Michael Moorcock | The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, promotional leaflet, 1980

Michael Moorcock

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. London: Virgin, 1980

(570 x 360mm.), 24 pages, tabloid newspaper format, folded, some repairs

‘The novel you just didn’t expect! The outlandish, zany, intriguing, newspaper of the book of the novel of the film of the record of the Sex Pistols’.

The leaflet by renowned genre novelist (and anarchist) Michael Moorcock, proclaims the ten lessons outlined within the film with photos and text. By using Pearce Marchbank as designer for this publication, Virgin were trying to approximate the look pioneered by Jamie Reid who had ceased working on Pistols projects in 1979. Marchbank had earlier been art director for the London Rolling Stone, Friends and Time Out at the time of its launch, as well as having been editor for Oz.