Customer Reviews

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An odd, occasionally hilarious, hodge-podge from those notorious yobs of the late seventies that transcends vulgarity and low brow humor and drifts into the realm of the truly bizarre. Certain tracks will raise questions of not only how much the band was involved, but how these tracks came into existence, but if your taste veers into warped humor, you'll probably have a lot of fun along the way. There's a handful of loud, gritty Pistol's type punk with Rotton's notorious scathing vocals. Some are covers, (e.g.) "Substitute", "(I'm not your) Stepping Stone", some are originals, "I Wanna Be Me", "Belson Was A Gas" (for bad taste fans), and there's also an alternate take, though not much different from the original version, of "Anarchy In the U.K.". Actually there are several different versions of Anarchy, and here is were things get weird, one is part of a disco medley and the other is the French accordion version. Who's responsible for this is unclear. Guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook, who originally started the group and expected little more than your standard hard rock band, put in a couple of good originals. The songs "Silly Thing" and "Lonely Boy", not surprisingly, sound closer to standard, crude hard rock. Infamous dervish nitwit Sid Vicious does a trio of surprisingly great covers. He covers two Eddie Cochran numbers ("Something Else" and "C'mon Everybody") and his "singing" has an on target sly but energetic rockabilly delivery, which sounds great with Steve Jones' crude (but often under appreciated) guitar playing. Vicious also turns in a humorous parody of Paul Anka's "My Way". Another great track is Steve Jones' arrangement of an old sea shanty, complete with orchestral backing (Once again, we wonder, how and whom?) titled "Frigging in the Rigging". Be forewarned, the song is credited as traditional and if the lyrics are all original, amusingly, this centuries old sea shanty puts any of the Pistol's original material to shame in the vulgarity department. This track, along with Sid's "My Way", also shows Jones' thick Chuck Berry riff guitar style sounds great with a string section (Who'da thunk?). Also, there's a great track to annoy music "purists" with, a hilariously botched "Johnny B. Goode" and Modern Lovers "RoadRunner" medley recorded live in the studio, presumably from the early days. The best moments are when Jones stumbles over a generic Chuck Berry riff, Rotten exclaims "Oh god, I hate songs like that" and Rotten at one point forgetting the words starts screaming "Stop it, that's f***ing awful! Torrtuure! Elsewhere on the album there's a version of "Rock Around The Clock" with hiccuping strangled unintelligible vocals. You'll probably surmise the album is going to be a bit unusual from the first track. A rasping voice claiming to be band manager Malcolm McLaren, though the voice sounds more like Gollum from Tolkien's "The Lord of The Rings", explaining how the Sex Pistols were a plot to swindle the Rock and Roll music industry. To top it off, a chamber orchestra plays "God Save the Queen" in the background. People expecting only the raging bile of the "Never Mind the Bollocks" album may be disappointed (as well as confused), but I always get a laugh out of it.

The Sex Pistols, having recorded just one album and splitting up as a fully-functioning group after a disastrous North American tour in January 1978, suffered the most drawn-out, painful demise of any band in rock history. Their manager/Svengali, London boutique owner and conman extraordinaire Malcolm McLaren, willed the battered corpse of the Pistols to lurch onward for another two years--like Frankenstein's Monster--until the film "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle" was released. McLaren's obsessive quest to bring the Sex Pistols phenomenon to what he felt was a proper end was documented in exhaustive(and exhausting) detail in Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming", and can be heard on this sprawling soundtrack album.
There was no more Johnny Rotten, of course, but Lydon's vocals spice up a few tracks on this disc, including the ragged 'I Wanna Be Me'; a demo of 'Anarchy in the UK' that strangles the life out of the "Never Mind the Bollocks" version; and the horrifying live take of 'Belsen Was a Gas'(from the final show on their American tour). Steve Jones takes the mic on 'Silly Thing' and 'Lonely Boy', two stripped-down rock and roll tracks. Exiled train robber Ronnie Biggs contributes vocals to two more songs(one of them an inferior remake of 'Belsen'), Sid Vicious gets the single shining moment of his brief life on 'My Way', and even McLaren makes a couple of appearances. On the title song, Tenpole Tudor and various Pistols fans join the band on vocals...and the end result is a rollicking, desperate shout into the void that will leave you reeling.
Some of the other reviewers have insisted that this is not a Sex Pistols album. I don't think that's accurate, really--in some ways it's a Pistols album, in other ways it isn't. Ultimately, it transcends such mundane labels and becomes a fascinating document of desperation and mental illness. It's a strange soundtrack for a strange film.

