Introduction
On June 7, 1977, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook, and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols sailed down the River Thames, just two nights after Queen Elizabeth’s own luxurious and incredibly exclusive Jubilee fleet had done the very same. They played the British national anthem on cassette and followed it with original songs—“Anarchy in the U.K,” “Pretty Vacant,” and, of course, “God Save the Queen”—that were outright offensive to British tradition, the government, and even Elizabeth herself. It’s no surprise, then, that the four punks were almost arrested for public indecency by police even though they had a legal permit to be there (or so Richard Branson says). That same year—Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee year—the Pistols had skyrocketed to international popularity. In record time, they outpaced bands they called “dinosaurs” like the Stones and the Beatles and rode a wave of nihilism characteristic of 1970s Britain.i,ii
Despite popular belief, 1977 Britain was more than the anti-authoritarian sentiment and iconoclasm typically associated with punk music. By the second half of the century, the functions of the crown lied overwhelmingly in public displays such as coronations, balcony speeches, Jubilees, and weddings. Such elaborate celebrations were important because they alluded to something profound—be it empire, patriotism, British identity, or some combination thereof. But as faith in the entire British project began to erode in the seventies, so did the profoundness that underpinned the crown. A novel number of Britons thought the crown and its displays were inauthentic, phony, out of touch, and out of step with the people. Influenced by these phenomena, the Pistols wrote “God Save the Queen,” arguing that the Queen was a commodity and her Jubilee a veneer, neither with any meaningful basis. However, rather than take to the republican pulpit, the Sex Pistols instead sought to inject meaning and authenticity back into the monarchy. Along with the appropriately dubbed “alternative national anthem,” the Thames River boat party was supposed to serve as a juxtaposition to the Queen’s elite and inaccessible Jubilee fleet, an example of what authentic celebration ought to look like. Even further, performative fashion served as the Pistols’ most deliberate attempt to make the Queen an interactive and meaningful part of punk identity by using her portrait combined with original patterns and graphics. The Sex Pistols did not sing in vain, because the monarchy was forced to communicate more openly and meaningfully with the English in the era of Diana and Kate Middleton.
The Conventions & Functions of Monarchy Around 1977
By the Pistols’ time, the bulk of the crown’s duties lied in public display: Jubilees, coronations, balcony speeches, weddings, and radio broadcasts. Such displays were deliberately invented to secure relevancy of the crown following the shrinkage of the monarch’s political and economic agency, and to bolster British pride amid the decline of the country’s prestige abroad.iii Even further than that, public display proved especially beneficial “PR” for the monarchy itself. Regular Britons could see the royal family, celebrate them, and sometimes even feel intimately connected to them; their patron rulers who, though neither appointed nor elected, represented them in important ways. For instance, during wartime in the 1940s, George VI and the future Queen Elizabeth’s displays on the war front and at home reminded the English people that “the British imperial monarchy embod[ies] decency, continuity, reassurance and hope”.iv Even more important, by “combining order with freedom, and tradition with liberty,” the royal couple also reminded Britons that the King and Queen, like the common people, experienced the carnage firsthand.
Monarchical public displays were not just public displays. Whether British spectators looked at “the gloved hand waving from the golden coach” and saw national pride, international prestige, or a family representative of the right kind of Britishness, did not matter. What mattered was that they saw something more profound than gloved hands and golden coaches.v If stripped of this importance, which Cannadine repeatedly urges makes them relevant, public displays look different, and understandably so.vi At face value, they celebrate men and women who are anointed, not appointed or elected, to a position above politics, sin, and the humdrum of regular British life. Their clothes are elaborate, their robes are lined with expensive fur, and they deliver speeches atop platforms and in protected palaces. The divide between monarch and subject is integral to the praxis even of a Christmas broadcast or radio speech.vii Fortunately for the monarchy, the underpinnings that gave Jubilees, coronations, balcony speeches, and their relevance has yet to give way in Britain. Even still, the meaningfulness that was supposed to define one display—Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee—came under fire in the decade of discontent. For the first time in a long time, a lot of Britons felt real resentment for the crown and all of its trappings.
