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 Museum 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 reneged 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.

 

 

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

 

Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 2: On Big Flavour Wraps and Vicious Burgers

You pays your money and you takes your choice ...

 McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps (2016) [a]

Vs Jamie Reid's Vicious Burger (1979) [b]

 

 

I. 

 

In the second part of Ian Trowell's dead knot essay, he discusses a 2016 TV ad by the "multinational fast-food franchise" [c] McDonald's for a new summer range of Big Flavour Wraps:

 

"Whilst not all of my observations and suggestions will be intentional on the part of the creative teams associated with the instigation and production of the commercial, my own intentions are to examine the ubiquitous, neutralized and atemporal representations of punk that resonate within the images and actions." [189]

 

Having established that, let's go ...

 

 

II. 

 

Via a detailed, imaginative, and theoretically-informed analysis of each scene, Trowell is very good at relaying the anachronistic tension present in an ad that seems designed to appeal to old punks on the one hand and disorientate them on the other: 

 

"How are we meant to feel, how did we used to feel, what has changed?" [190] 

 

Of course, the assimilation of punk began a long, long time before 2016: what is The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) if not a brutal exposure of the way in which big business indecently exploits young flesh and rapidly co-opts, commodifies, and mythologises groups like the Sex Pistols? 

 

Anyone who felt genuinely shocked and outraged by "such an unholy alliance between McDonald's and punk" [195] - or by Virgin Money's issuing of Never Mind the Bollocks and 'Anarchy in the UK' credit cards the year before [d] - clearly wasn't paying attention to what McLaren and Reid were warning about in the Swindle and clearly hadn't read their Guy Debord [e].

 

Punk - and the very word is already a misunderstanding - may have initially wished to "disrupt cultural, social and historical forms and habits through a multitude of methods" [195], but it didn't take long before the majority of punk performers were looking to build long-lasting careers in the music business. 

 

If rock 'n' roll died when Elvis joined the US Army in 1958, then perhaps we can say punk died when John Lydon decided to trust a hippie and sign an eight album deal with Virgin. McLaren and Reid fought a kind of resistance campaign operating behind enemy lines in those months following the breakup of the group - and, personally, I think the work produced in 1978-79 is some of the most provocative and amusing - but the game was basically up.         

Ultimately, no matter how much some of us wish it were otherwise, the majority of Brits like their Big Flavour Wraps [f]. And, as Trowell rightly notes, for all the faux outrage expressed from some quarters when the McDonald's 2016 campaign was launched, what we didn't hear were the voices of "disgruntled and disgusted [...] customers outraged at the linking of punk and the safe, normative environment of McDonald's" [195].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps campaign (2016) was devised by the American advertising company Leo Burnett - the home of so-called populist creativity. It featured ersatz punk imagery and also incorporated the Buzzcocks' 1978 single 'What Do I Get?', written by Pete Shelley, into a TV ad. Morrissey, like many other old punks, was not best pleased. 

      To watch the 30 second TV ad, dir. Jason Lowe, click here. For further details of the people who worked on the campaign, please click here. 

 

[b] Jamie Reid's promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 'C'mon Everybody', released from the soundtrack of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), featuring a photo of vocalist Sid Vicious by Bob Gruen. For more details see the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here. 

      The Vicious Burger was just one of many imaginary products featured in a fake cinema ad in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): "Feeling uptight, violent, or tense? Why not take it out on a sizzling Vicious Burger; the gristle ball that gives as good as it gets!"

 

[c] 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. 

 

[d] See the post of 12 June 2015: click here. 

[e] Debord used the term récupération to refer to a process by which politically radical ideas and subversive art works are defused, incorporated, and commodified within mainstream culture (usually with the full collaboration of the media). See the post of 26 June 2023, in which I discuss this idea: click here. 

 

[f] According to statista.com, 96% of Brits were aware of McDonald's as a brand in 2023 and 60% not only liked to eat there, but expressed loyalty to the company.

 

  

Musical bonus: Buzzcocks, 'What Do I Get?', (United Artists, 1978): click here for the remastered 2001 version that appears on Singles Going Steady (Domino Recording Co., 2003). And for the official video, which Trowell provides a nice reading of in his essay (pp. 191-92), click here.

To read part one of this post, click here. 

On the Triumph of Karaoke Culture and Punk Pantomime

Poster design for Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave 

(Not exactly Jamie Reid, is it?)

 

 

I. 

 

Shortly before he died in April 2010, Malcolm McLaren bemoaned the fact that artistic creativity (which is a chaotic phenomenon that often ends in failure) was increasingly becoming impossible within what he described as a karaoke world - i.e., an ersatz society, that only provides us with an opportunity to safely revel in the past achievements of others; a life lived by proxy [1]. 

 

And, whilst I'm a little uneasy with his use of words like authenticity, McLaren was making an important (though hardly original) point: Britain's got talent; but it's lost its soul. 

