Why Me Contra So What

 

 

Even if receiving the most dire news from a doctor, the one question I would hope never to ask is: Why me?

 

For no question is more metaphysically naïve and egocentric than this request not only for meaning, but for a coherent narrative that unfolds in relation specifically to one's self. This may be all too human, but it's all too shameful for a philosopher.

For a philosopher should know better than attempt to explain, justify and integrate a random event into a personal life story, or start asking crypto-theological questions of the universe.

 

And even if the question is more rhetorical than anything else - a venting of natural emotion - it should still never pass the lips of a philosopher; i.e., one who always remains stoical, always refuses to take things tragically, and always favours the Warholian response when given terrible news: So what? [1]        

   

 

Notes

 

[1] See The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again), (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), in which he writes:   

      "Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, 'So what.' That's one of my favorite things to say. 'So what.'  [...] I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget." (Ch. 7)

And God Save Ronald Biggs

Jamie Reid promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 

'No One is Innocent' (Virgin Records, 1978)

 

Ronnie Rotten - he never sang for Scotland Yard, but he burst his lungs for the Sex Pistols ...

 

  

I. 

 

If you want to understand the Sex Pistols, then it probably helps to conceive of them more as an adolescent criminal gang, led by former art student Malcolm McLaren, who peddled anarchy and fetish fashion from their hideout on the King's Road, rather than simply a punk rock band fronted by Johnny Rotten [1]. 

 

Instead of chasing chart success and pop stardom, the idea was to generate cash from chaos, aestheticise evil, and celebrate the outlaw à la Jean Genet [2] who recognised in the ruthlessness and cunning of murderers and thieves a sunken beauty.  

 

Thus, for example, one of the earliest shirts sold at SEX featured the leather mask of the notorious Cambridge Rapist. And so it was that when Rotten was thrown overboard for collaborating with the record companies so as to establish a long-term, professional career in music, he was replaced not by some hopeless teen wannabe, but by Great Train Robber and fugitive Ronnie Biggs ... [3]  

 

 

II. 

 

Biggs, who had daringly escaped from Wandsworth Prison fifteen months into his thirty year sentence, was still wanted by the British authorities, but had immunity from extradition, having fathered a child in Brazil, where he had been living since 1970.

 

He and the two remaining Sex Pistols - Paul Cook and Steve Jones - got on well, writing and recording a new track together, entitled 'No One is Innocent' [4], which was released as a single on 30 June 1978, coupled with Sid's unique version of 'My Way'. Despite a (predicatable) BBC ban, it reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart [5]. Biggs also recorded a version of 'Belsen Was a Gas', which was included on the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack (1979) [6]. 

 

I know many people - including fans of the band - were either perplexed or pissed-off by McLaren's decision to replace Rotten with Biggs as the new singer with the Sex Pistols [8], but I tend to agree with Jamie Reid that it was a brilliant (and necessary) move which demonstrated an idea crucial to the pluralistic politics of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, namely, that anyone can be a Sex Pistol [9].

 

 

III.

 

In February 1978, McLaren joined Cook and Jones in Brazil. Filmmaker Julien Temple was also there to shoot the scenes with Biggs for the Swindle, including an expensive riverboat sequence to promote the new song, which had been recorded at a local 16-track studio with overdubs later added back in London at Wessex Studios, by audio engineer Bill Price. 

 

The thing is - and I think this is something even those who dismiss the track as simply a cynical attempt to stir controversy and grab headlines will admit - it does sound like a Sex Pistols track; even without Rotten on vocals. Thanks to Jones's distinctive guitar and Cook's solid work as always on drums, it has typical swagger and a huge amount of energy. 

 

And for those who, like me, appreciate the absurd anarchy of the Swindle rather than the austere monarchy of Never Mind the Bollocks, it's a fantastic single. 

 

To play 'No One is Innocent' (audio only) click here. 

 

To play (with official video using footage from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)), click here.

 

 

Sex Pistols (sans Rotten and Vicious): 

Jones / Rowland / McLaren / Cook /Biggs (1978)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] I think it's important to acknowledge that the key figure in the band was never really Rotten; it was Steve Jones, a semi-professional tea leaf with more than a dozen criminal convictions; someone described by Glen Matlock as resembling a character from a book by Jean Genet. 

 

[2] See the post 'God Save Jean Genet' (2 Feb 2026), in which the French writer is considered in relation to the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

[3] Whilst I cannot go into too much detail here, I thought readers who are unfamiliar with the name and the robbery with which Biggs is forever associated, might appreciate a few lines of explanation ...

      Ronald Biggs was a petty criminal from South London who helped plan and carry out the Great Train Robbery on 8 August 1963 (his 34th birthday). Whilst in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) he is portrayed as the legendary mastermind behind the robbery, he actually had a very minor role. 

      The gang got away with £2.6 million (equivalent to around £70 million today), so a considerable sum of money then as now and the holding up of a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London was an enormous story in the British press, dominating headlines for weeks afterwards and remaining in the cultural imagination ever since. For some people it still remains the crime of the century and, despite what happened to the train's driver, Jack Mills, the robbers are often regarded as folk heroes who got one over the authorities. For even though Biggs and eleven other gang members were arrested just three weeks after the robbery and received long prison sentences, most of the money was never recovered.

      Biggs subsequently became notorious for his escape from prison in July 1965, living thereafter as a fugitive in foreign exile (and with a new identity) for thirty-six years. The money - as it always does - soon ran out (mostly on legal fees and other expenses relating to his exile, although £40,000 also went on plastic surgery), so Biggs was obliged to do whatever he could to secure and income - including the selling of his soul for punk.  

