Fred & Judy Vermorel Sex Pistols - the Inside Story (1981)
Here's an actual crappy 1970s paperback with airbrushed Sex Pistols on the cover, and probably not worth reviewing because it isn't like I have anything profound to say. D.H. Lawrence's White Peacock was getting a bit too chewy for bedtime reading so I took to dipping into this, the expanded edition of a book published soon after they split first time around. It's mostly excerpts from Sophie's diary - Sophie being McLaren's secretary, roughly speaking - coupled with verbatim transcripts of interviews with everyone involved, thus allowing the band to pretty much speak for themselves; which is great. The material which I gather has been added to form the expanded edition doesn't really do much, maybe even detracts from the first and otherwise snappier part of the book. The added interviews with record company types aren't particularly interesting, and there's Fred Vermorel's lengthy essay, When Malcolm Laughs, which is at least better than the usual bollocks people tend to write about Malcolm the Master Situationist, except that it never fully escapes from being the usual bollocks people tend to write about Malcolm the Master Situationist. Oh well. This book is still better than a lot of the stuff which has been written about this group.
Here's an actual crappy 1970s paperback with airbrushed Sex Pistols on the cover, and probably not worth reviewing because it isn't like I have anything profound to say. D.H. Lawrence's White Peacock was getting a bit too chewy for bedtime reading so I took to dipping into this, the expanded edition of a book published soon after they split first time around. It's mostly excerpts from Sophie's diary - Sophie being McLaren's secretary, roughly speaking - coupled with verbatim transcripts of interviews with everyone involved, thus allowing the band to pretty much speak for themselves; which is great. The material which I gather has been added to form the expanded edition doesn't really do much, maybe even detracts from the first and otherwise snappier part of the book. The added interviews with record company types aren't particularly interesting, and there's Fred Vermorel's lengthy essay, When Malcolm Laughs, which is at least better than the usual bollocks people tend to write about Malcolm the Master Situationist, except that it never fully escapes from being the usual bollocks people tend to write about Malcolm the Master Situationist. Oh well. This book is still better than a lot of the stuff which has been written about this group.
No comments:
Post a Comment