 

And so it is, fifteen years on, the Dominion Theatre in London's West End and numerous other venues around the UK and Ireland are planning to stage Ged Graham's Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave ...   

 

II.

 

Ged Graham is a 62-year-old Irish writer, musician, actor, podcaster and producer; what my mother would call a jack of all trades, but, let's be generous, and say he's a multi-talented and versatile individual with a great many passions and ideas. The sort of person who, when you speak with them, always has another project in the pipeline. 

 

The sort of person also who claims to have lived through punk as a teenager and now, à la Danny Boyle, wants to turn this event into a musical stage show; a combination of pantomime, karaoke, and nostalgia for those who want to sit down and enjoy an evening's entertainment. As Graham says in an interview: 

 

"At sixty-two you don't want to be in a nightclub, watching a band on stage. You want to be sat down with a glass of wine or an £8 bottle of beer in a theatre. The old knees just don’t want to do the standing up gigs anymore ..." [2] 

 

That may be true: but not all of us have come to the conclusion that punk is now simply a family-friendly narrative that provides an opportunity to reminisce and have a good singalong; some of us don't wish to be taken on a rollercoaster ride by an incredibly talented cast of musicians, singers and dancers; some of us seriously doubt that the punk attitude can be recreated on stage (even if it can be mimicked, just as punk fashions can be knocked up by costume designers).   

 

Graham may insist in a promotional statement that Pretty Vacant is "not just a show - it's a rebellion against the ordinary!" [3] - but that, as Steve Jones would say, is a load of old bollocks.  

I don't know if Malcolm will be spinning in his grave at this latest development, or looking on with Sid and laughing. But I do know that members of the following bands who - along with many, many more - presumably gave permission for their music to be used should hang their heads in shame:

 

Sex Pistols

The Clash

Blondie

The Damned

Ramones

Buzzcocks

Sham 69

The Undertones

Tom Robinson Band

Ian Dury and the Blockheads

The Police

The Jam

Generation X

Siouxsie and the Banshees

The Pretenders

Joy Division

The Stranglers

The Rezillos [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers who are interested can click here to watch McLaren deliver his final public talk at the Handheld Learning Conference (2009). Originally entitled 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Txt Pistols', the talk is now better known by the title it appears under on ted.com - 'Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture'. 

[2] Interview with Ged Graham by Kevin Cooper on UK Music Reviews (5 March 2024): click here. 

[3] Click here to read this statement in full on the Pretty Vacant website. You can also buy tickets, visit a picture gallery, sign up to a mailing list, or watch a trailer for the show on the website. The latter can also be found on YouTube: click here.  

 

[4] Obviously, I am disappointed with some of these bands far more than others.    

André Masson and the Sex Pistols

The Surrealist and the Sex Pistol:

 André Masson and Malcolm McLaren

Photos by Man Ray (c. 1930) and Joe Stevens (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When asked shortly before his death: Which living artist do you most admire? 

 

Malcolm McLaren answered: 

 

"When I was 18, I studied for three months under the automatist painter André Masson in France. Every day I would buy him tomatoes, a baguette and a bottle of côtes du rhône, but he never spoke. On my last day he bought me a drink and wished me well. He's dead now, but I remain haunted by him." [1]

 

I don't know how true that is, but it's an amusing story [2] and forms an interesting connection with an artist whose relation to surrealism is much discussed, but whose influence on punk is - as far as I know - rarely mentioned. 

 

 

II.

 

My knowledge of Masson is mostly limited to the period when he worked on the journal founded by Georges Bataille - Acéphale (1936-39). 

 

His cover design for the first issue featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organ should be, has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in the mid-1990s and I'm disappointed that Malcolm didn't ask Jamie or Vivienne to adapt this pagan image on a design for the Sex Pistols.

 

To identify as an anti-Christ is an important start. But equally important is to declare oneself in opposition to the ideal figure of the Vitruvian Man embodying all that is Good, True, and Beautiful - and to repeat after Bataille: "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être." [3]

 

Wouldn't that have made a great punk slogan? 

 

I think so.

And I think also that the sacred conspiracy involving Bataille, Masson, Klossowski and others, anticipates McLaren's idea for SEX as a place which might bring together those sovereign individuals who didn't belong to mainstream society or wish to conform to the dictates of fashion, but wanted to violently affirm their singular being above all else.

 

And so, again, I think it a pity that the dark surrealism of Bataille and Masson - which not only set itself in opposition to all forms of fascism but also all forms of humanism, including André Breton's surrealism - wasn't explored (and exploited) by McLaren; especially as, in Sid Vicious, punk rock had discovered its very own Dionysian superstar [4]; someone who, as Malcolm liked to say, never saw a red light and enacted the primordial powers of instinct and irrationality.  

And, like Masson's acéphalic figure, Vicious even had a penchant for carrying a (sacrificial) knife ... [5]

 

Notes

 

[1] Amy Fleming, 'Portrait of the artist: Malcolm McLaren, musician', in The Guardian (10 Aug 2009): click here. 

