Why I Still Love My Cassette Pet

(EMI Records, 1980)

 

 

Consisting of seven original tracks written by Malcolm McLaren and the trio of Ants he'd persuaded to abandon Adam and form a new group under his management [1] - plus a joyous cover of the Bloom-Mercer classic, 'Fools Rush In' - Your Cassette Pet [2] is 20-minutes of pop perfection that sounds as brilliant and as bonkers now as it did back in the day.

 

Essentially, Your Cassette Pet is a mixtape manifesto setting out McLaren's idio-romantic vision for music and fashion in a post-punk world. Ideas (and fantasies) vocalised by 14-year-old Annabella Lwin, include: 

 

(i) underage sex and rape play (Louis Quatorze) -

(ii) societal breakdown and gold fetishism (Gold He Said) -

(iii) extraterrestrial birth and macrosomia (I Want My Baby On Mars / Giant Sized Baby Thing) -

(iv) suicide as an eroticised practice of joy (Sexy Eiffel Towers) -

(v) queer primitivism coupled to new technology (Uomo Sex Al Apache / Radio G-String).

 

There is nothing else quite like it, athough some of the songs on Kings of the Wild Frontier - released in the same month and year as Your Cassette Pet (Nov 1980) - arguably come close and contain some of the same inspired madness, and I have always admired Adam for not only learning from his mentor McLaren, but, making the latter's ideas very much his own.

 

It's disappointing, therefore, that Your Cassette Pet isn't more widely - and more fondly - remembered. 

 

The reaction of Vim Renault, for example, is typical: in a reflection on Punk Girl Diaries, she describes Your Cassette Pet as a "remarkable release", before then informing us that "with the hindsight of 2020 attitudes to child exploitation", it becomes obvious that McLaren wrote the "back-of-the-envelope sexualised lyrics" for sleazy and commercially frivolous reasons: 

 

"At the time, I thought it was bold and I admired Annabella Lwin. But they weren't her words - they were the words of a narcissistic old perv." [3]  

 

Whilst I'm pretty sure the last line would have made Malcolm laugh, it's disappointing (to say the least) that Ms Renault feels this way and has come over all Mary Whitehouse in her old age; from being the cause of moral outrage to one who, with hindsight, has become the voice of such. 

 

Perhaps it might help her to think more favourably of McLaren as a lyricist if she were to be informed that, far from being written in a hurried manner, several of the songs had a history pre-dating the formation of Bow Wow Wow, when Malcolm was drifting round Paris in the post-Pistols period and trying to find funding for a new film company that would produce movies combining pop and porn, by and for a young generation that he termed the sex gang children [4].

 

And perhaps it might help Ms Renault to understand the wider (socio-political) context that McLaren's thinking had grown out of in the late '60s and early '70s; a time when radical theorists, such as Michel Foucault, were convinced that even underage teens should be allowed (and encouraged) to express themselves sexually [5].

 

Although in his biography of McLaren, Paul Gorman repeatedly indicates his unease with (and distase for) such a countercultural conceit, he considers the matter in an insightful manner and what he writes is worth quoting here (at length and in closing), not least for Ms Renault's benefit:

 

"Unlike David Bowie, Johnny Thunders and other rock stars whose sexual exploits with such young groupies as Lori Maddox and Sable Starr are well documented, McLaren derived no sexual pleasure from, and was not interested in engaging in, sexual acts with underage teens. By nature he was more of a romantic than a libertine, though it is true that he had cultivated a prurient view of sexual matters, largely as a result of his strange upbringing. His promotion of liberating young desires sprang from radical political grounding; not only had the Situationists propagated the idea [...] but the European and American underground press of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which informed his worldview, had brimmed with such views [...]

      McLaren's point was that true power in popular, and in particular music, culture resided with youth, not preening performers in their twenties or self-indulgent, middle-aged music-biz hacks, and that the sexual and social potential of young people outstripped that of any of the rock stars of the era [...] McLaren constantly referred to record company executives as 'child molesters' in that they corrupted and stifled fans' desires with a forced diet of corporate gloop." [6]    

 

Notes

 

[1] Matthew Ashman (guitarist), Dave Barbarossa (drums) and Leigh Gorman (bass) - along with 13-year-old Annabella Lwin on vocals - were brought together as Bow Wow Wow by McLaren, who not only managed them, but styled them and provided song lyrics and ideas.   

 

[2] Bow Wow Wow, Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980), a debut mini-album available only on tape, (therefore making it ineligible for the UK albums chart): click here to play in full.

      Your Cassette Pet came in a flip-top box designed by Jamie Reid and was originally to be sold alongside a magazine, Chicken, containing song lyrics, band photographs, features on fashion, consumer technology, and pornography for the under-12s. Perhaps not surprisingly, EMI got cold feet and when Bow Wow Wow's next single - 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)' - failed to chart, the record company dropped them like a hot potato.

        

[3] Vim Renault, 'Bow Wow Wow - Your Cassette Pet' (7 Jan 2020) on punkgirldiaries.com: click here.

