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. 

 

Happy Birthday Julien Temple (and in Memory of Malcolm McLaren)

Film director Julien Temple

(the punk generation's Jean Vigo)

 

 

Born on this day, in 1953, the British filmmaker Julien Temple is - without ever really being part of the gang - crucial to the story of the Sex Pistols, which he began to document from the very early days, having come across the band rehearsing in an abandoned warehouse in Bermondsey, South London, whilst drifting around the area admiring the rusting hulks of ships and the general decay of what had once been a thriving centre of industry and trade. 

 

This chance encounter was before the band had played their first gig at St Martin's School of Art on 6 November 1975 (supporting Bazooka Joe), so Temple can effectively claim to have been involved with the band from day one and was certainly not some Johnny-come-lately on what would become known as the punk scene, even if he never quite escaped being thought of as a middle class cunt - his words, not mine [1].    

 

Be that as it may, he was young and clearly talented enough to capture Malcolm's attention, and so Temple was eventually given permission to become the Sex Pistols' in-house filmmaker. 

 

Initially, however, McLaren, had opposed such an idea. It was only when the band began to hit the headlines that he was persuaded it would be a good idea after all to document what was going on - particularly when Temple offered to do so for free, although Malcolm eventually put him on a retainer of £12 a week.       

 

When the idea of making a full-length feature film arose - originally to be called Who Killed Bambi? and directed by Russ Meyer - Temple was appointed as the latter's assistant. For one reason or another - actually, for many, many reasons - this film was never going to be made and the project eventually morphed into The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), which is credited to Temple as director, although I'll always think of Malcolm as the film's auteur. 

Twenty years later, Temple then made The Filth and the Fury (2000) with the band's full cooperation, which is to say Rotten was on board and ready to put the record straight and tell the true story of the Sex Pistols (with tears of emotional sincerity welling up in his eyes). 

 

Whilst the latter rockumentary - not a term that Temple likes or uses - was critically acclaimed, I hate it for its attempt not only to give a more balanced account of events, but to humanise the band and perpetuate the ridiculous idea that poor Johnny was somehow a victim - even though he was also, apparently, the real reason for the band's success: A true star, honest!  

Temple claims he wanted to make The Filth and the Fury because he was annoyed with McLaren saying that the band members were essentially of no great import and that he was the artistic visionary who created everything. But, whilst that's not quite the case, neither is it entirely the fantasy of an egomaniac and, ironically, I think Malcolm's contribution to British popular culture is still hugely underrated [2].

 

Still, I don't wish to debate this here and now, nor say anything negative about Temple as a filmmaker. I simply want to take this opportunity to wish him happy birthday and thank him for the role he has played in recording an important period in British social and cultural history.     

 

 

Jamie Reid badge design 

vam.ac.uk

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Speaking with John Robb in 2022, Temple recalls the reaction of the band when he proposed they provide a soundtrack to a five minute film he was then working on as a student: "'Fuck off!' Middle class cunt basically being the subtext." Click here to watch the full interview on YouTube. The line I quote begins at 2:38.  

[2] Not by Temple, who, despite his issues with McLaren, had this to say in an obituary in The Observer (11 April 2010): 

 

"Malcolm was an incredible catalyst for my generation. To be in the same room as him in 1976 was to be bombarded with energy and swept up in a rush of ideas and emotions. [....] But his impact was not limited to music alone. Right across the creative spectrum Malcolm made young people - artists, designers, writers, film-makers - aware that they had a distinctive voice and encouraged them to use it right there and then." 

      

Temple concludes: 

 

"On a personal note, although I worked intensely with Malcolm for only a short period of time and managed to fall out with him pretty spectacularly too, the creative ideas he instilled in me have lasted a lifetime." 

 

 

Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)

Fig. 1: Pretty little moth in my front garden / Fig. 2: A colour enhanced detail from the wing

Fig. 3: Jamie Reid God Save the Cambridge Rapist (poster design for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1980)

There are, apparently, around 2,500 species of moth in the UK and I'm no lepidopterist, so don't expect me to identify the very pretty little moth in the photo above which seems to like living in (or on) my front garden privet. 

