anyway, my main take on sex pistols: boy band or no? is that you have to come up with a consistent set of criteria that a group meets to be considered a boy band, and the pistols were so inconsistent that it’s impossible to see how you could apply it to the without applying it to basically everyone
the long and short of this is that “boy band” is inaccurate unless you’re classifying most bands before the mid-80s as boy bands or girls groups, and that malcolm mclaren, vivienne westwood and each individual member of the pistols all had entirely different motivations for being involved
fwiw, my criteria is:
1. plays music written by producers/managers/label
2. public/personal life largely controlled by label (this one is subjective, i know, but important)
3. are part of a marketing strategy to sell items other than music
the pistols only meet 1/3 here
I think there's a little bit of both/and going on though. I seem to recall an interview with Lydon where he said the Pistols were intended (by McLaren, I guess) to be 'the Rolling Stones to the Bay City Rollers' Beatles'
i mean, that’s what mclaren had in mind, but mclaren never had a grip on them at all, and the thing that makes it hard to parse is that both lydon and mclaren are and were shameless liars
