1976
‘Your God has gone away’
"No Feelings," Sex Pistols
When he sang "Pretty Vacant," Johnny Rotten claimed the right not to work, and the right to deny all the values that went with it - perseverance, ambition, piety, frugality, honesty and hope. The past that God had invented work to pay for, the future that work was meant to build- there was none.
These were echoes of another recurrent situationist theme: the idea of the "vacation" as a sort of loop of alienation and domination, a symbol of the false promises of modern life, a notion that, as CLUB MED-A CHEAP HOLIDAY IN OTHER PEOPLE’S MISERY, would become grafitti in Paris in May 1968 and then turned up in the Pistols’ fourth single, "Holidays in the Sun," released in 1978.
The situationists were notorious for falling out with each other and many members were excluded over the years, including Ralph Rumney, an early casualty, writer Alexander Trocchi and, in 1967, the entire English Section.
The English formed King Mob, while in America, Situationists in New York banded together as the Motherfuckers. Within the ranks of King Mob were two art students: Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid.
During the May 1968 revolt in France, future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had been involved in setting up solidarity demonstrations in London while the early '70's saw McLaren on the Kings Rd flogging t- shirts decorated with the recycled slogans of May '68.
In 1974, McLaren and Reid helped to publish ex-situationist Chistopher Gray’s Leaving the 20th century, the first English language anthology of situationist writings. It included Jamie Reid’s cartoons and graphics to give the situationist message some more aesthetic appeal. He would later use this collage style to startling, iconic effect in the graphics for the Sex Pistols’ record covers.
A poster by the May '68 art student collective Atelier populaire showing a young woman covered in surgical gauze and a safety pin jamming her lips closed was appropriated for the cover of God Save the Queen: HRH with a safety pin through her lips.
By 1975, McLaren was with the defunct Situationiste Internationale looking to create his own situation, then along came a boy called Johnny...
from http://www.furious.com/perfect/situationism.html