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The Boy Looked at Eurydice

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This piece appeared in Berfrois on 17 July 2014.

The Boy Looked at Eurydice

Retro-futurism, as we now call it, came out of the closet in the late ’70s due to the widespread feeling that there was indeed ‘no future’ any more. Whilst Johnny Rotten waxed apocalyptical, Howard Devoto screeched existentially about his future no longer being what it was. Time seemed topsy-turvy, out of joint; the future not something to look forward to, but to look back on. “About the future I can only reminisce,” sang Pete Shelley on a dotty ditty dedicated to “nostalgia for an age yet to come”. (Significantly enough, it was almost immediately covered — recycled — by Penetration.) This trend was knowing and ‘ironic’ in typical postmodern mode (à la Rezillos or B-52’s), but also imbued with a genuine longing for a time — mainly the 50s and 60s — when the march of progress (in the shape of the space age and consumer society) seemed unstoppable. A time, crucially, when the future punks were still children, or twinkles in their parents’ eyes. Twinkling little stars.

When we were young, we were very young. You had to be. After witnessing the Sex Pistols for the first time, Richard Strange (Doctors of Madness) suddenly sensed that his time was up: “I’m two years too old,” he lamented. Joe Strummer could have drawn the very same conclusion. Upon joining The Clash, he was deemed “a bit old” by Glen Matlock (himself only four years younger). Concealing his real age would be an essential part of the public schoolboy-cum-pub rocker’s reinvention as a bona fide punk. A year on from the Pistols’ acrimonious demise, Steve Jones confided in Sounds, “I feel a bit old. I walk down the street and see these little punk rockers, about 13, and they don’t even recognise me”. Already in his mid-thirties by 1980, Charlie Harper (UK Subs) screamed his desire to be “teenage” as though it were a state of mind, or perhaps even the only way to be: “Teenage / I wanna be teenage / I wanna be teenage / I wanna be”.

When we were young, we were impossibly young. Sid Vicious boasted that he “didn’t even know the Summer of Love was happening” because he was “too busy playing with [his] Action Men”. “See my face, not a trace / No reality,” sang the Sex Pistols on “Seventeen,” the closest they ever got to a generational manifesto. Buzzcocks, who had barely reached adulthood, penned a paean to “feeling almost sixteen again”. In a cheeky act of lèse-majesté — given that this was the single John Lydon had mimed to during his fabled King’s Road audition — Eater wound back Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” to “Fifteen,” thus reflecting the group’s average age. The Lurkers, and countless others, glamorised the growing pains of being “Just Thirteen”…

“It’s funny,” says Nicky in The Vortex, “how mother’s generation always longed to be old when they were young, and we strain every nerve to keep young.” Was The Vortex club named after Noël Coward’s 1924 play, or was it a nod to Ezra Pound’s 1914 essay? All we can say for sure is that, more than any other subculture before or since, punk was afflicted with Peter Pan syndrome. Oscar Wilde’s famous aphorism — “To be premature is to be perfect” — had found its ideal embodiment. Early gigs frequently resembled a St Trinian’s prom night gatecrashed by the Bash Street Kids. The ubiquitous school uniforms — all wonky ties and peekaboo stockings — were designed to rub punks’ youthfulness in the face of the rock dinosaurs and other Boring Old Farts. One could also flag up the recurring theme of onanism (“Orgasm Addict” and “Teenage Kicks” being the prime examples) as well as McLaren’s dodgy flirtation with paedophilia (from the early nude boy T-shirt through Bow Wow Wow) to argue that the Blank Generation was more clockwork satsuma than orange. Bliss was it in that dawn to be young. But to be a punk rocker was very heaven!

Punk was carpe diem recollected in cacophony — living out your “teenage dreams,” and sensing, almost simultaneously, that they would be “so hard to beat” (The Undertones). The movement generated an instant nostalgia for itself, so that it was for ever borne back to the nebulous primal scene of its own creation. Its forward momentum was backward-looking, like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history. To quote the Cockney Rejects on their debut album:

I wanna go back to where it all began / And I wanna do a gig in my back garden / Wanna have a laugh before the press get in / If you give ’em half a chance / They’ll kill the fucking thing (“Join the Rejects”).

