“Listen, you know this: If there’s not a rebellious youth culture, there’s no culture at all. It’s absolutely essential. It is the future. This is what we’re supposed to do as a species, is advance ideas.” — John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten)

I love this 2012 interview with John Lydon, where he is asked about his “anarchist” stance, and whether or not he still identifies as an anarchist. Here is how the conversation goes:

“I’m the same as I ever was.” But you’re not an anarchist anymore? “I never was. Whoever told you that? Anarchy is mind games for the middle class.” But didn’t you have a song that said: “I am an anarchist?” “I also had a song that said Pretty Vacant. I’m not pretty and I’m not vacant.” It may come as a surprise to some that he watched the Jubilee on television and isn’t waiting for Margaret Thatcher to die. “It’s vicious, can’t these people offer anything better than that? No- one is the enemy, none of us is the enemy.”

“Anarchy is mind games for the middle class.”

That is brutal. Similar to his summing-up of the 60s as not a “revolution” at all but a bunch of “university kids with wealthy parents having some fun”, or something like that. Pitiless truth. He dismissed Green Day (being hailed as punk rock) as “bubblegum” and he said that U2 should “never have existed.” On the other hand, he loves Lady Gaga. He met Newt Gingrich and found him “totally dishonest and totally likeable.” lol He hung out with the Monty Python guys back in the day and found them all “insane”.

Rock ‘n roll – and that includes everything punk, of course – was always dangerous. It made people scared. It felt like it would topple civilization. Whether it was Chuck Berry, Elvis, Lou Reed, Nirvana, or the Sex Pistols … these figures were dangerous, and – by their mere existence – in hostile opposition to the status quo. They called the “status quo” into question.

Who is doing that now? In my opinion, this “opposition to the status quo”, this sense of danger, is only alive and well in the realm of hip hop. Elsewhere, “status quo” is to be kow-towed to, paid obeisance to, even among the most progressive circles, where conformity is paramount. If you think I’m exaggerating or being unfair, then I hate to break it to you: You are in a bubble. It’s not too late. You can leave the bubble once you recognize it IS a bubble. Where does danger lie in pop culture now? Maybe hip hop, although hip hop has also been so absorbed into the mainstream it may have lost some of its teeth. The best hip hop still takes shots at the so-called mainstream, still calls out injustice and unfairness, rages against hypocrisy. The culture now is so diffused and spread out, there’s just so much MORE out there – it’s harder to cut through all that noise with a singular rebellious voice.

The Sex Pistols’ tour of America was their swan song. That tour resulted in one of my favorite photographs.

This one image encapsulates the weird shaggy beauty of the era, its clashes and contradictions. Culture isn’t a straight line. One thing doesn’t lead to another. A lot happens simultaneously, seemingly incongrous things. At any given moment, there is a lot of NOISE. That these two musical acts – Merle Haggard and the Sex Pistols – can not only exist simultaneously BUT play the same club – a club called the LONGHORN BALLROOM, of all things – is hope for humanity. The world really is big enough for all of us, even though there’s a tendency to forget.

I cannot opine on the Sex Pistols. That is my brother Brendan’s territory. He wrote an amazing essay about Never Mind the Bollocks.