Sex Pistols - The Inside Story - Fred & Judy Vermorel

SEX PISTOLS - THE INSIDE STORY -

FRED & JUDY VERMOREL

It's still my contention that the best book ever written on the subject of 'punk' is Jon Savage's England's Dreaming. It's in the way that Savage is so thorough, leaving (practically) no stone left unturned. His writing style is like that of a shark hunting down prey, with the scent of blood in the nostrils driving it forward. Sniffing after every entrail, every speck of blood but when sensing the prey might be too large to easily digest (like the subject of Crass), backing off to allow for further consideration.

For all that, I still wouldn't say Savage's book is definitive, and that to get an even wider and more complete understanding of punk, you really need to read other books on the subject by other writers - Sex Pistols - The Inside Story by Fred and Judy Vermorel being but one of them.

'But what exactly is there to understand about punk?' some might say, and 'Why even bother?' If you have to ask, of course, you'll never know, for as Neil Young once advised in his ode to Johnny Rotten: There's more to the picture - than meets the eye. And if there has ever been a band that this applied to then it's the Sex Pistols.

The backbone of the Vermorel's book is the diary kept by Sophie Richmond, who as well as living with Pistols' art designer Jamie Reid, was the secretary and office manager to Malcolm McLaren and the Pistols up until the end of 1977. Sophie had previously worked with Jamie Reid on the radical anti-commerce newspaper Suburban Press so her politics were already in place. Indeed, in one of her diary entries she alludes to being a non-affiliated Marxist.

Sophie is very conscious of the political nature of the Sex Pistols though also acknowledging that it's a double-edged sword. 'What worries me is fascism,' she writes 'That rebellious stance (of the Pistols) at this point of political time could equally lead rightwards as leftwards'.

Possibly of more interest is her awareness of situationism, shown in one of her diary entries when she attributes to the situationists the quote about all men and women living lives of quiet desperation. Even though she's mistaken in citing the quote to them (it was actually said by Henry Thoreau) at least it's an indication that she's aware of the situationists - which is probably more than could be said about Johnny Rotten.

On the other hand, Jamie Reid and Malcolm McLaren were well versed in them as was Fred Vermorel, so this obviously explains why it's a theme that runs through the whole book. It's funny nowadays, actually, how a significant number of people are of the view that the Pistols were just a 'boy band' and mere puppets of McLaren. It's patently not true. It is, however, true to say that McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, and Reid dressed them up in symbols and slogans. Moreover, it was situationist slogans - or versions of them, at least - and a chapter in the book on the subject of the situationists lists a number of them that in 1968 were sprayed all over the buildings and metros of Paris:

'Live Without Restrictions Or Dead Time. Never Work. Scream, Steal, Ejaculate Your Desires. The More You Consume the Less You Live.' Etc, etc. There is also mention given to the situationist idea of making retreat impossible and 'global proletarian revolution in the name of 'perpetual orgasm''.

No matter how much John Lydon might wish to deny it, the links between the Sex Pistols and situationism are obvious. Right down, even, to the situationists' concept of recuperation whereby radical ideas are defused, neutralized and commodified into mainstream consumer culture.

It's interesting also that the agent of mainstream consumer culture in the case of the Sex Pistols wasn't so much the big, established record companies EMI or A&M but the supposedly more hip (at the time) Virgin Records and in particular Richard Branson. As Julien Temple in the book puts it: Branson was a businessman pretending not to be a businessman. In fact, whilst McLaren was doing his utmost to present himself as the great rock'n'roll swindler, it was Branson who actually out-swindled everyone, going into overdrive in the end come the death of Sid Vicious and the over-the-top exploitation of the whole sad and sorry affair.

And talking of Sid Vicious, Julien Temple in the book makes another good observation in regard to when viewing the film footage of the Pistols in America, it's Sid who's keeping the craziness going and making the Pistols more than just a rock and roll group. According to Temple, Sid knew by that stage that he'd inherited Rotten's place and importance so based on that alone, the subsequent splitting up of the band was inevitable.