      In 2001, feeling increasingly homesick - telling friends that he longed to walk into an English boozer once more and order a pint -  he announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK. Still having twenty-eight years of his sentence left to serve, he was aware that he would be detained upon arrival in Britain and spend time in prison: which he did. However, due to his health rapidly declining, he was (eventually) released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 (two days before his 80th birthday and having served a third of his original sentence). 

      Biggs died in a North London nursing home on 18 December 2013. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 3 January 2014. The coffin was covered with the flags of the UK and Brazil (and a Charlton Athletic scarf). An honour guard of British Hells Angels escorted his hearse to the crematorium.

 

[4] Before Virgin vetoed the idea, the track was originally to be called 'Cosh the Driver', tastelessly referencing the fact that during the robbery the driver of the intercepted train, Jack Mills, was blugeoned with an iron bar. Mills never fully recovered from his serious head injuries - nor overcome the trauma of what he had experienced - although he died of an unrelated cause (leukaemia), in 1970. 

      The 12" single - which I bought along with the 7" - came with a different sleeve, featuring a still from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) in which the American actor Henry Rowland (dressed as Nazi on the run Martin Bormann; a role he had played in a number of Russ Meyer movies) is shown playing bass alongside Jones on guitar, Cook on drums, and Biggs on lead vocals. It also came with a different title: 'The Biggest Blow - A Punk Prayer by Ronnie Biggs' (Virgin Records, 1979).  

 

[5] The single was not released in the US and failed to chart in other overseas territories. 

 

[6] Readers might be surprised to learn that this was not Biggs's first outing as a recording artist. For Biggs, an avid jazz fan, had previously collaborated in 1974 with three musicians to make a musical narrative of his life entitled Mailbag Blues. The album was finally released in 2004 (whatmusic.com) and is "a fusion of experimental jazz, blues and funk, with echoes of Brazilian styles such as tropicalia and bossa nova" and although Biggs doesn't actually sing on the record, he is credited as inspiration and storyteller. See Alex Bellos, 'Ronnie Biggs: the album', in The Guardian (1 Sept 2004): click here. To listen to the title track - 'Mailbag Blues' - please click here. 

      Biggs also had a post-Pistols recording career; in 1991, he provided vocals for the songs 'Police on My Back' and 'Carnival in Rio' by German punk band Die Toten Hosen, and two years later Biggs sang on three tracks for the album Bajo Otra Bandera by Argentinian punk band Pilsen. You can find some of these songs on YouTube, but, frankly, I'd not bother.

 

[7] McLaren's original plan was for the group - including Rotten - to fly down to Rio de Janeiro after the final US show in San Francisco, so that they could be filmed performing with Biggs. Paul Gorman writes: "The combination of the UK's most wanted felon cavorting with the world's most hated group amid the favelas during Carnival was too good an opportunity to let pass, McLaren believed." 

      But Rotten wanted nothing to do with the idea and his refusal to comply with McLaren's latest scheme effectively brought the curtain down on his career as a Sex Pistol. Interestingly, Gorman is sympathetic to the singer here: 

      "With justification, Lydon viewed Biggs as a charmless nerk rather than an anti-hero deserving of glorification, not least since the train driver in Biggs's gang crime had suffered severe brain damage from injuries inflicted upon him during the raid."

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 386 and 388. 

 

[8] Jamie Reid would later explain:

      "'One of the things we were aware of was the need never to remain still, never to become stagnant. After three or four records have come out there begins to be a typical punk fan, who identifies with the band the way fans always do. When Rotten left and we put in Ronnie Biggs, they couldn't understand. It seemed a good idea to us.'"

      Quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm Mclaren, p. 402. 

God Save Joe Orton

Joe Orton anachronistically wearing a 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears T-shirt

in a photo by George Elam (1967) 

 

'The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste 

invariably have very bad taste.'

 

 

I. 

 

Remembered primarily as a playwright who came to a sticky end at the hands of his lover, Joe Orton was a gay, working class English writer who, in a brief but brilliant public career lasting from 1964 until his murder in 1967, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies, characterised by a mix of cynicism and sauciness [1].  

 

 

II. 

 

After leaving school, Orton got a job as an office junior whilst also developing an interest in the performing arts, joing a number of am-dram societies in his home town of Leicester. He obviously showed promise, as, in November 1950, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he took up the following spring.   

 

It was at RADA that Orton met Kenneth Halliwell, seven years his senior, and they formed a strong romantic relationship, moving into a West Hampstead flat together (shared with two other students). 

 

After graduating, they collaborated on a number of novels. However, as these failed to set the literary world alight (or even find a publisher), Orton and Halliwell decided it might be best to write separately, scraping by as best they could on benefits and monies earned from part-time jobs, whilst amusing themselves with various pranks; such as removing books from their local library in order to modify them (i.e., deface the covers with comically surreal images and additional text), before returning them to the shelves [2].   

 

They were eventually nicked by the police and charged with larceny and damage to property deemed to be wilfully malicious in nature. After pleading guilty at Old Street magistrates (in May 1962), each received a six-month custodial sentence (and a £2 fine). Interestingly, whilst Halliwell hated being in jail and attempted suicide, Orton seemed to enjoy himself and find inspiration. His career as a powerful and subversive writer arguably has its origins in his time behind bars and shortly after his release he wrote Entertaining Mr Sloane [3]. 

