Jones, Allan. "Local censors out in force to ban punk rock groups" and "Rotten! Sex Pistols talk to Allan Jones." Melody Maker, 4 June 1977, pp. 8-9.
Local censors out in force to ban punk rock groups
— Two articles. "Local censors out in force to ban punk rock groups" featuring The Clash and "Rotten! Sex Pistols talk to Allan Jones."
— Reports widespread punk bans: The Stranglers lose seven tour dates including Leeds Polytechnic and Nottingham Playhouse, while Sex Pistols are rejected by Bristol Colston Hall
— Reveals plans for two-day Bristol punk festival with Sex Pistols and The Clash headlining separate nights after venue rejections
— The Clash manager Bernard Rhodes details insurance obstacles for London Rainbow return show following their controversial White Riot concert, charts the political fallout of punk, with Tory-controlled GLC reviewing concert codes as councils nationwide crack down on the scene
— Main feature is an explosive interview where Rotten and bandmates savage contemporaries like The Clash, The Damned, and rock elders including Mick Jagger and Robert Plant, while defending their controversial reputation
— Rotten/Jones/Sex Pistols' article on street confrontation with police in Notting Hill, framed by Johnny Rotten as "living in England in 1977", — Sex Pistols' new single God Save The Queen enters charts at No.25 amid ongoing media frenzy and establishment backlash
Melody Maker
JUNE 4,1977
15p weekly USA 75 cents
STREET LIFE
“This is called living in England in 1977,” said Johnny Rotten when he and his Sex Pistols mate Sid Vicious were stopped and searched by the police in London’s Notting Hill.
Sex Pistols, whose new single God Save The Queen entered the MM chart at 25 this week, were returning to the Portobello Road offices of Virgin Records when they were stopped and questioned — “because we look different,” Rotten said.
He and Vicious were frisked and their names taken, but Scotland Yard told the MM on Monday that this was a formal procedure and no official charges have been made.
The Pistols remain the most controversial and provocative English punk rock band, emphasised this week in an exclusive MM interview. They attack not only established rock stars like Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, Mick Jagger and Ian Anderson, but also accuse their new wave contemporaries — including The Clash, The Damned and The Stranglers — of selling out to the major record companies.
“The Pistols [are] the best,” asserts Rotten. “The only honest band that’s hit this planet in two thousand million years. There’s no one who can follow us.”
Meanwhile, the Pistols — whose debut album is scheduled for late July — and The Clash are planning a two-day punk festival in Bristol, set tentatively for the end of June. Pistols top the bill one night, The Clash the other.
• Sex Pistols interview starts on page 8. Rotten/Jones slag off The Clash
Melody Maker | June 4, 1977 | Page 8 & Page 9
Local censors out in force to ban punk rock groups
You talk about getting banned from places and if that happened it would make everything simple
by Brian Harrigan
Punk paranoia is sweeping the nation again, with the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, The Jam and The Stranglers all being banned from playing in the wake of controversy surrounding The Clash’s London Rainbow concert three weeks ago.
Local councils across the country have reacted in protest against new wave with the same vigour that reduced the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK tour to ruins last December.
In London, the attitude towards punk has become even more confused after the recent elections which switched control of the Greater London Council from Labour to the Tories. In addition, the GLC’s controversial pop concert code — the code of practice for rock shows instituted a year ago — was due for review in May. This has been postponed because of the local elections, and the Tories have yet to fix a date to discuss the code. Local councils outside London have reacted strongly against new wave, with The Stranglers suffering most in terms of cancelled gigs. Seven dates on their current tour have been scrapped — Torquay Town Hall (June 9), Southend Kursaal (11), Leeds Polytechnic (13), Blackpool Imperial Hotel (15), Blackburn King George's Hall and Nottingham Playhouse (19) and St Alban's Civic Hall (25).
All of these concerts, except Blackpool, have been banned by the local councils, according to The Stranglers spokesman Alan Edwards. The Blackburn date was set up to replace the Nottingham cancellation and then, in turn, it was cancelled. The Blackpool show was scrapped because of a booking mix-up.
A spokesman for Torquay council stated: “The type of entertainment which is associated with this type of group is not in keeping with the council’s policy of entertainment in any of its theatres or public halls under its control.” Jean-Jacques Burnel, The Stranglers bass guitarist, dismissed the bans as “an over-reaction.” He added: “It shows how insecure these people are.” Albion Agency are attempting to reschedule all cancelled dates.
The Sex Pistols, recently signed with Virgin and attempting to get back into action after almost six months of inactivity, have immediately run into problems at the very first stage of attempting to set up a tour.
