THE SEX PISTOLS – "God Save The Queen"

haha Happy Birthday to me! i’m sure i will have a ton of stuff to say here when i’m less tired and busy but for now — there are dozens of pop-stars i’ve had flings with before and since, and remain enormously fond of, but lydon is my one true and lasting love: he just opened the door to and flooded right in

Yes, the Acts thing deserves a little more spelling-out – mainly because I’m interested in the idea of the greater continuity that would connect everything from the 50s through Rod Stewart. I gather that this is as much about record-buying practice as it is about content, which would seem to suggest many smaller chapters (rise of the LP, etc…).

X?

I don’t agree that this song is so special or unique as to be any more unjudgeable than any other song…

Tom #12

I take your point about “Anarchy” being only a low 30s hit, but it wasn’t exactly unknown. Despite the radio ban, everyone got to hear it, and I believe opinions were formed at that time, not six months later.

I was sixteen at the time, probably the optimal age to be when this was going on. Everyone in my class knew “Anarchy”, and most had made up their minds by then whether they were going to embrace this punk rock thing or not.

I’ll admit GSTQ was the one that hit the mainstream – the record company didn’t bottle it, as EMI did with “Anarchy”. – but there were other things working in favour of GSTQ. The Bill Grundy incident and the A&M controversy had ensured the public at large were aware of the band well in advance of the single coming out; the jubilee celebrations came along at the perfect time; and the inevitable radio bans duly arrived, all factors creating a “perfect storm” for this record.

But, at the time, hearing GSTQ wouldn’t have done that much for you. If you were the type of person to be affected by it, you would already have been affected by “Anarchy”.

It was a better “pop” record than “Anarchy”, but not as good (a pop record) as “Pretty Vacant” by which time the Pistols were really little more than a rather noisy pop band, a fate which (un)fortunately befell so many of the torch-bearers of this “New Wave”.

I love the singles from “…Bollocks” but no more or less and certainly no differently than I loved Sweet and Slade and T Rex before them…I didn’t notice the great big sea-change that happened in 76/77 – to me they were just another pop band and maybe they pissed off my parents more than my earlier fascinations but they never really seemed to do anything more than that. I can’t help but wonder at the ridiculousness of the concept that punk was “needed”, that music was in such a woeful state that punk had to come along and sweep away the drudgery of 70s rock. Surely punk was more about chart music than rock music and by my reckoning the charts were not so much better afterwards…although I guess we’ll see about that.

I guess if anything punk (and metal for me at least) exposed that there was music “out there” that was different from the music I was hearing on the radio so if anything this was the beginning of the end of my relationship with the mainstream and with “the charts”. And was that because of punk or because I was 13 years old?

(Author’s Note: as I am being an especially busy sod today I have to ‘phone this comment in, adapted especially from my forthcoming book on the relationship between the British acting profession and the pornographic film industry of the seventies, Too Many Gielguds (Not Enough Colin Gordons)…)

“I mean, it was number one and Woolworth’s wouldn’t even post our name or the name of our record on their fucking board. What the fuck was that all about? Nothing at number one! At number one…a blank space!”
(John Lydon)

And a lie of all sorts was exposed, finally and in a raw, distressed and distempered state. That blank space at number one was as shatteringly significant as the “Blank” in Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation”; you fill in the void, you fucking decide.

“Don’t be told what you want and-ah don’t be told what you need!”

No hindsight was needed in 1977 to know that this had to happen; think of all those grindingly deathly chortling ballads and romps leading up to this, all those cynical strips torn off nine months in a tax-free studio because making an album’s a pleasant change from sniffing one’s nose into non-existence…and meanwhile, the world burned, or more pertinently Britain burned

BED TUBE WORK LUNCH WORK TUBE DINNER TV BED HOW MUCH LONGER CAN YOU TAKE IT

“If there’s no future, how can there be sin?”

And then on Tuesday the single blasted into the chart at number 11 and I did a jig straight into my Latin class. Now I know that these days going into the chart at number 11 means that you’ve sold 11 records, but back in ’77 number 11 was the kind of entry position to which the likes of Abba and David Soul were accustomed. It kept on selling throughout that whole week, was streets ahead of boring old glumster Rod the Nod on sales, and it looked on course to be number one for Jubilee Week, the definitive protest of all those people who looked upon this wretched spectacle and wanted to express their disgust and abhorrence of it in the most democratic way they knew how.