The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle was a hodgpodge film that
was produced by Svengali/Haberdasher Malcolm McLaren.
The movie itself is a collection of half and partially finished
film projects. It was up to novice director Julien Temple to make something out of the endless reels of footage. The soundtrack mirrors the album. This soundtrack was released in several different versions. A single disc, a double disc and an even shorter release.

The songs for the most part were recorded by the Sex Pistols except....

1.)God Save the Queen (orchestration) spoken word by Malcom McLaren.
2.)Rock and the Clock: vocals Eddie "Ten" Pole-Tudor
guitar Steve Jones, Drums Paul Cook, Bass Andy Allen
5.)Sex Pistols Medley (Black Arabs)
8.)Who Killed Bambi: vocals Eddie "Ten" Pole-Tudor
9.)Silly Thing: Guitar/Vocals Steve Jones, Drums/Vocals
Paul Cook, Bass Andy Allen.
13.)Lonely Boy: Guitar/Vocals Steve Jones, Drums Paul
Cook, Bass Andy Allen.
14.)Something Else: Guitar Steve Jones, Drums Paul Cook
Vocals Sid Vicious, Bass Andy Allen
15.)L'anarchie Pour U.K. (polka version, french language).
17.)Belsen Vos a Gassa : Vocals Ronnie Biggs, Guitar &
Bass , vocals Steve Jones; Drums, vocals Paul Cook.
18.)No one is Innocent (same as above).
19.)My Way : vocals Sid Vicious, guitar Steve Jones, bass
Andy Allen, Drums: sessions drummer. (recorded in
Paris).
20.) C'mon Everybody: vocals Sid Vicious, guitar Steve
Jones, bass Andy Allen, Drums Paul Cook.
21.)EMI (orchestration) vocals Steve Jones
22.)Great Rock n' Roll Swindle vocals:Eddie "Ten" Pole-
Tudor and others, Guitar Steve Jones, Drums Paul
Cook, Bass Andy Allen.
23.)You need hands: Vocals Malcolm McLaren
24.)Friggin' in the Riggin' :Vocals Steve Jones.

Not a true Sex Pistols album. Even the songs with Johnny Rotten on vocals were later overdubbed by Jones and Cook.
A classic collection of songs. MAybe after the legal wranglings with finally crediting Andy Allen on the tracks, we'll finally see a new remastered copy of this CD. Keep your fingers crossed!

Highly recommended.

This album contains a bit of something for everyone, although hardcore Pistols fans may be somewhat disappointed. However, despite the inclusion of some dreadful material (most notably Ten Pole Tudor), there are some rare and entertaining tracks. Sid Vicious renders an hilarious version of "My Way", and turns in surprisingly good renditions of two Eddie Cochran classics. The Pistols' botched efforts on "Johnny B. Goode" and "Road Runner" are quite amusing, and fugitive train robber Ronnie Biggs gets in on the action (and steals the show) with "No One Is Innocent" and "Belsen Vas A Gassa", and does both rather well. The rest is somewhat spotty, ranging from great to awful, but the good parts of the album are worth the price of admission. Get this one - it's great fun.

I first saw the video when I was sixteen years old. At first I thought all the swearing and messing around with music(as I knew it) and guys doing whatever they wanted was the coolest thing ever.After I saw it a couple of times thereafter though and buying the record, I saw that these guys were showing me how to think for myself, not to be confined and to teach myself my own values and morals. This record has to be in my top ten of all time. By the way I am 30 now and still miss this record(it got stolen,wouldnt The Pistols have loved that!)