By 1980, when that record was released, going back to “where it all began” meant totally different — and even contradictory — things to totally different — and indeed contradictory — people. Every splinter group that joined the ranks of the punk diaspora (goth, oi!, the Mod revival, 2-Tone, No Wave, cold wave, post-punk, early New Romanticism, anarcho-punk, positive punk, psychobilly, hardcore, etc.) was a renewed attempt to recapture an original unity, which the emergence of these very splinter groups made impossible. As Paul Gorman put it in a recent documentary, “People began to play with, and tease out, the strands which were therein, and it was so rich, and so full of content, that one strand could lead to a whole movement”. When Garry Bushell claims that the Rejects were “the reality of punk mythology” — which is precisely what Mark Perry had previously said apropos of Sham 69 — he is referring to a very restrictive, lumpen version of punk that excludes most of the early bands bar The Clash. (Even within The Clash, only Joe ‘Citizen Smith’ Strummer ever really subscribed to this view.) Many Blitz Kids felt that it was their scene — which was not only contemporaneous with Oi! but also its inverted mirror image — that captured the true spirit of the early movement.

Expressing a desire to “go back to where it all began” is all well and good, but where did it all begin, and how far back do you have to go to get there?

Where is a bit of a red herring. New York City had a head start, but it is obvious that punk would have remained a drug-drenched late flowering of the beatnik scene without Britain’s contribution. If punk came from the United States, the United Kingdom was its destination; its manifest destiny. When former New York Doll Syl Sylvain failed to join the fledgling Sex Pistols, in London, Malcolm McLaren gave his white Les Paul to Steve Jones. This symbolic passing of the baton was echoed by the recruitment of Johnny Rotten in lieu of Richard Hell, who also remained stranded on the other side of the Pond. Rotten looked a hell of a lot like Hell — which is why he was auditioned in the first place — but he certainly was no lookalike. The fact that he had developed a similar style (spiky hair and ripped clothes) was purely coincidental, proving that something must have been in the air.

Attempting to pinpoint when that something first appeared is also a non-starter. Do you go back to Television’s early gigs at CBGB, or to the New York Dolls, or the Stooges, or right back to Dada by way of Situationism? The point of origin recedes as one approaches it.

Locating the end point of the first — authentic — stage of punk proves equally problematic. Was it when Sid Vicious lobbed a pint glass during The Damned’s set, on the second night of the 100 Club Punk Festival (September 1976)? Or when the Pistols, goaded by Bill Grundy, swore on prime-time television (December 1976)? When The Clash signed to CBS (January 1977)? The chaotic Silver Jubilee boat party (June 1977)?…

The history of punk is, above all, the story of the traumatic loss of its elusive essence: that brief moment in time when a new sensibility was beginning to coalesce — sufficiently well defined to be recognised by the cognoscenti; sufficiently amorphous to accommodate a wealth of conflicting impulses. A brief moment which may have ended, symbolically, with Jonh Ingham’s “Welcome to the (?) Rock Special” piece, published on 9 October 1976. Significantly, the article opens with a few crucial considerations on onomastics:

I was hoping to avoid mentioning the bloody word at all, but since Sounds has so adamantly advertised this shebang as a Punk Rock special, I guess there’s no avoiding it. In the context of the band [the Sex Pistols] and people mentioned in the following pages, I hate the word as much as they do.

The debate surrounding the new movement’s christening is often glossed over nowadays. McLaren, for instance, favoured ‘new wave’ in homage to the French nouvelle vague — a monicker that ended up describing punk’s more commercial fellow-travellers and other bandwagon-jumpers. The fact that the noun that finally stuck (courtesy of Melody Maker journalist Caroline Coon) was second-hand — ‘historically inaccurate,’ as Ingham points out — made it all the easier to reject. To get a purchase on the new phenomenon it was necessary to name it, but the transaction could only be a rip-off: the word gave you punk by taking it away, replacing it with a grotesque caricature.

My contention is that punk died as soon as it ceased being a cult with no name (or with several possible names, which comes to the same thing). Linder Sterling recently recalled how, upon witnessing the Pistols for the first time, she did not “even have the language to describe what it [was]” — which is doubtless why the impact it made on her was so profound. In the beginning was the unword, when the unnamed cult remained a question mark to outsiders and insiders alike. Punk — in its initial, pre-linguistic incarnation, when the blank in Blank Generation had not yet been filled in by that “bloody word” — was the potentiality of punk. It escaped definition, could never be pinned down, as it was constantly in the process of becoming. Punk was a movement towards itself, made up of people who disliked movements and kept pulling in opposite directions. Devoto’s brilliant parting shot, when he sabotaged the first stage of his career, springs to mind: “I don’t like music. I don’t like movements”.

