Hide Your Grandmothers, It’s the Sex Pistols!<\/b><\/p>\n
By John Pecorelli for\u00a0Alternative Press\u00a0<\/i>magazine<\/p>\n
It’s just another typical Los Angeles day: sunny, 70 degrees, the Eagles’ \u201cDesperado\u201d playing quietly in a mini-mart next to a nondescript beach motel. Middle-aged bourgeoisie in colorful shorts enjoy a game of volleyball in the sand, sailboats wafting by on the water behind them. It’s all very lazy and serene, but a pall of anxiety hangs over everything. I’m not here to interview Jimmy Buffet, after all. Waiting in that nondescript beach motel are the Sex Pistols.<\/p>\n
Never mind that this is a band that existed only two years yet dramatically altered the industry, sound, and scope of rock and roll. They did it with a startling new noise, with combative theatrics, and most of all with words, forcing taboo after taboo down the throats of a docile and unsuspecting English public. They did it despite being banned from the radio, banished from performing in most English counties, and having the top spot in the country’s published record charts left blank when one of their songs occupied it. They did it despite two major labels signing and unceremoniously dumping them almost immediately, and they did it despite record plant workers going on strike, refusing to press the vinyl and sleeves. Most amazingly, the Sex Pistols did it releasing only one LP, 1977’s\u00a0Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols.<\/i><\/p>\n
Never mind all that. Mode immediate concerns plague me. This is band whose members \u201chate each other\u201d (according to their old manager Malcom McLaren), a band that at interview time today hadn’t even rehearsed together in nearly two decades. The press gets on their nerves, one source close to the Pistols had warned me to \u201cwatch your Ps and Qs because tensions are running a little high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bollocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAw, you’re all right,\u201d says Johnny Rotten with a grin, plopping down in a plastic lawn chair next to me on the motel patio. \u201cSome of the birds in there fancy ya. \u2018Oooh, he’s all right, isn’t he?’ Tell you what\u2014I’ll get their numbers. Hello!\u201d<\/p>\n
Stev Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock (the Psitols’ original bassist, whome the late Sid Vicious replaced in early 1977) wander in. No leather jackets, no Doc Martens, no practiced sneers. And why should there be? The Sex Pistols are, after all, the punk rock archetype.<\/p>\n
\u201cBloody glad to hear it,\u201d nods Rotten. \u201cQuite frankly\u2014no seriously\u2014we’ve been gettin’ this a lot now in the last three weeks: people saying what punk is, what punk isn’t, and how could we do this because it’s not punk. We\u00a0are\u00a0<\/i>the first, foremost. We write the laws\u2014others follow them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe write the laws!\u201d Jones counters jokingly, his normally Cockney voice somewhere between John Wayne and Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don’t mean to be corny,\u201d Rotten continues, staring directly at me, \u201cbut first there was Jesus Christ\u2026and then there was the Christian movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re the punk-rock icons and we created\u00a0everything<\/i>, boy! Jones undercuts again in his Elvis Wayne voice.<\/p>\n
Whether they were \u201cfirst\u201d or not depends on which historian you consult, and historians are a fickle lot. No one knows this better than the Sex Pistols, who’ve been both vilified and deified, respectively, by music and youth culture historians. Ask the band and they’ll tell you that either way it’s dehumanizing. Starting with early mainstream media coverage in England , the Pistols were portrayed as no-talent dole thugs and\/or nihilistic seditionaries attempting to, in the words of Parliament member Marcus Lipton, \u201cdestroy our established institutions.\u201d The truly self-destructive antics of bassist Vicious and the band’s sudden, violent implosion in 1978 only lent credence to the \u201clive fast, die young\u201d motif\u2014an easy clich\u00e9 that still plagues the Pistols. Cook dismisses it all with five words.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re still here, ain’t we?\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotten is typically more elaborate.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you ever hear any of us say that we wanted to destroy ourselves? No, you didn’t. That’s all rewrites of history, people not dealing with things the way they really were, but wanting to fit their own little personal bit into it, e.g., make a place for themselves in the scheme of things. And this is the trouble with history\u2014it’s constantly being rewritten incorrectly by people who should know better but who, quite frankly, don’t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotten takes a large breath. \u201cAnd another thing!\u201d he snorts with a laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet on your soapbox over there, Johnny,\u201d Cook chuckles. \u201cStraight off the cuff, that was!\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotten’s smile evaporates. \u201cA bunch of things\u00a0are\u00a0<\/i>off the cuff with me. But I’m constantly thinking about this and I don’t like people having the\u00a0sheer audacity\u00a0<\/i>to tell me what punk is or is not. \u2018Punk’ was a title given to us by Caroline Coon first off. That’s the first time I ever noticed it, when she called me the \u2018king of punk’ in\u00a0Melody Maker<\/i>,\u201d he says, uttering the phrase with mock bombast. \u201cNow I took that as a personal offense\u2014because a \u2018punk’ was like, um, Mr. Big’s bum boy in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was the question again?\u201d Cook asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonsense,\u201d Jones quickly answers.<\/p>\n
