I would never (I don’t think) have pretended to be able to predict what John Lydon might or might not do in the future.
Right now, I would not be blown over backwards if next year he, as unironically as anyone can tell, conducts a Gregorian monk choir. Or if he releases an album of sounds during sex. Or if he fronts another band while telling every interviewer that he, and the public at large, are tossers and idiots.
Part of what I meant by 1976 was that the Beach Boys were seen as all too cozy with Republican politicians generally. That James Watt could a few years later consider them a bad element should have been a warning sign that the right-wing had already become dangerously insane, even though most of the rest of the Republican hierarchy defended them.
Today we can’t imagine any mainstream politician bad-mouthing rock music per se, or the Beach Boys specifically, as evil forces in society. You kiddies can’t imagine how bizarrely ancient 40 years ago was. (You too, Little Nemo, you, you youngster you. )
That’s because it’s been at least 20 years since anyone seriously thought rock music was a threat to Western Civilization. Hip-Hop took that title sometime in the 1990s and held on to it for about a decade until popular music became too fragmented for any particular genre to blamed as this nation’s #1 Corrupter of Youth.
Have you seen Brian Wilson lately? He looks dead most of the time. When interviewed by Holland he stared straight ahead, blank-faced, instead of looking at him. Lydon looked older than Keith Richards.
Besides, they both by rights should be dead by now.
Ironically, it’s now pirates who are trying to steal rock music who are a threat to Western Civilization. Rock music has become part of the establishment that wants law and order to protect it from the outlaws.
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