Love Kills (Or Sometimes Just Lies Limp): Sid and Nancy 40 Years On

Sid & Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986) 

An official theatrical film poster

 

 

I. 

 

Sid and Nancy - also known by the working title Love Kills [1] - was released 40 years ago. 

 

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 1986 and was first shown in London at the Limelight Club on 20 July, before going on general release in UK cinemas the following month.

 

It's a biopic directed by Alex Cox, who co-wrote the script with Abbe Wool, starring Gary Oldman as the Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and American actress Chloe Webb as his punk paramour Nancy Spungen [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Oldman is a talented and versatile actor - not one of my favourites, though I don't dislike seeing him on screen - but his initial decision to turn down the role of Vicious (not once, but twice) was one I wish he'd stuck by. 

 

For one thing, he was already 27 when filming took place in 1985, which makes him too old to play a character who died aged 21. Also, by his own admission, he had zero interest in Vicious and punk subculture, wasn't a fan of the Sex Pistols, and found the entire story surrounding Sid and Nancy banal. 

 

Ultimately, Oldman only accepted the role at the urging of his agent and after learning that he was being offered a £35,000 fee to star in the movie [3]. 

 

However, to be fair, he did throw himself into the part with all his characteristic intensity once he agreed terms. Amusingly, he lost so much weight in such a short period in order to play Vicious that he was briefly hospitalised with malnutrition [4]. And at least Oldman came from a relatively working-class background, unlike posho actor Louis Partridge who played Vicious in Danny Boyle's ludicrous six-part mini-series Pistol in 2022 [5].  

 

Oldman - who went on to become an Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor - now rarely mentions Sid and Nancy and casually dismisses his own performance in the film.  

 

 

III. 

If Oldman, at 27, was just a tad past it to play Sid, Chloe Webb, pushing 30 when she took on the role of Nancy - who died aged 20 - was way over the hill (certainly by punk standards). 

 

So again, whilst she does a reasonable job, I think it would have been better - or at least more daring - to have cast 20-year-old Courtney Love in the role - one for which she submitted a video audition and was genuinely passionate about. 

 

Cox was deeply impressed by Love's youthful enthusiasm - and her acting ability - but eventually caved in to pressure from the film's financial backers and investors who insisted on a more experienced actress in the role. 

 

He did, however, create and write the minor supporting character of Gretchen for Love (a fictional New York junkie friend of the punk couple) so she could still be part of the project and this marked her debut feature film appearance (several years before she formed the band Hole and met Kurt Cobain).      

 

 

IV. 

 

Although Sid and Nancy failed to recoup its production budget at the box office, the film was received positively by most critics [6] and has since developed a cult following. Strangely, however, it is rarely shown on British TV and I don't think I've seen it other than at the cinema back in August 1986 - when I was less than impressed, as this diary entry makes clear:

 

Sophie and I woke up late. After lunch, we set off on a nice sunny day to King's Road. Boring! Nothing (and no one) caught my eye. From Chelsea to Kensington Market and Hyper Hyper. Still found nothing to excite. Everything seems to have stagnated. But perhaps that's a good thing - a precursor to a change of some kind. Or maybe not.   

      Got to Leicester Square at five-ish. Had something to eat in Pizzaland and then went to the cinema. It had been my intention not to see Sid & Nancy, but felt a strange obligation to do so - and Sophie had bought the tickets. The two main parts were well-acted, so kudos to Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. Other cast members were less convincing - particularly David Hayman as Malcolm and Andrew Schofield as Rotten. 

      Ultimately, I came away asking myself what was the point of such a film other than to echo the 'Just Say No' anti-drugs campaign? The only thing worse than the ridiculous ending of the film was Joe Strummer's soundtrack. [7]

 

As I say, I don't think I've since re-watched the film - though I'd very much be interested to do so, one day, just to find out if it's as bad as I remember it. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Director Alex Cox used the title Love Kills throughout the writing and development process. Why this title was dropped (or relegated to the status of a subtitle) in favour of the more prosaic Sid and Nancy, I don't know, but one suspects there was probably external pressure to do so coming from the film's producers (particularly after a letter was received from a party claiming to own the title 'Love Kills' and threatening legal action).

      Clearly, it must have been a decision made late on, because by then Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash) had already written the film's title track and 'Love Kills' was released as a single from the film's soundtrack in July 1986. Fans of Strummer will doubtless disagree, but it's a shit track and, personally, I much prefer the song written by Dee Dee Ramone also called 'Love Kills' and also dealing with the tragic story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. This track can be found on the Ramones album Animal Boy (Sire Records, 1986). 

