Or to put it another way:
A POST WHICH IS CALLED “SHADOW
BEHIND THE HEART”
People up-thread have veered towards the
Thing, then just swerved past it [OK, OK, so
remember this is a record that mattered so
much to me that I probably didn’t play it
ONCE from c.1979-92: oh yes, an impossible
unfaceable disappointment on first arrival,
but already by then I *wanted* to be
disappointed; by then betrayal was already
the best we had to look forward to anyway]
and the Thing is this. The centre of the core
of the essence of the Thing: that if Sex
Pistols gave us (“us”) the territory in which
to live out our so-called adult lives, if that
was the word, it was because they alone
seemed to know that contradiction was: All.
That. Mattered. Their heart, their motor,
their hook, their end.
[You know, I read England’s Dreaming seven
times straight through when it first came
out: the compulsion only broke when I
realised I was trying to _make the ending
come out another, a nicer way_]
And I’m tempted just to talk about ‘Bodies’:
after all, there’s a thread over there
somewhere which says (to me) that this song
— of all their hits and misses, deep projects
and silly-thing throwaways — is the one that
*hasn’t* yet been hoovered up into mere CD-
collectable classicness. The *really*
difficult one. Not Holidays, not Belsen. The *
really* ugly one. The *really* scary one. The
one that tricks you (= me) into stepping back
from what they are, into, like, questions
about — oh — guitar layering and song
sequencing. Into scholarship. Objectivity.
Somewhere safe, where I needn’t listen *and*
think *and* hear. Because the contradictions
are written right through that song: through
words, delivery, even there in the peculiar
anti-pop intro, a surging hostile undecided
pure-music [dunno].
The first four lines of ‘God Save the Queen’
could furnish a punk William Empson with a
perfect new project: Four [hey, Forty!] Types
of Sarcasm. Every one delivered at a
different level and/or setting of “irony” (too
weak a word, obviously). But you can read
the claim and you can read JR’s attitude to
it, each time. In ‘Bodies’, what’s he saying,
who’s he being? Who the *hell*? Himself,
her, the infant, the watching world? All?
None? In the interviews on Ltd Edn 2-CD set,
they all just blabber abt Pauline, some poor
mad early stalker-fan, doomed self-
mutilator attracted by the spooky punk dog-
whistle that all the insane and the now-long-
dead also heard. Answer given to: “What
made you write the song” Answer NOT given
to: “WHERE DID YOU GO WITH THE SONG...”
…“‘When that Indian spoke to us,’ went on
Brown in a conversational undertone, ‘I had a
sort of vision, a vision of him and all his
universe. Yet he only said the same thing
three times. When first he said, ‘I want
nothing,’ it only meant that he was
impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself
away. Then he said, ‘I want nothing,’ and I
knew he meant he was sufficient unto
himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no
God, nor admitted any sins. And when he
said the third time, ‘I want nothing,’ he said
it with blazing eyes. And I knew that he
meant literally what he said; that nothing
was his desire and his home; that he was
weary for nothing as for wine; that
annihilation, the mere destruction of
everything or anything—’”…
So, just some of those contradictions: here’s
a song — a hard song, a song that’s a vortex of
irresponsible, irrecuperable nastiness —
which sits with both sides. Yes with nasty-
child gross-out facepulling , deliberate
fake-thoughtless adolescent pigtail-pulling,
and Yes with righteous rage at such jerky
capering. A song which sits with both sides.
Not mediating, though: EXACTLY not
mediating. More like dragging each
impossibly opposed side through the guts of
the other. You say either/or, you imagine
some nice you-choose consumer ambiguity:
this is more like, whichever you wanted, you
get the *other* one. Punk = feeling SO MUCH
you have to pretend that nothing touches
you, that the worst is a joke like all the rest.
Punk = feeling SO LITTLE that you’ve no
problem pretending you care about
everything and anything. Both. The good *
and* the horrible. The invaluable *and* the
worthless. Begin there (which the stupid
Clash stupid didn’t).
The guitars and rhythm section are fantastic
YET the production is amateur and rubbish,
murkily mastered, arbitrarily sequenced: a
careless maybe-deliberate assault on the
very idea of the LP as desirable item,
repeatable proposition, nice-thing-to-grow-
old-with. The package is amazing YET the
sleeve was chucked together, designed to
seem to be random rubbish non-design. The
death of rock intended YET this was the
sought-for apotheosis of all rock culture, to
date, when the unspoken promise was called
in. Malice, yes: venom, rage, yes yes, all that
blah blah ho-hum. YET also Lydon’s
incredible *wide-openness* as performer
and songwriter, never so mobile, so
unguarded, so daring. Manufactured boyband
mindgames: of course — all the time. Lydon is
the second most manipulative man in all pop
culture; McLaren the third (or vice versa/
doesn’t matter). YET the people they fooled
most of all — themselves and one another —
they tricked into a zone from which even
retreat was just another kind of weary
advance, because it meant working through
so many otherwise unspoken things,
especially compared to [insert anything you
like or hate here].
Rage and deeper rage: rage for, and rage
against life. He hurls himself down into the
dank well of his disgust — imagine singing
this song, night after night after night after
night — and finds, what? You looking back at
him. Me looking back at him. I don’t know
how to end this bit. (You know Sex Pistols
briefly had a notion to tour with Henry Cow
...)
Lydon: “I regard myself as working class,
but I know damn well working class doesn’t
regard me that way” *YET* Lydon: “Why are
the working class so angry, lazy and scared
of education? Why are they so scared of
learning and stepping outside their clearly
defined class barriers?”
Jesus: imagine listening to the hideous
churning fucker for casual pleasure! For
DIVERSION!!
McLaren : “Of course, the *real* fans aren’t
buying it”
― mark s, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
nine months pass...