Were the media accusations of self-destructive behavior\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cNo no no no no no!\u201d Rotten interrupts. \u201cAs I’ve always said whenever I’ve done anything, right from day one, the idea is to\u00a0survive.\u00a0<\/i>Beat the rest, not get beaten down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing we ever did was contrived,\u201d Cook adds quietly. \u201cNot a lot of thought went into it, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHello! My survival is quite contrived, I’ll say that,\u201d Rotten counters.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I mean like self-destructive and all that,\u201d Cook continues. \u201cWe wouldn’t have contrived all that. That was just a natural reaction for us, against the music biz, the apathy that was around at the time. There was so much\u00a0shit\u00a0<\/i>in 1976.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cook has a point, even if you limit his comment to music. The hit machines of 1976 were ghastly: Genesis, ABBA, Peter Frampton, Grand Funk Railroad\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, I like Grand Funk Railroad!\u201d Rotten cuts me off, laughing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe too,\u201d agrees Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were the noisiest, most awful band in the world and everybody hated them!\u201d Rotten exclaims. \u201cBut they had two really good singles, and God, I can’t remember the bloody titles\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c’The Locomotion,’\u201d Cook mumbles.<\/p>\n
\u201c’Some Kind of Wonderful,\u201d offers Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet’s stop talking about this or they’ll reform,\u201d says Cook, exploiting the irony. \u201cThey’ll reform!\u201d<\/p>\n
Since we’re on the topic\u2026while almost every punky band from the past 20 years is coming back to reap the rewards of current green-hair trendiness, no one ever suspected the Pistols would. Rotten’s bitter, eight-year legal battle with Pistols manager McClaren (Lydon vs. Glitterbest) notwithstanding, the initial group breakup in January 1978\u2014after a particularly sour gig on the particularly disastrous U.S. tour\u2014was so sudden and brutal that no one even toyed with notion of reformation. The band remembers it well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t know what was happening on that U.S. tour,\u201d Cook says. \u201cIt was all fucked up, and that’s why we split up. Because it was a total disaster from start to finish. It wasn’t our fault really, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a disaster from\u00a0our\u00a0<\/i>point of view,\u201d Jones clarifies. \u201cMaybe not from the people who went and saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEver get the feeling you’ve been cheated?\u201d Rotten asks, reiterating his often-quoted final words to the crowd at the Pistols’ final show in San Francisco. \u201cThe crowds loved it anyway. A whole\u00a0spectacle.\u00a0<\/i>But for us as people I definitely felt very upset about it all. It went horribly wrong and we were distanced. Steve and Paul were in a hotel in one place, I was with the road crew, and Sid in another place. Couldn’t get through to anyone because Malcom [McClaren] made sure of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSid was off dead on a San Francisco floor somewhere,\u201d Cook mutters.<\/p>\n
\u201cSid was off dead\u2014but getting money from Malcom to keep him that way,\u201d says Rotten bitterly. \u201cNo money came my way. I didn’t even have a plane ticket out of America when you all went off to\u2014I didn’t know where you went, I was just told it was Rio and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe manager just let things go, you know,\u201d says Cook quietly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met briefly at your hotel,\u201d Rotten looks at Cook and Jones, \u201cbut the animosity at that point was\u00a0ludicrous.\u00a0<\/i>You couldn’t get past it: \u2018You’re a cunt.’ \u2018No, I’m not.’ \u2018Yes, you are.’ That was about it. It was as childish and stupid as that. And that’s the same way we broke up with Glen [Matlock]. And it was Malcom instigating again. \u2018He said, she said, duh duh duh.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like some old fuckin’ woman,\u201d puts in Jones. \u201cJust had to gossip about something all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
But one persistent myth about the Sex Pistols’ formation is that McClaren \u201cconstructed\u201d them as a living, spitting advertisement for his alternative clothing boutique, Sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s all bollocks,\u201d Jones states sharply.<\/p>\n
