“The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.” 1. Steve - “I was only in it for the birds after the show” - Jones and Julien Temple discuss the film.

Welcome back to chriswasanon. First we had the Great Piespace Swindle on cwa blog and now we have another teaser for you. The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Part 1 and er part 2. Part 2 to up step tomorrow or Sunday.

The Embezzler, The Crook, The Gimmick, The Collaborator, etc.

Wonderful sequences! Terrific animation and not a CGI muppet in sight!

Eh: You need haaaaands!

The TrAnsCrIber and I have been looking over the rushes, I been proofing this slab after Tina tapped it out and shipped it . It’s Fresh! LA.--------------------------->UK.

This interview was first broadcast on Indie 103.1 LA and OC area and sprayed over the Interweb on 23.3.06. Yesterday!

Tina is at the controls.



Steve: You're listening to Jonesy's Jukebox on Indie 1031 on a gorgeous...I can't believe how hot it is. It was eighty degrees as I was pulling in the garage...almost eighty, and it will be in a little bit. Just couldn't be happier. Couldn't be happi-er. But besides all that we have Julien Temple in the studio. How are you, Julien?

Julien: I'm good. (referring to the Jonesy's Jukebox opening theme, the orchestral version of "God Save The Queen" from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle) I'm surprised how well...it's it amazing how well that song blew up to orchestral...

Steve: I'm sure you've heard that song a million times, right?

Julien: I hear it in my...nightmares, yes.

Steve: Do you? (both laugh) If none of you don't know it, Julien was, uh, the director of The Rock and Roll Swindle.

Julien: Steve was my leading man.

Steve: Yes, I'm the...I was the leading man, star-man. Did you have fun doing that? Or was it, was it...

Julien: Uh, not really. It was a nightmare. By that stage, everything was a bit of a nightmare. But, you know, it was a survival course. You had to stay the course or give up for the rest of your life, basically.

Steve: Yeah. What did uh, did you...it, it was a nightmare as far as dealing with Malcolm Mclaren, or just, it...it was a shambles, wunnit? I mean nothing...it wasn't run like a normal movie.

Julien: We didn't have money one day to the next, you know. You'd wait for six weeks to then find out you'd got a little bit of money, which is probably your money in the first place, but I don't know where it came from. Um, it was, you know, it was blood on the walls already at that stage, though. I mean, the whole thing with John and Malcolm was, was pretty bitter, wasn't it?

Steve: Right.

Julien: ...and, you know, I was making it with Malcolm but I wanted to be trying to keep some kind of truth to, to the input of Rotten and the band, particularly. Ah, and in a way, you know, looking at the two films together, I think it works quite well because you've, you've got two sides to the story there because The Filth And The Fury obviously made with a bit more hindsight, a bit more space between things. You could tell the story in a different way, a more human way.

Steve: Yeah.

Julien: At the time, the, the Swindle was a kind of provocation. It was meant to enrage, annoy everybody. It was a very "punk" film in that sense and making cartoons of you at that time was a sacrilege, wasn't it? I mean now...you have to be a cartoon to be in a band. Back then, rock and roll stars, or rock and roll characters portrayed as a cartoon was not what you were meant to do, so hopefully it was irreverent and in the spirit of the times...you know, for whatever it is, it's a document of the...

Steve: I think, I, I love watching it. It makes no sense, but I love it. It's just the things that are going on in it, you know, one minute you're, you know, the Brazil bit and you know, it's just, its...its great having Ronnie Biggs in the movie. For me, that was...it's just like one of them mad Carry On movies, to me.

Julien: Yeah, yeah, it is.

Steve: A Carry On movie on acid, or something, you know? It's just out there.

Julien: I think it's good 'cause it did leave a good monument to Sid, what Sid was in it, 'cause in the band he didn't really, didn't really work in as a Sex Pistol on stage, I thought. But when, when he did My Way, he did get a real, real sense of who he was.

Steve: Yeah, Chrissie was saying that yesterday, that he was, if he would have had his, his stuff together, he could have went on to be...

Julien: Huge.

Steve: Yeah. He had it. He had, he had the charisma and he had a voice, too.

Julien: But he lost it though, didn't he?

Steve: The voice?

Julien: He lost it...he had it and then he lost it.

Steve: Well, only through substances. I don't think it was a...

Julien: That's what I mean...

Steve: Yeah.

Julien: Before that all started happening, he was you know...electric guy in a room. There was something really charismatic about Sid.

Steve: I think it was pretty sad when he ended up in CBGB's. Did you ever hear any of them tapes when he performed there?

Julien: Seen some stills of that. I haven't heard the music.

Steve: Yeah, it was pretty sad. What a mess he was there. What was it like working with him, 'cause you did a lot of stuff by yourself with him, didn't you, when he's doing the bit on the back of the bike...you weren't really driving the bike, right, it was being...

Julien: It was on a flat trailer...

Steve: ...you could tell...from a mile away! (laughs) I don't think he'd ever been on a motorcycle in his life.

Julien: Well, in a way, if you had a bag of sweets, you were all right with Sid, you know, 'cause...you forget how young he was also, you know...and ah, the problem was not what he did when you were filming him, it was getting him out of bed and getting him towards the camera, you know, just getting things set up and ah, I always found a bag of Humbugs or something...

Steve: Smarties. (both laugh) "'ere ya are, Sid, here's your Smarties!" Ah, boy. Yeah, I was...I wasn't in too great a shape when I was doing it. I might have acted like I was together, but I was uh, that's when I started doing that nasty drug.

That was an EmBeZzler Tina and chriswasanon production.

Thanks to Pauly Poo for the image!

Steppin up part 2.