Britain in the 1970s: A Decade of Discontent
During the 1970s, the economic and political situation in Britain was poor, and practically everyone—including the Pistols—knew it. Inflation was at a high 16%, wages were low, and British prestige was embittered across the globe, having folded to the likes of Russia and the United States.viii Though it was certainly a decade of recession and strife, it was not plagued by major depression and existential conflict like the 1940s, contrary to what the media promoted. According to Tara Martin-Lopez, the optics of it, defined by the daily sight of “rubbish…left on the street and bodies… unburied,” combined with Conservative efforts to paint the period as a historically negative one enshrined the 1970s as Briton’s problem decade.ix Britons who turned their TVs saw towers of garbage, on-going strikes, and pessimistic political speeches. The decade and its mythologized winter of 1978-79 were near-apocalyptic. In fact, as Sex Pistol’s frontman John Lydon looks back on the seventies in Julien Temple’s The Filth and Fury, he captures this exact feeling:
It was cold and miserable, no-one had any jobs, you couldn’t get a job. Total social chaos. There was rioting all over the place, strikes on every kind of amenity you could think of. The TV channels would go on and off randomly…there was also a garbage strike that went on for years and years and years and there was trash piled ten feet highx
Certainly, then, the disillusionment of the 1970s was one of many lenses with which the Sex Pistols looked at the world. As youngsters, seventies Britain was the only Britain they knew, and it undoubtedly shaped their songs, behavior, and perception of the monarchy. Despite the punk band’s critiques of the Queen were novel in their outlandishness and brazenness, they were by no means leveled alone in their frustrations. Disillusionment with the monarchy cropped up exponentially in 70s Britain, though not addressed in detail by British historians like Cannadine, Antonia Frasier, and Robert Lacey because the “venire” of discontent “gave way to tradition” at the end of the day.xi Many Britons shared with the Pistols a dynamic and complicated relationship with their monarch.
Evidence of anti-monarchism and anti-Jubileeism in the seventies is quite ample. According to one 1977 public opinion poll, 16.4% of Britons responded “no” to the question “does Britain need a queen”, compared with 11% in previous years.xii Several pieces in newspapers and magazines criticized the cost of the Silver Jubilee. “Abolish the Monarchy” and “Stuff the Jubilee” badges were worn in public by a great deal of British Communists and Socialists. Though left-leaning newspapers made such criticisms and radical leftists wore such pins, a newfound reservation of the crown grew among those of the middle and right on the political spectrum. For example, former Home Secretary Merlyn Reese, described by the Guardian as “a conventional politician… of the moderate wing of his party” took “issue with the palace’s decision to issue silver medals to award do-gooders” because of how expensive it was.xiii In addition, one Mass-Orbs reporter was struck that the Telegraph, a conservative newspaper, printed editorials on “the pros and cons of the monarchy and of the Queen’s virtues and fault. Such think pieces, the reporter writes, “would have been inconceivable even twenty-five years ago”.xiv
The Queen’s public opinion crisis was not political or economic, considering that the monarch had little power over both, only power to “advise and consent” the government.xvii Instead, the profoundness that underpinned the very functions of monarchy—which lied mostly in public display—eroded under the weight of domestic turmoil, and that seriously affected how the English people thought about their Queen. Remarkably, British monarchal rituals propagated became threatened in the 1970s. National pride was scarce Britons’ faith dwindled in their Labour government. The empire was shrinking by the day. The meaning of being “British” became threatened because of the rising nationalism among the Scottish and Irish.xviii The only things left of the Silver Jubilee were skeletons of golden chariots and expensive street parades. Though some Britons wearing “Abolish the Monarchy” badges felt that the discontent of the seventies proved the crown had run its course and should dissolve, the Sex Pistols thought otherwise.