Surprise isn’t the only sentiment greeting the Pistols’ reunion, either\u2014a fair amount of dismay exists, as well. They’ve \u201csold out,\u201d some say\u2014forget that the band always embraced crass materialism, saying \u201cthe more the merrier\u201d to talk-show host Bill Grundy in the late \u201870s (shortly before calling him a \u201cfucking rotter\u201d on live, primetime British TV). Others feel the Pistols shouldn’t be allowed to sully their own legend the way Elvis and the Beatles did. There seems to be an almost pathological social need to keep the Pistols frozen in time like James Dean or Brian Jones\u2014or Sid Vicious for that matter\u2014as icons of eternal rebellious youth. Perhaps the heaviest irony of all is that the original icon breakers, who carried the nothing-is-sacred credo to its visceral extreme, have become all-too-sacred themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Rotten agrees. \u201cPeople have built the Sex Pistols into a\u00a0church.\u00a0<\/i>Like an icon, something sacrosanct, and\u00a0fuck\u00a0<\/i>that. \u2018Fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat. Because I don’t wanna baby that looks like that!’\u201d Rotten says, pointing at me. \u201c’Bodies! It’s not an animal, it’s an abortion!’\u201d (One thing is clear about the reunion: Rotten still remembers the lyrics.)<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s right though,\u201d Cook says, back to the point. \u201cPeople think it’s sacrosanct, can’t be touched, so, you know\u2026they’re so precious about it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they had nothing to do with it,\u201d mutters Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy shouldn’t we?\u201d asks Cook. \u201cThey don’t mind everyone else reforming, but as soon as it’s us they’re like, \u2018Ooh, horror!’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s good,\u201d says Jones. \u201cI’m glad they fucking don’t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt annoys,\u201d murmurs Rotten.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, not everyone,\u201d says Cook.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get questions like this: \u2018Oh, is it hard to shock these days?’\u201d Rotten bristles. \u201cDon’t care about shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never tried to shock,\u201d says Jones simply.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never, ever did,\u201d Rotten agrees. \u201cJust shit happens and then you live with it. And here we are now, reforming, and whether they like it or not,\u00a0it’s shocked them.\u00a0<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a pause. Then Cook adds, \u201cIt’s only the people in the media who are shocked. When I was touring with [Edwyn Collins] I was actually asking the fans, the kids coming to the gigs, what they would think of the Pistols, and every one of them loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but hello?\u201d Rotten butts. \u201cWhat do we know about the music press? We know that it works for record companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExactly,\u201d agrees Cook.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201dIn-out,\u201d Rotten mutters tiredly. \u201cThey want fads, trends, and they want them disposed of very quickly. They want a high turnover for their dollar. They don’t like anything that looks long-term\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless it’s safe,\u201d cuts in Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless it’s safe,\u201d sighs Rotten. \u201cYou can’t really think of a Kiss song, can you, for instance, that reminds you of a moment in your teen life that really, truly annoyed your parents. I think the only thing your parents ever thought about Kiss was, \u2018You’re a prat. Those boys are in lipstick. You’re stupid.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re reforming too,\u201d chuckles Cook. \u201cSo you got your choice: Kiss or us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u00a0kiss this,\u00a0<\/i>\u201d quotes Rotten.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what?\u201d Jones suddenly exclaims. \u201cI’m glad people are fuckin’ saying we’re sellin’ out. Good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cavalier attitude proves just how at home the Pistols are with large-scale disapproval. It was never limited to people with sensationalistic agendas (i.e., the tabloid press and politicians); other entertainers, from Rick Wakeman to Karen Carpenter, lodged complaints with A&M when the label briefly signed the Pistols. Even the Rolling Stones\u2014hardly musical virtuosi or establishment darlings in their own day\u2014criticized the Pistols’ musical ability.<\/p>\n
