- We can smell a swindle a mile away ...
Not that there's much to their legacy that hasn't already been exploited and pissed on by Johnny Rotten and the other band members, but the Sex Pistols' new perfume may be their most shameless and obnoxious moneymaking swindle since the last time they pulled something like this (take your pick: the half-ass reunions, shitty reissues, etc.).
The unisex perfume is called Sex Pistols (they gave up on being creative right around the time they fell apart onstage in 1978) and will be coming to some U.S. stores next week. Apparently it's already available in France, a country that knows class when it smells it.
Who says you can't market rebellion?
The company behind the perfume — the Paris-based Etat Libre d'Orange — says "the fragrance exudes pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli."
Live Nation Merchandising — which had a hand in the deal — said the Sex Pistols were "closely involved" in the project.
So if you're still holding on to idealistic notions that the Sex Pistols were punk's greatest band and one of the all-time great rock & roll rebels, you can wash them all away now. They are and were a manufactured project that had a handful of great songs on an OK album. (For the record, the Clash were a zillion times better.)
If you ever wondered what "Sex Pistols" would smell like, it has a not-so-subtle stench of hypocrisy and cashing in. Not so surprisingly, there's not an ounce of integrity to be found in therel. And Johnny Rotten has the audacity to tell the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to kiss off? —Michael Gallucci
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