 

[4] 'Sexy Eiffel Towers', for example, was written by McLaren for a proposed musical about  three 15-year-old girls to be called The Adventures of Melody, Lyric & Tune. The script for this film eventually merged with that of another project, The Mile High Club, that will ring a bell with fans of Bow Wow Wow, as a song of that title appeared on their 1982 EP The Last of the Mohicans (RCA Records).  

      The phrase, 'sex gang children' - which Malcolm borrowed from William Burroughs - can be heard in the 'Mile High Club' track. Interestingly, Boy George - who briefly performed with Bow Wow Wow under the name Lieutenant Lush - considered using this as the name of his group before going with Culture Club.

 

[5] For Foucault and many other intellectuals in the 1970s, the suggestion that children - particularly over the age of twelve - were unable to consent to sexual relations, either with one another or with adults, was itself an unacceptable form of abuse, restricting their right to freedom and decision making via the use of contractual law introduced into the amorous realm. Children, he said, should be fully empowered to find pleasure in any way they liked. 

      I have written on this subject in a post published last year (9 Jan 2021) on TTA: click here. 

 

[6] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 437. 

      As Gorman goes on to note, McLaren's primary concern, as ever, was simply to provoke people and create a storm of moral outrage: "McLaren knew that banging on about teenage sex was an effective means of causing a stir." [438]

 

 

Chrysopoeia 3: No More Gas, Just Gold He Said - Gold on My Head!

Do you love Annabella? 

Gold is what she holds.

 

 

I. 

 

Having confronted the perceived greyness of English culture with nihilistic blackness during the punk period, McLaren and Westwood dramatically changed tactics (and shop design) during their pirate phase: now gold was the colour by which to challenge the three things they hated most: puritanism, provincialism, and poverty.  

 

Just to be clear: by the latter, we refer to a certain spiritual condition; to individuals bereft of ideas, imagination and a sense of adventure, rather than those without money for the gas meter; to individuals whose vision of a post-punk future involved either wearing raincoats and moaning about being on the dole, or adopting a gothic persona and pretending to be one of the undead.  

 

Contra this model of either bleak or morbid miserabilism, Malcolm and Vivienne offered a new romanticism that was all about sun, gold, and piracy ...

 

 

II. 

 

Thus it was that Seditionaries gave way to Worlds End and Malcolm's new group, Bow Wow Wow, was fronted not by a spiky-haired, pale-faced punk with green-teeth, but by an exotic-looking, 14-year-old girl called Annabella, who informed us that she didn't care about having no money, because she had gold in her hair. 

 

And, besides, thanks to TEK technology, sang Annabella, she could steal the songs she loved to listen to by illegally taping them off the radio: "No silver, no copper / Cassette on my shoulder / I'm richer than Richard III / I don't need to work" [1].

  

The idea that you can look rich and feel powerful - without having any money - is an interesting one, rooted in both the concept of a natural (or savage) nobility and dandyism. It suggests that what matters most is not what you have in your wallet, but how you walk, talk, and present yourself; a combination of style, swagger and attitude. 

 

And it's always important to be reminded that, for Malcolm, punk was about fighting for the right not to work - Cos work, is not the golden rule - and I happily endorse his suggestion that the unemployed be issued roller skates and paid in gold dust [2].  

 

 

Jordan wearing a golden outfit from the 

Worlds End Pirate Collection (A/W 1981)

Image reworked from a photo by Michael Costiff

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the Bow Wow Wow song 'Gold He Said', which originally featured on the 8-track mini-album Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980). Whilst Dave Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman and Matthew Ashman came up with the music, it was McLaren - a uniquely gifted lyricist - who came up with the words. Click here to play. 

[2] This is something that all those dreary left-leaning punks who earnestly believed themselves to be part of a drab socialist revolution never understood. I would have loved to have been paid in gold dust when I was signing on during the 1980s - far more exciting than having to cash a giro at the post office every fortnight. I'm a little surprised, therefore, that Paul Gorman dismisses Malcolm's proposal as preposterous (though maybe he's a fan of Absurdism and means that in a good way); see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 456. 

      Finally, note that the line quoted in italics is a lyric (again written by McLaren) from the second Bow Wow Wow single 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)', (EMI Records, 1981): click here to play the extended version. 

Young Flesh Required: Notes on Punk and Paedophilia

A banned promotional image for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

Designed by Jamie Reid (1979)

I. Cash from Chaos

Some of Jamie Reid's most provocative images produced during the Sex Pistols period came after the group itself fronted by singer Johnny Rotten had imploded and McLaren's management company, Glitterbest, had passed into the hands of the receivers.    

This includes, for example, the above artwork designed to promote the fabulously ambitious project known as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle; a project which set out to paradoxically mythologise and demythologise the Sex Pistols whilst also exposing the greed, cynicism and corruption at the heart of a music industry that ruthlessly exploits young talent as well as the loyalty of fans.  

