On the (Lost) Art of Swearing

The Filth and the Fury: 

Sex Pistols x D. H. Lawrence

 

Obscene language ... what language is that? I speak nothing but the fucking English language. 

And if that's obscene then tough shit. - Johnny Rotten [1]

 

I. 

 

Whilst their manager Malcolm McLaren tried to package the band as a combination of sex, style, and subversion, the press had other ideas following the Bill Grundy incident (see below) and would often discuss them in relation to another trio of terms beginning with the letter S: swearing, spitting, and scandalous behaviour. 

It's the first of these things - i.e., the use of language regarded as coarse, blasphemous, or obscene - that I wish to briefly touch on here with reference both to the Sex Pistols and, firstly, to the writer D. H. Lawrence ...

 

 

II. 

 

Following publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), Lawrence conceded that he would henceforth be known as the author who (re-)introduced the so-called obscene words into English literature [2]. 

 

But despite the abuse he received for this, Lawrence insisted on the necessity of having published his book unexpurgated and maintained that "the words that shock so much at first don't shock at all after a while" [3]. 

 

And that's not because we are corrupted by the words and quickly become depraved; rather, says Lawrence, it's because "the words merely shocked the eye, they never shocked the mind at all" [4]. 

 

He continues: "People with no minds may go on being shocked, but they don't matter. People with minds realise that they aren't shocked, and never really were; and they experience a sense of relief." [5]

 

For Lawrence, words such as shit, fuck, cunt, and arse, refer to perfectly natural acts and to organs we all possess: "Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body ..." [6] and so it is the mind we have to liberate, bringing it into harmony with the body and its potencies. Otherwise, we will fall into a kind of madness: like Swift [7].

 

Thus, whether one agrees or disagrees with Lawrence's use of four-letter words throughout Lady C. - and whether one thinks his attempt to cleanse language and free the mind works or fails - it cannot be said that he was merely attempting to épater le bourgeois. 

 

Obviously, it was a novel "written in defiance of convention" [8], but the ridiculous desire simply to shock the respectable middle-class and offend slow-minded and mob-indignant members of the public, was not Lawrence's intention. 

 

The bold (if slightly naive) attempt to give back the body its own phallic language and to startle individuals out of their word-prudery - to remind us that the word arse "is as much god as the word face" [9] - is an attempt to keep society sane.      

 

 

III.

 

I'm not sure that the Sex Pistols shared Lawrence's philosophical concern with revaluing language and preserving social wellbeing, etc. Nevertheless, these foul-mouthed yobs as they were branded, managed to place the question of swearing back on the agenda for discussion - not once but twice.      

 

The first occasion followed what is known as the Bill Grundy incident, in December 1976; a televised early evening interview which, as Paul Gorman says, has attained folkloric proportions within the cultural imagination:

 

"The impact of [Steve] Jones closing the encounter by calling Grundy 'a fucking rotter' - in the process uttering the expletive for only the third time in four decades of British television broadcasting - was to make the Sex Pistols both media demons and free speech causes célèbres." [10]  

Amusingly, one viewer claimed that he had been so outraged by the incident that he had kicked in the screen of his new £380 colour television set, though I suspect he would be one of those mindless morons that Lawrence describes. 

 

Still, it demonstrates that even fifty years after the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover - and sixteen years following the Chatterley trial at the Old Bailey - expletives could still cause shock and outrage amongst some sections of the Great British Public.   

 

 

IV. 

 

The second time the Sex Pistols brought the question of what does and does not constitute offensive language to public attention was in November 1977, following release of their debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks ... [11]

 

The album, banned from sale by several highstreet retailers - including Boots, Woolworth's, and WH Smith - was available at Virgin Records, including the Nottingham branch where, on 9 November, the police arrested the store manager, Chris Searle, for displaying promotional material which included the word 'bollocks' in the window, after previously warning him on several occasions not to do so.  

 

Searle was charged with contravening the Indecent Advertisement Act (1889) and found himself in front of three local magistrates two weeks later. 

 

What might have remained a small matter, became a story of great national interest when Richard Branson - owner of the Virgin Record Stores and the Virgin Records label that the Sex Pistols were signed to - hired the famous barrister John Mortimer QC to (successfully) defend the case.

