Electric Boogaloo: Remembering the Rock Steady Crew

The Rock Steady Crew in a Charisma Records 

promo photo (1983)

 

 

I. 

 

Apparently, the Rock Steady Crew are still a thing even today; indeed, the name has become a kind of franchise, used by various other groups of hip-hoppers and b-boys in multiple locations. 

 

I have to admit, I like this idea; it's not something that the Rolling Stones ever thought to do and even though Malcolm declared in the post-Rotten days that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, the actual band members were quick to assert intellectual property rights and demand other assets and accumulated royalties during their High Court case against him [1].  

 

 

II.

 

For me, however, the RSC - and I'm not referring to the Royal Shakespeare Company here - will always consist of the six members pictured above: Prince Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, Buck 4, Doze, Kuriaki, and, up-front and centre, 15-year-old Baby Love, who provided the vocals on their international hit single, '(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew' (1983) [2].   

It is, to be brutally honest, a rubbish song; although when I first heard it played in Steve Weltman's office I reluctantly agreed it was 'not bad' [3]. Ultimately, the RSC were just another novelty act, signed by Charisma Records [4] in an attempt to cash in on the surprise success of McLaren's 'Buffalo Gals' (1982) [5] and exploit the burgeoning American hip-hop scene. 

 

Having said that, I remember them with a certain fondness; especially Doze, who was very friendly, very funny, and clearly a talented artist. And it was a shame that they were destined for the same sad fate as befell Adam and the Ants two years earlier - i.e., to make a spectacle of themselves on stage in a Royal Variety Performance ... [6]. 

 

 

Hip-hop meets pomp & circumstance: the Rock Steady Crew 

with a soldier from the Household Cavalry 

(London, c. 1983)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Those who want to know more about this court case - which was instigated by Rotten in 1979, but not fully resolved until 1986 after much legal wrangling - should see chapters 26 and 31 of Paul Gorman's biography The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020). Long story short: Malcolm, unfairly in my view, loses the case and everything is awarded to Lydon, Cook, Jones, and the estate of Sid Vicious (including, ironically, rights to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle).

 

[2] '(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew' was released from the group's debut studio album Ready for Battle (Charisma Records, 1984) and it reached number 6 on the UK Singles Chart. Blue Soldier and Stephen Hague, two of the co-writers of the song, also produced the track; the other co-writer, Ruza Blue, was the Crew's manager at this time. Click here to play the song's promo video on YouTube.

 

[3] This according to a diary entry made on Tuesday 16 August, 1983. Weltman had just returned from New York with the newly recorded song and accompanying video, which I first saw on the 19th, thinking it a pale imitation of McLaren's video for 'Buffalo Gals' in some respects, but noting that Baby Love was certainly easy on the eye. 

      

[4] Charisma Records was founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton-Smith and remained, at heart, a hippie label much loved by prog rockers, despite it's eclectic roster that included Monty Python, Sir John Betjeman, and Billy Bragg. Sadly, Charisma was swallowed by the Virgin shark in 1983 and fully digested by the latter in 1986. Steve Weltman was the managing director of Charisma, 1981-86.   

 

[5] 'Buffalo Gals' was very much a surprise hit - and a hit despite rather than because of the good people at Charisma Records, on whom the track's genius (and revolutionary nature) was completely lost. McLaren later recalled:

 

'It was greeted poorly by almost all at the record company. The radio plugger [...] was so outraged he refused to take it to radio and declared it was "not music" [...] The only person who stood up for me was the press lady: a young American, new in her job.' 

 

Charisma seriously considered legal proceedings against McLaren on the grounds that he had grossly overspent the budget and that he was "in breach of the contractual obligation to deliver music of acceptable commercial value". 

      However, thanks to the hugely positive response Kid Jensen received after playing the track on his Capital Radio show, Charisma were quickly obliged to recognise that they not only had a potential number 1 on their hands, but that they possessed a track capable of causing "a sea-change of significance in popular music terms to rival the advent of punk". 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... pp. 516-517. 

 

[6] On 23 November, 1981, Adam and the Ants played two songs at the Royal Variety Performance, much to bass player Kevin Mooney's obvious discomfort; he thought he'd joined a post-punk band, not a pop pantomime troupe happy to entertain members of the English royal family. Refusing to take the performance seriously - thereby infuriating Adam - Mooney was subsequently sacked. Those who wish to watch, can do so by clicking here. 

      On 7 November, 1983, the Rock Steady Crew performed in front of Her Majesty the Queen at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane: click here. Their being added to the bill is an even more egregious example of cultural appropriation in which a marginalised subculture is ripped out of the urban context in which it derives its meaning, its magic, and its potency simply for the amusement of the rich. And the fact that this was done with the connivance of their record company and, one suspects, either the naive or knowing complicity of the RSC themselves, is doubly depressing.

      It's not often I find myself writing in praise of John Lennon, but I do admire that during The Beatles' set at the Royal Variety Performance in 1963, he sarcastically requested that wealthy members of the audience rattle their jewellery rather than just clap their hands like those in the cheaper seats: click here.

      It's worth noting that The Beatles also refused future requests to appear at the Royal Variety Performance, despite their continued popularity and the fact that all four had been awarded - and accepted - MBEs from the Queen in 1965 (Lennon returning his in 1969, in protest at Britain's involvement in or support for various armed conflicts around the world). 

