Rioting: The Unbeatable High (With Reference to Current Events in France)

For a note on these images see [1] below

 

 

Probably there are quite a few songs about rioting and I suppose they might be classified as a sub-genre of what are known as protest songs (i.e., songs that in some way call for social change). 

 

Here, however, I wish to discuss only two: White Riot by the Clash [2] and Riot by the Dead Kennedys [3] ...   

 

 

A Riot of My Own

 

'White Riot' was released as the English punk band's first single in March 1977 (an earlier demo version was also included on their self-titled debut album released the following month). The song was written after singer Joe Strummer and bass player Paul Simonon were caught up in rioting at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976. 

 

Ironically, some people misinterpreted the title as advocating race war, whereas, actually, the band were suggesting that white working class kids ignore what they were being taught in school and learn from black youth about the necessity of political violence (i.e., throwing a few bricks).     

 

According to Strummer, the oppressed, the alienated, and the disadvantaged had a right (and a duty) to oppose the System and its heavy-handed policing; to demand a riot of their own and seize some of the power held in the hands of "the people rich enough to buy it". It would be cowardly, suggested the bourgeois punk rebel in his Brigatte Rosse T-shirt, to passively accept one's position and refuse to rise up and fight back.  

 

There is no denying that 'White Riot' is a great single and call to arms; one which, as Strummer rightly says, knocks spots off all the other stuff on the radio at that time. However, it's also, of course, laughably naive in its political posturing and massively irresponsible in its advocacy of mindless violence [4]. To his credit, guitarist Mick Jones would later refuse to perform the song, considering it crude.     

 

 

Playing Right Into Their Hands

 

Whilst he's undoubtedly a bit of a jerk himself, Jello Biafra is a lot smarter and politically astute than Joe Strummer. He's also a superior lyricist. So, no surprise that the Dead Kennedys track 'Riot' is a far more sophisticated take on the subject.

 

Acknowledging the visceral excitement involved in smashing windows, torching cars, looting stores, throwing bricks at the police, etc., Biafra is nevertheless quick to point out that rioters inevitably play into the hands of the authorities and end by burning their own neighbourhoods to the ground. 

 

The song closes with the repeated refrain: "Tomorrow you're homeless / Tonight it's a blast", the latter speaker sounding increasingly distraught as they slowly realise the consequences of their actions.    

 

Perhaps those rioting in France at the moment [5] might like to consider this ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The picture of charging police officers, by Rocco Macauly, was taken during a riot at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976. It featured on the back cover of the eponymous debut album by The Clash (CBS 1977). 

      As for the grainy black-and-white image of a row of burning police cars, this was taken in San Francisco in May 1979 during the so-called White Night Riots; a series of violent events sparked by the lenient sentencing of (former policeman) Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. It featured on the front cover of the Dead Kennedys' debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red Records, 1980).

 

[2] The Clash, 'White Riot', single released March 1977 (CBS): click here. Or, alternatively, click here to listen to the album version and watch the official video (with footage filmed by Don Letts).  

 

[3] Dead Kennedys, 'Riot', from the album Plastic Surgery Disasters, (Alternative Tentacles, 1982): click here.  For a live performance of the song from 1983, click here.

 

[4] Strummer's terroristic fascination with political violence is also displayed in the B-side of 'White Riot' on a track called '1977'. In this charming punk ditty in which he announces the death of the rock 'n' roll establishment - "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones, in 1977" - he also fantasises how it won't be so lucky to be rich when there's "Sten guns in Knightsbridge".

 

[5] On 27 June 2023, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French youth of Maghrebi Algerian descent, who was driving without licence, was shot and killed by a police officer following a car chase in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Despite the officer who shot Merzouk being arrested and charged on suspicion of 'voluntary homicide by a person in authority', the incident led to widespread protests and riots in which symbols of the state such as town halls, schools, and police stations - as well as retail outlets - were attacked and over a 1000 vehicles set on fire.

 

Glitch: The Art of Error and Imperfection (With Reference to the Photography of Julia Margaret Cameron)

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Holy Family (1872) [1]

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

I. 

 

Thanks in large part to Jews working in the American entertainment industry, a fair few words of Yiddish origin have been adopted by English-speakers: chutzpah, klutz, mensch, schlep, schmooze, shtick ... etc.

 

But my favourite such word at the moment is the rather impish-sounding glitch, which first entered everyday English during the period of the Space Race (1955-1975).  

 

Whilst it now refers to a temporary technical issue or a short-lived fault in a system that eventually corrects itself, glitch is derived from a Yiddish word for that which slides, slithers, or causes one to slip or skid, which is interesting; might one refer to a patch of black ice as a glitch in the road?

