The skinhead scene continued listening to ska right up to the 80s and through the National Front times. In fact it was the great irony of the scene that they clung in diehard fashion to ska music while being blatant full-blown National Front campaigner racists.

Also that Lydon hung out in ska clubs says nothing about whether or not he was racist. Loads of extremely racist white Americans in the 1950s used to listen to rhythm and blues with a passion. Liking a certain type of music does not indicate that you tolerate the people who made it. The music itself is a separate entity to the personalities behind it. I love a lot of Michael Jackson's material. I still would have loved the music even if it turned out he had been guilty. Also, just what is a "ska club" anyway? It could have been a club full of white people that listened to ska.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about Costello.

I think one has to accept the middle ground here. You can't call someone a racist if they don't like the blues (or hip-hop, or reggae), but someone who will listen to Pat Boone instead of Little Richard or Fats Domino...that's either racism or just plain bad taste. :p

You gotta point there. My grandmother has some pretty racist points of view.

But she loves Fats Domino and R&B, especially Motown.

And no you don't have to listen to only music that reflects your point of view or outlook on life.

Pat Boone is SO horrible. His Little Richard covers are ghastly.





It certainly took a while for the brothers in rock n roll to get any respect. Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nielson, Bill Haley and all those guys had to break into the scene first before black rock n roller's could ever be accepted by the mainstream. So until kids were finally free to listen to Little Richard, they had to settle for Pat, dark ages indeed.

Oh yeah i already agreed with you to a point, of course you don't have to like music AND agree with whatever prejudices the musician has,. I mean, i love Bad Brains even though i know they're homophobic idiots.
I know little about the club scene then but do know that he did frequent clubs where ska and reggae was played and where it was mostly black people there.

I think in this case it was Lydon wanting to live up to the Rotten image of old, wanted to a be seen as that rebel image again so said something controversial.

Even today, some rock historians give Holly more credit than they give Berry, even though Berry came first and has more of a claim to the "original singer-songwriter-guitaris" tag. I think it's pretty sad that Little Richard doesn't get much credit either (I'm not a fan of his music, but I think he was far more inventive and possibly influential than many of his contemporaries).

But yeah, Pat Boone's work is wretched, and I think it's proof that there was some sort of racism back then that people would buy the "safe" versions of rock songs (i.e., made by a white guy).

The Birmingham immigration shit and I seem to remember Clapton saying something derogative about Jimi Hendrix (he implied that he shouldn't be producing psychedelic music because of the color of his skin). He immediately regretted his statement, and as a sign, thereafter he invited African-American musicians to perform in his band. It was all pretty much all racist bullshit though.

And yes, Elvis Costello is too a racist.

The whole Rock against racism thing in the 70s started after Clapton made a comment about how the UK was becoming overcrowded and was becoming a black colony at a gig in Birmingham.

Clapton and Costello were both apparrently drunk when they made these statements, to be fair.

There was also something David Bowie said that set people off, but he's always been trying to offend people, and he married a black woman so ehhhhhhh...

Jim Morrison was also a drunken racist.