"England's Dreaming"

[sufi]

... was the title of Jon Savage's book about the pistols, taken from the sardonic snarling line in "God save the queen"

Question: was that an original lyric? I can't imagine the pistols using allusion in their lyric, but i suppose it's not impossible.

amazing how that phrase (picked up again in the appalling viral "coming home") hits such an evocative note that it's become ... something... what?

 

[martin]

Despite all his subsequent "It was just a laugh, ENG-ER-LUND, loved the queen really" schtick, he was quite poetic and sensitive back in the day.

 

[john eden]

If you take away the snarl and the line before it, it changes it somewhat…

 

[john eden]

I always assumed it was “There’s No Future - In England’s Dreaming” but it turns out “In” is “And”?

 

[john eden]

Actually the internet seems to say both so I will stick with my OG version.

 

[martin]

It's 'in England's dreaming;.

 

[martin]

I got the impression Sufi was wondering if Lydon was too thick to have come up with it and swiped it from somewhere.

 

[sufi]

It's 'in England's dreaming;.

Yeah i always thought so, but that is a much more poetical syntax innit

 

[sufi]

I got the impression Sufi was wondering if Lydon was too thick to have come up with it and swiped it from somewhere.

not so much too thick as too punk

 

[martin]

not so much too thick as too punk

Yeah, I guess I meant theatrically crude.

 

[sufi]

Yeah, I guess I meant theatrically crude.

precisely

 

[sufi]

too iconoclastic to borrow it in an allusive way
though "swiping" or "nicking" it might have been acceptable, depending on the original source.

 

[sufi]

something very Derek Jarman about it, but impressive that gobshite punks managed to label this sort of national fugue state that has become beloved of lazy yankophile headline writers
canny too, i suppose, that it was included in 3 Lions, or is that a mishearing?

 

[martin]

It is the kind of thing you can imagine Shelley scribbling down after a night on the laudanum. "We're the flowers in the dustbin" is a great line too.

 

[martin]

something very Derek Jarman about it, but impressive that gobshite punks managed to label this sort of national fugue state that has become beloved of lazy

Weird, I was about to say it reminds me of him! "The Last of England" etc.

 

[martin]

Think it's meant as in, England's lost in a dead-end reverie. Emphasis on tradition aborts the future.

I'm sticking with IN. Seeing as that's what he actually wrote, lol.

But on the first draft, it was "England's dream"

 

[blissblogger]

Is that meant to be "God Save ... Windowlene"?

"we are the romance behind the screen" is an intriguing line that never made it to the final cut

 

[blissblogger]

it was very clever of Savage to take the negative phrase and ambiguate it so that it could be about England's dissident dreamers

 

[martin]

Is that meant to be "God Save ... Windowlene"?

Yeah, it's on one of the demos. Maybe on 'Spunk' though also the billion bootleg LPs floating around.

 

[craner]

This is Talmudic.