Double Exposure (A Tale of Two Pictures)

D. H. Lawrence Boccaccio Story (1926) 

McLaren and Westwood Two Cowboys (1975)

 

Oh what a pity, oh! don't you agree 

that figs aren't found in the land of the free! [1]

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of the aspects of his work that you might discuss in order to lend credence to such a thesis is his painting ...

 

Take, for example, the humorous canvas Boccaccio Story (1926), which depicts the handsome young peasant Masetto [2] asleep - or possibly feigning sleep - beneath a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected. 

 

It was clearly intended to amuse - but also to provoke. For as Lawrence confided to a friend at the time, he deliberately inserted a phallus in each one of his pictures somewhere: "And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality." [3] 

 

This is very much what we might now characretise as a punk attitude and it's not surprising that Boccaccio Story - along with a dozen other pictures - was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929 [4].  

 

 

II. 

Forty-six years later, another police raid took place at a small boutique called Sex on the King's Road, Chelsea, owned by Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood ...

 

This time, it wasn't an oil on canvas that the virgin pure policemen came to grab, but T-shirts featuring a print of two semi-naked cowboys "facing each other in side profile [...] one wearing a denim jacket, the other a leather waistcoat" [5]. 

 

The cowboy on the right is shown rather tenderly adjusting the other's neckerchief. It's not this detail, however, which initially catches one's eye. Rather, it's the fact that their "semi-flaccid penises, prominently on display, are close to touching" [6]. 

 

For McLaren, this image - appropriated from the world of gay male erotica - not only possessed the capacity to shock and outrage public opinion, the cowboys also encapsulated the frustration and boredom he was feeling at this time: "'It was as though they were waiting for something to happen, just like everyone I knew in London.'" [7]

 

The shirt went on sale at Sex in the summer of 1975 and Alan Jones - who worked at the shop - was perhaps the first to buy it; he was certainly the person who became best associated with the shirt after being taken into custody by two burly policemen for wearing it whilst walking round Soho and charged with 'displaying an obscene print in a public space'. 

 

He was then released, but ordered to appear at Vine Street Magistrates' Court a few weeks later.  Naturally, the case attracted attention from the press. It also resulted, as mentioned, in a police raid on 430 King's Road: 

 

"The remaining stock  of eighteen Cowboys T-shirts were seized, and McLaren and Westwood's arrest on indecency charges escalated the affair into a free-speech cause célèbre when Labour MP Colin Phipps called on Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to review the outmoded law." [8]   

 

Despite mounting a spirited defence - one that called upon expert witnesses to attest to the artistic merit of the shirt design - Jones, McLaren, and Westwood were all found guilty and handed down fairly large fines [9].

 

 

III. 

 

McLaren may have hoped that this (somewhat farcical) case "would continue the process of 'decensorship' of British life that had begun with the 1960 victory to publish D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover" [10], but, it never quite became the national scandal that he wished for. 

 

It did, however, increase sales at Sex. 

 

And today, five decades later, a Cowboys T-shirt can be found in the Metropolitan Musem of Art - click here - or bought at auction at Bonham's for a substantial sum of money; including this one originally owned and worn by Sid Vicious and autographed on the back by Johnny Rotten (a snip at £17,850). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Innocent England', Nettles (Faber & Faber, 1930).  

[2] Masetto is a character in Boccaccio's Decameron, a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). 

      Its overtly sexual and anti-clerical elements did not go down well with the Church, but the work, first translated into English in 1620, has remained hugely popular and influential. It is available online as a Project Gutenberg e-book: click here. The story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence letter to Earl Brewster (27 Feb 1927) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 648. 

 

[4] What is surprising, however, as I indicated in an earlier post discussing Lawrence's Boccaccio Story - click here - is that Lawrence scholars, including Keith Sagar, should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of his paintings. 

      It is surprising also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when thirteen of his pictures were removed by the police from the Warren Street Gallery, branded as obscene, and threatened with destruction by the authorities (they were saved from the flames and returned to Lawrence only after it was agreed with the judge at Bow Street Magistrates court that the paintings would never be exhibited in England again).   

 

[5] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 265. 

      As Gorman informs readers, the image of the two cowboys was originally produced as a charcoal and ink drawing by the American artist Jim French, in 1969. McLaren had come across the picture reproduced in the magazine Manpower! that he had purchased at a bookshop located in New York's gay quarter in the spring of 1975.  

[6] Ibid. 

[7] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 266. 

      This explains the addition of the text McLaren added beneath the figures to the effect that there's nowhere to go and nothing to do; that everything was played out.

     

[8] Ibid., p. 269. 

  

[9] Gorman reminds us that, according to Alan Jones, "McLaren and Westwood renged on their offer to reimburse him for his own £30 fine". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 271.

 

[10] Ibid., p. 270. 

 

Where Every White Face ... Remembering That Time When the Clash Went on Their Very Own Dreadlock Holiday

 

They got the sun and they got the palm trees ... 

I'd stay and be a tourist, but I can't take the gun play

 

I. 