 

Perhaps its most striking feature, to me at least, is the marking on the wing which reminds me of the Cambridge Rapist [1] mask that so fascinated Malcolm McLaren and which he and Vivienne Westwood incorporated as an image on shirt designs sold at 430 Kings Road [2]; an image which Jamie Reid later used in one of his God Save ... series of posters produced for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) [3]. 

 

Does this serve to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art? [4] Or does it prove that even an insect can be a sex pistol? 

 

 

Notes

[1] Peter Samuel Cook - known in the press as the Cambridge Rapist - attacked several women in their homes between October 1974 and April 1975. He quickly entered the public imagination due to the distinctive leather mask with the word rapist painted in white letters across the forehead that he liked to wear whilst carrying out his crimes. 

      The 46-year old delivery driver was arrested following one of Britain's largest police manhunts. He was convicted at his trial in 1976 of six counts of rape, as well as assault and gross indecency. Cook was given two life sentences with the recommendation made that he never be released. He died, in jail, in January 2004 (aed 75).   

 

[2] A long-sleeved muslin shirt by McLaren and Westwood with the Cambridge Rapist motif is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum: click here.  

 

[3] A version of this work (produced in 1978) by Jamie Reid can also be found at the V&A: click here.

 

[4] See Wilde's essay 'The Decay of Lying', Intentions (1891). Note that an earlier version of the essay was published in the literary magazine The Nineteenth Century, in January 1889. 

 

For a related post on cultural entomology entitled 'Insectopunk', click here.    

Reflections on Another Jubilee (There's Still No Future in England's Dreaming)

Jamie Reid: sleeve artwork for 'God Save the Queen' 

by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977) 

National Portrait Gallery (NPG D48055)

 

 

I.

 

Celebrations to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee are set to take place over a special four-day bank holiday weekend from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 June 2022. 

 

Seeing the Union Jack bunting and hearing all the Gawd bless 'er majesty bullshit reminds me very much of the Silver Jubilee back in the fateful summer of 1977 - the summer of hate as it is sometimes known; i.e., the summer of punk ...

 

II.

Although not old enough to have partied with the Sex Pistols on their notorious jubilee boat trip along the Thames, I was old enough in 1977 to have woken up and realised what side of the bed I was lying on - and it wasn't the side with the red, white and blue sheets.

 

As far as I recall, I was pretty much the only Essex schoolchild who refused to attend (or have anything to do with) the street parties being held on my estate that June. 

 

And my sense of alienation - combined with a long hatred for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal family - meant that I now aligned myself with the Sex Pistols (what this meant in practice was keeping press cuttings about the band, taping 'Pretty Vacant' off the radio [1], and doing my best to perfect a Rotten persona). 

 

The Sex Pistols were the flowers in the dustbin and they were the poison in the human machine, but it was precisely their uncompromising nihilism that made them so attractive; that, and the way they looked [2]. 

 

III. 

 

Finally, while we're on the subject of the Sex Pistols ...

 

Tonight sees the start of Danny Boyle's six-part TV series Pistol - a Disneyfied punk pantomime loosely based on Steve Jones's memoir, in which a kamikaze gang of foul-mouthed yobs is reimagined by a cast of impossibly middle-class actors [3].

 

Were he still with us, I'm sure Malcolm would regard this as a prime example of what he termed karaoke culture [4] - i.e., one lacking in authentic sex, style or subversion.  

 

So, rather than sit through Danny Boyle's load of old bollocks, why not click here to watch a new version of the video for 'God Save the Queen' - one which combines footage shot by Julien Temple at the Marquee in May 1977, with footage of the Thames river boat party (a fun day out which resulted in eleven arrests, including Malcolm's). 

 

 

Notes

[1] I couldn't record 'God Save the Queen', of course, as it was banned from the airwaves. Famously, it was also prevented from getting to number one in the official UK singles chart, although it was the highest selling single during the jubilee week.  