 

 

III.

 

The unduly harsh nature of the prison sentence, which Orton suspected was due to the fact that he and Halliwell were queers, brought home to him the fact that corrupt priggishness and hypocrisy still exercised its power and authority in the UK, even after the Chatterley Trial: 

 

"It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul." [4]

 

Orton's next performed work was Loot (1965); a dark two-act work that satirises social and religious attitudes to death, as well as the integrity of the police. It opened to severe criticism, but, after numerous edits and rewrites, a London production in the autumn of 1966 received rave reviews, several awards, and established Orton's reputation. He was even able to sell the film rights for £25,000 (that's over half-a-million nicker in today's money and was a record figure at the time).     

 

 

IV. 

 

Orton's final play, What the Butler Saw, was a clever modern farce that he completed writing in July 1967, one month before his death [5]. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 5 March 1969 and was met with a hostile audience reaction; boos and cries of rubbish were heard coming from the balcony and some people walked out, protesting the play's raunchy character and obvious contempt for authority.

 

There is, finally, one more work I would like to mention; Up Against It - an unproduced film script written in 1967 for the Beatles, who were then at the height of their fame. 

 

After submitting the script to their manager, Brian Epstein, it was returned to Orton following a long period of silence and without comment. It's anarchic, sexually explicit, and subversive tone was deemed too potentially damaging to the Beatles' carefully managed public image and inappropriate for a mainstream movie audience [6]. 

 

In fact, the dark and chaotic script might have better suited Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols ...

 

 

V.   

 

It's not wrong to consider Orton a defining figure (and diarist) of London in the 1960s; his work and lifestyle embodied the rebellious and sexually liberated spirit of the counterculture during that era. 

 

But, having said that, I can't help thinking of him as more of a trickster-punk than a peace-loving hippie - even if he did have a Beatles song played at his funeral. And Malcolm McLaren was a great admirer, considering Orton an inspiration for the punk aesthetic that he and Vivienne Westwood had created in their shop at 430 King's Road.   

 

Thus it is that Orton's name appears on the right side (literally and figuratively) of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up' manifesto (1974). And thus it is that, in 1979, McLaren and Westwood produced the 'Prick Up Your Ears' shirt for Seditionaries, which comes with a quotation taken from Orton's diary (I write in more detail about this shirt in a post that can be accessed by clicking here). 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, for McLaren, Orton was a "remorseless cultural provocateur" [7] and a kindred spirit; someone who drew inspiration (as he did) from the gutter and delighted in the prospect of fucking the rich up the arse.    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The comparison with Oscar Wilde is often made and it's not an unreasonable comparison to make; both used wit to expose the moral hypocrisies of their respective societies, often focusing on the absurdity of authority. Writing in the more permissive 1960s, rather than the Victorian 1890s, allowed Orton to be more explicitly transgressive than Wilde, though I'm not sure he was more anarchic or provocative.

      For a critical essay on this pair of queer iconoclasts, see John Bull, 'What the butler did see: Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde', in Francesca Coppa (ed.), Joe Orton: A Casebook (Routledge, 2002), pp. 45-60. 

 

[2] In their defence, Orton and Halliwell were protesting what they regarded as an appalling selection of books; endless shelves of rubbish, as they put it. See Ilsa Colsell's Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013). 

      And see also the excellent article by Jonathan Jones titled 'Joe Orton's defaced library books and the death of rebellious art', in The Guardian (14 Oct 2011): click here. Jones argues that their amusing (if somewhat juvenile) defacement of library books was "a glorious rejection of the austerity and ordinariness that still set the British tone in 1962" and anticipated the manner in which the Sex Pistols scandalised a moribund nation in the following decade.  

      Amusingly, the book covers Orton and Halliwell vandalised have since become a valued part of the Islington Local History Centre collection and some are exhibited in the Islington Museum (i.e., they have been recuperated by the Spectacle). A collection of the book covers is also available online at the Joe Orton Gallery: click here.  

 

[3] Joe Orton (1964) as quoted on joeorton.org: click here. 

 

[4] The three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane premiered at the New Arts Theatre (London) on 6 May 1964, produced by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage, with one critic for The Times declaring that it made his blood boil more than any other British play in the last decade. The play was transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End at the end of June and then to the Queen's Theatre in October, and Orton was hailed as a promising new talent. 

 

[5] On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home in Islington with multiple hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. It seems likely that Orton had wanted to terminate their relationship (albeit not in such a literal fashion). 

 

[6] The screenplay was filled with what was termed outlaw sexuality and it should be recalled that homosexuality had only (partially) been decriminalised in July of 1967. Paul McCartney would later admit that the Beatles didn't wish to do the film because it was gay and they were not.  

      Interestingly, in 1979, John Lydon initiated a High Court case against Malcolm McLaren and his management company, Glitterbest. While the primary goal was to reclaim misappropriated royalties and the rights to the Sex Pistols name, Rotten also wanted to make clear his objection to the salacious and immoral elements contained in the script upon which the film that eventually became The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) had been based. Arguing that the script portrayed him and other members of the band in a defamatory and harmful light, Rotten also made it clear that he had no wish to be associated with infamous figures including Jack the Ripper, Myra Hindley and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Nor, indeed, did he approve of any scenes involving extreme sexual and violent content. 

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.  

  

 

To read a sister post to this one - God Save Jean Genet (2 Feb 2026) - please click here. 

