Jamie Reid had a premonition of punk years before it hit. His 1972 painting Monster on a Nice Roof portrays a giant green beast perched on the roof of a suburban home as broiling storm clouds gather above: it seems in retrospect to foretell the monster that was punk.
What exactly happened to Britain in 1977 – when Reid’s cover for the Sex Pistols’ single God Save the Queen covered Elizabeth II’s eyes with the title in cut out lettering and her mouth with the band’s name – has been amply picked over by cultural theorists and pop historians. It has been seen as anything from a raw blast of working-class honesty (the interpretation favoured by John Lydon) to an apocalyptic consummation of the most radical ideas of the 20th-century avant garde.