      This is an interesting short question and answer piece, which also reveals McLaren's favourite film to be David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). However, I don't think the description of McLaren in the title as a musician is one he would recognise. Sadly, McLaren died eight months after the piece was published (on 8 April 2010). 

 

[2] McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, tells us that prior to beginning life as a student at Harrow Technical College & School of Art, Malcolm was "sent by his mother to a summer school in the south of France" and that this (apparently) involved an internship with André Masson and not just enjoying life on the beach at Cannes. 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 45.

 

[3] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often the original French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'.

      The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, illustrating the essay on p. 180.       

 

[4] See ' Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified' (3 Feb 2024) where I develop this idea: click here.

 

[5] See 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You: Notes on the Case of Sid and Nancy' (30 Dec 2020): click here. 

 

 

This post is dedicated to the Danish art historian and curator Marie Arleth Skov, author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023). Her paper at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication (20 March 2024) - 'Berlin Calling: The Dark, Dramatic, and Dazzling Punk Art Praxes of a Divided City' - was inspirational.

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified

Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified 

(SA/2024) [1]

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; 

Sid Vicious on his motor-bike is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn 

and return again from destruction.

 

 

I.

 

Can it really be forty-five years ago yesterday that Sex Pistol Sid Vicious died, aged twenty-one, from acute intravenous narcotism? 

 

It may seem hard to believe, but time flies and it's absolutely the case that Sid departed this world in the early hours of February 2nd, 1979.

 

 

II. 

 

There's really not much more to say about a death of which so much has already been written. 

 

Besides, I'm not one who mourns or regrets Sid's martyrdom; for his was what we might term a necessary death; fatal in the originary sense of the term and one which secured his tragic status. 

 

It's important to realise that punk was - despite its nihilism and apparent morbidity - a form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; that Sid, as its highest representative (i.e., its one true star), was not just a drug-addicted loser, but an ecstatically overflowing spirit who redeemed the contradictory and questionable nature of rock 'n' roll.   

Christ on his Cross counts as an objection to life in its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence. But Sid on his motorbike was a spiky-haired Dionysus who affirmed life whole and not denied or in part - even in its most destructive and terrible aspects.

 

As Nietzsche writes:

"One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it." [2]

 

In sum: Christ on his Cross places a curse on life; but Sid on his motorbike - or singing on stage at the Olympia, Paris [3] - is a promise that life will be eternally reborn from destruction.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The iconic image of Sid on his motorbike is from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): click here. Christ Crucified is an oil painting by Velázquez (1632), located in the Prado Museum, Madrid.  

 

[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1052, pp. 542-543. I'm essentially paraphrasing this section throughout this post. 

 

[3] See the post published on 13 October 2018: click here. 

 

From Beatlemania to Dyschronia: Some Thoughts on 'Now and Then'

Screenshot from the official video (dir. Peter Jackson) 

for 'Now and Then', by The Beatles

 

 

I. 

 

As a young child, I was never a Beatles fan: they were my teenaged sister's favourites, but meant nothing to me. To quote Sid Vicious: "I didn't even know the Summer of Love was happening. I was too busy playing with my Action Man." [1]

 

And later, as a young punk, I despised the Beatles: I was happy, like Joe Strummer, to affirm 1977 as a kind of Year Zero in which the Fab Four along with Elvis and the Rolling Stones were deemed irrelevant and the past effectively abolished. 

 

(I was happy also when - according to Malcolm - Glen Matlock was thrown out of the Sex Pistols on the grounds that he was secretly a Beatles fan.) 

 

And, in the years since, I haven't been persuaded to change my view or reconsider my relationship to John, Paul, George, and Ringo. But I have been enchanted (and disturbed) by their new single ...

 

II. 

 

Released a few days ago - and billed as the Beatles' final song - 'Now and Then' [2] appears to bring poignant closure to the story of a band who formed in 1962 and broke up in 1970. 

 

But, as I'll suggest below, it also seems to mark the end of something more than that, which is why such a simple ballad has resonated so profoundly with so many people - including those who, like me, have never been subject to (or infected by) Beatlemania [3].     

 

Originally written and recorded as a demo tape by Lennon in 1977, 'Now and Then' was considered as a Beatles reunion single for their 1995–1996 retrospective project The Beatles Anthology, but this idea was quickly abandoned due to technical issues at the time (namely, Lennon's vocals could not be separated out and cleaned up).

 

However, thanks to AI-backed audio restoration technology, the track has now been reimagined and reworked and the result is pretty astonishing - as is the music video directed by Peter Jackson. So well done to Paul and Ringo and all those who contributed to the project, including the ghosts of John and George [4] and producer Giles Martin [5]. 

 

Fans and critics are almost universally happy with the result, although, paradoxically, the song and video make many people upset at the same time; even some of those who were not born in the 20th-century have been moved to tears. 