 

By calling a professor of English at the University of Nottingham as an expert witness, Mortimer was able to show that bollocks in the context of the album title clearly meant nonsense and derived from an Old English term for the kind of rubbish spoken by clergymen in their sermons and had no obscene sexual meaning, even if, etymologically, the term referred to the testicles. 

The chairman of the court hearing reluctantly concluded that as much as he and his colleagues wholeheartedly deplored the 'vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits', they must find the defendant not guilty of any crime. 

 

Helped in part by the publicity surrounding the case, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols topped the charts and quickly went gold; Punk? Call it filthy lucre - a prime example of how to generate cash from chaos, as Malcolm might say. 

 

V.

 

Of course, all of this is a long, long time ago and we live today in a very different world from the one in which Lawrence wrote or even the one in which the Sex Pistols recorded. 

 

Indeed, one is almost tempted to speak now of the lost art of swearing as a once precious verbal resource has almost entirely been robbed of its potency. Rendered banal through endless repetition, the word fuck, for example, no longer shocks, no longer offends, no longer amuses, no longer endears. 

  

That's not to say, however, that the present doesn't have its own list of taboo terms and one smiles to see the content warnings given at the start of TV sitcoms from the 1970s: discriminatory language is what gets Gen Z viewers clutching their pearls and calling for the morality police, not foul language.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have slightly altered the transcript of an interview that Rotten gave to Dutch TV in 1977. 

      The interviewer asks (rather strangely) about infamous language and although Rotten twice repeats this term in his answer, one suspects that he was aware that the interviewer intended to say obscene language, although, one cannot be quite sure; the Dutch translation that appears on screen is schuttingtaal, which is usually given in English as 'jargon' or 'secret language'. 

      Click here to watch on YouTube.

[2] As he writes in his 'Introduction to Pansies' (1929): "I am abused most of all for using the so-called 'obscene' words [...] all the old words that belong to the body below the navel [...]" - words that cause the censor-morons to get excited and allow policemen to think they have the right to arrest you. See D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 664.

 

[3-5] D. H. Lawrence, 'A  Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover', in Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 307.

 

[6] Ibid., p. 309. 

      In his 'Introduction to Pansies', Lawrence writes: "What is obvious is that the [obscene] words [...] have been dirtied by the mind, by unclean mental association. The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply. But the mind drags in a filthy association, calls up some repulsive emotion. Well then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job." See p. 664 of The Poems, Vol. I (2013). 

 

[7] See Lawrence's remarks on Swift and his horror at the fact that his beloved Celia defecates in 'Introduction to Pansies' ... pp. 665-666. But see also my post entitled 'Celia Shits! Notes on Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" and (Alleged) Coprophobia' (2 April 2024): click here.     

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'A  Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover' ... p. 334

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Pansies' ... p. 664.

 

[10] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 339. 

      For those readers who aren't familiar with the details of the Bill Grundy incident, let me briefly summarise: After Queen cancelled their appearance on the live television show Today show at the last minute, the Sex Pistols were offered the spot in order to promote their debut single, 'Anarchy in the UK', and explain what punk rock was all about. 

      Things started badly and quickly got worse when it was clear that Grundy was hostile and dismissive of the band and that the latter - particularly guitarist Steve Jones - were not prepared to take his bullshit, nor listen to his creepy sexual innuendo when speaking to a female member of their entourage called Siouxsie Sioux. Suggesting to her that they might 'meet afterwards' triggered Jones into calling him a 'dirty sod' and a 'dirty old man'. 

      Stupidly, Grundy then challenged Jones to 'say something outrageous' - which he did; calling Grundy a "dirty bastard" and a "dirty fucker". Grundy responded, "What a clever boy!" to which Jones hilariously replied, "What a fucking rotter!" 

      Predictably, the phone lines to the Thames switchboard lit up and the national press had a field day. Grundy was suspended by Thames and his career effectively ended. The Sex Pistols were fired shortly afterwards by their record label EMI and were now branded as public enemies. 