Michael Bracewell claims that “one of punk’s very first roles was to debate its own definition — to make internal dissent an integral part of its own identity”. Such self-reflexivity ensured that the nascent movement never quite coincided with itself. If the original spirit of punk is anywhere to be found, it is in this gap, this disjuncture — this grey area. One could even argue that punk was “a thinking against itself”, to hijack Adorno’s famous phrase: internal dissent was its identity. Take Buzzcocks’ “Boredom” (on the Spiral Scratch EP, released in January 1977) which was so presciently contrary that it performed the feat of debunking punk clichés before they had even had time to become clichés.

A mere four years after the launch of Dada, Tristan Tzara declared that “the real dadas” were now “against DADA”. The real punks were also against punk, or at least the label. Being a true punk was something that could only go without saying; it implied never describing oneself as such. Insiders would often claim that they listened to heavy dub reggae, krautrock, or just about anything but punk rock itself. Like Eurydice, punk could only be approached by turning away.

Punk’s year zero mentality (like all other attempts to start again from scratch) was haunted by a yearning to return to some original, prelapsarian state — back in the garage, when the cult still had no name, before they killed the fucking thing. Being born again is just that: being born again. Being borne back.

Punk fashion reflected this doomed quest for authenticity. The playful, postmodern plundering of rock history’s wardrobe, the deconstruction and reassembly, collage and bricolage; the ambiguous semiotics and DIY aesthetics, gave way to a drab, off-the-peg uniform. The look was radicalised and codified until it finally ossified into mohicaned cliché — a process which mainly took place between 1979 and 1981. By increasingly becoming itself, punk, paradoxically enough, lost its soul — that sense of feeling “almost” sixteen again; of being on the cusp of an awfully big adventure.

The Young Parisians

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This appeared in the summer 2010 issue of Nude Magazine (issue 16, pp. 40-43):

The Young Parisians

‘Why don’t you come to Paris with me?
And see the young Parisians’
– “Young Parisians” by Adam and the Ants

‘There’s something very un-British about electronic music,’ says Daniel Miller — founder of Mute Records — in BBC Four’s excellent Synth Britannia documentary. By ‘very un-British’ he means très European — German, of course, but also French. Lest we forget, musique concrète composers like Pierre Schaeffer began their sonic experiments before Stockhausen. Most Continentals in the late 70s were first introduced to synthesizers via Jean-Michel Jarre not Kraftwerk. Métal Urbain — France’s answer to the Sex Pistols — produced their scuzzy rabble-rousing pogobeat on custom-made imitation Moogs at a time when electronic instruments were still usually associated with prog rock dinosaurs. The strong French presence on Angular Records’ recent Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics compilation was generally met with dismay by British music journalists who were blissfully unaware of the existence of a thriving post-punk scene across the Channel (Indochine, a synthpop outfit in the Depeche mode, even became France’s biggest band at one point). Whereas Gallic guitar combos have always been viewed — rightly or wrongly — as derivative vis-à-vis their Anglo-American counterparts, the synth-driven ‘French Touch’ sound was successfully exported ‘around the world’ at the turn of the century. The missing link between the early 80s and late 90s was Denis Quillard, better known as Jacno, who died in November last year at the age of 52 having cemented his country’s love affair with electronic minimalism.

There are times when the past, present and future seem to collide, and one such occasion occurred on 9 February 1977 when Jacno’s band, the Stinky Toys, were invited to a music press junket aboard the eponymous Trans Europe Express coinciding with the release of Kraftwerk’s album. Having a reputation to maintain as the enfants terribles of the local punk scene, the Toys went off the rails, much to the amusement of their more sedate German hosts. Legend has it that singer Elli Medeiros was sick all over the boss of EMI France, who subsequently refused to sign the band to his label and even tried to get them blacklisted. Jacno, however, had caught a glimpse of his musical future. As fate would have it, the train was bound for the Champagne region where he was buried some thirty years later in the vicinity of his family’s impressive country pile.

