Tearing Down The Streets - Adventures In Urban Anarchy - Jeff Ferrell

 TEARING DOWN THE STREETS -

ADVENTURES IN URBAN ANARCHY -

JEFF FERRELL

There is much that Americans get right and that they fully understand but there are also some things that Americans just have no understanding of at all and so get totally wrong. Irony is the classic example of course but also certain aspects of culture and politics - especially when it comes to British culture and politics. Jeff Ferrell, author of Tearing Down The Streets - Adventures In Urban Anarchy is American. In fact (at the time of writing this book at least) he's a Professor of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. Hold your horses for a moment though and don't with a roll of your eyes instantly dismiss this because to be fair, Ferrell's heart is in the right place and his intentions are honourable. He's been doing some thinking and researching the subject, and has come to the conclusion that our cities and urban areas are being compromised, homogenized, sanitized and 'Disneyfied'. Or to put it another way: gentrified.

This is pretty self-evident and no great revelation of course, but the question that it begs is whether it's a good or a bad thing? The answer - as with most things in life, really - is all dependent upon what side of the fence you're sitting. If money is your god and you're fully invested in the capitalist system and the societies it creates, unable or unwilling to think outside the box, then gentrification is alright. For sure, you might like things to be a bit edgy and you like a bit of Banksy but no-one wants to live in a slum and run a gauntlet of muggers every time you go to a cashpoint.

If, however, you have no real investment in capitalist society and even such a thing as getting on the property ladder is a dream too far, then gentrification doesn't really have a lot to offer. In fact, gentrification is going to be set against you. It's going to exclude you and push you further to the sidelines because you have nothing to offer it and it has nothing to offer you. You are surplus to requirement.

Though probably enjoying some privileges that come with being a professor at Northern Arizona University (and there's nothing wrong with that, I might add), Jeff Ferrell is on the side of the surplus people. Not only this, he's also on the side of those who seek to challenge if not destroy the authoritarian, corporate, exclusionary model of community that gentrification enables. He's on the side, even, of the Mikhail Bakunin epithet that says the passion for destruction is a creative passion.

Tearing Down The Streets records a potted history of opposition to spatial control. A history of those who in the author's eyes have fought back against the regulation and closure of public space. It's a long, winding path that's very fractured and ultimately unfinished, with no clear starting date and no clear end point. For all that, however, Ferrell proffers a suggested starting point of 1871 and the Paris Commune, which is actually a pretty good call. From there he mostly focusses on America, going from The Wobblies, Emma Goldman, Jack Kerouac and so on, right up to his own activist lifestyle as a busking, bike-riding, graffiti artist.

The main portion of Ferrell's book is set around his own activities and activist scenes he's been directly involved with such as Critical Mass, pirate radio and graffiti art during the 1990s. Noticeable by its absence is any mention of Seattle 1999 and the mass protests that took place there against the World Trade Organization but that's because he says he didn't go. But also noticeable by its absence is any criticism of any of the things he's been involved with or even any post-mortem analysis of it all.

When writing about Reclaim The Streets, I'd hazard a guess he wasn't there in England either and he's picked-up all his information from the Internet because some of what he's written isn't quite true. It's an example also of (being American) failing to understand British culture and politics though this is exemplified each time he mentions the Sex Pistols as if they were some hardcore anarchist gang espousing hardcore anarchist ideology. The Clash as well to some extent. For example: 'Anarchy In The UK, the Sex Pistols' howling punk anthem, offered a dead-on account of anarchist practice.' I mean, really?

It's always been a bit unclear as to how the Pistols were perceived in America because even though they famously did the tour there that ultimately led to their demise, the nuance and even the irony of the Pistols would have been somewhat twice-removed and lost in translation, buried under the hype and the shock horror headlines. For sure, the Pistols were one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands of all time but even more than this they were an idea trying to describe a feeling. They were a vibe. And as Johnny Rotten once said of Anarchy In The UK, anyone who doesn't understand that (song), doesn't understand anything. 

