The Heart of Rock and Soul

"Anarchy in the U.K." is an unquestionably great rock and roll record, the kind of raging, burning rock and roll that is even more rarely heard than made. It inspired a major pop explosion in Britain and Europe, and a minor one in the United States. Yet for a fact, the bulk of what the Sex Pistols spawned lies outside the scope of The Heart of Rock & Soul, not because it's too wild and unruly - there are nine Little Richard singles in this book, not to mention "Kick Out the Jams" - but because the musical center of what the Sex Pistols spawned is so far removed from even the most radical rhythm and blues. Studio-crafted pop music based on a different rhythmic process needs and deserves a discussion all its own, not because it's weird, but because most postpunk discards the basic assumptions on which the finest records listed here are based.

Which may seem an odd thing to say given how many singles herein are celebrated as transformative breakthroughs. But there's a difference between a transformation and a fracture, between a breakthrough and a breakdown. The revolts of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "Dance to the Music" never severed the connective tissue that "Anarchy in the U.K." shreds from start to finish. A dozen years on, it seems clear that the Sex Pistols were not only sincere in their desire to make rock that smashed rock, but that they were absolutely equal to the task.

That doesn't mean anything as corny and melodramatic as the Death of Rock and Roll. It just means that somebody had figured out how to make artistically and commercially viable pop music based on a rhythmic process outside R&B, a feat unequalled since the advent of Elvis Presley, and that consequently, things were fundamentally different thereafter. In terms of the aesthetic of The Heart of Rock & Soul, that difference amounts to a true historic disjuncture. Which is a pretty damn longwinded way of saying that there are hardly any punk and postpunk records here for the same reason that there aren't many Chicago blues singles.

"Anarchy" fits, because both Johnny Rotten, the Pistols' overacclaimed singer, and Steve Jones, its underacclaimed guitarist, knew how to make unforgettable rock and roll. Rotten and Jones hold your feet to the fire, making a mockery of John Lennon screaming about mere blisters on his fingers. Rotten sings like a man picking at a scab, fingering it just where it hurts most, hurling every filthy and threatening imprecation he can think of, but it's Jones, with his relentlessly droning six-string crunch, who takes the record over the top, converts threats into promises, promises into accomplishments,

In a way, one of the most unfortunate things about the whole Sex Pistols story is the notion - assiduously spread by both Rotten and manager/impresario McLaren - that the band "couldn't play." Sid Vicious couldn't but the group that made this record, with Glen Matlock, who did know one string from another, on bass, understood perfectly how to make rock and roll effects in the recording studio. And that's the job. The evidence is that those effects aren't just amateurish; they're professionally calculated to do a job. And that's why and how a record whose aim was to smash history wound up an ineradicable part of it.