 

 

Memories of a Duck Rocker

Nick Egan: Front cover of Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983) [1]

and Duck Rock (2023), a mixed media collage on canvas, 48 × 36 in [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I was very pleased to discover that the artist, designer, and film director Nick Egan is alive and well and living in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and family. 

 

I was even happier to discover that he has recently been reimagining some of the record covers he designed back in the 1980s; including Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983), which has been transformed from a 12" square image into a large mixed media collage on canvas, using digital artwork, airbrush, oil pastels, acrylic and metallic paints.    

 

Still referencing the art of Keith Haring and Dondi White [3], which formed such a vital part of the original work, it also includes the magically customised boom box (or ghetto blaster, as we used to say) designed by Ron West, that became known as the Duck Rocker - one of the most iconic objects in the cultural history of hip-hop.   

 

Due to the size and shape of Egan's 2023 work, it reminds one of poster art; and in fact Egan has admitted that this was his intention:  

 

'I saw it as a poster that had been put up on the walls of a New York subway station, with the Duck Rocker retained as the base image, but, as time went on, people would come by and graffiti over it. Some would try to peel it off the wall, and others would stick another flyer over it until it became almost unrecognisable from the original, exactly how it would look if it did appear on a subway wall.'

 

I suppose it's fair to say that Duck Rock is Egan's greatest achievement as a designer of record covers [4]; although his recreation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) for the cover of the Bow Wow Wow album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981), will always just top it for some of us [5].

 

 

II. 

 

I first met Nick Egan back in the spring of 1983, at Malcolm's first floor office on Denmark Street, after he'd kindly offered to help find me a six-week work attachment of some description. He was very tall and thin with lots of blonde hair and wore a large punk-style jumper, a pair of striped pirate trousers, and a Buffalo coat from Nostalgia of Mud, so looked good.     

 

He gave me several names and numbers to try, including that of the press officer at Charisma Records, and told me not to worry as he was sure something could definitely be arranged (although unfortunately not at Moulin Rouge, as he and McLaren were both going to be in New York for a lot of the time in April and May). 

Thus it was I ended up at 90 Wardour Street; in the Charisma offices above the Marquee Club, working as Lee Ellen Newman's assistant (and general dog's body). Amongst my more amusing assignments was taking the Duck Rocker to the HMV, where it was to feature in a window display dressed by Nick to promote Malcolm's album [6].

 

Whether this was the original customised boom box - or one of several that were made - I'm not sure; but it looked fantastic and was surprisingly heavier to carry than one might imagine. Judging by the stares of astonishment it received - and the number of people who stopped me as I walked along Oxford Street requesting a photo - it wasn't only the Zulus in South Africa, the Hip-hoppers in New York, or the Hilltoppers in the Appalachian Mountains, who were enchanted by it.       

Unfortunately, I didn't think to have a photo taken with the Duck Rocker. However, here's a picture taken in the Charisma press office, standing in front of a smaller replica (which, I think, was eventually given away as a prize in a Smash Hits competition), accompanied by a photo of Malcolm in NYC with the mighty original [7].

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren's groundbreaking studio album Duck Rock, produced by Trevor Horn, was originally released on Charisma Records in 1983. Arguably, it has proved to be as influential - if not more so - than Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). 

      A 40th anniversary double vinyl edition was issued on the independent label State51 Conspiracy in 2023. This featured six additional tracks and was produced in collaboration with Young Kim of the Malcolm McLaren Estate: click here for details.

 

[2] Duck Rock (2023), by Nick Egan, is available to buy from the Wilma Gallery: click here for more details. For those who can't afford the asking price of the original canvas (£22,800), there are some very nice limited edition prints available, starting from just £150: click here. 

      Other works by Egan can also be viewed on (and purchased from) the Wilma Gallery website: click here.     

[3] Keith Haring (1958-1990), was an American Pop artist who emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. At Nick Egan's invitation, he provided the illustration that formed the pink background image of the Duck Rock sleeve (for which he was paid $1000).

      Dondi White (1961-1998), was also an American street artist; he provided the Duck Rock lettering, again having been asked to do so by Nick Egan (unfortunately, I don't know how much he was paid).

 

[4] The album cover artwork for Duck Rock is now included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art: click here.

 

[5] Amusingly, Egan transformed Andy Earl's 1981 photograph, inspired by Manet's canvas, back into a painting entitled We're Only in it For the Manet (2023): click here for details. 

      By his own admission, Egan always felt a little awkward being credited for the original record sleeve, as it contained none of his graphics; yes, he directed the photo shoot, but the artist responsible for the actual image was Andy Earl. With this new canvas, however, he has made it very much his own.       

      For those who are interested, I explain why I love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe in a post on TTA dated 27 April 2017: click here. 

[6] According to my diary, this was Monday 23 May, 1983. 

      Amusingly, Malcolm had agreed to dance with a buffalo gal in the store window on the following Saturday, but he pulled out at the very last minute, insisting he must have been drunk to have ever agreed to such; much to Lee Ellen's irritation, as she had already informed several journalists who went along to witness the event.  

