England's Dreaming, Revised Edition: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond

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New Labour’s appropriation of England’s comparative success in Euro 96 (beaten by the Germans in the semi-finals) was quite brazen – culminating in the refrain “Labour’s coming home,” deployed by Tony Blair in his party conference speech that year. Savage read Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating in 1975. [2] [3] Becoming a music journalist at the dawn of British punk, he wrote articles on all of the major punk acts, publishing a fanzine called London's Outrage in 1976. A year later he began working as a journalist for Sounds, which was, at that time, one of the UK's three major music papers, along with the New Musical Express and Melody Maker. Savage interviewed punk, new wave and electronic music artists for Sounds. At that time, he also wrote for the West Coast fanzines Search & Destroy, Bomp! and Slash.

The econcomic situation was different at that time, but that's the beauty of this book: it sets everything in a social, political and musical context, which enables you to grasp how and why it was so provocative and important.For Gareth Southgate, England’s coach, this will have felt like something different entirely. Sunday’s game will be the culmination of a task that in many ways was set out for him from the moment he stepped off the Wembley pitch after missing a penalty against Germany in 1996, and which – despite everything – still remains tantalisingly incomplete. England had lost their last four tournament semi-finals. They have not won a major trophy since 1966. That hoodoo has never felt closer to being broken. In a plethora of toe-curling tweets, Boris Johnson and his Cabinet colleagues have tried the same stunt in the past month, awkwardly pulling England tops over their work clothes, gormlessly spraying the hashtag #ItsComingHome across social media, and expecting us to forget their earlier equivocations over the fans that booed England taking the knee. How grotesque it has been to watch a government that has so shamelessly blown the dog whistle over immigration and refugees claiming suddenly to be foursquare behind a squad half of whose members could have chosen to play for another country.

Jon Savage (born 2 September 1953 [1] in Paddington, London) is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming (1991). JD: Maybe my favourite section in the book is McLaren’s collision with Richard Branson, who is, if anything, even more wily and amoral. It’s a real battle between two post-war ideologies: hippy millionaire versus situationist disrupter. There’s something epic about that relationship; it could be a film or a play. LTW: In one of those entries you mention your experience of seeing a first proper punk band – the Clash. Throughout the book, many speakers mention the sense of urgency that punk emanated. When did you realize the importance of what was happening?They have succumbed neither to mean-spirited nativism nor to performative loathing of their country. Instead, and in provisional form, they offered a glimpse of what a post-populist patriotism might look like: full of feeling, of course, but also progressive energy and social responsibility. As world-class athletes under extraordinary pressure, they showed that it is possible to be successful, dynamic and ambitious; but also generous, decent and compassionate. LTW: Isn’t nostalgia a feeling that music writers in magazines such as MOJO attempt to evoke in their audience? Isn’t the audience craving for this sort of feeling? Savage's book, Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture, was published in 2007. It is a history of the concept of teenagers, which begins in the 1870s and ends in 1945 and aims to tell the story of youth culture's prehistory, and dates the advent of today's form of "teenagers" to 1945. [5] The book was adapted into a film by Matt Wolf.

Despite the brief lifespan of the Sex Pistols, their high-octane existence turned on irreversible processes. Saturated with turbulent events, both from the life of the band (death of Sid, court battles between McLaren and Lydon) and the political context of Britain (victory of the Conservatives), the last part of the book comes up with a reassuring statement: “Punk was beaten, but it had also won. If it had been the project of the Sex Pistols to destroy the music industry, then they had failed; but as they gave it new life, they allowed a myriad of new forms to become possible.” JS: I was primed by the first Patti Smith album and very much by the Ramones which I was obsessed with during the spring of 1976. So I knew, I knew that something was going to happen. And I was very isolated and very angry at that time. So when I saw the Clash I realized that like that (snapping fingers – ed.). And again it wasn’t an intellectual feeling, it was just like – press the button, and you are there. And I just knew that I had to get involved, sometimes you just know things. And I suppose I was trying to understand what that moment meant by writing a book actually. Because it was a very very powerful moment. I saw the Clash a week later, then the Sex Pistols and the Damned a week after that. By the end of November, within a month, I’d seen the first three British punk bands. I knew that this was happening. I was doing a fanzine [London’s Outrage – ed.] which was the first step in me becoming a writer which is what I wanted to do. I made that decision to be a writer that summer in 1976. Spain await, the one remaining obstacle in England’s path. In Irene Paredes, Russo will come up against one of the most experienced operators in the game, but Spain’s defence does have its flaws. They are without arguably their best defender, with Mapi León ruling herself out of selection. Russo will be full of confidence, aware of the frailties and will leave everything out on the pitch to help England’s push to take home the biggest trophy of all.

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JD: As middle-aged men, we are marinated in pop music, and we need to come to terms with the fact that we are potentially doomed to obsess over Top Of The Pops performances, B-sides and album covers. We are just so expert at the absolutely useless information of the pop culture we’ve absorbed. We would be into steam trains if we were 30 years older; Jon rescues punk from that “steam-train syndrome”. We also cover some more very well known electro-hits in our own unique punk style which goes down a storm at gigs and has the audience dancing and shouting along by the end of the evening. I would imaging this was used for the screenplay of Pistol, the disney tv series. Everything in the show is found in this book - including the emphasis on Steve Jones stealing kit from Bowies gig at the Hammersmith Odeon. LTW: As a historian and researcher, you have a different approach to writing compared to that of a journalist. Your presence in the book [England’s Dreaming] is reduced to diary entries.