288 Hello The Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK

Chart  entered  : 18  December  1976

Chart  peak : 38

Number  of  hits : 10

Here's  the  one  we've  been  waiting  for. The  significance  of  this  single  is  still  much-debated  and  some  writers, particularly  those  who  weren't  around  at  the  time, seek  to  downplay  its  influence  but  it  surely  can't  be  denied  that  the  movement  it  heralded  represented  a  seminal  shift  in  UK  culture  which  clove  the  decade  in  two. I  think  it  was  Rick  Wakeman  who recalled  that  one  minute  you  had  young  bands  playing  in  pubs  singing  about  Tolkien  and  the  next  the  same  guys  were  called  Spit  and  singing  about  glue  sniffing. The  young  writers  who  championed  punk  are,  mostly,  still  active  opinion-formers  today  and  most  of  the  artists  from  this  point  on   are   still  under  retirement  age  so  in  that  sense  we're  entering  the  modern  world  here.

I'm  presuming  people  calling  here  are  fairly  familiar  with  the  Sex  Pistols'  story  so  I'm  not  going  to  dwell  too  long  on  it.  It  starts  of  course  with  a  former  art  student  turned  clothes  seller  named  Malcolm  McLaren  who  was  doing  OK  selling  fifties  gear  to  feed  the  Rock  and  Roll  Revival  of  the  early  seventies. However  this  conservative  client  base was  never  going  to  serve  as  a  platform  for  his  Situationist  ideas  and  he  turned  to  the  American  shock  rock  band  the  New  York  Dolls  who  he  met  at a  trade  fair  in  1973.  His  shop  was  renamed  Sex  selling  fetishwear  and  shirts  with  provocative  slogans. He  supplied  the  Dolls  with  stage  wear  and  became  their  manager  but  they  had  already  shot  their  bolt  and  broke  up  early  in  1975.

However  McLaren  still  saw  a  pop  group  as  the  ideal  subversive  vehicle  and  introduced  two  of  his  ( not  always  paying )  customers,  Steve  Jones  who  played  guitar  and  Paul  Cook who  played  drums , to  his  shop  assistant  Glen  Matlock  who  played  bass  and  fancied  he  could  write  songs. McLaren  wasn't  happy  with  their  original  choice  of  singer  and  approached  a  young  Glaswegian , Midge  Ure  who  preferred  to  stay  with  his  current  band  Slik.  McLaren  approached  another  customer  whose  subversive  ideas  seemed  to  chime  with  his  own. Despite a  very  obvious  inability  to  sing  in  any  technical  sense  of  the  word,  John  Lydon  , a  second  generation  Irish  immigrant, was  drafted  in  as  Johnny  Rotten  on  account  of  his  bad  teeth. All  four  were  around  nineteen  or  twenty  and  none  had  a  recording  history.

While  the  original  quartet  were  still  together  all  the  songs  were  credited  to  the  four  of  them  but  they  all  started  life  as  a  collaboration  between  John  and  Glen  with  the  former  supplying  lyrics  and  the  latter  giving  the  song  some  structure  and  usually  rudimentary  melody.  Their  first  gig  was  at  St  Martin's  College  ( at  which  Glen  was  a  student )  in  November  1975. They  were  influenced  by  the  more  raucous  sixties  bands  The  Who  and  The  Small  Faces  and  US  garage  acts  such  as  The  Stooges  and  the  new  kids  on  the  block,  The  Ramones ( John  has  rejected  that  idea ). They  quickly  started  building  a  following  ; cross-marketing  benefited  both  the  shop  and  the  band.

I  didn't  go  to  see  them  at  the  Free  Trade  Hall  in  Manchester  ; I  doubt  they  would  have  let  an  11-year  old  in  anyway. I  do  though  distinctly  recall  seeing  the  posters  for  the  second  gig when  I  visited  Manchester  with  my  dad  in  the  summer  holidays  in  1976; I  think  it  was  my  last  visit  to  Belle  Vue  Zoo  which  closed  the  following  year. The  magic  word  in  the  group's  name  caught  my  eye  because  I'd  only  just  found  out  what  it  meant; the  headmaster  at  my  new  school  had  informed  new  parents  in  the  introductory  letter  that  incoming  pupils  should  be  aware  of  "the  facts  of  life". The  concert  had  actually  already  happened  by  then  but  Manchester  city  centre  was  then  a  huge  building  site  with  acres  of  boarding  protecting  the  construction  site  of  the  new  Arndale  Centre   which  was  a  windfall   for  fly  posters.  I  feel  very  privileged  to  have  been  young  at  the  time  of  the  punk  explosion; I  don't  think  there's  been  anything  quite  like  it  since.