 

As we all know, the Clash liked to pose as working-class heroes and rebel rockers, even though lead singer, Joe Strummer, was the son of a British diplomat (Ronald Ralph Mellor, MBE) and attended public school where his fees were paid for by the UK government, thanks to his father's job.

 

In other words, Strummer was a privately-educated middle class boy who went through his folk-loving and pub-rocking phases, before encountering the Sex Pistols in April 1976 and deciding to cut his hair, put on a pair of bondage trousers, and reinvent himself as a punk outlaw. 

 

Equally irksome, is the fact that the Clash also liked to wear musical black face from time to time and experiment with reggae, producing a kind of dub-inflected rock that is more Notting Hill than Kingston Jamaica; a pale imitation of the real thing, although, to be honest, I don't care too much about issues surrounding authenticity and cultural apropriation.

 

Amusingly, however, Strummer was given something of a rude (boy) awakening when he and fellow Clash City Rocker Mick Jones went on a songwriting trip to Jamaica, at the end of 1977, and it turned into their very own dreadlock holiday ...  

 

 

II.   

 

My knowledge of the long-haired English rock band 10cc is very limited [1]. 

 

However, I do remember being invited to load up with rubber bullets by them in 1973 [2] and I also remember their recounting the tale of someone having a series of unfortunate experiences whilst on a Caribbean vacation later in that decade [3].   

 

Whilst the song's narrative is essentially a lyrical fiction, it was, apparently, based on real events experienced by one of the founding members of 10cc, Eric Stewart, during a visit to Barbados, and by the band's bassist and singer Graham Gouldman, when he went to Jamaica. 

 

The former, for example, recalled seeing a white tourist trying to look cool and generally acting like a dick, go up to a group of Afro-Caribbeans who rebuked him in no uncertain terms and told him that he needed to show some respect (a concept that is central to the code of informal rules that govern behavior and interpersonal interactions amongst certain groups).    

 

In the song, having been mugged for a silver chain - given to him by his mother - said tourist retreats to the relative safety of his hotel to drown his sorrows with a piña colada by the pool, only to be approached by a good-looking young woman offering to supply him with some weed. 

Thus the track and accompanying video - whilst reinforcing several stereotypes - does at least touch upon the politics of race, tourism, and cultural appropriation (even if it's in a manner that might make many people uncomfortable today).

 

 

III. 

 

Returning to the Clash ... 

 

The opening track to their second studio album, Give 'Em Enough Rope (1978), is entitled 'Safe European Home' and it provides us with an honest admission by Messrs. Strummer and Jones that it's one thing being a white man in Hammersmith Palais for an all-night reggae gig [4], and another thing entirely cruising round Kingston after dark; a place where, according to the song, "every white face is an invitation to robbery" [5].  

 

Both men were, just like the tourist on a dreadlock holiday, out of their depth and out of their comfort zone, and so mightly relieved to get back to their hotel [6] alive - and even happier when they were finally able to return home to Blighty.   

 

Why they decided to go to Jamaica in the first place - leaving bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon behind (much to the former's anger and irritation, as he was the genuine reggae devotee in the band) - I don't know. Probably it was one of Bernie's bright ideas; hoping they'd find inspiration in a land riven with political violence and criminal gang activity.    

Which perhaps they did: though it came also with a certain disillusionment. For ultimately there's nothing more glamorous, more radical, or more authentic about life under the Carribean sun - and certainly not when you're living in slums or shanty towns with poor quality housing and almost zero social infrastructure. 

 

One wonders why Joe never asked himself why it was that large-scale migration from Jamaica to the UK (as well as to the US and Canada) occurred in the 1950s, '60s and '70s; and why most of these people (and their descendants) really didn't want to return.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be amused to discover that I once had a job interview with Godley and Creme, in the mid-1980s, long after they had left 10cc and established themselves as successful pop video directors. The interview was held at the Cadogan hotel. I remember they offered me a spliff, to which I responded by asking in my best Rotten voice: Do I look like a hippie to you? Needless to say, I wasn't offered the job.  

[2] 'Rubber Bullets' was a number one single released from the band's eponymous debut album in 1973. Whilst not particularly relevant to this post, readers who want to give it a listen and see the band perform it on Top of the Pops can do so by clicking here.

 

[3] The white reggae track, 'Dreadlock Holiday', by 10cc, was the lead single from the band's 1978 album, Bloody Tourists (Mercury Records, 1978). It became the group's third number one in the UK and was a huge hit internationaly (with the exception of the US, where many radio stations refused to play reggae of any kind). To watch the video for the song on YouTube, dir. Storm Thorgerson, click here. The image used with this post is a screenshot taken from the opening of this video, whilst the lines underneath are taken from the lyrics to 'Safe European Home' by the Clash (see note 5 below). 

 

[4] This reggae night was on June 5th, 1977, at the Hammersmith Palais, a famous dance hall and entertainment venue on the Shepherd's Bush Road, London. It was headlined by Dillinger, Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson. Strummer was accompanied by the dreadlocked figure of Don Letts (I won't say for protection, but so as to add to his own credibility as a reggae aficionado). 

