Today, it’s as common as muck for people to make films about songs but at the time people would say to us, ‘How can you make a film about a song? Just one song?’ But of course all these recordings and anecdotes were flooding the office and we were saying ‘It’s surprisingly easy!’ Through his political connections, my friend had witnessed George Brown drunk at a diner, trying to recite the words to My Way and clearing the room with the attempt. I knew George Brown had an obsession with the song from a friend of mine who moved in Labour circles and worked for ASTMS, a left wing union of the time. Like Squires, George was famous for being forever eight sheets to the wind in public. Dorothy’s words were, ‘He should be crucified, he should have been crucified before he crucified that song.’ I was also aware that George Brown, who was the Foreign Minister in the Wilson administration in the 60s, had named his biography In My Way, he even quotes the song at the beginning of the book. The song was as much her signature tune as Sinatra’s. We played the Sex Pistols version to Dorothy Squires, the Welsh singer who features in the film, who hadn’t heard it before. I thought the song was unutterably naff with all that preposterous chewing it up and spitting it out. Sid’s attitude to it was probably pretty much the same as ours, which was to take it to pieces. On hearing Sid Vicious I thought there’s got to be something in this, it sounded absolutely fantastic and of course for those who were sympathetic to it you could hear that Sid’s version was a masterpiece. At the time I was also writing about rock music, the idea for a film came to me when I received an advance copy of the Sex Pistols performing their version of the song.
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