 

[2] For my own take on these star-crossed lovers, see the post titled 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You' (30 Dec 2020). For a rather more personal take on the story of Sid Vicious see 'Sweet Sixteen' (8 Feb 2022). And for a longer post in memory of Ms Spungen, see 'The Last of the Groupies' (26 April 2022).   

  

[3] I know there will be readers thinking that £35,000 doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was considered a significant sum to pay a young and relatively unknown theatre actor at the time. Oldman has since revealed in interviews that he was only earning around £80 a week working with the Royal Court Theatre at the time - and that was in a good week (sometimes his income would fall to half that). Thus, for Oldman, £35,000 was a small fortune - one that allowed the purchase of a modest flat in London. 

      Readers need to also remember that Sid and Nancy was an independent British film - not a big-budget Hollywood movie. Total production costs were only around £2.7 million.   

 

[4] For those who might want to know the secret of such dramatic weight loss, apparently the knack is to live on a diet of nothing but steamed fish and lots of melon. 

 

[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... See the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021). 

[6] Roger Ebert, for example, gave Sid and Nancy full marks in his review (25 Oct 1986). He concludes that Alex Cox has all the makings of a great director: "He and his actors pull off the neat trick of creating a movie full of noise and fury, and telling a meticulous story right in the middle of it." The review can be found on rogerebert.com  

      Thirty years later, Peter Bradshaw writing in The Guardian (4 Aug 2016) was equally enthusiastic, insisting that Sid and Nancy is a "welcome corrective to bland punk nostalgia" and calling it "Alex Cox's Beckettian masterpiece about those two prisoners of futility" and undiagnosed dysfunction.  

 

[7] This is an edited and slightly revised entry in The Von Hell Diaries (Sat 23 August, 1986). 

 

 

Bonus 1: the original trailer to Sid and Nancy (1986) - enhanced version by HD Retro Trailers.  

 

Bonus 2: the trailer for the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Sid and Nancy (Studiocanal, 2016). 

 

 

Punk History is for Pissing On: Notes on PZ77 by Simon Parker

PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022) 

by Simon Parker

 

'Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. 

Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Conceived, designed, narrated, and edited by Simon Parker - and published by an independent co-operative he established in 1996 to celebrate and promote contemporary Cornish writing - PZ77 is "a unique story of time, place, friendship, community, and an almost obsessive passion for making music" [2]. 

 

The book features more than ninety personal accounts, across 392 pages, from old punks like himself who grew up in a place "others came for their holidays" (Penzance) [3].      

 

It's not the kind of book I would normally read (for reasons we'll come to shortly). 

 

However, as a 40 page extract from the work - the first five tracks - is the chosen text for discussion by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) [4] this coming week - a group with which I'm associated - I thought I'd take this opportunity to assemble (and share) some thoughts in advance ...

 

 

II. 

There are, as Russ Bestley reminds us, now hundreds of books on punk in the mid-late 1970s, and it sometimes feels as if everyone and their dog who was in any way connected to the scene has now had their say on the subject or shared their memories of the time. 

 

For those over a certain age, punk nihilism has now given way to punk nostalgia; the chaos of a life lived blissfully in the moment (now/here) has been replaced with a comforting and conformist vision of the past. 

 

In other words, instead of going with the flow of events and strange becomings that carry them beyond the constraints of a fixed identity, many old punks now prefer to relive the past as best they can at the Rebellion Festival [5] and produce narratives which reinforce the mythology of punk by "re-articulating variations of the same story, often through a nostalgic lens centred on personal experience and memories" [6].  

 

 

III.   

To be fair to Parker, PZ77 might be read as an attempt to give a voice to many punk fans whose stories and memories of the time might otherwise have gone unrecorded, thereby expanding our understanding of punk (certainly as it unfolded in Corwall in 1977).  

 

As Bestley rightly points out, "punk's standard narrative has become so deeply embedded, its cultural and historical position so neatly summarized, that there is a desperate need for alternative perspectives that might sustain a sense of engagement and highlight new contributions to knowledge within a tired and over-familiar field of study" [7]. 

 

However, from what I've read of the work, I don't like it ... 

 

And the reason I don't like it is because, as a Deleuzian - and as a member of the extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars [8] - I don't like writing that attempts to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience and I don't like writing that is merely a form of personal overcoding; i.e., an opportunity for an author to give whatever it is they write about a familiar face that somehow resembles their own. 