Tearing Down The Streets is good but it's not brilliant, but being just 'good' isn't quite good enough. The stuff of which Ferrell writes is of some importance, and it deserves and demands better. If anyone is going to write a book about it with full annotations and a comprehensive index like this one, then I'd like them to be bringing something to the table so as to try and add to it all. Rather than simply record (and wrongly in parts) a history, I'd like them to try and bring forward the ideas that things like punk and Reclaim The Streets were once exploring. I'd like them to show a bit more vitality. A bit more imagination. As the Bob Hoskins gangster character in The Long Good Friday says to the American Mafia representatives: I'd like them to contribute with 'something a little bit more than a hot dog. Know what I mean?'

John Serpico

Fashion & Perversity - Fred Vermorel

FASHION & PERVERSITY - A LIFE OF VIVIENNE WESTWOOD AND THE SIXTIES LAID BARE -

FRED VERMOREL

Has there ever been a band as much as the Sex Pistols where legend and truth have become so entwined as to become near impossible to distinguish between the two? But then 'When you have to choose between truth and legend' as Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson once said 'Print the legend', and he's a man, of course, who was an expert in such matters. This is the premise on which Fred Vermorel bases the first chapter of his book - Fashion & Perversity, A Life Of Vivienne Westwood And The Sixties Laid Bare. In fact, Vermorel takes it one step further and titles the first chapter 'Vivienne Westwood: An Imaginary Interview', it being exactly that. It's Vermorel taking liberties with everything he can recall Vivienne Westwood saying to him over thirty years of knowing her along with what she's said in interviews.

Now, who's to say if everything in this book is true or absolutely none of it? There's always been argument and confusion among the Pistols' band members themselves even over such simple things as who wrote what lyrics so who knows? According to Westwood in Vermorel's 'interview' for example: 'No one really knows who wrote the lyrics. Sometimes it was everyone, including me, in a pub, pissed. We'd come up with lines and slogans and somehow a song would emerge. Like 'Anarchy In The UK.' That was written one evening in a pub under Centre Point.' Is it any wonder there was such a fight over royalties come the end?

Other such declarations strewn throughout the 'interview' are equally questionable but at the same time equally interesting and even somewhat amusing. 'At one time Malcolm wanted me to go to Madame Tussaud's and set fire to the wax effigies of The Beatles. I thought that was inspired. Only I was worried it might start a fire and someone would get hurt.' Which, whether true or not is indeed an inspired idea. A perfect situationist stunt, even.

'It does make me smile nowadays when John Lydon says that ideas like situationism had little to do with the Sex Pistols, and that he was what counted. In fact, maybe it was John himself who had little to do with the Sex Pistols? 'Johnny Rotten' was really just a face and a mouthpiece for ideas John was often too uneducated to understand, and attitudes he was too cowardly to follow through.'

When it comes to the question of situationism there's an awful lot of evidence to point to the idea that it was in actual fact absolutely everything to do with the Pistols.

'To break through the wall of indifference Malcolm and Jamie Reid and the others around us used the sort of Dadaist tactics they'd learnt about at art college. Shock and provocation and outrage. And then more of the same. Never let up, never give in. Like the situationists they wanted to 'create a situation in which there was no going back'. Burning all bridges, going for broke.'

So might this also have included the idea to promote a blow-up Sid Vicious sex doll? Or Malcolm paying Teds to beat up punks in the King's Road?

'We were trying to start a war,' Westwood is quoted as saying, and everything right down to her T-shirt designs was all part and parcel of this. A prime example being her 'Which side of the bed' T-shirt. Composed of two lists, on one side of the shirt was everything that was hateful in British culture and on the other side everything that gave hope. 'Which side of the bed was like which side of the barricade are you on?'

And on the subject of barricades this is where Fred Vermorel comes into his own, specifically in regard to the barricades thrown up on the streets of Paris in May of 1968. Vermorel was there and in the second chapter of his book writes intelligently and very eloquently about it. Entitled 'Growing Up As A Genius In The Sixties' this particular chapter is wholly autobiographical and is all the better for it.

