The Sex Pistols' 1977-78 U.S. tour fell flat partly because they were out of sync with the inner dynamic of American music. The Sex Pistols undoubtedly struck many young listeners as highly original, but in the late 1970s I was already 30 and had gotten my punk zap from the Velvet Underground, whose mesmerizing first album was released in 1967, when I was in college. Although their manic influence can be traced in rhythmic terms to thrash rock and in performance terms to brash boy personae as far afield as Billy Idol and Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Sex Pistols self-destructed too soon to leave much of a musical legacy. Punk anarchism may be an adolescent phase of simplistic rebellion against authority. The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious, who died of a drug overdose in 1979 several months after he was charged with murdering his girlfriend, didn't live long enough to work through his early punk positions.
Anarchism is glorified thumb-sucking.
Construction, not destruction, is the name of the human game. All rights reserved.