One of the most striking commercials glutting television during the Olympics has been Nike's extreme-sports celebration, which uses "Search and Destroy," a searing slice of proto-punk aggression by (an unidentified) Iggy Pop. It did not destroy the music business - it simply gave it one more trend to recycle at the appropriate time (see also lounge, glitter, disco). Siouxsie has a point: Punk is suddenly chic. Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Dallion) had been in the audience during the Pistols' earliest shows in 1976 and might well have changed music history had she held on to the drummer who backed her at her very first gig - a pre-Pistols Sid Vicious, who was apparently an even worse drummer than bassist.
In fact, one of the Pistols' immediate progeny, Siouxsie and the Banshees, recently announced it was breaking up to protest the current mood of nostalgia surrounding punk. Since the Sex Pistols once screamed "No future!," it's clear they never imagined themselves on a punk oldies circuit, along with the Buzzcocks, the Damned and Stiff Little Fingers, or that the Ramones would (finally) be breaking up just as the Pistols were getting back together. That Sid had been cremated was apparently something she had forgotten, which is surprising since she spilled him at Heathrow Airport while bringing him home.
Apprised of the reunion, Vicious's mother said he was probably spinning in his grave. As Rotten put it at the London news conference announcing the reunion, "Sid was a coat hanger taking up space onstage." Since Vicious never wrote a Pistols song or played bass particularly well, it's safe to assume that the Sex Pistols would not have bothered even to tell him about this 20th-anniversary tour. The late, unlamented Sid Vicious replaced Matlock in 1977 after the original bassist was booted (according to legend, for liking the Beatles according to Matlock, for despising Rotten's clumsy rhyming of "anarchist" and "Antichrist"). They may not be younger than springtime, but they are younger than the Rolling Stones. To ensure financial payback, the Sex Pistols have - like Kiss-in-makeup - reunited their original lineup: Rotten (born Lydon, then Rotten '75-'78, then Lydon '78-'96, then Rotten '96-?) guitarist Steve Jones, 41 drummer Paul Cook, 40 and bassist Glen Matlock, 40. As Rotten put it in the bitter track "EMI," "You thought that we were fakin'/ that we were all just money-makin.' " Actually, the Pistols made no money in their brief but loud career and (with apologies to Neil Young), it's now apparently better to earn out than to rust. And that, it turns out, is the prime motivation for the aptly named "Filthy Lucre Tour" (recording reviewed on this page) that brings the Sex Pistols to the Patriot Center on Tuesday, just as it will bring the Monkees to town later this month, and Kiss in October.Īs the tour title suggests, there's no hidden agenda, no irony: The Sex Pistols are not here to revive the spirit of '77 but simply to catch up on some paydays. Green Day, it should be noted, is just one of the many young bands that have benefited from the punk revival, though less literally than Rancid, punk's Sha Na Na (with Lars Frederiksen in the Bowser role).
Green Day's Billie Joe recently suggested an alternate lyric: "I am the Antichrist! Please buy our merchandise."īillie Joe knows how to go for the jocular. "I am an anar-CHIST! I am the Anti-CHRIST." In their London show, Rotten and the re-formed, seemingly reformed Pistols proceeded to cheerfully revisit the past - there were no new songs to strain the legend - eventually launching into their theme (and now, encore), "Anarchy in the U.K.," in which the 41-year-old Rotten spat out his youthful mantra: Punk's progenitors were kicking off their first tour since the group's implosion at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in January 1978, when Rotten crouched down onstage at show's end and whispered into the microphone, "Ever feel like you've been cheated?" With those chilling words did Johnny Rotten greet the crowd at London's Finsbury Park on June 23 as the Sex Pistols unleashed their first British concert since 1977.