Greil Marcus Praises Sex Pistols, Celebrates Book Anniversary at Lecture

The young John Lydon was so brilliant, author Greil Marcus argued Thursday night during a presentation at Columbia University, that the iconic Sex Pistols singer, now 53, should be forgiven for appearing in British butter commercials.

"I think John Lydon did so much to make the world a richer, more abstract, more contingent place -- and did more to raise the stakes of what people see as art -- that I don't care what he does to make a buck," Marcus said. "I think he deserves every penny."

Marcus' absolution of Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, came after the writer -- one of the most intelligent rock critics of all time -- gave a dramatic reading of the play he wrote as a precursor to 'Lipstick Traces,' the book whose 20th anniversary he was on hand to commemorate.

A rock 'n' roll book only in the loosest sense, 'Lipstick Traces' is best described by its subtitle: 'A Secret History of the 20th Century.' At more than 500 pages, it's an incredibly convoluted, largely speculative, consistently brilliant attempt to connect a series of obscure artistic and political movements that existed between World War I and the end of British punk.

As Marcus revealed at the start of his talk, 'Lipstick Traces' was born of a single nagging question: "Why was 'Anarchy in the U.K.' by the Sex Pistols so powerful?"

His quest for an answer led him to research the Dadaists, Situationists, Lettrists and other groups that, before fading into obscurity, used slogans and avant-garde art to protest the status quo.

"To me, they were all engaged in the same project," Marcus said. "This project was to enact a negation, a public event, to show the world it wasn't as it seemed."

In order to write 'Lipstick Traces,' Marcus said, he started with a play, a dramatic springboard he claims to have composed in a single afternoon. In constructing the narrative, he imagined the various misfit characters he'd researched hanging out and espousing revolutionary views in a variety of historical settings: Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire, 1916; a Paris basement, 1968; and the London punk club the Roxy, 1977.

Playing perhaps a dozen characters -- everyone from German Dada poets to Poly Styrene, lead singer of the first-wave British punk band X-Ray Spex -- Marcus read his lines with great humor and verve. By design, the play was virtually impossible to follow, as it amounted to characters interrupting one another with snippets of half-baked manifestos, but Marcus' enthusiasm held it all together.

After 40 minutes, the play ended with Marcus, portraying Lydon, reciting the immortal opening line of 'Anarchy in the U.K.': "I am an antichrist."

Responding later to an audience question regarding why he chose to link the Pistols, as opposed to some other British punk band, to the political movements outlined in 'Lipstick Traces,' Marcus revealed what so startled and intrigued him about Lydon's band.

"It was a refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the audience," he said.