Huge (2 lb.) 1991 hardcover with dust jacket. Out of print. ISBN 0312069634.

From Kirkus Reviews
In an account packed with incisive social analysis, a London-based writer who contributes regularly to US music magazines (Spin, Rolling Stone, etc.) chronicles the lurid yet surprisingly complex rise and fall of Britain's quintessential punk band, the Sex Pistols. Taking his title from the lyrics of the band's "God Save the Queen'' ("There is no future, in England's dreaming. No future for you, no future for me''), Savage begins with a long description of the nihilistic, in-your-face fashion world in which Malcolm McLaren, the group's manager, got his start. These first pages are decidedly slow, but they are the only slow ones in a long book that--among countless other things--describes McLaren's apparently seething, opportunistic ambition, and the "miasma'' of violence that followed the Sex Pistols from an early, foulmouthed TV interview to a gruesome tour across America's South (recounted by Noel E. Monk and Jimmy Guterman in 12 Days on the Road, 1990) and the drug-induced death of bass player Sid Vicious. Throughout, Savage provides much intriguing background information, especially about the suffocating nature of recession-hit 1970's England, along with illuminating quotes from dozens of sources. His narrative is filled with pithy insights that keep their appropriate punch even when wallowing in verbosity ("The very English phlegm which had served as a powerful psychological metaphor for denial...was now, literally, expelled in torrents as...Punk audiences covered their object of desire with sheets of saliva''). Though at times overly detailed and wordy, still a compelling and intelligent narrative that's as much about the nature of anarchy as about the Sex Pistols and punk rock. (Sixteen-page color insert.)

From Library Journal
That a group of disaffected English teenagers should in the span of two years, five 45s, and one album become the vanguard of the punk rock movement exerting musical and social influence which persists today is an improbable and, in the hands of rock journalist/author Savage, a fascinating story. This is a lengthy and detailed treatise grounded by material derived from interviews with the principal participants and the author's own journal entries. The bibliography and 50-page Sex Pistol/punk rock discography appended to the text alone can justify purchase. The analysis is cogent, if at times academic, while the decidedly Anglophilic nature of the subject, politics, and language may intimidate readers more interested in fanzine material. This should become an important work on a seminal band and movement; the numerous Sex Pistol photo books and Glen Matlock and Peter Silverton's recent I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol (1991) pale in comparison.

From Publishers Weekly
With wit and authority, freelance writer Savage pens an entertaining, exhaustive chronological history of punk rock and politics through 1980. For the first several chapters the account focuses on attention-getting impresario Malcolm McLaren, who opened a series of outrageous clothing shops including Let It Rock and Sex during the early '70s with companion Vivienne Westwood. McLaren's visits to New York City left him enamored of such iconoclastic American bands as the New York Dolls and Television, and, using the nervy, bored adolescents he met while selling punk fashion, he nurtured a group that would become the Sex Pistols. McLaren and the Pistols' shenanigans are set against a background of such seminal punk bands as Iggy and the Stooges, the Clash, the Damned and the Ramones. Savage also devotes attention to McLaren's flamboyant shop maven Jordan, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders and Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees as he chronicles the Pistols' ascent and decline. Even readers who consider this volume's length somewhat daunting will find it the definitive source of early-punk anecdotes. Photos.

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