      The interview - click here - has become one of the most requested TV clips of all time. It will be noted that Johnny Rotten having muttered the word 'shit' prior to Jones's outburst almost apologises at first for his use of a 'rude word'.    

 

[11] The album was originally going to be called God Save the Sex Pistols, but the title was changed based on a phrase favoured by Steve Jones, which, as Rotten explained, was a popular working-class expression meaning 'stop talking rubbish'.

 

 

Destroy! Notes on a Punk Imperative

D. H. Rotten in a Seditionaries Destroy shirt [1]

 

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of the key ideas that might be discussed in order to lend credence to such a thesis is the concept of destruction ...

 

 

II. 

 

As I'm sure many readers will know, 'Anarchy in the UK' famously ends with a call to destroy; not so much anything in particular as everything in general, although earlier in the same song Rotten identifies the passer-by as a prime example of the sort of person he wishes to eliminate [2]. 

 

Funny enough, Lawrence too dislikes non-combatants; those gentle readers who refuse to actively engage with his texts are encouraged to curl up with books by other authors [3]. He imagines his ideal reader as a rampageous and ferocious reader; a surly, rabid reader; a hell-cat of a reader - not one who meekly passes by or turns the page on those passages that might shock or offend them [4].  

 

 

III.

 

Lawrence advocates for the necessity of destruction not only if one aims, as an artist, to create a new vision of the world via the liberation of what he terms chaos [5], but as one who actively fights, like Oliver Mellors, to preserve the tenderness of life against those forces of mechanised greed that negate and deaden. 

 

And, like Nietzsche, Lawrence also relates the process of becoming and self-overcoming to destruction: "The man I know myself to be must be destroyed before the true man I am can exist." [6] 

 

 

IV.

 

The notion of the creative potential within destruction is something Malcolm McLaren will later echo when defending the Sex Pistols from critics, such as Giovanni Dadomo, who accuse them of nihilism [7]. 

 

But McLaren, as someone who passionately subscribes to the idea of flamboyant failure [8], is also keen to destroy one ideal above all others: success. If Rotten hates those who pass by on the other side of the road, McLaren hates those who strive to achieve what they posit as a worthy goal or realise what they imagine to be a positive outcome.   

 

And Lawrence too hates those such as the rich, young, Irish playwright Michaelis, cheerfully prostituting himself to the bitch goddess Success, as she roams "snarling and protective" [9] around his heels. 

 

For what is benign success at last, but another form of nothingness?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image is based upon an original photo of Johnny Rotten taken by Dennis Morris in 1977, which, along with many other great images, can be found in Destroy: The Sex Pistols, 1977: Jubilee Edition, by Dennis Morris (Creation Books, 2002). 

      The Destroy shirt was designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood for sale in their shop - then named Seditionaries - at 430 King's Road, in 1977. Made of muslin, it features extended sleeves, with strait-jacket clasps and D rings and is screen-printed with a design showing an inverted crucifixion scene, a swastika, a Jamie Reid drawing of a Royal Mail postage stamp, and the word destroy written in capital letters. The bottom of the shirt contains lyrics from 'Anarchy in the UK'. 

      As Paul Gorman rightly notes, "this new top [...] epitomised the creative exchange conducted between McLaren and Westwood: her technical daring combined with his graphic understanding and political discourse to produce the most surprising outcomes existing way beyond the purview of fashion". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 348. 

 

[2] 'Anarchy in the UK', by the Sex Pistols, was released as a debut single in November 1976 on EMI Records. It can also be found on their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977). The single (featuring 'I Wanna Be Me' on the B-side) reached number 38 on the UK singles chart. It's essentially a punk call to arms. Click here to watch the band performing the song.

 

[3] See the letter to Carlo Linati (22 Jan 1925) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 201, where he writes: "I can't bear art that you can walk around and admire [...] whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it - if he wants a safe seat in the audience - let him read someone else." 

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 205.    

[5] See the recent post entitled 'On the Art of Destruction and the Creative Potential Within Chaos' (21 Jan 2025): click here. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 34. It's unfortunate that Lawrence relates his thinking on the self to truth (authenticity), but the point remains that destruction is the key. 