 

Any form of writing that is heavily reliant upon the recounting of youthful memories is usually not only bad writing but dead writing; for as Deleuze says, literature dies from an excess of autobiography just as surely as from an overdose of emotion or imagination [9].   

 

Rather than transport us away from Oeidpal structures towards a zone of indiscernibility where we might lose ourselves, PZ77 attempts to take us back to a better time where we might rediscover our passions and dreams, renew old friendships, etc. 

 

Whereas I still believe in the ruins, Parker believes in building a sense of community. The interviews with participants in his project indicate a level of acceptance that punk has become part of mainstream culture; nice people, performing nice gestures, and leading nice lives, etc. 

 

 

IV. 

Ultimately, I was never going to like a book written by an obsessive Ramones fan: they may have been Sid's favourite band, but they were never my favourite band. 

 

And whereas Parker, a grammar school boy from a Methodist fishing village who likes to see the good in people is, by his own admission, "always thinking about music" [10], I don't care about the music; to paraphrase Malcolm, if punk had just been about the music it would have died a death long ago.   

  

It's his best mate, Grev Williams, however, who really irritates me. Thinking back to the Summer of Hate, he ponders just how important the period was to him: 

 

"Punk bursting into our lives was hugely invigorating and inspiring [...]  but I'd be lying if I said I found any expression of my inner self in it [... and] the idea that I was revolting against my background and community would be wholly false. I was blessed with the strength of knowing where I came from, I didn't want to smash it up - I loved it. Punk wasn't a spit-filled, nihilist cul-de-sac for me, it was a launch pad. As a budding musician it provided opportunities and informed my attitude, not my taste. [...] Anyway, long story short and truth be told, I didn't hate or revolt against much [...] [11]

 

Whilst aknowledging the benefit of his experiences in 1977, Williams has to ask himself whether he was ever really a 'punk': "As with so much, I'm really not sure." [12]

 

It's not, of course, my role to help him decide the matter. 

 

But I would say, given his confession above - every aspect of which (apart from his uncertainty) I find objectionable - that whilst he may or may not have been a punk, he was clearly not a Sex Pistol as I understand the term; i.e. in a manner largely shaped by McLaren's description in the Oliver Twist Manifesto (1977) - click here - and the ideas developed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

I look forward to discussing this with other members of the SIG, including Russ Bestley [13]. 

 

However, I won't be buying a copy of Parker's PZ77. For those who like this sort of thing, as Miss Brodie would say, this is the sort of thing they like: but, for me, punk history is for pissing on ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] J. L. Carr, A Month In The Country (Harvester Press, 1980). 

      This quote was used as an epigraph to PZ77. It should be noted, however, that the narrator of the novel goes on to ask himself would he have always remained happy had he somehow been able to stay in the same time and place. And the answer is: "No, I suppose not."  

 

[2] I'm quoting here from the Scryfa website: click here. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) is an informal collective operating out of the University of the Arts London (UAL), concerned with what we might briefly describe as the politics of style and offering resistance to temporal colonisation; i.e., the imposition of a perpetual present in which it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a future (or remember a past) that is radically different. 

      I have published several SIG-themed posts here on Torpedo the Ark, which can be read by clicking here.    

      

[5] For those who don't know, Rebellion is the biggest independently run punk festival in the UK, that takes place each summer in the historic Winter Gardens, Blackpool. I haven't been and I don't want to go to this family-oriented event which celebrates Punk in all its forms with the blessing of the local council. For further information, click here. 

 

[6] Russ Bestley, 'Going Through the Motions: Punk Nostalgia and Conformity', in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2. (Intellect Books, 2021), pp. 179-196. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] This wonderful phrase was coined by Peter York to describe the denizens of 430 King's Road (i.e., the SEX people). It was used in his article 'Them' that appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976) and is cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329.

 

[9] See the post dated 30 August 2013 entitled 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' - click here. 

 

[10] Simon Parker, PZ77: A Town A Time A Tribe (Scryfa, 2022), p. 11.

 

[11] Grev Williams quoted by Simon Parker in PZ77 ... pp. 38-39.

 

[12] Ibid., p. 41.

 

[13] Russ Bestley's own review of Simon Parker's PZ77 can be found in Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 12, Issue 1 (Feb 2023), p. 131 - 134. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain free access to this text online, so couldn't discuss it here.    

 

 

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

 Groucho was a punk rocker

 

I.