With his angelic features and slicked-back hair, the young Jacno bore a striking resemblance to David Bowie circa 1976. Throughout his short life he felt like a man who had fallen to earth, often describing himself as a ‘Martian’. Significantly, one of his more recent solo efforts was entitled ‘Je viens d’ailleurs’: ‘I Come From Elsewhere’. There was something of the Byronic noble bandit about him, which — along with a deep-rooted anglophobia — was in fact very much part of his vieille France DNA. The Stinky Toys’ tipple of choice was famously one of the cheapest brands of lager on the French market (Valstar), but Jacno soon reverted to type after the band broke up, making a point of only ever getting rat-arsed on the finest of vintages. In the early days, he always sported a fleur-de-lis on the lapel of his leather jacket — a symbol of the French monarchy frequently associated with the far right. This gesture was interpreted at the time as a typically punk shock tactic, but it was really Jacno’s private homage to his eccentric royalist grandfather from whom he inherited an aristocratic disdain for work and a militant nonconformism which set him aside from the herd mentality of a movement he never really belonged to. His ancestry also included several artists whose works are exhibited in the Louvre as well as one of the four generals who organised the failed Algiers putsch of 1961 designed to overthrow President de Gaulle. When his record company refused to bring out his first solo record or release him from his contract, Jacno sent the CEO a picture of old Uncle Zeller with a caption warning him that his factory was going to be blown up. Job done.

This quintessentially Gallic mixture of rebellion and tradition explains why Jacno is so often lost in translation. He belongs to a long line of elegantly wasted rock dandies that includes the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc, Yves Adrien, Alain Pacadis, Patrick Eudeline and Daniel Darc (a book of interviews, published in 2006, was aptly entitled Itinerary of a Pop Dandy). Just as Jacno himself embodied early-80s ultra-modernity while whizzing around town on a vintage scooter looking like he had just stepped out of a Nouvelle Vague movie, his post-Stinky Toys compositions managed to capture the zeitgeist while harking back, in a knowing, postmodern way, to the saccharine yéyé pop of the early 60s. The repetitive, almost dirge-like minimalism of ‘Anne cherchait l’amour’ (1979) — with its haunting, bittersweet Françoise Hardy-on-Prozac quality — perfectly illustrates this attempt to have your croissant and eat it. Whether in the past or the future, Jacno, it seems, was always elsewhere.

Along with New York and London, Paris was one of the three great centres of pre-punk activity, and France played an important part in shaping the punk template. Richard Hell’s spiky-haired wasted look was modelled on the fin-de-siècle poètes maudits. The ideological and aesthetic underpinnings of the Sex Pistols project came largely from the (chiefly French) Situationists. When the movement was still anonymous, the late Malcolm McLaren favoured calling it ‘New Wave’ in reference to the cinematic Nouvelle Vague — a monicker which ended up describing punk’s more commercial fellow-travellers. As early as 1972, dandy rock critic Yves ‘Sweet Punk’ Adrien (as he already called himself) penned a proto-punk manifesto which was the journalistic equivalent of Lenny Kaye’s seminal Nuggets compilation, released the same year and available at L’Open Market, Marc Zermati’s legendary record shop where Jacno and all the future Parisian punks used to hang out. Zermati would go on to launch the very first punk label (Skydog Records) and festival (Mont-de-Marsan, 1976). Future Ze Records supremo Michel Esteban and his then partner Lizzy Mercier Descloux (who would also play a pivotal role in New York’s No Wave scene) launched a rival emporium (Harry Cover) within gobbing distance of L’Open Market, thus sealing Les Halles’ reputation as the epicentre of Parisian punk activity. It was there that Malcolm McLaren bumped into the Stinky Toys, was impressed by Elli’s creative use of safety pins, and invited the band to take part in the 100 Club punk festival where their presence gave an international dimension to the nascent movement.