[7] In November 1976, the BBC invited the Sex Pistols to be interviewed on the current affairs programme, Nationwide. Along with the regular presenters, they also brought in music journalist Giovanni Dadomo, to challenge the band. He dismissed their music as being derivative and asserted that destruction for its own sake is dull and doesn't offer any hope. McLaren countered by saying: "You have to destroy in order to create [...] You have to break it down and build it up again in a different form."

      Readers interested in knowing more can visit the BBC Culture website: click here. 

 

[8] McLaren picked up his radical idea of failure from one of his tutors at art college; see Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... pp. 48-49.

 

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

 

 

For earlier posts in this series on D. H. Lawrence as Sex Pistol, click here, here, and here.

Double Exposure (A Tale of Two Pictures)

D. H. Lawrence Boccaccio Story (1926) 

McLaren and Westwood Two Cowboys (1975)

 

Oh what a pity, oh! don't you agree 

that figs aren't found in the land of the free! [1]

 

I. 

 

If, like me, you are keen to promote the idea of D. H. Lawrence as a Sex Pistol, then one of the aspects of his work that you might discuss in order to lend credence to such a thesis is his painting ...

 

Take, for example, the humorous canvas Boccaccio Story (1926), which depicts the handsome young peasant Masetto [2] asleep - or possibly feigning sleep - beneath a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected. 

 

It was clearly intended to amuse - but also to provoke. For as Lawrence confided to a friend at the time, he deliberately inserted a phallus in each one of his pictures somewhere: "And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality." [3] 

 

This is very much what we might now characretise as a punk attitude and it's not surprising that Boccaccio Story - along with a dozen other pictures - was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929 [4].  

 

 

II. 

Forty-six years later, another police raid took place at a small boutique called Sex on the King's Road, Chelsea, owned by Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood ...

 

This time, it wasn't an oil on canvas that the virgin pure policemen came to grab, but T-shirts featuring a print of two semi-naked cowboys "facing each other in side profile [...] one wearing a denim jacket, the other a leather waistcoat" [5]. 

 

The cowboy on the right is shown rather tenderly adjusting the other's neckerchief. It's not this detail, however, which initially catches one's eye. Rather, it's the fact that their "semi-flaccid penises, prominently on display, are close to touching" [6]. 

 

For McLaren, this image - appropriated from the world of gay male erotica - not only possessed the capacity to shock and outrage public opinion, the cowboys also encapsulated the frustration and boredom he was feeling at this time: "'It was as though they were waiting for something to happen, just like everyone I knew in London.'" [7]

 

The shirt went on sale at Sex in the summer of 1975 and Alan Jones - who worked at the shop - was perhaps the first to buy it; he was certainly the person who became best associated with the shirt after being taken into custody by two burly policemen for wearing it whilst walking round Soho and charged with 'displaying an obscene print in a public space'. 

 

He was then released, but ordered to appear at Vine Street Magistrates' Court a few weeks later.  Naturally, the case attracted attention from the press. It also resulted, as mentioned, in a police raid on 430 King's Road: 

 

"The remaining stock  of eighteen Cowboys T-shirts were seized, and McLaren and Westwood's arrest on indecency charges escalated the affair into a free-speech cause célèbre when Labour MP Colin Phipps called on Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to review the outmoded law." [8]   

 

Despite mounting a spirited defence - one that called upon expert witnesses to attest to the artistic merit of the shirt design - Jones, McLaren, and Westwood were all found guilty and handed down fairly large fines [9].

 

 

III. 

 

McLaren may have hoped that this (somewhat farcical) case "would continue the process of 'decensorship' of British life that had begun with the 1960 victory to publish D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover" [10], but, it never quite became the national scandal that he wished for. 

 

It did, however, increase sales at Sex. 

 

And today, five decades later, a Cowboys T-shirt can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art - click here - or bought at auction at Bonham's for a substantial sum of money; including this one originally owned and worn by Sid Vicious and autographed on the back by Johnny Rotten (a snip at £17,850). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Innocent England', Nettles (Faber & Faber, 1930).  

[2] Masetto is a character in Boccaccio's Decameron, a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). 

