John Lydon - Anger is an Energy (2014)

 

I was initially puzzled as to why he seemed to have written it all over again, and having already read Rotten, I didn't bother with this one. Then, recently re-reading the aforementioned Rotten I noticed that it came out thirty years ago and therefore assumed this must be a continuation; but it makes a second sweep of both Lydon's troubled childhood and his time in the Pistols, so it isn't that either. Now, however, I understand - Rotten was a counter to all those history of punk books that were popping up at the time and not quite getting it right, whereas this is the autobiography proper, now that he's had a lot more to write about.

...or at least to talk about. Once again, we're back with that conversational style of as told to, complete with digressions and the kind of asides which make more sense in speech than on the page. It can be both exhausting and maddening at times, but I get the impression it was either that or the book wouldn't have happened at all; so you just have to get used to it, which you do because Lydon is a very entertaining man who says a lot which needs to be said.

It may not surprise you to learn that our man tends to blow his own trumpet loudly and often. At one point, for example, he takes credit for shops opening on Sunday because Public Image Ltd played at the Rainbow Theatre on Boxing Day back in 1978. However, this isn't to say that he lacks self-awareness regarding the complaints of his most vocal critics:

'What is it they're really trying to say? Have they a point? Should I analyze myself?' And of course, being me, I do. Well, I'm glad to report that I came out of my own self-analysis rather favourably.

Inevitably we also have certain contradictions, and my favourite of these refers to producer, Dave Jerden, slapping a sample of the Pistols' God Save the Queen over the coda of Acid Drops from That What is Not. I'm absolutely certain I've seen an interview - and just months ago - wherein John describes this having been done without his knowledge and so he's furious when he hears it, then eventually grows to like the idea; on the subject of which, herein we find:

At the end of the song I wanted the end refrain from God Save the Queen - 'nooooo fuuuuuture!' That to me seemed absolutely appropriate. I hope he remembers 'me like acid drops.'

Think Tank was about the rewriting of history that was going on with all them idiot punk books…

Yes, the rewriting of history…

Well, it doesn't matter, and our boy seems to pride himself on his contradictions with fairly good reason, rightly viewing them as symptomatic of the ability to think and progress, as distinct from merely hooting and clapping one's flippers in service of this week's most fashionable doctrine, regarding some of which - in case you were wondering - he also asks that we don't go mistaking his views as similar to those of that twat, Nigel Farage, in those actual words.

...sometimes I will say one thing to get a result, when I actually mean the opposite.

See? It isn't actually difficult to grasp, and any other silly questions you may have are capably answered in this book, which is far from perfect, but probably wouldn't do its job quite so well if it were.

You remember that deal with court jesters using comedic forms to say that which cannot otherwise be said? Well, while this one falls on its arse page after page, it nevertheless comes up smelling of roses nearly every time and is generally wise as fuck.

John Lydon - Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (1993)

 

I had a feeling this one might not have stood the test of time quite so well after I read Lonely Boy, and although it probably isn't quite such a riot as Steve Jones' account, it's pretty fucking good and remains a refreshing alternative to the usual bollocks about how the Pistols were actually the Raoul Vaneigem of their day - or what amounted to the usual bollocks for a long time - not to mention all that Malcolm's masterplan shite to which a few idiots still seem to subscribe.

That said, Rotten has the initially off-putting cadence of one of those as told to autobiographies, but you get used to it and the stuff that matters is what's said more than how it's been set down. Of course, Rotten has fallen out of favour of late thanks to both Country Life butter and his vocal expressions of admiration for both Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. Whilst I'd suggest that the Country Life thing only constitutes a betrayal if you've ever mistaken the man for Joe Strummer - and I doubt even Alan Moore managed that leap - the chuckling praise for complete shitbags seems entirely consistent with everything else he ever said in pursuit of annoying those who deserve to be annoyed as much and as often as feasibly possible.

A lot of people feel the Sex Pistols were just negative. I agree, and what the fuck is wrong with that? Sometimes the absolute most positive thing you can be in a boring society is completely negative. It helps. If you're not, you show weakness, and you must never do that.