God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime
The Alternative Jubilee began with “God Save the Queen,” The Sex Pistols’ second single after “Anarchy in the U.K.” It dropped in late May because Malcolm McLaren, the band’s manager, wanted the record to top the charts by Jubilee week. When the Pistols started working on the song earlier that year, EMI unexpectedly ditched them months prior because of the band’s recklessness. The band later signed with Virgin Records, but their influence had waned since their breakout. Naturally, then, McLaren figured the press generated by the “God Save the Queen” record would propel the band right back on top of the evergrowing heap.xix “God Save the Queen” ultimately became the Pistols’ highestgrossing record, selling 120,000 copies despite attempts by British media to thwart its distribution and marketing.xx
To view “God Save the Queen” as a lime light grab does little justice to the song and its message. The record reflected the Sex Pistols’ sentiments about the crown and British society in the 1970s. John Lydon, the band’s lyricist, tells interviewer Jon Savage twenty years after the record dropped that he wrote “God Save the Queen” “in the kitchen at the squat, just like that” and that he had “thought about it for weeks”.xxi More generally about his creative process as a young lyricist, he says he always “left a free hand” to write “honest and open” songs.xxii With that, the lyrics of “God Save the Queen” genuinely reflected Lydon’s feelings. The substance of it cannot be written off as a vain attempt to use slander of the Queen to warrant attention for the band through a press controversy. On the contrary, Lydon hated the media circuses McLaren often drug the Pistols into.xxiii, xxiv, xxv
Media opportunism aside, “God Save the Queen” was not laced with any explicit political or anti-monarchical agenda. To Savage, Lydon repeatedly stresses that the band was apolitical, and that every song he wrote was about “personal anarchy” much more than “political anarchy” of any kind. Though many people close to the Pistols, including McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, toed a Communist line in the seventies, Lydon himself did not care all that much about what was going on in Parliament or abroad. In interview, Lydon tells Savage that he hates when people ask him political questions because he doesn’t have a clear political opinion, because he “hates Thatcher, but so do most people” and “hates left-wing politics, as much as” he does “the right”.xxvi That the song was written to degrade the monarchy or ruin its Jubilee is false. In a 1977 interview with Kris Needs, a punk journalist who wrote for ZigZag, Lydon and his fellow Sex Pistol Paul Cook emphasize that when they wrote “God Save the Queen” they “didn’t think of the Jubilee”:
Paul: We didn’t even know it was coming. We didn’t bring it out specially for this sh*t, but it’s good it’s come out now, ‘cos the Jubilee is a load of bollocks, I think. “The single is nothing personal against the Queen. It’s what she stands for...a symbol”, said Johnxxvii
Needs further contextualizes their statements, writing that the song was actually “first performed at a gig in Hendon and then on the Anarchy tour six months ago [in January]”.xxviii Before McLaren opted to change it, “God Save the Queen” wasn’t the original title, but rather, “No Future.”xxix The song has a political or republican flavor to it, but was never exclusively about politics, the Jubilee, or the Queen, and it did not make explicit any position regarding those things.
What was “God Save the Queen” if not an attempt to spurn controversy or a political or anti-monarchical protest piece? Given the lyrics, it becomes clear that what is being articulated in the “alternative national anthem” is a critique of the meaninglessness of the crown and its Jubilee, accurately capturing the opinion of a great number of Britons at the time.
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bombGod save the queen
She’s not a human being
and there’s no future
And England’s dreamingDon’t be told what you want
Don’t be told what you need
There’s no future
No future
No future for youGod save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God savesGod saves the queen
‘Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seemsOh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paidOh when there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers
In the dustbin
We’re the poison
In your human machine
We’re the future
Your futureGod save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God savesGod save the queen
We mean it man
There’s no future
In England’s dreaming
God save the queenNo future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future
No future for youxxx
In the first half of the song, the Queen is painted as a shiny commodity or relic with no viable connection to reality. Lines like “she ‘aint no human being” and “our figurehead is not what she seems” support that. Her Silver Jubilee is presented as equally problematic, a “mad parade” that has stupefied the masses and that has thrown a veil over the nihilism and hopelessness of the time. Lydon captures this sentiment with phrases like “no future,” “the potential H-bomb,” and “the dust-bin”.xxxi The lyrics of “God Save the Queen” were not shocking because they were outright anticrown, anti-Jubilee, or anti-Elizabeth; rather, they were shocking because they “said the present was a lie” and accused the crown and its public displays of being a part of that lie.xxxii Though the Queen herself was not entirely to blame—the song, as Lydon notes in the above interview, was “nothing personal” against Elizabeth herself—the institution that bared her name still propagated a cushy and elaborate dream for England via golden carriages, gloved hands, and expensive dresses.xxxiii There was “no future” in that dreaming, not in the seventies and certainly not to the Pistols.
