sid Vicious also kills his mother in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - though with a pistol, not a pillow (see link in note 2 below).    

      Julien Temple briefly discusses the new British Board of Censors approved ending to his film in the commentary provided as an extra to The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle DVD (2005): click here and go to 1:43:37. Unlike Temple, I clearly do not think this makes a good ending; on the contrary, I think it places a moral curse on all those who watch and enjoy it.            

 

[2] In The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle viewers are led to believe that Sid is performing at L'Olympia, but this venue was unavailable, so filming actually took place at Théâtre de l'Empire, using the stage set which had been built for Serge Gainsbourg. To watch the performance, click here.   

 

[3] James Medd, 'Sid Vicious: The Grubby Demon of Punk', The Rake (September 2018): click here. 

      It should be noted that Medd himself goes on to mount a defence of Vicious and writes: 

      "Beyond the ferret-faced, sneery urchin cartoon [...] there's another Sid, not much more real but closer to something celebratory, romantic and even meaningful. Like the Marquis de Sade or Francis Bacon [...] he took ugliness and nihilism to their extremes, and found beauty in them."   

 

The Sex Pistols - Who the Dickens Were They?

Malcolm McLaren: Oliver Twist Manifesto (42 x 32 cm)

Double-sided flyer created for the Sex Pistols' final British show 

Christmas Day, 1977 [1]

Punk came out of this strange culture that had been repressed through the Victorian times ... 

The Sex Pistols were something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll 

and Malcolm saw them very much in a Dickensian way. - Julien Temple 

 

 

I. 

 

I spent a fair amount of time earlier in the year arguing that D. H. Lawrence can be thought of as a Sex Pistol: click here, for example. But to think of Lawrence as a proto-punk is not to suggest that we might think of the Sex Pistols as Lawrentian. 

 

In fact, if we are to think of the Sex Pistols in English literary terms at all, it makes far more sense to conceive of Johnny Rotten and company as neo-Dickensian characters. That's certainly how Malcolm McLaren attempted to portray them late on in their career, as the above flyer, written by him in December 1977, illustrates.

 

It begins:   

 

They are Dickensian-like urchins who with ragged clothes and pock marked faces roam the foggy streets of gas-lit London. Pillaging. Setting fire to buildings. Beating up old people with gold chains. Fucking the rich up the arse. Causing havoc wherever they go. Some of these ragamuffin gangs jump on tables amidst the charred debris and with burning torches play rock 'n' roll to the screaming delight of the frenzied pissing pogoing mob. Shouting and spitting 'anarchy' one of these gangs call themselves the Sex Pistols. [2]

 

It's obviously a fantasy vision of the band. But the question is: why does the fantasy take this particular form? Why reference ragamuffin gangs and pogoing mobs, etc? Is it just because McLaren's grandmother adored Fagin and made him read Dickens as a young child, or is there also a wider political context?

 

II. 

 

Before addressing these points, let's first give a bit more background to the production of the flyer ...  

 

By the end of 1977, life had never looked so good for the four Sex Pistols; three hit singles, a number 1 album, and about to commence on their first American tour. 

 

However, things were rapidly coming apart at the seams as relations amongst members of the band - never particularly good - had significantly worsened due to various factors including Sid's addiction to drugs (and to Nancy), Rotten's loathing of McLaren, and Malcolm's desire to ensure the band were remembered as a spectacular failure rather than a benign success.     

 

And so, in hindsight, it isn't all that surprising that the two shows played on Christmas day in Huddersfield - the first, in the afternoon, a benefit gig for the children of striking firemen and the second, in the evening, for fans of the band in and around West Yorkshire - would prove to be their final British performances.

 

Perhaps sensing that the end was nigh, Mclaren began to reimagine the Sex Pistols as so much more than merely another boring rock 'n' roll group. And so he wrote the above text for distribution at the events and illustrated with artwork by George Cruikshank from the original 1838 edition of Oliver Twist [3].

 

According to Paul Gorman, this flyer "acted less as a promotion for the Pistols than a commentary on both his Jewishness and his strange relationship with the group" [4]. But it also demonstrates McLaren's (somewhat bourgeois and overly-romanticised) understanding of working class culture as inherently rebellious, violent, and non-conforming and that returns us to the politics of this manifesto ...