      Ironically, Strummer was disappointed by what he saw - not rootsy enough for his tastes - although the evening did give rise to the song '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' (1978), which has become a fan favourite: click here to play. 

 

[5] 'Safe European Home', written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, is the first track on the second studio album by the Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope (CBS, 1978): click here. This line, about every white face being an invitation to robbery, may be intended humorously, but it echoes the white anxiety captured on the 10cc track 'Dreadlock Holiday'.  

 

[6] Joe and Mick stayed at the Pegasus hotel, in the heart of the business and financial district, rather than the hipper Sheraton hotel, which is where Rotten stayed when he went to Jamaica a few months later (in March, 1978), accompanied by Don Letts and Richard Branson, who picked up the bill and ensured Lydon would remain under long-term contract with Virgin. Interestingly, Rotten seemed to fit in with the local scene much better than Strummer and Jones. 

 

 

For a related post to this one on Serge Gainsbourg as an unlikely reggae star, please click here. 

 

Vive le flâneur - et la flâneuse!

 

Mariateresa Aiello: The Flâneur

(Ink on paper, 2011)

sketchbloom.com 

 

"Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. 

The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them." - Walter Benjamin

 

I. 

 

In comparison to the concept of dandyism, which has often been referred to on Torpedo the Ark [1],  the idea of  flânerie - as embodied by the figure of le flâneur - has, rather mysteriously been overlooked.

 

I don't know why that is, particularly as this blog is essentially a form of strolling amongst literary leftovers, philosophical fragments, and the ruins of contemporary culture; coolly observing what passes for (and remains of) the real world whilst collecting images and ideas as I go, thereby making me a kind of postmodern flâneur in all but name.

 

For although the term flâneur threatens to transport us back to the arcades of 19th-century Paris and the musings of Baudelaire and Benjamin [2], that needn't be the case. For the concept of the flâneur - and flânerie as a practice - has been brought into the 21st-century by those who are more interested in moving through virtual spaces and exploiting the opportunities afforded by mobile technologies than actually standing on street corners. 

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, as someone who has concerns with the question of technology, I'm not averse to physically still drifting through Soho; gazing in the windows of shops and restaurants; observing the street life whilst sipping coffee on Old Compton Street; jotting down notes for future blog posts; vaguely hoping someone I know will pass by, or that I might encounter the ghost of Sebastian Horsely; essentially just idling time away (much as I have the last forty years) [3].

 

Paradoxically, as a flâneur one is both an essential part of urban life and yet detached or set apart from it - which kind of suits me as I want to belong, but only on the margins or fringes of society; Johnny Rotten may want to destroy the passer-by, but I'm happy to be a non-participant who is not caught up in events or overcome with enthusiasm (for one thing, this provides a certain degree of immunity from infection by political or religious fanaticism).

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, it isn't easy to be a flâneur in the poetic-philosophical sense today.

 

Some (perhaps overly pessimistic) commentators suggest that the flâneur has been supplanted by the badaud - an open-mouthed bystander who simply gawks without intelligence or aesthetically attuned appreciation for what he sees; one who is enchanted by the Spectacle and is a representative of das Man [4].

 

Way back in 1867, before Debord and Heidegger were even born, the French journalist and author Victor Fournel wrote this:

 

"The flâneur must not be confused with the badaud; a nuance should be observed here. […] The simple flâneur […] is always in full possession of his individuality. By contrast, the individuality of the badaud disappears, absorbed by the outside world, which ravishes him, which moves him to drunkenness and ecstasy. Under the influence of the spectacle that presents itself to him, the badaud becomes an impersonal creature; he is no longer a man, he is the public, he is the crowd." [5]

 

However, just as I believe in fairies, so too do I believe there are flâneurs still amongst us today; just much rarer in number and harder to spot. And I was reinforced in this by a chance meeting a couple of weeks ago at the National Poetry Library with an astonishing young woman called Tamara who gaily confessed herself to be a flâneuse ... [6]

Notes

 

[1] Click here for several posts on TTA which have mentioned dandyism over the years.  

[2] Developing the work of Charles Baudelaire, who described the flâneur both in his poetry and the seminal essay Le Peintre de la vie moderne (1863), Walter Benjamin spurred artistic and theoretical interest in the flâneur as a key figure of the modern world; see The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard University Press, 1999). And for a short discussion of this work by Benjamin - and my convoluted relationship with him - see the post dated 21 October 2024: click here. 

 

[3] Readers will doubtless understand that this is a form of active idleness; as one French literary critic noted, flâneurie is tout le contraire de ne rien faire. 

     

[4] The badaud is essentially the anti-flâneur; more bystander than passer-by; the sort of person who today films events on their mobile phone, bartering away the sheer intensity and joy of experience for mere representation. This includes filming those terrible sights from which any decent person would look away; the mangled remains of some poor devil who jumps from the platform in front of a train, for example. 