(N.B.: I’ve left the following two paragraphs as they originally stood, since blood needs fire, sometimes in contravention of admitted rationality)

And the British Phonographic Industry twisted the truth in the most brutal way they knew how. Come the following Tuesday, “God Save The Queen” was number two, to everyone’s surprise, and on the Tuesday after that had fallen back to number four. The facts of the matter are that, in the week leading up to the Silver Jubilee, “God Save The Queen” and the Rod double A-side were both distributed by CBS, and figures confirm that the Pistols were outselling Stewart by something like four to one. But the BPI coined another ruse. They introduced a special rule which stated that no record shops connected with record labels – i.e. HMV and Virgin, the chain stores where most of the Pistols singles were being sold – were to be discounted from the final chart return figures for the purposes of chart compilation. That rule was revoked the following week, by which time it was, intentionally, too late.

The NME chart for that week – it still carried a faint tinge authority in 1977 – had “God Save The Queen” at an unequivocal number one. But everything points to the conclusion that The Industry fiddled the charts so that “God Save The Queen” would not be number one in Jubilee Week, would not embarrass Radio 1, would not leave a ghastly silence at the end of that week’s Top Of The Pops – does anyone else recall poor old Neil Innes dragged onto the show to perform his well-meaning non-ironic non-hit “Jubilee”? And the whole point and purpose of the singles chart was thrown into profound question; of course we all knew that there was always some fiddling going on, favours for PR favours, quid pro quo, all the rest of it, that many number one singles had not honestly reached there. But the Pistols, despite having been set up to promote a clothes shop, were in the end, and indeed practically in the beginning, not about The Industry; far more so than the Arctic Monkeys or Lily Allen, they demonstrated that, despite their record being prevented from being heard by the people who most needed to hear it, despite all the attempts by authority and thugs – frequently interchangeable – to silence the Sex Pistols and all who sailed in them by brute force. As Charles Shaar Murray pointed out in his NME review of the single: “If someone tries that hard to stop you from hearing something, you owe it to yourself to find out why.”

And, despite McLaren’s chortling hindsight-enabled conman routine, the Pistols were real and popular in a way which nobody can really balance now. The Ting Tings? You know that they’ve already been assessed, codified and filed; there are no outraged lorry drivers kicking in their TV screens. They will rise and sustain and fall in a reasonably predictable way. Nothing will really change as a consequence of their existence.

But with punk and the Pistols, everything changed in ways which permeated right down through several subsequent ages; the free pass for kids to start making music again, the green light for female musicians to have equal status and honest independence, the intertwining with reggae and dub, whose consequences continue to echo through the caverns of contemporary grime and dubstep.

And of course there’s the philosophy. In an era where writers who try to praise music and musicians in ways and by the use of comparisons which go beyond the cosy Denmark Street world of marketable categorisation are routinely ridiculed and besmirched by failed television presenters masquerading as music critics, the achievement of “God Save The Queen”’s lyric is all the more remarkable. Back then, at thirteen, I was only just getting to grips with notions like Situationism and Anarchy with a Capital A, not to mention Adorno and the CoBrA Group of artists (from which latter movement Jamie Reid’s graphics derived considerably), but Lydon namechecks and summarises them all (“God save your mad parade,” “All crimes are paid,” “We’re the poison in the machine”). You wouldn’t get that now, or if you did…well, it’s in a perilous state; if Lester Bangs were starting out now he wouldn’t get past the reception desk at King’s Reach Tower, all those canting sycophants at Uncut and Mojo bemoaning the loss of the Golden Days of Real Rock Writing, such writing as would never be compatible with their 80-word capsule starred the-customer-is-king review system…

But there is an escape hatch; the line “We’re the flowers in the dustbin.” In other words, we are the last precious moment, we are your only chance of potential salvation (“We’re the future! YOUR future!”), and so its closest blood brother is “Something In The Air,” which was a gentle clarion call of a scream trying to persuade the stoned of 1969 to get off their backsides and fucking change things. “God Save The Queen” had to be more remorseless by necessity, seizing the listener by the scruff of their complacent neck and trying to shout sense into their stuffed heads of unthinking acceptance. So it stands apart, even tore the meaning of the chart apart, just for a second, opening the curtain and peering through it, revealing what could be done if only we wanted it. Every number one which follows it has difficulty escaping its shadow, for better or worse. It is alone. And it was, and is, number one, in so many infinite and important ways, if only because, by declaring “NO FUTURE,” the Sex Pistols actually gave everybody, me included, a future.

