Albatross

AFAIK, John Lydon thought it would be funny to put an atonal, 10-minute jam session with meaningless lyrics at the start of the second album in order to further annoy/alienate the people who were criticizing him because his new band didn't sound like the Sex Pistols.

That is the sound of disco dying.

Almost certainly alluding to Samuel Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'...

Dictionary.com has a definition of 'albatross': "a seemingly inescapable moral or emotional burden, as of guilt or responsibility." The easiest interpretation is that the singer is getting rid of the burden of the Sex Pistols, thought Lydon did that already with 'Theme'.

The "rear blinds" part was certainly misheard. It's also "I have seen you far too close". But to end my nit-picking...

Another possibility is that it's about some horrible incident on a ship. I believe that it is a seafaring tradition that to kill an albatross is sure to bring bad luck. Or is it any appearance of it... I can't recall.

It reminds me of a incident in which a ship was found with only two survivors after a terrible storm and several months. The two men left had lived by eating the others remains, and were discovered staring each other down from other sides of the deck...

Appropriate, I think, for the same fellow who penned "Poptones".

These lyrics are from the liner notes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner is about the poem where the albatross reference is from.

Scratch it all, I read an interview with Lydon in which he claims he improvised the lyrics pretty much on the spot, in a sort of trance, à la Damo Suzuki at a live Can performance. But perhaps that validates every answer here...

It's about the Sex Pistols and perhaps in effect, punk, which Lydon was very disillusioned with at the time. Getting rid of the unbearable albatross with slow motion "non music."

According to Mr Lydon: 'A song like “Albatross” is about the confusion of things. It’s about the [antiwar] riots outside the American Embassy [in London] in 1968. It’s really about nothing. The song really tries to capture that, the confusion of that moment. You can’t really sum up a riot in a verse-chorus format. It’s a slow, grinding, deliberate, purposeful examination'.

To start with, these lyrics are not complete. One of the lines left out of them is "kill the spirit of '68". What this line refers to is getting rid of Frankfurt School liberalism. 1968 was the year of the West's cultural revolution. In other words, this song is about getting rid of liberal Baby Boomer, hippie culture. This interpretation is in keeping with Lydon's well-known dislike for "drugged out rock and rollers".