Protest Pop and Queen Elizabeth II' s Silver Jubilee

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As the Queen celebrated her 25th year on the throne, England was restless, on the verge of anarchy, and sweating out the hottest summer in years. God Save the Queen went to the top of the charts, and the Sex Pistols, followed later by other acts, vented their rage at the royal family. We will revisit the tumultuous year of 1977 as our starting point to explore the British musicians who protested the monarchy in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Podcaster: Esther

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Further Reading and Other Media
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The Filth and the Fury (documentary, 2000).

Petridis, Alexis. "Leaders of the Banned." The Guardian, 12 April 2012.

Reynolds, Simon. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. Penguin, 2006.

Savage, Jon. England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond. Revised edition. Macmillan, 2002. 

"The Smiths' 'The Queen Is Dead' tops NME's list of 500 greatest albums of all time." NME.com, 22 October 2013.

​Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)

Infamous interview with the Sex Pistols and Siouxie Sioux of Siouxie and the Banshees on the Today program in December 1976, by television personality Bill Grundy. Lots of swearing, and, as Bill Grundy pointed out, they were not like "the nice, clean Rolling Stones." Also, notice the swastika worn by Steven Severin in the background. The swastika did not have the racist connotations among British youth during that time as it does now; punk rockers, who were generally anti-racist, wore swastikas to enrage their parents and the older generation, whom they felt were too hung up on the victories of World War II and defeating the Germans. Transcript here.

"Official" video for the Sex Pistols song that packs as much of a political punch as God Save the Queen: ANARCHY IN THE U.K., which was released in November 1976. Lead singer and lyricist Johnny Rotten (government name: John Lydon) perfectly encapsulates here the frustration of his generation, who felt disenfranchised, impoverished, and powerless in the late 1970s.

Anarchy for the UK
It's coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time stop a traffic line
Your future dream is a shopping scheme...