The Sex Pistols and etc / The Great Rock N Roll Swindle (album of the movie): The movie was interesting more than fun, the CD is more Fun than the movie. Calling a Sex Pistols album `a mess' is like calling a brick `hard'. Of course it's a mess, everything they did is a mess. That doesn't mean it wasn't Fun. You don't have a Pistols collection if you don't have this one. You don't have a Punk collection if you don't have this one. Five Stars.

This is the import "Remastered" CD and it sounds great. It even includes "Whatcha Gonna Do About It" which got left off some CDs (I think the US one left it off,too). But, like the original LP which had multiple vinyl versions, this one is not fully complete and it's a shame because they had so much they could have included to make it *complete* (hence, my 4 stars). This has the single version of "Anarchy..." instead of the enhanced demo version (only on the old vinyl LP). Also, some LPs and one of the singles had a fully instrumental (no voiceover) of the "God Save the Queen (Symphony)" that could have been included. Another b-side was "Pistols Propaganda" which featured the films' trailer voiceover narration. But, these are quibbles - this is a fun, ridiculous, music-hall cartoon of the Sex Pistols meant to be an iconoclastic "f-you" to the punks that took the whole thing way too seriously. Honestly, would the Clash ever have had the guts to ridicule themselves like this? No - they were too busy being earnest and 'serious.' The Pistols rule.

In the original packaging of the double-album set, a photograph of a bloodied dead doe shot through the throat with an arrow, with the question, "Who Killed Bambi?," says everything about this soundtrack to a movie of the same name. It was a bloody mess.

Marketed as a Sex Pistols album, it only features vocalist John Lydon and original bassist Glen Matlock in audio from archival footage, but has guitarist Steve Jones and "The Great Train Robber" Ronnie Biggs fronting the "new" Pistols - minus Lydon - and tracks from other artists.

I strongly feel the album was Malcolm McLaren's rib on fans who actually took the "punk revolution" seriously and his hope the brand name could survive with anyone in the studio. There is McLaren - in his best "Voice of Christmas" - bragging about creating punk rock, a disco medley of four Pistols' songs and French street musicians playing Anarchy in the UK.

The best track is a remix of My Way - performed by Sid Vicious, which initially appeared on Sid Sings - that was released as a single in the UK.

Punk rock was never owned by any person or band. But McLaren made sure that he was poised to push the movement over a cliff. Too much too soon, indeed.

I got this back in high school in the mid 80s. The best part is the studio stuff, with Johnny doing Johnny B Goode segueing into Roadrunner. Hey, there are some sweet drum fills in that jam! Its loose, and actually quite good. "I dont know the words!" LOL Great. As a Jew, I dont mind Belsen so much. Its a good song, with rather risque lyrics. The live version has Sid spanking away on bass, making maybe 50 percent of the notes he is supposed to. The Ronnie Biggs version uses different chords, and isnt as good as the live version. There are a lot of gems here. I wanna Be Me, Silly Thing. This record is best described as a hodgepodge. Even the songs that Sid sings are good, especially Something Else. He had a pretty good voice actually...Listen to the 50s songs he sings. Not to bad at all. Worth having in your collection...

This is the soundtrack to the "documentary" about The Sex Pistols. It features a few good tracks and a lot of junk. The songs sung by Sid Vicious are a definite highlight, especially the legendary "My Way". The tracks by original vocalist Johnny Rotten are poorly perfomed, unrehearsed covers of other people's songs, other than the reprise of "Anarchy in the U.K." from Never Mind the Bollocks. There are also a few vocal contributions by Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, which are pretty good. And then there are the odds and ends. There are mediocre contributions by Ten Pole Tudor, bank robber Ronnie Biggs and Sex Pistols svengali Malcom McLaren. Then there is the really weird stuff; a disco Sex Pistols medley and a traditional French version of Anarchy in the U.K. This CD is for hard core Sex Pistols fans only.