On the Three Punk Graces: Vivienne, Jordan, and Soo Catwoman

The Three Punk Graces: Soo, Jordan & Vivienne 

(SA/2025)

 

 

I.

 

The ancient Greeks may have famously had their Charites, but punk mythology has given us our very own version of the three Graces ...

 

Vivienne, Jordan, and Soo Catwoman may not have personified Classical notions of charm, beauty, and elegance, but they did embody the McLarenesque virtues of sex, style, and subversion; not so much the daughters of Zeus, as the offspring of Kháos (i.e., born of  a reality outside the known, familiar, and reliable world in which most people choose to make their home). 

 

 

II. 

 

Jordan, or Pamela Rooke as many commentators now insist on calling her (presumably in an attempt to unveil what they think of as the real human being beneath the beehive and facepaint and intimidating sexual persona) [1], was always more than just a superstar sales assistant; she was effectively the gatekeeper controlling access to 430 Kings Road, the sanctum sanctorum of punk, ensuring that the clothes were only worn by those who deserved to wear them [2].  

 

Everybody's favourite bleached platinum-blonde was the one who embodied the ethos and aesthetic of SEX so perfectly that we might legitimately call her the first Sex Pistol. And so it was only right that Jordan was the one to introduce the band on their first TV appearance in August 1976, attempting to inject a little further chaos into the proceedings by dancing and rearranging the furniture at the side of the stage [3]. 

 

Crucially, not only was Jordan willing to transform herself into a walking work of art and wear McLaren and Westwood's designs no matter how outrageous, but, when required to do so, she was also prepared to flash the flesh and get her tits out for the cause; stripped on stage by Johnny Rotten, for example [4], or posing with Vivienne and other members of the SEX fraternity for a notorious series of photos in the shop taken by David Dagley [5]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Although she wasn't a member of the Bromley Contingent, Sue Lucas - better known as Soo Catwoman - was a crucial (and much photographed) figure on London's early punk scene and a confidente of the Sex Pistols, at one time sharing a flat with Sid Vicious.  

 

Her distinctive feline image was so powerful that she was even chosen to feature on the front cover of the first (and only) edition of the official Sex Pistols' fanzine, Anarchy in the U. K. [6] and she was widely acknowledged - even by Rotten - as being one of the true creators of punk style.     

 

It goes without saying that I will always have affection for Miss Lucas - despite Bertie Marshall's less than flattering portrait of her [7]. But I can't say I'm impressed with her belated attempt to reclaim, protect, and market her own extraordinary look, in the naive belief - common amongst many punks - that authenticity is of absolute importance and that style is something that cannot (and should not) be copied [8]. 

 

IV. 

 

Finally, we come to the queen bee herself: Vivienne Westwood ... 

 

If, as argued here, Jordan was the one who put the sex in the Sex Pistols - and Soo was the Sex Pistols' devotee who demonstrated that theirs was first and foremost a revolt into style - then Vivienne, in collaboration with her partner Malcolm McLaren, was the woman who not only politicised sex and weaponised style with her fabulous clothes, but encouraged an entire generation to think it reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

If, in her later years, Westwood became - like so many of the punk generation - increasingly irritating, it remains the case that she was an astonishing and massively influential figure and, as with Jordan and Soo Catwoman, I will always think of her with a certain fondness and admiration. 

 

In fact, despite certain competing loyalties, I feel increasingly generous toward Westwood in the years between 1971 and 1984 (i.e., the years stretching from Let It Rock to Worlds End when she was involved - in one way or another and for better or for worse - with McLaren).  

 

I would even go so far as to say that no one - not Jordan or Johnny Rotten, Soo Catwoman or Steve Jones - ever looked as magnificent as Westwood in her own designs and no one was as messianic about punk at the time as Vivienne, as this lovely photograph taken outside Seditionaries in the summer of 1977 by Elisa Leonelli illustrates:   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It might be noted that Jordan chose the unisex autonym when aged 14, long before punk, so it was more than merely a nickname.   

 

[2] As she told one interviewer in 2016: 

      "Some people would come in the shop and just want to grab something because they had money and I would say [...] 'You can’t buy that. You shouldn't buy that, it's not for you'. [...] I wasn't prepared to sell things that looked awful on people just because they had the money to buy it. It would have been bastardising something beautiful just for the money." 

      McLaren and Westwood endorsed this policy of only selling things to those who could justify their wanting to purchase a piece of clothing (i.e., individuals who had the right attitude and shared their ideological perspective). 

      Following Jordan's death, the interview was reproduced in Dazed magazine (22 April 2022): click here.

 

[3] I'm referring of course to the band's brutally intense performance of 'Anarchy in the U. K.' on So It Goes, presented by Tony Wilson (Granada Television, 28 August 1976); one of the great moments in televised rock 'n' roll history, watched by an amused Peter Cook and an outraged Clive James. 

      Jordan, who has been asked by the show's producers to cover up the swastika armband on her Anarchy shirt, announces the Sex Pistols by declaring them to be "if possible, even better than the lovely Joni Mitchell": click here to watch the entire episode on YouTube. Jordan appears (briefly) at 1:09-1:14. And the band are introduced by Wilson beginning 21:14 ... Bakunin would've loved it.       

  

[4] The gig I'm referring to when Jordan graced the stage with the Sex Pistols and ended up topless took place at Andrew Logan's Studio, on 14 February, 1976.  

