On Punks, Hippies, and the Boy in the Blue Lamé Suit

 Joe, Johnny, and Jello in their pre-punk days

 

One of the defining characteristics of punks back in the day, was that they hated the complacency, passivity, and untrustworthiness of middle-class hippies and they differentiated themselves from peace-loving flower children by their hairstyles and clothes: no long hair or beards and no flared jeans or tie-dyed T-shirts with groovy psychedelic prints. 

Having a close-cropped barnet was just as much a sign of radical militancy for the punks as it had been for the rank-and-file Roundheads and very few of them had flowing long locks covering their ears. So it's always a little disconcerting to come across old photos of figures central to the punk revolution - including Rotten, Strummer, and Biafra - and see them looking like ... well, hippies!

 

No wonder Jamie Reid later advised us to never trust a punk either (that punks were, in fact, often just hippies in disguise).

 

 

II. 

 

One is also reminded, upon seeing these pictures, that, essentially, we have Malcolm to thank for concocting an anti-hippie aesthetic and philosophy - not Johnny, Joe, or Jello. It was McLaren's provocative and fetishistic take on fashion, his anarchic politics inspired by Situationism, and a penchant for 1950s rock 'n' roll - all brilliantly expressed in the slogan Sex, Style and Subversion - out of which the look of what became known as punk developed. 

 

Vivienne Westwood would later recall just how odd looking 20-year-old Malcolm was when she met him in the mid-1960s; with his very, very pale skin and his very, very short hair he looked so unlike his contemporaries. If he was, in many regards, a typical product of his era and cultural environment, McLaren was never a hippie and only ever had scorn for them. 

 

Thus it was that, in 1971, Malcolm bought a pair of blue-suede creepers, which, as Paul Gorman notes, had by this date long gone out of fashion; street style was now defined by "feather-cut hair, the ubiquitous flared loon pants, stack-heeled boots, platform shoes and velvet suits" [1]. 

 

For McLaren, the shoes: 

 

"'Made a statement about what everyone else was wearing and thinking. It was a symbolic act to put them on. Those blue shoes had a history that I cared about, a magical association that seemed authentic. They represented an age of revolt - of desperate romantic revolt [...]" [2]             

Later, he combined the shoes with a 1950s style blue lamé suit (made by Vivienne) and a matching ice-blue satin shirt: "'I decided it would be really cool to be like Elvis, to be a Teddy Boy in a kind of defiant anti-world and anti-fashion gesture [...]'" [3]

  

And that - boys and girls - is the spirit of punk; more heroic than hippie (and it comes quiffed or spiky-topped, rather than lanky long-haired or feather-cut). 

 

Malcolm the proto-punk (1972)

 

 

Notes

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 119. 

[2] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid.

[3] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid., p. 131.

 

 

For a sister post to this one entitled 'Never Mind the Spiky Tops' (28 Nov 2023), click here.  

Never Mind the Spiky Tops

All the curly young punks:

Michael Collins and Adam Ant (top row) 

Mick Jones and Me (bottom row)*

 

 

I. 

 

Short spiky hair - often dyed an unnatural shade à la Johnny Rotten - was one of the defining characteristics of punks back in the day. 

 

However, there were plenty of individuals central to the scene who, even in 1977, were proud of their curls and ringlets, including Michael Collins, for example, who was recruited by Vivienne Westwood to manage the shop at 430 King's Road.

 

One thinks also of Stuart Goddard, who abandoned his pub rock outfit Bazooka Joe after seeing the Sex Pistols, transformed his look and changed his name (to Adam Ant), but still maintained his dark curls even at his punkiest.

 

And talking of dark curly-haired punks ... let's not forget Mick Jones; he may have chopped his curls off in 1976 when he formed The Clash, but it wasn't long before his pre-punk (less militant more glam) self reasserted itself.  

 

 

II.

I'm sure there will be some readers by now asking: So what?

 

Well, for one thing, it's always good to be reminded that before it quickly became just another mass-produced fashion and media-endorsed stereotype - as well as a fixed set of values and prejudices - punk was a highly creative form self-stylisation. It was not about following trends, conforming to norms of behaviour, or caring what others thought about the way you looked. 

 

As The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle attempted to remind us: Anyone can be a Sex Pistol - even with curly hair, like me, and, of course, like Malcolm:

 

           

Photo credits: Michael Collins by Homer Sykes; Adam Ant by Ray Stevenson; Mick Jones by Sheila Rock; Malcolm McLaren by Joe Stevens. I don't remember who took the picture of me, but it's dated October 1977. 

 

 

For a follow up post to this one on punks, hippies, and the Boy in the Blue Lamé Suit, click here.

 

At the Tail End of German Idealism

Nico Metten: Libertarian

Nico Metten is a young German sound designer with a ponytail. He is also someone with interesting views on the question of immigration and national border controls. In a nutshell, he wants to encourage and massively extend the former as a good thing per se, whilst completely dissolving the latter as a matter of principle.

For Nico is a libertarian. He also openly admits to being an idealist which, in his case, means he is someone who believes that everyone is just like him; namely, an abstract labour unit. Or, at least, they should be. Otherwise he's fully prepared to subject them to the law, thereby equating radical difference or any form of otherness that can't be subsumed within a universal humanism, with criminality and terrorism.  

Nico doesn't conceive of those who care nothing for freedom - understood primarily as the freedom of the market place - or bourgeois individualism. That some men and women might value fulfilment over freedom and find such collectively as members of a people, is not something he even stops to consider. 

Besides, a global economy will put an end to such social primitivism in favour of the systematic anarchy and triumphant philistinism which he, Nico, favours, but which, as Nietzsche points out, allows someone only as much culture as it is in the interest of commerce that they should possess. If old ways of being persist, they may do so only as lifestyles; i.e. as commodities that afford men and women the chance to dress-up and indulge in colourful games of nostalgic make-believe, but not to opt-out of the New World Order. 

Of course, Nico is right to argue that many people have been granted human rights within the above and we should not simply dismiss this fact. But, on the other hand, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, human rights ultimately fail to address or compensate for the "meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies ... The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered."

And so, sorry Nico, but I'm unconvinced by your attempts to politically theorize; one respectfully suggests that you don't give up the day job. And maybe think about a haircut.

                                                                                  
Note: Lines quoted from Deleuze and Guattari are in What is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson, (Verso, 1996), pp. 107-08.