Obviously, most people have experienced individual loss and can feel nostalgic for their own past. But it seems to be more than that; people seem to be mourning something collectively, not so much as a generation, but as a people, as a culture.

 

So, how has Beatlemania - which began with hysterical joy  - terminated in mournful melancholia? 

 

 

III. 

 

You don't need to be Mark Fisher to understand what's going on here (although reading Fisher's work is certainly advantageous): we are being invited to join Paul and Ringo (and the ghosts of John and George) in a temporal loop (or time trap) where sounds and images from earlier periods get promiscuously mixed up.

 

The classic Beatles sound, "its elements now serenely liberated from  the pressures of historical becoming" [6], has been recreated via a machine. At first, we are astonished and amused; the montaging of discreet time periods is so perfect that we no longer quite know when or where we are. 

 

But then the sadness and unease creeps in, until, eventually, it all becomes a bit hellish and one realises with despair that such indiscretion ultimately leads to stasis and cultural inertia.

 

The Beatles were once genuinely something New: and they promised us the future. But with this final song the Fab Four imprison us in a perpetual present haunted by the past (and enhanced with AI-backed technology). 

 

What seems like an act of poignant closure, is actually anything but and, ironically, despite its title, this song belongs neither to Now nor Then, but to a timeless (and nihilistic) zone that some term dyschronia. 

 

This is what No Future looks like ...         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sid Vicious speaking in an interview with John Ingham, Sounds (Oct 1976). 

[2] The Beatles, 'Now and Then', (Apple Records, 2023). To watch the official music video dir. Peter Jackson, click here. The video features never-before-seen film of the Beatles, including scenes filmed during the 1995 recording sessions for Anthology, home movie footage of Harrison, and new footage of McCartney and Starr performing.

[3] Dismissed by The Clash in their 1979 single 'London Calling' as phoney, Beatlemania is actually a genuine, well-researched and well-documented cultural phenomenon. 

      The term was coined by the British press in 1963 to describe the scenes of hysterical adulation accorded to the group - particularly by adolescent girls - whenever (and wherever) they performed or appeared in public. Commentators rightly compared this to religious fervour with a very obvious sexual component. As an international phenomenon, Beatlemania surpassed in intensity and scope any previous examples of fan worship - even Elvis didn't make the girls scream (and literally wet their knickers) like John, Paul, George and Ringo. The Daily Telegraph published a disapproving article in which the scenes of mass worship were likened to Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies. Questions were asked in Parliament - Beatlemania was becoming a police and public safety issue. Lennon wasn't wrong to claim that the Beatles had become by 1966 more popular than Jesus amongst the young.    

      Eventually, disenchanted by their own fame, the Beatles quit touring and as they mutated from a pop group into a progressive, psychedelic rock band, so their fan base changed and Beatlemania in its most frenzied and delirious form passed as quickly as it had arisen. Now, Beatlemaniacs were looked down upon by the group's more mature, more sophisticated audience interested in serious matters, serious music, and facial hair (man). 

      The last mass display of fan adulation took place at the world premiere of the Beatles' animated film Yellow Submarine (dir. George Dunning) held at the London Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus, on 17 July 1968. There was very little screaming, but traffic was brought to a standstill.

 

[4] John Lennon was murdered in December 1980; George Harrison died of cancer in 2001.   

[5] Readers who are interested in knowing the full-story of how the song came to be can click here to view a 12-minute documentary film, Now and Then - The Last Beatles Song (written and directed by Oliver Murray, 2023) on YouTube.

 

[6] Mark Fisher, 'The Slow Cancellation of the Future', in Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, (Zero Books, 2014). 

On Punk, Pink, and Dollification

(L) SA wearing a pink gingham check shirt from Child of the Jago [1]

(R) Ken Doll wearing a pastel pink and mint green striped 

two-piece beach set by Mattel [2]

 

 

For me, pink is one of the essential colours of punk: which is undoubtedly why Jamie Reid used it (along with bright yellow and black) for the provocatively lurid sleeve of Never Mind the Bollocks and why, many years earlier, the proto-punk fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli had created a shocking shade of pink to be synonymous with her brand. 

 

Thus, when I wore a pink (and white) ensemble for an event in Bloomsbury recently, I was confidently expecting it to be received within the context of the above history of art and fashion.

 

Unfortunately, there were some young people present that evening whose cultural references are far more contemporary and, in their eyes, I looked like a refugee from Barbie World - which is, arguably, a little unkind, if not entirely unfair: after all, who wants to be thought of as a human doll? 

 

Having said that, if it's okay for Ryan Gosling to be dolled up and dollified, for his role as Ken in the movie Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023), then why should I worry?

 

And even Sid Vicious was ultimately reduced to the status of an action figure following his death (if not, indeed, years prior to his tragic and untimely demise) - although, sadly, not wearing the pair of pink peg-leg pants that he loved so much ... [4] 

     

 

 Jamie Reid: Sid Vicious Action Man 

£12.50 [3]

 

Notes

 

[1] Photo by Paul Gorman taken on 7 Sept 2023 outside Treadwell's Bookshop (London)

 

[2] Anyone interested in buying the doll (£44.99) can visit the Mattel website by clicking here. 

