Gary
Pig
Gold:
April, 2005
Another Year, Another
Glittering Showbiz Gathering, Another Cable TV Ratings Disappointment…
Yup, what remains of the music industry awarded
themselves some more fools' gold recently, and all in the
once-hallowed name of Rock and Roll. And by inducting Buddy
Guy, Percy Sledge, The O'Jays, Pretenders, U2, uber-promoter
Frank Barsalona and head Sire Records honcho Seymour Stein
into their very own Hall of Fame, the usual grimaces 'n' gripes
surely do apply (i.e.: Frank did indeed first bring The Who
to the previously-sedate USA, and The O'Jays once booted Mike
Love off their stage when he vainly attempted to board the
Love Train. But "When A Man Loves A Woman" certainly
notwithstanding, why was Percy given the nod before say, oh,
Arthur Alexander, and the esteemed Mr. Stein -- whose label
bankrolled The Pretenders, not coincidentally I bet - isn't
he already a gold card-carrying member of the RnR HoF's actual
nominating committee?)
Wholly questionable voting parameters, not
to mention conflicts of interest aside then, I just had to
wonder anew why my favorite rockin' underdogs were cruelly
ignored yet again this year. Because Seymour's still miffed
he lost the chance to sign them circa 77? One can only speculate.
But while one does, may I humbly offer……
Ten Reasons why
the Sex Pistols Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
1. Malcolm McLaren
Never before in the long and illustrious
annals of popular music history has a
man been handed so much raw talent atop a potentially platinous
platter, and at such an opportune time and location as when
Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, fresh from hiring
a new frontperson named Johnny Rotten, strolled into London's
cleverly named Sex Shoppe in 10/75 and asked its proprietor,
suede-o bohemian entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren, if he'd be
interested in helping them invent punk rock, revolutionize
-- or, failing that,
destroy -- the music business, and earn a million pounds (of
Dollars) in the process. And never before has a man so swiftly
and slyly enacted his master plan and seen it bear fruit in
greater abundances than even he, in his wildest Col. Ahmet
Loog Epstein fantasies, would have believed possible (within
a mere twenty-three months, the Pistols swept from crashing
obscure British art college balls to bumping Linda Ronstadt
off the hallowed cover of the Rolling Stone). And never
before , and hopefully Never Again, has such a superfluity
of potential and promise -- not to mention profit -- been
so thoroughly and effectively botched, blundered, and bludgeoned.
For, thanks to Malcolm McLaren's brilliant mismanagement,
the Sex Pistols, an act of unlimited wit, fire and socio-musical
import, are recalled today as little more than the great rock
'n' roll swindle Sid Vicious played in before he set his hotel
room on fire, sliced open his girlfriend, and joined Elvis
and Kurt in that big cabaret revue in the sky.
2. Glen Matlock
Unceremoniously hoofed from the band on the
virtual eve of their anti-success for professing admiration
for the wrong people (Paul McCartney) in the wrong place (the
pages of Melody Maker) at the wrong time (1976), the
Pistols, in one fool swipe, lost not only their most accomplished
musician -- well, not that that mattered much: after all,
his replacement was Mr. Vicious, fresh from the Dee Dee Ramone
"hunt-and-plonk" school of bass playing -- but their
one true resident songsmith (yes, it was GLEN who cooked up
some of the Seventies' catchiest guitar hooks; i.e.: "Pretty
Vacant" and "God Save Whats'ername"). Relatively
unperturbed, Glen took his talents elsewhere (Iggy Pop, and
cult faves The Rich Kids) while the new and "improved"
Pistols resorted to dismembering old Eddie Cochran tunes and
warbling cute lil' ditties about the Holocaust with some Great
Train Robber.
3. Virgin Records
In refusing to press enough copies of "Anarchy
In The U.K." to allow the Pistols' debut disc to creep
any higher than #12 in the British charts, EMI Records actually
(though probably unwittingly) helped establish the band at
this most crucial stage of their tragically brief career as
not only Euro-youth's latest cause-celebre, but Fleet Street's
most potent front-page fodder since Beatlemania itself. Then,
with characteristic ineptness, Malcolm trotted his cultural
icons elsewhere: inanely into the open arms of Virgin Records,
at the time widely known -- and ridiculed -- as the graveyard
of such synthesized Sixties casualties as Mike Tubular
Balls Oldfield. Under Virgin's laughably feather-brained
wings, the emphasis was quickly placed more on Amusement than
Anarchy, and the band was now forced to attack the airwaves
with such duds as "Friggin' in the Riggin'," "Rock
Around The Clock" and, in a rare display of Virgin forthrighteousness,
Some Product. (NB: said discs now populate your local pop
shop's delete zone... right alongside Mike Oldfield's).
