The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle – revisited

I was obsessed with punk in 1984. I know I came to that party late, but I was only six when the Sex Pistols played the 100 Club in London and my mum didn’t want to take me. I must have watched The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle more than twenty times during my teens. With one thing and another, though, I hadn’t seen it since. One of my resolutions for the lockdown was to watch all the old videos and get them out the door before the VHS player gives up the ghost. One of these was The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. How would it hold up today?

            The answer is: mixed. Watching it now, I get the impression the filmmakers ran out of usable archive footage halfway through and filled up the running time with scenes that don’t amount to much. To his credit, Johnny Rotten refused to have anything to do with the sequence where the band flew to Brazil to meet train robber Ronnie Biggs. Johnny said he didn’t want to glamourise anyone who’d left a train driver as a vegetable. It’s hard to see what’s added by this sequence – which must have been the most expensive part of the film. The antics on the beach and a boat aren’t funny. The music they made with Biggs ranks low in the Pistols’ canon. ‘No One Is Innocent’ is a series of deliberately tasteless benedictions, asking God’s blessing on Myra Hindley and Nazis on the run. Their version of ‘Belsen Was A Gas’ is the Pistols’ foray into AOR. It even has a saxophone solo, for heaven’s sake. Biggs’s cockney honk does not compare with Rotten’s cackling sneer. It is as ghastly as it sounds.

            This, however, is not my main problem with the film. The story, such as it is, involves Malcolm McLaren explaining how he swindled his way to the top of the record industry, using publicity stunts to promote a group that couldn’t play. I have two issues with this. One, that wouldn’t work. All the marketing in the world won’t help if you don’t have a good product behind it. Does anyone remember Sigue Sigue Sputnik? They were hyped relentlessly in the mid-eighties, but had only limited success because they weren’t a good band. My other issue is that the Sex Pistols could play. Their rendition of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ on So It Goes is one of the most stunning performances ever captured on film. Johnny Rotten is at his snarling best and the band behind him are tight and powerful. The one album they released during their brief lifetime, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, is one great tune after another. It still regularly features in lists of greatest albums of all time. No clever marketing ploys could ever make that happen.

            Despite all this, I still find things to enjoy in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It captures some great songs. It’s often Pythonesque in its mix of bizarre sketches and surrealist cartoons. A woman gives a scathing critique of the band while ants crawl over her face. Guitarist Steve Jones, who’s supposed to be looking for McLaren, gets a vital lead from a talking guard dog. Not everything works, but you never know what’s coming next and that’s enough to keep you watching. The other film Julien Temple made about the band, The Filth and the Fury, is a much more accurate history of the Sex Pistols. It’s also not as much fun.

            My advice about The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle is to watch the first half for the clips but take everything McLaren says with a dustbin full of salt. Skip the scenes in Brazil and the ones of Sid Vicious as Parisian flâneur. Go straight to the closing credits to hear ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin.’’ Yes, the lyrics belong in a rugby club locker room, but the interplay between electric guitar and orchestra make it a great piece of music.