They approached Bristol City Council with an application to stage a concert at the council-run Colston Hall during this month and were rejected out of hand.
Mr Ray Muir, the town’s Director of Entertainments, told Melody Maker, “The application was placed before Bristol City Council in its entirety and it was just rejected. No reasons were given — it was a straightforward decision.”
Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, was unavailable for comment at press time, but Clash manager Bernard Rhodes told MM that he and McLaren were discussing plans to stage their own two-day festival in the Bristol area at the end of this month, with the Pistols and The Clash headlining one night each.
In addition, Rhodes said that The Clash have been experiencing problems during their entire tour, which got off to a bad start when The Jam pulled out, as reported in last week’s Melody Maker.
The Clash planned a return date at London’s Rainbow, the scene of their controversial White Riot concert on May 9 — towards the end of June.
“We wanted to do another show there but the insurance company, who would meet the claims for damages if there were any, said they couldn’t take on the job of insuring the Rainbow for The Clash. I think they wanted £10,000 upfront before we even went on. But a deposit like that would just disappear. We couldn’t do it.”
Allen Schaverien, director of Strutworth who lease the Rainbow for rock concerts, denied Rhodes’ claim, however.
He told Melody Maker: “The dates they wanted were already booked. I would not comment on any question about insurance.” Asked if Strutworth had changed their policy towards punk bands since the Clash concert, he said: “We have never had any definite policy on punk so there cannot be any change.”
“I really do not wish to make an issue out of this, and I really do not want to say anything that will go into a newspaper about this subject.”
Rhodes, however, stuck to his side of the story and added: “It’s a restrictive policy and it’s working. It’s the English way of doing things, making it difficult for you to do anything.”
Rhodes claimed that “most councils” had raised difficulties on the Clash tour. “They see us as far more of a bogey man than they ought to, although I wouldn't say it’s all clean harmless fun like our record company says it is.
What we've seen happen is that the council will cut down on the maximum number of people allowed into a concert according to the fire regulations. If it’s a 1,500-seater they’ll cut it down to 1,200.
Then when people are actually going into the concert they’ll cut it down again to 1,000. Then at the last minute they’ll suddenly say that instead of having 30 bouncers we should have 45.
What can you do? It’s an incredible situation. At Chelmsford (Chancellor Hall) on Sunday (May 29) they closed all the bars and closed the local pubs down early. So you’re in a situation where no-one can even get a drink anywhere, inside the hall or outside.
You talk about getting banned from places and if that actually happened it would make everything simple. You either play or you don't. But in situations like this you don’t even know what’s going on. You’re being allowed to play but you still get problems, you still get harassed.
With this going on, the whole industry is going to suffer. If you have a restrictive policy all the creative people will disappear.
Bands like The Clash are like a sort of research department and it’s true in any industry that if you don’t have a research department you don’t have new ideas and if you don’t have new ideas it’s all going to stand still — there’ll be no progress.”
Like The Clash, The Stranglers and The Sex Pistols, The Damned have also been banned. According to Island press officer Brian Blevins, the concert planned for the Stafford Top Of The World on May 16 was scrapped four hours before the doors were due to open.
“The band’s road managers were refused access with equipment,” he stated, “and the venue was changed to North Staffs Polytechnic.”
The May 20 show at Southampton University suffered a strike by porters and bar staff in protest against the booking, while the May 26 show at Tiffany's in Newcastle-Under-Lyme was cancelled because Mecca refused use of the venue to The Damned.
The June 3 concert at Cromer West Runton Pavilion was cancelled, the June 7 show at Lincoln Drill Hall has been postponed to June 14 and the local council have stopped the show scheduled for June 16 at Cheltenham Town Hall.
The Southend Kursaal show on June 18 has been scrapped, again by the local council, and so the band are seeking an alternative venue in either Southend or Canvey Island. The Damned have added a date at Dunstable California Ballroom on June 29.
The Jam are perhaps the most surprising victims of the backlash against new wave across Britain. They have appeared without problems on BBC1’s Top Of The Pops and are set to play three Silver Jubilee concerts free of charge this month — all in London — at Chelsea Football Club (June 12), Tower Hamlets Poplar Civic Hall (18) and Battersea Town Hall (27).
However, Leeds City Council have banned them from playing the city's Town Hall on June 16, as well as scrapping The Stranglers show scheduled three days earlier at Leeds Polytechnic.
A spokesman for the city council’s Estates and Developments Department said the bands were considered “unsuitable.”