Chain-smoking Jacno — whose soubriquet was a tribute to the designer of the Gauloises cigarettes logo — had met Uruguayan beauty Elli Medeiros during a student demonstration in 1973. With three schoolmates, they formed the Stinky Toys in early 76. The name was a reference to the Dinky Toys Jacno collected (he holds a model car on his first solo record) as well as to the New York Dolls. The 100 Club punk festival, where they played on the Clash’s equipment and were attacked by Sid Vicious, was their first real breakthrough. Elli subsequently made the cover of Melody Maker and record companies started showing interest. After signing to Polydor, they released a single in spring 1977 which received very mixed reviews. Their debut album, recorded in a mere five days in October, sold as many (or rather as few) copies as the Velvet Underground’s, as Jacno liked to point out. The band were dropped by their record company, releasing their second album — a colder, resolutely post-punk affair — on Vogue the following year. Torn between increasingly irreconcilable influences, the Toys disbanded shortly after an Altamont-style gig during which a fan was killed by rampaging Hell’s Angels.

So what had gone wrong with the local punk scene? Pretty much everything. The early bands suffered from the fact that rock’n’roll still wasn’t rooted in French culture. Rehearsal spaces were hard to come by and, apart from Le Gibus (where the Stinky Toys always refused to play), there were precious few gigging opportunities. As a result, the level of musicianship was often appalling, even by punk standards. Meanwhile, the provocative flirtation with Nazi imagery in some quarters didn’t go down well in a country which was still coming to terms with the Occupation. Punk’s anti-hippie stance also appeared a trifle superfluous given the enduring stigma attached to long hair. More crucially, the movement lacked any genuine social resonance. Singing about anarchy in front of a handful of junkies, socialites and fashionistas on loan from the local gay bars was unlikely to threaten the status quo. Essentially, this was a scene in search of an audience.

France’s pre-punk promise was only really fulfilled during the post-punk years. This is when Jacno finally came into his own. He had, of course, already achieved minor cult status as a member of the Stinky Toys. He had been courted by Andy Warhol, who famously painted his portrait on a restaurant tablecloth using a make-up kit, and there were persistent rumours that the French lyrics added to Blondie’s version of ‘Denis’ (Jacno’s real name) were in fact addressed to him. In 1980, he became the figurehead of the Jeunes Gens Modernes (‘Modern Young Things’), a label invented by Actuel magazine to refer to the rather elitist, very fashion-conscious post-punk scene revolving around clubs like Le Rose Bonbon (where Joy Division played). That year, Jacno recorded several electronic instrumentals with titles like ‘Rectangle,’ ‘Triangle’ and ‘Circle’ that seemed to conjure up unfamiliar Structuralist soundscapes. All the major record companies declared that releasing the 12-inch would be commercial suicide, so it eventually came out on a tiny indie label. Contrary to all expectations, the title track (‘Rectangle’) became an overnight success all over Europe, topping the French charts and ending up on a TV commercial for Nesquick. The music provided the soundtrack to Olivier Assayas’s first short film (Copyright) in which Elli Medeiros made her debut performance as an actress. Assayas also shot a video for ‘Rectangle’ which shows Jacno playing against the suitably angular, brutalist background of the La Défense area of Paris. The only track on the record that wasn’t an instrumental — the aforementioned ‘Anne cherchait l’amour’ — was sung by Elli. It marked the beginning of Elli & Jacno who provided a blueprint for countless other synth-based duos like Soft Cell and Yazoo, and sold millions of records until they split up in 1984 having written the soundtrack to Eric Rohmer’s Les Nuits de la pleine lune.

Elli would go on to have a couple of massive solo hits in 86-87 before concentrating on her acting career and family life. She made a musical comeback in 2006. Jacno, meanwhile, released six solo albums and produced work by some of France’s greatest stars like Jacques Higelin or Etienne Daho, an early fan of the Stinky Toys. He will always be remembered, however, as the New Wave Erik Satie whose elegant electronic minuets (as Rohmer once described them) seemed to capture the essence of our adolescence. ‘True life,’ as Rimbaud once put it, ‘is elsewhere.’ That is, as ever, where Jacno is to be found.

****

Ten of the best first wave punk bands from over the Channel

Métal Urbain
Think Sex Pistols crossed with Suicide or Throbbing Gristle — or both. Hardcore political lyrics. Their second single was Rough Trade’s first release. Best track: ‘Panik’.

Asphalt Jungle
Fronted by dandy rock critic-cum-novelist Patrick Eudeline. Talked the talk but seldom walked the walk except on their third single, ‘Polly Magoo,’ which sounds like a gang of inebriated football hooligans rutting with Phil Spector. In a good way.

