Not no fun: The England's Dreaming Tapes, final edition

And so, the end is near ... yes, dear reader, I'm nearly through and out the other side of Jon Savage's The England's Dreaming Tapes. 

It's been fun (not no fun) and I've enjoyed it. Yes I have. Anyway here are the last clutch (I promise) of my solid gold nuggets unearthed after back-breaking punk mining labours ...


Howard Devoto & Pete Shelley went to London to see the Sex Pistols in a laughably haphazard way, reading an NME review then driving down from Manchester in a borrowed car to "see if they were playing anywhere that weekend"

Shelley said the Sex Pistols (Matlock era) were all "nice people" and nothing like the media image

Steve Diggle ended up in the Buzzcocks because McLaren's street hustling outside the first Lesser Free Trade Hall gig ("come inside, there's this great band from London playing tonight") led to Diggle accidentally seeing the Sex Pistols and meeting Devoto & Shelley

The big thing for Devoto & Shelley was reading that the Sex Pistols played a Stooges cover

Siouxsie Sioux once accosted Captain Sensible at a gig and said "You're not a real punk, Captain, and you never will be"

Glitterbest's Sophie Richmond once asked Howard Devoto about him writing lyrics for the Sex Pistols ("they're having trouble writing anything new")

Almost every one of the Bromley Contingent/early Sex Pistols entourage hated The Damned but by contrast the independently-minded Shanne Hasler hooked up with Rotten very early and also organised The Damned's first gig

There is (near-) consensus that the Sex Pistols were losing impetus during the latter part of 1976, Rotten was becoming more ego-driven and Grundy in Dec '76 was effectively the end of the band as a dynamic artistic force

The Sex Pistols were only supposed to play for three-and half-minutes on the So It Goes show but had fallen out with the floor managers and deliberately did an extended (seven-minute) Anarchy, the tape of which (an out-take) has been wiped

Early Buzzcocks were as fast as the Ramones and used to do a Ramones cover

When the New York Dolls were met on arrival in the UK by Glitterbest's Nils Stevenson, Leee Black Childers honestly thought Stevenson was Sophie Richmond ("a fairly plain girl") because he was dressed in a Seditionaries mohair sweater and had "fluffy" spiked hair



And the last words go to ... er, the Sex Pistols, along with footage from the great Derek Jarman. The first - and surely the best - live images of the band ...