There are few bands in the history of rock that have left a greater impression in such a short time as the Sex Pistols. The band was together for about two years, they never charted a single in America, and they never recorded a complete album together; their lone album was largely a singles collection.
However, had there been no Sex Pistols, the current musical landscape would be a vastly different one; everything that came after their 1976-1977 existence has somehow been touched by them, either directly as a musical influence, or indirectly in terms of the recontextualization of rock music the Pistols achieved in their brief moment. Punk, indie rock, and alternative rock all owe a tremendous debt to the band whose stated goal was to destroy rock 'n' roll. They might not have succeeded in their mission, but they did manage to change its face forever.
Their music was raw and nihilistic; The Ramones were a cheerful pop band in comparison. In England, they were more than a dangerous band; they were a bona fide threat to the social order and the monarchy itself. In America, most people didn't hear of them until they were already gone; still, the shadow cast by their small clutch of releases had immediate and irreversable effect on punk rock; the overwhelming rage and sonic attack their music held, and their defiant, do-it-our-way attitude were the cornerstones of a whole new generation of music.
Their story begins in 1975 when Malcom McLaren, owner of the London boutique SEX, decided to take some principles learned from the French situationist art terrorists of 1968 and apply them to the staid boys' club of rock music. The idea was to shake things up with a large dose of provocative anarchy that would fly in the face of the pomposity of progressive rock and the flaccidity of country-rock and singer/songwriter music. Having very briefly worked with the provocative New York Dolls at the end of their career, he had some rock experience; this time, he wanted to be fully in charge of a band from the start, and orchestrate their attack like puppetmaster.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - godoggo
Heard Jonesy interviewing Malcolm on his radio show today. Second question (after "How long has it been?) was "Where's my money?"
First PiL (hope I got the capitalization right) release was First Issue.
2 - Marty Thau
For the umpteenth time, let's put the record straight -- Malcolm never managed the New York Dolls. He wanted to but it never came about but he has been claiming for years that he did. I think I should know...
3 - uao
Thanks godoggo, I forgot about First Issue
As for Mclaren and the New York Dolls, I don't know if he was "officially" manager, but there are a lot of references that call him manager, or say he "worked" with the band. I welcome the real info, if you have it, Marty Thau. I hate to keep misinformation alive.
Here's some references I found, there are many others:
From here
Following the disappointing sales of their two albums, Mercury Records dropped the New York Dolls. No other record labels were interested in the band, so they decided to hire a new manager, the British Malcolm McLaren, who would soon become famous for managing the Sex Pistols. With the Dolls, McLaren began developing his skill for turning shock into invaluable publicity. Although he made it work for the Pistols just a year later, all of his strategies backfired for the Dolls. McLaren made the band dress completely in red leather and perform in front of the USSR's flag; all of which meant to symbolize the Dolls' alleged communist allegiance. The new approach only made record labels more reluctant to sign the band and members soon began leaving the group.
From an Amazon.com review:
The punk scene would have been much different minus The Dolls. It's unlikely The Ramones would have done it quite the way they did, and The Sex Pistols certainly wouldn't have happened. In fact, Malcolm McLaren managed the tail end of The Dolls before he moved back to England to create The Sex Pistols. Malcolm dressed The Dolls in patent red leather and draped giant sickle & hammer red flags behind them on stage, all this to upset the American public. None of his antics seemed to work with The Dolls, as they were nodding out of consciousness more than half of the time. It may have been easier for Malcolm McLaren to go from a band with two zonked junkies to a band with only one.
'I was trying to do with the Sex Pistols what I had failed with the New York Dolls' --Malcolm McLaren
In fact, Malcolm wanted to hire either Sylvain Sylvain of The New York Dolls or Richard Hell (then of Television) to front his incomplete Sex Pistols.
'Malcolm...he always wanted me to come over and start a group called the Sex Pistols' --Sylvain Sylvain
...and in retrospect:
'It was a stupid idea of mine...no way Hell or Syl would have fit in with the Pistols. Hell and Syl had years on the Pistols...the Pistols were incredibly naïve.' --Malcolm McLaren
From here
More than that, the link with Malcolm McClaren is obvious as their manager for a short but undistinguished period of time. The Dolls were the first band that met his expectations of rebel rock. His first attempt to dress such a band was not a qualified success not helped by them being on their last legs with drug wastage. After first unsuccessfully attempting to get Sylvan then Richard Hell to come to the UK and form a band , he instead took some of the sartorial ideas of the latter and the guitar of the former - the famous white Gibson Les Paul - ended up in Steve Jones's hands .
