I suppose there are still some aging punk purists who will tear their last tufts of spiked hair out over John Lydon’s gleefully crass and pandering ad for Country Life butter. (Watch it here.) What an utterly shameless sell-out for the antiestablishment icon who used to call himself Johnny Rotten! Still, I think if you look closer at the Sex Pistols’ (tiny) body of work, you’ll see that the impulse to sell out and cash in on their fame was present all along, from the take-the-money-and-run ethos behind the song "EMI" to the self-congratulatory movie title The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (we self-destructed quickly, but we suckered everyone and made a bundle along the way), to the Filthy Lucre reunion tour a few years ago. Besides, what could be a more defiant gesture than spitting in your fans’ faces by doing an ad for a product this prosaic? Anybody can sell out, but to sell out with such deliberate, stubborn banality? Now, that’s punk rock.
More on unlikely celebrity endorsements:
What’s Bob Dylan doing in a Victoria’s Secret ad?
The Olsen twins and the Velvet Underground
Woody Allen: Fashion icon?
Awesome – I loved it! (But sorry, I’m hooked on Brummel & Brown.)
the Pistols were all for “selling out” – they pioneered and then comercialised the whole punk scene. That’s one of the great things about them. I thought the butter ad was quite silly and fun, hardly anything to get your knickers in a twist about. And besides, prior to this ad, Lydon did actually appear on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – infinitely worse that selling butter.
Punk rock is dead. Again.
No amount of explaining how “subversive” and “ironic” this is will ever restore Lydon’s credibility. It’s a butter commercial. The end.
The Sex Pistols are one of those bands who weren’t that great themselves, but they inspired all kinds of good bands to play music. Lydon’s autobiography (mostly his early life + the Sex Pistols) is an interesting read, but he’s also full of hot air on a lot of things. AFAIK he’s also appeared on schlocky British celebrity reality shows well before he did this commercial.
I personally like the X-Ray Spex a lot more than the Sex Pistols, and with all of the additional advertising & other types of media over-saturation we have now their songs might have actually become *more* relevant!
Looks like Mr Rotten is finally coming out of the closet, and this is his way of easing into it….
I absolutely love this ad, i think its hilarious all these people getting so upset about it, and all of it comes from a misunderstanding of what the john lydon & sex pistols were all about. i actually hate the term ‘punk’ and everything it encompasses, people have put the pistols in this anti-establishment, working-class-heroes box – completely restrictive. they were all just kids gaving a laugh, they were money makers, they stood on stage and raged about stuff that directly affected themselves, they werent trying to be working class heroes, they were kids seeing how far they could push the boundaries, having a laugh and being driven by malcolm mclarens desire to cause a stir and make money. theyre purpose is so badly misinterpreted nowadays, people don’t understand the pistols stood for anarchy – lydon does whatever the hell he wants, for whatever the hell reason he has for himself – the fact that people don’t want him to do these things, or dont expect him to means absolutely nothing
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