The decision follows a recent concert by The Clash at Leeds Polytechnic during which members of the audience broke into the kitchens and caused about £100 worth of damage, according to the council.
Mr D. Watson, the council’s buildings manager, said the Tory-run council had to be particularly careful with Town Hall bookings because of the nearness of the city’s law courts complex.
About three years ago Leeds Council earned some notoriety in the rock world by imposing a decibel limit on concerts, and this year they were the only major council to impose a ban on showings of the Michael Winner occult film The Sentinel.
A spokesman for Polydor said that they were surprised at Leeds Council’s decision and emphasised that the rest of the tour remained unaffected.
London’s rock fans, bands and promoters will have to wait for the new Tory rulers of the GLC to settle in before they can expect any changes in the year-old pop concert code.
A spokesman for the GLC told MM, “The new council has only just formed its committees and we’re still in a sorting-out period.
The pop concert code was due for review this month as it has just finished its experimental first year’s run.
When and if a review takes place all of the parties who contributed to the original code of practice will probably be asked for their views — people like pop concert promoters and so on.”
The man with the ultimate responsibility for changes in the code of practice for rock concerts in London will be Dr Gordon Taylor who, as chairman of the public safety committee, takes in concert licensing under his umbrella.
The public safety committee is due to stage its first meeting on Thursday this week, but their agenda contains no reference to the pop code.
According to the GLC spokesman they are not bound to review the code in the near future or at any time. “However, from a public relations point of view,” he explained, “I doubt if they will leave the subject dangling for too long.”
The pop concert code ran into a storm of criticism in April this year when the GLC demanded an agreement from The Stranglers that they wouldn’t wear clothes that bore offensive words or slogans. This occurred in reaction to a gig at London’s Roundhouse in January when one of the band wore a tee-shirt bearing a four-letter word.
The GLC move was lashed by promoter John Curd as a decision which “exceeded all bounds of triviality.”
Curd also said at the time that the GLC told him: “The GLC as elected representatives of the people has a duty to maintain acceptable public standards in relation to offensive material and words. And if the general public don’t like this policy they needn’t re-elect us.”
The Labour Party was not re-elected as the majority group in the GLC and now the capital’s rock fans are waiting to see how the change in the ruling party will affect them as concert-goers.
& The pop code was brought into being following an incident at a David Cassidy concert at London’s White City in 1974 when teenage girl Bernadette Whelan was killed in the crush.
JAM: surprising victims of backlash / STRANGLERS: councils ban dates / CLASH: no insurance
Sex Pistols/Rotten/Jones / Slags off The Clash
Melody Maker | JUNE 4,1977 | Page 3 & original front page photo
Mick Jagger, The Clash, Robert Plant, The Damned, Ian Anderson, The Stranglers, Roger Daltrey, Ian Hunter
Rotten!
Sex Pistols talk to Allan Jones
Johnny Rotten. Picture by Dennis Morris
“We mean it, man.” — The Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen
John Rotten stands with his arms casually outstretched in a sardonic parody of the crucifixion, a look of languid hatred flickering for a moment across his pallid features before giving way to an expression of petulant contempt.
A policeman searches Rotten’s pockets and frisks his scrawny frame with dedicated efficiency.
He finds nothing.
John lowers his arms and curls his lips around a can of lager, taking a defiant swig as the police constable who has stopped him in the fierce sunlight along Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill diverts his attention toward Sid Vicious.
Sid smiles malevolently as he turns out his pockets and P.C. B510 takes out his notebook to scribble down a few pertinent details.
Imagine the conversation: “Name?”
“Sid Vicious.” “V-I-C-I-O-U-S?”
“’Spose so.”
“Address?”
“Here and there.”
“Date of birth?”
“How should I know?” Rotten looks on in disgust: he and Sid had been walking along the street after a photo session for the Melody Maker when the Old Bill appeared suddenly and turned them over.
“We look different, see, and it frightens them,” he says in that sarcastic intonation he so effectively employs. “I can understand it, though. This is called living in England in 1977. If they ask for violence, then we’ll give them violence. What else can they expect if they treat people like this?”
A guy from Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s office has the temerity to ask the officer why, precisely, he stopped John and Sid.
“Turn out your pockets,” the officer replies to our disbelief.
“Arrest him, officer,” Sid thoughtfully advises our friend P.C. B510. “He’s a Nazi...”
“And you’re a big mouth,” responds B510. “And if you don’t move along I’ll book you.”
“It happens all the time,” says John Rotten as he, Sid, Paul Cook and Steve Jones collapse into the interview room at Virgin Records’ offices just off the Portobello Road. “All the time. Everywhere I go. Wherever I go. Every time I walk down a street. If it ain’t a copper, it’s some big, fat ignorant turd. It happened yesterday. In Highgate. I was just walking along...”