'Paris in May '68 was an ideological 'slippage', Vermorel writes 'A vertigo of discourses which projected political non-sense centre stage.'

On the building of the barricades, Vermorel describes how cars were shunted into the middle of the streets with cafe tables and chairs and debris added, echoing the French Revolution itself, not to mention the Paris Commune of 1871. Because more and more working class youths had started turning up from their suburbs out of curiosity and in the hope of giving the police a good hiding, the barricades began to go up in earnest - up to seven feet high. These were sons of the street and veterans of building sites so they knew how to build properly as opposed to the amateurish efforts of the students.

According to Vermorel, however, the incursion of these working class youths was not always to the students' liking who were often perturbed at the ease and panache of the street fighting of these newcomers, along with their lack of proportion and propriety and their obliviousness to liberal idealism and polysyllabic rhetoric.

At the time, nobody was acknowledging that rioting is actually serious fun and that cars being set on fire is a beautiful sight. Vermorel even suggests a metaphorical link between a riot and a collective orgasm. Describing the Grosvenor Square riot of 1967 as being less a revolution than a rugby scrimmage, Paris '68 in comparison was the moment when the imaginary burst its banks after reaching the famous situationist 'point of no return'.

The combination of student politics, working class hooliganism and situationist groups made for a heady cocktail, one that would later be commodified through the Sex Pistols and Punk. It's an analysis and an argument that Vermorel convincingly weaves, comparing the relationship of the Situationist Internationale with their student and working class 'cannon fodder' to the Sex Pistols' management team's (Glitterbest) relationship with the punks of 1976. 'Like the situationists, Glitterbest had access to an avant-gardist repertoire of examples which suggested that you can never 'go too far'. To go 'too far' was merely to enter history, timidity being the only barrier to success.'

Fashion & Perversity is an interesting addition to the Sex Pistols/Punk Rock/Situationist/May '68 canon, written by someone who by chance and acquaintance was at the centre of these cultural/political cyclones. Years later in the 1980s during Malcolm McLaren's Bow Wow Wow period, Vermorel fell out with McLaren but remained friends with Westwood though it should be said the relationship between the three was always a strange one, almost like an unfulfilled menage a trois.

Come the end of the book, we see Vermorel diagnosing McLaren as having Tourettes and this explaining the way McLaren talks, his mannerisms and even his behaviour throughout his whole life - and Vivienne Westwood agreeing with the diagnosis. When thinking about it, it's a pretty strange thing to put into print in a book, based as it is merely on amateur and idle speculation no matter if it might be true or not? But then maybe it's meant to be taken as just another stitch in the tapestry? More grist to the mill falling somewhere between truth and legend? Which brings us once again back to the Tony Wilson adage: 'When choosing between truth and legend - print the legend.'

John Serpico

Lonely Boy - Steve Jones

LONELY BOY – STEVE JONES

There's a telling sentence at the start of Steve Jones' autobiography, where he writes 'It was my shit upbringing that got the ball rolling.' The ball he's referring to, of course, is the Sex Pistols and what Jones says gets to the gist of the matter immediately, even though it's not quite the whole story. Jones did indeed have a shit upbringing, there's no denying that, but in him describing it there's no wallowing in self pity or anything of the like, it's just him telling us how it was.

What all the Sex Pistols' members had in common and what typically applies to a lot of working class youngsters was the idea that they were essentially worthless, or as Jones puts it: 'The message I'd got from my upbringing and education was that I was a piece of shit who was never going to amount to anything, and that kind of negative view of yourself can very easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

The point Jones makes is an important one and it tells us exactly where the Pistols were coming from: The Sex Pistols could only ever have been working class. If they had been anything else, they would not have had the impact they did. To borrow Mark E Smith's term, the Sex Pistols were the original prole art threat.

It's not, however, quite the whole story because other influences also came into play to make the Pistols such a 'success', not least the effect of Johnny Rotten's personality and Malcolm McLaren's art school background and contacts. Saying that, it was still Steve Jones' willingness to look beyond his shit upbringing that started it all. 'That's not me showing off,' he writes 'It's just a fact.'

