Malcolm McLaren, Bow Wow Wow and Adam & The Ants

In the summer of 1979 Virgin released Some Product: Carri On, a hastily assembled album of Pistols radio interviews, complete with a cover depicting imaginary Sex Pistols spin-off merchandise - 'Fatty Jones' chocolate bars, a 'Vicious Burger', a Sid action doll complete with coffin.

The Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren ended up half-heartedly managing a London band called Adam & The Antz. Adam was an ex-art-school punk who'd built up a devoted cult following with mildly kinky songs like "Whip in my Valise" and "Beat My Guest".

Adam & The Antz - Whip in my Valise 1979


Adam & The Antz - Beat My Guest 1979

But the singer also had a mind of his own, and McLaren flinched from the prospect of dealing with another Johnny Rotten. Sensing that the band would be far more malleable, he connived with the Antz to sack their leader, and at the end of 1979 he gave Adam the bad news at a rehearsal.

McLaren proposed the new band, now called Bow Wow Wow, as a victory over Thatcherism. Rather than take the obvious post-punk path and bemoan mass unemployment, though, he mischievously framed the absence of work as liberation rather than affliction. Bow Wow Wow's "W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah NO! NO! My Daddy Don't)" declared, 'Demolition of the work ethic takes us to the age of the primitive'. Going to school was pointless because its function (socializing youth for a life of labour) had been outmoded. 'T.E.K. technology is DEMOLITION of DADDY/Is A.U.T. Autonomy', goes the chorus chant, taking the Situationist fantasy of automation enabling a utopian future of perpetual play and updating it for the microchip era.

Bow Wow Wow - W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah NO! NO! My Daddy Don't) 1981

Again, this attitude put McLaren ahead of the curve: Wham! rode exactly this carefree/careless attitude to fame a few years later, with the pro-dole "Wham Rap!" (a rewrite of "W.O.R.K.", essentially) and the sunshine anthem "Club Tropicana".

Wham! - Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) 1983


Wham! - Club Tropicana 1983

McLaren penned lyrics praising cassette piracy and got the ex-Antz to write Burundi-rumbling backing music. But in July 1980, despite getting acres of press and hours of radio play, the debut single "C-30, C-60, C-90 Go!" stalled just outside the Top 30.

Bow Wow Wow - C-30, C-60, C-90 Go! 1980

In the meantime, in the winter of 1980, Adam Ant's singles "Dog Eat Dog", "Ant Music" and "Kings of the Wild Frontier" smashed their way one by one into the UK Top 10. Adam's sheer self-belief lent a weird sort of conviction to ludicrous lines like 'Don't tread on an ant/He's done nothing to you/Might come a time/When he's treading on you'.

Adam & the Ants - Dog Eat Dog 1980


Adam & the Ants - Ant Music 1980


Adam & the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier 1980


Adam's zenith came with "Prince Charming", his September 1981 UK chart topper, and one of the strangest hit singles ever. Its keening coyote-yowl melody resembled a Native American battle cry; the beat lurched disconcertingly, a waltz turning into an aboriginal courthship dance. For the video, Adam glides between a series of arrested poses, frozen tableaux of defiance and hauteur that weirdly anticipate 'vogueing', the New York gay underground's form of competitive dancing inspired by photo spreads in fashion mags. At the end of the video, Adam impersonates a gallery of icons - Rudolph Valentino, Alice Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando. Song and video both expose a certain empty circularity to Adam's neo-glam idea of reinventing yourself: imitate me as I've imitated my heroes. The chorus is oddly brittle and defensive ('Ridicule is nothing to be scared of') while the ultimate message - dressing up in fancy finery as a way of flaunting self-respect - feels distinctly trite.

Adam & the Ants - Prince Charming 1981

"Prince Charming" ultimately suggested that Adam's destiny was to run through history's wardrobe until he ran out of heroic archetypes. He'd already done highwaymen with the previous number 1 single, "Stand and Deliver".

Adam & the Ants - Stand and Deliver 1981

In the video for "Ant Rap", the next big hit from the Prince Charming album, he dressed up as a knight in shining armour.

Adam & the Ants - Ant Rap 1981

PiL - Public Image

Given Lydon's initial talk of PiL as antimusic and antimelody, the group's debut single, "Public Image", was a massive relief for all concerned-the record company, Pistols fans, and critics. It's a searing, soaring statement of intent.
The glorious, chiming minimalism of Wobble's bassline and Levene's plangent, ringing chords mirror Lydon's quest for purity as he jettisons not just the Rotten alter ego ("somebody had to stop me/...I will not be treated as property") but rock 'n' roll itself.
"That song was the first proper bassline I ever came up with", says Wobble. "Very simple, a beautiful interval from E to B. Just the joy of vibration. And incredible guitar from Keith, this great burst of energy."
"Public Image" is like a blueprint for the reborn, purified rock of the 1980s. One can hear the Edge from U2 in its radiant surge. "It's so clean, so tingly, like a cold shower", says Levene. "It could be really thin glass penetrating you but you don't know until you start bleeding internally".
In "Public Image" Lydon reasserted his rights over "Johnny Rotten"-"Public image belongs to me/It's my entrance, my own creation, my grand finale"-only to end the song by shedding the persona with an echo chamber yell of "goodbye!"

PiL - Public Image - 1978

John Lydon surprises listeners during his radio show "The Punk and His Music" - 1977

Those who tuned in anticipating punk rock were immediately thrown for a loop by the first selection, Tim Buckley's "Sweet Surrender", a lush, sensual R&B song swathed with orchestral strings.
When he talked about identifying with Dr. Alimantado's "Born for a Purpose", a song about being persecuted as a Rasta, Lydon gave his audience an advance glimpse of PiL's aura of paranoia and prophecy, casting himself as a visionary outcast in Babylon, U.K.

Tim Buckley - Sweet Surrender - 1972


Dr. Alimantado - Born for a Purpose - 1976

Sex Pistols - Johnny B. Goode

Perhaps the first example of Berry-phobia occurs as early as the Sex Pistols demos exhumed on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. The band begins jamming on "Johnny B. Goode". Johnny Rotten-the group's closet aesthete, who'd go on to form the archetypal postpunk outfit Public Image Ltd-halfheartedly jabbers the tune and then groans, "Oh fuck, it's awful. Stop it, I fucking hate it. Aaarrrgh".

Sex Pistols - Johnny B. Goode - 1976

Sex Pistols - Bodies

The profanity hooked me first (I was fourteen), Johnny Rotten's "fuck this and fuck that/Fuck it all and fuck her fucking brat". More than the naughty words themselves, it was the vehemence and virulence of Rotten's delivery-those percussive "fucks", the demonic glee of the rolled rs in "brrrrrrat".

Sex Pistols - Bodies - 1977

Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen

The Sex Pistols swearing on television, "God Save the Queen" versus the Royal Jubilee, an entire culture convulsed and quaking-I simply did not notice.

Sex Pistols - Bill Grundy Interview - 1976


Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen - Live on Boat Trip Queen's Jubilee - 1977