 

[5] The photos by Dagley were taken to illustrate an interview Westwood gave to Len Richmond for the adult magazine Forum, in which she discussed the kinky sexual politics she and Malcolm were promoting (involving bondage and rubber wear). As well as Jordan and Westwood, Steve Jones, Danielle Lewis, Alan Jones, and Chrissie Hynde, also pose provocatively for the pictures. They can be viewed on Shutterstock: click here.

 

[6] The 12 page fanzine, designed by Jamie Reid in collaboration with Sophie Richmond, Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, and photographer Ray Stevenson, was intended to be sold on the 'Anarchy' tour in December 1976.  

 

[7] See p. 68 of Marshall's memoir - Berlin Bromley (SAF Publishing Ltd., 2007) - where he describes Lucas as a wannabe member of the Bromely Contingent who not only slept with everyone's boyfriend, but essentially just barged her way on to the scene; "she thought she could replace Jordan but didn't have the charisma or the originality, she was in the right place at the right time with that one look".  

 

[8] I discuss this topic at greater length in the post 'Of Clowns and Catwomen' (8 December 2016): click here.  

 

Bonus 1: An interview with Jordan by Miranda Sawyer for an episode of The Culture Show entitled 'Girls will be Girls', (BBC2, 2014): click here.  

 

Bonus 2: Soo Catwoman singing 'Backstabbers' (Spit Records, 2010); her version of the O'Jays 1972 hit: click here.

 

Bonus 3: Finally, here's an amusing piece of film from the BBC archive showing a bemused Derek Nimmo getting a punk makeover courtesy of Vivienne Westwood, while Jordan and members of the Sex Pistols watch on. The clip is from Just A Nimmo, originally broadcast 24 March, 1977: click here.  

 

 

For a sister post to this one on three more punk graces - Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene, and Helen of Troy - please click here. 

 

  

What's in a Word: Punk

 'The cult is called punk; the music punk rock ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In a pre-Grundy television interview, Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is asked by Maggie Norden:

 

"What about the word 'punk' - it means worthless, nasty - are you happy with this word?"

 

A crucial question to which he replies: 

 

"No, the press gave us it. It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk." [1]

 

It's a somewhat surprising response which every idiot who proclaims that they'll be a punk until they die might care to consider ...

 

 

II.  

 

When Rotten refers to the press, he was more than likely thinking of posho freelance journalist and photographer Caroline Coon, who, having risen to prominence as part of the British Underground scene in the 1960s, attached herself to the new youth movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols in the mid-70s [2].

For it was Coon, writing for the influential music paper Melody Maker, who famously described this anarchic subculture held together with safety pins and bondage straps as punk - a name by which, for better or for worse, it has been known ever since (despite Rotten's disavowing of the term) [3].

 

Personally, I always think it a pity when something as beautifully fluid, ambiguous, and messed up as the scene that grew out of at 430 King's Road is identified and codified; to name is to know and to know is to kill. Calling the Sex Pistols a punk band was to suggest they were not something radically new or different; that they could, in fact, be compared with other groups and to prevailing rock trends.

 

That's undoubtedly true of the Clash - the band with whom Coon became most closely associated - but it's absolutely not true of the Sex Pistols as conceived by McLaren and Westwood. And not true either of Alan Jones, Jordan, and all those others who either worked at or hung around 430, King's Road. 

 

Assuming that a collective term of reference is at least provisionally needed, what should we call this assemblage of individuals ?   

 

Perhaps the best answer to this question was supplied by cultural critic Peter York, who, in October '76, referred to the "Sex shop people" and characterised them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

That, I think, is spot on: and very much in line with how I think of the Sex Pistols and those closely associated with them - as more funny peculiar than punk; i.e., as unusual, strange, abnormal, deviant, perverse, extraordinary, singular, exceptional, outlandish ... 

 

The photo below perfectly captures just how queer things were before being named and tamed by the media and the music business and before an army of identikit punks emerged.         

 

The Sex shop people: (L-R) Steve Jones, Danielle, Alan Jones, 

Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, and Vivienne Westwood 

Photo by David Dagley (Forum, June 1976)

 

Notes

 

[1] The full six minute interview with McLaren and Rotten - including a pre-recorded performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' - was on the tea-time current affairs show Nationwide (BBC1 12 Nov 1976). It can be found in the BBC Archive on Facebook: click here. A shorter version - without the band's performance - can also be found on YouTube: click here.   

 

[2] Acting on the recommendation of Alan Jones, then working as an assistant alongside Jordan at McLaren and Westwood's shop on the King's Road, Coon attended an early Sex Pistols gig and, like many others, she was captivated by what she saw happening both on and off stage and immediately began to document this new scene.  

 

[3] See Coon's Melody Maker article entitled 'Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System' (7 August 1976).       

      Although the word punk had already been used fairly widely for several years in connection to rock music in the US - and, indeed, has a much longer and more complex history than that: click here - it was Coon's piece that played a crucial role in introducing a slightly revised version of the term to a British audience and helping to identify a novel (but not radically new) genre of music.

      Coon obviously had a gift for this kind of thing as, interestingly, she was also the person who named the hardcore group of friends who followed the Sex Pistols as the 'Bromley Contingent'.

 

[4] Peter York, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. York was writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).