You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and Ask Yourself: Does D. H. Refer to D. H. Lawrence?

Two of England's great punk perverts: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) 

and Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

 

 

At number 7 on Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment - as compiled by the man himself in February 2000 for The Guardian - is Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, which he describes as: "The most melancholic and blissfully romantic novel I have recently re-read." [1]

 

And so, it's not entirely unreasonabe to ask the question first raised by Paul Gorman [2]: do the letters D. H. on the right hand side of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning ...' shirt refer to the author of English literature's most scandalous novel?   

 

The fact that McLaren had "recently re-read" Lady C. in 2000 and still responded so positively to it, would suggest that he was a longtime fan of the work and we can probably assume he admired Lawrence for confronting the English with the one thing which, in McLaren's view, really scares them: sex.   

 

Of course, Lawrence would have hated McLaren and the Sex Pistols, but then Lawrence pretty much hated everyone and there's no denying that in his willingness to provoke and outrage and challenge the moral and political authority of the Establishment, Lawrence had an attitude which those who later idenified as punk rockers would very much recognise as similar to their own.    

 

Rather strangely, if there's one person who forms a kind of bridge between Lawrence and McLaren its the author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. 

 

For not only did the latter openly admire Lawrence and his writings, even at a time when it was not fashionable to do so, but he was on friendly terms with McLaren whom he famously referred to as the Diaghilev of punk [3] at the opening of an episode of The South Bank Show devoted to the latter [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment', The Guardian (21 Feb 2000): click here.  

[2] See Gorman's blog post on paulgormanis.com: click here. Or click here for a revised and updated version of this post with fresh links.  

[3] Whether he coined this phrase, I don't know; but it makes a nice change from the usual description of McLaren as the Svengali of punk. 

[4] See the post 'When Melvyn Met Malcolm (A Brief Reflection on The South Bank Show Episode 178)' published on Torpedo the Ark on 10 April 2023: click here. 

When Melvyn Met Malcolm (A Brief Reflection on The South Bank Show Episode 178)

Malcolm McLaren - Boy George - Adam Ant

The South Bank Show (S8/E9 - 1984)

 

The South Bank Show is a British television programme which treats high art and popular culture with equal respect. Conceived, written, and presented by Melvyn Bragg, it was originally produced by LWT and broadcast on ITV between 1978 and 2010 [1]. 

Of the many excellent episodes during this period - and there are over 730 to choose from - I suppose my favourite is the one broadcast on 2 December 1984 (S8/E9) [2], featuring Malcolm McLaren and filmed whilst the latter was recording Fans - his amusing attempt to fuse opera with R&B [3]. 

 

It's not just that the film provides an excellent insight into Malcolm's thinking, it also reveals how two of his protégés - Adam Ant and Boy George - really didn't understand his motivation, or quite get what the spirit of punk was really all about; namely, a desire not merely to question authority and challenge conventions, but destroy success (i.e., the very thing these ambitious, hard-working pop stars most wanted).   

 

When speaking about Malcolm, George, for example, says: 

 

"He's somebody who's capable of being absolutely brilliant. But for some reason, you know, he's someone who regards success as being anti what he believes in and he gets to a certain level then he wants to smash the wall down." 

 

Whilst Adam confesses (with the same disbelief at McLaren's anarcho-nihilism): 

"I don't understand all the anarchist stuff, with him. Obviously, that's a lot to do with his youth, or whatever. He likes to do things [...] and afterwards he just smashes it all to bits, he just destroys it." [4]

 

This, of course, is precisely the aspect of McLaren I most admired; the fact that, in his own words, he was not an empire builder ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A new version of the series began broadcasting on Sky Arts in May 2012. 

 

[2] As Paul Gorman reminds us, this episode was the brainchild of director Andy Harries and, crucially, it "conferred importance to McLaren's position in British cultural life". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 555-56.

 

[3] Fans was McLaren's second studio album released on Charisma Records (1984). Although not an entirely convincing or successful experiment, the album did give rise to the astonishing single 'Madame Butterfly (Un bel dì vedremo)' and the steamy video that accompanied it, directed by the fashion photographer Terence Donovan: click here.

 

[4] Boy George and Adam Ant interviewed on The South Bank Show S8/E9 (1984): click here and go to 3:42 - 4:08.