Having never experienced any desire to belong to any club that would have me as a member, I really felt that I got what the Pistols were about from the moment I first went around my friend Sean's house and, instead of listening to Remember You're a Womble as we usually did, he somehow had a copy of that pop record with all the rude words; and so, regardless of the music, I've never understood why there are still people who don't get the Pistols, persons who presumably never developed any sort of inherent scepticism regarding those claiming to have our best interests at heart. Is it not just common sense?

With this in mind, it's worth noting that Rotten incorporates statements and even entire chapters from others who were around at the time, even where Lydon's own testimony is contradicted. If you don't understand why anyone would do that in their own autobiography, you probably need to read this and to keep reading it until you're no longer a twat.

Sorry. That's just how it is.

The Making of the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

Joel McIver
The Making of the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (2005)
Here's an oddity, one of a series of books examining classic movies - classic movies such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Scarface and er… The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.

Me neither.

I guess the general public must have been similarly mystified given that I picked this up cheap from a remaindered section somewhere in the general vicinity of its publication date. It's been sat on my bookshelves ever since, five different bookshelves given the number of times I've moved house since my presumed purchase - presumed because it's a vague impression rather than a definitive memory. I assume it's been there sandwiched between Lydon and Milligan all this time, somehow eluding even those sweeps deliberately intended to select volumes I never got around to reading. Similarly, I've seen The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and don't remember much about that either. I rate the soundtrack album quite highly, and even Moorcock's bizarre pseudo-novelisation of the film is pretty great, but the movie itself…

McIver's autopsy handily includes a scene by scene synopsis, thus allowing me to remember why I've failed to remember the thing, specifically that it was mostly existing footage cobbled together like a last minute homework assignment which cleverly admits to being crap in the hope we won't notice that it is, in actual fact, crap; plus it was McLaren's vision of the Pistols and therefore pretty much a complete waste of time.

Nevertheless, in discussing a movie which wasn't anywhere near as amazing as I hoped it would be when I was fourteen, McIver pulls together all sorts of fascinating historical details which somehow failed to make it into other Pistols biographies, or were else so underplayed that I didn't notice. Sid, in particular, comes out of it quite well, and actual light is shed upon why he almost certainly wasn't responsible for killing his girlfriend, which is good to know; and crap as the film was, Julian Temple's justification is interesting. Even Russ Meyer comes out of it well enough to suggest his version might have been worth a look, had it been made.

It's surprising that anyone should have found something new to say about punk rock in 2005 - or if not new, at least something obvious which hadn't been said before - but McIver pulled it off. I'm still not too bothered about watching the movie ever again, but I'm glad this thing found its way onto my shelves.

Sex Pistols File

Ray Stevenson (editor) Sex Pistols File (1978)
I borrowed this from some kid at school and spent the next couple of weeks absorbing more or less every last detail. With hindsight, I'm not even sure I had any of their records at that point and may only have known them from Sid's versions of Something Else and C'mon Everybody. By the time I had enough of a disposable income to buy my own copy, it had vanished from the shelves and the moment had passed. Now catching up, four decades later, I'm astonished to realise that I vaguely knew the guy who put the book together. My friend Carl came to know Ray Stevenson fairly well in later years and so I met him down the pub on a couple of occasions. I knew he had one hell of a reputation as having taken many of the best known photographs of the whole punk era, and I vaguely recall he had some great stories, but somehow the penny didn't quite drop beyond something fairly basic about my probably having seen his work in Sounds.

Well, fuck me.

The book is a scrappy splatter of Ray's photographs along with articles and interviews from the papers arranged in roughly chronological order so as to provide a pleasantly impressionistic summary of the rise and fall of the Pistols, and one which - oddly enough - seems to work better than the usual biographical narratives through the image and noise being preserved without any dominant authorial voice getting in the way. So it reads now just as it did then, from my perspective, as the fortunes of a bunch of older kids who were trying to make things a bit more fun and interesting than they had been for some time. Maybe it's not so much that I lost sight of what this book did for me, but I'd forgotten how much of it came from this thing. This was where I learned that sometimes it's necessary, even positive, to point out when something is dull or stupid or needs to be replaced by something better. We seem to have forgotten this of late, at least judging by the number of times I've had some self-appointed gatekeeper set me right about adults dressed as characters from children's television shows, or insisting that I really should try with such and such a fucking Yes album because the musicianship blah blah blah...