 

I have given several attempts to explain what the polysemic phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen - means to me, including:

 

(a) to have done with the judgement of God ... [click here]

 

(b) to hate everything ... [click here]

 

(c) to find everything funny ... [click here]

 

But, every now and then, I get emails from readers asking me to further elucidate. And so, I thought I'd offer a new definition - this time one inspired by Groucho Marx, rather than (a) Gilles Deleuze, (b) the Sex Pistols, or (c) Larry David: 

 

Torpedo the ark means ... Whatever it is, I'm against it!    

 

 

II.

 

This amusing line is sung by Groucho playing the role of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Head of Huxley College) in the 1932 Mark Brothers film Horse Feathers (dir. Norman Z. McLeod).

 

The original song - 'I'm Against It' - was one of several musical numbers in the movie written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. 

 

Verses include:

  

I don't know what they have to say 

It makes no difference anyway 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

No matter what it is 

Or who commenced it 

I'm against it!

 

Your proposition may be good 

But let's have one thing understood: 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

And even when you've changed it 

Or condensed it 

I'm against it! [1]

Such wonderful comic nihilism nicely supplements the earlier interpretations of the phrase torpedo the ark and builds upon my own natural impulse to say no, nein, and non merci to everything - including those kind offers and opportunities that it might make more sense to accept and take advantage of [2].    

 

This obviously shows a perverse streak in my character, but there you go; if someone opens a door for me, I turn and walk away. Similary, if someone invites me to join their literary society, political party, social network, or private members club, I again remember the famous words of Groucho Marx [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch Groucho perform this song - the opening number of Horse Feathers (1932) - click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'Just Say No' (1 Aug 2014): click here. 

 

[3] Groucho Marx is believed to have said: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of it's members." Or something very similar to this; no one knows the exact wording or the precise circumstances of its employment. This amusing line was first reported by the Hollywood gossip columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 and it has been repeated ever since.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for suggesting this post and reminding me also that the Ramones have a track entitled 'I'm Against It' which can be found on their album Road to Ruin (Sire Records, 1978): click here to play a 2018 remastered version on YouTube.  

 

Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)

The Sham Pistols: Jimmy Pursey, Steve Jones, Dave Treganna, and Paul Cook

Photo by Paul Slattery (July 1979)

 

 

James Timothy Pursey - or Jimmy Pursey as he likes to be known - is the founder and frontman of British punk band Sham 69. 

 

Although initially inspired by the Ramones, Jimmy always wanted to be a Clash City Rocker; he even dreamed of one day becoming a Sex Pistol ...

 

For despite the fact that Sham 69 were one of the most commercially successful punk groups - achieving five Top 20 singles and making regular appearances on Top of the Pops - Jimmy lacked that one thing he truly desired - credibility and the respect of his punk superiors.     

 

Thus, imagine his joy when, on 30 April 1978, Jimmy was invited on stage at Victoria Park in East London, to perform alongside Joe and Mick, belting out 'White Riot' in his own inimitable mockney style, in front of a 100,000 people: click here.

 

And imagine his still greater excitement when, the following year, having kicked Rotten out of their band, Steve Jones and Paul Cook invited Jimmy to become the new voice and face of the Sex Pistols - or, more precisely, the Sham Pistols as they were (possibly) going to be known.

 

Alas, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For although Cook and Jones found Jimmy amiable enough at first and things seemed to be progressing well in the studio - in July 1979, the singer informed the NME they had recorded 10 songs and would be ready to tour by September that year - Sham 69 were still contractually bound to Polydor whilst Cook and Jones were signed to Virgin.

 

Apart from this legal issue, relations were also beginning to sour on a personal level between Jimmy and the two former Sex Pistols, coming to a head on 19 August, when the latter walked out of a recording session and Jones hilariously declared: It's worse than working with Rotten.

 

Elaborating in an interview at the time, Jones described how an overly emotional Jimmy kept crying and stuff like that. Worse, he and Cook had come to the conclusion that although Jimmy could talk the talk, when push came to shove, he couldn't walk the walk: All he wanted to do was be a Sex Pistol.   

 

Recalling events in his autobiography, almost 40 years later, Jones writes: 

 

"When me and Cookie gave Jimmy a try, it was never going to be the Sex Pistols in our minds, we always thought of it as a new group. The odd thing about it was that we liked him, but when we got together to try and write some songs in a studio out in the country, he couldn't fucking come up with anything. His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near". 

- Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

After the dissolution of the embryonic new band, Cook and Jones went on to form The Professionals and poor little Jimmy moved on to solo projects, later reforming Sham 69, with whom he still performs today, aged 68. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Natural Born Killer', a track by the Sham Pistols recorded in June 1979 (later reworked with new lyrics by Cook and Jones as 'Kick Down the Doors'): click here. 