 

[3] This image by Jamie Reid was used to promote the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). The original poster is in the Jamie Reid archive at the V&A and can be viewed online by clicking here. Obviously, Reid is critiquing the co-option and commodification of punk by the Spectacle (as well as, perhaps, the exploitation of dead performers, who will never be allowed to rest in peace so long as they can still shift product). 

 

[4] Sid can be seen wearing these pink pegs in a short film on Youtube provided by ITV Channel Television, which shows the Sex Pistols at Jersey Airport in the summer of 1977 about to board a plane, having been officially ordered to leave the island: click here. Paul Gorman informs me that Sid had actually borrowed the trousers from guitarist Steve Jones, who had bought them years earlier from Let It Rock.  

 

 

For a post published back in Feb 2019 on the politics of pink, click here.

 

 

Better Than the Original: On the Joy of Cover Versions

Alien Ant Farm lead vocalist Dryden Mitchell and Bubbles lookalike in the video 

for their 2001 version of Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' (1988)

 

 

I. 

 

If there's one thing I like, it's a great cover version; that is to say, a new interpretation of a song which exposes the fallacy that the original recording, or one closely associated with a well-known artist, is always the best. 

 

The fact is, there is no definitive version of a song and, in as much as a song is usually written before it is ever performed or recorded, all versions are essentially covers. 

 

Even the songwriter or composer, cannot claim to exercise complete control or final authority over his work; la mort de l'auteur isn't just a phenomenon within the world of literature, you know (or, at any rate, certainly deserves to be extended into other areas, including popular music, where - even in a post-punk environment - too much reverence is paid to the artist and they still unironically hang a star on their dressing room door).  

 

And so, just as the singer must release the song from the page on which it's written, so must the listener also liberate the song from the recording and refuse any limit upon how they hear or understand it. The magic and the meaning of a song depends on the impressions of the listener, rather than the passion of the performer, or the intentions of the songwriter.

 

Anyhoo, having briefly set out my theoretical reasons for loving cover versions, I'd like now to discuss what makes a great cover version ...

 

 

II.    

 

Having selected an old song that one wishes to cover, it's important to remember that one isn't merely obliged to rework or reinterpret it; one must also find a way to update the song so that it sounds fresh and contemporary. Avoiding what Barthes calls the mere stereotype of novelty, one must make New (which is another way of saying make sexy).  

 

And whilst it's respectful to give a nod in some manner to the artist one is covering, one must not remain unduly faithful; high-fidelity is undesirable and one doesn't want to be seen simply as a tribute act and a cover needs to be more than a cheap imitation or the next best thing compared to the original. Ultimately, as Neil Tennant once said: the cover has got to sound like you [1]. 

 

It also needs to be aimed at a different (and possibly a wider) audience than the (so-called) original. Forget about crowd-pleasing.      

 

 

III.

 

It only remains for me now to provide some examples of great cover versions - or, at any rate, cover songs which I happen to like ... 

 

Initially, I was going to provide a list or, if you like, a chart. But then a top ten became a top twenty and a top twenty a top forty ... And so, rather than do this, I've decided to simply mention several of my favourite cover versions and discuss one of these in detail.

 

Let's begin with two songs that I have already written posts on: 'My Way' by Sid Vicious, released as a single by the Sex Pistols in 1978 [2], and 'Common People' by William Shatner, on the album Has Been (2004). Both of these tracks are perfect cover versions: as I explain here and here.

The next track I'd like to mention is Serge Gainsbourg's amusing version of 'Smoke Gets In You Eyes', on the album Rock Around the Bunker (1975), which contained songs relating to the Third Reich and which drew upon Gainsbourg's experiences as a Jewish child in Nazi occupied France. 

 

Along with nine original songs, Gainsbourg included this cover of 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', written by Otto Harbach and Jerome Kern the 1933 Broadway musical Roberta, because it was said to be one of Eva Braun's favourites. Click here to play.   

Speaking of French singers ... I would like to also give a shout out to Marie Laforêt and her 1966 version of the Rolling Stones' hit 'Paint It Black' - retitled as 'Marie-douceur, Marie-colère' - click here. As the song is also given completely new lyrics, it's arguably a different work altogether - though the tune's the same [3].

 

Then there's Siouxsie and the Banshees working their alchemy with the Beatles track 'Dear Pudence', released as a single in 1983 [4]. It would be the band's biggest UK hit, reaching number 3 in the charts (much to their surprise). What amuses me is the manner in which they add a sense of darkness and menace to the original hippie vibe (despite the sunny blue skies). Click here to play.  

 

Finally, there's arguably the greatest of all covers: Alien Ant Farm's punky nu-metal version of 'Smooth Criminal' by Michael Jackson, released as a single from the album Anthology (2001): click here. 

