In the great gar­den of fork­ing paths and alter­na­tive time­lines there are two oth­er ver­sions of The Great Rock n’ Roll Swin­dle that Julian Tem­ple nev­er direct­ed. One would have been direct­ed by Gra­ham Chap­man of Mon­ty Python fame, but “he behaved glo­ri­ous­ly bad­ly to Mal­colm (McLaren)” accord­ing to John Lydon many years lat­er. The oth­er was to be writ­ten by film crit­ic Roger Ebert and direct­ed by bux­om beau­ty lover Russ Mey­er (who Lydon called “shab­by” and “a senile old git.”) But you do have to won­der what the hell either of those films might have been like.

Would either of them con­tained the above clas­sic scene–probably the only scene worth the price of admission–where Sid Vicious both mur­ders the clas­sic “My Way” and sev­er­al rich peo­ple in the front row.

Killing sacred cows has long been a part of the West’s sense of humor, long before punk. Spike Jones and his City Slick­ers reg­u­lar­ly destroyed clas­sic warhors­es like The Blue Danube and The Nut­crack­er. The Bon­zo Dog Band in the UK took on “The Sound of Music” and left no sur­vivors. And the Res­i­dents lov­ing­ly destroyed pop music of the ‘60s on Third Reich ‘n’ Roll and their cov­er of the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.” When it comes to pop cul­ture, noth­ing is sacred. Not even Frank Sina­tra.

By the time Tem­ple joined the McLaren’s film project, Lydon was not speak­ing to his man­ag­er. And when they got close to shoot­ing the “My Way” sequence in Paris, Sid Vicious didn’t want to take part. Julien Tem­ple remem­bered:

I would go to the stu­dio every night and come back to report to Mal­colm that the guy did­n’t want to do the song. Sid would spend all the time in the stu­dio try­ing to learn the bass. We would have to come back and tell Mal­colm we had wast­ed anoth­er night’s mon­ey. Mal­colm grew tired of it. He picked up the phone and start­ed scream­ing at Sid about what a use­less junkie he was and so on. Mean­while, Sid had giv­en the phone over to Nan­cy and while that was going on, sud­den­ly the door of Mal­colm’s hotel room flew off its hinges. Sid crashed into the room wear­ing his swasti­ka under­pants and motor­bike boots. He dragged Mal­colm out of bed and start­ed hit­ting him. Then Sid chased a naked Mal­colm down the cor­ri­dor intent on beat­ing the shit out of him.

Now, that might have been a more inter­est­ing scene than the the­ater mas­sacre, but who knows? McLaren want­ed every­thing in the film to be big­ger than life and to his cred­it, this pum­mel­ing of a cover–which had a sec­ond life as the end­ing song to Mar­tin Scorsese’s Good­Fel­las–is still a prop­er two-fin­ger salute. But in a twist, it would be Sid Vicious and the flame of British punk that would be quick­ly snuffed out upon its release. Vicious died Feb­ru­ary 2, 1979.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sex Pis­tols Play a Gig on a Thames Riv­er Barge Dur­ing the Queen’s Sil­ver Jubilee, and Get Shut Down by the Cops (1977)

When the Sex Pis­tols Played at the Chelms­ford Top Secu­ri­ty Prison: Hear Vin­tage Tracks from the 1976 Gig

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Christ­mas Par­ty for Children–Which Hap­pened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Seems there was a time when the dom­i­nant sto­ry of punk was the sto­ry of British punk. If you knew noth­ing else, you knew the name Sid Vicious, and that seemed to sum it up. Maybe it was only in the mid-nineties, around the time Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain released Please Kill Me: the Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk that more peo­ple began to pop­u­lar­ly under­stand the lin­eage of late six­ties garage rock, the Vel­vet Under­ground, Detroit’s Iggy and the Stooges, and the ear­ly CBGB scene in the mid-sev­en­ties crowned by the sound of The Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Blondie, and Talk­ing Heads.

Now even that sto­ry can seem over­sim­pli­fied, sketched out in brief on the way to dis­cussing the lit­er­ary tri­umph of Pat­ti Smith, cul­tur­al inter­ven­tions of David Byrne, career high­lights of punk pow­er cou­ple Deb­bie Har­ry and Chris Stein, or the many, always fas­ci­nat­ing doings of Iggy Pop.

The Ramones roared back into fash­ion twen­ty years ago, and the demise of CBGB in 2007 brought on waves of mar­ket­ing nos­tal­gia of almost Dis­ney-like pro­por­tions. Most every­one who pays atten­tion to pop cul­ture now knows that late-sev­en­ties punk wasn’t a move­ment that arrived out of nowhere, bent on destroy­ing the past, but a con­ti­nu­ity and evo­lu­tion of ear­li­er forms.

But the Trash The­o­ry video at the top reach­es back even ear­li­er than garage bands like the Monks and the Sonics—typically cit­ed as some of the ear­li­est com­mon ances­tors of punk and rock and roll. Punk was “rock and roll bored down to its bare bones,” says the nar­ra­tor, and begins with a rock­a­bil­ly artist who called him­self The Phan­tom and tried to out­do Elvis in 1958 with the rau­cous sin­gle “Love Me.” The Phan­tom him­self may not have embraced the label at all, but like Link Wray, he was still some­thing of a pro­to-punk. Wray’s raunchy, grit­ty instru­men­tal “Rum­ble,” also released in 1958, inspired huge num­bers of gui­tarists and aspir­ing musi­cians, includ­ing young Iggy Pop, who cities it as a pri­ma­ry rea­son he joined a band.

