I think that this is a misreading of Savage's book, which emphasizes Lydon as an intellectual figure in his own right. The situationism often was an influence of Lydon's conversations with artist Jamie Reid, not McLaren. Lydon also brought in his own interests, intellectual and aesthetic, into the group as well as a fairly substantial and esoteric set of musical interests (from dub to Can, along with other interests) Savage's text often shows that McLaren's attempts to shape the band were failures, and reveals the lie behind the McLaren narrative of the band, although one cannot dismiss him entirely, either. The conventional rock influences come out of the work that Steve Jones put into the lp, layering guitars, adding sheen, etc. This is also worked out by Savage in his book. robert wood
> What hypocrisy? Lydon has never pretended to be any kind of leftist. In
> fact
> he has proclaimed his hostility to socialism on numerous occasions.
>
> The Situationist posturing of the Sex Pistols was 100% McLaren's
> influence;
> whatever one's feelings about McLaren's relationship to the band, I think
> Jon
> Savage's book England's Dreaming makes a rather convincing case that the
> most
> interesting aspects of the Sex Pistols were entirely due to McLaren: the
> image
> he created for them, the discursive context he placed them in, the
> influences he
> claimed for them, etc.
>
> The Sex Pistols were rather dire guitar-driven sludge rock. John Lydon's
> only
> interesting *musical* output are the first two PiL albums (and that's not
> a
> slight; Metal Box would make my top ten list of rock/pop albums ever).
>
>
>
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