Oh dear
The words ‘mighty’ and ‘fallen’ come to mind.
I suppose at not too much of a stretch this fits into the celebs endorsing weird products debate you can read about here as Reece Witherspoon appears in an Avon advert and more oddly click here for my thoughts on Gary Oldman appearing in a football advert which got the lovely (read as mean and sarcastic) people at ITV to get in contact with us.
Rotten was never punk. Dude was in a manufactured band, and told what to wear, do and say. Then that band split up, and one of it’s members killed his wife. Somehow they achieved notoriety by swearing on the telly and saying ‘naughty’ things about the Queen.
Manufactured?
I can’t see why you would think that. They had a dodgy manager but they formed on their own and wrote their own songs. To be fair their ‘antics’ are hardly shocking now but they were then. They were just really childish and irritating, the music they make still stands and was definitely punk.
Seriously, proper punk… what else was it? Do you stop being a punk if you become famous?
Anyway, the advert… I hope they payed him well, he lost all his credibility long ago.
McLaren told them what to say, what to do, what to wear… Most of this ideas he’d nicked from his travels to New York to see Richard Hell and the rest.
Proper punks who got famous (relatively) and old but didn’t become ridiculous charicatures of themselves at 20.
Henry Rollins (publisher, TV presenter, actor, musician, comedian, political activist)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=W9S5-EB8dR8
Joe Strummer (was in a manufactured band too, except he was in a good one)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zq9fEV6uSa4&feature=related
Sorry, but I’ve hated the Sex Pistols for years. They are, to my mind, the reason the mainstream media so regularly declares that punk started in 76 and ended in 78, and their album was crap. Complete crap. Anyone can name check a much maligned political perspective to a few chords to con daft middle class kids out of their money. The Clash, X-Ray Spex and The Damned, and many other bands from that era deserve more respect, and more recognition, because they didn’t treat their fans like idiots, but rather inspired them to look more closely at themselves and the world around them.
Incidentally, this is what ‘proper’ punk is…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FvbRoN1IDSQ
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ZnFT2qAJU
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=c1kgZLgWpb8
With all my sarcasm about this advertising campaign apparently it has been a huge success and profits have risen by 40% or so. Who’d a thunk it.