Based on the design of the American Express credit card,* the Sex Pistols are identified as being the Artist (or Prostitute). Of course, anyone's name could be inserted here, providing they have what it takes to generate income for the Record Company (or Pimp), which controls every aspect of the Artist's career and uses the monies earned to increase their power and diversify their business (perhaps even starting their own airline).

The Swindle, ultimately, is nothing other than the operation of the free market itself; for what's more anarchic (and amoral) than the unrestricted flows of capital? We all get cash from chaos - but particularly those who have resolved all values into commercial value and found a way to co-opt even the most radical and revolutionary of forces.

The relationship between punk and capitalism is an interesting one: I'd like to think that the former is a genuinely decoded flow of desire and not ultimately identical with capitalism's own game of deterritorialization. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely convinced of this; too many punks - like too many hippies before them - went on to make too much money and establish successful (and seemingly interminable) careers.


II. Servicing the Fetishes of the Pop World  

Jamie Reid's punk Amex card isn't simply making a point about the exploitative nature of the music business from a financial perspective, however. It also hints - in fact, it explicitly suggests with its language of pimping and prostitution - that there's also a sleazy, sexually abusive game being played by those in positions of power (including rock stars, DJs, and record company executives).

At the time, I don't remember anyone being particularly concerned about this; there was the same jokey, nudge-nudge, wink-wink attitude to paedophilia as there was to rape. Either that, or people simply turned a blind eye to what was going on. It's precisely this aspect, however, that resonates most strongly with many people today in the era of the #MeToo movement and Time's Up campaign.

Thus, when watching The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle now, one of the more unpleasant and truly shocking scenes takes place at a brothel based at the Cambridge Rapist Hotel, where Steve Jones encounters a record boss awaiting trial on a child molesting charge. Whether this was intended to alert people to the perverse underbelly of the entertainment industry, or simply amuse viewers of the film, is debatable.

It's worth noting, however, that McLaren was not adverse to exploiting young flesh himself in order to create a stir; from his use of a picture of a naked boy posing with a cigarette on an early t-shirt design, to his attempts to embroil members of Bow Wow Wow - including their 14-year-old singer, Annabella Lwin - in a sex scandal, via a photographic recreation of Manet's Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. 

In the end, no one is innocent ...


Notes

Perhaps not surprisingly, American Express were not best pleased with Reid's artwork and claimed copyright infringement. An injunction was issued and the graphic immediately withdrawn by Virgin.

For those who are interested, the writer Paul Gorman provides more details of the smoking boy t-shirt designed by McLaren on his very wonderful blog devoted to all aspects of visual culture: click here. 

See: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, dir. Julien Temple (1980): click here to view the trailer.  

Why I Love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)

Édouard Manet: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) 
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264.5 cm

Manet's controversial picnic scene, known in English as Lunch on the Grass, might seem fairly innocuous to a modern viewer, despite the nudity of the central female figure and scantily-clad bather in the background - and despite the high regard in which it's held by art-loving members of the dogging and CMNF communities respectively.

But, back in the day, it sparked outrage in the art world, breaking with academic convention in style, in subject matter, and in the size of the canvas. It also provoked a huge public scandal; not only was there a woman in the nip besides two fully-clothed men, but they appeared to be fairly indifferent to the fact - more concerned with their own conversation and appearance, like a couple of queers. What's more, she, the brazen hussy, is gazing directly at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall with a coquettish smile that is as knowing as it is obscene.       

Surprisingly, for such a famous work, there's still a good deal we don't know for certain about the painting; including, for example, when Manet first began the canvas, how he originally got the idea and what sort of preparatory work he carried out. Having said that, we do know that the female nude was Victorine Meurent, a famous model and accomplished artist in her own right, whom Manet loved to paint (she it was who sat for another of his notorious canvases belonging to this period, Olympia).

And we do know that Manet was playfully reworking an Old Master's depiction of a Greek mythological scene. For the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's celebrated engraving The Judgement of Paris (c. 1515), after a drawing by Raphael; an artist revered by the conservative members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, so Manet's très moderne take on this Renaissance treasure was bound to ruffle feathers. In fact, some members were said to be apoplectic, though others found the canvas simply laughable.

Émile Zola, however, thought it to be Manet's greatest work. So too did many other 19th and 20th century artists, including Picasso, who was so obsessed by Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe that he completed 27 paintings and 140 drawings inspired by it.

Punk impresario Malcolm McLaren also liked it so much that, when managing Bow Wow Wow, he commissioned the photographer Andy Earl to recreate the picture with members of the band, including 14-year-old Annabella Lwin taking on the Victorine Meurent role - much to the outrage of her mother, who called in Scotland Yard and had the image removed from the sleeve of the group's 1981 album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! 

Photo of Bow Wow Wow by Andy Earl 

49 x 38.5 cm colour print (1983) 

Given to the National Portrait Gallery by Andy Earl (1999) 

It's amusing to think that, almost 120 years after being rejected by the Salon, Lunch on the Grass could still upset the elderly authorities and those D. H. Lawrence terms censor-morons; i.e. individuals who attempt to circumscribe the pornographic imagination.