      Its overtly sexual and anti-clerical elements did not go down well with the Church, but the work, first translated into English in 1620, has remained hugely popular and influential. It is available online as a Project Gutenberg e-book: click here. The story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence letter to Earl Brewster (27 Feb 1927) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 648. 

 

[4] What is surprising, however, as I indicated in an earlier post discussing Lawrence's Boccaccio Story - click here - is that Lawrence scholars, including Keith Sagar, should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of his paintings. 

      It is surprising also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when thirteen of his pictures were removed by the police from the Warren Street Gallery, branded as obscene, and threatened with destruction by the authorities (they were saved from the flames and returned to Lawrence only after it was agreed with the judge at Bow Street Magistrates court that the paintings would never be exhibited in England again).   

 

[5] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 265. 

      As Gorman informs readers, the image of the two cowboys was originally produced as a charcoal and ink drawing by the American artist Jim French, in 1969. McLaren had come across the picture reproduced in the magazine Manpower! that he had purchased at a bookshop located in New York's gay quarter in the spring of 1975.  

[6] Ibid. 

[7] Malcolm McLaren quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 266. 

      This explains the addition of the text McLaren added beneath the figures to the effect that there's nowhere to go and nothing to do; that everything was played out.

     

[8] Ibid., p. 269. 

  

[9] Gorman reminds us that, according to Alan Jones, "McLaren and Westwood reneged on their offer to reimburse him for his own £30 fine". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 271.

 

[10] Ibid., p. 270.

 

 

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

 

Magic's Back: Evoking the Ghosts of Malcolm McLaren's Oxford Street

Malcolm McLaren's The Ghosts of Oxford Street (1991): 

'It was meant to be great, but it's horrible.'

 

 

I. 

 

According to Malcolm, one of the things he liked to spend his time doing as an art student was making petit cadeaux out of bricks: 

 

"'I decorated each one with ribbons to which I attached a little tag reading: Magic's Back. Then I'd go out at night and hurl them through the church windows [...] in the hope that a priest would pick one up and read the message.'" [1]

 

II. 

 

This act of pagan vandalism - which McLaren thought of as conceptual art - was later dramatised in the Channel 4 1991 Christmas special The Ghosts of Oxford Street  - a bizarre 53 minute film written by McLaren and Rebecca Frayn and starring (amongst others) Tom Jones, Sinéad O'Connor, and Shane MacGowan.

 

McLaren also narrated and (mis)directed the work and, as in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), made a camp and slightly creepy attempt at acting, whilst prowling about the West End at night like a Dickensian phantom dressed in a dark velvet suit, hat, cloak, and mask. 

 

Even as a McLaren fan, I have to say it was a bit much: by which I mean - not to put too fine a point on it - disappointingly shit. The concept - based on an unfinished student project from twenty-two years earlier [2] - was typically brilliant, but what ended up on the screen was often just embarrassing. 

 

McLaren's (sympathetic) biographer Paul Gorman notes:

"The Ghosts of Oxford Street bears all the marks of a difficult production, but there are several bright points, including the biographical elements such as the conflation of McLaren's childhood visits to Selfridges with the King Mob Christmas invasion of 1968." [3]

However, Gorman admits that "the narrative arc was fragmented and McLaren proved too cloying a presence". Worse, the film's finale - "a masquerade inside Marks & Spencer on the site of the Pantheon" - was a "damp squib" [4].

 

Gorman also quotes McLaren's retrospective dismissal of the project as a "'pathetic Christmas musical'" [5] made purely for the money (though that's clearly not true; the memories, obsessions, and ideas explored in the film were very much his own). 

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, unlike The Snowman (1982), The Ghosts of Oxford Street hasn't become a festive favourite and is rarely repeated on TV. However, those who wish to do so can watch it on the Channel 4 catch-up service, My4: click here.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted in Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 114. 

 

[2] See Gorman's biography, chapter 8, pp. 108-113 for details of this psychogeographic project.

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren ... p. 645. 

      Gorman also commends the reimagining of McLaren's pagan vandalism and the fact that the script retained elements of Situationist theory.  

[4] Ibid., pp. 645-646.

[5] Ibid., p. 646.

 

 

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren (feat. Alison Limerick), 'Magics Back' (Theme from The Ghosts of Oxford Street), written and produced by Malcolm McLaren, Mike Stock, and Pete Waterman (RCA, 1991): click here.

 

There She Blows! Carry On Columbus

The Carry On Album, featuring the compositions of Bruce Montgomery 

and Eric Rogers, performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, 

conducted by Gavin Sutherland (White Line, 1999) 

Carry On Columbus, single by Fantastic Planet 

(written and produced by Malcolm McLaren and Lee Gorman) 

(A&M Records, 1992)

 

The music for the majority of the Carry On films - and there are thirty-one in total, made between 1958 and 1992 [1] - was written by just two composers: Bruce Montgomery and Eric Rogers. 

 

The former provided scores for the first six films, from Carry On Sergeant (1958) to Carry on Cruising (1962) and wrote the instantly recognisable Carry On theme - click here - that was adapted and given a bit more swing by the latter, who composed the scores for twenty-three Carry On films, from Carry On Cabby (1963) to Carry On Emmanuelle (1978).  

 

Their work for the Carry On movies may not be the most sophisticated film music, but it's arguable that without their contribution the series wouldn't have been as popular or as long-running and both men surely deserve more recognition for their work than they have been afforded. 

 

As one commentator has rightly noted: "It is through [their] music that every structural aspect of the Carry On films is brought to life. " [2]

 

Interestingly, sometimes the films incorporated a song into the opening credits; Carry on Cowboy (1965) and Carry on Screaming! (1966) being two examples that immediately come to mind. But perhaps the most surprising of Carry On songs was the one played over the closing credits to nobody's favourite film, Carry on Columbus (1992) ...

 

 

II. 

 

 

Carry On Columbus was the final release in the Carry On franchise; or, if you prefer, the final nail in the coffin of a film series that had died two decades earlier. 

 

Unfortunately, I can't say how bad it is, as I've never managed to watch more than a few minutes. 

 

However, I'm willing to accept the BFI's listing of it as amongst the series' bottom five films, although I'd reject the claim made by some that it's the worst British film ever made (even if it does include amongst its cast a number of so-called alternative comedians) [3]. 

 

But - and not a lot of people know this - the film did provide us with a song written and produced by Malcolm McLaren and ex-Bow Wow Wow bass player Leigh Gorman [4] that fused various genres of music into an insane hard house track a million miles away from the work of Rogers and Montogomery, but which, nevertheless had something anarchic and comical about it.

 

If it wasn't quite right for a Carry On movie, it nevertheless betrayed its origins in the earlier work of McLaren and Leigh with its sampling of sounds echoing their past recordings; for example, the incorporation of the classical piece Asturias, by Spanish composer and pianist Isaac Albéniz, reminded one of McLaren's work on Fans (1984), whilst, as Paul Gorman points out, the vocals provided by Jayne Collins were yelped in a manner reminiscent of Annabella Lwin [5]. 

 

Anyway, those who are intrigued may click here to play the extended edit that appears on the 12" single (along with three other mixes of Carry On Columbus) [6].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] All thirty-one of which were produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas. The Carry On franchise is the most successful series of comedy films in British cinema history. As one scholarly commentator notes: 

      "Like most aspects of popular culture, these films were not original; they wallowed in a collection of tried and tested comic ideals and stereotypes, owing something to nearly every genre of comedy which had gone before. And yet the 'Carry On' series quickly established itself as something rather special; something which was uniquely and affectionately British, and remains so to this day." 

      See Peter Edwards, 'Carry On Composing! The Music of the 'Carry On' Films (1958-78)', posted on the Robert Farnon Society website (25 May 2014): click here.

 

[2] Peter Edwards, as cited above. As Edwards goes on to note: "Every aspect of the comedy - the spoofs, the naughty situations, the larger-than-life characters and caricatures, the verbal and visual jokes - is presented by the composer in his score."

 

[3] Alternative comedy was a term coined in the 1980s for a style of politically-correct humour that rejected the discriminatory and stereotypical character of mainstream comedy. Unfortunately, it's chief exponents - several of whom appeared in Carry on Columbus - simply weren't funny. Ultimately, the British public rightly value Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey over Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, and Julian Clary.

