The Filth and the Fury

It's, uh, it's good to jump on board you, in America and have a bit of a chat.

Let's start with the idea behind the book, 'cause you say that the idea really began when the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury made you realize that lyrics could be more than stories, they could actually become catalysts for change.

Talk about why that film, how it made you understand things about music that you hadn't understood before.

Yeah, well, I think you, you've always paid attention to lyrics in songs, and you always try to analyze them and, like, what it means.

That appearance electrified the nation.

As controversial in its day as the Sex Pistols' notorious The Filth and the Fury interview, on the Today program in 1977.

The reviews in the next day's newspapers were savage, said the New York Journal-American.

The sight of the young Mr. Presley cattle-walling his unintelligible lyrics in an inadequate voice during a display of primitive physical movement difficult to describe in terms suitable to a family newspaper... has caused the most heated reaction since the Stone Age days of TV.