  

Commonly used within the computing and electronics industries - and still a favourite with the engineers at NASA - the term glitch is also found in the world of art ...

 

 

II.

 

Glitch art is the contemporary practice of using errors for aesthetic purposes, either by corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. As well as glitch imagery and film, there is also glitch music, a genre of experimental electronic sound that many people simply call noise.

 

Of course, whilst such 'errors' can be random effects, they are more often the result of deliberate manipulation and so not really errors at all. Numerous artists have posted online tutorials explaining the techniques they use to make their work and produce (pseudo) glitches on demand. 

 

Personally, I prefer real errors and genuine glitches to those distortions and deviations that are the result of intention. But, either way, you can end up with some amusing results, which is why glitch art is increasingly common in the world of design. And of course, there's even an app allowing those who like to edit their pics on social media to produce an instant glitch effect.  

 

Let's not pretend, however, that there's anything remotely subversive (or even all that original) about this phenomenon [2]. Artists have played with light, sound, and colour and been aware that beauty often lies in small imperfections - that failure is often more instructive than benign success - long before the digital age or anyone was using the term glitch.

 

 

III. 

 

Consider the case, for example, of the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose controversial images were lambasted by the critics [3] and jeered at by her contemporaries for being smudged, smeared, or out of focus, but which are now regarded as brilliantly ahead of their time.

Error, we might say, was the hallmark of her style; Cameron deliberately left the flaws that others would have attempted to disguise or eliminate, affirming an art of imperfection and happy accident and rejecting the idea of photography as a scientific practice via which one aimed at a perfect representation of the world, or an accurate and precisely detailed rendering of the human subject. 

 

Using an extremely messy - and slippery [4] - process that involves coating glass with an even layer of collodion, sensitising it with a bath of silver nitrate, and then exposing and developing the plate whilst still wet, Cameron was, arguably, the Cindy Sherman of her day and elements in her work are not only postmodern as some commentators claim, but distinctly glitchy.  

 

 

Notes

[1] The photograph used here illustrates Cameron's unorthodox style; undefined edges, out-of-focus figures, etc.

 

[2] We might, in fact, best understand glitch art as a form of nostalgia on the behalf of those who remember (or wish to retrospectively experience) the days of cassettes, video tapes, home movies, and polaroid instant cameras, etc. In other words, it's an attempt to resurrect a bygone techno-aesthetic. 

 

[3] In 1865, The Photographic Journal reviewed an exhibition of Cameron's portraits, commenting: 

      

"We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. [...] In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art."

 

Meanwhile, a reviewer at The Photographic News wrote: 

 

"What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined, and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as its image had appeared."

 

[4] I remind readers of the etymology of the term glitch discussed in the first section of this post.

 

On Recuperation and Karaoke Culture: Welcome to Glastonbury 2023

Steve Jones, Billy Idol, Tony James, and Paul Cook demonstrating 

the spectacular nature of punk rock at Glastonbury 2023 [1]

 

 

I. 

 

 

I hate - and have always hated - the Glastonbury Festival. 

 

And so, whilst 'Smash It Up' may not be my favourite track by The Damned, it contains one of my favourite verses of any song and I fully endorse the vitriol aimed at those zen fascists who continue to insist we all wear a happy face and share their vision of unity in diversity: You can keep your Krishna burgers and your Glastonbury hippies [2].  

 

Glastonbury may have started out in 1970 as a counter-cultural event rooted in the free-festival movement, but that's not what it is today, over fifty years on. Now it has become the coldest of all cold monsters, feeding on everything and everyone, and from whose mouth comes the monstrous lie: Art can make you happy and music set you free! 

 

Glastonbury, basically, is a means of establishing the total control and coordination of all aspects of what was once known as pop culture, or youth culture. 

 

The Nazis had a term for such a process: Gleichschaltung. Some translate this as bringing-into-line, but it more accurately means that everything is placed on a single circuit or network, so that it only requires one master switch that can be flicked on or off at the will of a single governing body or individual: Michael Eavis Über alles.   

 

 

II. 

 

For those who think this comparison with Nazi Germany is a bit over the top and who are uncomfortable with the use of the word Gleichschaltung, let's try another term - this time one that is recognisable in English, even though it's French in origin: Récupération ...

 

This term, often associated with the Situationist Guy Debord, refers us 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) [3].  

 

Glastonbury is a huge recuperative machine making a spectacle out of aged rockers who were once the voice of teen rebellion; gleefully castrating the Sex Pistols, for example, and even managing to strip the songs of the Smiths of all negativity (their dark humour, their melancholy, their pain) by hiring the smiling anti-punk Rick Astley to show that Morrissey really isn't needed any longer. 

 

The audience sing along and wave their arms, or passively stand and watch the reified spectacle. It's an amusing irony that the festival takes place in fields where usually there are a large number of dairy cows grazing, because that is what these audience members essentially constitute - a human herd consuming pop fodder.     

 

Shortly before he died in April 2010, Malcolm McLaren bemoaned the fact that genuine 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 our own stupidity and the achievements of others; a life lived by proxy [4].

 

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

 

Notes

 

[1] I am grateful to Roadent for suggesting that Generation Sex are best understood in terms of the Spectacle (i.e. from the theoretical perspective of Situationism).

 

[2] The Damned, 'Smash It Up', single release from the album Machine Gun Etiquette (Chiswick Records, 1979): click here for the official video. 

      Alternatively, you can click here, for a live performance of the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test (6 November 1979), followed by a (curtailed) performance of another track released as a single from the above album, 'I Just Can't Be Happy Today'. 

 

[3] See Debord's seminal text La société du spectacle (1967). It was first published in English in 1970, trans. Fredy Perlman and friends.  

[4] 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'.  

 

From Harold Hill to Hampstead Heath: Walking in the Footsteps of D. H. Lawrence with Catherine Brown

 

Ceramic Blue Plaque erected in 1969 by Greater London Council 

at 1 Byron Villas, Vale of Health, Hampstead, London, NW3 

englishheritage.org.uk

 

 

Hampstead is an affluent residential community in northwest London, long favoured by an assortment of artists, intellectuals, millionaires, and Marxists (i.e., the posh, the privileged, the often pretentious, and the politically radical). 

 

It's not an area I'm familiar with or particularly comfortable in; for whilst it's certainly very lovely, it's a long way from Harold Hill and I don't wanna go to where, where the rich are living.      

 

Nevertheless, putting aside my prejudices as a Clash City Rocker [1], I recently agreed to join a walking tour of Hampstead, led by Dr Catherine Brown; Vice President of the D. H. Lawrence Society, Founder of the Lawrence London Group, and unofficial Queen of the wider Lawrence collective [2].

 

Because Lawrence - a red-bearded poet and novelist who was deeply proud of his working-class roots in an East Midlands mining community - was once, briefly, a resident of Hampstead, there's even an English Heritage blue plaque celebrating the fact. 

 

We might see this as a good thing; a sign of nascent social mobility in the twentieth-century, or the classless nature of the art world; a meritocratic community in which anyone with genius [3] is welcome. Or we might view it as just one more attempt to neutralise Lawrence by assimilating him and his work into the dominant culture that he did so much to counter [4].       

 

Still, the blue plaque was just one of many things to stop and gawp at and hear about on the walking tour. Other highlights included:

 

(i) Hampstead Underground Station, which Lawrence used (but didn't like). Whether he knew it was (and still is) London's deepest tube stop - 192 feet beneath the surface - (or whether he would've cared), I don't know. Designed by architect Leslie Green, it opened in June 1907, just a few months before Lawrence first visited the area.    

 

(ii) Whitestone Pond, close to where Lawrence saw a German airship over London, in September 1915, an event that obviously captured his imagination. This is how Lawrence describes the incident in a letter: 

 

"Last night when we were coming home the guns broke out, and there was a noise of bombs. Then we saw the Zeppelin above us, just ahead, amid a gleaming of clouds; high up, like a bright golden finger, quite small, among a fragile incandescence of clouds. And underneath it were splashes of fire as the shells fired from earth burst. Then there were flashes near the ground - and the shaking noise. It was like Milton - then there was a war in heaven. But it was not angels. It was that small golden Zeppelin, like a long oval world, high up. It seemed as if the cosmic order were gone, as if there had come a new order, a new heavens above us: and as if the world in anger were trying to revoke it. Then the small long-ovate luminary, the new world in the heavens, disappeared again. 

      I cannot get over it, that the moon is not Queen of the sky by night, and the stars the lesser lights. It seems the Zeppelin is in the zenith of the night, golden like a moon, having taken control of the sky; and the bursting shells are the lesser lights. 

      So it seems our cosmos is burst, burst at last, the stars and moon blown away, the envelope of the sky burst out, and a new cosmos appeared, with a long-ovate, gleaming central luminary, calm and drifting in a glow of light, like a new moon, with its light bursting in flashes on the earth, to burst away the earth also. So it is the end - our world is gone, and we are like dust in the air." [5] 

 

(iii) Various places associated with the short story 'The Last Laugh' (1924), a tale in which Pan appears in Hampstead, with predictably tragic consequences. The story is  an example of what might be termed sardonic paganism; a mocking and malevolent form of queer gothic fiction directed towards a dark god who is always coming, but who never quite arrives or reveals himself. 

      By setting the story in a leafy north London suburb, Lawrence relates his onto-theological vision to everyday experience, whilst, at the same time, demonstrating how the latter unfolds within a wider, inhuman context that is resistant to any kind of moral-rational codification. He thereby attempts to loosen the aura of necessity surrounding categories of the present and restore a little primordial wonder to NW3 [6].

 

(iv) Several houses belonging to Lawrence's swell friends, who often provided him and Frieda with refuge when needed. These didn't particularly interest, but Hampstead Heath certainly did and one can see why Lawrence - who mostly hated London and its damp gloom - loved this ancient area of woodland, meadows, and ponds spanning 790 acres. 

Anyway, in closing I'd like to thank Catherine for all her hard work and kindness; I'm sure the handful of Lawrence devotees who turned up on the day - including Nottingham's favourite son and digital pilgrim, James Walker - enjoyed the tour and learnt something new. 

Members of the London Lawrence Group 

   

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to (and paraphrasing a line from) a song by The Clash called 'Garageland', the final track to be found on their eponymous debut album (CBS Records, 1977): click here. The song was written in response to a snide remark by middle-class music critic Charles Shaar Murray - precisely the kind of person who lives in Hampstead.  

 

[2] Catherine Brown, 'Lawrence's Hampstead: A Walking Tour'. Full details (and illustrations) can be found on Catherine's excellent website: click here. 

 

[3] Lawrence was deeply suspicious of how the term genius was used by certain people to excuse his lack of finesse and the more problematic aspects of writing. In a short piece written towards the very end of his life, he recounts, for example, Ford Maddox Hueffer's reaction to the manuscript of The White Peacock: "'It's got every fault that an English novel can have. But, you've got GENIUS.'"

      Lawrence notes: "In the early days, they were always telling me I had got genius, as if to console me for not having their incomparable advantages." See 'Myself Revealed', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 178-79. 

[4] Guy Debord famously describes this process of recuperation in La société du spectacle (1967). In brief: all politically radical ideas and/or subversive works of art are eventually defused and then safely incorporated back into mainstream culture, where they can be successfully exploited.   

 

[5] See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press,1981), pp. 389-90. The letter was sent to Lady Ottoline Morrell (9 Sept 1915).

      One suspects that, Lawrence being Lawrence, he also found the phallic shape of the Zepplin particularly striking ... This same event was also described in his 1923 novel Kangaroo; see pp. 215-16 of the Cambridge Edition, ed. Bruce Steele, (1994).

 

[6] See the post dated 15 May 2017 - 'Pan Comes to Hampstead' - click here.

 

 

She Flows Lava: On Why the Volcanic Feminism of Betty Hirst is More Effusive Than Dada

Heide Hatry: She Pees Fire (2023)  

heideihatry.com

 

 

I like Heide Hatry. And I like this image; it's always a pleasure to be reacquainted with Betty Hirst. But I really hate the new title assigned to the picture - She Pees Fire. 

 

That might work on an ad alerting women to the signs and symptoms of a urinary tract infection and in which humour is used to counter embarrassment concerning the body, but, in my view, puns should have no place in the world of art [1].  

The photo appears in the latest issue of Maintenant, an annual journal featuring contemporary Dada writing and art [2]. 

 

Unfortunately, I have concerns with this publication and its claim to provide provocative outsider ideas as Dada has done since its inception. For it seems to me that Dada - like punk - was materially embedded in the politics and culture of its time. 

 

To vainly attempt to appear avant-garde by invoking the spirit of something that erupted over a hundred years ago, just seems a little foolish and mistaken to me. It turns Dada into just another -ism (i.e., a practice and an ideology), rather than an Event, (i.e., something unique and chaotic). 

 

I might be mistaken, but I thought the artists involved with Dada during the years 1916-24 aimed to produce works that were completely original; to eradicate all forms of imitation, not found a new school or a tradition in which their ideas and techniques were simply learned and passed on.        

 

Anyway, leaving this debate aside for now, the new issue of Maintenant (#17) argues that war and peace are two-sides of the same coin and that what anti-war protestors should be demanding is not simply a cessation of all military conflicts, but a peacefire. 

 

By this, I think they mean a deconstruction of the binary that forges war and peace into a relationship of co-dependence and obliges us to think of the latter in purely negative terms; i.e., as the absence of war, or the temporary suspension of hostilities.  

 

Heide Hatry's She Pees Fire is a play on this term, peacefire, which, of course, is a play on the term ceasefire - so we have here a double-layered pun. But, as I've said, whilst mildly amusing, it's not a title I care for. 

 

I also fear it detracts from the power of the image, which, to me, reveals the volcanic potentiality of womanhood; she isn't so much pissing fire, as unleashing Hell - i.e., sending a stream of molten lava flowing into the phallocratic world order from out of the bowels of her being. 

 

It's certainly an effusive feminist image, but, ironically, I'm not sure it works to promote an anti-war message. Nor is it particularly Dadaist in character [3]; for it seems to me laden with symbolic meaning, rather than being nonsensical in character (i.e., it's an art-utterance, not just an absurdist prank intended to shock). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm all in favour of paronomasia if and when it is itself raised to the level of an art form, but I'm extremely wary of puns (and the kind of people who make puns); not because I find them threatening or seek a level of control over the meaning of language, as John Pollack, a communications expert and author of The Pun Also Rises (2012), claims, but because I think they are an easy and lazy form of wordplay - neither witty, nor particularly clever, and certainly not subversive.  

[2] Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, Issue 17, ed. Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, (Three Rooms Press, July 2023). 

      For more information and to order your copy direct from the publishers, click here. Alternatively, British readers may find it easier to go to Amazon UK: click here. 

 

[3] One might remind readers that, for all of its supposed radicalism and revolutionary spirit, Dada was not without its problematic aspects, including what might be construed as misogynist tendencies. See Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity, ed. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, (The MIT Press, 1999).   

 

 

Melody Blue

Photo of Jane Birkin by Tony Frank used for the sleeve of 

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

 

 

As long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, whilst, as a nihilist, my default position is always paint it black, I do have a philosophical fascination with a colour much loved by painters and poets and which French fashion designer Christian Dior once described as the only one which can possibly compete with black: Blue [1]. 

 

This includes the lyrical blue celebrated by Rilke and Trakl; the deep blue invented by Yves Klein; and the blue of the Greater Day that Lawrence writes of. 

 

So, no surprise then, that I should also adore the light blue used as a background colour by the photographer Tony Frank when shooting his iconic image of Jane Birkin for the cover of Serge Gainsbourg's seven-track concept album, Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) [2].

 

Birkin, who would have been twenty-four at the time - and pregnant with Gainsbourg's child - was playing the part of the red-haired, rosy-cheeked 15-year-old with a penchant for blue jeans, a pair of which Birkin can be seen wearing in the photo, whilst clutching a toy monkey to her bare chest. 

 

It's a good look - albeit a slightly pervy one, with its Lolita-esque overtones. Birkin not only gets away with pretending to be an adolescent, but she has an androgynous thing going on in the photo that adds to her appeal. 

 

By staring directly at the camera - one assumes at Frank's suggestion - Birkin reveals Melody's innocence and vulnerability. But she also challenges the viewer to accept her gaze and question their own position vis-à-vis the question of a middle-aged man desiring (or actually entering into) a sexual relationship with an underage girl [3].            

 

Anyway, whatever one's thoughts on this, the fact is Frank's image of Birkin on the cover of Histoire de Melody Nelson has become as celebrated as the album itself and - according to the photographer at least - some people have even started to describe the background colour as Melody Blue [4].  

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written several posts on the colour blue. See, for example, 'Blue is the Colour ... Notes on Rilke's Blue Delirium' (1 April 2017) and 'Blue is the Colour ... Yves Klein is the Name' (2 April 2017).

 

[2] Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson was released on 24 March, 1971 (Philips Records). It tells the tale of an illicit romance which develops between the middle-aged narrator and a sexually innocent 15-year-old called Melody Nelson. The album is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work (despite only being 28 minutes in length). To play the second track from the album - 'Ballade de Melody Nelson' - click here. 

 

[3] Technically, Melody was not underage as the (heterosexual) age of consent in France at this time was fifteen, as established by an ordinance enacted by the French government in 1945. Interestingly, however, an article within this ordinance forbade anal sex and similar relations against nature with any person under the age of twenty-one (an attempt, one assumes, to discriminate against homosexual lovers).   

 

[4] Readers interested in this post will be pleased to know that Tony Frank has assembled photos, contact sheets, behind-the-scenes imagery, and slides from the shoot with Birkin, into a 96-page book entitled Bleu Melody (RVB Books, 2018). In the book, Frank also recounts his memories from the time.

 

Johnny Vs Jimmy (Notes on a Punk Spat)

Johnny Rotten on Jukebox Jury (30 June 1979)

Jimmy Pursey on Jukebox Jury  (4 August 1979)

 

I. 

 

As disussed in a recent post, Jimmy Pursey - punk's self-proclaimed Cockney Cowboy - was desperate to become a Sex Pistol and assume the mantle of punk figurehead once Johnny Rotten had been unceremoniously thrown out of the band (at Malcolm's instigation) by Paul Cook and Steve Jones [1].   

 

Unfortunately for Hersham's favourite son, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For Cook and Jones soon realised that working with Pursey - an emotional geezer who always wore his heart on his sleeve - was even more demanding than working with Rotten. 

 

Further - and this was the real deal breaker - when they finally got together in the studio to write some new songs, Pursey failed to come up with the goods: "His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near." [2]    

 

Nevertheless, the three parted on amicable terms and there was never any of the intense animosity that existed between Messrs Pursey and Rotten ...

 

 

II. 

 

When or why this animosity begins, I don't know: perhaps it has origins that are now lost in the mists of punk history. 

 

Or perhaps Rotten was simply unhappy with the thought that Pursey might replace him as a vocalist in the Sex Pistols; a possibility with which he was taunted by Angelic Upstart Mond Cowie whilst appearing with his new band, Public Image Ltd., on Check It Out in the summer of '79. 

 

Describing Rotten as a terrible singer, a sell-out, and an old man, the Geordie guitarist finished his defamatory attack by saying: "I'm glad Jimmy Pursey's got his job in the Sex Pistols" [3].

 

During an interview with Danny Baker in this same period, Jimmy Pursey's name comes up in relation to the question of class and Rotten says:

 

"I certainly don't have to perform at being working class. There's so much made of it, as if the more dumb you are the more glorious you become. That's why Pursey is so well-liked, because he plays his role for everyone. It's so easy to manipulate, it fits into a nice little clichéd bracket - no threat. It's once you break that apart you become a worry to them." [4] 

 

Shortly afterwards, Rotten put in a comical appearance on Jukebox Jury, in which he did his (by then familiar, but still highly entertaining) I hate everything routine followed by a premiditated strop and early exit off set [5]. 

 

Appearing on the same show five weeks later, Pursey couldn't resist having a little dig at Rotten and doing a mocking impression of the latter, much to the amusement of host Noel Edmonds [6].  

Strangely, however, things didn't really come to a head until a quarter of a century later ...

 

In August 2005, Pursey was involved in a fight - well, let's call it a brief altercation - with Rotten whilst they were both queuing for travel visas at the United States Embassy in London. Spotting the latter, Pursey decided to let bygones be byones and went over to offer his hand - which, to be fair, is the decent (and manly) thing to do.

 

Unfortunately, Rotten by this date was well on his way to becoming a genuinely nasty piece of work [7] and he spurned the chance to kiss and make up, launching a foul-mouthed tirade and throwing a cup of coffee over Pursey, who naturally retaliated by trying to kick the fat fifty-year old Sex Pistol, before armed police intervened to calm the situation.  

 

Afterwards, Pursey attempted to make light of this slightly embarrassing scrap, whilst Rotten seemed to want to deny it had even happened, dismissing Pursey's claims in a typical manner: "All the usual lies. He's not fit to be in the same sentence as me. What do you expect from a low-rent, fake mockney, two-bob runt?" [8] 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring to the post of 17 June 2023 - 'Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)' - click here. 

 

[2] Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

[3] Public Image Limited appeared on this Tyne Tees music show on 2 July 1979. They performed the track 'Chant' from the (soon to be released) album Metal Box and were then made to watch a filmed interview with the Angelic Upstarts before being subjected to what Rotten called a "cheapskate comedy interrogation". The whole thing can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here.

 

[4] Danny Baker, 'The Private Life of Public Image', NME, (16 June 1979): click here to read the interview in full online.  

[5] Those who wish to watch Rotten's appearance on Jukebox Jury (30 June 1979), alongside Elaine Paige (seems sweet), Joan Collins (still sexy at 46), and Alan (Fluff) Freeman (a cunt in a wig), can click here.

 

[6] To watch Jimmy Pursey's appearance on Jukebox Jury (4 August 1979), alongside Rick Wakeman (a complacent hippie), Billy Connolly (unfunny Scottish bore), and Judy Tzuke (a one-hit wonder), click here. Pursey does his brief Rotten impression beginning at 8:56.  

[7] Just ask Welsh songstress Duffy, whom he reduced to tears at the Mojo Awards three years later (but that's another story ...)

[8] For a report on the incident written at the time in the Irish Examiner (24 August 2005), click here.

In Memory of Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson as Gudrun Brangwen in Women in Love (1969) 

and as Cleopatra in The Morecambe and Wise Show (1971)

 

 

I. 

 

I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of the actress Glenda Jackson [1], who died a few days ago, aged 87. But I do remember with a certain degree of fondness her appearances on the Morecambe & Wise Show - particularly the cod-classical Cleopatra sketch, in which she delivered the immortal line: "All men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got." [2]

 

And, of course, I also admire her Academy Award winning performance as Gudrun, in Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) [3]. The critic Brian McFarlane was spot on to describe Jackson's "blazing intelligence, sexual challenge and abrasiveness" [4] in the superbly written role; I think even Lawrence might have been impressed by her fearlessness.  

 

 

II. 

 

Born, in 1936, into a solidly working-class family from Birkenhead, Glenda was named after the wise-cracking Hollywood blonde Glenda Farrell. 

 

A politically-conscious and talented teenager, Miss Jackson won a scholarship to study at RADA in 1954. 

 

Prior to this, she spent two years working at Boots, which she hated; as she did the series of soul-destroying jobs she was obliged to take whilst unable to land roles in the early years of her acting career [5].

 

Fortunately, fame, fortune, and critical success were just around the corner and Jackson became a huge star of stage and screen in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

 

However, she decided to quit acting in 1991, in order to devote herself to politics full-time as the Labour Party candidate for Hampstead and Highgate. 

 

Entering Parliament the following year, Jackson declared her determination to do anything legal to oppose the Tory government, still led at this time by Margaret Thatcher, whom she despised. 

 

(As a staunch republican, she wasn't a great supporter of the British monarchy either.)

 

In 2015, having retired from politics, Jackson returned to her first love; even treating us to a magnificent (gender-transcending) interpretation of King Lear, in Deborah Warner's 2016 production at the Old Vic: 

 

 

 Photo: Tristram Kenton (2016)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] As lengthy obituaries for Jackson have (rightly) appeared in every major news publication, I'm not going to recap her life and career in detail here. Primarily, I wanted simply to remind readers of her roles as Cleopatra and Gudrun Brangwen. However, I will add a few biographical details in part two of this post discussing her later years.    

 

[2] See The Morecambe & Wise Show (S5/E5), dir. John Ammonds, written by Eddie Braben, which aired on 3 June, 1971. Click here to watch the lengthy (14:32) Cleopatra sketch on the Facebook page Classic TV Moments. The line quoted begins at 5:57.  

 

[3] Interestingly, Jackson was pregnant whilst filming Women in Love - though I'm not sure if this fact helped, hindered, or made no difference to her astonishing performance. 

      Click here to watch the famous scene in which Jackson - as Gudrun - dances in front some (bemused and increasingly agitated) Highland cattle, whilst her sister Ursula (played by Jennie Linden) watches on fightened of what might the beasts might do. Eventually, Gerald Crich (Oliver Reid) arrives to put a stop to her fun and games, demanding to know why she wished to drive his cattle mad.

 

[4] Brian McFarlane (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film, (Methuen / BFI, 2003), p. 339.

 

[5] These jobs included: waitress in a coffee shop; receptionist for a theatrical agent; and a shop assistant at British Home Stores. Being a woman with an artistic temperament from a traditional working class background, surely helped Jackson in the role of Gudrun.   

 

 

Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)

The Sham Pistols: Jimmy Pursey, Steve Jones, Dave Treganna, and Paul Cook

Photo by Paul Slattery (July 1979)

 

 

James Timothy Pursey - or Jimmy Pursey as he likes to be known - is the founder and frontman of British punk band Sham 69. 

 

Although initially inspired by the Ramones, Jimmy always wanted to be a Clash City Rocker; he even dreamed of one day becoming a Sex Pistol ...

 

For despite the fact that Sham 69 were one of the most commercially successful punk groups - achieving five Top 20 singles and making regular appearances on Top of the Pops - Jimmy lacked that one thing he truly desired - credibility and the respect of his punk superiors.     

 

Thus, imagine his joy when, on 30 April 1978, Jimmy was invited on stage at Victoria Park in East London, to perform alongside Joe and Mick, belting out 'White Riot' in his own inimitable mockney style, in front of a 100,000 people: click here.

 

And imagine his still greater excitement when, the following year, having kicked Rotten out of their band, Steve Jones and Paul Cook invited Jimmy to become the new voice and face of the Sex Pistols - or, more precisely, the Sham Pistols as they were (possibly) going to be known.

 

Alas, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For although Cook and Jones found Jimmy amiable enough at first and things seemed to be progressing well in the studio - in July 1979, the singer informed the NME they had recorded 10 songs and would be ready to tour by September that year - Sham 69 were still contractually bound to Polydor whilst Cook and Jones were signed to Virgin.

 

Apart from this legal issue, relations were also beginning to sour on a personal level between Jimmy and the two former Sex Pistols, coming to a head on 19 August, when the latter walked out of a recording session and Jones hilariously declared: It's worse than working with Rotten.

 

Elaborating in an interview at the time, Jones described how an overly emotional Jimmy kept crying and stuff like that. Worse, he and Cook had come to the conclusion that although Jimmy could talk the talk, when push came to shove, he couldn't walk the walk: All he wanted to do was be a Sex Pistol.   

 

Recalling events in his autobiography, almost 40 years later, Jones writes: 

 

"When me and Cookie gave Jimmy a try, it was never going to be the Sex Pistols in our minds, we always thought of it as a new group. The odd thing about it was that we liked him, but when we got together to try and write some songs in a studio out in the country, he couldn't fucking come up with anything. His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near". 

- Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

After the dissolution of the embryonic new band, Cook and Jones went on to form The Professionals and poor little Jimmy moved on to solo projects, later reforming Sham 69, with whom he still performs today, aged 68. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Natural Born Killer', a track by the Sham Pistols recorded in June 1979 (later reworked with new lyrics by Cook and Jones as 'Kick Down the Doors'): click here. 

 

Thanks to Sophie S. for her help fact checking this post. 

 

For a related post to this one, on Johnny Rotten Vs Jimmy Pursey, click here.

 

 

Claude Lalanne, Serge Gainsbourg, and the Man with the Cabbage Head

 

Claude Lalanne's L'Homme à tête de chou, as featured on 

the cover of  Serge Gainsbourg's 1976 album of the same title 

 

 

Claude Lalanne was an avant-garde French sculptor and designer, who often worked in collaboration with her husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, even though they had distinctively different styles and ideas.

 

Inspired by a whimsical mix of Surrealism, Art Nouveau, and her love of plants, Claude Lalanne produced some astonishing pieces (including items of furniture and jewellery) and her hybrid (often bizarre) style of decorative design has captured the imagination of many in the art world, as well as leading fashion designers including Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent, the latter of whom commissioned Lalanne to create several mirrors adorned with electroplated leaves and branches [1]

 

In fact, for anyone who wanted an apple with lips, a rabbit with wings, or a man with a cabbage head, Lalanne was the go-to artist; Salvador Dalí once asked her to make him some cutlery and Serge Gainsbourg famously acquired her piece entitled L’homme à tête de chou, featuring it on the sleeve of his 1976 album of the same title [2], thereby bringing her work to the attention of a new and wider audience. 

 

Amusingly, Lalanne also made a whole series of chicken-legged cabbage sculptures which she called choupattes - a series she added to (with the assistance of her daughter and granddaughter) right up to her death, aged 93, in 2019. 

 

 

Claude Lalanne: Choupatte (2014 / 2017)

Bronze (57.5 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm)

Ben Brown Fine Arts

  

 

Notes

 

[1] After his death in 2008, Yves Saint-Laurent's fifteen Lalanne designed mirrors fetched more than $2m at auction. 

      It might also be noted that Lalanne collaborated with the designer on his 1969 Empreintes collection, for which she made bronze breastplates cast from the chest of his favourite model. It was Saint-Laurent's only collaboration with an artist. 

 

[2] Although not as celebrated as Histoire de Melody Nelson (Philips Records, 1971) - considered by many to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work - L'Homme à tête de chou (Philips Records, 1976) does have its moments and dark delights. It tells the story of a middle-aged man obsessively in love with a young and free-spirited shampoo girl, Marilou. Driven mad by jealousy and desire, he eventually murders her with a fire extinguisher, concealing her body beneath the foam. Unsurprisingly, he ends his days in an inane asylum.

      Claude Lalanne's sculpture, owned by Gainsbourg, is pictured on the front sleeve of the album sitting in the courtyard of his house in Paris (5 bis Rue De Verneuil). Click here to listen to the title track of L'Homme à tête de chou uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group.