“On your way to the f------ pub,” interrupts Sid.
“Nah, acourse not,” John replies wearily. “They’ve banned me from all the pubs up there. I can’t even get a drink in Highgate anymore.”
This bright Tuesday afternoon is the first time that all four members of the Sex Pistols have visited the offices of their new record company, with whom they signed only three weeks ago (for £45,000, according to McLaren; “for an unspecified amount of money,” according to Virgin; “for no advance at all,” according to Rotten).
Now, for all its enterprise, Virgin has never had to deal with a pack of maverick delinquents like the Sex Pistols in its entire history.
And here they are with a group whose capacity for outrage has antagonised over the last year the entire nation and provoked their enforced departure from two major record companies. No, Virgin has always been more closely associated with the Woolly Hat Brigade (Gong and various compatible hippy combos) and rather serious European ensembles rather than the rock and roll defiance expressed by the Pistols.
The shock waves of the signing seem to be reverberating still through the company: and you should have seen the concerned and apprehensive expressions decorating the bemused faces at Vernon’s Yard last week when the Pistols staggered, like the Wild Bunch swaggering defiantly into Aqua Verde for their final stand in Peckinpah’s movie (I rather fancifully thought), down the cobblestone alley and into the reception area at Virgin.
“Where’s old Branson-pickle, who’s that c—--, and where can I get something to f------ eat?” demanded Sid Vicious as he dropped in a loose-limbed pile of rags and leather onto a couch.
“More to the point,” countered John Rotten, “where can I get a bleedin’ drink?”
Steve Jones, looking burly and aggressive, and Paul Cook (as ever quite amiable), wandered about clocking the premises, amused at the confusion they were causing. We were joined by the staff of the Virgin press office and drinks and sandwiches were promised to appease John and Sid, who complained constantly of being a dying man.
“I’m so f------ ill I’m going to puke,” he observed colourfully.
“You’ve just got a big spot on the end of your nose,” he was rebuffed by Jones.
“I know, it’s because of all that f------ pressure I’m under. I’m too f------ sensitive to have to put up with all this,” Sid commented weakly.
“Where’s that booze?” asked John irritably.
“Give us some free albums.” Sid, reviving suddenly, demanded of Virgin PR Al Clark. The request was politely declined. “If you don’t give us them we’ll steal them,” Sid warned.
It was immediately clear that his recent illness had not blunted young Sid’s rapier-like wit.
“Stand a bit closer,” he subsequently ordered a photographer. “I can’t gob that far in my present state.”
I first saw the Sex Pistols in April 1975 at the Nashville in London when they supported Joe Strummer’s 101ers. John Rotten stumbled to the front of the stage, held together with safety pins and wild conceit, his blond hair spiky and greasy, his dark eyes alive with venom. “I bet you don’t hate us as much as we hate you!” he screamed at the bewildered audience, few of whom were at all familiar with the group or its nascent attitude.
He was quite mistaken — the audience responded to Rotten’s jeering abuse with extrovert disdain and made clear their instinctive dislike for the Pistols’ leering aggression and crude music.
I went away that evening and wrote a review of the band that concluded with the profound hope that no more would be heard of them. Some hope.
By the end of the year they had become the most notorious group in the country: controversy, disaster and constant publicity elevated them from obscurity to international disrepute in a blur of months of persistent outrage.
Their history — as short as it is — reads like a series of reports from a battlefront, so full of incident has it so far been. They precipitated a whole new wave of bands cast in a similarly aggressive stance: The Clash, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Generation X, Chelsea, The Slits... all of them owe a debt to the Sex Pistols.
The media, faced with the explosive anger and rebellion expressed by these bands, reeled in confusion. The music press was split in arguments over the respective merits of these young groups: their admirers congratulated them for the energy and passion of their music and applauded the way they had challenged the complacency that had recently settled on the rock establishment.
Their critics, conversely, condemned them for their inarticulate anarchy, their apparent nihilism and their musical incompetence. Those of us in this latter category floundered in our attempts to place these groups in any correct perspective and may even have felt slightly threatened by the collective aggression and determined disregard for convention displayed so arrogantly by these new wave renegades with their punk toughness and volatile outbursts.
We’re the only honest band that’s hit this planet in about two thousand million years
We may even have wished, despite our increasing fascination with the movement, that they'd all just shut up and make some music or disappear up the slipstream of their own invective.