Might be w/e 4th June, though, in which case Dale could get away with passing over it at #11, “No Charge”-style.

great writeup and some great comments. i was three at the time and so there was never THE MOMENT when i first heard the sex pistols and they changed my life. they were always a background presence (one of my earliest memories is of being in the car with my parents and older brothers and saying something about the six pistols to a perplexing embarrased silence) but by the time i really heard them they were a safely commodified piece of rock history, something that came pre-approved as something important, something that people once found shocking and revolutionary, just as they had the stones and the who and bill hayley. but the thing is, thirty years on, if i listen to GSTQ, or especially if i hear it unexpectedly, it doesn’t sound like a historical fact, it sounds like a real and urgent threat, it sounds like something is happening right now and i’d better watch out. as pete townsed said “it sounds like some one shouting “the germans are coming! and we can’t stop them”.

no doubt this record has changed my life by changing lots of other people’s lives (not least the people who made the records in the coming golden age of pop), but hearing it now doesn’t feel like i;m in a world shaped by GHSTQ and the changes have already happened, it sounds like year zero is being declared all over again and i’d better do something about it.

this is glorious pop music but it has a quality which goes outside pop music and feels even now like a shock, like society is being attacked, like i personally am under threat. ‘anarchy in the uk’, ‘bodies’ and ‘holidays in the sun’ also have this, but i can think of pretty much nothing else in any artistic field which does – even other punk records, even the other sex pistols records, are just rock music, GSTQ is something else.

Rosie #17/Waldo #23–

Spot on, both of you. Life and ever-increasing age have taught me to be deeply suspicious of mythology, especially self-mythology. I agree with Waldo that “punk per se was far more tongue-in-cheek than many people fervently believed.” Though far away from the epicenter of it all, my observations of the “punks” I’ve known (or taught) in the ensuing years have suggested that a certain factor of self-amusement was somewhere in their motivations and that none of them even remotely believed that they were making any huge contribution as far as changing society and overthrowing the status quo were concerned.

Personally, my fave Sex Pistols’ song is “L’anarchie dans l’U.K.” (Mais oui! En français!), a cover by the pseudo-Brazilian (actually Australian) cabaret singer Pastel Vespa. (I know, I know–I can hear the roar of disapprobation coming from the “purists,” but it’s hard for me to respect those who suffer from acute irony deficiency syndrome. Obviously, the ironic Ms. Vespa understands the tongue-in-cheek element all too well.)

I am grateful to John Lydon for one thing: He named his next group after a Muriel Spark novel–even though his explanation for doing so suggests that he missed more than half of Spark’s point.

And I don’t think I was supposed to do that, was I?

But you were, Waldo, you were.

Rod Stewart said in Q mag that he wasn’t aware that he had kept the Pistols from no 1 and it was just Lydon who appeared on Juke Box Jury when he was with Public Image, Sid was medically speaking dead by then, Johnny even voted everyting a miss I believe.

Re 18. Amazing piece, as always, but was being in England in 1977 really that terrifying, I wonder? For the majority of people? In inner cities and small towns, perhaps. If you were black, or queer, or something of a misfit, yes. I reckon that there may have been more of a sense of threat from strangers than subsequently, but also more of a sense of the reliability of the goodwill of strangers. But then I was only 4 at the time…

I think that chronologically, though, the economic nadir of the Callahagn government was in 1976 with the IMF crisis, and that the country was experiencing a modest upturn, the jubilee celebrations coinciding with a comparatively optimistic mood. One important thing to remember is that the gap between rich and poor was at its narrowest in 1977, which may be a good indicator of the conditions most needed for a cohesive society.

If he hasn’t already read it, I think that Marcello would find Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘Personality’, about a Lena Zavaroni type figure in 1977, worth investigating.

Move forward six months to May the 28th 1977, though and the NME world clearly orbits around the Sex Pistols. In addition to a classic cover, they take up a further 8 pages. There’s even a safety pin running through the masthead!

This is the issue with CSM’s rave for ‘God Save The Queen’. Other singles reviewed that week include;

The Ramones – Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

Nick Lowe – I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass

Bob Seger – Get Out Of Denver

Parliament – Tear The Roof Off The Sucker

The Clash – Remote Control

The Heartbreakers – Chinese Rocks

The Vibrators – Baby Baby

The Police – Fall Out

ELP – Fanfare For The Common Man

The big news story of the week is “BAD COMPANY: JULY 2 EARLS COURT CONCERT”

Various Billy S xposts:

Lena and I are looking forward very avidly to imagining the look on Dale’s face when he has to play “GSTQ” tomorrow!