      In contrast, the flâneur takes single snaps that are technically imperfect and full of flaws, but never obscene or sensational; images that give a fleeting glimpse without exposing objects or making them strike a pose (thereby allowing objects to retain their allure). 

 

[5] Victor Fournel, Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris [What One Sees in the Streets of Paris] (1867), p. 263. The (uncredited) English translation is cited on the Wikipedia entry for the subject of badaud: click here.  

      Walter Benjamin essentially adopts this distinction between the two figures of flâneur contra badaud in his work. 

 

[6] The feminine term flâneuse was born of recent feminist lit-crit and gender studies scholarship; previously, the term passante was used to describe the somewhat elusive modern woman who liked to wander round the city, experiencing public spaces in her own manner. Proust famously favoured this term.  

      Readers who are interested, might like to see Lauren Elkin's book: Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London (Chatto & Windus, 2016), in which she discusses a number of flâneuses, including George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Agnès Varda, Sophie Calle, and Martha Gellhorn.    

 

Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 1: I Got You in My Camera ...

 

Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street 

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

I. 

 

Ian Trowell's dead knot essay [a] provides a fascinating insight into how time and space are encoded in punk imagery and demonstrates how a photograph, for example, is not simply an objective or neutral representation of reality, but an artefact that is both constructed and constructive of the world as we know it.    

 

The essay analyses two visual artefacts: a photograph of the Sex Pistols from 1976 and a 30-second TV commercial for McDonald's from 2016. Here I shall reflect on the first of these, whilst in part two of this post I shall discuss the latter. 

 

 

II.

 

Ray Stevenson's famous photo of the Sex Pistols strolling along Carnaby Street in the spring of 1976 still makes smile almost fifty years later, due mostly to what Trowell terms the performative iconoclasm and punk theatricality that is here captured and preserved on film; a second of their lives ruined for life, as Rotten might say [b]. 

 

According to Trowell, whilst Paul Cook is perfectly content to eat his grapes purchased from Berwick Street Market and remain not only partially obscured but as anonymous as the brown paper bag containing his fruit - and whilst Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten are both happy to clown and pose for the camera - Glen Matlock looks uncomfortable and out of place:

 

"His comportment is akin to Wittgenstein's multi-stable rabbitduck illusion in that he is both relaxed and not relaxed at the same time. He has taken the relaxed pose of a pop star going through the motions of a publicity photograph but it clearly seems that he is out of step with the posed anti-comportment of the rest of the band." [183]

 

Matlock, with his buttoned-up jacket and persona, doesn't quite fit in with a band safety-pinned together or with the wider punk aesthetic and ethos; he's just a little too smart and sensible; the slightly nervous observer of the scene, always hanging back and looking on: 

 

"It is a disorienting picture since he appears to know his time is running out, but at the same time he gives the impression of lingering with admiration and anticipation, an adumbration of what is to come evidently with or without him." [184]

 

If, due to Rotten's "hogging of the frame" [185], locating the picture's true point of magic is made difficult, neverthless, for Trowell, it's not Rotten's ugly mug but the fastened button on Matlock's jacket that forms the pictures punctum - i.e., that troubling detail that disturbs and distracts from the more general field of interest (the photo's studium); that which pricks our attention and often moves us with a certain poignant delight [c]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Glen Matlock's button and Wittgenstein's duckrabbit aside, Trowell gives us many other interesting ideas to consider; about Carnaby Street as a subcultural epicentre; about the staging of photography; and about Rotten's performance for the camera.

 

He suggests, for example, that "Stevenson's photograph bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger Fenton's 1855 photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death" [184]. I don't quite see it myself, however, and might just as easily imagine the Sex Pistols "photoshopped into the immediate foreground" [184] of many an image containing a tapering path. 

 

For instance, here's Jones and Rotten following the yellow brick road:

 

 

 

I wasn't entirely convinced either by Trowell's suggestion that we might consider Stevenson's photograph as "a precisely posed document with the four punk musicians reminiscent of the generic crouched figures of Captain Kirk and his original Star Trek crew materializing on a hostile, alien planet with their phasers at the ready to deal with the subcultural detritus that might turn on them at any moment" [186], although it's certainly an original reading.  

 

These things aside, for the most part one agrees with Trowell's interpretations and marvels at his insights. Rotten's captioning of Stevenson's photo as forced fun at Malcolm's behest is pithy, but one needs Trowell's essay to provide the theoretical and cultural context without which it's just another snap. 

 

The band may never have had much clue as to what was going on or what was at stake, but Malcolm knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted the band to look: "The photograph tries to set out McLaren's deliberate positioning of punk as against the process of accumulation of all music genres and stylistic connotations and manifestations that have gone before." [188]

Obviously, in due course every image loses its power and becomes just another stock photo filed away in an archive: cultural fodder, as Trowell puts it. Some truly great pictures, however, retain their abilty to shock or seduce or to scandalise for decades; others, like this one, now mostly rely on Matlock's button to provide a point of interest.

 

Ultimately, argues Trowell, even the Sex Pistols "cannot escape time and space" [188] just as punk cannot escape being co-opted and commercialised by the forces of capital, as McLaren and Reid conceded in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.  

