The Sex Pistols. David Bowie. Pink Floyd. Rebel rockers and provokers of the public, vivid in our memories as much for their subversion of the mainstream as for their signature sounds. Yet what very few people realize is that a substantive part of the weaponry used by these rockers and their contemporaries was humor: outrageous onstage antics, coded cultural references, and clever lyrical constructs were all critical to expressions of youth rebellion that could still slip past the powers that be.
Focusing on key subversive rock humorists, Brit Wits shows how and why humor has been such a powerful catalyst and expressive force in these artists’ work. Distinguishing rock humorists from rockers who are merely sometimes humorous, Iain Ellis trains his attention on those whose music and persona exude defiance—beginning with the Beatles, the Kinks, and Pink Floyd; and continuing through the Smiths, the Slits, and even the Spice Girls—to investigate the nature of rock humor and the ways in which these groups have used it to attack prevailing social structures. Politics and issues of gender, class, and race are all laid open to ridicule, as is the music industry itself—epitomized by the Sex Pistols’s scathing “EMI.” And although lyrics are foregrounded, Ellis demonstrates that a guitar solo, dissident dance move, or antisocial hairstyle may in context be every bit as subversive and humorous as a song.
At once an action-packed look at some of the most notorious rebels of British rock history and a celebration of an underexplored area of humor, Brit Wits compiles essays and critical profiles that look at one of the most effective—and entertaining—means of anti-establishment expression for half a century.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: British, Rock, Humor
Manifestations Across the Nation
Home Is Where the Humor Is
Coordinates and Determinants
The Ins and Outs
1. Starting Points
Music Hall Comedy
George Formby
2. The Fifties
American Dreaming
Lonnie Donegan
3. The Sixties
Accent-uations
The Beatles
The Kinks
Wacky Whimsy
Pink Floyd
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
David Bowie, Part One
4. The Seventies
Glam Bam!
David Bowie, Part Two
Roxy Music
Goin’ down th’ Pubs
Ian Dury
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s British Punk
Sex Pistols
The Slits
Punk Poetry
John Cooper Clarke
The Nutty Sound
Madness
5. The Eighties
New Romantics
ABC
New Traditionalists
The Smiths
Billy Bragg
Pop Go the Scots
The Proclaimers
Manc Lads
The Macc Lads
Happy Mondays
6. The Nineties
Girl Power!
Spice Girls
Cool Britannia
Blur
Pulp
Techno-Shock Therapy
The KLF
7. The Naughties
2-Steppin’ Out
The Streets
London’s Anti-Divas
Lily Allen
Britpop’s Up Again
Arctic Monkeys
Art Brut
Welsh Wits
8. Closing Points . . .
Notes
Manifestations Across the Nation
Home Is Where the Humor Is
Coordinates and Determinants
The Ins and Outs
1. Starting Points
Music Hall Comedy
George Formby
2. The Fifties
American Dreaming
Lonnie Donegan
3. The Sixties
Accent-uations
The Beatles
The Kinks
Wacky Whimsy
Pink Floyd
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
David Bowie, Part One
4. The Seventies
Glam Bam!
David Bowie, Part Two
Roxy Music
Goin’ down th’ Pubs
Ian Dury
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s British Punk
Sex Pistols
The Slits
Punk Poetry
John Cooper Clarke
The Nutty Sound
Madness
5. The Eighties
New Romantics
ABC
New Traditionalists
The Smiths
Billy Bragg
Pop Go the Scots
The Proclaimers
Manc Lads
The Macc Lads
Happy Mondays
6. The Nineties
Girl Power!
Spice Girls
Cool Britannia
Blur
Pulp
Techno-Shock Therapy
The KLF
7. The Naughties
2-Steppin’ Out
The Streets
London’s Anti-Divas
Lily Allen
Britpop’s Up Again
Arctic Monkeys
Art Brut
Welsh Wits
8. Closing Points . . .
Notes