 

Bonus video: a short clip of Joe Orton being interviewed on The Eamon Andrews Show (ABC Weekend TV, 23 April, 1967): click here. A decade later, Andrews' co-presenter on the Thames TV show Today, Bill Grundy, would interview the Sex Pistols, who weren't prepared to play along in such a charming manner as Orton.  

 

 

Notes From the Gutter on Joe Orton's Fur Coat and the Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears Shirt

Joe Orton's fur coat and the 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears shirt [1]

   

I. 

 

In January 1967, Joe Orton's theatrical agent, Peggy Ramsay [2], bought him a dark grey faux fur coat designed by Hardy Amies for Hepworths [3]. 

 

Whether intended as a belated Christmas gift, or simply an act of mid-winter kindness, it's a fabulous-looking thing that I would be more than happy to wear, knowing as I do that twenty years later the coat was worn by Gary Oldman playing the part of Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987) [4]. 

 

And knowing as I do too that previously the coat was mentioned on a Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood designed shirt for Seditionaries (one which also borrowed its name from John Lahr's definitive biography of Orton).

 

 

II. 

 

I have to confess, the gay orgy scene depicted - which McLaren adapted from an image found on a T-shirt he purchased from a sex shop in LA [5] - is not really my cup of tea, but, as Miss Brodie would say in her best Edinburgh voice, for those who like that sort of thing - and regard the word 'ears' as an anagram - then that is the sort of thing they like.

 

More exciting to me than the image - to which McLaren added a splash of colour and a few other minor details in order to punk it up - is the fact that underneath the scene is a short text in the form of a dialogue reproduced from Orton's diary which reads:   

 

"'You look very pretty in that fur coat you're wearing', Oscar said as we stood on the corner before going our separate ways. I said, 'Peggy bought it me. It was thirteen pounds fifteen.' 'Very cheap,' Michael White said. 'Yes, I've discovered I look better in cheap clothes.' 'I wonder what the significance of that is?' Oscar said. 'I'm from the gutter,' I said. 'And don't you ever forget it because I won't.'" [6] 

 

As Paul Gorman notes in his reading of this text: "Orton's response to White, thought McLaren, expressed punk attitude to a T." [7] 

 

Wilde was probably right to say that some look at the stars (i.e. aspire to the highest ideals and have the capacity for hope), but others, like Orton, and McLaren, and so many other artists, draw inspiration from the gutter itself and the base materials found therein that are "external and foreign to ideal human aspirations" [8]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I think I'm right in saying that Joe Orton's fur coat was last given an outing as part of retrospective exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of his death and featuring a collection of his personal belongings. Entitled 'Ortonesque', the exhibition was held at Leicester's New Walk Museum and Art Gallery (March 3 - May 7 2007). The coat was eventually sold at auction, on behalf of the Orton Estate, in June 2022, for £2,295. The image used here is taken from the Bonhams website: click here, but an alternative image can be found on joeorton.org: click here. 

      The long-sleeved white muslin shirt, designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westood for sale at their King's Road store Seditionaries in 1979, known by the title borrowed from John Lahr's 1978 biography of Orton features a graphic print of a homosexual punk orgy and includes a text taken from Orton's diary (9 January, 1967). The shirt shown here was sold by Julien's Auctions, in June 2021, for $576: click here.

 

[2] Peggy Ramsay represented many of the leading dramatists to emerge from the 1950s onwards, including Alan Ayckbourn, Eugène Ionesco, J. B. Priestley, Stephen Poliakoff, and David Hare. 

      After discovering Joe Orton, then living on National Assistance, she persuaded producer Michael Codron to stage his play Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964). Ramsay represented Orton, and then his estate, for the rest of her life. 

 

[3] Hardy Amies was a British fashion designer and one of the first to venture into the ready-to-wear market when he teamed up in 1959 with another iconic British brand, Hepworths, to produce a range of stylish but essentially conservative men's clothing.  

 

[4] Prick Up Your Ears (1987), dir. Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Alan Bennett (based on the 1978 biography of that title by John Lahr), starred Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell and Vanessa Redgrave as Peggy Ramsay. 

      The fur coat makes its first appearance in an early scene when Oldman visits Ramsay's office to show it off to her (6:00) and is seen twice more later in the film; once after an awards ceremony (1:18:28) and once in an episode set in a public convenience (1:18:50). Click here to find the scenes and watch the entire film on YouTube. Oldman's excellent performance in this almost makes me forgive his portrayal of Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986). 

 

[5] The store was (and still is) called The Pleasure Chest and is located at 7733 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. It wasn't the first time that McLaren found inspiration here and borrowed - Paul Gorman's word is hijacked - a design for use on one of his pieces produced in collaboration with Westwood; he visited the original New York store, based in the West Village, in the period when his shop at 430 King's Road was called SEX.  

 

[6] There seems to be some discrepencies between the text on the shirt and the actual diary entry; for example, the first speaker is referred to on the shirt only by his first name, Oscar, and not his full name Oscar Lewenstein (a British theatre and film producer); and whilst the price of the coat is given on the shirt as £13 19s, in the diary it is priced at £13 15s (i.e., four bob less). 

      Readers who are interested can check things for themselves by consulting The Orton Diaries, ed. John Lahr (Methuen, 1986), p. 54. Just to add a little further confusion into the mix, Paul Gorman identifies the Oscar figure as Oscar Beuselinck, the showbiz lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect; see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.      

      As for the third speaker - Michael White - he was a prominent theatre and film impresario and a champion of Orton's work.   

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 426. 

 

[8] Georges Bataille, 'Base Materialism and Gnosticism', in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 51.