It was the lure of music and fashion that cast Jones a lifeline and caused him to look further than his allotted place in the world. Born into a single-parent family, abused by his step-father and essentially 'brainwashed into apologising for it', Jones ended up as a career criminal, stealing anything and everything which took his fancy, including musical instruments – lots and lots of musical instruments.

Being broadminded and without prejudice, simply by hanging out at his shop Jones became a friend of Malcolm McLaren and from there the story of the Sex Pistols began, as has been documented enough times already for the need to go over again here.

As well as being a thief and in the words of McLaren in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle film, 'a brilliant cat burglar', Jones also had – to put it mildly – an eye for the ladies. Come the Bill Grundy interview and his past experience of sexual predators (and even being a bit of one himself, as detailed in his book) Jones recognised what Grundy was up to immediately in the way he was talking to Siouxsie Sioux. “You dirty sod. You dirty old man.” Jones says. “Well, keep going, chief, keep going,” Grundy replies “Go on, you've got another five seconds. Say something outrageous.” So Jones tells Grundy what he thinks of him: “You dirty bastard. You dirty fucker. What a fucking rotter.”

And the rest is history.

The Pistols never put themselves up on a pedestal – they were pushed there – but once they were on a pedestal, what exactly did people want from them? If the truth be told, a lot of people probably wanted them to be martyrs. To be useful idiots, even? Well, they certainly got both with Sid Vicious. Johnny, on the other hand, was a little too smart to be anyone's fool, least of all Malcolm McLaren's.

In hindsight, the Sex Pistols reforming in 1996 and their Finsbury Park concert was the best thing they could have done in terms of kicking the pedestal out from under them. It certainly destroyed the myth that had built up about them. The fact that a lot of people didn't want them to reform and viewed it even as a betrayal is evidence enough. And was it such a crime to be only 'doing it for the money'? “Is it cos we're working class and that means somehow we don't have access to cash?” Johnny roared at the gathered media at the press launch for the Finsbury Park concert “Should we just stay in our horrible little council estates? Bollocks!”

Come the day of the concert, Johnny was in his element: “Let's start a war!” he called to the heaving mass of the audience. And so too in his own special way was Jones in his element: “Who wants a shag?” he called out.

Steve Jones' autobiography, Lonely Boy, certainly lays a few ghosts to rest particularly from his childhood as well as, of course, from his Sex Pistols experience. On reading it, you just can't help but to love the old rogue even if by today's terms he's a veritable rock dinosaur, especially when it comes to women.

Does he really need to let us know he had Chrissie Hynde over a bath at a party once? Do we need to know he 'took one for the team' when shagging Nancy Spungeon whilst she was going out with Sid? Do we need to know John Lydon's wife, Nora, used to be Jones' sugarmummy? Do we need to know he shagged Pauline, the girl from Birmingham as sung about in Bodies, down an alley off Wardour Street? I guess we do?

Nowadays, Jones is a resident of Los Angeles where he has his own radio show, Jonesy's Jukebox, which is actually really very good. On the not so plus side, he admits to hanging out over there with Russell Brand doing transcendental meditation. It's a reminder of what Rotten once said when asked about Neil Young's paean to him in the track Hey, Hey, My, My from Young's Rust Never Sleeps album: “I've got better things to do than sit on a beach in California taking acid,” said Johnny.

In his remark, he was highlighting the remoteness of Neil Young's world in comparison to our own and in a similar way, Jones' life in America these days highlights the gap between where he is now and where we all are back in Britain where government imposed austerity continues to crush its people and eat its children.

We shouldn't bemoan or criticise Steve Jones' life nowadays, though. After all, who are we and what gives us the right? In fact, we should instead be pleased for him because he's been through the mill and he deserves the peace he seems now to have acquired. In fact, if anything we should be thanking him for giving us one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands ever and for a lot of us, at least, for actually helping to change our lives for the better.

In buying his book, you'll be making Steve Jones a happy man. Send him nudes and you'll probably be making him even happier.