“You were probably right when you wrote that rave review,” John Rotten comments sarcastically as he tugs on another lager. “We were probably really bad then. Don’t f------ apologise. The point is that we were just starting. We just went out and we did it. We formed when music was becoming too serious.
Rock and roll is supposed to be fun. You remember fun, don’tcha? You're supposed to enjoy it. It's not supposed to be about critics, or about spending 100 f------ years learning a million chords on the guitar. It's the spirit — it’s what you say that’s important.”
There is something to be said, I ventured, for a certain musical eloquence: you can't survive indefinitely on undiluted energy and passion.
“Yeah,” Rotten replies, his voice undulating in that particular sarcastic rhythm of his, “I understand that, and we are concerned about the quality of what we play... but, like, when you criticised us we were just starting. We just went out and we done it in front of the public. We didn't stay in a rehearsal studio until we were so perfect we were boring.
The whole idea was to get out and have some fun. And we hoped that someone out there would see us and have fun, too. We just wanted to get out and play and we hoped that some people would see us and go away and form their own bands. We wanted to make a new scene.”
“We f------ did,” comments Steve Jones, and then adds with a curious sense of disenchantment, “and for a while it was good...”
Rotten sits clutching the inevitable can of lager, his legs stretched out before him. He looks, momentarily, distracted and tired. He runs his fingers nervously through his bright red hair: his mood has changed now from the aggressive punk stance he had earlier assumed and, relentlessly sarcastic, he’s more open and polite.
His attitude seems constantly to shift from one of defensive condescension to passionate concern. His conversation may be scattered profusely with scatological expletives, but he remains abrasively articulate.
Steve Jones sits opposite him: more immediately extrovert in his opinions than Rotten, his characteristic bellicosity is mitigated only by his gruff humour. His contributions to the conversation are pointed and emphatic. Paul Cook, the quietest of the quartet, sits beside him listening more than he speaks.
Sid Vicious is slumped beside John: he’s so dreadfully pale and wasted that he makes Keith Richard look like Steve Reeves. He lapses often into a comatose silence that is broken only by frequent statements to the effect that there are certain individuals to whom he would like to deliver “a good kicking.” He’s a sweet lad, our Sid.
Rotten suddenly jerks forward, staring intensely.
“The Pistols are the best,” he says simply. “The only honest band that’s hit this planet in about two thousand million years. We’ve been treated like some kind of fashion parade or as a bunch of no-talents. People have said those things for their own reasons.
And it’s very hard to stop that, because when you do an interview with someone they only print what they want to print. You can't control it. So you just give up, you just say, ‘Shut your face and f--- off.’ ’Cos it's not worth the hassle of talking to them.”
“Nobody,” adds Paul Cook, “writes the truth. Especially about us.”
“That's right,” Rotten continues. “And the worst load of f--- b---- is from people like Caroline Coon. Always going on about the sociological implications of the Sex Pistols. Makes me cringe. Absolutely dire stuff.
She hates me... I mean, I really thought that people would recognise that what appears about us in the newspapers is b----. But they don’t. That’s what shocks me about the general attitude of the public. They’re excessively stupid. Their whole lives are centred around what the Daily Mirror or the Sun says.
There was all that crap after the Bill Grundy thing. I just don’t understand how they could take it all so seriously. I thought it was a great laugh. People are so very gullible. It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks about us. It doesn’t matter what you think about us. You could go away and slag us off. I don’t care. I don’t expect anything from anyone.”
“Because of what they’ve read in the national press,” Steve Jones observes, “people think all we do is go around giving people good kickings, fighting, drinking, f--- things up, spitting, swearing...”
He actually sounds disturbed that this should be the case.
“But we won’t change,” emphasises Rotten, his eyes glaring. “We’ll always tell people to f--- off if they try to tell us what to do. That's why we have trouble with record companies. This deal’s fine. We don’t want to f--- this one up...
We set our own direction. We don’t follow anyone. And there’s no one who can follow us. The rest of those f--- bands like The Clash, The Damned and The Stranglers and all the rest, are just doing what every other band before them has done. It’s the same big, fat, hippy trip. Those bands are pathetic. They make me cringe.”
The way John delivers that final word makes my flesh creep.
“I think it’s absolutely vile,” Rotten speeds on, “when I go to see a band that’s obviously trying to imitate us I think it’s absolutely disgusting. That shows a complete lack of intelligence. It shows they have no reason for being on a stage.
You have to do your own thing. You have to be yourself; otherwise you can’t offer anything. And if you can’t offer anything, you’re in the wrong place and you should f------ off. You have to be honest. You have to believe in yourself, whatever anyone says or whatever happens. You can’t give in.