Indeed I am familiar with O’Hagan’s work of upmarket slasher fan fiction (much better in my opinion than, say, Gordon Burn’s similarly themed Alma Cogan</i), which is in part why I have never published my own marathon dissertation on the tragic Ms Zavaroni (originally it was going to the final entry on my 1974 A-Z Koons project, if you remember that far back) – also in part because that piece goes far too deep on a personal pain basis even by my standards; there’s a limit to the amount of confessionalising any writer can do. Plus I’m happy now and life is different so I don’t really feel the need to publish it, let alone the urge.

The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t stand up until ‘Holidays In The Sun’ because my ears were a little behind the curve on punk (Marcello seems awfully precocious for such a wee bairn and I’m two years older). I thought ‘Anarchy’ was a horrible noise and I don’t remember ever hearing GSTQ until a years or two later. The Jam were my entree into punk, being just that little more tuneful, then when I did “get” it I was blown away. Life changed, ELO records in the bin, flares chucked out..all that good stuff.

It always struck me peculiar that the Pistols actually harmonise on the chorus of “Anarchy”, which surely flies in the face of the whole concept of the song. The only explanation, it seems to me, is that Lydon was being sneeringly ironic, which I suggest puts money in the bank for the Waldo “Punk was far more tongue-in-cheek…” theory, since irony indicates humour, even though it isn’t quite the same thing.

Yes, of course you’re right, Tom. “A band that could not play…”

About Swindle: both Lydon and McLaren were very friendly with Peter Cook and did their damnedest to persuade Cook to write the screenplay but it never quite came off, and indeed Cook even out-punked Lydon one evening when he came round to Cook’s place and was proferred a bowl of Smarties, at the bottom of which was a selection of what I will diplomatically term “Blue Meanies.”

At the time Cook was also writing a weekly column for the Daily Mail (he didn’t believe a word he wrote in it but said that he just wrote what he thought the Mail people wanted) including one searing, ultra-right wing anti-punk rock tirade which he sat up and co-wrote with McLaren the night before.

So – Dale Winton’s verdict – “You know, given all the fuss at the time, it actually stands up as a good record”

It might be preferable for the single’s historical reputation if people still were prepared to condemn it as a seditious and despicable racket. Which is a reaction that some people might still have if, say, ‘We Are All Prostitutes’ or ‘Reality Asylum’ came onto mainstream radio.

Dale is kind of right, though. By this juncture, The Sex Pistols are such a familiar cultural landmark that only people exposed to this music for the first time realise what a weird and bizzare thing Rotten’s voice was, as unique and unprecedented as Mick Jagger or Bryan Ferry.

A particular delight is how every single line is phrased in an odd way, you can’t anticipate where the emphasis is going to be, drawing and compelling the listener in. The definitive Rotten vocalism is the mirthless cackle, a tone that you can never be certain if its guying you or genuinely unhinged. I think that this uncertainty is best shown in the balance between the “your future” and “no future” lines here.

People cite these lines so often that you can forget how amazing they are. There’s a burning incisive intelligence combined with an uncertainty about what to do next that evokes both living in a time of decay and also what it feels like to be a teenager. I think that you have to hold both interpretations concurrently in your head to really feel this song. You could say that it was a petulant whine, or a situationist artwork, but its brilliance lies in it being both.

And doesn’t this recording sound big? Everything is separated out and made to seem hugely exciting. It doesn’t plod or bludgeon, but it rages!

10

@ Rosie 43: Excellent post, most of which I agree with, but I always thought he was singing “Don’t know what I want”. It’s pretty clear what he did want though.

“Cui bono?” Bono.

I thought we were discussing pop music, not the charts. With the number ones chosen as representative of their times. I don’t think we’ve ever agreed that the number one was the best or the most influential at the time.

I can’t help being reminded of Jeffrey Archer, who once claimed that he was the best writer in the country because he sold more books.

Who is this “we” of whom you speak, Marcello? Is that a Royal ‘we’?

To me, it was a matter of great pride that “The Man” was so threatened by GSTQ that “He” had to suppress it. Pride and outrage.

Yet “Anarchy” is by far the better song, so GSTQ was a slight disappointment to me. I even liked Sheena Is a Punk Rocker more. Possibly because me mum’s called Sheena.

Oh, and it seems to me that Rosie is indulging in an orgy of point missing.