John Serpico

Kiss This - Gina Arnold

KISS THIS - GINA ARNOLD

On the 14th January 1978 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, Gina Arnold's universe suddenly opened up. It was the Sex Pistols' last ever gig and Gina was there in the audience and - as she describes in her book, Kiss This - it was like the moment when you learn to read, or when Dorothy steps out of her house in the Wizard Of Oz.

For the next 17 years Punk Rock ruled her world until 1996 when it dawned upon her that Punk had become by then a meaningless philosophy; her epiphany being the announcement that the Pistols were to reform. So begins Gina's reckoning with the forces that had once so inspired her.

To Finland she flies to catch the Pistols on the first date of their comeback tour, then on to London and the Finsbury Park concert where she sees them being welcomed home like prodigal sons. Back in America, Gina considers Lolloopazola and various other mega-festivals where sponsorship deals are the order of the day. Beer companies, chewing tobacco companies and snow boarding companies are all chasing the young, white male market and there are no ends to where they'll go and what they'll do for it, from sponsoring concerts and festivals to sponsoring established and even unsigned bands.

Where did it all go wrong, Gina ponders, as she casts her eye upon the remnants of the Grateful Dead fan base still cluttering Haight Ashbury and all still buying into a lifestyle that is well past its sell-by date? Bought out, sold out and burnt out by capital and the death pickers of corporate America. Punk, in Gina's eyes, has gone exactly the same way as has Grunge and every other off-shoot of supposed teenage rebellion.

'History repeats itself,' she quotes Marx as saying 'The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.'

From here, Gina goes on to contemplate Green Day, Rancid, the 924 Gilman Street project, Bad Religion, and the Epitaph label; and if these names mean less than nothing to you then her book is obviously not for you but then this begs the question: Just who exactly is Gina's book for? Who exactly is she talking to? Well, I would suggest that Gina is essentially just talking to herself, that Kiss This is just one long navel gaze more suitable for an essay or an article rather than a whole book.

Essentially, there's nothing startlingly original or insightful about any of her concerns and there's nothing much really to be gained from her observations. For example, suggesting that Rap music is more DIY and in many ways more punkier than Punk is hardly an original thought. A turntable and a microphone are in all likelihood going to cost less than a guitar and an amp, and are going to be more accessible to a teenager in the Bronx or in Compton than all the paraphernalia required for starting a band.

So is Rap better than Punk in terms of what it has achieved? I suspect it might be but at the end of the day we're talking about musical taste, style and form, and it's what you choose to do with and and use these things for that actually counts. If turning a profit is the aim then whether it's through Rap, Punk, or Albanian nose-flute playing it doesn't really matter as it's all just means to an end. The same goes for more loftier aims such as, for example, creating a political or cultural stir, or even if the aim is simply to provide entertainment. Style and form are just ways and means and not ends in themselves. The medium is not the message.

Gina then goes on to cite Homocore as the only true form of radical Punk being made at the time of her writing, which is a debatable point. Whilst an openly gay Punk Rock band such as Pansy Division are brilliant, I fear they might mostly be viewed more as a novelty band than anything else. Not that there's anything wrong in being a novelty band, of course, but it doesn't make you a Punk Rock saviour as what Gina seems to suggest. And whatever Pearl Jam get up to in their spare time certainly doesn't make them Punk Rock saviours either, which is what Gina suggests also. The same goes for the Fastbacks who Gina declares to be 'the best Punk Rock band in America', and it's at this point that I lose interest. After 198 pages of wavering and shooting off at tangents, the point of her book has somehow been lost and has ended up as a Fastbacks tour diary. 'The best Punk Rock band in America' indeed. Ahem.

Listen, I used to believe that Punk was the most special, the most brilliant thing and I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like that. My perception of the meaning of Punk evolved and changed over the years though it didn't take me too long to understand that it had very little to do with a style of music or a dress code but more to do with an attitude and a state of mind and even then it was a multi-faceted state of mind - like a diamond.

Who was I to dictate, for example, that Punk wasn't about getting drunk and falling over (and believe me, I witnessed an awful lot of that and in fact it even seemed at one point as though this was what it was all about and nothing else) but then I also knew that anyone can get drunk and fall over whether they were Punk or not.

