Memories

Public Image Ltd: Memories 

(Virgin Records, 1979)

  

"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of pain."

 

 

I. 

 

Looking back, one of the admirable things about 22-year-old John Lydon, after he left the Sex Pistols in 1978, is he had no time for rosy retrospection. 

 

Indeed, if anything, he viewed his own punk past and Rotten persona negatively - as something to be abandoned or overcome, rather than desperately clung to or fondly remembered:

 

I'm not the same as when I began  ... This person's had enough of useless memories ... [1]

 

 

II.

 

However we attempt to configure it, the nature of one's relationship to one's own past remains an interesting question ...

 

Is it best, for example, to simplify one's own history and, in the process of simplifying it, also give it a positive gloss; are good memories (and reshaped lies) vital in maintaining self-esteem and happiness? 

 

Or is it best (if possible) to never look back; to regard nostalgia as a dangerous disease; to tie innocence and becoming to forgetfulness and/or an active denial of the past? 

 

It was, after all, because of Lydon's refusal to rest on his laurels or bullshit about his experience as a Sex Pistol, that he was able - in collaboration with Keith Levene and Jah Wobble - to deliver unto the world his Metal Box [2]. 

 

Arguably, with this album Lydon proved himself to be a genuinely creative artist (or a true star as he once signed himself to me) and not merely a derivative talent or copycat; i.e., one who uses memory to mimic ability and as a resource to plunder. 

 

As Nietzsche says, original artists and great poets seek to counter the deadening effects of an all-too-faithful memory (i.e., a mere recording capability that is of no value creatively speaking).

 

Sadly, however, Lydon never quite succeeded in getting rid of the albatross and he became a monster of passive memory, increasingly consumed by ressentiment. 

 

Now, his entire being revolves around having the last word, settling old scores, slagging off everyone he's ever known or worked with; a grotesque (and bloated) parody of his former self, it should be clear by now that he's the one who makes us feel ashamed ...

 

We let him stay too long.  

 

And he's old.    

 

Notes

 

[1] Lines from the singles 'Public Image' (Virgin Records, 1978) and 'Memories' (Virgin Records, 1979), by Public Image Limited. 

      Cf. Lydon's attitude to the past (and the importance of memory) in the single 'Hawaii' - taken from the album End of World (PiL Official, 2023) - in which he remembers all the good times shared with his wife, Nora Forster. For a discussion of this song, click here.    

 

[2] Metal Box, was PiL's second studio album released by Virgin Records in November 1979. The album is a million miles away from Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) and, indeed, a significant departure from PiL's debut album released eleven months earlier; the band moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction. Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark of post-punk. An alternative mix of 'Memories' appears on the album - click here to play the 2009 remastered version.  

     

 

For an earlier post in which I discuss Johnny Rotten as an artist in decline, click here.

 

 

Wigging Out with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol: Self-Portrait  
from the Fright Wig series (1986)

I.

A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair; or, rather less convincingly, synthetic fibres. Whilst concealing baldness is certainly a popular reason for wearing one, there are many others; some people wear them on religious grounds, for example; some do so simply for the pleasure of enhancing, disguising, or transforming their appearance. 

The Case of Andy Warhol is particularly interesting ...


II.

If, initially, Warhol wore a wig as a young man in the 1950s in order to hide prematurely thinning hair, he eventually styled his public persona upon a never anything but artificial looking collection of silver-white wigs. Indeed, Warhol's wig-wearing might even be seen as a wonderful piece of performance art concerned with self-creation and self-promotion.    

Made from hair imported from Italy and sewn by famous New York wig maker Paul Bochicchio, Warhol opted for his trademark silver-white wig in order to look slightly alien and also in the knowledge that if you have always looked old, no one can guess your real age. Allowing his own hair to protrude at the bottom of the wig ensured no one mistook it for anything other than a piece of artifice.

Strangely, however, just as the wig came to be seen by others as Andy's natural look, so too did Warhol grow to feel it was an essential element of his identity - we might almost say that just as some wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he wore his soul upon his head. 

And so it is that when Warhol had his wig snatched off his head by a young woman at a book signing in October 1985, it was as much a violent assault as when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously injured the artist back in the summer of '68. Indeed, Warhol described this shocking and painful later event as the day his greatest nightmare came true. 

Nevertheless, real trooper that he was, Warhol simply pulled up the hood on his Calvin Klein coat, smiled, and continued signing copies of his newly published work America. It might also be noted that although the perpetrator of the assault was held until the police arrived, no charges were pressed.


See: Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry covering this wig-grabbing incident at the Rizzoli bookstore in the Soho district of Manhattan, Warhol describes his assailant as very pretty and well-dressed and suggests that this may have been what prevented him from pushing her over the balcony.  

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.