The Vermorel's book is full of observations such as this and full of insights from those behind the scenes, making it an important and somewhat special book when it comes to the story of the Sex Pistols. Unexpectedly and very amusingly, one of the highlights is actually Paul Cook's mum and the interview with her. For example, on Paul Cook as a baby she says: 'I couldn't believe it when he was born. I said to the doctor - he said it was a boy, and I said: 'No, it ain't,' and he said: 'Yes, it is.' And there he was, his little white nob!' And then on being asked about Johnny Rotten, she says: 'He sat on my back step in the garden and he looked so depressed. So I said: 'Well, we are all depressed, Johnny,' and he started to laugh.'

Paul Cook's mum is brilliant, and if as Malcolm McLaren once said that 'Anyone can be a Sex Pistol' then she was an undisclosed star member.

John Serpico

The Shit Of God - Diamanda Galas

 THE SHIT OF GOD - DIAMANDA GALAS

'Is it safe?' as Lawrence Olivier's Josef Mengele character keeps asking Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Marathon Man, as he drills a hole into his tooth without the use of anesthetic.

Is it safe? In this instance to read a book by Diamanda Galas with the somewhat alarming title of The Shit Of God. Is it safe?

Well, I always say you should never be intimidated by a book be it by its size, its girth, its complexity or anything, really - particularly its title. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky? It's only a book. Ulysses by James Joyce? It's only a book. The Shit Of God by Diamanda Galas? It's only a book. And unfortunately in the case of Galas's book, not a very good one.

Writer and filmmaker Clive Barker gets it right in his introduction when he says of Galas: 'Her voice carries her audience on a journey into primal regions, where intellectual analysis and even aesthetic judgements become redundant. All you can do is listen and feel.'

And that's the thing. The work of Diamanda Galas is something to be heard and experienced, preferably in a live setting. Her words aren't meant to be laid down on paper and presented as poetry. It just doesn't work. In doing so they lose all their power and are rendered redundant. Rendered useless.

Galas is a musician, a vocalist/singer extraordinaire, composer, performance artist and a visual artist/painter. She's a legend. The printed word, however, just isn't her medium.

Obviously, The Shit Of God isn't completely without worth as I imagine if you're a fan then you're going to view it as a little birthday present but as Joe Strummer once sang: 'Nembutal numbs it all but I prefer alcohol', whilst I say: Diamanda Gala is possessed of genius but give me Peaches any day.

John Serpico

A Fistful Of Dollars - Frank Chandler

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS - FRANK CHANDLER

'Get three coffins ready.' And with that we are formally introduced to the Man With No Name. Everyone makes mistakes, however, even a gunslinger who has death as a constant companion because it ends up as actually being four coffins that are required after him shooting down a gang of gunmen in a blur of movement before twirling his two pistols around his index fingers and then sliding them back into their holsters with a slow, gentle movement that's almost like a caress... 

It's impossible to read Frank Chandler's A Fistful Of Dollars without picturing Clint Eastwood as the stranger who rides into town leaving a trail of bodies behind when he departs. And so it should be because Clint Eastwood owns the Man With No Name character even though there have been many subsequent imitations. It's the character that made Clint Eastwood into the iconic actor that he is today, and the character that has become the template for the silent killer/studied cool/avenging angel trope in movies ever since.

Based on the screenplay of the film, Chandler's book stays close to the script and doesn't deviate from the crux of the original at all, but again - that's how it should be. You don't read a book like this for it to go off at tangents. Flesh it out a bit, for sure, but don't go changing it for the sake of being clever. Don't go trying to fix something that's working fine already, or trying to improve something that doesn't need improving. Just present in a different medium what is there already and everyone will be happy.