 

 

For a related post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

 

God Save Jean Genet

Sex Pistols ft. Jean Genet (SA/2026)

Photo credits: Sex Pistols by Bob Gruen (1976) 

and Jean Genet by Brassaï (1948)   

 

Beauty is the projection of ugliness and to achieve harmony in bad taste 

is the height of style ...

 

 

I.

 

Jean Genet (1910–1986) was a seminal French writer and political activist whose life was defined by his transition from a marginalized outcast to a celebrated avant-garde icon. 

 

Born to a prostitute mother and placed into foster care, he spent his youth banged up in reformatories and prisons for crimes including theft and vagrancy [1], before joining the Foreign Legion at eighteen, from which he was dishonourably discharged on grounds of indecency (that is to say, well, I think we can all imagine what he was caught doing). 

 

After this, Genet stole and slept his way round Europe as a tea leaf and rent boy, before ending up in and out of prison in Paris; experiences that served as the primary inspiration for his lyrical debut novel, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1943) [2].

 

Genet's later work - which includes novels such as Journal du voleur (1949) [3] and plays such as Les Bonnes (1947) [4] - is renowned for its stylised (but uncompromising) exploration of power and the beauty of evil, as well as the subversion of social hierarchies and the transgression of traditional morality (often giving iconic status to outlaws and outcasts, punks and queers).   

 

 

II.

 

Genet was championed by both Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre [5] and, in his later years, following the events of May '68, he became increasingly active politically, advocating for all kinds of oppressed groups and radical causes and participating in various demonstrations. 

 

In 1970, Genet spent three months in the United States at the invite of the Black Panthers, before then spending six months visiting Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan [6]. He also became pally with Foucault during this time and, in his experimental text Glas (1974), Jacques Derrida contrasted Genet's ideas on crime, homosexuality and all the reste with Hegel's philosophy, in order to deconstruct traditional concepts of the law, family, and the ideal of Wholeness (or the Absolute) [7].   

 

Like Joe Strummer, Genet expressed solidarity with the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof Gang); a militant far-left group designated as a terrorist organisation by the West German government, publishing an article titled Violence et brutalité in Le Monde (2 Sept. 1977) [8]. 

 

Whilst Strummer was, of course, simply posing in a T-shirt - the Clash specialised in radical chic - Genet was driven by a deep-seated hatred for Western imperialism and French bourgeois society in particular; in 1985, the year before his death, he informed a shocked interviewer from the BBC that he loathed France so much that he had even supported the Nazis when they invaded Paris. 

  

 

III. 

  

Whilst Genet never collaborated with the Sex Pistols - nor ever refer to them in his writings or interviews - it's tempting to imagine that he would have found McLaren and Westwood's tiny shop at 430 King's Road a conceptual space very much to his liking, promoting as it did anarchy, sexual deviance, and the kind of transgressive behaviour that he seemed so excited by.

 

And if we define the denizens of 430 King's Road as Peter York once famously defined them - "the extreme ideological wing of the peculiars" [9] - or, alternatively, recall the description of them from the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - "a kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [10] - then it's possible that Genet would have identified with the Sex Pistols and acknowledged how his legacy found youthful expression via punk [11]. 

 

But, again, just to be clear - there is no evidence of a direct relationship between Jean Genet and the Sex Pistols and I don't remember Malcolm ever mentioning his name, whereas he would often refer to other poets and playwrights he admired, such as Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The speculative connection suggested here is largely based on the fact that both McLaren and Genet understood style as a form of refusal and aligned themselves with the counterculture. 

 

On the other hand, however, it's worth noting that while Genet may have appreciated the SEX and Seditionaries aesthetic, by the mid-1970s he had become increasingly cynical about art and theatrical rebellion and so it's possible that he would have dismissed punk as just another fashion and commercial commodification, rather than something genuinely subversive or dangerous - who knows? 

  

 

Notes 

 

[1] Genet's mother raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption (one likes to believe she did so with good intentions and was putting the child's interests first). According to his biographer, his foster family was loving and attentive. Neverthless, his childhood involved numerous attempts to run away and incidents of petty criminality (even whilst the obviously bright boy got good grades at school). Eventually, aged fifteen, Genet was sent to a brutal penal colony, where he spent three unhappy years. 

 

[2] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frechtman, was published as Our Lady of the Flowers in 1949. 

 

[3] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frectman, was published as The Thief's Journal (1964).

 

[4] This work was again first translated into English by Bernard Frechtman and was published as The Maids by Grove Press in the United States (1954), and by Faber in the UK (1957). A famous film adaptation, dir. Christopher Miles and starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York, was released in cinemas in 1975.

 

[5] When Genet arrived in Paris, he sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau and the latter, impressed by his writing, used his contacts to help get Genet's first novel published. 

      Later, in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a life sentence after notching up ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. In gratitude - and perhaps realising there was more money to be made from art than crime - Genet stayed on the straight and narrow after this (or, at any rate, he avoided being caught doing anything that might return him to a prison cell).

      By this date, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality. In 1952, Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's existential development (from vagrant to writer), entitled Saint Genet. Profoundly affected by Sartre's analysis, Genet did not write for the next five years, during which time he became emotionally attached to Abdallah Bentaga, a tightrope walker. Following Bentaga's suicide in 1964, Genet entered a period of depression and attempted to end his own life.

 

[6] A memoir detailing his encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers was published posthumously; see Un captif amoureux (Gallimard, 1986). Translated into English by Barbara Bray and with an introduction by Edmund White, it was published by Picador as The Prisoner of Love (1989).      

