The Dickies Return With Controversial New Single “A Gary Glitter Getaway”

Punk rock veterans The Dickies remain one of the most reliably entertaining bands around, but despite their fun-loving reputation, they’re no stranger to controversy. Since their inception in 1977, the band’s lyrics and stage personas have always knocked up against mainstream norms and subverted social mores in a way that was both light-hearted and intellectually acute. Now, the band has courted some of their most furtive sideways glances of their career with the new single, A Gary Glitter Getaway, that is now available via Cleopatra Records.

The track is delightfully upbeat and catchy, biting a bit of The Go-Go’s‘ Vacation for a pop hook punch, while taking as its subject the UK’s most notorious, once most-revered, now most-despised, pop icon. Like all great punk rock songs, its ironic detachment hides a righteous moral anger pointed directly at the ruling class. Or, as Dickies vocalist Leonard Graves Phillips puts it, tongue firmly planted in cheek, “This is a song about getting away from it all, going to far away places, and meeting new people.”

The single’s B-side is a bit easier to digest. In fact, it continues The Dickies’ long-standing tradition of crafting punk rock cover versions of well-known pop and rock songs. This time it’s The Beatles’ I Want To Hold Your Hand that gets the fast and loud treatment. The Dickies have also announced that they will be releasing a brand new studio album later this year.

You can get yourself a A Gary Glitter Getaway on coloured vinyl here and digitally here