[b] Somewhat surprisingly, Trowell doesn't refer us to the following lines in the Sex Pistols' song 'I Wanna Be Me': 'I got you in my camera / a second of your life, ruined for life'.

      He does, however, refer us to John Berger who argues that the true content of a photograph is invisible as it "derves from a play not with form, but with time ... it isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum". See Understanding a Photograph (Penguin, 2013), p. 20. 

[c] Barthes's concept of the punctum raises a problem discussed by commentators such as Michael Fried and James Elkins; if it calls forth a highly idiosyncratic response on behalf of an individual viewer, then how can that experience ever be communicated and theorised? In other words, can Matlock's button ever intensely move anyone other than Trowell himself? I might understand what he says and appreciate what he writes, but is his experience of pleasure (as of pain) not uniquely his own?  

 

 

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'I Wanna Be Me', b-side to 'Anarachy in the UK' (EMI, 1976): click here.  

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero (2)

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Following publication of a recent post on Johnny Rotten as an abject antihero, a young woman writes from France to accuse me of body shaming the former Sex Pistol: 

 

'If he wasn't larger-bodied than you and many others in our fatphobic society find acceptable, then I very much doubt you'd feel at liberty to ridicule Lydon and subject him to such unfair criticism.' 

 

Whilst I'd accept there's an element of truth in this, I think it misses the point of the post, which - as the opening reference to Julia Kristeva indicates - was essentially concerned with the state of abjection and what an abject individual may have to teach us, rather than with Rotten's weight per se (although his obesity obviously plays a role here). 

 

Perhaps I might offer a few further remarks in an attempt to clarify ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In critical theory, to be an abject individual is to exist outside of social expectations and moral standards in a manner that doesn't only challenge but unsettles conventional notions of identity. One isn't so much inhuman, as abhuman (i.e., not-quite-human and seemingly caught up in the process of becoming-monstrous). 

 

For Julia Kristeva, this can easily induce horror, particularly when one is confronted by an intrusion of corporeal reality into the symbolic order [1] - such as seeing Rotten on stage now whilst remembering him on stage back in the day. 

 

Being forced to face the abject truth is an inherently traumatic experience; like being asked to look at the decomposing corpse of a loved one. It's deeply disturbing and I understand how it can manifest in the desire not merely to look away, but do away with the abject subject. 

 

Learning how to accept others in their otherness - particularly when that otherness strikes us as repulsive - is to adopt what Roland Barthes describes as a politics of pure liberalism: I am a liberal in order not to be a killer [2]. 

 

 

III. 

 

The irony is that whereas in his punk period Lydon was merely pretending to be Rotten and a social outsider, he has now become truly abject. 

 

And yet, as I suggested at the close of the post we're referring to here, perhaps we should be grateful to him for this; for mightn't it be the case that Rotten, in his very abjectness, draws us unto him and not only grants us a perversely-morbid pleasure of some kind, but exemplifies a Christ-like level of passion by which we might all learn something important ...? 

 

I think so. 

 

And thus, I wasn't so much subjecting Rotten to 'unfair criticism', as my correspondent suggests, rather I was trying to find a way to view him in a positive light; recalling, for example, Jean Genet's insistence that it is only via a becoming-abject that the individual can achieve an existentialist form of sainthood (something that might appeal to the son of Irish Catholics who self-righteously believes himself to be the voice of Truth). 

 

 

IV. 

 

Ultimately, why Rotten does what he does now in the manner he chooses, is, I suppose, only something he can explain. 

 

Perhaps his speaking tour is not simply a commercial venture, but a method of public mourning; i.e., a form of catharsis via which he can express all his anger, sorrow, regret, etc. 

 

And perhaps his karaoke rendition of 'Anarchy in the UK', in which he invites the audience to clap and sing along as if they were the elderly residents of a care home, can be seen as a piece of abject performance art in which old ideals (such as artistic integrity) are devalued once and for all.

 

Or perhaps he's just become what he is (and what he formerly despised) ... 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia University Press, 1982). 

 

[2] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac, 1995), p. 117. My italics.

 

 

Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero (1)

Johnny Rotten: Now and Then

 

"Since he has nothing, since he is nothing, he can sacrifice everything." - Julia Kristeva [1]

 

 

Watching YouTube footage of 68-year-old Johnny Rotten on his latest speaking tour of the UK is profoundly troubling for anyone who once loved him [2].

 

For he appears to have morphed into an abject end-of-pier entertainer wearing a Ukipper tie, retelling old stories and performing karoake versions of his own songs whilst looking - if we might borrow a line from yesteryear - like a big fat pink baked bean.     

A once charismatic and amusing individual is now literally revolting; transporting us to a place where integrity collapses and memories of the past are confronted with the gross reality of the present. 

 

But perhaps we should be grateful to him for this: for mightn't it be the case that Rotten, in his very abjectness, draws us unto him and teaches a vital lesson? Indeed, does he not even grant us a perversely-morbid pleasure of some kind; a violent and painful passion? 

