Dissssstroooy!
Ok, track 1. Seventeen. The tracks on the back are jumbled so I have to look at the label (not on Virgin, disappointingly, but Wizard, must have been a local licencing thing). A stutter on the drums and then a crashing big bent note. Johnny comes in aiming at someone. "You're only twenty nine!" A constant sneer at some middle class fat head who's a lazy sod which is the chorus: "I'm a lazy sod, I'm a lazy sod, I'm a lazy sod. I'm so laaaaazeeeey!" The anger is so unsmiling it's funny. Then Anarchy again. G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-geeeeeeee!
Then BAM! Weirdly, a distant falsetto whoop like an opera singer in a jungle. It rings out over a clutch of raspberries before the grinding minor chord progression starts cutting in. 60s garage rock riff C Bb Eb C. A mission in a submarine but also watery love (with a huge sudden gush of overdriven guitar) and a great big chorus: Submiiiiiiiiision! It's also the only time Rotten does anything other than his spitting diction Cockney when he pronounces can't as cairnt, like an American. When he does it it doesn't sound like he's joining the convention as it's too sarcastic. Any few seconds of interview footage (which I'd seen in fair abundance by that time) told you that his sarcasm could cut reinforced concrete. I get the cunnilingus ref (fifteen year old schoolboy) but didn't get what it was donig in an album that gobbed so constantly at the culture around it. Oh ....
Pretty Vacant. Already knew it from tv. It was a mimed performance clip (Rotten misses a line at one point or the shot of him was put it regardless of its contradiction) but it felt like watching my team win. This loud through the stereo it's like being in a winning army. The menacing string skipping intro drones. The drums kick in but they're toms not snare hits. It's a gallop. The bass comes in with the first power chord and then there's Johnny snarling out the big fuck you to his detractors. We're so pretty we're so pretty va-cunt. Slam! And we don't caaaaaaaaaaaaaare! If Anarchy was an ecstasy this is another bite. It thrills through me.
New York still feels like a filler and I didn't get it until I read about it later in an interview. Big and powerful but I pass through it. Still not a favourite.
EMI is powerful and bloody funny. A huge charging football stadium chant of searing spite. "...stupid fools who stand in line LIKE! EMI" Goooodbyyyyyyye, A&M raspberry. That was the end of the album but to me it's still just the end of side one. FLIP!
Jackboots on gravel. Guitar chords slice through before the band kicks in with the riff that sounds both heavy and jolly. I dowanna holiday inna sun! I wanna go to the new Belsun (I thought it was the Nouvelle Sun)! I wanna see some H-history now I gotta reason a bad economy! Now I gotta reason now I gotta reason now I gotta reason and I'm still waiting now I gotta reason to be waiteeeng The Berlin Wall!.... I didn't ask for sunshine and I got world war three. I'm lookin' over the wall AND THEY'RE LOOKING AT MEEEE! Now I gotta reason ..... Under the refrain about the reason the word Reason sounds like a herd of pissed yobbos goading ... another herd of pissed yobbos. After a blazing one note solo Rotten comes back "claustrophobiaaah there's too much paranoia". It's a big screaming nightmare with some distrubing order under the chaos and in its own way, while I'm throwing my fifteen year old self around the room, it's quite chilling. But wait...
A chromatic punch and growl that could be from a Sabbath song, slow and violent. And then suddenly it's going at a million kph. "She was a girl from Birmingham. She just had an abortion. She was a case of insanity. Her name was Pauline (I heard "Polly" for years) and she lived in a tree." Woah! Even as an embryonic leftie at that age I was pro-choice (and wasn't everyone under twenty-five?). The sheer violence of this one stopped me funning about and sit down with my eyes wide. "Bodyyyyyyy I'm not an animal!" A messy solo bit where Rotten is snarling about not being a loss of protein while the football crowd chant that they're not animals and I'm plastered to the back of the seat. Then there's a pause which just explodes into the kind of bludgeoning swearing I've never heard in music before. "FUCK THIS AND FUCK THAT FUCK IT ALL AND FUCK THE LITTLE BRRRRRATTTTT!" It's as though I've just seen someone have their arms hacked off. All they need to do for the rest of the song is gibber and power chord; the noise of it says more than a single further line. I'm sweating. I know it's summer in Townsville but I'm sweating from this. I've just been shocked by a rock song, a form already ageing by my first birthday. But here's the thing: I like it. Well, like... As I was being pushed around by it I felt a real thrill, a sick mix of anger and surrender. There had been no music at all before this moment that had approached that kind of power over me. I had to hear it again but I had to be ready.
A very thin distorted guitar crunches through an ascending barre chord riff and we're straight into No Feelings. The contempt is so childishly angry it's funny and in any case after what I've just been through it may as well be ABBA.
Liar begins with a mighty chugging on guitar and bass and climbs to a sawtooth vibrato: "Yoooooooou're in sus-pen-sion ... you're a liar" There are too many riffs already familiar that this just sounds like offcuts. It's easy to live through but I still don't care if I miss out on it today. Same with New York. I wonder now if they were both late in the recording or writing as they have more dynamics and arrangement about them. Hmm.
God Save the Queen. This one I missed on the few occasions it was played on tv. It wasn't played on the radio. So this was the first time for me. An oversized Eddie Cochrane riff settles to a chug as Rotten gleefully tears strips off Her Maj. As with abortion I was anti-monarchy and assumed everyone else my age thought the same. So all the stuff about all crimes are paid and potential H bomb sounded good to me but then the outro came up which finally sealed the deal for me. I didn't care about White Riots or anything happening at the Hammersmith Odeon or Down in the Tube Station at Midnight but before the song was over at first hearing I was shouting along with the football crowd in the coda: "NOOOOOOOO FUTURE NOOOOOOO FUTURE NOOOOOOO FUTURE NO FUTURE for you ......!" Yep, where do I sign?
Problems is like No Feelings after that but still thrillingly angry with the deliciously intentional irritation of the repeated "problem problem problem" that extends beyond the backing. That was it, the end of what I thought was side two. I'd just spent about forty-five minutes with some of the most intense and shocking musical violence I'd ever known and I was shaking from shock and pleasure.
Yes, I was in. "And me only fifteen"... ;)
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