GOD SAVE THE QUEEN by SEX PISTOLS. Story by Julian Savage.

Camberwell, Melbourne. 1977.

Growing up in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the 1970s two potential career paths appeared likely: a somnambulist or a Catholic priest. The former as the reassuring sounds of crackling fires in winter and the din of cicadas in summer behind meticulously pruned hedges lent itself to a dozy, sleep walking existence, the serenity of eternal normalcy.

A line a Dominican shared with this impressionable teenager, “I’ve never been so rich since I took the vow of poverty”, inspired the latter. Having witnessed first hand how those of the cloth were wined and dined by local families – beef wellington from Robert Carrier’s European classics followed by vintage cheeses washed down with litres of claret and tawny port – priesthood seemed like a doddle.

However, beneath the surface trouble bubbled away: infidelity, alcoholism, barbiturate abuse, domestic violence, financial ruin, repressed homosexuality, pederasty and teen suicide ideation.

The incursion that burst my bubble occurred in the summer of 1977. The previous year my parents had undertaken a pilgrimage as representatives of The Teams of Our Lady (TOOL); lay Catholic communities that proselytised conventional matrimony within a theological framework.

TOOL took them to Fatehpur Sikri in India and Lourdes at the base of the Pyrenees in France and my brother and I to my uncle and aunt’s piggery in Queensland. While they shared the social lubricant of prayer with an international cast of devotees, we couldn’t get the smell of porcine effluence out of our nostrils and ate bacon thrice a day: heaven indeed. One couple my parents met hailed from East London and it was a visitation to the dominions of their eldest son the following year that rocked my world.

My initial impression of meeting Pete: older than me by a few years, he had a lean and hungry look and the physique of a whippet. His hair was cropped to a quarter of an inch, opposing the excessive locks of my brother and I, and, most dramatically, he wore an oversized metal safety pin through his ear. Unbeknownst to me he was a punk. Punk had hardly featured on Countdown and our house “swung” to the sounds of Abba, Sergio Mendes and James Galway with a light smattering of Robert Goulet, Sabicas and Judy Garland.

Pete spoke in an abrupt, harsh vernacular. I could barely understand the meaning of “orright”, “guvnor”, “bovver”, it sounded both brittle and truthful, a dramatic counterpoint to the faux British accents of ABC newsreaders.

“I go’ somefink for ya”, he announced, and handed me a claret and blue scarf and a small banner with a coat of arms adorned with a castle crossed by hammers, the colours and insignia of West Ham United, a working-class East End London football team famous for its ironworks and tribal supporters.

I became an instant lifelong fan and years later attended games at the Boleyn Ground where the song, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles was sung by the fans as machines pumped giant suds into the crisp, London air. It is a sentimental novelty song, originating from Tin Pan Alley and crossing the pond via British music halls of the 1920s. Equally nostalgic as incongruous it evokes that great English tradition of a “better”, faded past.

And then Pete slipped me a brown paper bag. “Play it when ya ol’ lady ain’t listenin’”, he confided.  Whatever you say, I’m in. I was in utter awe of him.

I snuck a look and saw the word “Sex” fleetingly. My mind raced as to the nature of the contraband. Later, I was aggrieved to uncover not a teenage boy’s lurid fantasy, but a 45 single from a band called Sex Pistols with a picture of a defaced Queen on the cover. Talk about disappointing!!

Still, I was intrigued and one day after school I dropped the needle of our Pioneer turntable on the lead-in track. Suddenly there was a coruscating wall of sound, clashing, clanging discordant guitars, a hammering backbeat and some snotnosed singer snarling in an incandescent screeching rage, something about the “fashion regime” (note: fascist) and repeatedly inciting “No Future”.

It shook me to the core: why were they so angry, hadn’t my old soak of a history teacher taught us that the Queen was meant to be revered, is this music? It was the most revelatory, energised, kick in the guts I had ever heard and spoke to my burgeoning doubt of the crumbling edifice that had enveloped me in my cloistered Camberwell existence.

It gave me a vital, mainline shot of reality that punk it its initial, raw manifestation could. Yes, I’m forever blowing bubbles, but I’ve never stopped taking a giant safety pin to prick those falsities and injustices that lie beneath the soapy film of life.

Stereo Story #721