Another day, another photo exhibition about punk. This time it was the Superman Is Dead (SID) show of Dennis Morris's stuff on Sid Vicious. Yeah man, for real. Modestly sized (two smallish rooms in a shop-type gallery in super-commercial Neal Street in Covent Garden), it seemed - to the untrained eye - to be comprised of a handful of enlarged prints of mostly familiar images, and ... not much else. Is this it, I thought? Apparently it was. Well, there was also an installation ("Destroy") which recreated a trashed hotel room: a messed-up bed, a stoved-in TV, take-away food containers and other Emin-esque junk in a sort of homage to the way that Vicious apparently once left a room in one of the fleapit no-star hotels graced by the Sex Pistols while on tour (SPSUHRWOT = Sex Pistols Smashing Up Hotel Rooms While On Tour).
Anyway, that really did seem to be it. There were of course the obligatory photo book (which I think was actually Morris's 2014 The Bollocks publication) and prints to buy, and a commemorative t-shirt from the exhibition if you were feeling particularly merchandise-y. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? In fact, though Superman Is Dead was distinctly skimpy I really didn't mind. A friendly bloke gave me a free bottle of Grolsch (it was the private view, liggers like me were there), the weather was warm, and I could stand outside in the pedestrianised street along with about 60 others who had also quickly skimmed the exhibition then decamped into Neal Street. A few words on the photos though. My favourite is probably the exhibition's lead image - Vicious gurning for the camera outside Coventry train station. This works because the composition is so good: Vicious centre-frame and leaning at an odd angle, Rotten (in his magnificent safari hat thing) in the right-hand corner looking at something out of sight (the dreaming spires of Coventry's city centre no doubt), and another person (a roadie?) with his back turned on the left-hand side. There's also what I think is the Pistols' tour bus in the background of the shot (a vehicle going nowhere of course).
Coventry's dreaming: Sex Pistols on tour
There are one or two other interesting images. For instance, I don't think I'd previously seen a stage shot of Vicious where he's on the mic (singing?, saying someting?) while Rotten (with blond hair) looks across waiting for him. Quite striking.
Have you heard the one about this band that was set up to promote a clothes shop?
It sort of goes without saying that Dennis Morris's photos of the Sex Pistols are invaluable, just like his excellent reportage on black life in Dalston and Hackney in the 70s and 80s. For whatever reason, this Covent Garden show is very much on the cheap and cheerful side, an exhibition quickie. Unless I somehow missed them, there were no information boards or other explanatory info at Superman Is Dead and this really was a stripped-down-to-almost-nothing type of show. Punters, beers, photos, that's it. Hang on - there was something else. The exhibition had music playing (the Undertones when I arrived, the Stranglers when I left), albeit it was far too quiet. And, downstairs where the messy bed installation was set up, there were the looped sounds of things being kicked in and smashed up. That's more like it! Chaos. Destruction. Punk rock! The Sex Pistols as a creative musical force came and went in a flash (Savage's The England's Dreaming Tapes mentions how they were almost burnt out after a year), but it's going to take a nuclear war to annihilate them from our culture now. They're here to stay. I don't think this exhibition has anything new to show us about Vicious and the Pistols, but its location is at least fitting. Neal Street is in London's hyper-commerical Covent Garden, with street after street of high-end/naff shops. The Sex Pistols started out in a shop and they're still in one. And that's where they destined to remain. In the future - your future - there will always be a shop selling Sex Pistols merchandise. It's what Malcolm McLaren would have wanted.
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