As far back as the spring of 1977, Malcolm McLaren had been trying to get a film about the Sex Pistols off the ground. At that time, the punk craze which the Pistols had spearheaded was flourishing in the UK even as McLaren 'managed' the band into a blind alley; by 1980, when this abomination of a film was finally released, the Pistols were no more and punk had splintered into a confusing variety of subgenres. What does "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" tell the viewer about the Sex Pistols and why they mattered? Sadly, not much. 'That film was us preventing the whole thing from turning into a dreadful tragedy and turning it into a fantastic enigma,' McLaren said years later in "England's Dreaming", Jon Savage's definitive book on UK punk. 'That's what we tried to do, to lie incredibly.' In that regard they succeeded, but McLaren's statement was pure bullshit: he and director Julien Temple lied out of necessity. Vocalist John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) had left the band in early 1978, and budgetary constraints prevented the hiring of actors for anything more than a few minor roles, so McLaren *had* to take center stage. The end result was a long, disjointed rant (padded with live footage, interviews, animated sequences and painfully unfunny scenes intended as comic relief) about how causing the Pistols to self-destruct had been his master plan all along, and it's terrible. Only during a performance of the title song does it look as if anyone's having any fun. McLaren repeatedly insists that the music itself was meaningless, that he was interested only in attracting adolescent fans 'who loved to dress up and mess up.' Which begs the age-old question: was punk ever about music, or was it just a pose? That query will elicit a broad range of responses from the various participants in the movement. But ask guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook (who had formed the group before McLaren entered the picture, and for whom the Sex Pistols were a labor of love) and they'll tell you that the Pistols were a rock 'n' roll band, plain and simple. They're right. The gestures--the haircuts, the silly clothes, the pretensions of revolution--were empty. It's the music that endures.
Review of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
