Rock & roll had always been subversive by nature. If we're talking Brit rock exclusively, about ten years earlier, Pete Townshend had smashed his guitar to bits while Roger Daltrey howled about “My Generation”; Mick Jagger had figuratively summoned youths to take up arms in the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man”; and then there was John Lennon in 1970, dropping F-bombs as he strummed his way through a scathing indictment of the British class system in “Working Class Hero.”
But rock had never advocated nihilism in such a blunt, brash way. "Anarchy in the U.K." "God Save the Queen." In the Sex Pistols' world, the fractured British economy, social structure, and politics were beyond fixing. And pop music? That had to go, too.
But then, take a song like "Pretty Vacant." It isn't really advocating anything, other than a Marlene Dietrich-like desire to be left alone. And that's basically the bent of the whole song: don't try to understand us, don't ask us questions, just go away.
In a way, that's even more shocking and subversive than climbing on a soapbox and screaming about the end of the monarchy and anarchy, because it disengages totally. What's more jarring than someone walking away from an argument because they couldn't care less about what you think or feel?
In hindsight, considering that the band made one album before it imploded and frontman John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon pretty much went on to create his own brand of fractured pop with Public Image Ltd., the band's bark was louder than its bite. But you can't deny that there's still something immediate and exciting about Steve Jones's raging guitar riffs and Paul Cook's war drumming on "Pretty Vacant." It's loud, loutish, and groundbreaking.
What else can you ask for in your rock & roll?
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