No, Punk contained an idea, a notion that no other movement, genre or scene possessed. There was something unique within Punk though for all the talk of Year Zero I later discovered it had been inherent within Hippydom as well. I admit that for a while I did indeed believe Punk was an end unto itself and it took some time for me to realise that it was instead and in actual fact a stepping stone or a springboard to other things. An important and special springboard but a springboard none the less.

'Inspiration gave them the motivation to move on out of their isolation', as a young Anarcho Punk Rock poet once wrote. Punk was an inspiration, an energiser, an urge, a way of saying 'No' where we'd always said 'Yes'; and in saying 'No' we were subsequently saying 'Yes' to a better life and the possibility of a better world.

Is Punk now dead, as Gina asks in her book? I don't really know but then nowadays - who the fuck cares?

John Serpico

Only Anarchists Are Pretty - Mick O'Shea

ONLY ANARCHISTS ARE PRETTY - 

MICK O'SHEA

Now here's a weird one: Only Anarchists Are Pretty by Mick O'Shea; the story of the Sex Pistols in novel form, chronicling their early days from the formation of the band up to the Bill Grundy incident.

The question that comes immediately to mind is why hasn't this been done before? Particularly during their Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle period when anything and everything Pistols-related was being packaged and sold to a discerning public, not least the still warm corpse of Sid Vicious. There's been a huge number of books written about the Sex Pistols over the years but no actual novel - until this one. Somebody missed a trick there, I think.

But is it art, John, I hear you cry? Tell us, tell us! Well, of course it's not but it's not as awful as it could have been and that's because it's written by a fan and not some 'professional' writer with his eye on a quick buck. Actually, the closest it gets to art is when the writer incorporates himself into the story as a young fan travelling down to London from the north in a bid to see the Pistols live.

I can only presume this part is entirely fictional because at that time I calculate the author would have been about 13, and like Sid Vicious should still have been at home playing with his Action Man not gallivanting off to the the far-reaches of the King's Road to a fetish clothes shop called Sex.

He doesn't big himself up at all when he introduces himself and his friend 'Alan' (Alan Parker, writer of a number of books on the Pistols) into the story and in fact, depicts himself as a kind of northern bumpkin entranced by the bizarreness of the Pistols' coterie like Mowgli in The Jungle Book being hypnotised by the python. And that's a suitable analogy, actually, with Johnny Rotten being the king of the jungle - the jungle VIP - and Malcolm McLaren being the python ("Trust in me..") as he coils himself around his prey. But which character is Vivienne Westwood, you might wonder? The tiger Shere Khan, of course.

There's something missing in Mick O’Shea’s story, however, and that's any sense of danger and anger as exuded by John Rotten. And believe me, kids, you may not believe it now by looking at him but once upon a time Johnny did indeed exude danger and anger. Epitomised it, even. O’Shea’s story instead reads more like the cartoon version of the Pistols as depicted in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle film; with Paul Cook as a podgy oaf, Steve Jones as a moronic lech and Johnny Rotten as an entirely dislikeable teenager ('The Collaborator', as McLaren tried to label him).

Mick O'Shea knows his stuff, there's no question about that and there's no obvious clangers in the story as far as I can see though I do take exception to the way Wally Nightingale - the original Pistols guitarist - is depicted.

Now, I was too young to see the original Pistols but I did once see the Lightning Raiders, the band that Wally went on to form following him being thrown out from the band - on Malcolm's instructions allegedly? I thought they were all right, being a kind of cross between the Pistols and Zodiac Mindwarp. Wally is depicted as a bit of a pathetic character and it doesn't quite ring true to me and I wonder what Mick O'Shea is basing this on?

What's interesting is that O'Shea depicts Glen Matlock as being the most likeable character and as the real musical force behind the band. And I can believe this. It's totally Johnny, however, who gives the band their edge - and their politics.