After  they  appeared  on  Tony  Wilson's  So  It  Goes  where  they  performed  "Anarchy  in  the  UK"  the  record  companies  became  interested  and  in  October  they  signed  with  EMI. This  became  their  first  single, released  in  a  featureless  black  sleeve  ( the  idea  of  McLaren  and  his  buddy  Jamie  Reid ).

"Anarchy  In  The  UK"  doesn't  concern  itself  with  anarchy  as  a  hippy  would  understand  it, a  society  where  people  worked  things  out  for  themselves  in   a  peaceful  fashion  without  direction  from  a  central  authority. John's   pessimistic  version  is  violent ,  destructive  and   inescapable -  "I  wanna  destroy  passers  by !" He  makes  the  same  diagnosis  as  the  retired  colonels  who  were  apparently  plotting  a  military  coup  at  the  time  but  he  doesn't  want  to  forestall  the  apocalypse    he  relishes  the  prospect  and  wants  to  bring  it  on.  In  that  opening  couplet  "I am  an  Antichrist  / I  am  an  anarchist "  he's  saying to  Middle  England  I  am  your  worst  nightmare. There's  a  clear  Alice  Cooper  tieback  there  -John  was  16  in  the  summer  of  1972  - and  may  well  have  been  thinking  of  School's Out 's rhyming  difficulty  when he  came  up  with  the  infamous  "An-ar-keist"  pronunciation.

There's  no  coherent  vision  in  the  song; it's  not  a  manifesto  or  a  positive  programme.  It's  a  howl  of  inchoate  rage  aimed  at  several  targets  at  once .Some  of  it  is  actually  bathetic. No  revolution  has  ever  been  started  by  giving  someone  the  wrong  time  when  asked. It's  also  grounded  in  its  time  by  the  reference  to  the  MPLA*  which  few  people  would  recognise  perhaps  even  then.

It's  performed  with  energy  and  attack  led  by  Lydon's  inimitable  sneer,  apparently  based  on  Olivier's  portrayal  of  another  disruptive  force , Richard  III  ( as  Shakespeare  would  have  him ).
Glen's  over-driven  bass  and  Chris  Thomas's  multi-tracking  of  Steve's  guitar  licks  ( his  musicianship  took  everyone  by  surprise )  defined  the  sound  of  punk. It  wasn't  the  first  punk  single  but  Stiff  didn't  have  the  nous  to  get  The  Damned's  New  Rose  into  the  shops  and  The  Vibrators  weren't  going  to  be  taken  seriously  while  they  were  on  RAK.

As  we  know,  a  week  into  the  song's  release  McLaren  accepted  on  their  behalf  a  last  minute  invitation  onto  London's  Today  programme  when  label  mates  Queen  pulled  out. The  band  had  been  drinking  and  didn't  want  to  be  there  and  the  cantankerous  host  Bill  Grundy  who'd  also  been  drinking  certainly  didn't  want  to interview  them. It's  not  surprising  that  it  all  went  pear-shaped  when  Grundy  lost  interest  in  the  guys  and  started  chatting  up  their  female  hangers  on  who'd  somehow  blagged  their  way  onto  the  set.  It  was  Steve  who  accepted  Grundy's  challenge  to  up  the  ante  in  the  swearing; what's  striking  is  how  cowed   and  uncomfortable  John  looks  in  the  footage. It  doesn't  serve  his  purpose  to   be  thought  a  lout  and  quickly  tries  to  cover  up  his  own  faux  pas  after  saying  "That's  their  tough  shit" earlier  in  the  interview.

The  tabloids  went  bananas  the  following  day; one  recounting  the  famous  story  of  the  man  putting  his  foot  through  the  screen  in  anger. They  became  the  most  infamous  band  in  the  country  overnight. Curiously  it  didn't  do  a  great  deal  for  sales  of  the  single. Perhaps  people  elsewhere  in  the  UK  who  hadn't   been  able  to  see  the  broadcast  hesitated  to  respond  to  a  London-led  firestorm. Or  maybe  EMI  had  already  decided  to  get  shut  of  them  and  didn't  want  to  press  any  more  copies.

Still  it  remains  a  religious  record  for  many  of  my  generation. In  the  late  nineties  I  used  to  go  to  a  pub  in  Rochdale  mainly  to  keep  in  touch  with  a  friend  who  liked  to  see  the  live  bands  there.  None  of  them  were  much  cop  but   if  any  started  playing  this  there'd  be  a  rush  to  the  front  and  a  hunt  for  a  spare  microphone  to  bawl  along.

*  The  Movimento   Popular  de  Libertacao   de  Angola, a  left  wing  faction  in  the  Angolan  Civil  War  which  displayed  an  alarming  relish  for  murdering  people  once  it  had  attained  power.