The album John Lydon said was his version of “heaven”
If the Sex Pistols were part of the birth of the punk movement, then you have to wonder where all of their musical cues came from.
The point of punk was to rebel against everything that had come before it, and to create a confrontational style of music that hadn’t been done before, so if they were truly creating something new and exciting, surely they couldn’t have had much to use as inspiration from before their existence, can they?
Of course, proto-punk and elements of punk existed beforehand, with The Velvet Underground being a prime example of a punk-adjacent band who arrived well before their time, and garage rock had the same frenetic approach to riffs, as exemplified by The Kinks on their 1964 single, ‘You Really Got Me’. However, punk presented itself in a completely different fashion, and the shocking manner in which the Sex Pistols dressed and created an antagonistic and rebellious public image was far from how earlier acts with punk tendencies held themselves.
As much as they may have wanted the listener to believe they were staunchly anti-everything, the bands who functioned as the lynchpins of the movement all had varied music tastes that encompassed plenty from the 1950s and ‘60s, and often, there was little shame when it came to the admission that a punk icon loved something that a more ardent individual would feel embarrassed to confess to listening to.
Despite being part of the punk movement in the US, which was somewhat separate from the UK dawn of punk, the Ramones are a prime example of this. Joey Ramone was noted as being a vocal fan of bubblegum pop and girl groups, and while this might seem like an odd combination for a punk rock band, when you dig a little deeper, the melodic elements of their work immediately come through on what the Ramones did on their earliest releases. If this is the case, then what was going on for the Sex Pistols, and where were their musical cues coming from?
Frontman John Lydon may have been a little more reluctant to be vocally positive about other things, and certainly didn’t have much time for prog rock, which was ultimately the antithesis of everything that punk stood for in terms of being hyper-complex, conceptual and polished in its production. However, there’s one classic rock record that sends the man formerly known as Johnny Rotten to a place of complete bliss, which inspired him to become one of the most electrifying yet controversial figures of punk.
In an interview with Classic Album Review, Lydon sang the praises of The Rolling Stones’ 1972 album, Exile on Main St, claiming it to be one of the finest albums ever made. “Exile on Main St is heaven to me, there’s one side that’s just absolute if I want a ferociously entertaining evening. It’s beautifully atmospheric! It absolutely reeks of whiskey and smoke-filled small clubs and seedy basements. It’s an amazing achievement to get that vibe.”
There’s a rawness to Exile that certainly makes it feel akin to a lot of early punk records, but when it was released in 1972, there hadn’t even been the slightest murmuration of punk coming into existence. The Stones may have unwittingly predicted the rise of the genre with this scrappy record, and it’s completely understandable why punks such as Lydon formed an obsession with it.