 

[7] The photo was taken by Bob Gruen in April 1983. Many more wonderful photos of McLaren taken by Gruen can be found on the latter's website: click here.

 

 

Bonus 1: click here for a fascinating interview with Nick Egan conducted by Mike Goldstein in August 2013, in which he discusses his work with Malcolm on the cover of Duck Rock. As Egan makes clear, he was involved with McLaren as a conceptual partner rather than simply an art director; in other words, he worked on Duck Rock from its inception all the way through its recording and mixing, contributing ideas at every stage. 

      Egan is currently working on a book project which explores the cultural influence of Malcolm McLaren and features his artwork from the Duck Rock period. 

 

Bonus 2: To watch the feature documentary Creative Vandal (dir. Peter Pahor, 2024), chronicling the career of Nick Egan, click here. 

 

Bonus 3: The essential track on Duck Rock is, of course, 'Buffalo Gals', which was released as a single in November 1982 on Charisma Records. The video pretty much captures what was happening in NYC at the time (filtered through the imagination of Malcolm McLaren who directed it): click here.

      For those who might be interested, my post on 'Buffalo Gals' (dated 19 Feb 2019) can be accessed by clicking here.     

 

Dangerously Close to Love: Hommage à Steve Jones (Sex Pistol and Style Icon)

 

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy shirt and pair of 

Seditionaries boots and looking like the coolest man alive

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

I. 

 

If Johnny Rotten was the face of punk - and Malcolm McLaren the brains - then Steve Jones was the genitalia; the one who supplied a lot of the stylish swagger and foul-mouthed humour to the Sex Pistols; the one who called Bill Grundy a fucking rotter ...

 

Perhaps that's why I always had a lot of affection for Jones, who, in 1972, co-founded The Strand [1] with former schoolmates Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale [2]. They were the band from out of which the Sex Pistols would eventually evolve, sans Wally, but with the crucial addition of Glen Matlock on bass and, later, John Lydon, as lead vocalist and frontman; a role that Jones was never comfortable in. 

 

In fact, Jones was probably much happier nicking musical equipment from wealthy rock stars and clothes from the King's Road store owned by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. We might discuss whether Vicious is fairly labelled as The Gimmick - or Rotten as The Collaborator - in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), but Jones certainly loved to steal and so his being cast as The Crook is hardly unjust.    

Fortunately for Jones, Malcolm seemed extremely fond of him and in mid-1975, after years of constant pestering from Jones on the matter, McLaren reluctantly agreed to become the group's manager - but only on the condition that Cook and Jones agree to fire Nightingale (which they did). 

 

Mclaren was also keen that the band change their name and, after suggesting various alternatives, it was agreed that they would be known as Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols ...

 

For McLaren, the latter part of the name not only referenced his and Vivienne's store, then called SEX, but it also hinted at the idea of young assassins for whom everything was permitted and to whom it was reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

As for the first part of the name ... well, Kutie was a word much favoured by pornographers to describe a young female model; thus it was, for example, that a vintage fetish magazine published in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entitled QT, punning on this term, as well as the idea of it being something that those in the know kept quiet about [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Why did Wally have to go? 

 

Partly it was because he was, at heart, more pub rock than punk rock and he and Jones found themselves constantly at odds over the band's musical direction; the former favouring a traditional R&B sound, whereas the latter was very much into Bowie, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls.  

 

But it was also a question of style, not just music; Nightingale didn't look the part, whereas the rest of the band - Cook, Matlock, and especially Jones - were as obsessed with fashion as they were with music; particularly the unique designs sold at 430 King's Road, created by McLaren and Westwood.  

 

This is evidenced by the above photo, taken in August 1976, in which Jones can be seen wearing a pink striped Anarchy shirt, accurately described by Paul Gorman as "the visual equivalent of the music made by McLaren's charges the Sex Pistols; jarring, violently expressive and an act of collage representing an exciting and scrambled manifesto of desires" [4]. 

 

This variant of the shirt contains several of the (now) familiar elements, including the Karl Marx silk patch, the chaos armband, and a stencilled slogan that greatly amused McLaren: Dangerously Close to Love.  

 

Jones is also wearing a pair of Seditionaries boots; if hippies liked their Birkenstock sandals - and skinheads loved their Doc Martens - then the footwear of choice for those punks who could afford to buy a pair was this refashioned suede and leather jodhpur boot, commisioned from the famous English shoemakers George Cox, that came complete with bondage-style straps and buckles.  

I'm not sure about the blue denim jeans - or the slightly dodgy-looking barnet - but Jones looks the business in this picture - as indeed do the rest of the band (before punk became just another uniform):

 

The Sex Pistols: Rotten, Matlock, Cook, and Jones

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The band took their original name - later changed to the Swankers, at Wally Nightingale's suggestion - from the Roxy Music song 'Do the Strand', written by Bryan Ferry and found on the album For Your Pleasure (Island Records, 1973). Steve Jones has often spoken of his love for Roxy Music during the glam rock period. 

      Those who don't know the song - as well as those who never tire of hearing it - can click here, or here to watch a live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, 3 April 1973). Surprisingly, 'Do the Strand' wasn't released in the UK as a single until 1978, when it failed to chart.  