From here
To keep the Dolls in the public eye, McLaren devised a scheme that would pave the way for the shocking fashion and statements that would come from later punk acts. McLaren toyed with some of the slogans from the French students' revolution of 1968. In 1974, he borrowed their question, "What are the politics of boredom?" and dressed the band in red patent leather. The red, combined with the boredom banner boasting a sickle and hammer, had many asking if the Dolls had gone too far. From drag to Communism, the Dolls had once again overextended themselves, and this time failed miserably. McLaren tried to resurrect the Dolls' career by sending the band on a tour of the South. The tour ended when the band broke up in Florida in 1974. Guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan's heroin left the Dolls in the middle of a tour because they could not find heroin in Florida.
From: Wikipedia
The New York Dolls were a glam rock band in the 1970s that prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era. Influenced by the MC5, the Dolls influenced a whole era of musicians and bands such as the Hanoi Rocks, The Ramones, Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, The Damned and even Morrissey of the Smiths. Perhaps their most lasting influence was on the sound and style of The Sex Pistols whose manager, Malcolm McLaren, was briefly involved with the Dolls at the end of their career (see protopunk).
4 - uao
Oops! Sorry about the long url. Can someone fix that? Sorry!
5 - HW Saxton
Man, where in the F*** do you get your info dude??? On a weekly basis more and more flat out nonsense gets pushed onto BC care of your word processor than I can stand to read. Starting with the S.P.'s never recorded an LP proper?!?!?
Well,waddinthefug was "Never Mind The Bollocks?" Many tracks on there were not
not released as singles ever.Period.
That LP was not just a collection of singles and their were B sides from other singles that were not included there either.
Your ethusiasm for the music is very
admirable and noted it is also wrong on
a lot of occasions.
If you would stop regurgitating anything
and seemingly everything you've read on
line and do a little homework you might hit on something hafway correct half of the time. I've had trouble taking you seriously since your assertion that the Butterfield Blues Band was a San Fran
hippie blues band a few months back and I have noticed that you print verbatim that info you've gleaned on line without
any knowledge at all to back up any of your claims. Sorry to be so harsh, honestly I am, but why bother writing about that in which you have next to no understanding or knowledge about.Sheesh!
Listen to Marty as regards The Dolls and Malcolm. He tried to ingratitae himself into their midst but they were having next to nothing to do with him. You need to read "Please Kill Me" for a better look at that particularly strange
situation,amigo. Again, I understand your passion for the music but why bother try to write on it as it is becoming glaringly obvious that you do not know SHIT about it and are just out to rehash facts/factotums that are largely incorrect if not just plain wrong. I've ignored it until now because
there is no point in bothering with it. But when you make such absolutelt wrong staements sucadss these it makes it very
hard to keep ignoring.
6 - uao
Gosh, HW. I always was nice to you. Watch your language, man.
I don't know where to begin with you here. Let's start with where I get my facts. I usually stick with facts I can verify in at least three separate places; I think I go to more trouble to verify stuff than most people.
As for Marty Thau's comment, I asked him to elaborate, and I posted examples of how I could very easily come to the conclusion McLaren managed the Dolls at the end of their career. It's all over the place; if you know the story, then spit it out.
I never "asserted" Butterfied Blues Band was a San Fran hippie band, those were your words. I included them in an aside about blues bands active on the west coast. Yes, they were from chicago; Bloomfield wound up on the west coast.
I don't "regurgitate" stuff. I try to put biographical info, recording info, and the like into a readable format. It's not an easy job either, especially when you know anal-retentives will pick apart your article while seldom offering useful info on their own.
Sheesh, it's a diversion, to talk about bands and music. I never claimed to be a historian, although I'll match my facts up against the facts cited in most other articles around here.
Sleep it off, HW. You're way outta line here.