 

[7] The English translation of Derrida's book, by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, was published by the University of Nebraska Press, in 1986. A more recent translation, by Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills, was published with the title Clang by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021. 

 

[8] This Le Monde piece can be found in Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Albert Dichy, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 171-177. 

      According to the blurb for this book, Genet affirms a heroic politics of protest and revolt with "an uncompromising outrage". In other words, it's that depressing mix of militant asceticism and pathological narcissism that I genuinely despise. In fact, the only thing I hate Genet for more is his reported sexual abuse of the eleven-year-old daughter of his friend and fellow writer Monique Lange. Viewers interested in knowing more about this should see the unconventional docu-drama Little Girl Blue (2023), written and directed by Mona Achache, and starring Marion Cottilard: click here to watch the trailer.

 

[9] This wonderful description of McLaren and company was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976). It was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

 

[10] Click here to watch the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980); the film that incriminates its audience. The narrator is the famous BBC newsreader John Snagge.

 

[11] Of all the Sex Pistols, I think it would have been guitarist Steve Jones whom the Frenchman would have found the most appealing. For as Glen Matlock once rightly observed, it was Jones who was the true spirit of the band and "like a character out of Jean Genet book [...] a real livewire scoundrel, unabashedly so".   

      Matlock was speaking in an interview with Matt Catchpole; see 'Trigger Happy - Sex Pistol Glen Matlock on Life as a Solo Performer and New Album Good To Go' (26 June, 2018): click here. Matlock later repeats this observation in an interview with Dave Steinfeld; see  'Glen Matlock - Truth or Consequences: Talking with the original Sex Pistol about politics and punk rock', on the website Rock and Roll Globe (18 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

  

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'L'Anarchie Pour Le UK', from the album The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group: click here. The vocalist is Loius Brennon and he is backed by his merry band of street musicians on accordian and fiddle.  

 

Simon Poulter: Artist and Aurelian

 

Simon Poulter: Purple Emperor (2022) [1]

Watercolour on Fabriano Artistico paper 

viral.info/butterflies

 

 

I. 

 

Another Simon whom I admire and whose work I greatly appreciate, is the artist Simon Poulter whose fascination with colour naturally led him towards the iridescently beautiful world of butterflies, and who for the past five years has been assembling a collection of watercolours depicting all fifty-nine of Britain's remaining butterfly species.

 

 

II.  

 

Of course, there's a science behind the vibrant wing patterns and one could write at length about the way in which butterflies rely on colour in every aspect of their lives. From courtship displays to camouflage techniques, the 18,000 named species with which we share the planet have evolved strategies over millions of years to make the most of their defining feature. 

 

One might also wax lyrical about the fact that butterflies can see more colours than humans; like many other insects - and perhaps one or two poets - Lepidoptera are sensitive to ultraviolet light (i.e. the blue of the Greater Day). Or how they often use bright, bold colours like red and orange to advertise their toxicity to predators (a technique known as aposematism).  

 

But, instead, I think I'll just refer readers to Poulter's website and encourage them to purchase one of his lovely butterfly pictures - click here - as, in this case, the work speaks for itself. Poulter's vision - like that of the Russian author V. V. Rozanov - is full of passion and he is able to see that "immortality is in the vividness of life" itself. 

 

Thus it is that the butterfly "becomes a whole revelation to him: and to us" [2].

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, I would also ask readers to do all they can to protect these insects and their habitat. Not because they are symbols of the human soul, but because they are finer things than us; creatures with unique biological traits, including metamorphic life cycles, possessing a terminal value (or delight) independent of mankind [3].  

 

Ultimately, ethics means very little if it does not extend into the natural world and include non-human entities (indeed, I would extend it even further into the world of non-living objects, but that's another story).         

  

Notes

 

[1] The Purple Emperor (Apatura iris), was once common in southern England, but, like half of all British butterflies, it experienced a sharp decline in both range and numbers during the last hundred years, mostly due to habitat destruction. The surviving populations are now mostly confined to broadleaved woodlands in Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex, with a few scattered across other localities. Following the rewilding of the Knepp Estate by Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, the Purple Emperor has also returned in significant numbers to this Kentish haven. I have written in praise of this project; see the post of 5 March 2019 - click here. 

      Readers might also be interested in the work of Matthew Oates, an English naturalist and nature writer, obsessed with butterflies, especially the mighty Purple Emperor. See His Imperial Majesty, a natural history of the Purple Emperor (Bloomsbury, 2020) and for more information visit his website: click here. I am told that Oates and Poulter are currently collaborating on a film project to do with the Purple Emperor butterfly, so that's something to watch out for.  

 

[2] I'm quoting from D. H. Lawrence in his 'Review of Solitaria, by V. V. Rozanov', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 317. See my post of 14 May 2019 - 'The Butterfly Revelation' - click here. 

 

[3] As John Keats once wrote in a letter to Fanny Brawne (his fiancée and muse): "I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty [human] years could ever contain." I have substituted the word 'common' with human.

      This letter, of 1 July 1819, can be found in Volume II of The Letters of John Keats (1819-1821), ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge University Press, 2012); or it can be read online thanks to the Keats Letters Project: click here. 

 

 

For a short selection of other posts on butterflies (and moths), please click here.

 

In Praise of the 1% Who Don't Fit in and Don't Care

Anarchist Punk Gang muslin shirt 

McLaren & Westwood (Seditionaries, 1979)

Image via bonhams.com 

 

 

I. 

These days, the 1% typically refers to an economic, social and political elite; i.e., the wealthiest and most powerful segment of the population who own, control, and consume an ever-growing share of the world's resources.

 

The phrase is often used by those who wish to critique such inequality on the grounds that it is both grotesque and immoral. Members of the Occupy movement, for example, would often chant: We are the 99% as a unifying slogan that expressed their commonality. 

 

All this rather amuses me as an old punk; for I remember a time when the 1% referred metaphorically to a subcultural minority who prided themselves on not fitting in; members of an anarchist gang who created hell and got away with it; queer extremists aware of their own mortality, but death-defiant ...    

 

II. 

 

One of the final designs by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries, the Anarchist Punk Gang shirt - aka the One Per Centers shirt - is not one of their better known pieces, but it is perhaps one of their most memorable once seen (and will still cost you a considerable sum should you wish to buy an original) [1].

 

By the spring of 1979, the shit, as they say, had truly hit the fan; Sid Vicious was dead, the Sex Pistols as a four-piece band were long over, and even the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was losing steam [2]. 

Following an acrimonious court case brought against him by Johnny Rotten (with the backing of Richard Branson), McLaren sought refuge in Paris, and so it was left to Westwood to keep things ticking over on the home front as best she could and it was Vivienne who was mostly responsible for the above shirt (even if Malcolm approved the design).  

  

The central image of a skull is surrounded by the well-known phrase: As you were, I was; as I am, you will be. As Westwood was romantically involved with a biker at this time, it seems likely that she might have read (or re-read) Hunter S. Thompson's classic study of the Hell's Angels, where this memento mori is used as a chapter title [3]. 

One of the flagpoles on the design has the figure of 1% written above the description anarchist punk gang; the other flagpole, in contrast, carries the line made famous by Sid: 99% is shit [4].  

It's another detail on the shirt, however, that has been intriguing me for the past few days: written underneath the skull design are the following lines: 

The barrier between friend and foe is thin. At certain times of day there are only us.

I was pretty sure it had to be a quote: McLaren and Westwood often incorporated lines of text from admired authors into their designs, but I couldn't locate the source of this until it was suggested to me that it might also have a biker connection - and, yes, sure enough, it turns out the lines are from a book published in '79 by a former organised crime investigator, Raymond C. Morgan, called The Angels Do Not Forget.

 

Below, I reproduce the cover of the book's second edition (2014), alongside a photo of Soo Catwoman [5] wearing the T-shirt version of McLaren & Westwood's late Seditionaries design (which, because of its biker connection, rather nicely returns us to the pre-punk days of Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die [6]).    

  

Notes

 

 [1] The famous London auction house Bonhams sold an 'Anarchist Punk Gang' shirt in November 2023 for £1,280. Click here for details. 

[2] The album of this title had been released on 23 February 1979 (Virgin Records); the film of this title, dir. Julien Temple, was finally released in May 1980. 

      Jamie Reid's final artwork for the Sex Pistols project was for the sardonically named compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980); a follow up to Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols, released by Virgin in July the previous year. 

[3] Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson, was published in 1967 by Random House.    

[4] See the post titled '99% is Shit' (2 Dec 2019): click here. 

 

[5] Image of Sue Lucas (aka Soo Catwoman) is taken from a restored photo on the Instagram account seditionaries1977 (posted on 26 Jan 2026): click here.  

 

[6] Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die was the second incarnation of Mclaren & Westwood's store at 430 King's Road (after Let It Rock, but before SEX). It specialised in biker gear for rockers and was intended to be all about speed, danger, and death. 

 

 

Thanks to Jennifer Davis Taylor for help with this post.    

Bob & Vivien & Nick & Young: Thoughts on a Post Screening Discussion

L-R: Nick Egan, Vivien Goldman, Bob Gruen, and Young Kim

Malcolm Mclaren: Worlds End Paris Catwalk Shows 

+ Duck Rock Post Screening Discussion and Q&A 

Click here to watch on YouTube 

 

 

I. 

 

If I could have been anywhere in the world this week it would have been New York City - despite the subzero temperatures - in order to attend a programme of events put on by the Anthology Film Archives to honour Malcolm Mclaren and organised in collaboration with Young Kim, his creative and romantic partner for the last twelve years of his life and the executor of his estate. 

 

Essentially a series of screenings, the week-long event explored McLaren's relationship to film and surveyed his rarely seen or discussed contributions to the world of the moving-image.

 

Following the screening of a 60 minute video of the Worlds End Paris Catwalk shows (1981-84) and the 42 minute long-form music video made to accompany the album Duck Rock (1983), there was a post-screening discussion and Q&A moderated by the the British writer, musician, and punk scholar Vivien Goldman and featuring the American photographer Bob Gruen and the English visual artist and self-styled creative vandal Nick Egan, alongside Young Kim. 

 

And, having now twice watched a recording of this discussion uploaded to YouTube, I thought I'd share some thoughts (and impressions) on what was said (since I wasn't invited to attend and chip in my tuppence ha'p'orth in person). 

 

II.

Vivien Goldman sounds fun and seems keen to infuse a little liveliness into events, which is what you need, I suppose, from a moderator. Her remark re Malcolm's heavenly status (0:26) made me smile; for if he has indeed ascended to the Kingdom of God then the angels had better tie him to a tree, or he'll begin to roam and soon you know where he will be.  

 

Young sounds smart and serious, though one might raise an eyebrow at some of her claims; was Duck Rock really an 'anthropological study of world dance cultures' (3:22)? I mean, it's more than just an amusing pop record, but that's over-egging the pudding somewhat.