 

Thanks to Sophie S. for her help fact checking this post. 

 

For a related post to this one, on Johnny Rotten Vs Jimmy Pursey, click here.

 

 

Punk Xmas

'Tis the season to be Johnny 

(Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la)

I.

For all its professed anarcho-nihilism and counter-cultural posturing, punk quickly revealed itself to be all too human when the festive season rolled round, with many bands embracing the cynical-sentimental showbiz tradition of releasing Christmas songs. 

Now, whilst punk intellectuals such as Craig O'Hara and Gerfried Ambrosch* might think it terribly subversive for Stiff Little Fingers to release a raucous live rendition of White Christmas, or that by performing Silent Night at a million miles an hour the Dickies caused Franz Gruber to start spinning in his grave, I do not.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how hard you pogo around the Christmas tree, you're not reclaiming the happy holiday as a pagan tradition or deconstructing moral idealism, you are - in the words of Paul McCartney - simply having a wonderful Christmastime (ding-dong, ding-dong, ding). 

That doesn't make you a collaborator, or a sell out.

But it does mean you perhaps have rather more in common with everyone else than you might otherwise wish to acknowledge and that your romantic rebellion - against cliché, dreary convention, and commercialism - is born of the fact that you care a great deal (punk indifference being merely another pose).**

II.

So what, then, are the best punk Xmas songs?

That's hard to say, as, to be honest, they're all pretty awful, with one or two exceptions, such as Fairytale of New York (1987), by the Pogues, ft. Kirsty MacColl, and Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) (1987), by the Ramones - though I'm not overly keen on either.

I do quite like Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of the traditional French Christmas carol Il est né, le divin Enfant (1982), but, ultimately, my tastes take me back towards the two tunes previously mentioned, by SLF and the Dickies: White Christmas (1980) and Silent Night (1978).

And finally, let's not forget the Thin Lizzy/Sex Pistols collaboration (as the Greedies); A Merry Jingle (1979): click here to watch their performance on Top of the Pops (20-12-79), or here, as they close the New Year's edition of The Kenny Everett Television Show, in another time and in a different world ... 

Notes

* Craig O'Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, (AK Press, revised 2nd edition, 2000); Gerfried Ambrosch, The Poetry of Punk, (Routledge, 2018).
 
** Obviously, when I say punks care, I don't mean about the baby Jesus, but about the authenticity of experience; they so want things to be meaningful and honest and real - including the joy of Christmas. 

To relive Christmas '77 with the Sex Pistols, see the BBC Four documentary directed by Julien Temple, (2013): click here.

Sheena: From Jungle Queen to Punk Rocker

Irish McCalla as Sheena (1955)

Just like Joey Ramone, I have a penchant for jungle girls in general with their animal skin bikinis, running barefoot through the forest or swinging through the trees. There's surely no disputing, however, that Sheena is queen of them all ...

Created by the American duo Jerry Iger and Will Eisner, Sheena strangely enough made her debut in a British magazine in January 1937, before starring in a US comic book the following year, inspiring a host of imitators during the period that followed, such as the raven-haired Princess Pantha, who made her debut in 1946.   

Like Tarzan, Sheena was an orphan who grew up in the jungle; albeit under the guardianship of a native witch doctor. Possessing an uncanny ability to communicate with wild animals, Sheena was also highly proficient in fighting with all manner of weapons. Her adventures often involved violent encounters with savage tribes, slave traders, and great white hunters. 

In the mid-1950s, a 26-episode TV series aired with the pin-up Irish McCalla portraying Sheena. Others, including Tanya Roberts and, more recently, Gena Lee Nolin, have also taken on the role of jungle queen, but none have surpassed the performance given by the girl from Nebraska. For even though, by her own admission, she couldn't really act, Miss McCalla had an Amazonian physique, a wild look in her eye, and she was prepared to do her own stunts.    

I don't know for sure, but I suspect it was Irish McCalla whom Joey Ramone was thinking of when he wrote the classic 1977 track Sheena is a Punk Rocker - a song which, according to the man himself, combined the primal sound of punk with surf music and a contemporary vision of the Queen of the Jungle, into (just over) two-and-a-half minutes of pop cultural genius.   

Play: The Ramones, Sheena is a Punk Rocker, released as a UK single in May 1977, (Sire Records): click here to view the official video. 

Watch: Ramones Cartoon No. 7: Sheena is a Punk Rocker, by Neil Williams Media (May 2017), stelosanimation: click here.  

And to watch the TV trailer for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1955-56): click here.