Sex Pistols : God Save the Queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
On May 27, 1977 The Sex Pistols released "God Save The Queen", their first single on Virgin Records. It would--to the horror of Royalists celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee--race up the charts despite a unanimous ban on all radio and TV stations.
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming
Had The Sex Pistols released a song with lyrics like these in Thailand or Saudi Arabia, they would have been imprisoned or much worse. Had Jamie Reid defaced a monarch in those countries, same deal.
'Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems
A student filmmaker named Julien Temple directed the music video below. In his book, England's Dreaming, Jon Savage described the evening:
The shoot was chaotic with Johnny Rotten acting like a prima donna and Vicious still ill. Yet somehow the atmosphere of madness worked well - the footage was both electric and humorous.
These days everybody is trying to out-shock every one else, so it may be hard to remember what it was like to have a song like "God Save the Queen" released in the Summer of '77. The video below does a fine job of that.
A timeless classic and really 40 years old? Great post once agaain
ReplyDelete