I don't really care that Rotten sells butter and votes Donald, and I don't really care that they were a boy band. They taught me the joys of saying no, and unpopular opinions, and not turning into your parents, and never having to say you're sorry. I sort of wish I'd realised this and had been able to directly thank Ray Stevenson when I had the opportunity, but never mind. It probably would have come across as slightly weird.

This one, in all sincerity, changed my life.

Lonely Boy

Steve Jones Lonely Boy (2016)
I'd heard good things about this one and it has exceeded my expectations. I've read a few books about the Pistols over the years and never anticipated that the best would be written by their guitarist, a man who, by his own admission, could barely read or write until he was in his thirties. To be fair, Lonely Boy wasn't so much written as told to some bloke with a tape recorder, so it reads like a transcription of a conversation in a pub; which might be a problem but for Jones being sharp as a knife and a genuine wit. It turns out that I didn't actually know much about the guy before this beyond a penchant for pies, beer and knobbing. I didn't realise quite how driven he was in pursuit of the same, or quite how expansive his career as petty criminal had been, or that he was clearly the most important Sex Pistol, the one without whom it would have been a different group and probably a waste of time.

Lonely Boy reminds me of nothing so much as being sat in the pub with Terry, with whom I used to work, talking complete bollocks, but complete bollocks with a point, and which ultimately says something profoundly meaningful about existence albeit in an indirect way. It's a fucking joy to read and makes most other rock autobiographies look like complete wank.

Jonesy, I tip my hat to you. This is the best thing I've read in a long, long time.

Makes Lydon look a bit of a twat too!

My Amazing Adventures with the Sex Pistols

Dave Goodman My Amazing Adventures with the Sex Pistols (2006)
As may be obvious from the title, this is written in a conversational tone by someone for whom writing books doesn't come naturally, so it reads a little like a footballer's autobiography - no actual descriptions of how I opened the door and who should be stood there but my famous friend, Joe Pasquale, but we're skating pretty close; and yet in spite of this, Goodman's book threatens to be the best thing ever written about the Pistols for most of its page count - keeping in mind that I'm yet to read Steve Jones' Lonely Boy, and it's been at least a decade since I read anything by Rotten or the Vermorels. Dave Goodman was the Pistols' sound engineer, arguably their first producer, and a staple of their entourage in the early days. Amazing Adventures therefore differs from a great many of the other books - fixated as they seem to be with pound shop Situationism and layers of irony attributed to something which was actually pretty straightforward - in being an account of gigging with the Pistols before anyone had heard of them, back when it was still fun. As such, it dispels most of the mythology, not least the one about them being unable to play, and constitutes an amiable, even heart warming ramble through a much misrepresented period of rock history and even MacLaren comes out of it quite well.

If you've been in a band of even vaguely punky disposition, and if you've recorded in a London studio, you will almost certainly recognise Dave Goodman as one of an archetype. I've known at least two Daves, former hippies more through a love of booze and space fags than ideology, always a bit older than anyone in the band, working class and very, very funny. In my limited experience, the best thing about going into the studio is usually the engineer.

All the same, this isn't to say the engineer should necessarily consider writing his memoirs, hilarious though those tales may be. Goodman comes across as a likeable bloke, but one with a slightly inflated understanding of his own importance, and clearly one who has gone beyond the veil when it comes to the consumption of recreational substances - gone beyond the veil and decided to live there judging by the final ten or so pages. Somewhere near the end we begin a page with something or other about the legal arguments surrounding The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, then finish the next one reading about Tony Blair and George W. Bush conspiring to suppress the release of Dave's Wedding Day single, fearing that the knowledge it reveals will bring western capitalism crashing down around their ears - just as soon as the kids hear the song and decide they've had enough. Wedding Day is described as Anarchy in the UK re-recorded with new lyrics written by Goodman. I had a look on Discogs, but they don't seem to have any copies, or even to acknowledge its ever having existed. It's a shame the book ends as it does, but is probably consistent with this being the same guy who made those pointless Ex Pistols records.

So I went from recognising the type from studio engineers I've known, to feeling as though I've actually been in a band with this guy, which is a bit tiresome given a couple of the nutcases for whom I've squozen an accordion over the years.