Until reading this book I didn't know about Steve Jones' trick with a loaf of bread and some liver, and when this is juxtaposed with Johnny singing about the UDA, the MPLA and Fascist regimes I'm not sure if this makes the Pistols fully-rounded or if it suggests nothing short of a miracle occurred with them coming together as a band at all?

Whilst reading this on the train, a woman sat in the seat opposite asked me what the book was and when I explained she wondered what might Sid Vicious have ended up doing had he not died? It was a good question. We ended up deciding that he would have formed a double-act with Johnny, either as a comedy duo (like Morcambe and Wise) or as chat show hosts (like Dame Edna Everage and her assistant, Madge).

You don't usually get people on the train asking what it is you're reading but then if you consider the back cover of O'Shea's book, it's understandable why it might make someone curious. But then as Johnny once advised: "Don't judge a book just by its cover, unless you cover just another. And blind acceptance is a sign, of stupid fools who stand in line, like - " But of course, you know the rest.

John Serpico

Anger Is An Energy - John Lydon

ANGER IS AN ENERGY - JOHN LYDON

John Lydon's come out with so many good lines in His songs over the years that it's hard to choose which one might be His best. Howard Devoto once stated that what John writes is sheer poetry and I almost agree. I mean, it's not consistently sheer poetry by any means but He's had his moments. For John Himself, 'Anger is an energy' is possibly the most powerful one-liner He's ever come up with, hence using it as the title for His autobiography.

Autobiography? John Lydon? Haven't we been here before with 'Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs'? Well, yes we have though according to John that one wasn't so much an autobiography but more of a setting the record straight following Jon Savage's 'England's Dreaming'. Whatever. 
But who in 2015 would think there was anything left to say about the Sex Pistols/John Rotten/Lydon/PIL, etc, that hasn't already been said? Well, obviously John Lydon for one and you know what? He's not entirely wrong. Anger Is An Energy - My Life Uncensored contains a fair few tasty nuggets, morsels, insights and revelations that they make it a joy to read; the only problem being that it's sometimes hard to decipher the truth from the fiction, the opinion, and the revisionism. But who am I to argue because the bottom line of it is that John was there and I wasn't. Hundreds of other people have given their versions of events regarding the Pistols, Punk and the subsequent fallout and why take their versions as the truth and not His?

So what do we get? For starters we find out about John's musical influences and some of them come as a surprise, to me at least. According to John, Status Quo are "Fantastic rock. Wonderful, brilliant, beautiful stuff." He also adored Alvin Stardust, David Essex's 'Rock On', and Gary Glitter's 'Rock And Roll (Part 1 & 2)'. He also likes Arthur Brown, Can, Faust, Nico, Dr Feelgood, the Kinks, a lot of reggae, and Duran Duran. That's right, Duran Duran. In addition He loves Ted Hughes and Oscar Wilde, and has read Dostoevsky.

Apparently Mick Jones of The Clash is "a lovely person, really warm", Paul Simonon is "a posh kid, from a good background", Chrissie Hynde is "a very important person in the world", Robert Plant is "a great fella", and Keith Levene is "a cunt".

Guests who turned up at His house in Gunter Grove included Joan Armatrading, Althea and Donna, composers John Barry and Stomu Yamashta, and Les Mckewan of the Bay City Rollers.

Whilst working briefly at Sex, John sold newscaster Reginald Bosanquet a skin-tight rubber top. If you know who Reginald Bosanquet is and know what he looked like - can you imagine? The original idea for the Anarchy tour was to pair up with a circus and tour that way. Richard Branson wanted John to be the lead vocalist of Devo. Whilst involved in initial preparations for the Sex Pistols movie, John put forward Graham Chapman from Monty Python to direct it (as opposed to Malcolm McLaren's first choice of Russ Meyer). John auditioned for the lead role in Quadrophenia which in the end, of course, went to Phil Daniels. And as of 2013, John now has American citizenship.

According to Sid Vicious, Vivienne Westwood was a "turkey neck", and Paul Cook "an albino gorilla". Sid's mum would give her son devilled kidneys sprinkled with heroin; and when Nancy Spungeon was found murdered at the Chelsea Hotel, Mick Jagger got his lawyers sent in to protect Sid. And on that subject: John suggests Nancy was killed by New York drug dealers to whom Sid owed money.