That’s another reason people hate us — we don’t conform to their stupid standards. Like at press conferences, you know, they try to get us to be nice and polite to all the ‘right’ people. That’s dreadful.
If someone says to me, ‘Watch that person, they’re in a position to really stitch you up,’ then I just go up and say, ‘You c---. I hate you.’ I don't need all that.”
“People have described us as a kamikaze band,” offers Steve Jones. “But we just play music, we don't crash f----- planes. It’s just that we don’t back down. We just do it.
The other bands don’t have the nerve to follow us. They were all right in the beginning, but now they've signed their contracts they’re f----- up. I feel sorry for them. And now they say that we've f------ the scene up.
They've forgotten that we started it. We opened all the doors.”
“The doors and the windows,” says Sid, coming back to life for a moment.
I’d heard the Pistols described as martyrs recently for the reason that they’d sacrificed themselves in the initial assault on the establishment that led eventually to the present commercial success of those bands — like The Clash and The Damned — whom they originally supported.
“That’s right,” says Rotten. “We helped all them bands in the beginning. We helped them start off. The Anarchy tour, right... We paid for all that. We gave them hotels, money — the works.
Well,” and here he gives one of his nervously evil little laughs, “I ain’t seen any of it come back. We’ve lost a lot of money. Thousands. And the tax is doing us for 80 per cent of everything we ever got. Which is ridiculous. You saw us squabbling over a quid. It ain’t funny. The shortage of money is pathetic.
But we don't need any sympathy and we ain't martyrs. Martyrs are failures. We ain’t failures, ’cos we never give up. They’re not going to get rid of us. We'll only finish it the day it gets boring.”
“I don’t even know the name of the Prime Minister,” asserts Steve Jones, “so I don't really see how anyone could describe us as a political band.”
“We don’t support no one,” emphasises John Rotten. “Politics is b-------.”
We’ve been discussing the political overtones of the Sex Pistols, as exemplified most significantly by their singles, Anarchy In The UK and God Save The Queen. As far as I'm concerned, the infectious irreverence and spirited venom of these two songs is considerably more appealing than the wearying political stance adopted by, let's say, The Clash.
Rotten agrees and articulates my own feelings when he stresses that music and politics enjoy an uneasy, frequently loathsome, relationship if the political views expressed are incoherent and immature. He's clearly of the opinion that The Clash are incoherent and immature. “Music,” he says, “should be fun. It's meant to be a relief from working 9 to 5 in a factory. It shouldn't be about some c--- on a stage gabbing about how terrible it is to be on the dole.”
He turns on one of his most innocent smiles and sneers: “’Cos when I was on the dole it was not terrible. I was being paid for not working. I don't understand why people complain about it,” he adds slyly. “I was getting paid a tenner a week. More than I'm getting now.”
“It's like The Clash going on about it,” says Steve. “And they've just made a mint. I don't think Clash even know what they're talking about.”
“Right,” agrees Paul Cook. “People talk about us being Malcolm’s puppet. That's ridiculous. The Clash are the puppets.”
“Malcolm’s a good manager,” insists Rotten, “but he wouldn't dream of telling us what to do.”
“He wouldn't dare,” Jones grins. “We'd turn Sid on him to give him a good kicking.”
“F---- right,” quips Sid, without opening his eyes.
“Strummer’s no politician. Never was. Never will be,” asserts Jones. “I mean that single that he had out with The 101'ers on Chiswick (Keys To Your Heart), it was a little love song. Now he's shouting about Hate And War. He don't know what he's on about.”
“The Clash ain't got no guts anyway,” Sid thoughtfully opines. “They sound as weak as The Damned. Pathetic, the lot of them. That Damned record sounds like an early Searchers album.
All tinny. And that Clash album sounds like a folk album. They're going to end up singing ballads, The Clash.”
Rotten mentions the new Chelsea single, Right To Work, and breaks out in a malicious grin: “That's Gene October. Him screaming about wanting the right to work is hysterical. He's got a job. He's in a f------ group. Ridiculous.”
“We take our songs seriously,” Rotten comments, “but we don't take ourselves seriously. We believe totally in the songs, though. That's why we play them, and that's why we're prepared to put up with so much aggravation to get them out.
Yeah, I know I said music should be fun. I ain't contradicting myself. I know we sing about unemployment and all that. You should write about what's happening, but there has to be fun, too.
Of course, there's no fun in being bored or on the dole. But music should offer a relief from all that. It shouldn't be depressing. If a song's about boredom, it should be about ways to overcome that boredom. It has to be true, but there should be humour, optimism. And that's not political.