[2] I loved the songs too, but the music was always secondary to the politics, the clothes, and the artwork - which is why I soon came to appreciate that Malcolm was the fabulous architect of chaos and Rotten just another juvenile Bill Grundy. Indeed, he's now something of an admirer of the Queen it appears.

 

[3] For earlier thoughts on Danny Boyle's Pistol click here and here. 

[4] Readers who are interested in this can watch McLaren's TED Talk of October 2009 on authentic creativity versus karaoke culture: click here. 

In Memory of Liz Fraser

Liz Fraser in Carry On Cruising (1962)

I was very sorry to hear of the passing two days ago of busty British beauty and much-loved Carry On star Liz Fraser, aged 88.

As I wrote in an earlier post, any film in which she appeared is instantly improved, even if, sadly, not always worth watching, and seeing Liz in her black underwear always makes happy and nostalgic. She had the serious erotic charisma that Barbara Windsor, for all her infectious giggling, completely lacks and was undoubtedly one of the great comedic actresses of her generation and one of the smartest of all dumb blondes. 

For anyone like me who loves TV of the sixties and seventies, it's impossible not to think fondly of Miss Fraser, who had roles in many classic shows, including: Hancock's Half  Hour, Dad's Army, The Avengers, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).    

And anyone like me who loves the Sex Pistols, will also recall that, like Irene Handl and Mary Millington, she also pops up in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

Thus, with her place in the popular cultural (and pornographic) imagination happily secure, she can, I hope and trust, rest in peace. 


Note: the earlier post I refer to above is 'Why I Love Carry On Cruising' (2 Jan 2017): click here.    

Of Clowns and Catwomen

                                                                                                                

As everybody knows, there's an unwritten rule in the world of clowns that one must never copy the face make-up of another, thereby enabling each performer to retain their own unique identity.

In order to help ensure that this unwritten rule is followed and not accidentally infringed, some clowns voluntarily have their likeness painted onto a ceramic egg and registered with Clowns International. New clowns are able to consult the registry and avoid the potential embarrassment of looking like somebody else; one is tempted to say that face on egg thus prevents egg on face.

It's worth noting, however, that the registry is unofficial and Clowns International cannot enforce compliance; indeed, as far as I'm aware, you can't legally copyright a hairstyle, facial feature, or a way of applying make-up, no matter how individual or distinctive it may be. And neither - I believe - can you copyright a stage name, nickname, or any other type of alias.

I thought of this when reading recently about the punk icon, Soo Catwoman, who is desperately fighting a rearguard action to reclaim, protect and market her own extraordinary image - albeit forty years too late and after the young actress Judy Croll showed us all to brilliant effect in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle just how easy it is to steal and to simulate a look, no matter how original the original may be. 
  
For Soo, like many punks naively committed to notions of authenticity and the Real, it's terribly important that we not mistake Croll for her and she carefully points out the differences in facial bone, hairline and breast size, as if we should care about such anatomical details - we who care only for masks and cosmetics and the free-floating aspect of a persona as something to be performed (not essentialised or trademarked).

Interestingly, Soo also expresses her moral and maternal outrage over the fact that Croll was only fourteen and raises the spectre of child abuse by the filmmakers, thereby demonstrating her poor understanding of the Swindle as a provocative work of cinema, a crucial aspect of which is its brutal exposure of the inherently exploitative nature of the music industry which blithely trades in young flesh and talent.

Despite what she seems to believe, there's nothing degraded or inappropriate about the nudity or sexuality of a minor, nor indeed its representation in art; obscenity begins when this is commodified and prostituted by men in positions of power for their own perverse pleasure or financial gain: Mummy! Mummy! They've killed Bambi!

And so, I'm sorry if Julien Temple's film and Croll's appearance in it have caused Soo and her family great distress over the years, as she claims, but she needs to understand that most viewers either don't know who the fuck she is, or, if they do, don't care that a small role she turned down was eventually given to an actress happy to play the part.  


Note: those interested in knowing more about Soo Catwoman might like to visit her official website: click here.