The major issue George Harrison had with the Sex Pistols: “Punk bands were just rubbish”
When the Sex Pistols showed up in the late 1970s, they were fighting against the establishment, both political and musical. They were ready to challenge the status quo and prove themselves as the feisty new kids on the block, standing up for a voiceless generation. The London punks didn’t care for the support of others, even if they were icons like George Harrison.
At this stage in his career, Harrison had been famous for 15 years and had been renowned for almost all of his adult life, allowing him to experience a jet-set lifestyle. However, despite his lavish existence, Harrison didn’t forget his roots and claimed to remain sympathetic to the struggle of ordinary people. Harrison was raised on a council estate in Liverpool and knew first-hand about what it was like to live without grandeur, but that alone didn’t make him a fan of the Sex Pistols.
Although Harrison broadly agreed with the Sex Pistols regarding the societal issues they loudly fought against, their form of messaging was not something he could get behind. Harrison, a spiritual soul from the love generation, didn’t believe positive change could be created with anger, which went against everything he stood for.
When the punk boom arrived in 1977, Harrison felt torn by the movement. On the one hand, he could relate to why bands like the Sex Pistols felt frustrated at the system and wanted to tear it down. However, his pragmatic side felt they were conveying their message incorrectly, which likely came from misunderstanding an entire generation. He may have come from a working-class background, but he didn’t experience the dark clouds that lingered over Britain in the late 1970s, which fuelled the Sex Pistols’ anger.
The Sex Pistols never professed to be the most talented musicians in the world, nor did they hold any ambitions to be. Instead, they connected with young people on a visceral and emotional level, who felt like Johnny Rotten was vocalising their struggle with the necessary level of rage. Unsurprisingly, Harrison wasn’t impressed with their technical ability, telling Rolling Stone in 1979: “As far as musicianship goes, the punk bands were just rubbish – no finesse in the drumming, just a lot of noise and nothing.”
However, he also believed they were fighting the good fight, continuing, “I felt very sorry when the Sex Pistols were on television, and one of them was saying, ‘We’re educated to go into the factories and work on assembly lines’, and that’s their future. It is awful, and it’s especially awful that it should come out of England because England is continually going through depression; it’s a very negative country. Everybody wants everything and nobody wants to do anything for it.”
Harrison then changed tack by seemingly echoing Margaret Thatcher by claiming the Sex Pistols, or any other disgruntled young person, should simply work harder, adding, “But it’s a very simple thing; how do you give people money if there is none? The only way you make more money is to work harder. Now that may be all right for me to say because I don’t have to work in a factory, but it’s true. But out of all that is born the punk thing, so it’s understandable. But you don’t fight negativity with negativity. You have to overpower hatred with love, not more hatred”.
At this point, Harrison had been obscenely wealthy for two decades and had begun to lose sight of what people in Britain were going through. Seemingly, he believed that The Beatles’ method of changing society was the only applicable method without comprehending that the Sex Pistols existed in a completely different time. While Harrison proclaimed the need to “overpower hatred with love,” it can be hard to find space to love when staring at a dead-end road.
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