The song was a point of controversy (one of many) for the band for years. In a 1996 interview with Q magazine, Sex Pistols lead singer/songwriter Johnny Rotten admitted that the song “was a very nasty, silly little thing ... that should've ended up on the cutting room floor.” You can see a performance of the song here.
But the Belsen saga didn’t end when the Sex Pistols broke up in 1978. In 2007, a billboard ad for Bell Canada showed a young female punk rocker wearing a “Belsen was a gas” button. A company spokesman at the time apologized, explaining that Bell officials approved the ad after seeing smaller sample images in which the text on the button wasn’t visible.
Bringing the controversial song back into the limelight earlier this week, Australian clothing designer Evil Twin apologized after receiving numerous complaints for naming a parka after the infamous song.
Originally created as a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp in 1942. Although Bergen-Belsen did not house any gas chambers, more than 50,000 people died there as a result of typhus and starvation. British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, and after the war they burned it to the ground and set up the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp nearby.
The Sex Pistols may have been trying to be ironic with the song – referencing both gas chambers and the slang term for a good time – as they tried to upset social norms, but, this crossed a line into the profane. Evil Twin should have known better than to revisit the controversial and offensive title.
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ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that always foreign artists would come up with such defamation of the German past. A German group would never get away with that. They would be crucified in the public eye.
ReplyDeleteIn Germany it's illegal to do anything or say anything that glorifies the nation's Nazi past. Unfortunately, there is way too strong of an anti-immigrant movement (or shall we say anti-Muslim since most of the immigrants happen to be Muslim -- wearing a hijab makes a woman a very easy target). Just because the state has officially locked down on blatant references to its shameful past, not all Germans have been taught to think differently about people unlike themselves. Silencing by the German government has clearly not solved the true problem.
ReplyDeleteI never knew about this song (and used to listen to the Sex Pistols a lot). Pathetic that Johnny didn't think there was anything "silly" about the song. I guess it's another illustration of "this is your brain on drugs".