 

Has Rotten not merely become fat, old, and boorish, but Christ-like?     

Notes

[1] Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 19. 

[2] Click here to watch Rotten encourage an audience to sing and clap along to 'Anarchy in the UK' on his I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right spoken word tour (2024). The video was recorded by Dror Nahum at Albert Halls, Stirling, on 14 June and uploaded to his YouTube channel the following day. 

 

 

For a post that might be said to anticipate this one on Rotten, written over ten years ago, click here. 

 

And for a follow up post to this one, click here. 

 

 

Procrastination

Statue of Pál Pató in Svodín, Slovakia [1]

 

 

You know when your procrastination is becoming serious when you choose to write a post on procrastination rather than work on the 8000-word essay you should be writing ... 

 

Procrastination is an ugly word for an ugly thing; the act of unnecessarily delaying or postponing something that needs to be done, despite knowing that there could be negative consequences for doing so. 

 

Apparently, it's quite a common thing, although until now I've never experienced it. Someone suggested that it's sign of an underlying mental health issue, such as depression, or possibly related to old age - which didn't really help. 

 

I tend to suspect that in my case, however, it's more due to the fact that after 13 years of writing nothing but fragments and short posts in a cheerful manner, the thought of composing a long and serious piece of scholarly research in a formal academic style no longer comes naturally and no longer appeals. 

  

Also, because the essay is on the Sex Pistols I can't help hearing the mocking words of Johnny Rotten at the beginning of 'No Fun' - A sociology lecture, with a bit of psychology ... etc. [2]

 

Having said that, I do want to write the essay - and I will write the essay! 

 

Just not today ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Pál Pató is a popular pipe-smoking character who appears in a poem by the 19th-century Hungarian poet (and liberal revolutionary) Sándor Petőfi and personifies procrastination. His catchphrase is: We've got time for that ...

 

[2] 'No Fun' is the B-side of 'Pretty Vacant', the third single released by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to play the remastered version as it appears on the 35th anniversary edition of Never Mind the Bollocks (Universal Music, 2012). Although not strictly relevant to the subject of this post, being left in a void of indecision and unable to act by procrastination is certainly no fun.    

 

Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy

Jordan as SEX punk (1976) 

and Worlds End pirate (1981)

 

'Twas a sunny day when I went to play down by the deep blue sea  

I jumped aboard a pirate ship and Malcolm said to me ...

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I most love about the animated closing scene to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) aboard the good ship Venus [1] is that it anticipates the radical move that McLaren (and Westwood) were to make the following year when they transformed Seditionaries into Worlds End and replaced the figure of the punk rocker with that of the pirate, obliging an entire generation to either set sail with them on a new swashbuckling new adventure, or risk being thrown overboard like that scurvy dog Johnny Rotten.

 

 

II.

By 1979 it was clear that Seditionaries was no longer the centre of the world:

"McLaren and Westwood's customer base was no longer drawn from the cutting edge of the capital's cognoscenti. Now visitors comprised curious provincials, cookie-cutter second-wave punks, Johnny-come-latelies and Sid fans." [2]

 

It was time to move on, or risk becoming trapped by old ideas and old looks - although, ironically, this meant leaving the 20th-century by travelling back to a more Romantic time. 

 

McLaren, now more excited by the outlaw than the rebel, began to conceive of a new age of piracy - one which Westwood was able to brilliantly materialise with her latest fashion designs. Their partnership was once more "firing into the future" [3] and it was all systems (C30 C60 C90) Go!  

 

Of course, this meant the shop at 430 King's Road would also require a major refit ... 

  

 

III.

 

Worlds End - the fifth and final version of the store - was arguably the most imaginative; a cross between a pirate's ship and the Old Curiosity Shop made famous by Dickens. Not as pervy as Sex; not as intimidating as Seditionaries, Worlds End was an unreal place of fantasy and promise. 

 

The large clock placed above the entrance with its hands perpetually spinning backwards, suggested the idea of time travel. But the fact that it had thirteen hours rather than the standard twelve made sure that one also aware that the time one was escaping to didn't exist - but might, one day.

 

In retail terms, Worlds End was certainly more successful than the earlier versions of 430 King's Road. And McLaren and Westwood's Pirate collection (1981) was a seminal moment in fashion history (it certainly inspired Galliano). 

 

Even now, the outfits seem astonishingly fresh and colourful; full of youthful exuberance and swagger. Jerry Seinfeld may have rejected the pirate look [4], but for many of us, the puffy shirt was once a must have back in the day and every now and then you'll still see models on the catwalk wearing clothes inspired by the clothes Malcolm and Vivienne created.  

  

Post-punk pirates Bow Wow Wow 

looking the part in 1981

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written about this scene earlier this year on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 438.

[3] Ibid., p. 450.

 

[4] I'm referring to the episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Puffy Shirt' [S5/E2], dir. Tom Cherones (1993), in which Jerry famously declares: "I don't wanna be a pirate!" Click here. 

Musical bonus: Adam and the Ants, 'Jolly Roger', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.