 

This track only got to number 3 in the UK, but was a huge number 1 smash in the US. Like Sid's version of 'My Way' and Shatner's cover of Pulp's 'Common People', it is just perfect - as is the video directed by Marc Klasfeld, which references numerous Jackson music videos.  

 

The fact that I love it - even though I'm not a Michael Jackson fan - is not the point; the point is that MJ also loved it and so do many of his fans and those who might be wary of white artists coming along and messing with the work of a legendary black performer - as many so-called reaction videos on YouTube make clear [5].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Neil Tennant, vocalist with the synth-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys, knows a thing or two about producing a great cover; his 1987 version with Chris Lowe of the song made famous by Elvis in 1972 - 'You Are Always on My Mind' - is often said to be the greatest cover version ever (which it isn't, but it certainly deserves a mention, and a listen: click here to see them performing it on Top of the Pops). 

[2] Somewhat ironically, the Sex Pistols were rather good at covering other people's songs; click here for their take on 'No Fun', by the Stooges (originally the 'B' side of 'Pretty Vacant' (1977), but this is the remastered version from the 35th anniversary edition of Never Mind the Bollocks (2012)); and click here for their version of '(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone', made famous by the Monkees, as found on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979).    

 

[3] A 1983 cover of 'Paint It Black' by the American punk band the Avengers, which I also like very much, is rather closer to the original: click here. 

[4] Siouxsie and the Banshees had previously covered another Beatle's track from the White Album (1968) - 'Helter Skelter' - which can be found on their debut album Thev Scream (1978): click here. 

[5] See for example this reaction by Jamel_AKA_Jamal, or this one from Rob Squad Reactions. 

The Last of the Groupies: In Memory of Nancy Spungen

Nancy Spungen (1958-1978)

 

What d'you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with 

a society that abandons her and treats her like trash? 

You get what you fucking deserve!

I. 

 

It might be argued that Nancy Spungen was the last of the great American groupies [1]. 

 

For whilst there were - and probably still are - many young girls happy to starfuck their way to notoriety post-Nancy, I can't think of any by name and in the #MeToo era even the term groupie now seems dated and problematic.

 

Similarly, whilst the rock 'n' roll circus continued after the Sex Pistols imploded in 1978 - the year of Miss Spungen's death - it has never really recovered from the blow dealt it by punk and I'm pretty sure that when cultural historians look back a hundred years from now, rock's golden age will be identified as lasting from the mid-1950s until the end of the '70s (i.e., from Elvis to Sid Vicious). 

 

 

II. 

 

It would be wrong to pretend that Nancy was simply a nice Jewish girl at heart. Because, whilst she was indeed Jewish and raised in a respectable middle-class home, she wasn't composed of sugar and spice, so much as madness and spite and all things vice [2]. 

 

An emotionally disturbed infant and young child, prone to screaming fits and violent behaviour, Nancy was already prescribed barbiturates at just a few months of age in an attempt to pacify her [3]. Finally, at fifteen, having attempted suicide the year before, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

 

An obviously bright girl, Nancy excelled at elementary school, but made few friends. At age eleven, however, she was expelled due to repeated absenteeism. She had also by this age threatened to kill her babysitter with a pair of scissors and attacked her shrink after being accused of simply wanting attention and this also caused the school authorities some concern.  

 

Nevertheless, Nancy graduated from high school in April 1974 and was accepted into the University of Colorado. Unfortunately, after being twice arrested - firstly for purchasing marijuana from an undercover police officer and then for being discovered in possession of stolen property - her student life was cut short. Indeed, it was only on condition that she leave the state of Colorado and agree to parental supervision that Nancy avoided jail. 

 

At seventeen, Nancy left home and moved to New York City. Here she supported herself by whatever means she could; a little bit of freelance music journalism, some temporary work at a clothes store, stripping, and prostitution. She also decided she wanted to become a groupie and began to follow various rock bands, including Aerosmith, The New York Dolls, and the Ramones [4].

 

In 1977, Nancy flew to London with The Heartbreakers and decided she wanted to get herself a Sex Pistol. Initialy she had set her sights on Rotten, but when he showed no interest, she turned her attention to Sid. And so began a fateful eighteen-month relationship that came to a bloody end at the Chelsea Hotel in October 1978; one I have written of elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

Nancy was buried in the King David Memorial Park in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Deborah, published a memoir in 1983 with a title taken from a poem by Vicious: I Don't Want to Live This Life [5]. 

 

Whilst often still demonised by those who should know better (and, in many cases, didn't know her), Nancy Spungen has cemented her place within popular culture and I do think, over forty years since her death (aged just twenty), we might retrospectively view her with a little more kindness.  

         

 

Notes

 

[1] For an earlier post on groupies - those muses with dirty faces - click here.