4. Warner Bros. Records
No doubt experiencing sudden pangs of guilt
in the midst of their post-
** Rumours ** coke 'n' caviar indulgences, and in nostalgic
remembrance of their label's maverick infancy when record
contracts were bravely being handed out to the likes of Wild
Man Fischer and The Fugs, Warner Bros. decided to test out
the new waves of 1977 by arranging a distribution deal with
the above-mentioned Seymour Stein's legendary Sire label (who
in turn had such bright hopes as the Ramones and Talking Heads
under contract). However, soon growing discontent with simply
marketing Seymour's signings, Warners set out to land a punk
act of their very own Stateside, and spent untold amounts
of Fleetwood Mac royalties to graft Malcolm's boys to the
dotted line in October of '77. No sooner had WB issued
Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols than they
found John, Paul, Steve and Sid on their very doorstep as
it were, about to embark on that ill-fated first American
tour. Now, to say Warner Bros. had absolutely NO IDEA how
to handle, let alone capitalize upon, the Pistols' arrival
on the U.S. scene is akin to accusing John Lydon of having
certain flaws in his personality... to say nothing of his
dental work (for example, it's been alleged Warners hired
former CIA goons to roadie the band's tour). Nevertheless,
despite a decade of non-promotion, Bollocks was finally
awarded Gold Record status in 1987... and Warners went on
to reap additional billions from Seymour Stein's signings
(as in Madonna).
5. Roger Ebert
It's a hitherto closely-guarded secret that
the roly-poly film critic known and loathed by millions of
media junkies across America was, 'way back in the Summer
of Hate, nothing but a mild-mannered scribe for the Chicago
Sun-Times who by some incidious twist of faith was hired
by director Russ Meyer (Super Vixens, and that latest
cult musical just dying to be adapted for Broadway, Beyond
The Valley Of The Dolls) to script the Sex Pistols' eagerly-awaited
silver screen debut Who Killed Bambi. ("Remember,
without me, there wouldn't be any mention of Bambi in this
movie," boasted Ebert to Rolling Stain). Yet despite
both a healthy budget (courtesy of Warners' film division)
and truly inspired casting (Marianne Faithfull as Sid's mother),
the movie never made it past the rough-cut stage, denying
not only the Blank Generation of a Hard Day's Night
they could call their own, but theatre-goers the world over
a larger-than-life Technipallor dose of charisma Rotten &
Vicious-style. Instead, Who Killed Bambi appeared
years later in wholly bastardized form as The Great Rock
'n' Roll Swindle, Meyer quickly high-tailed it onto the
pages of FilmThreat magazine, Marianne Faithfull carries
on despite, in several ways, a fate worse than Sid's... and
Roger Ebert continues to throw his ever-increasing weight
around the entertainment industry.
6. The I.N.S.
At 11:30 PM on the night of December 11,
1977 every North American who still believed rock 'n' roll
had some spit left in it was tuned to their local NBC-TV affiliate,
anxiously awaiting the Sex Pistols' long-rumored appearance
on
Saturday Night Live: a television event which promised
to equal, if not
surpass, Elvis and them Fabs' Ed Sullivision barnstorms of
decades previous. Alas, it was not to be. For several days
before The Great Event That Couldn't, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, lamely citing several Cook and Jones
criminal offenses (nothing serious, mind you... just the usual
r' n 'r roster of B and E's, concealed weapon and assault-with-a-Fender-bass
charges) ruthlessly denied both Malcolm and his anti-Beatles
permission to enter the Big Apple. That is, until after the
comparatively meek and mild Elvis Costello had replaced the
Pistols on the SNL in question. Perchance it's simply Nixonian
paranoia running away with me again (excuse me, I think my
pen's tapped...), but this seems to me to be but the first
of several high-level attempts to squash the horror known
as p-u-n-k-r-o-c-k by the post-Watergate White House. Read
on.
7. Jimmy Carter
Unlike British Prime Minister Harold Wilson,
who shrewdly rode to Downing Street beneath the coat-tails
of four fellow Liverpudlians in 1964, Jimmy Carter was not
so willing to embrace the latest pop/rock peculiarities in
order to secure a power base amongst his nation's young. Quite
to the contrary, at a closed-door pow-wow amongst the recording
industry elite in 1978, the peanut-farming President reportedly
suggested to a gaggle of America's leading radio programmers
and promo men, in a most sinisterly Agnewesque fashion, that,
quote, "Boys, we really don't want this new wave music
now, DO WE." As a sorrowful result, the Pistols' stylus-shaking
debut LP soon vanished from the airwaves and salesracks of
the land, only to be replaced by the safe, sterile, sickly-slick
sounds of, amongst far too many others...
8. The Cars
This late but wisely little-lamented combo
epitomized America's squeaky-clean response to the Pistols'
furor: They looked, and sounded about as menacing as Pat Boone
had twenty years before (when he too helped rid the USA of
"dangerous new sounds" by musically castrating the
likes of "Tutti Frutti"). Ironically, it was Pat's
eldest daughter Debby whose thoroughly wretched "You
Light Up My Life" held a 439-week stranglehold atop Billboard's
Hot 100 at the very moment such classics as "Bodies"
and "I'm A Lazy Sod" languished unheard in some
obscure Greenwich Village import bin.
9. The Bee Gees
And while America was being force-fed such
pablum as "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Heart
of Glass" under the guise of New Wave, those Brothers
Gibb, designer chest-wigs intact, were busy dominating both
the AM and FM dials with their eunuch blend of down-under
falsettos and bubbleyum R' n' B. Their glory days already
far behind them, these once-imaginative Aussie chart-toppers
pioneered the utterly detestable genre known and loved to
this day as Soundtrack Rock, thanks to such full-length promotional
vehicles as
Saturday Night Fever and (pause for blanching)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The veritable upchuck
of billion-sellers which resulted left precious little room
in your home entertainment center for Messrs. Vicious, Rotten,
Cook and Jones.
10. Simon John "Sid Vicious" Ritchie,
1957 - 1979
R.I.P(unk): "No Future" indeed!
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