A Party on the River Thames, June 7th, 1977
Rather than call for the end of the monarchy because it was not meaningful or authentically connected to its subjects in any way, the Pistols wanted to show the royal family and its inner circle the right way to celebrate in the seventies: in cramped quarters, with amplifiers dialed to ten, and people shoving each other around. Though Thames River Boat Party was not the Pistols’ idea, Lydon wanted it to be just like one of the Pistols’ shows: a gathering of young punks who drank, celebrated, and connected with something bigger than—but still true to—themselves. The party would be drunken, ugly, and messy, but authentic.xxxiv If the band could do that on the River Thames, they would set an example for Queen and for Britain: this is what the Queen’s Jubilee boat party is not, but what it could and should look like.
Instead, Malcolm McLaren had packed the U.S.S. Elizabeth with fakes who pulled rank and relished in the circus he had created. Before even stepping aboard the boat, Lydon became aware of the phoniness in the atmosphere, and fell into “a terrible mood [because] here was this anarchist group, the Sex Pistols, with people like Richard Branson on the boat that he [thought] should [have been] there”.xxxv Evidently, then, rather than highlight the accessibility and meaningfulness of the punk boat party, the Pistols’ Thames River Boat Party became just as inaccessible and exclusive as the royal Jubilee fleet. It violated everything the band thought they stood for. As Lydon notes, June 7th was not the day the Pistols showcased authentic celebration to the Queen and to Britain. Rather, it was the day the Pistols had “played to a captive audience who [had] to pretend” that they liked punk. What “selfish rubbish that was”.xxxvi
Despite the failure of the 1977 Thames River Boat Party, Lydon acknowledges that Elizabeth and her family have fallen more in-step with the Pistols’ vision since 1977. Such an acknowledgement is important. It suggests that the royal family could, with some effort, break free of the inauthenticity they are routinely held hostage to. In one 2002 interview about Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee, for example, Lydon states “that the queen couldn’t organise a piss-up in a palace… the best she can do by way of a gig is have Elton John tinkle the ivories”.xxxvii Despite how pathetic the Jubilee seemed to Lydon, he does note the authenticity of its disorder, which did not exist in 1977.xxxviii In an interview with The Sun tabloid about Prince William and Kate Middleton, Lydon talks about William’s mother. “Princess Di,” was “fantastic… [because she] refused to turn up and just be a cartoon character in someone else’s charade”.xxxix Dianna was certainly at times erratic, but she was real to Lydon, very much in-step with the disorder he thought was worth embracing in 1977. Evidently, it was never that the crown was broken forever. Rather, it was that the crown was out-of-touch and could be pieced back together if royals followed the blueprint laid out by the Pistols and their boat party and its original intent.
Union Jack, Plaid, and the Queen: The Britishness of Punk Fashion
While the boat party attempted to display authenticity and accessibility the Queen and Britain ought to take note of, the Pistols’ fashion forced authenticity and accessibility back into the crown on their own terms. Though iconoclastic and anarchical, the Sex Pistols did not intend these traits to be interpreted as destructive. Rather, their fashion is better understood as a reconstruction of traditionally British symbols by combining them with punk trinkets and original alterations to forge a coherent punk identity. As Ruth Adams puts it, the project that the Sex Pistols initiated was
a subculture constructed through a process of collage, of bricolage. Bits and pieces of both officially sanctioned and popular English culture, politics and history were brought together in a chaotic, uneasy admixture to form a new culture—a culture that arguably spot lit the very institutions that it nominally sought to destroyxl
The band tried to embody what Sex Pistols’ confidant Derek Jarman calls “English archetypes” in themselves. The Pistols sought to forge strong relationships with traditional and contemporaneous British culture.xli In fact, Malcolm McLaren defined himself as a “Charles Dickens” type, while Lydon, in Julien Temples’ The Filth and the Fury, claimed to model both his character and his stage act on Shakespeare’s Richard III—gangly, ugly, and absurd. In the documentary, Lydon’s narration was almost always coupled with scenes from the 1955 King Richard movie with Lawrence Olivier.xlii The band and its inner circle of punks were engaged in what Jarman calls “a reinvention of the past”.xliii Regularly, the Pistols sought to create an identity true to themselves but also to Britishness, tradition, and history. This kind of reinvention, of course, bled quite heavily over into performative fashion.
The Queen, though perhaps the most controversial, was not the first symbol the Pistols twisted and turned around for the sake of their outfits. Before her, the union jack was regularly used by the Pistols in clothing and for album art, and traditional Scottish tartan was co-opted for the stage. Often, these quintessentially British symbols were coupled with less attractive punk pieces and designs like safety pins: spiky hair, rips and tears, and blocky lettering.xliv Through fashion, the Pistols created an “authentic” fashion style very intimately tied to British tradition, whether they intended to or not.
