And then the person I had become, totally detached and out of touch with the original ideals, the person having too good a time, me and X and Degville, hanging out in the sunshine, being IT and dreaming about pulling Princess Stephanie.....Well we all fancied a bit of a holiday in the sun as Lydon had once sneered, especially one on EMI’s expense. So here we go!
We’ll film a swinging sixties party video in MARBELLA just like in the lyric. We’ll even get Duffy, the famous sixties photographer to direct. It will be such fun - we can spend a whole week poncing about getting pissed.
There, in that single, fun-seeming idea, I destroyed the whole image of Sputnik. From Elvis 2020 to Freddy and the Dreamers, from Clockwork Orange to the Birdy Song, From Blade Runner to Bognor Regis in one painful four minute clip that I would never live down.
And the video was terrible. All the 100 famous people demoted to tiny unrecognisable cameos overlaid silently over the blaring jaunty track. No famous people saying Success, just a succession of half-recognisable faces.
I have to accept full responsibility. It was my idea, on my watch. Where was my celestial Svengali protecting me from myself? No tap on the shoulder with a “what the fuck are you doing Tony?” Of course the band loved it, a week in the sun and they definitely got very drunk. I somehow accurately predicted and portrayed my very own Kubrician Peter Sellars-like character in Dr Strangelove as the Meglomaniac pushed around in a wheelchair by a nurse. How accurate that was to become.