 

Video bonus: Jordan outside Worlds End in 1981 speaking about the new age of piracy: click here.

 

For a related post to this one on Worlds End, please click here.   

Punk It Up (I'm a Sex Pistol Man Oh Yeah!)

Malcolm McLaren: screenshot taken from the video for 

'Punk It Up' (dir. Ian Gabriel): click here. 

A Sex Pistol - that's what I am / I punk it up / I'm a Sex Pistol Man, oh yeah!

 

 

I. 

 

These days, we're all supposed to agree that the Sex Pistols were a four-piece punk rock band fronted by the presiding genius of Johnny Rotten and that they existed from late 1975 through to January 1978, during which time they recorded and released four singles and one perfect album. 

 

But that's not a narrative I subscribe to or go along with. 

 

For me, the Sex Pistols was always a much wider, more interesting and more radical project, conceived by Malcolm McLaren, involving fashion and politics as well as music, and supported by a number of brilliant individuals, including Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid, who had no performing role within the group. 

 

For me, the project begins in the spring of 1974 when McLaren and Westwood refurbish their store at 430 King's Road and rebrand it as SEX and Jordan is the original face of punk long before John Lydon ever reared his ugly head. 

 

For me, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records 1979) is, in many respects, a far more challenging and daring album than Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records 1977) and it should be remembered by those punk purists who insist that the latter is the only true album, that the former featured some of the Sex Pistols' greatest hits [1] - just as the film of that title provided some of the most memorable moments in the Sex Pistols story [2]. 

 

And for me, the last Sex Pistols track doesn't appear on either of these albums and doesn't involve any members of the band who went under that name. Written by McLaren and Trevor Horn, and featuring Zulu musicians and backing singers, the track can be found on McLaren's debut solo album, Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983) ...

 

II.

 

'Punk It Up' resulted when McLaren spent a few weeks recording material for Duck Rock in South Africa and was asked by the locals to recount stories from his time as manager of the Sex Pistols, much to their delight and amusement:      

"'They couldn't believe when I told them about causing chaos across the land, taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from gullible record companies and sticking a safety pin through the Queens' lips [...] By the end of the story the Zulus were laughing and cheering [...]'" [3]

 

As Paul Gorman rightly says, whilst McLaren refused to allow his central role in the story of the Sex Pistols define him, he was always happy to look back on this period of his life and career and discuss it at length. And so, encouraged by the response to his storytelling, he wrote lyrics for the song 'Punk It Up' and affirmed that, at heart, he remained a Sex Pistol. 

 

'Punk It Up' is a brilliant track - full of joy, full of sunshine, full of chaos, and full of magic; elements that define McLaren's unique vision of post-punk that quickly moved from piracy to paganism and celebrated (amongst others) hobos, hillbillies, and hip hoppers. It almost makes 'Anarchy in the UK' seem a bit provincial ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The double A-sided single coupling 'Something Else' with 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was the only Sex Pistols single to sell more than a quarter of a million copies.  

 

[2] I'm thinking here, for example, of Sid's performance of 'My Way', about which I have written here. 

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 291.  

My Night at the 100 Club (Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated?)

Johnny Rotten expresses how I felt post-screening.

 

 

I.

 

'Come along to the 100 Club,' she said, 'they're screening The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and Julien's going to introduce it and take questions from the audience - it should be good!'

 

 

II.

 

The 100 Club is a legendary live music venue [1] and one of the sacred sites of punk rock, hosting as it did the first punk festival organised by Malcolm McLaren and promoter Ron Watts over two nights in September 1976 [2]. 

 

But of course, that was then and this is now ...

 

And so, I wasn't too suprised that what would have once been a gathering of boisterous spiky-haired teens had been transformed into an assemblage of mostly grey-haired and bald-headed punk pensioners:

 

"It wasn't a rock 'n' roll party. It was more like a dying horse that needed putting out of its misery." [3] 

 

Somethings don't change, however; the decor of the Club, for example, remains pretty much the same. It's essentially a dingy basement with greasy walls and peeling ceilings, stinking of piss. I know for some people that's a sign of its authenticity, but I couldn't help longing for the reassuring smell of bleach or wishing I had a pocket full of posies for protection.

 

 

III. 

 

Before the screening, the film's director Julien Temple took to the stage. Now aged 70, he nevertheless still looked trim and boyishly handsome - or silver foxy, as my friend put it. He wasn't dull exactly, though pretty much on autopilot as he answered the same dreary questions and trotted out the same old anecdotes about how he became involved with the Sex Pistols, etc.

 

An obviously clever and cultured individual, who has pretty much met and worked with everyone in the music industry over the last 45 years, Temple nevertheless lacks McLaren's charisma and I couldn't help suspecting that, at some level, he resents the fact that he is still seen as a Glitterbest flunkie [4] and still obliged to discuss his own career in the shadow of the Sex Pistols.  

 

 

IV.    

 

Probably best we don't mention the actual screening: because the film shown was of such piss poor quality and so savagely cut (I don't know by whom or for what reason) that it was unrecognisable as the movie I have watched obsessively since its release in 1980. 

