So what about this Jubilee business? asks Tyrone Jenkins in a comment on an earlier blog posting.
I remember the silver jubilee of 1977 as being a very odd week. I'd bought God Save the Queen, of course, though to be honest - while I liked the words - I didn't think the song itself was a patch on Anarchy in the UK, and wasn't as good as the b-side, Did You No Wrong.
And the best lyrics weren't those about the Queen, anyway, but the wider stuff: 'Where there's no future, how can there be sin?' There's a phenomenal line to put in a best-selling pop single. He was a fine lyricist, that Johnny Rotten, as well having one of the great rock and roll voices.
So that was mostly my soundtrack to jubilee week. But it wasn't the only thing I was listening to. Because that week my dad was conducting the massed bands of the Prince of Wales's Division in a Beating Retreat gig on Horseguards Parade. So I went to that, the same evening that Prince Charles went (he presented my dad with a Jubilee Medal), and very good it was too. Ended with an excellent arrangement of the Evening Hymn and Last Post.
A week of split personality, then. Though, looking back, what punk and a military band spectacular had in common was that my hair didn't fit in with either: too long for punk, and very definitely too long for the Army.
Showing posts with label Johnny Rotten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Rotten. Show all posts
Monday, 4 June 2012
Friday, 9 April 2010
Talcy Malcy RIP
What can anyone add to the millions of words that have spoken about Malcolm McLaren (most of them by himself)?
Well, maybe the one thing that doesn't get sufficient emphasis is pop music. As opposed to rock. The reason I fell in love with punk back in 1976 was nothing to do with, say, Iggy & the Stooges, of whom I knew nothing. Instead I came from a position of liking the Bay City Rollers. (Incidentally, I still reckon their fourth album is a bit of a powerpop classic, with fine production by Jimmy Ienner, who'd earlier shaped the sound of the Raspberries.)
To get back to McLaren, he was a bit fond of the Rollers as well. Indeed that was his concept of what a pop group should be, how he envisaged the Sex Pistols would turn out. Admittedly they evolved into something a bit different, thanks to the genius of Johnny Rotten, but still they made damn fine pop records: the same handful of chords you'd hear on Shang-a-Lang, the same attraction to big catchy choruses. Never really got the hang of bridges, though.
One of the joys that came with listening to the Rollers, Mud, Showaddywaddy and the rest of the post-glam pop bands of 1974-75 was that, being an ignorant kid at the time, I found it provided me with an education. They were covering songs by people like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, so I went back to the 1950s to listen to the originals. And I haven't stopped since. The sounds of the first wave of rock and roll remain my favourite music.
And again, when punk erupted, we found that McLaren was similarly enchanted by the '50s. His favourite reference point was the great British entrepreneur Larry Parnes, who brought us Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager and more. I know he dressed it all up in art school attitudes, talked about cash-from-chaos, spouted bollocks about situationism (has there ever been a sillier adolescent disorder than situationism?), but ultimately you knew that he was at heart a genuine fan of the music, that the elegant simplicity of rock and roll was as fascinating to him as the Machiavellian machinations of the industry.
At least, I think he was. But who knows? Maybe he was just a lucky bastard. After all, he was the manager of the New York Dolls who managed to split them up. He looked at Adam and the Ants, decided that he could do better than that, and sacked the singer so that he could launch Bow Wow Wow - just before Adam became the biggest pop star in the country. In between those two episodes, he lucked into discovering Johnny Rotten, who turned out to be one of the great artists of his generation, for a short while at least.
But my suspicion was that behind all the bullshit, beyond the wind-ups and gimmicks, he had a simple love of pure pop music. And so, in honour of the late Malcolm McLaren, here's a Harry Hammond photo of one of his favourite pop stars, Billy Fury:
Well, maybe the one thing that doesn't get sufficient emphasis is pop music. As opposed to rock. The reason I fell in love with punk back in 1976 was nothing to do with, say, Iggy & the Stooges, of whom I knew nothing. Instead I came from a position of liking the Bay City Rollers. (Incidentally, I still reckon their fourth album is a bit of a powerpop classic, with fine production by Jimmy Ienner, who'd earlier shaped the sound of the Raspberries.)
To get back to McLaren, he was a bit fond of the Rollers as well. Indeed that was his concept of what a pop group should be, how he envisaged the Sex Pistols would turn out. Admittedly they evolved into something a bit different, thanks to the genius of Johnny Rotten, but still they made damn fine pop records: the same handful of chords you'd hear on Shang-a-Lang, the same attraction to big catchy choruses. Never really got the hang of bridges, though.
One of the joys that came with listening to the Rollers, Mud, Showaddywaddy and the rest of the post-glam pop bands of 1974-75 was that, being an ignorant kid at the time, I found it provided me with an education. They were covering songs by people like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, so I went back to the 1950s to listen to the originals. And I haven't stopped since. The sounds of the first wave of rock and roll remain my favourite music.
And again, when punk erupted, we found that McLaren was similarly enchanted by the '50s. His favourite reference point was the great British entrepreneur Larry Parnes, who brought us Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager and more. I know he dressed it all up in art school attitudes, talked about cash-from-chaos, spouted bollocks about situationism (has there ever been a sillier adolescent disorder than situationism?), but ultimately you knew that he was at heart a genuine fan of the music, that the elegant simplicity of rock and roll was as fascinating to him as the Machiavellian machinations of the industry.
At least, I think he was. But who knows? Maybe he was just a lucky bastard. After all, he was the manager of the New York Dolls who managed to split them up. He looked at Adam and the Ants, decided that he could do better than that, and sacked the singer so that he could launch Bow Wow Wow - just before Adam became the biggest pop star in the country. In between those two episodes, he lucked into discovering Johnny Rotten, who turned out to be one of the great artists of his generation, for a short while at least.
But my suspicion was that behind all the bullshit, beyond the wind-ups and gimmicks, he had a simple love of pure pop music. And so, in honour of the late Malcolm McLaren, here's a Harry Hammond photo of one of his favourite pop stars, Billy Fury:
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