7 - uao
And Never Mind The Bollocks is not an "album" it is mostly a singles collection. I never said they never meant to make and album, but Bollocks ain't an album. It's a hodgepodge.
8 - Marty Thau
Here's the real info -- Malcolm worked with the Dolls for a short period of time -- for a few months at most -- and wanted to manage them but it never would have happened because some members of the band just didn't like him, or his ideas. As for Mercury, they wanted a 3rd album but only if the band wrote new material and cleaned up. Keep in mind that in the mid-'70s you could be anything in America but you couldn't be a commie. Ever hear of Vietnam? Malcolm's political fantasy, or vision(s), if you will, missed its mark by many a mile with his Red Patent Leather presentation. Oddly enough, though, the Dolls were great at that "comeback" show but the press couldn't see past the hammer and sickle banner. Here's the bottom line -- since when do reviews from sites like Amazon.com, etc. tell the real story, especially when they're quite often written by people who weren't, in many cases, even born when a particular band existed? The truth is this -- the one and only good thing Malcolm ever did for the Dolls was to send Arthur to alcoholic rehab. Everything else was a total disaster. The Dolls were well over by the time Malcolm showed up. All he ever did was drive them further into oblivion. But in all fairness to him, he learned his lessons well and his exposure to the Dolls, and New York's downtown tastemakers coupled with his revisionist resume, stood him in good stead in London. He lucked out but eventually even blew it with the Sex Pistols. His greatest revelation was that he understood a void had been created in England when the Dolls imploded. Malcolm obviously got a lot of mileage out of stating he was the Dolls manager but he just wasn't. That's what took place. Believe it.
9 - uao
Thanks Marty;
I should clarify one point: I don't use Amazon reviews for information; I simply googled "New York Dolls" + "McLaren" after I read your message, and printed the first 5 things that came up. That was just to show how one could easily fall into the trap of believing info that appears in a variety of places.
You cite no sources, but I believe your synopsis; I changed "managed the Dolls" to "worked with the Dolls".
The thing about community bloggin, like Blogcritics, is it gives us a chance to catch each other's errors. If someone catches one, I always fix it; I like good info as much as the next person. Like I said, I'm fastidious about checking things -it takes me hours- but I'm also human; I can overlook something, misread something, make a typo, or mischaracterize something just like anyone else. I try not to, and go to pains to avoid it. All I ask is that people try not to get too personal if they have their facts differently; I always look into it, as I did here.
In this case I plead guilty so saying something hundreds of other people said. It isn't integral to the story being told, but since reasonable doubt exists, I hope my edit will suffice.
At any rate, thanks for sharing your story; I appreciate it.
10 - Marty Thau
Cite sources? In this case I was the source.
11 - uao
Sorry Marty, no offense meant. I didn't recognize your name at first.
Thank you for the exclusive. :)
12 - Eric Olsen
much of the dispute here is interpretation -- what is an album vs a collection? -- but Marty is word on the Dolls. He was there. REad his history of the Dolls right here in Blogcritics
13 - Eric Olsen
And yes, everyone PLEASE make your URLs links
14 - Mark Saleski
ah geez, who cares about the actual facts?!! for me the only fact that matters is that i saw the Pistols do "God Save The Queen" on the tv and the hair rose on my arms and neck and i almost peed my pants.
you won't find that anecdote in the wiki.
15 - uao
Thanks for fixing the link Eric, I'll be careful of that in the future.
Also thanks for posting the link to Marty's account; it is indeed fascinating reading. Wish I had read that before writing this.
Mark Saleski's apt comment makes me want to add a thought I had about writing about music, and the facts one must double-check when doing so:
First of all, the piece is about the Sex Pistols, not the Dolls. That doesn't excuse a factual error, but the error was an aside, and doesn't bear on the story at large very much.
The story itself is not verbatim of anything; like all my articles, I wrote it first, and then went back and checked facts, names, locations, and dates. This meant changing stuff, rephrasing stuff, inserting stuff, and deleting stuff.
The purpose of the article (and all of my articles) is to tip my hat to the artist, and provide an introduction to the band and its work and noteworthy biographical events. It's not intended for superfans, collectors, and the like; it's meant for newbies who haven't tried the artist, or those who have but don't know much about them.