It's this policy that Chandler abides by and his book is all the better for it. The film of A Fistful Of Dollars is still better than the book but then the book isn't trying to be better. It's an accompaniment. It's a movie tie-in. It's a joy to read. It's a pleasure. A small pleasure maybe, in the scheme of things, but a pleasure all the same.

John Serpico

The Spear - James Herbert

 THE SPEAR - JAMES HERBERT

From the cover, you wouldn't really know what The Spear by James Herbert is about. 'Instrument of terror, symbol of evil...' says the tagline, but again that doesn't really give much away. Even the main protagonist when asked 'Have you ever heard of the Heilige Lance?' has to say 'no' before the person asking the question waves the subject away with a dismissive 'it's an ancient spearhead that a certain arms dealer seemed to have an interest in'.

In fact, for the first half of the book, arms trading and the subterfuge around the whole industry is what it seems to be about, taking in Israel, Mossad, global terrorism, and a private detective agency. It's not until the protagonist - private detective Steadman - and the arms dealer finally get to properly meet that the story takes a sudden turn to the esoteric with the arms dealer asking 'Have you heard of the Thule Gesellschaft, Mr Steadman?'

The Thule Gesellschaft - in English the 'Thule Society' - the German occult group founded shortly after World War I that sponsored the German Workers' Party, that was later reorganized by Hitler into the National Socialist Workers' Party - probably more commonly known as the Nazi Party.

So, rather than arms dealing, the core of the story is about the establishment of the Fourth Reich. This time round, however, taking control of the Western World through stealth. Spreading fear, confusion and mistrust on a universal scale through worldwide terrorist attacks and the gradual breaking-down of the world's economic structure. Boiling everything down to one simple but major conflict: Right against Left.

'It would be the only choice for the people of Britain.' Steadman is informed 'No in-betweens, no fence-sitting. The public would be forced to choose. Civil war would be balanced in favour of the Right, for the majority would be the wealthy, those whose sympathy lay towards nationalistic pride; and the middle classes who had suffered so much between the elite of the country and the working classes, would choose to join them rather than be ruled by the economy-wrecking socialists. The choice would be made very easy for them. New leaders would emerge and their ideals would be uncompromising, just as Hitler's had been in the 1930s.'

And those ideals if not broken why try fixing them as in the eyes of the Far Right there's nothing so perfect and normal than racial purity and racial segregation, along with the dissolution if not extermination of marxists, communists, trade unionists, anarchists, gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and anyone else deemed to be 'untermensch' - or in other words, 'subhuman'.

This being a James Herbert book, the supernatural is not too far away and is represented by the Heilige Lance, otherwise known as the Spear of Longinus the Centurion. The Spear of Destiny. The spear that was believed to be the weapon that pierced the side of Christ as he died on the cross. And just for good measure there's also the resurrection of Heinrich Himmler - the Reichsfuhrer himself - the head of Hitler's notorious SS and the architect of the Holocaust.

Whilst The Spear isn't Herbert's best book (and it certainly isn't as good as The Rats) it's still a well-written story told by a master storyteller, with Herbert obviously having done a lot of research into the subject of Himmler and his interest in the occult. And like it or not, the occult side of Nazi Germany is an interesting subject if only for the fact that its place in World War II is always downplayed to the point of hardly ever being mentioned at all.

The unsettling thing about The Spear, however, is that there are elements of it that still echo to this day, particularly around the subject of Fascism and how those who knowingly or even unwitingly advocate for its rule along with the methods utilised to bring it about. 

As the saying goes: Fascism doesn't start with concentration camps - that's where it ends.

John Serpico

Words Are My Matter - Ursula K Le Guin

 WORDS ARE MY MATTER - URSULA K LE GUIN

So impressed was I with Ursula K Le Guin after reading her The Word For World Is Forest that I thought I should investigate further. So, following the advice given by friend and top man Lawrence Burton from his hacienda in Texas, rather than reading another of Le Guin's novels, I picked up a collection of her essays entitled Words Are My Matter - Writings On Life And Books from of all places the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol, where on entering the building a copy was there on prominent display as if waiting for me to arrive. It was serendipity, obviously, particularly as I've always had issues with the Arnolfini staff for being ignorant about aspects of art and culture that they disguise through snobbery. But that's a whole other story.

Words Are My Matter is a collection of essays, talks, book introductions and book reviews all from the pen of Ursula K Le Guin, all on the subject of literature and its meaning and purpose in our lives. From the start she writes 'The imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses, it beats the opposable thumb', and then goes on to explain exactly why. It's a no-brainer, really, but Le Guin takes it further by saying 'Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making.' Before then adding 'In the market place, the word 'creativity' has come to mean the generation of ideas to make larger profits. This reduction has gone on so long that the word 'creative' can hardly be degraded further. I don't use it any more, yielding it to the capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can't have 'imagination'.'

These words were written in 2002 and they tell us that Le Guin was very much ahead of the curve, particularly in regard to creativity. Nowadays, there's no end of people who call themselves 'creatives', 'content providers', and 'digital creators' - and frankly, it's embarrassing. The terms are meaningless because essentially it's just people on social media grifting. Let them go ahead. Let them 'create', let them entertain, let them grift but don't let them tell you it's 'imagination' because it's not, for as Le Guin explains: 'The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human'. 

The imagination is not for grifting.

In regard to Le Guin's book introductions, one of them is for Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a book that just happens to be a favourite of mine and the film of it by Andrei Tarkovsky one that is easily in my Top Five. Her insights into Lem's book are both interesting and enlightening, particularly on the period it first appeared in an English translation in 1970. I didn't know, for example, that when Lem was made an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1973, many members of the association disapproved due to him being a citizen of a Communist nation. Never mind that Lem was actually a Pole, not a Russian. His honorary membership was withdrawn and in objection to this, Le Guin refused the Nebula Award voted for her by the members of the SFWA. It going instead to Isaac Asimov who, Le Guin tells us, was a vociferous Cold War Warrior.

Other introductions take in among others works by Philip K Dick, Huxley, Paternak, the Strugatsky brothers and HG Wells, all of which offers insights galore that could only come from a fellow writer.

And then there's the slew of book reviews, many of them being of works by authors I've not heard of before but by this time because you know where Le Guin is coming from, you trust her judgements. For example, when she says of one book that it's 'a classic, and should be cherished as such', you know she's not just saying it as a favour to the author and to promote sales. She's saying it because she means it.

'I like book reviewing,' Le Guin tells us. 'It's an interesting and demanding form. And one can say a good deal in a review that has to do with wider matters, literary and otherwise.'

I agree with this totally. It's the reason I'm writing these very lines. These very words. It's ended up as the very reason for this Art Of Exmouth blog. And in the same way that Le Guin sees imagination, a good book review is not for profit-making. It's not for providing content, and it's not a way of being 'a creative'. And it's certainly not for grifting.

John Serpico

The Hellfire Club - Daniel P Mannix

THE HELLFIRE CLUB - DANIEL P MANNIX

'The rise and fall of a shocking secret society whose sole interests were perversion and politics.' So says the blurb on the front cover and it's almost as if this book had been written especially for me. The Hell-Fire Club? Where do I join? But then I remember the Oscar Wilde quote with him saying 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,' and I'm stuck.

The Hellfire Club by Daniel P Mannix, first published in 1961, is the story of an elite club of men founded in the 18th Century by Sir Francis Dashwood whose main emphasis was on sex, drugs and the ridiculing of religion. A club that attracted the supposed brightest and the best minds of England that would secretly direct the fate of the nation, operating behind the scenes of government.

Members of the club included the Earl of Sandwich (who did indeed invent the sandwich), the Earl of Bute (who later became Prime Minister), Thomas Potter (the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury), William Hogarth (the English artist), Laurence Sterne (the novelist), John Wilkes (the British libertine), and Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The book is composed of large swathes of conjecture though based on a lot of facts that can easily be cross-checked. Amusingly, there doesn't actually seem to be any proof that any of these people were members though that doesn't stop Mannix from having a lot of fun with what is known.

