Story of the song: Open Up by Leftfield

Leftfield, the percussionists Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, peeled house music apart and mashed in a little dub, techno, reggae and hip-hop to create what was later termed “progressive house”. Their debut album, Leftism, was hailed on its release in 1995 as a Dark Side of the Moon for the dance generation: a record that sounded as good in the drawing room as it did on the dancefloor. “Open Up”, the 1993 single and a pivotal track on Leftism, is now also on the recent retrospective, A Final Cut. It’s the heartbeat of mid-1990s British dance music: a wobbleboard of rhythm, in which throb echoes of 1980s electro and post-punk experimentation.

John Lydon once remarked, with his characteristic disdain, that dance music was “regurgitation”, “Seventies disco recycled”, and “musical McDonald’s”. But Leftfield and Lydon had a mutual friend in John Gray, a Public Image Ltd backroom boy. With Lydon’s comments in mind, via Gray the duo invited the former Sex Pistol to wail a troubled vocal line over their hectic rhythm. “I love taking people with nothing to do with dance music and putting them in a different environment,” Barnes said at the time.

Lydon’s vocals were recorded in May 1993, at Leftfield’s Rollover Studios in London. “Open up/Make room for me,” Lydon brays, demanding a centre-stage role. Once there, he directs a withering diatribe at Tinseltown. As “Open Up” entered the charts, with its unremitting chorusline, “Burn, Hollywood, burn!”, forest fires raged in southern California. MTV dropped the video like a hot potato. “Who are they to be purveyors of good taste?” was Lydon’s riposte.