From there, we’re on to “ele­men­tal” tracks like The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird,” The Sonic’s “Psy­cho,” The Monk’s “I Hate You,” and Love’s “7 and 7,” all clear prog­en­i­tors of the sound. And the Mys­te­ri­ans, of garage clas­sic “96 Tears,” were the first band to be described as punk by the main­stream press. The Kinks and The Who set tem­plates in Britain while the Vel­vets per­fect­ed sleazy, exper­i­men­tal noise back in New York. The MC5 in Detroit helped bring us The Stooges. The Mod­ern Lovers’ 1972 “Road­run­ner” launched hun­dreds of bands.

The video is a con­vinc­ing short his­to­ry show­ing how punk arose nat­u­ral­ly from trends in the late 50s and 60s that clear­ly point­ed the way. Like every such his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly one under­tak­en in the span of fif­teen min­utes, it leaves out some pret­ty heavy­weight fig­ures who should have a cen­tral place in the nar­ra­tive. Irri­tat­ed YouTube com­menters have point­ed out laps­es like The New York Dolls (see them fur­ther up in 1973), with­out whom there would have been no Sex Pis­tols. (Pro­to-punk Detroit band Death does get a men­tion, though their influ­ence is neg­li­gi­ble since they went most­ly unheard until 2009.)

Also need­ing inclu­sion as ear­ly punk pio­neers are Tele­vi­sion (check them out in ’78) and Richard Hell and the Voidoids (above in 1980’s Blank Gen­er­a­tion). And these are just a few miss­ing New York bands. Any devo­tee of this musi­cal his­to­ry will come up with a dozen or so more from both sides of the Atlantic who deserve men­tion in the ear­ly his­to­ry of punk. And that’s why, I guess, that pop­u­lar his­to­ry keeps get­ting told and retold. As soon as it starts to get stale, it seems, there’s always more to add.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Punk­ing Out, a Short 1978 Doc­u­men­tary Records the Begin­ning of the Punk Scene at CBGB’s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

You may not find the ref­er­ence eas­i­ly in a Google search. But hang around elec­tron­ic musi­cians, DJs, or pro­duc­ers long enough, and you’ll prob­a­bly hear some­one talk about an “Amen song.” They don’t mean gospel, not direct­ly, but the famed “Amen break,” a six-sec­ond drum loop sam­pled from a 1969 soul instru­men­tal record­ing of the gospel song “Amen, Broth­er” from the B‑Side of a Gram­my-win­ning record by Wash­ing­ton, DC-based group The Win­stons. Played by drum­mer G.C. Cole­man, who died in 1996, it has like­ly become “the most sam­pled piece of record­ed music ever,” as the Great Big Sto­ry video above points out.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the more exten­sive doc­u­men­tary his­to­ry of the Amen break below by writer Nate Har­ri­son. The Great Big Sto­ry video is not that, but rather a short, 4‑minute tour through the sample’s ori­gins by way of Bronx DJ Lou Flo­res, “Break­beat Lou,” who includ­ed “Amen, Broth­er” on a com­pi­la­tion of songs made specif­i­cal­ly for DJs.

If you’ve nev­er under­stood what’s so cap­ti­vat­ing about this beat, lis­ten to Flo­res describe its son­ic qual­i­ties. It’s “prob­a­bly one of the most organ­ic, larg­er-than-life, big pres­ence style of drums… there’s so many depths to this par­tic­u­lar track,” he says, list­ing the spe­cif­ic effect of each piece of the drum kit.

There real­ly is “noth­ing else like it.” And, para­dox­i­cal­ly, it exists every­where, slowed down as the back­beat of ear­ly hip-hop, sped up to inhu­man speeds in drum ‘n’ bass; appear­ing in some form or anoth­er in the reper­toire of almost every con­tem­po­rary artist, pro­duc­er, and drum­mer. The Amen break has popped up in over 3,000 songs, from David Bowie to Slip­knot to Skrillex to Pub­lic Ene­my to N.W.A. to… well, it may be eas­i­er to name pop­u­lar musi­cians of the last thir­ty years who haven’t been at least Amen-adja­cent at some point in their lives. Like cer­tain stan­dards in jazz or move­ments from clas­si­cal hits, every­one knows it, even if they don’t know they know it.

What’s refresh­ing about the brief explain­er is that, rather than try to cov­er this kind of musi­co­log­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry in a few min­utes, it focus­es on the break’s first pop­u­lar­iz­er, Flo­res, who was drawn out of his retire­ment from music because of the viral phe­nom­e­non of the Amen break. He’s an affa­ble guide to the most famous sam­ple in his­to­ry, hap­py that his cor­ner of the Bronx con­tributed so much to the cul­ture by help­ing turn sam­pled music into an orig­i­nal and inven­tive art form. Learn much more about the his­to­ry of the Amen break in the doc­u­men­tary above and at our pre­vi­ous post here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness