Destroy Success

Based on an original design by Jamie Reid (1979) [1] 

 

I. 

 

It's hard to believe that November next year is the 50th anniversary of the release of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' 

 

But there you go - time flies and soon, just like Malcolm, Vivienne, Jamie, Jordan, and poor old Sid pictured above, we'll all be brown bread. 

 

The funny thing about the Sex Pistols' debut single is that it ends with the instruction to get pissed, destroy, but it's never made quite clear who or what is to be destroyed other than the passer by [2] and, as a matter of fact, one has to wait until The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle to discover that success is the main target marked for destruction. 

 

This is anticipated in the magnificent statement released by McLaren on behalf of Glitterbest after the band fell apart at the end of their US tour:  

 

"The management is bored with managing a successful rock 'n' roll band. The group is bored with being a successful rock 'n' roll band. Burning venues and destroying record companies is more creative than making it." [3]  

 

A statement which caused much embarassment for the Virgin press officer asked to explain whether it was meant to be taken seriously.  

 

One recalls also McLaren's equally well-known line, often repeated in interviews, that it is "better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success" [4]. 

 

For Malcolm, these words essentially define punk rock and daring to fail was not just romantic and heroic, but the only way to create great art [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, McLaren wasn't the only one to despise the notion of success; the early 20th century English novelist D. H. Lawrence - whom I would characterise as the first Sex Pistol (seen as a provocative and amusing analogy by some, but I'm being perfectly serious) - also hated success ...   

 

In his final (and most controversial) novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), for example, the Lawrentian narrator sneers at the figure of the young Irish playwright Michaelis, who had a Mayfair apartment and "walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman" [6]. 

  

Sir Clifford may admire and envy his success - "for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also" [7] - and even Connie may sleep with him, but we, as readers, are encouraged to find Mick contemptible (a bit doggy).    

 

Elsewhere, in his essays, Lawrence also makes clear his dislike for those who chase success - whether that's in the arts or in industry and the world of business. His mother may look down from heaven and feel chagrined at his lack of real success:

 

"that I don't make more money; that I am not really popular, like Michael Arlen, or really genteel, like Mr Galsworthy; that I have a bad reputation as an improper writer [...] that I don't make any real friends among the upper classes: that I don't really rise in the world, only drift about without any real status." [8] 

 

But Lawrence doesn't care; he has punk indifference to what others think of him - even his dead mother - and doesn't give a shit about getting on and becoming a great success in the eyes of the world. He thinks the bourgeois beastly - "especially the male of the species" [9] - hates the Oxford voice [10], and calls for a revolution "not to get the money / but to lose it all forever" [11]. 

 

And that's why, in part, I regard him as a Sex Pistol ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based on original artwork by Jamie Reid for a full page ad in the Melody Maker promoting the Sex Pistols single 'Something Else', released from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979). 

      It depicts a cartoon version of Sid Vicious, who provided the vocals for the track and who, unfortunately, had died three weeks prior to the single's release. Although I have removed most of the other text added to the design, I have left the slogan destroy success which McLaren and Reid had adopted as their strategy following the firing of Johnny Rotten. 

      The original image can be found in the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.   

 

[2] See the post titled 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby (Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan)' dated 28 May, 2020: click here.  

 

[3] This statement, dated 20 January, 1978, is quoted from The Guardian archive: click here. 

 

[4] McLaren repeats this phrase in an interview with Amy Fleming published in The Guardian (10 August, 2009): click here.  

      See the post titled 'Better a Spectacular Failure ...' dated 5 June, 2013: click here. Note how McLaren's son Joe misremembers the line spoken by his father; replacing the word flamboyant with spectacular. 

[5] McLaren took to heart the words of one of his early lecturers at art school who told him that it was only by learning how to repeatedly fail that one would ever become an artist of any note: 'Don't think success will make you better artists.' 

      As McLaren's biographer notes: "The impact of this statement on McLaren was immediate and profound." And he quotes the latter saying: "'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in so doing, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'"  

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 48-49.  

 

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

 

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Getting On', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 32.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'How beastly the bourgeois is', in The Poems Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 373. 

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Oxford voice', The Poems Vol. I., p. 376.

 

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'O start a revolution', The Poems, Vol. I., p. 392. 

 

 

Do You Know What's Funny? Do You Know What Really Makes Me Laugh? I Used to Think That Sid's Death Was a Tragedy, But Now I Realise It's a Fucking Comedy

Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008)

and an early visualisation of the character 

based on Sex Pistol Sid Vicious 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Malcolm McLaren, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) would have been a great film were it not for the incompetence of the director Julien Temple. But that's a little harsh, to be fair.

 

For in extremely trying circumstances, Temple managed to assemble (and edit) a car crash of a movie that continues to fascinate cinephiles and symphorophiles alike. And, as Malcolm himself often said, better a spectacular failure than any kind of benign success. 

 

Where I do agree with McLaren, however, is that one of the things that the film doesn't quite convey is the dark humour underlying the story of the Sex Pistols and there are those who still think of it as an unreliable documentary rather than an artistic reimagining of events; i.e., po-faced moralists obsessed with factual accuracy and what they, like Lydon, call the truth. 

 

The film should provoke laughter, but it appears to invite sorrowful reflection or remorse. 

 

This is particularly so when it comes to the case of Sid Vicious; the British Board of Film Censors insisting that the ending of the film be changed to include a real press report of his death, thereby undermining the film's disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and that any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

 

This is done solely with the intent to induce feelings of shame, guilt, and deep regret for ever having found the Sex Pistols amusing. They - the censor-morons - want us to think that Sid's death was nothing but a tragedy, when - as Arthur Fleck would surely recognise - it was a fucking comedy all along ... [1]  

 

 

II.   

Funnily enough, the above connection made between Arthur Fleck and Sid Vicious is not the only time the latter has found himself discussed in relation to the Joker ...

 

For it turns out that Heath Ledger based his unforgettable portrayal of this DC Comics character - in part at least - on the spiky-haired Sex Pistol in The Dark Knight (2008); this having been confirmed both by the film's director, Christopher Nolan, and Ledger's co-star Christian Bale (who played Batman).   

 

And once you know this, then you understand (and maybe even appreciate) the Joker's anarcho-nihilistic sense of humour a little better, as well as his fascination with chaos and violence. One finds traces of the same mirthful malevolence in Sid's performance in the Swindle (particularly, of course, on stage at the  Théâtre de l'Empire, in Paris, singing his version of  'My Way') [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

Now, I know there are those out there - including many punk scholars - who hate Sid Vicious: 

 

"He is, after all, to blame for embodying one of the 20th century's most exciting art movements in the form of a drooling, talentless junkie in a swastika T-shirt" [3]. 

 

Similarly, there are critics who hate the character of the Joker as portrayed both by Ledger and Phoenix. 

 

In an age of mass shootings and terrorist atrocities, it is, they argue, highly irresponsible to glorify anti-social and criminal behaviour carried out by individuals who clearly have serious mental health issues.  

 

To which one can only reply: Why so serious?  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix) became notorious in Gotham City as the clown-faced killer and aspiring stand-up comic called Joker in Todd Philips's fantastic film of that title (2019). 

      The scene in which he says the lines I have used in the title to this post (making one key alteration; replacing the words 'my life' with 'Sid's death') takes place in a hospital room, just as Fleck is about to murder his mother: click here.  

      Interestingly, Sid Vicious also kills his mother in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - though with a pistol, not a pillow (see link in note 2 below).    

      Julien Temple briefly discusses the new British Board of Censors approved ending to his film in the commentary provided as an extra to The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle DVD (2005): click here and go to 1:43:37. Unlike Temple, I clearly do not think this makes a good ending; on the contrary, I think it places a moral curse on all those who watch and enjoy it.            

 

[2] In The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle viewers are led to believe that Sid is performing at L'Olympia, but this venue was unavailable, so filming actually took place at Théâtre de l'Empire, using the stage set which had been built for Serge Gainsbourg. To watch the performance, click here.   

 

[3] James Medd, 'Sid Vicious: The Grubby Demon of Punk', The Rake (September 2018): click here. 

      It should be noted that Medd himself goes on to mount a defence of Vicious and writes: 

      "Beyond the ferret-faced, sneery urchin cartoon [...] there's another Sid, not much more real but closer to something celebratory, romantic and even meaningful. Like the Marquis de Sade or Francis Bacon [...] he took ugliness and nihilism to their extremes, and found beauty in them."   

 

The Sex Pistols - Who the Dickens Were They?

Malcolm McLaren: Oliver Twist Manifesto (42 x 32 cm)

Double-sided flyer created for the Sex Pistols' final British show 

Christmas Day, 1977 [1]

Punk came out of this strange culture that had been repressed through the Victorian times ... 

The Sex Pistols were something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll 

and Malcolm saw them very much in a Dickensian way. - Julien Temple 

 

 

I. 

 

I spent a fair amount of time earlier in the year arguing that D. H. Lawrence can be thought of as a Sex Pistol: click here, for example. But to think of Lawrence as a proto-punk is not to suggest that we might think of the Sex Pistols as Lawrentian. 

 

In fact, if we are to think of the Sex Pistols in English literary terms at all, it makes far more sense to conceive of Johnny Rotten and company as neo-Dickensian characters. That's certainly how Malcolm McLaren attempted to portray them late on in their career, as the above flyer, written by him in December 1977, illustrates.

 

It begins:   

 

They are Dickensian-like urchins who with ragged clothes and pock marked faces roam the foggy streets of gas-lit London. Pillaging. Setting fire to buildings. Beating up old people with gold chains. Fucking the rich up the arse. Causing havoc wherever they go. Some of these ragamuffin gangs jump on tables amidst the charred debris and with burning torches play rock 'n' roll to the screaming delight of the frenzied pissing pogoing mob. Shouting and spitting 'anarchy' one of these gangs call themselves the Sex Pistols. [2]

 

It's obviously a fantasy vision of the band. But the question is: why does the fantasy take this particular form? Why reference ragamuffin gangs and pogoing mobs, etc? Is it just because McLaren's grandmother adored Fagin and made him read Dickens as a young child, or is there also a wider political context?

 

II. 

 

Before addressing these points, let's first give a bit more background to the production of the flyer ...  

 

By the end of 1977, life had never looked so good for the four Sex Pistols; three hit singles, a number 1 album, and about to commence on their first American tour. 

 

However, things were rapidly coming apart at the seams as relations amongst members of the band - never particularly good - had significantly worsened due to various factors including Sid's addiction to drugs (and to Nancy), Rotten's loathing of McLaren, and Malcolm's desire to ensure the band were remembered as a spectacular failure rather than a benign success.     

 

And so, in hindsight, it isn't all that surprising that the two shows played on Christmas day in Huddersfield - the first, in the afternoon, a benefit gig for the children of striking firemen and the second, in the evening, for fans of the band in and around West Yorkshire - would prove to be their final British performances.

 

Perhaps sensing that the end was nigh, Mclaren began to reimagine the Sex Pistols as so much more than merely another boring rock 'n' roll group. And so he wrote the above text for distribution at the events and illustrated with artwork by George Cruikshank from the original 1838 edition of Oliver Twist [3].

 

According to Paul Gorman, this flyer "acted less as a promotion for the Pistols than a commentary on both his Jewishness and his strange relationship with the group" [4]. But it also demonstrates McLaren's (somewhat bourgeois and overly-romanticised) understanding of working class culture as inherently rebellious, violent, and non-conforming and that returns us to the politics of this manifesto ...

 

 

III. 

      

It's often the case that when commentators discuss the Sex Pistols in terms of politics they immediately reach for their French dictionary and start talking about the Situationists and referencing Guy Debord's La société du spectacle (1967). 

 

That's not mistaken, but it does mean that less attention is given to the fact that the Sex Pistols are also very much part of an English history of insurrection to do with the so-called London mob and the Gordon Riots [5]. 

 

As the opening sequence of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) explicitly informs viewers, the roots of 'Anarchy in the UK' can be traced back to the 1780s [6]. That is to say, to a period fizzing with revolutionary and carnivalesque energies on both sides of the Channel and one that Charles Dickens wrote about in his (little read and rarely adapted) historical novel Barnaby Rudge (1841) [7]. 

 

Wilfully conflating mob violence with punk rock, the cinematic re-enactment of the Gordon Riots makes clear that McLaren saw the Sex Pistols as first and foremost a rejection of authority - be it of parents, teachers, priests, policemen, or soldiers of the crown - and representative, as Julien Temple rightly says, of "something more feral and more dark and native to the English psyche than rock 'n' roll" [8].   

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The flyer was signed 'Oliver Twist' to emphasise McLaren's vision of the band as Dickensian urchins. It formed item 52 of the 71 item Stollper-Wilson Collection of Sex Pistols memorabilia auctioned by Sotheby's in October 2022: click here. 

      One of the most noticeable things about the flyer is the fact that Malcolm allowed corrections to the text to remain openly on display, just as they are on the Dickens manuscripts he saw as a child. As Paul Gorman reminds us, McLaren subscribed to the view that honest error is crucial to the creative process, rather than "'the icy perfections of the mere stylist'". 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 48, where Gorman quotes from an aphorism coined by the Victorian church architect J. D. Sedding (one often falsely attributed to Charles Rennie Mackintosh). 

 

[2] The rest of the text scawled by McLaren (with a wooden stick dipped in ink) reads:

 

This true and dirty tale has been continuing throughout 200 years of teenage anarchy and so in 1978 there still remains the Sex Pistols. Their active extremism is all they care about because that's what counts to jump right out of the 20th century as fast as you possibly can in order to create an environment that you can truthfully run wild in.

 

[3] The illustration by Cruikshank to which I refer depicts the first meeting between Oliver Twist and Fagin entitled 'Oliver introduced to the Respectable Old Gentleman'. It's an image which plays an important role in the mythologising of the Sex Pistols, paralleling as it does the first time that Malcolm and members of the band met with the nineteen-year-old who would become their singer and frontman: see the post 'On This Day ...' (22 August 2025): click here. 

      I am grateful for this clever insight to Michael E. Kitson, writing in 'The Sex Pistols and the London Mob', an unpublished doctoral thesis submitted to Western Sydney University (2008): click here to view the abstract and to download the work as a pdf. As this post makes clear, I agree with Kitson's central claim that the culture and semiotics of the London mob was fundamental to McLaren's (distinctly English) punk project and that the influence of Dickens on McLaren's thinking cannot be overestimated. 

 

[4] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... p. 381. 

      Interestingly, McLaren signs his manifesto with the name of Oliver Twist and not with Fagin, as one might have expected, as the latter was the explicitly Jewish character in Dickens's 1838 novel and the leader of a group of youngsters whom he grooms into a life of crime. 

      Still, whichever character McLaren ultimately identified with, the fact remains that Dickens's novel played a seminal role in his thinking. In 2000, he named the book as one of his favourites in a piece for The Guardian, describing it as an "unforgettable journey into criminal behaviour" that not only transported him back to his own childhood, but which justified his desire to - and here he paraphrases from his own Oliver Twist Manifesto - "create an environment " in which he could "truthfully run wild" whilst overseeing a generation of artful dodgers.  

      To read the list of Mclaren's top ten books in The Guardian (21 Feb 2000), click here.  

 

[5] The Gordon Riots of 1780 saw several days of violent disorder and destruction in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment and instigated by Lord George Gordon. After the mob - which had declared its own sovereignty on the wall of Newgate Prison - attempted to storm the Bank of England, the government finally sent in the army, resulting in several hundred fatalities.

 

[6] Funnily enough, the opening scene of the Swindle set in eighteenth-century London - featuring crowds cavorting in the streets as they joyously string up effigies of the Sex Pistols above a huge bonfire - is one that even Rotten admits to liking, conceding that it amusingly captures the spirit of punk. See John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (Hodder and Stoughton, 1994), p. 289.

 

[7] I don't know if McLaren read Barnaby Rudge, but it's possible and Dickens's novel remains the definitive literary work detailing the phenomenon of the London mob at its height. 

      It's also more than likely that McLaren would have been (at least vaguely) familiar with Christopher Hibbert's King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (Longmans, 1958), which provides a colourful reading of the historical record. 

      And finally, it should be pointed out that McLaren certainly knew of (and admired) the newsletter King Mob Echo produced by the British offshoot of the Situationist International, with whom he was acquainted whilst an art student in the 1960s (see Gorman 2020, pp. 95-98).

 

[8] Julien Temple, director of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), speaking in the audio commentary [2:13] provided as a bonus to the DVD release of the film in 2005: click here. Temple is speaking with the writer Chris Salewicz. Interestingly, while Malcolm sees the Sex Pistols as Dickensian, Temple prefers to think of them as a bit Chaucerian. 

 

 

That Time I Met Mr Pickle ...

 

I. 

 

One of my favourite scenes in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) is the closing animated sequence in which McLaren and his motley crew are all aboard the good ship Venus and Johnny Rotten, having been found guilty of collaboration, is forced to walk the plank. 

 

Abandoned by his shipmates, the singer finds himself literally all at sea where he is soon swallowed by a great white shark with the Virgin logo clearly visible on its fin [1].    

 

This scene replayed itself in my mind when, in 1983, the Virgin Group acquired Charisma Records (although it wouldn't be until 1986 that the latter was fully digested by the former; still maintaining at least a measure of independence until then). 

 

So, let us say that I was not a fan of Richard Branson and would laugh at Malcolm's stories about this hippie entrepreneur whom he vehemently disliked and derisively called Mr Pickle (either intentionally or mistakenly confusing the surname with that of an English food brand made by Crosse & Blackwell since 1922) [2].  

 

 

II. 

 

I first met Mr Pickle when, as a Charisma employee, I was sent an invitation by him and the directors of the Virgin Group to attend a party at the Manor, in Oxfordshire, to celebrate the first anniversary of Virgin Atlantic.  

 

The Manor, for those who might not know, was a recording studio housed in a 17th century Grade II listed building that had been bought by Branson in 1971, for £30,000, when he was only twenty-one years of age. It was where Mike Oldfield famousy recorded his precious Tubular Bells (1973) [3].

 

As pretty much everyone from Charisma was going to go, I decided I'd also (somewhat begrudgingly) accept Branson's invitation. And here, for those who may be interested, is my memory of the day based on an entry in the Von Hell Diaries dated 22 June, 1985 ... 

 

 

III. 

 

Unsure what to wear, I decided to go with the pink check suit I bought two years ago and which I've kept hanging in my closet - unworn - ever since. After my friend Andy arrived, we went over to pick Lee Ellen up from her place in Chelsea. Then cabbed it over to Kensal House (i.e., Virgin HQ), from where coaches transported everyone to the Manor. 

      Those of us from the Famous Charisma Label were segregated from the Virgin staff and we were seated as a group at the back of the bus. As Robin had kindly brought along several bottles of wine, however, no one seemed to mind about that and, amusingly, we were soon making twice as much noise as the Virginians on board (to be fair, perhaps that's why we were placed at the back of the bus).  

       The Manor was an impressive country pile (provided you have the capacity to be impressed by an assemblage of bricks) and set in very beautiful grounds that included trees, lakes, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. Mr Pickle was there to meet and greet us personally as we got off the bus. 

      There were three large tents erected and Branson had laid on copious amounts of food and drink as well as various entertainments that one could sign up for, including horse riding and helicopter flights. But I was more interested in Shelley's friend Claire to be honest. Unfortunately, I ruined my chances with her when I split my lip open swigging champagne straight from the bottle. Note to future self: spitting blood à la Sid Vicious is probably not the most attractive look. 

      Ultimately, it was a dull event - even with the odd pop star in attendance - and the weather didn't help (typical English summer's day - wet and chilly). Glad when the coaches turned up to take us back to London. Mr Pickle dutifully came over to say goodbye and shake everyone's hand for a second time: very much Lord of the Manor. And very much not to be trusted ... [4]    

  

 

 

Not to the manor born ... Andy Greenfield and myself 

The Manor Studio (22 June 1985)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written about this scene in a post published on 4 March 2024: click here. 

 

[2] Use of this nickname is confirmed by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 355. 

      Gorman's assessment of Branson is one I fully endorse; essentially, a very clever businessman from a privileged background who knew a good opportunity when he saw one and had "cultivated a knack of appropriating aspects of youth culture to his commercial gain" (ibid., p. 356). 

 

[3] The idea of building a luxurious home recording studio was still novel at this time; the Manor was only the third such studio in the UK. Oldfield recorded his debut studio album at the Manor in 1972-73 and it was the first album released on the Virgin Records label (25 May 1973). 

      In April 1995, after the takeover of Virgin Records by EMI, the Manor was closed as a recording studio and the building, listed for sale in 2010 at £5.75 million, is now the country home of some toff or other.   

 

[4] Lee Ellen, Robin, and Shelley all worked at Charisma (in the press office, accounts, and A&R department respectively). The final line is my recalling McLaren's famous advice given to Helen in The Swindle: 'Never trust a hippie'.   

 

 

Of Punks and Prostitutes (Everyone Has Their Price)

Linda Ashby with Soo Catwoman and members of the Bromley Contingent 

(L-R: Debbie Juvenile, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Sharon Hayman, and Simon Barker)

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

According to the official trailer, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is the staggering story of a punk group that not only "held the record business to ransom", "stuck a safety pin through Her Majesty's nose" and "turned the national press into an occupied zone", but also "smuggled a Great Train robber into the top ten and destroyed the myths of their own success" [1]. 

 

All of these things are true: but were the Sex Pistols really a "kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [2], or is that just a metaphorical mixture of Mclarenesque fantasy and hype? 

 

Leaving aside ideas to do with self-destructive behaviour and criminal theft, let's examine the more disturbing claim that the Sex Pistols - using that term in its wider application to refer not simply to the members of the band, but to all the many colourful, creative, and often fucked-up characters associated with them - might be viewed as child prostitutes ...

 

 

II.  

 

Some readers may recall that back in July 2019, I published a post in which I discussed an idea central to the Swindle project that the music industry ruthlessly exploits the young artists it controls as well as the young fans who buy its products [3].   

 

It doesn't simply make a point about the exploitative nature of the music business from a financial perspective, however. It also explicitly suggests with its language of pimping and prostitution that the music industry has a sleazy underbelly [4]. 

 

Not that Malcolm was adverse to exploiting young flesh himself in order to create a stir and he seemed to genuinely delight in the world of pornography, fetish, and prostitution, as his early T-shirt designs for Sex make clear. 

 

And many of the kids who hung around (or worked in) his store on the Kings Road and later became friends and followers of the band fronted by Johnny Rotten, also seemed drawn to the world of vice; particularly those who fell under the spell of Linda Ashby, a key figure in the early punk scene and a professional dominatrix, skilled in the art of S&M.    

 

 

III.

 

Ashby, with her short blonde hair, distinctive eye makeup, and often dressed in a favourite outfit from The London Leatherman [5], was a member of what we might term the illicit underground; that demi-monde of gay bars, strip clubs, sex shops, drug dens, and houses of ill repute frequented by a wide variety of people, from artists and entertainers, to politicians and bowler-hatted city gents.  

 

She was also one of those rare customers at 430 King's Road who actually had money to spend and, before long, her large central London apartment - just off Green Park - became an important location for the punk elite to meet up and crash out. This included members of the Bromley Contingent, who were famously photographed by Ray Stevenson in 1976 cavorting on the floor having just spray painted her walls with graffiti [6].

 

Of course, being associated with a known prostitute did not make the teens who gathered round her prostitutes themselves, although, everybody's favourite punk blonde, Debbie Wilson (aka Debbie Juvenile), when not following the Sex Pistols or working as a sales assistant at Seditionaries alongside her best friend Tracie O'Keefe [7], wasn't averse - according to Bertie Marshall (aka Berlin) - from turning tricks in Mayfair to clipping mug punters in Soho. 

 

Indeed, Marshall also worked as a rent boy and he described himself and his friends, like Debbie, who were on the game, as a bizarre and exotic pack of whore hounds [8]. 

 

And so, the phrase from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle trailer with which I opened this post wasn't entirely fictitious, nor referring simply to the manner in which record companies exploit young talent. There was an all too literal sense in which prostitution was an acceptable (and celebrated) aspect of the punk lifestyle - as it was in the contemporary art world at that time [9].          

 

Notes

 

[1-2] Lines from the official trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980), narrated by the famous British newsreader and commentator on BBC Radio John Snagge. To watch on Youtube, click here.

      Note that this commentary - entitled 'Pistols Propaganda' - can also be found as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single '(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone' (Virgin Records, 1980), released from the soundtrack of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979).

[3] See the post entitled 'Young Flesh Required: Notes on Punk and Paedophilia' (18 July 2019): click here. 

[4] In fact, as Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate in Anti-Oedipus (1972), flows of capital and flows of desire belong to one and the same libidinal economy. Thus sexuality, as they say, is everywhere; as much in the boardroom as in the bedroom; "the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate ..." it's all about desiring-production. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1984), p. 293.

[5] The London Leatherman (est. 1972), which caters to connoisseurs of a certain taste, significantly influenced the fetish fashions and accessories sold at Sex by McLaren and Westwood and, later, the wider punk scene. Thus, the name Ken Magson arguably deserves to be more widely known than it is: a brief biography can be found on The London Leatherman website: click here. 

      A description of the LP7 Wrestlers Suit favoured by Ashby - and a photo of her wearing such - can also be found on thelondonleatherman.com: click here.

 

[6] Ashby would have regularly encountered members of the Bromley Contingent not just at 430 Kings Road, but also at Louise's, a lesbian club in Soho that they and members of the Sex Pistols liked to frequent and where her girlfriend at the time would often DJ. 

      The photo session I refer to with members of the Bromley Contingent, taken at Ashby's flat by Ray Stevenson in October 1976, featured in the first (and only) issue of the Sex Pistols fanzine Anarchy in the U. K. One of the pictures (cropped) can be seen at the top of this post. 

[7] See the post entitled 'Reflections on a Photo of Two Young Punks' (4 December 2018): click here, in which I pay my respects to (and express my fondness for) Debbie and Tracie. 

[8] See Marshall's memoir, Berlin Bromley (SAF Publishing Ltd., 2006). 

      Marshall - aka Berlin - was just 15 in 1976 when he and fellow suburban misfits Susan Ballion (Sioxsie Sioux), Steven Bailey (Steve Severin), and Simon Barker (Six) began to hang around 430 King's Road and follow the Sex Pistols. They formed the core of the Bromley Contingent and, along with a small handful of others, can be regarded as those whom one cultural commentator at the time described as the "'extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars'". 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329, who quotes Peter York writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).     

[9] I'm referring here to the Prostitution exhibition (1976) by the performance art collective founded by Genesis P-Orridge - COUM Transmissions - at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, which included (amongst other delights) pornographic images, used sanitary products, bloody bandages, rusty knives, and dirty syringes. The opening night show featured a stripper and prostitutes and punks were invited to mingle with the gallery audience; this included members of the Bromley Contingent, some of whom - including Debbie - got their pictures in the papers. 

      Perhaps not surprisingly, the show - which ran for just over a week - caused press outrage and debate in parliament; one Tory MP described all those involved as the wreckers of civilisation. Despite criticism from almost every quarter, the ICA director, Ted Little, defended the show which is still regarded to this day - almost 50 years later - as one of the most controversial in both the ICA's history and that of British contemporary art, challenging moral and aesthetic values in a manner similar to McLaren's Sex Pistols and obliging him to thereafter up his game as a provocateur. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'We Are All Prostitutes' by The Pop Group (Rough Trade, 1979): click here.  

    

A Brief Note on the Punk Is Dead / Punks Not Dead Debate

I. 

 

There is a big secret about The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle: most punks don't like it [1]. 

 

And the reason is simple: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is an attempt by Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid to dig a grave and bury both the reputation of the Sex Pistols as well as the expectations of their fans. 

 

Of course, Wattie Buchan didn't get it: and still doesn't get it, even in 2024. 

 

Suggest that punk is anything less than alive and kicking and he'll give you the same mouthful of abuse as spewed out in 1981, grounded in his unshakeable conviction that punk's not dead.

 

 

II.

 

For those who aren't familiar with the name, Wattie Buchan is a former squaddie turned punk rocker, born in Scotland in 1957. He is best known as lead singer and frontman for the Exploited, who, in 1981, released an album by the title of Punks Not Dead [2] - one that, even lacking an apostrophe, would quickly become a slogan graffitied on walls (and leather jackets) the world over. 

 

In part a reaction to snobby music critics writing for the NME who now privileged bands categorised as post-punk, the album title also challenged the anarcho-hippie band Crass who famously included a track on their album The Feeding of the 5000 (1978) entitled 'Punk Is Dead' [3]. 

 

If this track is lyrically more sophisticated than that given us by Mr Buchan and friends - sung by Steve Ignorant, I'm guessing it was written by Penny Rimbaud - it is equally naive in its militant idealism and, ultimately, the discussion around punk - what it is and whether it is alive or dead (as well as who is and is not authentically a punk) - becomes extremely tedious and futile; especially when it's almost 50 years after the event.

 

One thinks of the phrase two bald men fighting over a comb ...

 

    

Messrs. Buchan and Ignorant in 2024 

(aged 67)

 

Notes 

 

[1] Obviously, I'm paraphrasing the opening line to Leo Bersani's famous 1987 essay 'Is the Rectum a Grave?', which can be found in Is the Rectum a Grave and Other Essays (Chicago University Press, 2009), pp. 3-30. 

      The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was released as a soundtrack album in 1979 (Virgin Records) accompanying the film of the same title that finally arrived in UK cinemas in 1980, dir. Julien Temple. Click here to play the title track. 

 

[2] The Exploited, Punks Not Dead (Secret Records, 1981). To listen to the title track: click here. For those who may have trouble understanding the lyrics: click here.

 

[3] Crass, 'Punk Is Dead', from the album Feeding of the 5000 (Crass Records, 1978): click here to listen to a remastered version of the track on YouTube (with a video by Jay Vee which conveniently includes the lyrics to the song). 

      Punk Is Dead is also the title of a collection of essays edited by Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix (Zero Books, 2017), about which I have written in a post dated 27 June 2021: click here.

 

 

Five Brief Notes on Rockism, Poptimism, and Authenticity (With Reference to Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols)

Cover by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' single 'Silly Thing' 

released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle 

 (Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Those elderly punks who maintain that Never Mind the Bollocks is the only true Sex Pistols album are clinging desperately to an ideal of authenticity that is central to what has become known as rockism.

 

 

II.

 

This neologism, coined in 1981 by the musician Pete Wyley, soon became a pejorative used enthusiastically by music journalists such as Paul Morley [2], who were sick and tired of the idealistic fantasy that rock music matters - and matters more than other genres of popular music - because the performers really mean it man and just 'one great rock show can change the world.' [3]

 

Perhaps my favourite definition of rockism was provided by the critic Kelefa Sanneh, in 2004: 

 

"Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher." [4]

 

 

III.

 

In contrast to the above, there are those think pop music - even at its most commercial and ephemeral - is just as worthy of serious consideration as hard and heavy rock. 

 

Now, whilst I wouldn't describe myself as a poptimist - and don't particularly worry about progressive values of inclusivity, etc. - my sympathies increasingly lie with those who prefer music that makes happy - makes you want to dance and singalong - to music that is overly earnest and makes miserable.

 

 

IV.

 

Funny enough, one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren disliked Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury (2000) was because in its downbeat revisionism it made the Sex Pistols' story seem a very sombre affair: 

 

"'I don't remember punk rock being like that. [...] I always remember it as a ticket to the carnival for a better life.'" [5]             

 

No wonder that The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle takes us to Rio de Janeiro and explores many different musical styles; from disco and punk pop to bawdy drinking songs. Whatever people like to think about McLaren, he was never one to take things too seriously.

 

 

V.

 

And yet, paradoxically perhaps, McLaren always retained a notion of authenticity; as something to be found beneath the ruins of culture in a similar manner that the beach is to be found beneath the paving stones. 

 

It's a non-ideal model of authenticity, however, invested with chaos and which, in his words, is dirty, horrible, and disgusting [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The single version, released on 30 March 1979, features Steve Jones on vocals; the album version, however, recorded in the spring of 1978, has Paul Cook on vocals. Click here to play the former, which reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart. Or click here to see the unique interpretation given to the song by Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops (BBC1 12 April 1979).  

 

[2] See Paul Morley's article 'Rockism - it's the new rockism', in The Guardian (25 May 2006): click here. Interestingly, Morley warns here that when poptimism simply becomes another form of proscriptive ideology, it's little different from rockism. 

      See also Michael Hann's article 'Is Poptimism Now As Blinkered As the Rockism It Replaced?' for The Quietus (11 May 2017): click here.

 

[3] I'm quoting a line by the character Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, in School of Rock (dir. Ricard Linklater, 2003).   

 

[4] Kelefa Sanneh, 'The Rap Against Rockism', in The New York Times (31 Oct 2004): click here. Unfortunately, it's difficult to argue with Sanneh's claim that rockism is ultimately "related to older, more familiar prejudices" of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[5] Malcolm McLaren speaking with Geoffrey McNab, 'Malcolm McLaren: Master and Servant', Independent (31 May 2002): click here. Cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable 2020), p. 718.  

 

[6] See the 1999 interview with Malcolm McLaren by Jefferson Hack; 'Another Malcolm McLaren Moment', in Another Magazine (7 May 2013): click here. 

Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy

Jordan as SEX punk (1976) 

and Worlds End pirate (1981)

 

'Twas a sunny day when I went to play down by the deep blue sea  

I jumped aboard a pirate ship and Malcolm said to me ...

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I most love about the animated closing scene to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) aboard the good ship Venus [1] is that it anticipates the radical move that McLaren (and Westwood) were to make the following year when they transformed Seditionaries into Worlds End and replaced the figure of the punk rocker with that of the pirate, obliging an entire generation to either set sail with them on a new swashbuckling new adventure, or risk being thrown overboard like that scurvy dog Johnny Rotten.

 

 

II.

By 1979 it was clear that Seditionaries was no longer the centre of the world:

"McLaren and Westwood's customer base was no longer drawn from the cutting edge of the capital's cognoscenti. Now visitors comprised curious provincials, cookie-cutter second-wave punks, Johnny-come-latelies and Sid fans." [2]

 

It was time to move on, or risk becoming trapped by old ideas and old looks - although, ironically, this meant leaving the 20th-century by travelling back to a more Romantic time. 