Queen Elizabeth, as a symbol of Britishness herself, became the centerpiece of a shirt all four young men and their fans regularly wore. It is, in typical Sex Pistols’ fashion, torn up and ratty looking as a total insult to her Majesty, who would never consent that her image be used for that sort of thing. Uses of the Queen in album art and promotional posters by the Pistols work similarly. In many cases, there are black blocks over Elizabeth’s eyes and mouth, and some sort of lettering, like “God Save the Queen,” is usually printed in ransom font on top of her face. Though the shirts and art may seem offensive, what they really did was turn Her Highness into something that connected more meaningfully with punks than any gilded chariot ever could. With a safety pin through her nose, Her Majesty resembles any one of the “Bromley Contingents” that followed the Pistols around. She becomes relatable, a punk, and finally cool. Even the album cover, which may look less endearing, made Elizabeth punk. By blocking out her eyes and mouth, the Queen becomes a vessel which then carries punks’ purposes and philosophies. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth appears on the shirt and on the art, but she becomes the Pistols’ Lizzie.
Conclusion
Thankfully, God saved the Queen from the seventies. The Sex Pistols’ charades were met with fierce criticism not only among old, high-level British aristocrats and statesmen, but from regular Britons of all backgrounds in the streets of London. To look at the Pistols’ alternative Jubilee and see nothing but contempt for and a longing to destroy monarchy, as many did in 1977, is misguided. The Pistols were born into an era in which the meaning, national identity, and security that underpinned monarchy and public display eroded. The band understood and expressed the sentiment of the decade with “God Save the Queen”. Rather than demand an end to monarchy, the band simply wanted their Queen to be more authentic, accessible, fun, real, and relatable. They figured Britons ought to be able to really interact with their royals, not as hardened relics above them on carriages and wrapped in embroidered silk, but as people more like them than not. This narrative has shifted in the age of Dianna, Princess of Wales, when the monarchy became keenly aware that to survive, it must relate meaningfully to its subjects. Though having fizzled with the death of Sid Vicious and the breakup of the band in 1979, the Sex Pistols sang, with heart, for meaning and authenticity on the part of the monarch.
Bibliography
Abell, Tara. “Travel to Punk-Era New York and London at the Met’s New Fashion Exhibit.” Condé Nast Traveler, July 31, 2014, https://www.cntraveler.com/ galleries/2013-05-09/photosmet-museum-costume-institutepunk-chaos-to-couture-exhibit/3. fig 4/11.
Adams, Ruth. “The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia.” Popular Music & Society 31, no. 4 (2008): 469-88.
Bagehot, Walter. The English Constitution. London: Chapman & Hall, 1867.
Birchall, Danny. “Radical Objects: Stuff the Jubilee Badge.” History Workshop, Nov. 7, 2014. http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/radical-object-stuff-thejubilee-badge/.
Branson, Richard. “The Sex Pistols Thames River party.” Virgin, August 12, 2016.
Cannadine, David. “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820-1 977.” In The Invention of Tradition, 101-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Cannadine, David. “From biography to history: writing the modern British monarchy*.” Historical Research 77, no. 197 (2004): 289- 312.
"Christmas Broadcast, 1957.” Posted by The Royal Channel. Video. December 20, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRP-o6Q85s&t=120s.
“Elizabeth II.” In The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Edited by Antonia Fraser. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.
Hattenstone, Simon. “Interview: John Lydon.” The Guardian, May 16, 2002.
Johnston, Maura. “Johnny Rotten Sends Prince William and Kate Middleton a Love Letter.” Rolling Stone, Nov. 19, 2010. http://www. rollingstone.com/music/news/johnny-rotten-sends-princewilliam-and-kate-middleton-a-love-letter-20101119.
Lacey, Robert. Monarch: the Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. New York: Free Press, 2002.
Martin-López, Tara. The Winter of Discontent: Myth, Memory, and History. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
McDonald, Henry. “Revealed: How the Sex Pistols Shook Ireland.” The Guardian. December 30, 2008.
Needs, Kris. “Sex Pistols: Silver Jubilation.” ZigZag, June 1977.