 

[2] The guitarist Wally Nightingale is arguably the Pete Best of the Sex Pistols story; it was he who suggested to Cook and Jones that they form a band and he would happily assist the latter in stealing instruments and equipment. He is also credited with writing the music for 'Did You No Wrong', a song which featured as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single 'God Save the Queen' (1977) - a song that I hated then and still hate now; but which can be played by clicking here.  

      Unfortunately, McLaren didn't think he fitted the image for the band that he had in mind. And so he was fired and Jones became the guitarist. Within six months of Nightingale leaving, they had found a new singer and played their first gig as the Sex Pistols (6 November, 1975) - and the rest, as they say, is history. Sadly, Nightingale died, aged 40, in 1996; still somewhat bitter about his expulsion.    

 

[3] Published monthly by the London-based company Concord Publications, QT ran for 94 issues between late 1956 and the summer of 1964. Click here for more details. In 1974, the magazine was revived under the title New QT, again featuring the work of Britain's top glamour photographer Russell Gay and published by Concord.  

 

[4] Paul Gorman, 'The Anarchy Shirt', Dazed (1 May, 2013): click here.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Silly Thing' is a song written by Paul Cook and Steve Jones and which features the latter on vocals. It was released as the third single from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), reached number 6 in the UK charts, and is a fresh and crisp example of punk popcorn: click here.     

Shadows Are the Means by Which Bodies Display Their Form

Malcolm McLaren, photographed by Bob Gruen in NYC, 

jumping in front of a Richard Hambleton Shadowman,  

whilst an amused Andrea Linz looks on (1983) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

I have to admit, for a long time I was one of those people who (mistakenly) believed that the human death shadows left behind at Hiroshima were due to the vaporisation of bodies after the Americans detonated an atomic bomb over the city on 6 August, 1945, killing tens of thousands of people (mostly civilians). 

 

I now know, however, that the shadows are not the vaporised remains of the dead, but were caused, rather, by the flash bleaching of the surrounding area behind the bodies located directly in the path of the blast and that, as a matter of fact, it would take a huge amount of energy to instantly vaporise a living body (far more energy even than released by Little Boy) [2].

Nevertheless, this doesn't rob them of their macabre interest and poignancy. 

 

 

II.

 

I don't know if the Canadian artist Richard Hambleton was thinking of the above when he came up with his idea of the Shadowman, but when I look at his work I'm certainly reminded of what happened in Japan (just as when viewing the Human Shadow Etched in Stone exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I can't help thinking of Hambleton's work).

 

Along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hambling emerged out of the vibrant NYC art scene in the 1980s, although he considered himself a conceptual artist rather than merely a street artist, even if he often graffitied his images on to the walls of public buildings.

 

Early work includes his notorious series of Mass Murder images (1976-78), in which he painted what appeared to be a chalk outline around bodies of volunteers pretending to be homicide victims and then splashed some red paint around to complete the bloody crime scene. These scenes were reproduced on the streets of numerous cities across the US and Canada and would often startle passersby.  

 

But it's the mysterious (somewhat scary) Shadowman paintings for which he is now best remembered [3]; each one a life-sized figure splashed with black paint on hundreds of buildings and other structures across New York City (and, later, other cities, including London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome). 

      

Again, Hambleton often selected locations calculated to have maximum impact on those who encountered a Shadowman - frightening some and delighting the imagination of others; including Malcolm McLaren, who persuaded the artist to license a design for his and Vivienne Westwood's final collaboration together: Witches [4].

 

It was during this duck rocking period that I first met McLaren and I vaguely remember him telling me that 'shadows are the means by which bodies display their form' (though I've since discovered that he was, in fact, quoting Leonardo da Vinci).

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The photo of Mclaren, his talented muse Andrea Linz, and Hambleton's Shadowman was taken by the American photographer Bob Gruen on Bethune Street, in the West Village, in April 1983. This and many other photos of Malcolm can be found (and purchased) on Gruen's website: click here.

 

[2] On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Little Boy atomic bomb was detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over the city of Hiroshima, exploding with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT.

      Among its other effects, it subjected the ground area to an extremely high radiant temperature for several seconds; high enough to set clothing alight and cause extensive damage to human flesh, but not high enough to vaporise a body so that no physical traces (such as carbonised tissue and bones) would remain. Nevertheless, the belief has persisted that the shadows are the traces (or even the souls) of people killed, quite literally, in a flash.  

 

[3] I say remembered for rather than known for as Hambleton died on 29 October 2017, aged 65.

 

[4] A Shadowman design was used on a roll top jersey skirt that formed part of the McLaren-Westwood Witches collection (A/W 1983): click here to view on Etsy. 

 

 

This post is for Andrea.

 

On the (Lost) Art of Swearing

The Filth and the Fury: 

Sex Pistols x D. H. Lawrence

 

Obscene language ... what language is that? I speak nothing but the fucking English language. 

And if that's obscene then tough shit. - Johnny Rotten [1]

 

I. 

 

Whilst their manager Malcolm McLaren tried to package the band as a combination of sex, style, and subversion, the press had other ideas following the Bill Grundy incident (see below) and would often discuss them in relation to another trio of terms beginning with the letter S: swearing, spitting, and scandalous behaviour. 

