ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the genesis of the British punk movement. It discusses the Lydon began identifying his style with English music hall and music-hall performers ever since the 90s. Lydon was not above incorporating political polemic and social realism in the band's musical modernism, if it meant recreating the oppositional social force associated with classic modernist art. The chapter makes the argument for the Sex Pistols phenomenon as part of the modernist art trajectory of British rock beginning in the 60s. The media frenzy around the Sex Pistols was unique at the time because it was comparable in size to the Beatles, but far more ambivalent people bought the records, and the band is the target of violent assaults. The Sex Pistols was an ideological as well as musical phenomenon and much of the band's oppositional ideology can be traced back to their manager.