As such, Mark illustrates a thought I have every time someone gets angry at me here: 99.5% of the people who read this article couldn't care less if McLaren managed the Dolls or not. That's not the story being told here.
That doesn't mean it's OK to be wrong; I'd just as soon satisfy the other .5% too; a hopeless task, but a goal always worth shooting for.
A lot of people have an attitude of "If you weren't there, then you don't know shit, and have no business writing about it". That's just bullcrap. I wasn't at the Civil War either, but I'll write about it if I want to.
My articles are never first hand accounts and never pretend to be. They're intended to tell a story, offer a context, outline a discography, offer some critique, and note big events in an artist's career.
Some work better than others; I wasn't around for Jefferson Airplane either, but the official Jefferson Airplane site thought my piece on them was worth featuring on their front page. So sometimes, people find value in these articles.
I dislike misinformation more than people might realize; I try to stamp it out in my articles myself, and invite others to alert me to stuff I get wrong. I also fix a lot of misinformation other sources misreport and get no kudos for that; I just did a piece on Pavement; you'd never believe how many sources mis-identify drummer Gary Young as a different Gary Young who drummed in Australia.
As for this Sex Pistols piece, I'm sure someone can take a microscope and pick it apart some more. I also think it's a better introduction to the Sex Pistols than you'll find at a lot of online rock sites. Perfect? No way; I'm still a beginner. 100% correct? Probably not, but not for want of trying. Would someone who was actually there write a better introduction? Not necessarily; might even be worse, might not.
Here's a sad but inevitable fact I don't need to double check: 25 years from now all rock lit will be written by people who weren't there. And the music and bands themselves will occupy a different context for later generations, one that might curl the hair of the old timers. But if the music survives, and moves people, that's a good thing.
I seldom respond to posts in as lengthy a manner as I've done here, but since one commenter trashed my entire output at BC on the basis of a couple of nitpicks, I felt compelled to stand up for myself, since I put a lot of work into producing pieces that do have value.
If a reader doesn't like my work, then don't read it; there's plenty else to read here, much of it better than mine. And if someone finds an error, try to point it out without cursing me out at the same time. That's all. I'm happy to fix it.
Sorry for the long post here, but I needed to get it off my chest.
16 - Vern Halen
Well, I like uao's weekly artists' overviews. You just gotta remember - they're overviews. And what a good overview lacks in insider information and intimate detail is usually made up for by being generally informative interesting or entertaining.
Keep up the good articles!
17 - Eric Olsen
I like them very much and find them valuable for the reasons uao states: focusing attention on deserving artist by providing background on them and their music.
All you can do with mistakes is correct them. Thanks uao!
18 - Mark Saleski
they make me wanna buy records (yea, i know...what doesn't??!!)
19 - Eric Olsen
oh, one other thing: dude, do a search of Blogcritics as you do each profile
20 - uao
Good idea, Eric, thanks.
21 - Vern Halen
Oh, and let's not forget - the Pistols were a hell of a band, and they've got lots of material that still sounds as tough as nails - "Anarchy in the UK" (you can almost believe Johnny Rotten IS the antichist), "God Save the Queen"(love the 4 note guitar solo!), "Bodies" (so acidic even prolifers can't use it as an antiabortion anthem), and "New York" ("lookin' for a kiss" indeed!).
I don't know if they could've survived a second album/collection/whatever. Bollocks is pretty near perfect on its own terms - of course, as the legend (and maybe even the reality) would have it, the Pistols would never have used anyone else's.
22 - dyrkness
I was at the Sex Pistols concert in San Antonio Texas at Randy's Rodeo.YOU CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT IT WAS LIKE! Punks+Cowboys.OH Brother What Art Thou? As Shel Silverstein once said in a song "The Mud and The Blood and The Beer."
23 - uao
As far as I'm concerned, dyrkness just delivered the best eulogy for the Pistols in America as anyone is liable to see.
24 - Antfreeze
You know uao, a better answer to the nitpicking here would have been, "Piss off ya wankers!" Great writing man. KIU
25 - uao
That would have been brilliant antfreeze; wish I had thought of it. ;-)