Anarchy In The UK was about musical anarchy... I don't think you can be a political rock and roll band. It's a loser stance.”
It seems an opportune moment to bring up the issue of the Pistols and the National Front, with whom they were associated in a cheap, sensationalist piece in the London Evening News (there have been suggestions elsewhere, too). Rotten, I know, was disgusted and hurt by the piece. It still shows.
“We got f---- all to do with the National Front,” says Steve Jones first.
“That was someone trying to discredit us and make out that we were for them. It was someone putting the boot in. Just a cheap bit of publicity. My God, that thing in the Evening News made me sick. They said that the National Front used to turn up at our gigs and that’s b----. I wouldn’t play for the National Front.”
He looks at me icily and with a chilling venom proclaims, “I hate them. I despise them. I’m Irish, right, and if they took over I’d be on the next boat back. I believe you should be allowed to live where you want, when you want and how you want.
If the National Front need a rock group to support they should go after The Clash. They want a Clash movement. Military thing. Like, you know, one of the songs on that album has some stupid lyric about conscription being what we need... That’s Strummer on that album. I heard that and I creased up. That’s disgusting.
If you want to join the army, sure — go ahead. But you shouldn’t be forced into it. No one should have the right to do that to anyone. That’s wrong; evil.”
“We should call the next single, ‘We Hate The National Front’,” Sid volunteers helpfully.
“If a load of c---- like the National Front get into power,” says John with cold conviction, “I’m afraid I won’t stay around. What’s the use in staying to fight? How can you fight an army?... I dunno, though. They might give me a good reason to die. Just get a machine gun and kill as many as possible. Nah, I don’t think that would be a romantic end. I don’t find anything romantic about dying.”
“Neither do I,” Sid says after some consideration of the matter. “And I find the idea of being shot to pieces by a million bullets from the National Front really unromantic. We’re all going to die from alcohol poisoning anyway...
“I like getting drunk,” he then adds on a more cheerful note. “I like getting out of my brain. It’s good fun. Ordinary life is so dull that I get out of it as much as possible.”
The night before the Sex Pistols were unceremoniously thrown out of the window by the panic-stricken fuhrers at A&M, says John Rotten, they were told by a paternal Derek Green that they were very fortunate young men: if they had tried to release a record as provocative as God Save The Queen in, say, an Eastern European country they would be savagely repressed and would in all probability spend the rest of their days in slave labour in Siberia or somewhere equally unpleasant.
Be glad and thankful, they were told, that they lived in a free country where freedom of expression was a cherished virtue.
The next day the Pistols were again without a record company.
“We just laughed and said, ‘B---- to you’ and had a big p---- up,” says Steve Jones when asked for his reaction to that fiasco.
Rotten, however, is less flippant: “Someone at the top put the boot in. We don’t know who, but someone doesn’t want us to make it. Someone wants us silenced. Someone wants to prevent us from working again. It seems that some of the local councils are lifting their bans, but we still can’t get a gig.
We can’t book a hall because we can’t get an insurance company behind us. And there’s no hall that’ll book us without an insurance company, because they think we’re mad and that we’ll just go in there and smash the place up and walk out the back door, waving a big fat cheque in the breeze. It’s bloody ridiculous.
I mean we were so disappointed that we didn’t get that record out. The record was ready to be released, right? It was going to come out then. We wanted it out then. I think it’s a good record. It was disgusting that it wasn’t allowed to get out. They signed us up without really knowing what the hell we were about. It was stupid. Pathetic.
I don’t trust anybody any more.
I’ve been let down too often for that. I just keep away from as many people in this business as possible. This deal with Virgin ain’t like the record deals we had with the other companies. These people here are working for us, and we like it. With the others, we ended up trying to use them as much as they were using us. That wasn’t easy, but we had to do it all the same. They don’t tell us what to do here. No one tells us what to do.”
He’s convinced there’s some kind of conspiracy attempting to subvert the Sex Pistols’ potential success. He mentions the effort to associate them with the National Front and the media campaign that constantly highlights their obnoxious behaviour.
“I hate that attitude people have. They think if you ain’t been to university, you must be an ignorant lout who doesn’t know his own mind and can’t form an opinion about anything. Some of the most intelligent people I know have come straight out of the gutter. I mean, that goes right down to boot boys who get fun kicking people. They still have their brains together. They know what they like and dislike. The trouble is, the media poisons them. That’s the worst part about it.”
