The Sex Pistols and I

Dedicated to my friend Danny O’Brien, whose band The Avengers opened for the Pistols at Winterland in San Francisco at their last performance before their first breakup.

On my second visit to London, in the early autumn of 1976, my pal Ward and I were wandering around in Soho. An eccentrically attired young man in front of a little club tried to lure us in. I asked whom the group in which he was trying to interest us sounded like. “The Stooges!” he said excitedly. I’d been one of the Stooges’ early champions. (You can look it up!) Been there, done that, I thought, and Ward and I continued our search. In so doing, I missed seeing one of the Sex Pistols’ first public performances. I am a foolish, foolish boy.

A week or two later, I visited my friend Chris Thomas, who’d produced my own band’s not-well-received debut and farewell album, in actual Ealing, where he resided with his Japanese pop star girlfriend. He confided that he was about to produce the Sex Pistols. He reckoned that they had…something that more than compensated for lack of musical proficiency. He was of course right.

Back home in West Hollywood, I played “Anarchy in the UK” for the first time, and it thrilled me like nothing I’d heard since “She Loves You”. Has there ever in the history of popular music been a more confrontational recording career-launching first line than “I am the antichrist”? In ordinary circumstances, I’d have found the singer’s asking me to believe that antichrist and anarchist rhyme no less irresponsible than Kim Carnes asking me, in “Bette Davis Eyes” to believe that “precocious” and “pro blush” rhyme, but these were no ordinary circumstances!

I wished Chris had done a tenth as good a job on my band.

The Sex Pistols burned out, as how could they have failed to, barely a year later. Mr. Rotten (who prefers to be referred to as Mr. Lydon, but I don’t fucking give a toss, innit, you cunt) formed a sort of art/punk group called PIL that I found unlistenable. But a friend of mine who’d worked at Warner Records told me that the great man had consented to perform in America only if his mum were allowed to come along. Beneath the studied obnoxiousness, there beat the heart of a loving son. It was later revealed that he was a loving husband too, married 44 years to an older woman for whom he reportedly cared with great tenderness when dementia got hold of her.

Until Adolescence, there hadn’t been anything as great as Johnny Rotten’s appearance on Juke Box Jury in almost half a century.

I read Mr. Rotten’s autobiography, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs and frequently laughed aloud. But throughout the first two decades of the new millennium, I found him decreasingly delightful. “Get a new schtick, for fuck’s sake,” I thought to myself time and again as he kept sneering and snarling as he had in 1976.

He nearly represented Ireland (from which his parents had emigrated) in last year’s Eurovision competition with a love song he wrote for his wife, and sang — that is, didn’t bellow or snarl — quite agreeably.

He got paid millions for a butter commercial, and was glimpsed at LAX looking like an overinflated balloon, apparently because he’d been receiving some sort of steroid treatment. He remained an implcable totturer of his own hair.

I didn’t much care for his expressions of enthusiasm for Trump. “The people have spoke [sic],” Johnny explained, emphasizing with bad grammar his empathy for the working class. “Do shut the fuck up,” thought I, though I was pretty sure he was just reviving his outrage-for-its-own sake schtick.

Mrs. Mendelsohn (she prefers the original, legal spelling) went to see the Sex Pistols at the Royal Albert Hall (let that sink in for a moment!) with our British musician friend Paul Simon last week, even though Mr. Rotten didn’t participate. He’s been fatally displeased with his former bandmates for the past three years, since they allowed to use songs he’d co-written in their Pistol miniseries. The 30-years-younger-than-they tattoo artist Frank Carter proved a credible stand-in. I’m not sure that I believe rumors about the band having first approached Adam Lambert or the late Jim Morrison, who I now read isn’t late after all..

My favorite thing about “Pretty Vacant” is that it Mr. Rotten designed it as an excuse to exclaim, “Cunt!” several times. In the UK, “cunt” is regarded as 4.7 times more offensive than “fuck”. It inspired my own song “Norfolk”, which I designed so that the latter syllable is emphasized. (The Brits pronounce it to rhyme with duck, rather than joke.)

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

You’re sure to enjoy these too!

https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/marjoran-murkas-new-class-couple?r=7yu5q

https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/unrelievable-suffering-be-upon-him?r=7yu5q