 

 

III. 

      

It's often the case that when commentators discuss the Sex Pistols in terms of politics they immediately reach for their French dictionary and start talking about the Situationists and referencing Guy Debord's La société du spectacle (1967). 

 

That's not mistaken, but it does mean that less attention is given to the fact that the Sex Pistols are also very much part of an English history of insurrection to do with the so-called London mob and the Gordon Riots [5]. 

 

As the opening sequence of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) explicitly informs viewers, the roots of 'Anarchy in the UK' can be traced back to the 1780s [6]. That is to say, to a period fizzing with revolutionary and carnivalesque energies on both sides of the Channel and one that Charles Dickens wrote about in his (little read and rarely adapted) historical novel Barnaby Rudge (1841) [7]. 

 

Wilfully conflating mob violence with punk rock, the cinematic re-enactment of the Gordon Riots makes clear that McLaren saw the Sex Pistols as first and foremost a rejection of authority - be it of parents, teachers, priests, policemen, or soldiers of the crown - and representative, as Julien Temple rightly says, of "something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll"

[8].   

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The flyer was signed 'Oliver Twist' to emphasise McLaren's vision of the band as Dickensian urchins. It formed item 52 of the 71 item Stollper-Wilson Collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia auctioned by Sotheby's in October 2022: click here. 

      One of the most noticeable things about the flyer is the fact that Malcolm allowed corrections to the text to remain openly on display, just as they are on the Dickens manuscripts he saw as a child. As Paul Gorman reminds us, McLaren subscribed to the view that honest error is crucial to the creative process, rather than "'the icy perfections of the mere stylist'". 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 48, where Gorman quotes from an aphorism coined by the Victorian church architect J. D. Sedding (one often falsely attributed to Charles Rennie Mackintosh). 

 

[2] The rest of the text scawled by McLaren (with a wooden stick dipped in ink) reads:

 

This true and dirty tale has been continuing throughout 200 years of teenage anarchy and so in 1978 there still remains the Sex Pistols. Their active extremism is all they care about because that's what counts to jump right out of the 20th century as fast as you possibly can in order to create an environment that you can truthfully run wild in.

 

[3] The illustration by Cruikshank to which I refer depicts the first meeting between Oliver Twist and Fagin entitled 'Oliver introduced to the Respectable Old Gentleman'. It's an image which plays an important role in the mythologising of the Sex Pistols, paralleling as it does the first time that Malcolm and members of the band met with the nineteen-year-old who would become their singer and frontman: see the post 'On This Day ...' (22 August 2025): click here. 

      I am grateful for this clever insight to Michael E. Kitson, writing in 'The Sex Pistols and the London Mob', an unpublished doctoral thesis submitted to Western Sydney University (2008): click here to view the abstract and to download the work as a pdf. As this post makes clear, I agree with Kitson's central claim that the culture and semiotics of the London mob was fundamental to McLaren's (distinctly English) punk project and that the influence of Dickens on McLaren's thinking cannot be overestimated. 

 

[4] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... p. 381. 

      Interestingly, McLaren signs his manifesto with the name of Oliver Twist and not with Fagin, as one might have expected, as the latter was the explicitly Jewish character in Dickens's 1838 novel and the leader of a group of youngsters whom he grooms into a life of crime. 

      Still, whichever character McLaren ultimately identified with, the fact remains that Dickens's novel played a seminal role in his thinking. In 2000, he named the book as one of his favourites in a piece for The Guardian, describing it as an "unforgettable journey into criminal behaviour" that not only transported him back to his own childhood, but which justified his desire to - and here he paraphrases from his own Oliver Twist Manifesto - "create an environment " in which he could "truthfully run wild" whilst overseeing a generation of artful dodgers.  

      To read the list of Mclaren's top ten books in The Guardian (21 Feb 2000), click here.  

 

[5] The Gordon Riots of 1780 saw several days of violent disorder and destruction in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment and instigated by Lord George Gordon. After the mob - which had declared its own sovereignty on the wall of Newgate Prison - attempted to storm the Bank of England, the government finally sent in the army, resulting in several hundred fatalities.

