Punk Friends Reunited

I remember with vague fondness my time at Trinity and All Saints College, which was then a small Catholic institution affiliated with the University of Leeds, but which has since gained full university status and autonomy.

Although I was there under the pretext of studying for a degree in Sociology and Media, essentially, like many undergraduates at this time, I was more interested in extracurricular activities that might broadly be categorised as messing around and fucking about. 

This included the cultivation of my own punk persona, Jimmy Jazz - after the song by the Clash - and becoming part of a small gang of misfits that numbered amongst its members:

(i) Clive Hooker, a drummer and DJ from Northampton, with a speech impediment that unfortunately made him sound like Klunk from Stop the Pigeon.

(ii) August Finer, a bass player with a knicker-invading smile and a mohican haircut; ultimately, a nice, middle-class Jewish boy, from Knutsford, posing as a punk (but who did have a brother in The Pogues).     

(iii) Kirk Field, a drama student (who couldn't really act) and a vocalist (who couldn't really sing), but a clever, funny, charming personality with a quiff and a penchant for magic mushrooms who went on to become a successful tour operator and events organiser for people who like to party.

During the years 1981-84, we four were as thick as thieves. But, amazingly, the moment we graduated the magic spell that bound us together was completely broken; even my friendship with Mr. Field, which had been extremely intimate and intense, didn't long survive the move to London.

I suppose there were reasons for this - but no real reason - and I'm told that it's a common phenomenon; that adolescent friendships often blossom with spectacular colour, but then quickly fade and die and that it's pointless trying to hold the petals on.

Regrets? I have a few. But then again, too few to mention. Besides, any lingering sense of loss only adds a delicious poignancy to nostalgic reflections like this; which is how dead friendships can continue to give pleasure.           

If the opportunity ever arose, I'd be happy to meet any or all of the above for a drink. But I suspect there'd be moments of awkward silence. And underneath the delight of seeing them again there'd be a slight sense of boredom and embarrassment and a longing to get away as soon as possible ...  

Why I'm a Sex Pistol Rather Than a Clash City Rocker

A Seditionaries Destroy shirt 

McLaren and Westwood (1977) 
Victoria and Albert Museum Collection

According to Mick Jones, speaking in an interview with GQ in 2011, there were two types of punk: those who wanted to destroy and those who wanted to create ...

Clearly, the Sex Pistols wanted to destroy; they announced the fact on their first single and on the shirts that Uncle Malcolm and Auntie Vivienne designed for them. They were into chaos, not music. And when asked what he intended to do about the rapid post-War decline of the UK, I'll always remember with a smile Steve Jones saying: Make it worse.

Like Nietzsche, the Sex Pistols wanted to consummate nihilism by accelerating the process; to kick over that which was already rotten and threatening to fall; to go still further in the schizonomadic direction of decoding and deterritorialization. Certainly for McLaren, the most revolutionary of strategies was to unleash all kinds of forces and flows and push things to the extreme, which is to say, their exterior and absolute limit. 

The Sex Pistols, we might say, are rock 'n' roll's anarchic promise brought to fulfilment; and they are also the exterminating angels who came to destroy rock 'n' roll once and for all, exposing its complicity with capital and the manner in which the music business ultimately serves to keep young people under control.

Their final great act was not their astonishing self-immolation on stage at the Winterland, but the destruction of their own legend in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - a project that incriminates everyone, including the fans.  

The Clash, in contrast, were typical type two punks: "trying to create something better for everybody", as Mick Jones says. Social justice warriors with zips and safety pins; or nice middle-class boys pretending to be outlaws, as Sebastian Horsley memorably described them.

The problem is that those who speak about initiating a new wave, often secretly wish to shore up the old order and establish successful careers within it. Thus it was, for example, that for all their anti-American posturing and talk of phoney Beatlemania having bitten the dust, the Clash were desperate to make it big in the US and soon fell into all the usual rock star clichés. Indeed, they even ended up opening for the Who at Shea Stadium:

And all the young punks looked from Joe to Roger and from Mick to Pete; but already it was impossible to say which was which ...

Finally, in 2003, the surviving members of the Clash were all present and correct to meekly accept with gratitude their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of fame - an institution which Rotten amusingly branded a piss-stain on humanity.

Of course, it's true that - eventually - we have our fill of destruction and must turn again to the task of creation; that once all the old forms are shattered and all the old icons toppled, we need to find a new way of living beneath the open sky. Only an idiot mistakes the ruins as an end goal.

But - and it's an important but - we should be extremely wary of those idealists who appear overly keen to start building the New Jerusalem; especially when using the same old tools and materials.   

Notes

To read the interview with Mick Jones, by Alex Pappademas, in GQ (2 Nov 2011): click here. 

To watch the Sex Pistols performing Anarchy in the UK during their final show (Winterland, San Francisco, 14 Jan 1978), click here. They tweak the lyrics, but the message remains the same: Destroy. 

To watch a 7 min promo film for the Clash Live at Shea Stadium album (Epic, 2008), click here. The actual show took place on 13 Oct 1982. 

For Sebastian Horsley's take on the difference between the Sex Pistols and the Clash, click here. 

Two Poster Designs for the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference (July 2017)

Having been asked to come up with a poster for the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference, which is being held here in London next summer, I thought it would be interesting to rework two classic punk designs. 

The first refers us back to the Clash album released in 1979, the front cover of which famously featured a photograph of Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage taken by Pennie Smith. But it wasn't the photograph that interested. Rather, it was the pink and green lettering used by Ray Lowry in homage to Elvis Presley’s eponymous debut album of 1956.

The second and I suppose more controversial design (in as much as it ties Lawrence not only to a musical genre, but to a history of crime), is in the style of Jamie Reid's brilliant God Save ... series of images created for the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir, Julien Temple, 1980).

In both cases, the idea was to create an image that would indicate Lawrence’s own notorious and iconic status within the popular imagination: not only as a serious author, but also as an angry, working-class rebel who scandalised the authorities; a poet-provocateur whose work was often censored or banned; an urban Lawrence, more Edwardian hipster than Eastwood hippie, interested in causing chaos and defying social and literary convention, rather than in writing best-sellers; a Lawrence who knew, in the words of Malcolm McLaren, that it’s better to be a spectacular failure than a benign success; a Lawrence determined to live fast, die young, die game.

Note: the Conference Committee accepted the first idea and image, but rejected the second (make of that what you will).