SEX PISTOLS - THE GREAT ROCK 'N' ROLL SWINDLE @ 45

Released on February 26th, 1979, the soundtrack to the Sex Pistols movie, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, turns 45 years old today. While it's hard to call this a proper album by the group, among the clutter and confusion, there are some genuinely amusing punk gags and a few nasty bits of ephemera worth the price of admission.

Before the group imploded at the end of their chaotic 1978 US mini-tour, Malcolm McLaren had been working on the idea of a feature film for the band, initially titled, "Who Killed Bambi?". With Johnny Rotten unceremoniously dumped after their San Francisco gig in January of 1978, the prospect of putting together a feature film, let along the film's soundtrack, seemed rather slim. Yet McLaren was determined to push this project past the finish line, even if he had to run it on fumes, including resorting to hiding cameras in bushes to try to film Lydon while on vacation in Jamaica & scouting reggae bands for Richard Branson. It was fortunate then that Malcolm managed to come across a forgotten 1976 tape of the band rehearsing.

The demo contained recordings of the band performing a number of cover songs, many of which were part of their live set at the time. These included The Monkees' Stepping Stone, The Modern Lovers' Roadrunner, Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode and The Who's Substitute. An early demo version of Anarchy in the UK was also uncovered. None of these recordings had ever been released before, so Malcolm came up with the idea of doing a bit of recycling in order to have a few building blocks upon which to structure some sort of soundtrack. Unfortunately, the demos were not of the best recording quality, being only 4 track roughs, but the vocal and bass parts were salvageable, or rather had to be as both Johnny and Glen were no longer in the band. At minimum, he could re-record Steve's guitar and Paul's drum parts again, to help freshen up the sound and allow him to claim the album contained actual Sex Pistols songs that were not previously released.

To fill out the rest of the double LP capacity, McLaren assembled a pastiche of odds and ends, firstly by having the remaining band members record some new material with lead vocals either being provided by them or by guest vocalists. Sid recorded cover versions of My Way, Something Else and C'mon Everybody, artifacts that would become his only proper studio appearances before his tragic death. Paul & Steve each provided lead vocals on a couple of tracks which were essentially prototypes for their post-Pistols project, The Professionals. Edward Tudor-Pole provided vocals for several tracks as well, but the most controversial guest was exiled "Great Train Robber", Ronnie Biggs, who provided vocals for Belsen Was a Gas and No One Is Innocent. That inclusion drew a lot of criticism because of Biggs' violent history and the impression that the appearance celebrated those heinous crimes.

The rest of the album is patched together with a handful of novelty songs, such as the disco medley by a fake studio band, The Black Arabs, and some French street performers were used on a parody of Anarchy in the UK. Malcolm took the task of crooning the saccharine, sentimental, You Need Hands. Other than the salvaged demos from 1976, Johnny Rotten had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of the album, completely disavowing it and the film upon their release and asserting they were NOT legitimate Sex Pistols products, but merely another of Malcolm's cons.

Taken as a whole, the album is a hodgepodge of occasionally amusing relics and random moments of ecstatic excess. Sid's rendition of My Way, for example, has gone on to become his signature statement of nihilistic self-destruction. The Pistols demos capture the band in a state of raw good humour, having a laugh before it all became too fucking crazy. Even the disco song is an amusing poke in the eye to the punks who clung to pretensions about what the movement was. In the end, the record does what it says on the tin. It's a total "swindle", but fun enough if you're in on the joke.
 

MALCOLM MCLAREN - DUCK ROCK @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the debut solo album from impresario Malcolm McLaren, with Duck Rock being released on May 27th, 1983. After a decade of working behind the scenes in the music business, McLaren decided it was finally time to step out front, taking the spotlight for himself rather than living vicariously through the likes of Johnny Rotten.

Cultural appropriation is something the Brits have certainly mastered over the years and Duck Rock is a prime example of a couple of white dudes wholesale pilfering black culture for their own ends. While it’s valid to be critical of that process these days, you still can’t deny that McLaren & company managed to put together one hell of a fun album. Since Malcolm wasn’t actually a musician in any sense, a HUGE portion of credit for the creation of this record has to go to co-producer, composer and instrumentalist, Trevor Horn. He’d made a name for himself as one half of The Buggles, followed by a brief stint in the progressive rock supergroup, Yes. Between the two of them, they put together a crazy-quilt of world music influences.

After becoming infamous for managing the Sex Pistols and then helping kick off the New Romantic “pirate” trend with Bow Wow Wow, Malcolm McLaren hooked up with Trevor Horn and the two began a sojourn around the globe, collecting bits and pieces for the collaboration they were cooking up. Their travels took them to places like South Africa, Brazil and the USA, where they recruited local musicians and performers to contribute to the musical gumbo they were cooking up. Unfortunately, several of those contributions were uncredited and subsequent lawsuits ended up being settled out of court in order to provide appropriate compensation to certain slighted musicians while retaining composer credits for McLaren and Horn.