 

[6] Funnily enough, the opening scene of the Swindle set in eighteenth-century London - featuring crowds cavorting in the streets as they joyously string up effigies of the Sex Pistols above a huge bonfire - is one that even Rotten admits to liking, conceding that it amusingly captures the spirit of punk. See John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (Hodder and Stoughton, 1994), p. 289.

 

[7] I don't know if McLaren read Barnaby Rudge, but it's possible and Dickens's novel remains the definitive literary work detailing the phenomenon of the London mob at its height. 

      It's also more than likely that McLaren would have been (at least vaguely) familiar with Christopher Hibbert's King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (Longmans, 1958), which provides a colourful reading of the historical record. 

      And finally, it should be pointed out that McLaren certainly knew of (and admired) the newsletter King Mob Echo produced by the British offshoot of the Situationist International, with whom he was acquainted whilst an art student in the 1960s (see Gorman 2020, pp. 95-98).

 

[8] Julien Temple, director of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), speaking in the audio commentary [2:13] provided as a bonus to the DVD release of the film in 2005: click here. Temple is speaking with the writer Chris Salewicz. Interestingly, while Malcolm sees the Sex Pistols as Dickensian, Temple prefers to think of them as a bit Chaucerian. 

 

 

That Time I Met Mr Pickle ...

 

I. 

 

One of my favourite scenes in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) is the closing animated sequence in which McLaren and his motley crew are all aboard the good ship Venus and Johnny Rotten, having been found guilty of collaboration, is forced to walk the plank. 

 

Abandoned by his shipmates, the singer finds himself literally all at sea where he is soon swallowed by a great white shark with the Virgin logo clearly visible on its fin [1].    

 

This scene replayed itself in my mind when, in 1983, the Virgin Group acquired Charisma Records (although it wouldn't be until 1986 that the latter was fully digested by the former; still maintaining at least a measure of independence until then). 

 

So, let us say that I was not a fan of Richard Branson and would laugh at Malcolm's stories about this hippie entrepreneur whom he vehemently disliked and derisively called Mr Pickle (either intentionally or mistakenly confusing the surname with that of an English food brand made by Crosse & Blackwell since 1922) [2].  

 

 

II. 

 

I first met Mr Pickle when, as a Charisma employee, I was sent an invitation by him and the directors of the Virgin Group to attend a party at the Manor, in Oxfordshire, to celebrate the first anniversary of Virgin Atlantic.  

 

The Manor, for those who might not know, was a recording studio housed in a 17th century Grade II listed building that had been bought by Branson in 1971, for £30,000, when he was only twenty-one years of age. It was where Mike Oldfield famousy recorded his precious Tubular Bells (1973) [3].

 

As pretty much everyone from Charisma was going to go, I decided I'd also (somewhat begrudgingly) accept Branson's invitation. And here, for those who may be interested, is my memory of the day based on an entry in the Von Hell Diaries dated 22 June, 1985 ... 

 

 

III. 

 

Unsure what to wear, I decided to go with the pink check suit I bought two years ago and which I've kept hanging in my closet - unworn - ever since. After my friend Andy arrived, we went over to pick Lee Ellen up from her place in Chelsea. Then cabbed it over to Kensal House (i.e., Virgin HQ), from where coaches transported everyone to the Manor. 

      Those of us from the Famous Charisma Label were segregated from the Virgin staff and we were seated as a group at the back of the bus. As Robin had kindly brought along several bottles of wine, however, no one seemed to mind about that and, amusingly, we were soon making twice as much noise as the Virginians on board (to be fair, perhaps that's why we were placed at the back of the bus).  

       The Manor was an impressive country pile (provided you have the capacity to be impressed by an assemblage of bricks) and set in very beautiful grounds that included trees, lakes, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. Mr Pickle was there to meet and greet us personally as we got off the bus. 

      There were three large tents erected and Branson had laid on copious amounts of food and drink as well as various entertainments that one could sign up for, including horse riding and helicopter flights. But I was more interested in Shelley's friend Claire to be honest. Unfortunately, I ruined my chances with her when I split my lip open swigging champagne straight from the bottle. Note to future self: spitting blood à la Sid Vicious is probably not the most attractive look. 

