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Sex Pistols

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"You don't write 'God Save The Queen' because you hate the English race, you write a song like that because you love them; and you're fed up with them being mistreated…"
—John Lydon, Johnlydon.com[1]
See God Save the Queen
See Wikipedia:Sex Pistols

This article is deliberately (inasmuch as laziness is intentional) incomplete. It currently serves only one fine purpose, as an unabashed coatrack for a BDSM rant.

The Sex Pistols evolved from the Strand, a London band formed in 1972 with working-class teenagers Steve Jones on vocals, Paul Cook on drums, and Wally Nightingale on guitar. According to a later account by Jones, both he and Cook played on instruments they had stolen. They would go to music performances and, when the concert was over, would go up on stage and steal as much musical equipment as they could carry.[2]

Early line-ups of the Strand—sometimes known as the Swankers—also included Jim Mackin on organ and Stephen Hayes (and later, briefly, Del Noones) on bass.[3]

The McLaren–Westwood shop had opened in 1971 as Let It Rock, with a 1950s revival Teddy Boy theme. It had been renamed in 1972 to focus on another revival trend, the rocker look associated with Marlon Brando.[4] As John Lydon later observed, "Malcolm and Vivienne were really a pair of shysters: they would sell anything to any trend that they could grab onto."[5] The shop was to become a focal point of the punk rock scene, bringing together participants such as the future Sid Vicious, Marco Pirroni (who became a guitarist, songwriter and record producer), Gene October (who became the singer for the punk band Chelsea), and Mark Stewart, among many others.[6] Jordan, the English model and actress noted for her work with Vivienne Westwood and the SEX boutique, was a wildly styled shop assistant, who is credited with "pretty well single-handedly paving the punk look".[7]

In early 1974, Jones convinced McLaren to help out the Strand. Effectively becoming the group's manager, McLaren paid for their first formal rehearsal space. Glen Matlock, an art student who occasionally worked at Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, was recruited as the band's regular bassist.[8] In November, McLaren temporarily relocated to New York City. Before his departure, McLaren and Westwood had conceived of a new identity for their shop: renamed Sex, it changed its focus from retro couture to S&M-inspired "anti-fashion", with a billing as "Specialists in rubberwear, glamourwear & stagewear".[9]

After informally managing and promoting the New York Dolls for a few months, McLaren returned to London in May 1975.[10] Inspired by the punk scene that was beginning to emerge in Lower Manhattan—in particular by the radical visual style and attitude of Richard Hell, then with Television—McLaren began taking a greater interest in the Strand.[11]

The group had been rehearsing regularly, overseen by McLaren's friend Bernard Rhodes, and had performed publicly for the first time. Soon after McLaren's return, Nightingale was kicked out of the band and Jones, uncomfortable as frontman, took over guitar duties.[12] According to journalist and former McLaren employee Phil Strongman, around this time the band adopted the name QT Jones and the Sex Pistols (or QT Jones & His Sex Pistols, as one Rhodes-designed T-shirt put it).[13] McLaren had been talking with the New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain about coming over to England to front the group.

When those plans fell through, McLaren, Rhodes and the band began looking locally for a new member to assume the lead vocal duties.[14] As described by Matlock, "Everyone had long hair then, even the milkman, so what we used to do was if someone had short hair we would stop them in the street and ask them if they fancied themselves as a singer."[15] Among those they approached was Midge Ure, who was involved with his own band, Slik. Kevin Rowland—who would co-found Dexys Midnight Runners three years later—auditioned, but apart from Matlock, no one was impressed. With the search going nowhere, McLaren made several calls to Richard Hell, who turned down the invitation.[16]

Oh, Bondage, up yours[edit]

It is purely an ironic accident that BDSM became associated with Punk music, and thus to Anarchism. The band members hung out regularly at two clothing shops on Kings Road, in London's Chelsea neighbourhood. One Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, was run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Don Letts worked as manager in Acme Attractions, run by John Krivine and Steph Raynor.[17].

BDSM is a portmanteau of B&D, Bondage & Discipline, D&S, Dominance & Submission, and S&M, Sadism and Masochism. It was ironic because dominance and submission are coercion and violence. The submissive partner's relationship with the dominant is equivalent, in terms of coercion, to workers who do not object to their wage slavery by their masters. Anarchism essentially opposes coercion in all its forms. It employs violence, but only as a means to an end for the good of all; BDSM commonly employs violence for its own sake, or for self interest. From the profound, such as humiliation, through the mundane, such as causing pain, Sadism is violent, and the very inequality that ALL progressives, without exception, fight against. Fascism is a multiplicity of evils, most of which eclipse its relation to domination. But there is a continuum from Fascism's concepts of the Master Race, the White Man's Burden, and Social Darwinism, to Exceptionalism, the philosophy of libertarians and Ayn Rand's "heroes", and on through a hundred Imperial heroes to the dominator that claims what makes them feel good is not only their natural spoils but the fulfillment of their victims.

There is no doubt that punk is anger and frustration. It was a reaction against complacency, against politeness and apathy in the face of evil. It was a political movement, a revolution against ills too long gone unhealed. But it never was and never will be deliberate torture, or violence for its own sake. It did not deliberately choose colors for its flag; it merely picked up the ones nearest to hand, and more, the ones handed to it. The damage has been done, so the task is clear; it can no longer simply be implied that Punk is not BDSM, and that BDSM is OK. It must be declared loudly. Sweet dreams may well be made of this, for a few, but no Utopia for all is.
  1. ↑ John Lydon (2007). Sex Pistols Vinyl Reissues 2007: God Save The Queen. johnlydon.com. URL accessed on 29 January 2008.
  2. ↑ Olsson, Mats. Sex Pistols. Expressen. URL accessed on 17 March 2009.
  3. ↑ Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 77–79; Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, p. 84.
  4. ↑ Bell-Price, Shannon (2006). Vivienne Westwood and the Postmodern Legacy of Punk Style. Metropolitan Museum of Art. URL accessed on 7 October 2006.
  5. ↑ Robb, John, Punk Rock, p. 83.
  6. ↑ Robb, John, Punk Rock, pp. 83–84, 86–87, 89, 102, 105.
  7. ↑ Robb, John, Punk Rock, p. 84.
  8. ↑ Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 70–80.
  9. ↑ Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 83, 92; Robb, John, Punk Rock, pp. 83–89, 102–105.
  10. ↑ Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 87–88, 97; Eglinton, Mark. Bringing Out the Dead: The New York Dolls on Their Highs and Lows. The Quietus. URL accessed on 3 August 2010.
  11. ↑ Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 88–90, 92, 97.
  12. ↑ Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, pp. 84–85.
  13. ↑ Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, pp. 85–86.
  14. ↑ Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, p. 93; Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, pp. 98–99.
  15. ↑ Robb, John, Punk Rock, p. 110.
  16. ↑ Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, pp. 93–94; Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming, p. 99.
  17. ↑ Strongman, Phil, Pretty Vacant, p. 87; Savage, Jon, England's Dreaming, p. 96.
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