It's the first of these things - i.e., the use of language regarded as coarse, blasphemous, or obscene - that I wish to briefly touch on here with reference both to the Sex Pistols and, firstly, to the writer D. H. Lawrence ...

 

 

II. 

 

Following publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), Lawrence conceded that he would henceforth be known as the author who (re-)introduced the so-called obscene words into English literature [2]. 

 

But despite the abuse he received for this, Lawrence insisted on the necessity of having published his book unexpurgated and maintained that "the words that shock so much at first don't shock at all after a while" [3]. 

 

And that's not because we are corrupted by the words and quickly become depraved; rather, says Lawrence, it's because "the words merely shocked the eye, they never shocked the mind at all" [4]. 

 

He continues: "People with no minds may go on being shocked, but they don't matter. People with minds realise that they aren't shocked, and never really were; and they experience a sense of relief." [5]

 

For Lawrence, words such as shit, fuck, cunt, and arse, refer to perfectly natural acts and to organs we all possess: "Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body ..." [6] and so it is the mind we have to liberate, bringing it into harmony with the body and its potencies. Otherwise, we will fall into a kind of madness: like Swift [7].

 

Thus, whether one agrees or disagrees with Lawrence's use of four-letter words throughout Lady C. - and whether one thinks his attempt to cleanse language and free the mind works or fails - it cannot be said that he was merely attempting to épater le bourgeois. 

 

Obviously, it was a novel "written in defiance of convention" [8], but the ridiculous desire simply to shock the respectable middle-class and offend slow-minded and mob-indignant members of the public, was not Lawrence's intention. 

 

The bold (if slightly naive) attempt to give back the body its own phallic language and to startle individuals out of their word-prudery - to remind us that the word arse "is as much god as the word face" [9] - is an attempt to keep society sane.      

 

 

III.

 

I'm not sure that the Sex Pistols shared Lawrence's philosophical concern with revaluing language and preserving social wellbeing, etc. Nevertheless, these foul-mouthed yobs as they were branded, managed to place the question of swearing back on the agenda for discussion - not once but twice.      

 

The first occasion followed what is known as the Bill Grundy incident, in December 1976; a televised early evening interview which, as Paul Gorman says, has attained folkloric proportions within the cultural imagination:

 

"The impact of [Steve] Jones closing the encounter by calling Grundy 'a fucking rotter' - in the process uttering the expletive for only the third time in four decades of British television broadcasting - was to make the Sex Pistols both media demons and free speech causes célèbres." [10]  

Amusingly, one viewer claimed that he had been so outraged by the incident that he had kicked in the screen of his new £380 colour television set, though I suspect he would be one of those mindless morons that Lawrence describes. 

 

Still, it demonstrates that even fifty years after the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover - and sixteen years following the Chatterley trial at the Old Bailey - expletives could still cause shock and outrage amongst some sections of the Great British Public.   

 

 

IV. 

 

The second time the Sex Pistols brought the question of what does and does not constitute offensive language to public attention was in November 1977, following release of their debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks ... [11]

 

The album, banned from sale by several highstreet retailers - including Boots, Woolworth's, and WH Smith - was available at Virgin Records, including the Nottingham branch where, on 9 November, the police arrested the store manager, Chris Searle, for displaying promotional material which included the word 'bollocks' in the window, after previously warning him on several occasions not to do so.  

 

Searle was charged with contravening the Indecent Advertisement Act (1889) and found himself in front of three local magistrates two weeks later. 

 

What might have remained a small matter, became a story of great national interest when Richard Branson - owner of the Virgin Record Stores and the Virgin Records label that the Sex Pistols were signed to - hired the famous barrister John Mortimer QC to (successfully) defend the case.

 

By calling a professor of English at the University of Nottingham as an expert witness, Mortimer was able to show that bollocks in the context of the album title clearly meant nonsense and derived from an Old English term for the kind of rubbish spoken by clergymen in their sermons and had no obscene sexual meaning, even if, etymologically, the term referred to the testicles. 

The chairman of the court hearing reluctantly concluded that as much as he and his colleagues wholeheartedly deplored the 'vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits', they must find the defendant not guilty of any crime. 

 

Helped in part by the publicity surrounding the case, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols topped the charts and quickly went gold; Punk? Call it filthy lucre - a prime example of how to generate cash from chaos, as Malcolm might say. 

 

V.

 

Of course, all of this is a long, long time ago and we live today in a very different world from the one in which Lawrence wrote or even the one in which the Sex Pistols recorded. 

 

Indeed, one is almost tempted to speak now of the lost art of swearing as a once precious verbal resource has almost entirely been robbed of its potency. Rendered banal through endless repetition, the word fuck, for example, no longer shocks, no longer offends, no longer amuses, no longer endears. 

  

That's not to say, however, that the present doesn't have its own list of taboo terms and one smiles to see the content warnings given at the start of TV sitcoms from the 1970s: discriminatory language is what gets Gen Z viewers clutching their pearls and calling for the morality police, not foul language.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have slightly altered the transcript of an interview that Rotten gave to Dutch TV in 1977. 

      The interviewer asks (rather strangely) about infamous language and although Rotten twice repeats this term in his answer, one suspects that he was aware that the interviewer intended to say obscene language, although, one cannot be quite sure; the Dutch translation that appears on screen is schuttingtaal, which is usually given in English as 'jargon' or 'secret language'. 

