PHOTO ESSAY

Rebel Yells

A protest music mixtape

By Matthew McKinnon

August 12, 2005

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Johnny Rotten (a.k.a. John Lydon), singer for punk group the Sex Pistols. Photo Getty Images/Evening Standard/Graham Wood.

God Save the Queen, The Sex Pistols

(Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, 1977)

“God save the queen / She ain’t no human being.” With those words, the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten became England’s public enemy No. 1. God Save the Queen fell like a hammer on the U.K.’s Silver Jubilee celebration, held to honour the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne. Rotten’s lyrics, backed by the galloping pulse of Steve Jones’s guitar and Paul Cook’s drums, urged English youth to rail against the false hope being trumpeted by their country’s ruling class. The full effect added up to blunt-force trauma: “Don’t be told what you want / Don’t be told what you need / There’s no future, no future / No future for you.”

The Pistols already had a well-earned reputation as music’s greatest menace. For this, they were excoriated anew by the British press. Rotten was hounded in the streets of London; he was stabbed in the hand during one confrontation. BBC Radio banned the song from daytime airplay. It became a smash hit anyway. Whispers linger that U.K. charts were fudged to keep it from claiming top spot.

God Save the Queen, a crucial moment in British cultural history, arguably became punk’s peak achievement.