Thursday 5 September 2013

Pretty Vacant

Finally, after all these years, it has been confirmed that what i thought i heard coming from my tinny speakers back then i did actually hear even if i seemed to be the only one.  
The song in question is The Sex Pistols ' Pretty Vacant' which i always heard as Vacant with a u in the place of that final a. I was always amazed other people couldn't really grasp it but now Johnny Rotten has admitted to The Guardian newspaper that 'yes, I got away with it'.
Surprisingly, he also admitted that they got the riff for "Pretty Vacant" from a very unpunk song, the ABBA ballad 'S.O.S.' which is a little factoid that i am going to ignore less i imagine the Pistols sitting around the radio singing along to ABBA songs which isn't the image i have of them.
It deservedly turned up in the Q magazine list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks and is regularly shown on television shows about punk or The Sex Pistols because it was one of only a few song that wasn't littered with swear-words or rather the one they thought wasn't until now although it seems only Johnny Rotten and I knew the truth at the time.

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