Pearce, Edward. “Lord Merlyn-Rees.” The Guardian, January 5, 2006.
Reid, Jamie. 1977. God Save the Queen. Album cover. London: Virgin Records.
“Salford Alternative Jubilee Part 3.” Salford Star, May 4, 2012. http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=1397.
Savage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 2002.
Savage, Jon. The England’s Dreaming Tapes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Savage, Jon. “The Sex Pistols’ jubilee boat trip – a classic account.” The Guardian, May 29, 2012.
The Sex Pistols. “God Save the Queen”. Recorded 1977. Track 6 on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Virgin Records. MP3.
Temple, Julien, dir. The Filth and the Fury. 2000; Burbank CA: New Line. Digital Video.
Endnotes
i Richard Branson, “The Sex Pistols Thames River party,” Virgin, Aug. 12, 2016.
ii Jon Savage, “The Sex Pistols’ jubilee boat trip – a classic account,” The Guardian, May 29, 2012.
iii David Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820-1977,” in The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
iv David Cannadine, “From Biography to history: writing the modern British monarchy*,” Historical Research 77, no. 197 (2004).
v Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual”, 158.
vi Ibid., 155-160.
vii “Christmas Broadcast, 1957”, YouTube video, posted by The Royal Channel, December 20, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRPo6Q85s&t=120s.
viii Robert Lacey, Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II (New York: Free Press, 2002), 247-248.
ix Tara Martin-López, The Winter of Discontent: Myth, Memory, and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 9-10.
x The Filth and Fury, directed by Julien Temple (2000; Burbank CA: New Line), digital video.
xi Lacey, Monarch, 250.
xii Ibid., 249.
xiii ibid., 248.
xiv Edward Pearce, “Lord Merlyn-Rees,” The Guardian, Jan. 5, 2006.
xv Danny Birchall, “Radical Objects: Stuff the Jubilee Badge,” History Workshop, Nov. 7, 2014.
xvi “Salford Alternative Jubilee Part 3,” Salford Star, May 4, 2012.
xvii Walter Bagehot, “III. The Monarchy”, in The English Constitution (London: Chapman & Hall, 1867).
xviii Lacey, Monarch, 247-248.
xix Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (New York: St. Martins Griffin, 2002), 342- 355.
xx Ibid.
xxi Jon Savage, The England’s Dreaming Tapes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 225.
xxii Ibid, 223.
xxiii The Fifth and the Fury, Temple.
xxiv Savage, England’s Dreaming.
xxv Savage, The England’s Dreaming Tapes.
xxvi Ibid., 226.
xxvii Kris Needs, “Sex Pistols: Silver Jubilation,” ZigZag, June 1977.
xxviii Ibid.
xxix Savage, England’s Dreaming, 348.
xxx The Sex Pistols, “God Save the Queen,” recorded 1977, track 6 on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, Virgin Records, MP3.
xxxi Ibid.
xxxii Savage, England’s Dreaming, 355.
xxxiii Needs, “Sex Pistols".
xxxiv Savage, The England’s Dreaming Tapes, 223- 226.
xxxv Savage, England’s Dreaming, 359.
xxxvi Ibid.
xxxvii Simon Hattenstone, “Interview: John Lydon,” The Guardian, May 16, 2002.
xxxviii Ibid.
xxxix Maura Johnston, “Johnny Rotten Sends Prince William and Kate Middleton a Love Letter,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 19, 2010, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/johnny-rotten-sendsprince-william....
xl Ruth Adams, “The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia,” Popular Music & Society 31, no. 4 (October 2008), 469.
xli Savage, The England’s Dreaming Tapes, 665.
xlii Temple, The Filth and the Fury.
xliii Ibid.
xliv Ibid.
xlv John Lydon, “Taking Liberties Not Taken Easily,” Army of One (blog), 2013. https://www.johnlydon.com/j106.html.
xlvi Henry McDonald, “Revealed: How the Sex Pistols Shook Ireland,” The Guardian, Dec. 30, 2008.
xlvii Tara Abell, “Travel to Punk-Era New York and London at the Met’s New Fashion Exhibit,” Condé Nast Traveler, July 31, 2014, https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2013-05-09/photos-metmuseum-costume....
xlviii Jamie Reid, 1977, God Save the Queen, album cover, (album art), 1977, copyright Virgin. Records, London.