With Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren off to the great mosh pit in the sky, Mark Steyn flashes back to his 2005 review of Julian Temple’s documentary of the Pistols’ career (such as it was), The Filth and Fury:
Happily, you don’t have to be a Pistols fan to enjoy Temple’s documentary, notwithstanding that it’s a little unnerving when the nearest thing to a good song in a musical biography is Middle of the Road singing ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’. Still, all the old favourites are here — ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Anarchy In The UK’, ‘God Save The Queen/She ain’t no human bein’’ (wonderful rhyme) — although the passage of time has not healed the creative differences within the group. For example, Glen Matlock still seems to be labouring under the delusion that he was a member of a musical ensemble. ‘The only thing I didn’t like about “Anarchy” was that dreadful rhyme. “Antichrist/anarchist” always made me wince,’ sighs Glen. Personally, I thought it was rather striking, but Glen had apparently been expecting Cole Porter. Responding to this musicological observation, Johnny Rotten says of Glen, ‘When you talk like an arsehole and you look like an arsehole, you’re an arsehole.’ After two hours of listening to Rotten — now John Lydon — compare himself to Richard III, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Arthur Askey and Ken Dodd, unkind souls may find themselves thinking, ‘Ask not for whom the arse holes, it holes for thee.’
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