Is any of this of any importance? Is anyone interested? Listen: The Sex Pistols were a bright, shining beacon of hope that offered inspiration and something a whole lot better to anyone desiring it. "I want more life, fucker." said Rutger Hauer's replicant android in the film Blade Runner. The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock offered more of everything - life included. The Pistols blew a hole in British culture and in the created space the Punk banner was raised. In towns and cities across the country whole armies of little Oliver Twists' stood up and poured into that space, all with one thing in common: They wanted more.

"We opened all the doors - and the windows." said Sid Vicious, and he wasn't wrong. By 1979, however, Sid was dead and the original Punk explosion had been accommodated, contained and diluted leaving only sparks and streamers descending from the skies and seeds drifting through the breeze. But what fires those sparks did light and what strange and brilliant fruit did those seeds yield.

Tittle-tattle regarding such things as Sid's mother putting heroin on his dinner is, of course, totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things but the importance of the Pistols and Johnny Rotten upon Britain and indeed many other parts of the world should not be denied.

Without his fellow Sex Pistols, John would have been just another misfit roaming the streets but without John the Sex Pistols would have been just another rock'n'roll band. Without John and His Sex Pistols no band of any substance or merit over the last few decades would ever have existed, or at least not in the same form. But then without His working class origins and all the influences upon Him, John would never have been the same person, which is why it's interesting to read who and what did influence Him - including even Alvin Stardust.

"You don't write a song like 'God Save The Queen' because you hate the English race." said John "You write a song like that because you love them and you're fed up with them being mistreated." And for His troubles John suffered rebuke, hostility, condemnation, physical attacks and police raids. At times it must have felt as though the whole world was against Him.

John doesn't owe us anything but we all owe John. He's earned the right to do absolutely anything He chooses and not only does that include reforming the Pistols to make money but also going on I'm A Celebrity and doing ads for Country Life butter. Is anyone so pure and effected so much change for the good upon the world that they are in any position to criticise Him? I think not.

There are bits in Anger Is An Energy which are really good such as when John's talking about being dropped by A&M, instigated by Herb Alpert - the 'A' in A&M - who sent a communiqué from LA to the UK label's office saying he didn't want such undesirables as the Sex Pistols on his label. Years later when John's living in Malibu, who might His neighbour be? None other than Herb Alpert. "There's a difference in the size of our respective properties, let me tell you. He has half a mountain." John writes "But I know it more than bugs him that I live here. Talking with the neighbours, they've told me so. Well, that's your comeuppance, you fuck."

Some bits are really moving, particularly when He talks about the death of His father: "At dad's funeral, I was borderline passing out with tears, which I never did with my mum. I was expected to give something of a speech. I couldn't, I just couldn't. Words fail you. I walked up when I felt like it and I leant into the coffin, and I kissed my dad's dead body on the cheek. I looked down and went, 'That's me dad!' and broke apart. I missed him so bad."

And then there are bits which are the Johnny Rotten we all know and love such as when talking about the Establishment lining up against Him during the Pistols' heyday: "Why aren't you (the Establishment) supplying us with jobs and a decent lifestyle, you fucks? You're going to tell me to shut up because I'm finding the economic situation you put the country in a problem? And using that very thing that they just love to espouse in the West, democracy! Ooooh - the right to say what you have to, to stand up and be counted. Wow. Didn't I blow a hole in that bubble. And seriously, a BIG hole in that bubble. I found that to be an absolute non-truth. I wouldn't tolerate it. And still won through. So there you go, boys and girls of the world, Johnny did his bit for ya. Fucking say thanks, cunts."

Down here in Exmouth, Anger Is An Energy is not only on sale at WH Smith but is also available from the public library, and copies are even now popping up in charity shops. It's ubiquitous and I can only presume this is a good thing? But let's keep this in perspective because at the end of the day it is simply an autobiography, nothing more and nothing less. The person it's about, however, is one in a million.

John Serpico