 

[2] Having said that, I don't think Nancy deserved the epiphet Nauseating placed before her name, no matter how unpleasant she may have seemed. For whilst even his fellow band members may have found her behaviour objectionable, there's no doubting that Sid was besotted with Nancy, describing her as an intelligent and humorous woman who possessed not only beautiful eyes, but the most beautiful wet pussy in the world - and a fab taste in clothes. 

      Ultimately, perhaps being nauseating is preferable to being nice anyway; certainly when one recalls that the latter derives from the Latin nescius, meaning unknowing, ignorant, foolish - terms which cannot be applied to the streetwise Miss Spungen. 

 

[3] Although no brain damage was recorded at the time of her birth, one wonders if the fact Nancy had emerged into the world bright blue due to oxygen deprivation played a part in her later mental health problems; after all, no one likes to be strangled by their own umbilical cord (or carry an unconscious memory of such). 

 

[4] When I say follow, I of course mean rather more than this; Nancy supplied numerous rock stars with drugs and sexual favours. Before meeting Sid, she had slept with many of those on the New York scene at that time; David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Syl Sylvain, Jerry Nolan, Richard Hell, Iggy Pop ... et al. 

 

[5] Those who are interested can listen to Deborah Spungen talk about her daughter, her book, her memories of Sid Vicious, etc. in a 42-minute radio interview (23 Nov 1983): available on YouTube: click here.  

 

 

Sweet Sixteen (In Memory of Sid Vicious and My Own Punk Youth)

John Beverley, aged 16, in his pre-punk days 

prior to becoming Sid Vicious, Sex Pistol.

Me, aged 16, in my post-punk days, but still sporting 

a Sid Vicious badge on the left lapel of my jacket.

 

 

I recently came across a rather touching photo of a young John Beverley on his way to a David Bowie concert at Earl's Court, in 1973 ... 

 

This was the infamous opening show of Bowie's Aladdin Sane UK tour on May 12th, two days after Beverley turned sixteen. Whether the latter took part in - or, indeed, incited - the violence that ensued amongst the 18,000 strong audience, I don't know. But it's possible this is where he first developed a taste for rock 'n' roll mayhem. 

 

Around this same time, Beverley was kicked out of his home by his heroin-addicted mother, so quit school and began squatting along with his friend John Lydon, the soon-to-be Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, who gave him the punk-sounding nickname of Sid Vicious by which he is best remembered today.

 

The two friends - like many other youngsters at the time interested in music and fashion - started to cruise up and down the Kings Road and eventually found themselves hanging out at the small and unusual boutique owned and managed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, called SEX. 

 

When, in late-summer 1975, Rotten joined the Sex Pistols, Sid became their No. 1 fan and acted as an agent provocateur ensuring that every gig ended in an unpredictable bloody mess. He can be seen in photos taken at the Nashville Rooms in April 1976 on the night that the band physically attacked their audience.

 

Vicious is also credited with inventing the pogo, an aggressive form of anti-dance. In February '77, he replaced bass guitarist Glen Matlock in the Sex Pistols, even though he had no experience of playing the instrument. He would later (rather cruelly) be stylised by McLaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle as 'The Gimmick'. 

 

Tragically, post-Pistols, things did not turn out well for Sid - or his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen; he died, from a drug overdose, on 2 February, 1979, aged 21, whilst on bail and awaiting trial for the murder of the latter, who died from a single stab wound to her abdomen, aged 20, on October 12th of the previous year.  

 

II.  

 

I vividly recall the time when Sid died. For one thing, it was less than a fortnight away from my own sixteenth birthday, on February 13th ...

 

I remember, for example, going out on a cold, foggy night and stealing that day's headline poster for the Evening Standard outside my local newsagent's which read: Sid Vicious Dead (I still have it today somewhere). 

I remember also the next morning, at school, being met with snide remarks from those who knew I was a fan of the Sex Pistols: Your hero's dead - that kind of thing, nothing very imaginative. 

 

Actually, Sid was never really my hero: I was more devoted to Rotten, as the Public Image Ltd. t-shirt worn in the above photo taken in 1979 indicates. However, I do retain a certain affection for him which, sadly, is no longer the case when it comes to the latter, who recently turned sixty-six, but died many, many years ago ...     

On Self-Esteem and Self-Harm; Selfies and Self-Destruction

Keith Negley: Self-Harm (2019)

keithnegley.com

 

 

I. 

 

Self-harm is an interesting phenomenon: one that the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han relates to the terror of authenticity, i.e., a neoliberal imperative that "intensifies narcissistic self-reference".*

 

For Han, there is a healthy (non-pathological) form of self-love, but narcissism is distinct from it. For one thing, the narcissist is blind to the Other: "The narcissistic subject perceives the world only in shadings of itself" [21].     

 

And that's not good: not only does the world soon becomes boring when everything is the Same, but excessive narcissism has a profoundly damaging effect on the individual. Ultimately, we need other people to make us feel good about ourselves. 