      Ultimately, it was a dull event - even with the odd pop star in attendance - and the weather didn't help (typical English summer's day - wet and chilly). Glad when the coaches turned up to take us back to London. Mr Pickle dutifully came over to say goodbye and shake everyone's hand for a second time: very much Lord of the Manor. And very much not to be trusted ... [4]    

  

 

 

Not to the manor born ... Andy Greenfield and myself 

The Manor Studio (22 June 1985)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written about this scene in a post published on 4 March 2024: click here. 

 

[2] Use of this nickname is confirmed by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 355. 

      Gorman's assessment of Branson is one I fully endorse; essentially, a very clever businessman from a privileged background who knew a good opportunity when he saw one and had "cultivated a knack of appropriating aspects of youth culture to his commercial gain" (ibid., p. 356). 

 

[3] The idea of building a luxurious home recording studio was still novel at this time; the Manor was only the third such studio in the UK. Oldfield recorded his debut studio album at the Manor in 1972-73 and it was the first album released on the Virgin Records label (25 May 1973). 

      In April 1995, after the takeover of Virgin Records by EMI, the Manor was closed as a recording studio and the building, listed for sale in 2010 at £5.75 million, is now the country home of some toff or other.   

 

[4] Lee Ellen, Robin, and Shelley all worked at Charisma (in the press office, accounts, and A&R department respectively). The final line is my recalling McLaren's famous advice given to Helen in The Swindle: 'Never trust a hippie'.   

 

 

Of Punks and Prostitutes (Everyone Has Their Price)

Linda Ashby with Soo Catwoman and members of the Bromley Contingent 

(L-R: Debbie Juvenile, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Sharon Hayman, and Simon Barker)

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

According to the official trailer, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is the staggering story of a punk group that not only "held the record business to ransom", "stuck a safety pin through Her Majesty's nose" and "turned the national press into an occupied zone", but also "smuggled a Great Train robber into the top ten and destroyed the myths of their own success" [1]. 

 

All of these things are true: but were the Sex Pistols really a "kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [2], or is that just a metaphorical mixture of Mclarenesque fantasy and hype? 

 

Leaving aside ideas to do with self-destructive behaviour and criminal theft, let's examine the more disturbing claim that the Sex Pistols - using that term in its wider application to refer not simply to the members of the band, but to all the many colourful, creative, and often fucked-up characters associated with them - might be viewed as child prostitutes ...

 

 

II.  

 

Some readers may recall that back in July 2019, I published a post in which I discussed an idea central to the Swindle project that the music industry ruthlessly exploits the young artists it controls as well as the young fans who buy its products [3].   

 

It doesn't simply make a point about the exploitative nature of the music business from a financial perspective, however. It also explicitly suggests with its language of pimping and prostitution that the music industry has a sleazy underbelly [4]. 

 

Not that Malcolm was adverse to exploiting young flesh himself in order to create a stir and he seemed to genuinely delight in the world of pornography, fetish, and prostitution, as his early T-shirt designs for Sex make clear. 

 

And many of the kids who hung around (or worked in) his store on the Kings Road and later became friends and followers of the band fronted by Johnny Rotten, also seemed drawn to the world of vice; particularly those who fell under the spell of Linda Ashby, a key figure in the early punk scene and a professional dominatrix, skilled in the art of S&M.    

 

 

III.

 

Ashby, with her short blonde hair, distinctive eye makeup, and often dressed in a favourite outfit from The London Leatherman [5], was a member of what we might term the illicit underground; that demi-monde of gay bars, strip clubs, sex shops, drug dens, and houses of ill repute frequented by a wide variety of people, from artists and entertainers, to politicians and bowler-hatted city gents.  

 

She was also one of those rare customers at 430 King's Road who actually had money to spend and, before long, her large central London apartment - just off Green Park - became an important location for the punk elite to meet up and crash out. This included members of the Bromley Contingent, who were famously photographed by Ray Stevenson in 1976 cavorting on the floor having just spray painted her walls with graffiti [6].

