The Committee to Nuke Elysium

The truth is, no one made much money off the Pistols, although McLaren made the most. The plug was pulled on our film, “Who Killed Bambi?,” after a day and a half of shooting, when the electricians walked off the set after McLaren couldn’t pay them. Meyer had presciently demanded his own weekly pay in advance every Monday morning.

The Catch-22 with punk rock, and indeed with all forms of entertainment designed to shock and offend the bourgeoisie, is that if your act is too convincing, you put yourself out of business, a fact carefully noted by today’s rappers as they go as far as they can without going too far.

The Sex Pistols went too far. They never had a period that could be described as actual success. Even touring England at the height of their fame, they were booked into clubs under false names. They were hated by the establishment, shut down by the police and pilloried by the press (“The Filth and the Fury” takes its title from a banner headline that once occupied a full front page of the Daily Mirror). That was bad enough. Worse was that their own fans sometimes attacked them, lashed into a frenzy by the front line of Rotten and Vicious, who were sometimes performers, sometimes bear-baiters.