 

For the Other is a gratifying authority. Without such a figure to love, praise, acknowledge and appreciate us, bang goes our self-esteem.

 

And that's not good either. For according to Han, lack of self-esteem underlies self-harm and the act - I almost wrote art - of cutting oneself with a knife, razor, or broken bottle "is not only a ritual of self-punishment for one's own feelings of inadequacy [...] but also a cry for love" [23] 

 

I'm not sure of that last claim, but let's hear the good professor out:

 

"The sense of emptiness is a basic symptom of depression and borderline personality disorder. Borderliners are often unable to feel themselves; only when they cut themselves do they feel anything. For the depressive performance subject, the self is a heavy burden. It is tired of itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outside itself, it becomes absorbed in itself, which paradoxically results in an emptying and erosion of the self. Isolated in its mental enclosure, trapped in itself, it loses any connection to the Other." [23-4]

 

If you deny negative thoughts and feelings any form of expression, they eventually come back to bite you. And yet, of course, the elimination of all negativity is "a hallmark of contemporary society" [24] which is designed to be a safe space, free from all forms of hate speech (in case someone is offended) and all types of conflict (in case someone gets hurt). 

 

But just as sometimes people need to express hateful ideas - not because that's what they really think, but so that they don't have to think such thoughts any longer - so too do they need a degree of conflict in their lives: "It is only from conflicts that stable relationships and identities ensue. A person grows and matures by working through conflict." [24] 

 

Deny people - particularly young people - the chance to express their anger and release their rage and it's little wonder they end up cutting their arms, for example. 

 

For such an act "quickly releases accumulated destructive tension" [24] - not to mention endorphins - so there's undoubtedly a pleasurable aspect involved (an aspect often overlooked or downplayed by those who are worried that by admitting such they might make self-harm seem attractive).     

   

I think where Byung-Chul Han gets more interesting, is when he attempts to relate self-harm first to the taking of selfies and then, perhaps more controversially, to the practice of suicide bombing ...

 

 

II.  

 

Some readers might recall that I wrote a post on selfies and the rise of the look generation way back in October 2013 [click here], in which I argued against those commentators who greet every development to do with technology, sex, and the play of images with moral hysteria. 

 

And I still have no wish to add my voice to those that suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem - all of which puts me at odds with Byung-Chul Han, who writes:

 

"The addiction to selfies also has little to do with self-love. It is nothing other than the idle motion of the lonely subject. Faced with one's inner emptiness, one vainly attempts to produce oneself. The emptiness merely reproduces itself. Selfies are the self in empty forms; selfie addiction heightens the feeling of emptiness. It results not from self-love, but from narcissistic self-reference. Selfies are pretty, smooth surfaces of an empty, insecure self. To escape this torturous emptiness today, one reaches either for the razorblade or the smarthphone. Selfies are smooth surfaces that hide the empty self for a short while. But if one turns them over one discovers their other side, covered in wounds and bleeding. Wounds are the flipsides of selfies." [24-5]

      

Apart from not sharing Han's horror of the selfie, a further problem I have with this is that, as a sex pistol, I find inner emptiness aesthetically pleasing rather than torturous and vacancy simply isn't something I care about. 

 

Many young punks - including most famously Sid Vicious - engaged in self-harm as an act of provocation; they stuck safety pins through their lips and burnt their arms with cigarettes to outrage and signal their nonconformity, not because they wished to deal with negative emotions, communicate distress, or cry out for love. It also facilitated bonding with other like-minded individuals (i.e. enforced group identity).   

 

Anyhoo, returning to Han's text, he now asks a series of questions:

"Could suicide attacks be perverse attempts to feel oneself, to restore a destroyed self-esteem, to bomb or shoot away the burden of emptiness? Could one compare the psychology of terror to that of the selfie and self-harm, which also act against the empty ego? Might terrorists have the same psychological profile as the adolescents profile as the adolescents who harm themselves, who turn their aggression towards themselves?" [25]

 

I suppose they could; I suppose they might. But I don't think so. But, again, let's allow Han to speak for himself (starting with a dubious gender claim):

 

"Unlike girls, boys are known to direct their aggression outwards, against others. The suicide attack would then be a paradoxical act in which auto-aggression and aggression towards others, self-production and self-destruction, become one: a higher-order aggression that is simultaneously imagined as the ultimate selfie. The push of the button that sets off the bomb is like the push of the camera button. Terrorists inhabit the imaginary because reality [...] denies them any gratification. Thus they invoke God as an imaginary gratifying authority, and can also be sure that their photograph will be all over the media like a form of selfie directly after the deed. The terrorist is a narcissist with an explosive belt that makes those who wear it especially authentic." [25-6]  

 

Again, I find this problematic in parts, but that's an important last line that reminds one not only of the need to curb enthusiasm, but be wary also of those who pride themselves on their authenticity and the truthfulness of their values.   

 

  

* Byung-Chul Han, The Expulsion of the Other, trans. Wieland Hoban, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 19. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.