When George III became king, his first act was to make Bute his prime minister, Sandwich the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Dashwood the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "I'll be the worst chancellor England ever had," Bute is reported to have told his friends, to which one of them disagreed: "But you have considerable experience with figures, My Lord. You have often helped chalk up how often each of us have had a go at the nuns."

Ah, the nuns. These were 'special' nuns, of course, who attended the parties and black masses held by the Hell-Fire Club where they would 'service' the attendees. Demonstrating, for example, new positions not found even in the Kama Sutra. Parties where sex and drink of only the most involved and esoteric kind would be served. Parties held under the maxim 'Do what thou wilt' and guided by the words 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

I know what you're thinking. It sounds like just a typical night down your local pub except there you've got Guinness on tap and a pool table to mess about on and then back to whoever's house is available that night until the sun comes up. And you wouldn't be far wrong, actually. Debauchery isn't the sole reserve of the ruling class. They might well have more money and be more lavish but when it comes to imagination, inventiveness and indulgence of extremes, they do not hold a monopoly. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the upper class and even the middle class so dislike the poor and the working class. Because the working class naturally know how to enjoy themselves, whilst the middle and upper class can only buy enjoyment. They cannot invent and make it themselves.

The thing of note about this book is that it shows the workings of such elite clubs as the Hell-Fire Club, Eton's Bullingdon Club and the goings-on at Epstein's island is nothing new. Secret societies, elite clubs, nepotism and the old school tie have been with us for centuries. So too has the machinations and the corruption of power and the way it's clung to and wielded for the benefit of the few and the exploitation of the many. And that is where the difference in debauchery lies. Not in the quality of it or in its highs and lows but in the level of the power games that go with it.

John Serpico

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

 HOMBRE - ELMORE LEONARD

The book on which the film starring Paul Newman is based of course, and I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff where a film is based on a book and vice versa. It's the interplay between the two mediums and the 'compare and contrast' that comes into play. It's only natural to match one medium against another and to let the best man win and though both have their own very unique strengths, nine times out of ten 'Het boek is beter' as the Dutch say. Which brings us to Elmore Leonard and I didn't realise just how many films have been made from his books - 23 in total - including 3:10 To Yuma, Valdez Is Coming, Jackie Brown, and this one, obviously - Hombre.

First published in 1961, Hombre by Elmore Leonard is concise, succinct and to the point. It's an example of storytelling in a very precise way. Lean, mean and clean in its structure though set in a hot, dirty and unforgiving landscape. One of the major themes running through it is the subject of racism, specifically in regard to the treatment of Native Americans, accentuated by the main character having spent half his life living with the Apache.

Without going into too much detail, the story involves a stagecoach holding a mixed-bag of passengers being held up by outlaws and them being left to die with no water in a barren, Monument Valley-type environment. A turn of events then leads to the passengers being chased-down by the outlaws across this same hostile landscape. The only one of them who has any survival skills and of any use with a gun is, of course, the one raised by indians so it's him they come to depend on for their survival even when only a day earlier they didn't want him in the stagecoach with them.

The vast amount of the story is centred on the play-offs and stand-offs between the characters, with the indian-raised character - the 'Hombre' of the book's title - being the pivot around whom everything circles. It's a familiar trope, admittedly, but what grips the attention is the masterly way the story is told and the suspense maintained.

But is the book better than the movie? Well, one of the major flaws in the film when watching it nowadays is seeing Paul Newman dressed as an Apache, which unavoidably doesn't really sit right. There's also the feeling when watching the film that it's an ensemble piece but usurped by Newman. So yes, the book - as ever - is better. Or again, as the Dutch say: 'Het boek is beter'.

John Serpico