      Click here to watch on YouTube.

[2] As he writes in his 'Introduction to Pansies' (1929): "I am abused most of all for using the so-called 'obscene' words [...] all the old words that belong to the body below the navel [...]" - words that cause the censor-morons to get excited and allow policemen to think they have the right to arrest you. See D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 664.

 

[3-5] D. H. Lawrence, 'A  Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover', in Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 307.

 

[6] Ibid., p. 309. 

      In his 'Introduction to Pansies', Lawrence writes: "What is obvious is that the [obscene] words [...] have been dirtied by the mind, by unclean mental association. The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply. But the mind drags in a filthy association, calls up some repulsive emotion. Well then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job." See p. 664 of The Poems, Vol. I (2013). 

 

[7] See Lawrence's remarks on Swift and his horror at the fact that his beloved Celia defecates in 'Introduction to Pansies' ... pp. 665-666. But see also my post entitled 'Celia Shits! Notes on Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" and (Alleged) Coprophobia' (2 April 2024): click here.     

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'A  Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover' ... p. 334

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Pansies' ... p. 664.

 

[10] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 339. 

      For those readers who aren't familiar with the details of the Bill Grundy incident, let me briefly summarise: After Queen cancelled their appearance on the live television show Today show at the last minute, the Sex Pistols were offered the spot in order to promote their debut single, 'Anarchy in the UK', and explain what punk rock was all about. 

      Things started badly and quickly got worse when it was clear that Grundy was hostile and dismissive of the band and that the latter - particularly guitarist Steve Jones - were not prepared to take his bullshit, nor listen to his creepy sexual innuendo when speaking to a female member of their entourage called Siouxsie Sioux. Suggesting to her that they might 'meet afterwards' triggered Jones into calling him a 'dirty sod' and a 'dirty old man'. 

      Stupidly, Grundy then challenged Jones to 'say something outrageous' - which he did; calling Grundy a "dirty bastard" and a "dirty fucker". Grundy responded, "What a clever boy!" to which Jones hilariously replied, "What a fucking rotter!" 

      Predictably, the phone lines to the Thames switchboard lit up and the national press had a field day. Grundy was suspended by Thames and his career effectively ended. The Sex Pistols were fired shortly afterwards by their record label EMI and were now branded as public enemies. 

      The interview - click here - has become one of the most requested TV clips of all time. It will be noted that Johnny Rotten having muttered the word 'shit' prior to Jones's outburst almost apologises at first for his use of a 'rude word'.    

 

[11] The album was originally going to be called God Save the Sex Pistols, but the title was changed based on a phrase favoured by Steve Jones, which, as Rotten explained, was a popular working-class expression meaning 'stop talking rubbish'.

 

 

Destroy! Notes on a Punk Imperative

D. H. Rotten in a Seditionaries Destroy shirt [1]

 

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of the key ideas that might be discussed in order to lend credence to such a thesis is the concept of destruction ...

 

 

II. 

 

As I'm sure many readers will know, 'Anarchy in the UK' famously ends with a call to destroy; not so much anything in particular as everything in general, although earlier in the same song Rotten identifies the passer-by as a prime example of the sort of person he wishes to eliminate [2]. 

 

Funny enough, Lawrence too dislikes non-combatants; those gentle readers who refuse to actively engage with his texts are encouraged to curl up with books by other authors [3]. He imagines his ideal reader as a rampageous and ferocious reader; a surly, rabid reader; a hell-cat of a reader - not one who meekly passes by or turns the page on those passages that might shock or offend them [4].  

 

 

III.

 

Lawrence advocates for the necessity of destruction not only if one aims, as an artist, to create a new vision of the world via the liberation of what he terms chaos [5], but as one who actively fights, like Oliver Mellors, to preserve the tenderness of life against those forces of mechanised greed that negate and deaden. 

 

And, like Nietzsche, Lawrence also relates the process of becoming and self-overcoming to destruction: "The man I know myself to be must be destroyed before the true man I am can exist." [6] 

 

 

IV.

 

The notion of the creative potential within destruction is something Malcolm McLaren will later echo when defending the Sex Pistols from critics, such as Giovanni Dadomo, who accuse them of nihilism [7]. 

 

But McLaren, as someone who passionately subscribes to the idea of flamboyant failure [8], is also keen to destroy one ideal above all others: success. If Rotten hates those who pass by on the other side of the road, McLaren hates those who strive to achieve what they posit as a worthy goal or realise what they imagine to be a positive outcome.   

 

And Lawrence too hates those such as the rich, young, Irish playwright Michaelis, cheerfully prostituting himself to the bitch goddess Success, as she roams "snarling and protective" [9] around his heels. 

 

For what is benign success at last, but another form of nothingness?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based upon an original photo of Johnny Rotten taken by Dennis Morris in 1977, which, along with many other great images, can be found in Destroy: The Sex Pistols, 1977: Jubilee Edition, by Dennis Morris (Creation Books, 2002). 