Starshooter
They hailed from Lyon, played a mean live set, had a sense of humour and were solidly working class unlike most of their bourgeois contemporaries. Good mates with the Damned. Listen to: ‘Macho’.

Marie et les Garçons
Also from Lyon. Heavily influenced by the NYC scene at first, then experimented with a disco crossover thang. Second single produced by John Cale. They had a female drummer (the eponymous Marie) who died in the 90s. Top track: ‘Re-Bop’.

Guilty Razors
Famous for singing in pigeon English (‘Provocate,’ ‘I Don’t Wanna Be a Rich’!). Two of their members were of Spanish origin. They were very close to the Slits. Check out: ‘I Don’t Wanna Be a Rich’.

Gazoline
Having been a failed teenybop heartthrob in the 60s, a failed glam rock star in the early 70s and a successful gay cabaret artist, Alain Kan reinvented himself as a punk rocker. His band was named after a group of militant drag queens from the early gay liberation days. Kan disappeared in 1990; no one has seen or heard from him since. Gazoline’s second single is arguably one of the most convincing punk records to ever come out of France. Best track: ‘Radio flic’.

Les Olivensteins
Started later than most of the others and paved the way for the hardcore of the early 80s (Oberkampf, Bérurier Noir et al.). One of their most provocative lyrics described the Vichy regime as the good old days. Their name came from a psychiatrist famous for his anti-drugs crusade. Like Sham 69, they ended up attracting the wrong element and split up. Top track: ‘Fier de ne rien faire’.

1984
On paper, a kind of dystopian Clash but never fulfilled their promise. Listen to: ‘Salted City’.

Les Lou’s
All-girl band managed at one stage by Bernie Rhodes. Highlight: ‘Back on the Street’.

Electric Callas
A flamboyant Bowie/Iggy fanatic from Lyon backed by a dizzying array of line-up changes. Check out: ‘Kill Me Two Times’.

Colossal Youth (Abridged Version)

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An abridged version of “Colossal Youth,” my piece on Arthur Cravan, was posted on the Flux magazine website on Friday 13 November 2009:

Colossal Youth

You may never have heard of him, but Arthur Cravan was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The fact that he wrote precious little — and certainly nothing of any lasting literary value — should not be held against him. Quite the contrary, in fact. Oscar Wilde’s nephew put all his genius into his life, turning it into a magnum opus full of sound and fury, high farce and convulsive beauty. In so doing, he influenced every single major avant-garde movement from Dada onwards. Cravan was the original Sid Vicious, the blueprint for all the subsequent outrages committed in the name of art. “Let me state once and for all: I do not wish to be civilised,” he wrote — and he meant it, man.

Arthur Cravan (or Fabian Lloyd, to call him by his real name) was born in Switzerland in 1887. After being expelled from an English military academy for spanking a teacher, he relocated to bohemian Paris where he partied hard with the likes of Blaise Cendrars and managed to become France’s Heavyweight Champion without throwing a single punch.

Cravan first gained the notoriety he so craved through Maintenant (“Now”), the literary journal in which he wrote everything under various noms de plume. Sourced from a butcher’s shop, the very paper it was printed on highlighted his utter contempt for belles-lettres. He filled an entire issue with gratuitous insults aimed at the artists taking part in the 1914 Independents Exhibition. As a result, he was challenged to a duel by the poet Apollinaire and almost lynched by a posse of avant-garde painters. Result.

Art, for Cravan, was essentially boxing by another means, as proved by the infamous conferences he gave in Paris and New York. During these happenings, he would knock back absinthe, perform drunken stripteases, shout abuse at the spectators and even fire gunshots over their heads. His final Parisian gig descended into pandemonium when he failed to commit suicide as advertised.

The onset of the First World War marked the beginning of a convoluted vanishing act that led him — in various guises — from Paris to Mexico where he disappeared at sea on a drunken boat of his own making. His body was never found. For years to come, he would continue to be spotted throughout the world. Arthur Cravan is still at large.

Sex Pistols

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From Jon Savage’s The England’s Dreaming Tapes (Faber, 2009)

Lee Black Childers on the Bill Grundy fall-out:
“Malcolm by that time was saying, ‘It doesn’t matter if we never play'” (p. 90).