 

Let's just say rather that it's an imaginative and pioneering work of ethnomusicological curation - albeit one that conveniently and commercially packages things for a Western audience. Malcolm certainly did his research and Duck Rock displays creative genius, but he wasn't an attempting a serious study of world music nor trying to faithfully document such.          

 

 

III. 

 

It's interesting to hear it confirmed by Kim that there is, in fact, not a huge archive of material left behind by McLaren (6:41); I know some people like to think he was England's Andy Warhol [1], but here he absolutely differed from his hero. 

 

For Warhol, of course, left behind an outrageously large and detailed archive of material, consisting of approximately half a million objects, including his personal and artistic belongings from the 1950s until his death in 1987, and filling a space of some 8,000 cubic feet. 

 

Amusingly, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts donated the vast majority of this material to The Andy Warhol Museum, giving them the Herculean task of cataloguing the contents (whilst they hold on to the massive collection of paintings, drawings, and prints).        

 

One suspects that the Malcolm McLaren Estate will soon exhaust whatever materials have not yet been placed into the public arena and that defending his legacy will be Kim's main role, rather than adding to it in any significant manner. 

 

 

IV.     

 

Nick Egan I'm always going to think fondly of, as he was kind and helpful to me back in 1983 [2]. 

 

But his claim that Malcolm was 'not a nostalgic person' (7:11) is laughably false; his entire project might be summed up as an attempt to live yesterday tomorrow (to reverse the past into the future). 

 

He may have been quickly bored and always looked to radically shake up the present (his history in relation to 430 Kings Road is evidence of that), but McLaren was a man haunted by ghosts and childhood memories his entire life and was even nostalgic for mud; i.e., some form of primal and primitive authenticity.  

 

Let's just say that his relationship with nostalgia was complex and that he viewed the lost promise of the past as potentially subversive rather than something to get sentimental about.     

 

 

V.  

 

Bob Gruen - whom I've never met or had any contact with - seems like a nice chap and I enjoyed listening to his anecdotes from back in the day, be they about the New York Dolls or suckling pigs (15:30). 

 

And his initial impression of McLaren as odd (9:45) is not wrong; Malcolm was nothing if not an odd duck, although some may prefer to idiomatically label him a queer fish. 

 

Either way, Malcolm was a member of the punk 1% - i.e., those who don't fit in and don't care (as it says on a Seditionaries shirt) [3].  

 

 

VI. 

 

Interesting also to hear from Nick that Malcolm had 'a bubble around him' (17:37) and wasn't always aware that other people didn't see things as he saw them and didn't always realise when he had overstepped the mark or outstayed his welcome. 

 

Hearing how he managed to piss off the mountain folk in Tennessee (16:42) reminds one of that time when, in 2007, he managed to antagonise the good people of Gardenstown, a small fishing village in Aberdeenshire, by informing them that Jesus Christ was a sausage [4].   

 

Is this a sign of McLaren's egoism, or narcissism, or solipsism ...? 

 

I don't know. 

 

But let's call it innocence. 

 

 

VII. 

 

Interestingly, in answering an audience question about accessing the McLaren archive Kim - who obviously has legal control - makes it clear she also wants complete control. Thus, whilst she plans to make Malcolm's work available, it will be at a time of her choosing and according to the terms and conditions she sets: 

 

'I don't really want [things] just everywhere right away. I want to do something with them, but I want to control kind of how it goes out to be honest.' (30:00 - 30:15) 

      

That's understandable, I suppose, but one does have concerns that Kim is also trying to determine the critical reception of McLaren's work and coordinate his entire story from her perspective (I suspect this is what Vivien Goldman refers to as Kim being a 'really fierce defender' (1:31) of Malcolm's legacy.   

 

 

VIII. 

 

Where Young is spot on - and right to contradict Egan - is in her claim that Malcolm always viewed things ultimately from a British perspective (33:13); thus, for example, his album Paris (1994) was very much a love letter to the city and to French pop culture written by an Englishman.     

 

He once told me that Paris is for living in; New York is for playing in; but London is where he always returns to work and bring ideas together (and it's Highgate, of course, where he has his final resting place, not Père Lachaise).   

 

 

IX.

 

Is Nick right to argue that Duck Rock has had more influence than Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977) (41:02)?

 

Young looks as if she wants to interject and challenge the idea and, if I'd been there, I think I might also have challenged that. For while both albums are seminal works, the comparison is inappropriate (maybe even odious), for their influence operates in very different spheres. 

 

Push comes to shove, however, I think Never Mind the Bollocks is the more culturally significant and broadly influential work, having defined the punk movement and its global aesthetic - but this is not to deny or downplay Duck Rock's innovations and the latter album has perhaps proven to be more prophetic (some critics arguing that it not only brought hip-hop into the mainstream, but that it anticipated developments in the 21st century, such as sampling, for example). 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post titled 'The Talented Malcolm McLaren and the Visionary Andy Warhol' (21 Jan 2026): click here. 

 

[2] See the post titled 'Memories of a Duck Rocker' (17 Mar 2025): click here. 

 

[3] I'm referring to the Anarchist Punk Gang' shirt designed by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries c. 1979. Click here to view an example of such held by the Met Museum. And click here for a forthcoming post discussing the shirt and in praise of the 1% who don't fit and don't care. 

 

[4] See the post titled 'Don't You Know Jesus Christ is a Sausage?' (18 April 2020): click here.