The Boy Looked At Johnny by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons

This feature on the The Boy Looked At Johnny by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons is written in the style of said authors.

The book by these two pretend punk NME music journalists, is unintentionally the funniest book about punk ever written. They described themselves as ‘star’ journalists on the back cover (whatever that means) though maybe they were looking in the mirror when they read the word.

Each responded separately to an NME advert for ‘hip young gunslingers’ in 1976 to cover the emerging punk scene and were taken on. Julie was a Bristolian 16 year old who wrote a eulogy to Patti Smith and her album Horses. Tony worked in a gin factory but had an allergy to gin. Both were those types of working class folk with chips on their shoulder ie they couldn’t wait to become middle-class, daily mail conservative crypto right wingers and enjoy what they had previously slagged off. One day Tony found a leather jacket backstage at a Ramones concert and that complete with his cvil servant haircut and ickle chubby cheeks meant he had his punk look sussed. Julie modelled herself on Spanish disco divas Baccara’s hair but cunningly punked herself up by applying a bit more kohl around her eyes and looking into the distance in photos to show she had some depth.

Young love – Picture Credit – Pennie Smith

Unfortunately for both, the NME lagged well behind Sounds and Melody Maker in discovering punk so Julie and Tony were late to the party, not that they had any musical knowledge whatsoever. If you look back their tips for the top were Sham 69 and Tom Robinson so make of that what you will!

Julie made a beeline for aging anarchist NME journalist Mick Farren and threw herself on him (her words from her autobiography) while his girlfriend was out. A disgruntled Tony, who had wanted to claim her for his prize himself recognising a similar self-absorbed needed to be noticed obsessive, ended up fighting a reluctant Farren while Burchill looked on. Parsons had to settle for sloppy seconds. Eventually they married (how passe) had a child and then divorced. Julie’s life after this was one long saga of relationships, a failed lesbian one, and more, cocaine abuse, court case litigation and taking such a right wing pro Israeli view on being hardline towards Palestine and its peoples that you’d struggle to distinguish Burchill from Boormann.

Tony on the other hand, having escaped the flat above the shop he was in and worked for all the right wing papers making statements to keep Oap’s, little Englanders and Mosely lovers happy and eventually mined his shitty life for some fiction books about his kid and one about Punk & the Roxy Club. He then disappeared up Nigel Farage’s arse and became a Brexit puppet and arguably his greatest accolade was being turned into a talking arse lampooned in Viz as Tony Parsehole. Fame at last!

Both droned on endlessly about swastikas and Siouxsie but themselves harbored dark desires and admiration for the Grantham Rheine madchen Thatcher and all she stood for

However, it was while at the NME that they discovered their USP which was to seize on any (in their view) deficiency or weakness in an artist (character/look ie make it personal) exaggerate it and then rip it to shreds. To do this meant they didn’t even need to listen to the music or go to their gigs. They could file their copy based on a person’s character. Truth for them, like Trump, was flexible. So Burchill would file a review on the MC5 Back In The USA praising it to the heavens but slag it in the book. Likewise, Parsons did the same with The Clash.

Right – blurb from the back of the book. Queue canned laughter!

In present-day times, this would be the equivalent of Facebook trolling/bullying and you can imagine that as a writer (influencer) on one of the three main music papers, their views got massive publicity. Think of Clarkson talking about Megan Markle then read Burchill’s comments reviewing Patti Smith’s Wave. No wonder JJ Burnel was driven to violence with journalists.

.. A lot of Patti’s problems stem from youth and looks being conspicuous in their absence. ..her declarations of intent have tended towards the mawkish…she really tries to be some jerks idea of a totally feminine woman, right down to the virgin white party dress…The only sleeve she was ever cute on was ‘Horses’ when she ..looked like the winner of the international “Dyke you’d like to take home contest”. Her attempts at femininity look like parodies, like drag without the padding. NME, 5/5/79

Being working class, and complete with shoulder chips, meant they despised the cocaine-trowelling rich rock start elite till they, well Julie at least, got some money and became….. a cocaine-trowelling nouveau riche hypocrite.

In the end, these two were the forerunners of people like the hideous Katie Hopkins and Piers Morgan building their public persona with regular outbursts of vindictive spite and those people who appeared on Love Island who managed to build a career-long afterward despite having no skill or talent.

In short Burchill and Parsons found it easy to destroy but missed the point of punk which was sometimes you’ve got to destroy to create. They, however, never created anything and to top it all the sad little love birds didn’t even know anything about music.

The Boy Looked At Johnny is the funniest book about punk ever written.

It’s no surprise some of the rock press thought the book didn’t ring true as they knew the couple. Tim Lott in Record Mirror 18.11.1978 nails the flaws but like all self publicists Lott’s indignation was column inches for the 2 chumps.



TalkPunk

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