 

I would think that at least a third of the film was missing, including several important and much loved scenes; no boat trip on the Thames; no Winterland gig with Rotten famously asking an ambiguous but eternally pertinent question: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" [5]

 

I'm sorry to say, but that's exactly how I felt. 

 

Ultimately, the evening was less a celebration of the Swindle than its public disembowelment and shame on all those responsible - not least of all Temple who allowed his own work to be butchered in this manner [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The 100 Club is located at 100 Oxford Street, London. It has been hosting live music since October 1942, although back then it was called the Feldman Swing Club, changing its name to the one with which most of us are familiar today in 1964.

 

[2] The event was headlined by the Sex Pistols, but also featured the Clash, the Damned, and many other up-and-coming young bands, including the Buzzcocks and a debut performance from Siouxsie and the Banshees (with Sid Vicious on drums).    

 

[3] Malcolm Mclaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980), with reference to the Winterland gig in San Francisco on 14 January, 1978.

 

[4] See the post of 26 November 2023 marking Temple's 70th birthday, which includes a badge from the Jamie Reid archive at the V&A designed especially for Julien: click here. 

 

[5] Johnny Rotten on stage with the Sex Pistols at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978.

 

[6] To be fair to the organisers of the event - Rebel Reel Cine Club - they did immediately refund my money upon request and the main man, Chris McGill, seems like a genuinely good egg. 

 

It Was on the Good Ship Venus ...

Sex Pistols: Friggin' in the Riggin' 

(Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

As many readers will recall, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) ends aboard the good ship Venus with the Sex Pistols reduced from flesh and blood punk rockers, who once called for anarchy in the UK, to cartoon pirates singing a bawdy 19th-century drinking song and heading for disaster on the rocks. 

 

Still, whilst the song itself may have a strictly limited appeal, the animated sequence contains many delicious moments, two of which I'd like to comment on here ...

 

 

II.

 

Firstly, there's the scene in which Rotten is made to walk the plank and is pushed into the sea at sword point by Captain McLaren, where he is quickly gobbled up by a hungry shark branded with the Virgin logo. It's très drôle.  

 

But before we discuss why the lead singer was cruelly dispatched in this manner, we might stop and ask if pirates ever really used walking the plank as a method of execution ... Apparently, the answer to this is yes, but only on rare occasions and it was practised mostly for the amusement of the crew. Nevertheless, it has become a popular pirate motif within popular culture.

 

In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1884), for example, there are several mentions of walking the plank, including the opening scene in which Billy Bones tells blood-curdling stories of the practice to Jim Hawkins. And Captain Hook and his men also had a penchant for making prisoners walk the plank in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904).

 

But, returning to the case of Johnny Rotten in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ... His symbolic execution illustrates the fact that shortly after the Winterland show in San Francisco on 18 January 1978, it was decided by Malcolm and other members of the group that he simply had to go. 

 

Not only was everybody bored with being part of a successful rock 'n' roll band, but, according to McLaren, Rotten was starting to develop certain starry pretensions and thinking about how he might develop a long-term (possibly solo) career in the music industry. In this, he had the backing of record company executives, who saw him as a valuable asset and someone whom - unlike McLaren - they could work with.

 

Further, McLaren was of the view that in order to gain everything it was necessary to sacrifice something, or someone, and Rotten - whom he now characterised as a collaborator - was the perfect candidate.     

 

And so, whilst throwing him overboard was an unexpected move, some might say it was also a bold stroke of genius; as was sending Cook and Jones to Brazil and recruiting the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs as the Sex Pistols' new lead vocalist, but that's another story ...  

 

 

III.

If walking the plank is a legendary pirate practice, then the idea that a sea captain must always go down with his ship is arguably a more noble maritime tradition; one that assigns to the latter ultimate responsibility for both his vessel and all who sail aboard her (crew and passengers alike). 

 

I'm not sure McLaren in his role as captain of the good ship Venus cared in the slightest about saving the lives (or musical careers) of his punk crew - in fact, having thrown Rotten to the sharks and determined to effectively skuttle the ship, Malcolm didn't give a fuck who would sink or swim and went beneath the waves standing to attention, but with a mischievous grin on his face. 

 

Nineteenth-century ideals of virtue and doing the right thing - of always following protocol and respecting tradition - were exactly what the Sex Pistols wished to destroy and McLaren prided himself on the fact that he was irresponsible and didn't manage so much as wilfully mismanage the group.  

 

 

Screen shots from  

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Friggin' in the Riggin'" - along with Sid's version of the Eddie Cochran song "Something Else" - was released as a double A-side single on 23 February 1979 (both taken from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack also released in Feb '79 on Virgin Records). It got to number three on the UK charts and sold 382,000 copies, making it the Sex Pistols' biggest selling single. To play and watch on YouTube: click here.   

[2] Animation for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was by Bill Mather, Andy Walker, Gil Potter, Derek W. Hayes, and Phil Austin (Supervised by Animation City). 

 

 

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.