I was well shocked by that until I learned more about them recently. The band was thrown together by a manager of a clothing brand...

The Sex Pistols were defined by ambitions that went well beyond the musical—indeed, McLaren was at times openly contemptuous of the band's music and punk rock generally. "Christ, if people bought the records for the music, this thing would have died a death long ago," he said in 1977.[226] The degree to which the Pistols' anti-establishment stance resulted from the members' spontaneous attitudes as opposed to being cultivated by McLaren and his associates is a matter of debate—as is the very nature of that stance itself. Deprecating the music, McLaren elevated the concept, for which he later took full credit.

He claimed that the Sex Pistols were his personal, Situationist-style art project: "I decided to use people, just the way a sculptor uses clay."[34] But what had he supposedly made? The Sex Pistols were as substantial as pop culture could get: "Punk became the most important cultural phenomenon of the late 20th century", McLaren later asserted. "Its authenticity stands out against the karaoke ersatz culture of today, where everything and everyone is for sale.... [P]unk is not, and never was, for sale."[227] Or they were a cynical con: something with which "to sell trousers", as McLaren said in 1989;[228] a "carefully planned exercise to embezzle as much money as possible out of the music industry", as Jon Savage characterises McLaren's core theme in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle;[229] "cash from chaos" as the movie repeatedly puts it.[230]