 

Of course, being associated with a known prostitute did not make the teens who gathered round her prostitutes themselves, although, everybody's favourite punk blonde, Debbie Wilson (aka Debbie Juvenile), when not following the Sex Pistols or working as a sales assistant at Seditionaries alongside her best friend Tracie O'Keefe [7], wasn't averse - according to Bertie Marshall (aka Berlin) - from turning tricks in Mayfair to clipping mug punters in Soho. 

 

Indeed, Marshall also worked as a rent boy and he described himself and his friends, like Debbie, who were on the game, as a bizarre and exotic pack of whore hounds [8]. 

 

And so, the phrase from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle trailer with which I opened this post wasn't entirely fictitious, nor referring simply to the manner in which record companies exploit young talent. There was an all too literal sense in which prostitution was an acceptable (and celebrated) aspect of the punk lifestyle - as it was in the contemporary art world at that time [9].          

 

Notes

 

[1-2] Lines from the official trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980), narrated by the famous British newsreader and commentator on BBC Radio John Snagge. To watch on Youtube, click here.

      Note that this commentary - entitled 'Pistols Propaganda' - can also be found as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single '(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone' (Virgin Records, 1980), released from the soundtrack of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979).

[3] See the post entitled 'Young Flesh Required: Notes on Punk and Paedophilia' (18 July 2019): click here. 

[4] In fact, as Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate in Anti-Oedipus (1972), flows of capital and flows of desire belong to one and the same libidinal economy. Thus sexuality, as they say, is everywhere; as much in the boardroom as in the bedroom; "the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate ..." it's all about desiring-production. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1984), p. 293.

[5] The London Leatherman (est. 1972), which caters to connoisseurs of a certain taste, significantly influenced the fetish fashions and accessories sold at Sex by McLaren and Westwood and, later, the wider punk scene. Thus, the name Ken Magson arguably deserves to be more widely known than it is: a brief biography can be found on The London Leatherman website: click here. 

      A description of the LP7 Wrestlers Suit favoured by Ashby - and a photo of her wearing such - can also be found on thelondonleatherman.com: click here.

 

[6] Ashby would have regularly encountered members of the Bromley Contingent not just at 430 Kings Road, but also at Louise's, a lesbian club in Soho that they and members of the Sex Pistols liked to frequent and where her girlfriend at the time would often DJ. 

      The photo session I refer to with members of the Bromley Contingent, taken at Ashby's flat by Ray Stevenson in October 1976, featured in the first (and only) issue of the Sex Pistols fanzine Anarchy in the U. K. One of the pictures (cropped) can be seen at the top of this post. 

[7] See the post entitled 'Reflections on a Photo of Two Young Punks' (4 December 2018): click here, in which I pay my respects to (and express my fondness for) Debbie and Tracie. 

[8] See Marshall's memoir, Berlin Bromley (SAF Publishing Ltd., 2006). 

      Marshall - aka Berlin - was just 15 in 1976 when he and fellow suburban misfits Susan Ballion (Sioxsie Sioux), Steven Bailey (Steve Severin), and Simon Barker (Six) began to hang around 430 King's Road and follow the Sex Pistols. They formed the core of the Bromley Contingent and, along with a small handful of others, can be regarded as those whom one cultural commentator at the time described as the "'extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars'". 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329, who quotes Peter York writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).     

[9] I'm referring here to the Prostitution exhibition (1976) by the performance art collective founded by Genesis P-Orridge - COUM Transmissions - at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, which included (amongst other delights) pornographic images, used sanitary products, bloody bandages, rusty knives, and dirty syringes. The opening night show featured a stripper and prostitutes and punks were invited to mingle with the gallery audience; this included members of the Bromley Contingent, some of whom - including Debbie - got their pictures in the papers. 

      Perhaps not surprisingly, the show - which ran for just over a week - caused press outrage and debate in parliament; one Tory MP described all those involved as the wreckers of civilisation. Despite criticism from almost every quarter, the ICA director, Ted Little, defended the show which is still regarded to this day - almost 50 years later - as one of the most controversial in both the ICA's history and that of British contemporary art, challenging moral and aesthetic values in a manner similar to McLaren's Sex Pistols and obliging him to thereafter up his game as a provocateur. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'We Are All Prostitutes' by The Pop Group (Rough Trade, 1979): click here.