Johnny Rotten on Sid Vicious as a one-man phantom band:
“Sid was out of his tree, thinking he was god, because by that time Nancy was telling him he was ‘the only star in this band’. The fact that Sid made no recorded contribution to any record didn’t occur to him to be important” (p. 230).

Jonh Ingham on how McLaren created an audience for the Pistols and then prevented that audience from seeing the band:
“Malcolm made the Pistols invisible. The kids are there, and you can’t have the Pistols. I guess it worked, but it was a dumb thing to do, making the band Olympian” (p. 495).

The Flowers of Romance

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Will Parkhouse, “I Do Not Believe in Love: Viv Albertine On Life Post The Slits,” The Quietus 25 February 2010

“The first time I met Sid, we were outside a pub and even though I couldn’t play I said, “I wanna get a band together,” and he immediately said, “Oh, I’ll be in a band with you.” And I was so touched, because at that time, guys didn’t want to do what girls did. For a cool guy like Sid to want to be in a band with a girl was forward-thinking. I don’t think Johnny Rotten, Mick, or any of those other guys would’ve answered that.

We arranged to meet, went to a squat and rehearsed all through the summer of 1976 — the hottest summer on record for a long time — and emerged at the end of it absolutely white, and without one song. Nothing. [Cracks up] And we were in that basement for hours every day. I remember Sid jumping up and down, doing that pogo thing, tooting away on the sax, and Palmolive [Paloma Romero who later joined The Slits and the Raincoats] was on drums for a bit, and a girl called Sarah [Hall] on bass. I couldn’t play guitar at that stage and we were thrashing about and it’d be a bit embarrassing. And that was it, the whole summer, nothing, not one song.”

From Jon Savage‘s The England’s Dreaming Tapes (Faber, 2009)

Lee Black Childers: “Oh yeah, they would have done fine. …It was a combination of Ramones and Sex Pistols. Very much the 1-2-3-4 syndrome” (p. 96).

Viv Albertine: “There was me, Palmolive, a girl called Sarah. We were rehearsing in Jo Faull’s squat. That was probably how I got to know Sid, he wanted to be in a group or something, and I said to come down, he was going to be the singer. John thought up the name, The Flowers of Romance, and it was the hottest summer, ’76, we spent it all indoors in this bloody squat, every day. We did have discipline.
It was a bedroom band. We couldn’t keep time, Sid went from being a singer to also playing saxophone. I wrote my first riff which was quite good, which turned into ‘So Tough’. Even when people came in who could play, it still didn’t get going for some reason. It was a bunch of interesting-looking people, and we’d get interviewed when we’d never done anything and could hardly play. We’d go into pubs in Notting Hill and Soho, and people would come up and interview us. Jonh Ingham and others” (pp. 290-91). Sid sacked her because she “wasn’t giving enough to it” and “couldn’t really play (p. 292). Viv also mentions plans to team up with Siouxsie (p. 301).

Marco Pirroni: He was going to play bass for the band. A rehearsal was arranged but never took place because of the infamous glass-throwing incident at the 100 Club which led to Sid being locked up (p. 358).

Steve Walsh: He met Sid at The Clash’s ICA gig, who asked him to join the band as a second guitarist. “I used to go up to Davis Road to this squat, with old grannies living downstairs, and we’d rehearse till about five in the morning, taking speed”. He explains that he moved into the squat and the band also rehearsed at The Clash’s place: “Things must have gathered steam. I moved into this place in Davis Road, and through the autumn we started rehearsing more, although we never got it together at all, we never found a drummer who’d play without a hi-hat.” He talks about taking speed and “playing the same riff for hours and hours” (p. 374). He explains that everybody had been kicked out of the band by the time Sid joined the Pistols, talks about the effect drugs had on the band and says that he “didn’t feel it was going to happen”: “The group fell apart. A lot of the equipment was nicked, guitars and amps just went missing”. They only had one song (“Belsen Was a Gas”) as far as he remembers: “I think it was just an excuse for hanging about. Being in a band — or being seen to be in a band — was quite important. There was a lot going on, we used to go out every night. We’d go to Louise’s” (p. 378).

Dave Goodman: The Sex Pistols would jam a bit when they got on stage “and it turned into something they called Flowers of Romance, after Sid’s first band” (p. 421).

–Wikipedia
–Punk 77 (includes scans of the interview the band did for the first issue of Skum in early 1977)