Beyond the the musical elements recorded using local talent, Trevor Horn recruited various UK musicians to help him create the remaining musical components needed to tie all these threads together. These included Anne Dudley, J. J. Jeczalik, and Thomas Dolby. Side recordings which Horn, Dudley and Jeczalik made in between takes of Duck Rock would eventually become the debut album by the Art of Noise, Into Battle with the Art of Noise. Horn was essentially defining the sound of the ‘80s, which is particularly notable given that, after these two projects, he’d go on to co-found ZTT Records and propel bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood to international fame. In retrospect, it’s impossible to overestimate the impact he had on the world of pop music throughout the decade and beyond.

The structure of the album presents a continuous flow of music inter-cut with radio spots from The Supreme Team radio show. Altogether, the album has a stream of consciousness feel to it, bounding between styles and genres with effluent ease. Each turn reveals a new surprise - from the tribal rhythms of Africa to the rope skipping glee of inner city youth clubs. Since Malcolm had no particular musical abilities, he took on the role of ringleader, contributing speak-sung vocals to several of the tracks. Throughout all of it, he pops in periodically as a kind of travelogue host, enthusiastically highlighting the virtues of each pit-stop along the journey. In his vocals, he affects a kind of mid-western Americana joviality, which almost comes off as obnoxious while somehow managing to remain charming.

As much as this album is an exploitation and appropriation of black music, it’s still interesting to note that the success of the album helped open the floodgates for that music to infiltrate the mainstream of pop consciousness. Before this album, hip-hop was mostly an underground fringe scene known only within select urban environments. After this release, rap music was all over the place. The impact on African music was also notable, particularly when you consider that, three years later, Paul Simon would release his Graceland album, which completely leaned into South African music. Ultimately, Duck Rock was a key pathway by which much or this black culture was smuggled into white western ears. 40 years on, it still has a freshness and dynamism that feels timeless.

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS @ 45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the debut album from the Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, which was released on October 27th, 1977. After spending the previous year creating havoc within the British youth scene and terrorizing government authorities with their bad behavior on the TV screen and stage, the Sex Pistols finally got themselves in a studio and created one of the most influential LPs in rock & roll history, albeit with Johnny Rotten intending it to be the end of rock & roll, full stop!

I believe that rock & roll music essentially has 3 epochs and they are hinged upon the appearances of its “holy trinity”: Elvis Presley, The Beatles and the Sex Pistols. When you look back across the history of the genre, it’s those tent-poles which most define the major shifts in its nature and cultural potential. Elvis introduced it to the mainstream, The Beatles turned it into a fine art and the Sex Pistols weaponized it. I say that because the Pistols were the last rock band to wield any legitimate sense of threat to the status quo. Sure, there have been controversial trends and popular movements, but the Pistols were the last band to seem dangerous and to make the establishment quake in their boots. Anyone who’s come along since then has been no more than an irritant to the powers that be. The Pistols were actually debated in Parliament and the government sought to crush them and stop them from spreading their message of revolt, going so far as to actively ban them from performing. It’s an unprecedented reaction which simply hasn’t happened since then.

Their one and only proper studio album now stands as a memorial to a scant few years when outrage seemed to have some import in the world. It’s also a damn good set of songs, well written both musically and lyrically. It says something about its time and the society that tried to silence it. Those messages remain relevant today, perhaps even more so than at the time they were penned. The fact it’s been co-opted into crass commercialism since then still doesn’t take away from the fact that it drew a line in the sand and we still look back at that time as a moment of epiphany and realization. Perhaps it was all a "swindle" as Malcolm retroactively postulated, but it changed the way people thought and that change keeps resonating around the world to this day.

As trite as kids thrashing out a few chords and bellowing their angst can be, you can still see when a culture is coming of age by the point at which its youth twig to the methodology and iconography of “punk”. You can observe these scenes happen in places like the middle east, Asia or Russia and see that there’s still a spirit of rebellion struggling to find a voice. It may often fail to create a distinction from Ramones style thrash, but it does show a desire to expose the energy pent up during that time when a new generation demands to be heard.

A lot of people want to push the flashpoint for punk to New York with the Ramones & New York Dolls or Detroit with the Stooges & MC5 and, while the structural elements may have been coming together in those places, they were only so much fuel without a spark. Those bands and scenes, as legitimate and eventually influential as they became, were only known to a tiny clique of hipsters until the Sex Pistols came along and put a match to all that kindling. It wasn’t until Johnny Rotten snarled that he was an “antichrist” that the world perked up and took notice of that generation and its rage. Others may have come sooner, but no one else struck the spark that would ignite the world. There is most certainly an undeniable “BP - before Pistols” and “AP - after Pistols” demarcation within the lineage of rock ’n’ roll.

I remember being intimidated to even buy Bollocks at the time I was first crossing the threshold from mainstream music into the looming underground. I was just starting to delve into the punk and new wave scenes and had a mere handful of records by bands like The Clash, Ramones, Elvis Costello & DEVO. I thought it was the nastiest thing in the world to pick up a Sex Pistols record and almost felt like I had to smuggle it into the house without my mom spotting it. When I heard a song like Bodies with it’s litany of “fuck this and fuck that” in a lyric about abortion, well I felt it was about as controversial a record as I could possibly bring home. 45 years on and it still sounds as ferocious and confrontational as it did back then. Of course it’s all paper tigers now and nobody’s gonna be threatened by a rock star again, but for a special, precious moment, the danger did seem rather real.