The slogan was used by society and by some punks themselves as an expression of pessimism and despair, and was seen as a self-destructive lifestyle in the consumption of alcohol and other drugs (“Live fast, die young”). In reality, however, the slogan was meant as a rejection of the contemporary elite , embodied in Great Britain by the Queen as an aristocratic relic of a bygone era, who was nevertheless held in great respect, particularly by conservatives. One line in the chorus of God Save the Queen reads :There’s no future for you !
John Lydon , co-author of God Save the Queen and known under the pseudonym Johnny Rotten as the singer of the Sex Pistols, explained in an interview how he wanted the statement No Future to be understood: “That line ‘no future’ is prophetic: if you don’t take your future into your own hands, you won’t have one – it’s as simple as that.” [2] In his 1994 autobiography No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, Lydon also emphasizes: “Apart from Sid [ Vicious ], none of the Pistols were self-destructive – quite the opposite. We intended to destroy the system, but certainly not ourselves.” [3]
Music journalist Greil Marcus commented on the slogan in his book Lipstick Traces , an analysis of twentieth-century cultural avant-gardes , saying: “Of course Johnny Rotten could not predict the future; he could only insist that it was contained in the past. That meant ‘no-future’.” [4]
Others understood the Sex Pistols’ slogan as an exclusively ironic formula. Moritz Reichelt , painter and member of the Neue Deutsche Welle band Der Plan as “Moritz R®” , commented on this in an interview: “Punk was initially the finest irony. “No Future” – for me, these were ironic statements. I never believed in them. I had a very positive attitude towards the future. And when I said “No Fun” or “I’m so bored”, it was just to express how I felt. And not with a serious statement, but with ironic over-affirmation. That was the trick of the time.” [5]
But the slogan No Future was also understood as a declaration of war on an official belief in technological progress and on a political optimism of the 1980s that many young people did not want to share , among other things because of the constant threat of a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War .
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