 

McLaren, now more excited by the outlaw than the rebel, began to conceive of a new age of piracy - one which Westwood was able to brilliantly materialise with her latest fashion designs. Their partnership was once more "firing into the future" [3] and it was all systems (C30 C60 C90) Go!  

 

Of course, this meant the shop at 430 King's Road would also require a major refit ... 

  

 

III.

 

Worlds End - the fifth and final version of the store - was arguably the most imaginative; a cross between a pirate's ship and the Old Curiosity Shop made famous by Dickens. Not as pervy as Sex; not as intimidating as Seditionaries, Worlds End was an unreal place of fantasy and promise. 

 

The large clock placed above the entrance with its hands perpetually spinning backwards, suggested the idea of time travel. But the fact that it had thirteen hours rather than the standard twelve made sure that one also aware that the time one was escaping to didn't exist - but might, one day.

 

In retail terms, Worlds End was certainly more successful than the earlier versions of 430 King's Road. And McLaren and Westwood's Pirate collection (1981) was a seminal moment in fashion history (it certainly inspired Galliano). 

 

Even now, the outfits seem astonishingly fresh and colourful; full of youthful exuberance and swagger. Jerry Seinfeld may have rejected the pirate look [4], but for many of us, the puffy shirt was once a must have back in the day and every now and then you'll still see models on the catwalk wearing clothes inspired by the clothes Malcolm and Vivienne created.  

  

Post-punk pirates Bow Wow Wow 

looking the part in 1981

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written about this scene earlier this year on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 438.

[3] Ibid., p. 450.

 

[4] I'm referring to the episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Puffy Shirt' [S5/E2], dir. Tom Cherones (1993), in which Jerry famously declares: "I don't wanna be a pirate!" Click here. 

Musical bonus: Adam and the Ants, 'Jolly Roger', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.

 

Video bonus: Jordan outside Worlds End in 1981 speaking about the new age of piracy: click here.

 

For a related post to this one on Worlds End, please click here.   

Punk It Up (I'm a Sex Pistol Man Oh Yeah!)

Malcolm McLaren: screenshot taken from the video for 

'Punk It Up' (dir. Ian Gabriel): click here. 

A Sex Pistol - that's what I am / I punk it up / I'm a Sex Pistol Man, oh yeah!

 

 

I. 

 

These days, we're all supposed to agree that the Sex Pistols were a four-piece punk rock band fronted by the presiding genius of Johnny Rotten and that they existed from late 1975 through to January 1978, during which time they recorded and released four singles and one perfect album. 

 

But that's not a narrative I subscribe to or go along with. 

 

For me, the Sex Pistols was always a much wider, more interesting and more radical project, conceived by Malcolm McLaren, involving fashion and politics as well as music, and supported by a number of brilliant individuals, including Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid, who had no performing role within the group. 

 

For me, the project begins in the spring of 1974 when McLaren and Westwood refurbish their store at 430 King's Road and rebrand it as SEX and Jordan is the original face of punk long before John Lydon ever reared his ugly head. 

 

For me, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records 1979) is, in many respects, a far more challenging and daring album than Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records 1977) and it should be remembered by those punk purists who insist that the latter is the only true album, that the former featured some of the Sex Pistols' greatest hits [1] - just as the film of that title provided some of the most memorable moments in the Sex Pistols story [2]. 

 

And for me, the last Sex Pistols track doesn't appear on either of these albums and doesn't involve any members of the band who went under that name. Written by McLaren and Trevor Horn, and featuring Zulu musicians and backing singers, the track can be found on McLaren's debut solo album, Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983) ...

 

II.

 

'Punk It Up' resulted when McLaren spent a few weeks recording material for Duck Rock in South Africa and was asked by the locals to recount stories from his time as manager of the Sex Pistols, much to their delight and amusement:      

"'They couldn't believe when I told them about causing chaos across the land, taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from gullible record companies and sticking a safety pin through the Queens' lips [...] By the end of the story the Zulus were laughing and cheering [...]'" [3]

 

As Paul Gorman rightly says, whilst McLaren refused to allow his central role in the story of the Sex Pistols define him, he was always happy to look back on this period of his life and career and discuss it at length. And so, encouraged by the response to his storytelling, he wrote lyrics for the song 'Punk It Up' and affirmed that, at heart, he remained a Sex Pistol. 

 

'Punk It Up' is a brilliant track - full of joy, full of sunshine, full of chaos, and full of magic; elements that define McLaren's unique vision of post-punk that quickly moved from piracy to paganism and celebrated (amongst others) hobos, hillbillies, and hip hoppers. It almost makes 'Anarchy in the UK' seem a bit provincial ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The double A-sided single coupling 'Something Else' with 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was the only Sex Pistols single to sell more than a quarter of a million copies.  

 

[2] I'm thinking here, for example, of Sid's performance of 'My Way', about which I have written here. 

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 291.