A REVIEW FROM THE SNIPER: CLINTON HEYLIN’S BOOK ON PUNK YEAR(S) ZERO (Sniper series – 34)

A REVIEW FROM THE SNIPER:

CLINTON HEYLIN’S BOOK ON PUNK YEAR(S) ZERO

(Sniper series – 34)

 

I read quite a number of books on punk and Sex Pistols: since the very end of 1977.

I also appreciated Clinton Heylin pivotal From The Velvets To The Voidoids.

Thus I approached his last work (having opted for the “special edition” purchase, being cheaper than the standard!) with the adequate tools.

 

Anarchy In The Year Zero (subtitled The Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Class of ’76, published in 2016 by Route, Pontefract, UK) declares itself (see foreword and introduction) to be a definitive account, considering Jon Savage England’s Dreaming drawbacks caused by lack of information at the time and by not a great amount of space being dedicated in it to Sex Pistols themselves.

 

Heylin’s opus does not meet its own declared standards for various reasons: completeness is not synonymous with repetitions; text in the work/footnotes is sometimes duplicated in footnotes and/or appendixes; discography has some flaws even when not considering that in the same 2016, just months after completion of the book, four Sex Pistols live recordings had official release (a coincidence?).

 

Some reviewers blamed lack of space in the book for bands like The Stranglers, I find the same pages more biased against anything which is outside Heylin’s tastes (I wonder when he discovered punk): fair enough Eater did not save the world, still Andy Blade years ago wrote a great book: The Secret Life Of A Teenage Punkrocker – The Andy Blade Chronicles.

 

The author’s style sometimes is really appalling: In two subsequent pages we have “manic street mavericks” and “A-bomb under Oxford Street” (pp. 219-220: I haven’t been in touch with Niky Wire or Paul Weller, but …).

This is not a book you will read in two days, even if the English used is quite accessible.

 

Final verdict: a lost occasion, although a book worth having for references; but even with them you need a “grano salis”.

 

 

                                                                                                                      Top Shooter

                                                                                                                      Steg

 

 

 

© 2017 Top Shooter

© 2017 Steg E HTTP://STEG-SPEAKERSCORNER.BLOGSPOT.COM/, Milano, Italia.

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