In fact, there was such a national effort in England to silence the Pistols that their labeling the motherland a \u201cfascist regime\u201d in \u201cGod Save the Queen\u201d seemed deadly accurate. The song reached No. 1 on the national charts in July 1977, just in time for the queen’s Silver Jubilee celebration and outselling Rod Stewart’s long-forgotten chart-topper \u201cI Don’t Want to Talk About It\u201d by a margin of two to one\u2014but sales figures were apparently juggled by the British Market Research Bureau to keep \u201cGod Save the Queen\u201d from being listed correctly. Nonetheless, word got out that the Pistols thought the queen \u201cain’t no human being\u201d and nationalists launched a quick counter offensive\u2014in the form of physical attacks on the band members. In Jon Savage’s wordy book\u00a0England’s Dreaming\u00a0<\/i>(\u201cExcuse me,\u201d Rotten interrupts, \u201cthat wasn’t a book. That was a Latin-to-English dictionary with some vague idea of content\u201d), band associate Al Clark is quoted as saying, \u201cNever have I known such national hatred focused on a pop group.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t have no mob to protect us,\u201d Rotten remembers, \u201cand still don’t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe was out there by ourselves,\u201d Cook adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrible! It really was,\u201d Jones mocks, sarcasm sharpening his voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it’s easy laughing about it now,\u201d Cook says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re a mate that had a car so it was all right for you,\u201d Rotten glares at Jones. \u201cBut I had to fucking take the subway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn’t stand it!\u201d Jones says effeminately.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, okay you bitch,\u201d Rotten chuckles. \u201cI’m going to have to sort him out. But I got razored up, I got scarred, I got stabbed. I’m left-handed and I got a stiletto blade put through here [his left hand, between the thumb and the first finger] and it came out there [his palm] and ruined those two tendons. I’ll never play guitar again, but I never did before,\u201d he smiles, \u201cbut that ain’t the point! The opportunity has been denied. And now I want some financial compensation,\u201d he says, affecting McLaren’s nasal brogue. \u201cNot from audiences, but from\u00a0these\u00a0<\/i>cunts!\u201d he howls, pointing at the rest of the band. \u201cThey think they’re getting paid! Ah ha ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne time these 20 teddy boys, they gang-banged me!\u201d Jones remembers, smirking. \u201cI said, \u2018Okay, the rest of ya now! More, more!’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSteve’s led an interesting life,\u201d Rotten says grimly.<\/p>\n
Culture’s initial attempts to spit out the Pistols have transformed, over time, to the opposite extreme. The topic of hundreds of scholarly papers in everything from\u00a0Time\u00a0<\/i>magazine to\u00a0Art Forum,\u00a0<\/i>the Pistols have been linked with intellectual movements from Surrealism to Situationism. Word-for-word deconstructions of Rotten’s lyrics have been published, and Greil Marcus’s 500-page tome\u00a0Lipstick Traces\u00a0<\/i>explored in multi-syllabic detail the relationship between the Pistols and the Frankfurt School .<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d Rotten says with a wink, \u201cin some weird way we’re connected with Michael Jackson: we’re all secret Situationists. But it’s such a secret that\u00a0nobody ever told us!\u201d\u00a0<\/i>he yells.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d never even heard of Situationism,\u201d Jones says shortly.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I like all that,\u201d Cook smiles. \u201cIt makes us sound interesting. If people want to intellectualize about what we did, fair enough, you know, fine. Let \u2018em carry on. People are fascinated with the subculture of the U.K. , really. Teddys, mods, rockers, punks and all that stuff\u2014that doesn’t go on as much in other countries. Which is weird, \u2018cause it’s such a working class thing, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s working class, she’s got lobsters up her ass,\u201d Rotten sings, punctuating the tune with a belch and a chuckle.<\/p>\n
Joe Strummer and the Clash may have had middle-class educations, but with the exception of Matlock, the Pistols came from Anglo society’s bottom rungs. Jones, barely literate and an admitted kleptomaniac in his late teens, stole most of the band’s equipment early on. (\u00a0England’s Dreaming\u00a0<\/i>states that microphones and a P.A. were lifted from a Bowie gig, two guitars from Rod Stewart’s mansion, a strobe tuner from a Roxy Music show, and so on.) Cook was from the same neighborhood. Rotten’s family were working-class Irish; one of his earliest jobs, according to his father, John C. Lydon, was to keep rats from climbing into a crane cab\u2014by slashing at them with a hook.<\/p>\n
No surprise that the band weren’t schooled Situationists. But more importantly, Rotten believes such social roots mark the single largest difference between them and the early \u201870s New York proto-punk scene, typified by people like Patti Smith and Richard Hell.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you know anything at all about the New York scene at that time,\u201d he says, \u201cit was this: they were a bunch of spoiled, upwardly mobile\u00a0brats\u00a0<\/i>. Their parents paid for their condos and apartments and\u00a0loft spaces,\u00a0<\/i>somebody bought their equipment\u2014these boys certainly didn’t have to go out and pilfer guitar leads like what we did just to plug the damn thing into a wall. Did none of that! And rubbished the whole thing by packaging it all in\u00a0poetry\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0art\u00a0<\/i>and being part of\u00a0that\u00a0<\/i>scene. What the\u00a0fuck is that?