      The Destroy shirt was designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood for sale in their shop - then named Seditionaries - at 430 King's Road, in 1977. Made of muslin, it features extended sleeves, with strait-jacket clasps and D rings and is screen-printed with a design showing an inverted crucifixion scene, a swastika, a Jamie Reid drawing of a Royal Mail postage stamp, and the word destroy written in capital letters. The bottom of the shirt contains lyrics from 'Anarchy in the UK'. 

      As Paul Gorman rightly notes, "this new top [...] epitomised the creative exchange conducted between McLaren and Westwood: her technical daring combined with his graphic understanding and political discourse to produce the most surprising outcomes existing way beyond the purview of fashion". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 348. 

 

[2] 'Anarchy in the UK', by the Sex Pistols, was released as a debut single in November 1976 on EMI Records. It can also be found on their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977). The single (featuring 'I Wanna Be Me' on the B-side) reached number 38 on the UK singles chart. It's essentially a punk call to arms. Click here to watch the band performing the song.

 

[3] See the letter to Carlo Linati (22 Jan 1925) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 201, where he writes: "I can't bear art that you can walk around and admire [...] whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it - if he wants a safe seat in the audience - let him read someone else." 

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 205.    

[5] See the recent post entitled 'On the Art of Destruction and the Creative Potential Within Chaos' (21 Jan 2025): click here. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 34. It's unfortunate that Lawrence relates his thinking on the self to truth (authenticity), but the point remains that destruction is the key. 

[7] In November 1976, the BBC invited the Sex Pistols to be interviewed on the current affairs programme, Nationwide. Along with the regular presenters, they also brought in music journalist Giovanni Dadomo, to challenge the band. He dismissed their music as being derivative and asserted that destruction for its own sake is dull and doesn't offer any hope. McLaren countered by saying: "You have to destroy in order to create [...] You have to break it down and build it up again in a different form."

      Readers interested in knowing more can visit the BBC Culture website: click here. 

 

[8] McLaren picked up his radical idea of failure from one of his tutors at art college; see Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... pp. 48-49.

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 21. 

 

 

For earlier posts in this series on D. H. Lawrence as Sex Pistol, click here, here, and here.

On the Art of Destruction and the Creative Potential Within Chaos

Agents of Chaos: Messrs. Rotten and Lawrence

 

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of his texts that you might discuss in order to lend credence to such a thesis is his introduction to Harry Crosby's volume of poetry Chariot of the Sun [1]. 

 

Entitled 'Chaos in Poetry', this short text develops the idea not merely of creative disorder that Malcolm McLaren and his young punk protégés will later inject into the moribund UK music scene of the mid-1970s, but of chaos as a realm of infinite possibilities and strange becomings [2].  

According to Lawrence, poetry is not merely a matter of words: essentially, it is an act of attention and the attempt to discover a new world within the known world. 

 

But this discovery of a new world involves an act of violence; the slitting of what he terms the Umbrella and by which he refers to all that is erected between ourselves and the sheer intensity of lived experience (our ideals, our conventions, and fixed forms of every description) [3]. 

 

The poet, then, as Lawrence understands them, is also a kind of terrorist; an enemy of human security and comfort. One whose concern is not with safeguarding the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, or merely experimenting with form and technique, but who wishes rather to unleash the inhuman and forever-surging chaos that punks, animals, and flowers all live within [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

On 12 February 1976, the Sex Pistols were due to play at the famed Soho music venue the Marquee, supporting the pub rock band Eddie & the Hot Rods. 

 

Shortly before the gig took place, they were interviewed by Neil Spencer from the NME and extracts from this accompanied a review of the above performance, including what has since become a famous quote from guitarist Steve Jones: 

 

"Actually, we're not into music. We're into chaos." [5]    

As Bill Grundy later discovered, Jones always did have a nice turn of phrase. However, I think we can safely assume that he'd picked up this particular term - chaos - from Malcolm, as - along with the word ruins - it had a privileged place within McLaren's thinking.

 

For McLaren, as for Nietzsche, one must always retain a little chaos in one's character if one wishes to give birth to a dancing star [6]; and for McLaren, as for Lawrence, an originary chaos is what lies beneath the ruins of culture and its fixed forms erected to keep us safe and secure, though which in the long run cause us to become deadened. 

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: of course we require "a little order to protect us from chaos" [7], as Deleuze and Guattari recognise. 

 

But so too do we need a little chaos to protect us from the monumental dead weight of civilisation. 

 

And so we need our agents of chaos and angels of destruction - whether they come with red beards like D. H. Lawrence, or spiky red hair like Johnny Rotten.   

 

Sous les pavés, la plage!

 

And surely that's not simply a cry for freedom, so much as for the joy that comes when we smash those structures and systems, narratives and networks, that enframe us within a highly-ordered (and boring) world of discipline, convention, and common sense and get back to chaos.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lawrence wrote the introduction in 1928. A revised version was published under the title 'Chaos in Poetry' in the magazine Echanges in December 1929 (the same month in which Crosby committed suicide). Another version was used for the Black Sun Press edition of Chariot of the Sun (1931). 

      The text can be found in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116. 

 

[2] I am, of course, indebted to the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari who, in their final work together, argues that philosophy, science, and art all have the essential task of confronting chaos and that each discipline does so in a manner specific to itself as a way of thinking and creating. 

