Review by Frank Plowright
The Sex Pistols changed music, sadly not forever, but for a brief while they were the UK’s most influential rock band. Around summer 1976 to summer 1977 is the plateau. However, if you know their reputation without having an intimate familiarity, this graphic novel isn’t the place to start learning, while those with background knowledge will find spirited recreations of iconic moments, beginning with singer Johnny Rotten’s audition.
“Cash from chaos” was a slogan devised by their manager Malcolm McClaren, and it’s very much been taken to heart by Jim McCarthy in his writing of this biography. It flits from subject to subject with the narrative voice seemingly changing and not greatly informing the uninformed, which is quite the punk ethos. Why, for instance, does the opening page feature four distinctively intimidating teenagers barging their way down the street all saying they’re John? Is it the band? You’d have to know from another source it’s Rotten and his mates, all of whom are also called John.
Steve Parkhouse’s attractive cartooning might seem an odd match for the rough and ready Sex Pistols, but it’s an unqualified success. He delivers them as the exaggerated cartoons they played up to during their brief existence, the likenesses excellent, although he concentrates on the visual gifts of Johnny and Sid, while serving them up in imaginative locations. In some cases all Parkhouse has to do is reproduce known photographs, but in others he recreates the atmosphere of the dank clubs the band played, illuminated by bold and striking colouring.
The provocative highs and the tragic lows are all aired, but with no great context, while many of the dropped names will have little meaning the UK these days, let alone beyond. Jim Callaghan? Who’s he? You won’t find out here.
While McCarthy is unashamedly mythologising, there’s no softening contextualisation, which is again punk, but not much help to anyone in 2012, over thirty years on from the events chronicled. Parkhouse prevents this from dropping into the ever feel you’ve been had category, but it’s style over substance.
