Every musician to reject The Queen’s honours
In theory, rock ‘n’ roll and the establishment should be mortal enemies. However, only a select few have been bold enough to stay true to the unwritten code they signed up for by turning down the Queen’s honours when she came calling.
“I went fucking berserk when I heard,” Keith Richards said in 2003 about his bandmate becoming Sir Mick Jagger. “I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment when they did their very best to throw us in jail and kill us at one time.”
The differing attitudes of the Glimmer Twins represent a microcosm of the musical communities opinion on accepting honours. After decades in the industry, those anti-establishment perspectives they once had when they were younger have dissipated, and many don’t have to think for a second before accepting a place on the New Year’s Honours list.
However, not everyone betrays the principles of rock ‘n’ roll, and many have turned down having an assortment of letters attached to their name by the Head of State. Below we look at those who refused an invite from Buckingham Palace and stuck two fingers up at the establishment.
Musicians who turned down honours from The Queen:
David Bowie
David Bowie was offered a CBE in 2000, and he had no interest in accepting their offer. Three years later, they came back with an offer of a knighthood, but Bowie’s position on the matter hadn’t changed, and he still was not bothered about stepping foot in Buckingham Palace for the ceremony.
Explaining the rejection during an interview with The Sun, Bowie said: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for. It’s not my place to make a judgment on Jagger, it’s his decision. But it’s just not for me”.
In the same interview, Bowie was questioned by the publication about whether he held an “anti-monarchy” viewpoint. The New York resident then cleverly deflected the question by saying: “I’d only have a serious answer to that if I was living in this country”.
George Harrison
In 1965, all members of The Beatles were given MBEs for their role in promoting British music on the global stage. At this time, Harrison was still a kid, and he was yet to fully form his opinion on the meaning of the honour.
In 2000, Harrison was offered an opportunity to upgrade his CBE to an OBE, but he blankly refused. There’s a lot of speculation surrounding why he said no to the honour, with some believing the guitarist was offended he wasn’t given a knighthood as Paul McCartney did in 1997, but it doesn’t seem to ring true.
Harrison’s opinion on the British Empire is distilled in this quote he gave to India Today around the time of his UNICEF benefit concert for Bangladesh in 1971: “Hey, I tell you Mrs Gandhi ought to run England. At last, India has some direction. There aren’t any beggars in the streets, there’s no chaos. I love India because the ancient traditions remain. It’s not mechanical and material like the West. The Gurus and masters are here and it’s possible to raise your God-consciousness.” After seeing the destruction caused by Britain first-hand, Harrison likely couldn’t bring himself to accept an OBE in good consciousness.
Paul Weller
Considering Paul Weller is the mastermind behind anti-establishment anthems like ‘Eton Rifles’, it would have been a peculiar sight to see him kneel for The Queen at Buckingham Palace. He’s spoken out against having a Royal Family on multiple occasions, but despite all of the above, they still offered him a CBE in the New Year Honours list in 2007.
In a statement, Weller’s publicist explained: “Paul was surprised and flattered, but it wasn’t really for him.” The following year, during his 22 Dreams album promotion, Weller explained why an honour wasn’t appealing to him to the BBC. “I’m not really into it. It’s not my sort of thing. I don’t like the Royal Family, I don’t like the establishment, I don’t like the civil service,” the former Jam frontman said.
Nitin Sawhney
Composer Nitin Sawhney has worked with everybody from Paul McCartney to Nelson Mandela throughout his accomplished career and was awarded the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement in 2017. A decade earlier, Sawhney was offered an OBE but turned it down because of the links to Britain’s colonial past.
He told the New Statesman in 2011: “I wouldn’t like anything with the word ’empire’ after my name. One of my heroes, [the Bengali polymath] Rabindranath Tagore, gave back his knighthood to the British after the Amritsar Massacre. I felt very strongly about what had happened in Iraq, and I thought it would be hypocritical to take any award that said ’empire’ in the wake of this country invading another country and killing women and children. I don’t want to be part of that world”.
Adding: “Having said that, I didn’t know who put me up for it. I was very grateful to whoever did, so I didn’t make a big deal of it at the time. I just said, ‘No thank you.'”
Despite his previous comments, Sawhney accepted a CBE in 2019 in tribute to his late father, who was upset his son had turned down an honour.
John Lydon
It seems ridiculous, considering John Lydon has built his career off The Sex Pistols’ anti-monarchy anthem, ‘God Save The Queen’, that the Queen offered him an honour. However, if you take Lydon’s word for it, that was reportedly the case.
He explained to NPR in 2015: “I’ve heard the rumours. Oh, they’re trying to give me an O.B.E. or an M.B.E. or whatever that is. Nope, not interested… You wouldn’t say that [I’m a national treasure] if you saw the state of my underpants. I tell you. Let’s be honest.”
Despite his claims about being offered a place on the New Year’s Honours list, I struggle to believe there’s much validity to it.
Brian Eno
In 2007, the same year as Sawhney and Weller, Brian Eno rejected the opportunity to become a CBE. Although he did not explain why he refused the prestigious honour, an interview with The Guardian in 2017 describes his position on the monarchy.
He explained: “Almost none of us now would think that hierarchic model of social organisation, the pyramid, is a good way to arrange things. … If you transpose that argument into social terms, it’s the argument between the top down and bottom up. It is possible to have a society that doesn’t have preexisting rules and structures. And you can use the social structures of bands, theater groups, dance groups, all the things we now call culture. You can say, ‘Well, it works here. Why shouldn’t it work elsewhere?’”
Skepta
In 2017, pioneering Mercury Prize-winning rapper, Skepta, revealed he turned down an MBE in the lyrics to his track, ‘Hypocrisy’. In the song’s second verse, he says: “Just came back from the Ivors, And look at what we collected, The MBE got rejected, I’m not trying to be accepted.”
As somebody who has defied the establishment throughout his career and lived through a time when grime concerts were regularly shut down by the police, becoming the face of the establishment was not of interest to Skepta. Furthermore, as somebody of proud Nigerian heritage, having the word ’empire’ attached to his name was also undoubtedly a deciding factor in turning down the honour.
John Pandit
John Pandit is a founding member of the Asian Dub Foundation, an outfit that have always worn politics on their sleeve. In 2002, Pandit was offered an MBE for “services to the music industry”, which didn’t sit right with him because he doesn’t believe the honours system should exist.
He told NME in 2002: “I personally don’t think it’s appropriate. I’ve never supported the honours system. If you want to acknowledge projects like CM (Community Music Ltd), the work that these organisations do, then fund them. There’s no point in giving an individual (an accolade). To bring people into the establishment won’t actually help the organisations.”
John Lennon
Along with the rest of The Beatles, John Lennon was awarded an MBE in 1965. However, four years later, Lennon reassessed his feelings toward the honour system and explained in an open letter why he no longer wanted to be associated with being connected to the empire. Similarly to his bandmate George Harrison, Lennon’s stance changed as he grew older as his politics developed.
He explained: “I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts”.