      If philosophy adventures into chaos via a plane of immanence and science via a plane of reference, then art constructs a plane of composition; indeed, this, for Deleuze and Guattari is definitional of art. But by this they refer not merely to technical composition, but an aesthetic composition concerned with sensation. Thus art is a unique way of thinking and of opening a plane within chaos, which, whilst related to science and philosophy, should not be thought of as merely an aestheticisation of these practices. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (Verso, 1994). And see also my post on this book dated 23 May 2013: click here.   

 

[3] See the post entitled 'On Poetry, Chaos and the Great Umbrella' (10 June 2013): click here.

 

[4] Unfortunately, unlike animals and flowers, even punks can't live within chaos for very long and that is why they soon topple into cliché and become stereotypical; why they parade up and down the King's Road pretending that they are revolutionaries breathing the wild air of chaos, when they are all the while living and dying beneath the Great Umbrella.

 

[5] Neil Spencer's piece in the New Musical Express (21 Feb 1976) was entitled 'Don't look over your shoulder, but the Sex Pistols are coming'. It was reproduced in The Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of its publication in 2006: click here. 

      Readers will note that no mention is given to the headlining Eddie & the Hot Rods, who had some of their equipment smashed by the Sex Pistols when the night descended (appropriately and not atypically) into chaos (they, the Sex Pistols, were booed off stage and subsequently banned from playing at the Marquee in future).

 

[6] See section 5 of the Prologue to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

 

[7] Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 201.

 

 

For related posts to this one, please click here, here, and here.   

The Vivienne Westwood Story: Will It All End In Tears?

Palace X Vivienne Westwood (Autumn 2024)

Click here and/or here for more details. 

Photo by Shoichi Aoki.

 

 

I. 

 

It's exactly two years ago today that the 81-year-old British fashion designer (and cultural icon, etc., etc.) Vivienne Westwood died, peacefully surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London [1].

 

But it didn't take 24 months for the (all-too-predictable) falling out between the Vivienne Westwood label in the red corner and, in the blue corner, the Vivienne Foundation, as the former's commercial interests and the latter's values soon came into conflict.

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Foundation - a not-for-profit organisation established to protect the legacy of Dame Westwood and to create a better society [2] - the fashion label based designs for a sell-out collection in collaboration with the uber-trendy skateboard brand, Palace [3], on her extensive archive without any consultation [4].

 

The row, which erupted in October of this year, resulted in Cora Corré - Westwood's granddaughter - resigning her role as campaigns manager at the fashion label, claiming that her grandmother would not be happy with the way the company was being run and calling for the removal of the CEO, Carlo D'Amario, after Westwood's close and trusted friend, British designer Jeff Banks, was forced out of his role as a director of the company in July [5]. 

 

What Cora and her father (Joe Corré) now think of Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood's (third) husband and long-time design partner - a man who supported the ousting of Banks whilst securing his own position as creative director at the fashion brand and personally approving the collaboration with Palace - I don't know (and wouldn't like to speculate).  

 

As to what I think ... 

 

Well, to be honest, I'm almost beyond caring and can't take either the Vivienne Foundation or the Vivienne Westwood fashion label very seriously. Indeed, one is almost tempted to echo Shakespeare's Mercutio and wish a plague on both their houses!

 

For ultimately, I find the manner in which Malcolm McLaren has had his seminal role downplayed in the official Westwood history more of a concern [6].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my personal recollection of Westwood, published on 30 December 2022, to mark her passing: click here. 

 

[2] How does one create a better society? Well, according to the Vivienne Foundation, one must: halt climate change; stop war; defend human rights; and protest capitalism. 

 

[3] Palace is a London-based skateboard brand established in 2009, founded by Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis, and very popular within the urban streetwear community. The collaboration with Vivienne Westwood was born, apparently, from the subversive spirit that both brands share and has culture and humour at its heart.

 

[4] Westwood transferred all of her creative design and property rights to the Vivienne Foundation, which she established in collaboration with her sons and granddaughter, in 2019.  

 

[5] In a post published on Instagram (22 Oct 2024), Ms. Corré writes: 

      

"There has been much confusion around my current role within the Vivienne Westwood company. Although, the company bares my grandmother's name, I do not feel at this time that it reflects her values.

      

Vivienne taught me to always stand up for what is right and I want to stay true to that. She created the Foundation in 2019 to pursue her activism outside of the constraints placed on her by the managing director of the company. 

       

Due to a breakdown in relations between the Vivienne Westwood company and the Vivienne Foundation, my role within the company has become untenable.

      

Moving forward, I will focus my energy on honouring my grandmother's legacy through the Vivienne Foundation and continue the work that was so important to her." 

 

[6] McLaren rightly felt that his contributions to fashion history were overlooked or downplayed. 

       One might remind readers, for example, that he was not properly credited for his work on the V&A Westwood retrospective in 2004 and that his name is often removed from archival documentation and photos. Even after taking legal action to correct omissions and inaccuracies, the official V&A catalogue remains an unreliable record of events from the days when he and Westwood were partners. 

      Sadly, the fact is that the fashion industry and media almost entirely buy into the idea that Vivienne was the creative visionary and Malcolm merely an entertaining charlatan of some kind; similarly, there are those within the music business who maintain that Johnny Rotten was the gifted genius behind the Sex Pistols and that McLaren was merely a manager.