 

[4] Gorman's first name was misspelt as Lee on record label of Carry on Columbus (1992). 

[5] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p, 649. 

      Gorman also explains how McLaren became involved with Carry On Columbus - he had been "introduced to the film's producer John Goldstone by a mutual acquaintance, the BBC arts correspndent Alan Yentob" (649).

 

[6] These other mixes are a techno-heavy 'android mix'- Ooh, Matron! - and (on the B-side) the 'new love baby vocal mix' and 'new love baby instrumental mix'.     

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer: Notes on the Ant People

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer

 

I. 

 

When I came across a reference the other day to the Ant People, I immediately thought of the Adam and the Ants slogan: Ant Music for Sex People: Sex Music for Ant People [1]. 

 

I had long believed that this line simply referred to those whom the cultural commentator Peter York once described as the "'extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars'" [2] - i.e., those who used to hang around Sex - and, secondly, to those who were hardcore fans of Adam and the Ants.

I now discover, however, that existing long before Adam and Marco ever walked through the doors of 430 King's Road, were a legendary race of highly advanced beings (possibly of extraterrestrial origin) known as the Ant People, and venerated by the Hopi Indians; a tribe of Native Americans who have lived on the high arid mesas of northern Arizona for thousands of years [3]. 

 

 

II. 

 

According to Hopi legend, in times of global catastrophe, it was the Anu Sinom, or Ant People, who come to their rescue and offered them sanctuary in underground caves, which essentially formed a natural network of subterranean prayer chambers, or what the Hopi call kivas (a word which etymologically means beautiful dwelling place).      

 

No wonder then that the Hopi refer to the Ant People with their elongated skulls, almond-shaped eyes, tiny waists, and long skinny arms and legs, as their friends: Anu-naki.  

 

And one can only hope that if members of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are correct in their dire predictions of a coming eco-apocalypse, that we palefaces will have some benevolent insects come to our rescue (although I doubt it and don't think we deserve such).    

 

Notes

 

[1] This line is a refrain in the Adam and the Ants track 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', found on the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.   

[2] Peter York, writing in an article entitled 'Them', Harpers & Queen (October 1976), quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

[3] See Gary A. David, 'The Ant People of the Hopi' (13 October, 2013) on the website Ancient Origins: click here.

 

 

And I Wanna Live Yesterday Tomorrow

Malcolm McLaren Paris (1994)

 

'The only artist capable of rekindling the spark of hope in the past is the one who is 

firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe if the enemy is victorious.'

 

 

I.

 

Retrofuturism - born of the fact that capitalist realism makes tomorrow inconceivable - doesn't imagine future worlds that are projections from the present; it imagines future worlds that are reclaimed from the past. 

 

At first, this seems like fun. But there's a certain melancholic pessimism in concluding that since one can no longer look forward and dream of what might be, one is obliged to look back and (wistfully) recall what might have been. 

 

No wonder that the cultural theorist most often associated with this idea, Mark Fisher, topped himself.

 

However, for those who can bear it, retrofuturism's exploration of the tension between past and future - and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology - is a philosophically fascinating topic; one that, surprisingly, has quite a long history - certainly pre-dating Fisher's analysis - although its import as a concept has grown in recent years, perhaps as the present becomes ever-more unbearably dystopian. 

 

 

II.

 

Funny enough, although the word retrofuturism wasn't then part of my philosophical vocabulary, I first came across the idea in a song recorded by Malcolm McLaren in 1994, the last line of which is: And I wanna live yesterday tomorrow [1].

 

I remember thinking at the time that it was a nice, rather clever line - probably borrowed, I assumed, from one of those writers, like Walter Benjamin [2], who meant a great deal to McLaren, but I didn't reflect any further on it. 

 

However, thirty years later, and here we are ... The line has come back to haunt me and this paragraph from McLaren on reclaiming history (rather than just pissing on it) now seem to me of crucial importance: 

 

"The question I find most interesting is how you reclaim history. This is a very different thing from repackaging it. It's not about nostalgia, which is basically dead tissue. Living yesterday tomorrow should be about reclaiming history then reversing it into the future. If you can discover how to do that, you are probably doing everything an artist genuinely wishes to be involved in. One must aim to use certain disruptive practices to challenge the dominant cultural forms and relax the grip of authority." [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The song I refer to is entitled 'Mon Dié Sénié' and can be found on McLaren's album Paris (1994): click here to play.