\u00a0<\/i>It’s so angst-ridden and \u2018ahhhh.’ But hello, when you’ve got no money\u00a0at all\u00a0<\/i>, and no prospects, and you put together a band like this, because quite frankly I think the only money Malcom ever put up was like 20 quid one time\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Matlock, silent for the bulk of the interview, finally pipes up. \u201cThe only difference was that these English guys had a little thing called\u00a0politics,\u00a0<\/i>you know,\u201d he snorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes!\u201d Rotten laughs heartily. \u201cThat’s exactly right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c America wants to make out like they started everything,\u201d Cook says. \u201cLike anything else. If you watch documentaries on the war, it’s how the Americans won the war. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
And current American punk fares no better in the Pistols’ ears.<\/p>\n
\u201cRancid!\u201d Rotten howls mockingly. \u201cI don’t mind what they’re doing, but the fact that they look like they’ve just waltzed out of a punk boutique. Even the bondage pants and the tight leather jackets\u2014they all look\u00a0brand fucking new.\u00a0<\/i>They don’t look like they’ve lived in anything. I’d like to see them on a day off\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a shame,\u201d Rotten continues. \u201cI don’t mind all the clothes and stuff, even though I think it’s silly and stupid\u2014in L.A. it’s damned difficult to walk around in a studded leather jacket and bondage pants. But where’s the content, boys and girlies? What’s really pissin’ you off? I’m so fed up, and grunge is the same. It just seems to be some bitching session against your parents living in areas like Pasadena . And that’s all well and fine, but don’t call that\u00a0punk.\u00a0<\/i>That ain’t it. Hello, there’s a big world out there. Try getting out of this little suburban daydream that you’re all right closeted into.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Green Day seem like just a living acting lesson or something to me,\u201d adds Cook, \u201cthey’re pulling their silly faces and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever,\u201d Rotten counters, \u201cI do think the singer, I can’t remember his name, but he has a sense of humor. He did some things on MTV recently that had me and Steve cracked up. We thought, \u2018Jesus, yeah. He’s okay, he’s\u00a0getting it.’\u00a0<\/i>Humor, right? Rather than vindictive dourness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big thing that every misses,\u201d says Cook, \u201cis that these bands start and people are instantly impressed because it’s trendy. When we started, everyone\u00a0hated\u00a0<\/i>us. There was nothing like us before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotten agrees. \u201cWe’ve given them their audience, we’ve given them their clubs, we’ve given them their deejays, we’ve given them their spots. Hello?\u00a0A bit of appreciation\u00a0<\/i>would be in order. Not that I expect it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they do, they do,\u201d jumps in Cook. \u201cWell, they name-drop us. There’s no denying that they’re influenced. What’s strange are these cover versions by heavy metal bands\u2014they can’t even play the songs and they don’t get it anyway. Megadeth, Motley Crue, they’re supposed to be great musicians but they can’t even play our songs!\u201d<\/p>\n
And there will be no fodder for bad future covers, either: Pistols have no plans to compose new material at the moment. However, a live CD from the upcoming tour is scheduled for late summer on Virgin Records. Ironically, some of the old problems are already cropping up: For whatever reason, the Pistols are having trouble finding opening acts (even Marilyn Manson balked at the prospect). Booking venues to play, especially in the U.S. , has also been a dilemma for the band. And one Greek promoter has asked Pistols management not to book the band anywhere in Greece, expecting \u201cproblems to the extent of riots.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the band members, the novelty of infamy has worn thin; whatever the industry and pundits think, the band just wants to get on with it. Frankly, given all the people it seems to be traumatizing, this tour may be the \u201cpunkest\u201d thing the Pistols have done yet.<\/p>\n
The final word, of course, belongs to Rotten.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you really want to understand punk,\u201d he says, \u201clook no further than the Sex Pistols. We’re working class, we’re all poor. That’s how we started out, and it’s how we’re probably going to end up. And in between, quite frankly,\u00a0anybody’s money\u00a0<\/i>\u201d \u2014he pauses here, staring hard\u00ad\u2014\u201c\u00a0is our money\u00a0<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hide Your Grandmothers, It’s the Sex Pistols! By John Pecorelli for\u00a0Alternative Press\u00a0magazine It’s just another typical Los Angeles day: sunny, 70 degrees, the Eagles’ \u201cDesperado\u201d playing quietly in a mini-mart next to a nondescript beach motel. Middle-aged bourgeoisie in colorful shorts enjoy a game of volleyball in the sand, sailboats wafting by on the water […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpecorelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}