He also despises the constant attempts to link the Pistols with every outbreak of violence at new wave gigs and elsewhere. He’s particularly angry about the band being blamed for the violence at the 100 Club Pistols Festival late last year when a girl’s eye was gouged out.
“That was despicable. We were blamed for something that happened when we were 200 miles away. That was caused by a fight between The Vibrators and The Damned. But what can we do? We were blamed for it, and everybody believed it was our fault. But here’s a fact: wherever we play, when we hit the stage, people don’t smash each other up. They watch us. They can’t take their eyes off us.”
He continues, “Look, we’ve got a very varied audience. We’ve played places where we’ve had teddy boys dancing at the back. Up north, we’ve had bike mobs come to see us. There’s been no wars. That’s the way it should be: a lot of people having fun together. F---- the rest if they won’t allow it to happen — that’s when you get trouble, when you try to stop it.”
When asked if he was ever personally frightened by the violence at new wave gigs, he replies simply, “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Most of it is ridiculously posed,” he adds. “You get people in the audience saying, ‘Come down here, we’ll take you on.’ And you look at them and want to cringe and die, because it’s just pathetic.”
“It’s not necessary. They should be having fun. And it’s not funny or glamorous being smashed to a pulp. It’s ugly and nasty. I’ve been beaten up frequently, old bean. And it ain’t funny... You know, sometimes you go out for a quiet drink somewhere and there’s a mob in the place and they take a dislike to you because they’ve seen your face in the papers. And there’s nothing you can do. And then it’s for real. And it ain’t glamorous when it happens.”
Steve Jones chimes in: “You know we get people coming up to us wanting to take us on ’cos they’ve heard all about the Sex Pistols. Now we ain’t going to start on them, but whatever happens we’ll get the blame. That’s the way it goes. Like that Speakeasy thing was just a squabble and it was all blown up and we got the blame. It was a load of b----. I mean, if a big guy comes up and starts on me I run... and if he’s a little guy I give him a good kicking.”
Rotten laughs at the idea of the Pistols surrounding themselves with bodyguards like the rock elite: “F---- that. I hate those c----. They’re full of lies. Always contradicting themselves. Like I was reading a thing about Pete Townshend talking about punk. And I thought, ‘Who are you?’ How dare you presume to have the right to tell us what it’s all about? He half-admits that he doesn’t understand what’s happening on the streets. I don’t think he ever knew.”
Jones interjects: “It’s that other c---- I hate — Roger Daltrey.” Sid Vicious adds dreamily: “I’d like to give him a good kicking.”
Rotten continues: “I don’t give a f---- for any of them. I mean, I never even liked The Stones. Jagger was always too distant. No way could you ever imagine talking to Michael Jagger (he delivers the name with a venomous sneer) like you could talk to someone on the street. And you should be able to. I don’t see why he has to have f---- bodyguards carting him about all over the place.”
Sid chimes in with a story: “He came down to Sex Wickers one afternoon. Stood outside for three hours ’cos he was terrified to come inside. And then just as he was about to come in, John slammed the door in his face. He’s a f---- comedian.”
Jones adds: “Ian Hunter’s a c---- too. All that talk about coming off the street.”
Rotten reflects: “I know that we frighten these people. You read the music papers and they all mention us. This I find very funny. People like Ian Anderson always have to slag us off to promote themselves. I find it trivial and silly and childish. Steve Harley’s the same. You might expect it of us, ’cos that’s what we’re supposed to be like. But they’re supposed to be ever so intelligent. If they were intelligent they wouldn’t have to say things like that... and it’s like they have to be seen at the same places that we go to.”
He shares another anecdote: “Like Robert Plant came down the Rosy, surrounded by millions of bodyguards. One of them came up to me and said, ‘Robert Plant wants to talk to you. Now, you aren’t going to start anything, are you?’ And all these heavies are around me waiting for me to have a go at him. And he’s twice my f---- size. What am I going to do? I just looked at him and he’s like a real ignorant old northerner, and I felt really sorry for him. The geezer looked so shy. Now how can you respect somebody like that?”
When asked if he could envision the Pistols becoming part of the rock establishment they despise, Rotten responds emphatically: “Never. We’re still the only band that doesn’t hold press conferences every two weeks and pay for some far-out binge for the social elite and grovel around or fly every other reporter in the music press over to New York on a private plane. F---- that. But we’re going to be around. We’ve got a record out now and we’re going to finish the album and we’ll find somewhere to play. They won’t stop us. They can shut us out, but they’ll never shut us up.”
Sex Pistols: “I felt really sorry for Robert Plant. How can you respect somebody like that?”
Melody Maker | June 4, 1977