 

[2] See what Benjamin writes, for example, in the well-known essay 'On the Concept of History', in Selected Writings, Vol. 4., (Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 389-400. Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, this short work by Benjamin is essentialy a critique of historicism.

 

[3] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman, in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2002), pp. 718-19. 

 

You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and Ask Yourself: Does D. H. Refer to D. H. Lawrence?

Two of England's great punk perverts: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) 

and Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

 

 

At number 7 on Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment - as compiled by the man himself in February 2000 for The Guardian - is Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, which he describes as: "The most melancholic and blissfully romantic novel I have recently re-read." [1]

 

And so, it's not entirely unreasonable to ask the question first raised by Paul Gorman [2]: do the letters D. H. on the right hand side of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning ...' shirt refer to the author of English literature's most scandalous novel?   

 

The fact that McLaren had "recently re-read" Lady C. in 2000 and still responded so positively to it, would suggest that he was a longtime fan of the work and we can probably assume he admired Lawrence for confronting the English with the one thing which, in McLaren's view, really scares them: sex.   

 

Of course, Lawrence would have hated McLaren and the Sex Pistols, but then Lawrence pretty much hated everyone and there's no denying that in his willingness to provoke and outrage and challenge the moral and political authority of the Establishment, Lawrence had an attitude which those who later identified as punk rockers would very much recognise as similar to their own.    

 

Rather strangely, if there's one person who forms a kind of bridge between Lawrence and McLaren its the author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. 

 

For not only did the latter openly admire Lawrence and his writings, even at a time when it was not fashionable to do so, but he was on friendly terms with McLaren whom he famously referred to as the Diaghilev of punk [3] at the opening of an episode of The South Bank Show devoted to the latter [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Malcolm McLaren's top 10 books of the moment', The Guardian (21 Feb 2000): click here.  

[2] See Gorman's blog post on paulgormanis.com: click here. Or click here for a revised and updated version of this post with fresh links.  

[3] Whether he coined this phrase, I don't know; but it makes a nice change from the usual description of McLaren as the Svengali of punk. 

[4] See the post 'When Melvyn Met Malcolm (A Brief Reflection on The South Bank Show Episode 178)' published on Torpedo the Ark on 10 April 2023: click here. 

In a Time Never-Never (Notes on McLaren & Westwood's Worlds End)

Worlds End: the fifth and final incarnation of McLaren and Westwood's 

store at 430 King's Road, Chelsea.

 

'It was a bright cold day in 1980, and the clocks were striking thirteen ...'

 

 

Whilst David Connor proudly promotes his role in the transformation of Seditionaries into Worlds End in late 1980 - describing the total refurbishment of 430 King's Road as a "collaboration with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren" [1] - I think those of us who care about this matter are aware that it was the latter who essentially should be credited with the work.

 

I'm not suggesting McLaren didn't have help [2]: but the creative vision was his and the key ideas - such as the steeply sloping shop floor and the giant 13-hour clock with hands that rotate anti-clockwise at high speed promising to magically transport those who stepped inside not merely to the past, but to a time never-never or an immanent utopia [3] - were his. 

 

As was the name of the shop: and the Worlds End logo, adapted from the flag design by the eighteenth-century pirate Robert Tew, featuring a muscular arm holding a Saracen sword on a black background (McLaren having decided that the skull and crossbones was simply too clichéd) [4].

 

The interior and exterior designs McLaren came up with for the store were intended to suggest a mixture of The Old Curiosity Shop located in London's Holborn area - and made famous by Dickens in his 1841 novel of that title - and an eighteenth-century galleon.

 

Ultimately, McLaren's idea was to sail away from everything; from punk, from England, from the twentieth-century. And for McLaren, Peter Pan style pirates and Red Indian braves [5] were now sexier, more stylish, and more subversive of the cultural mainstream than rockers in their black leather jackets and ripped jeans.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See David Connor's website page dedicated to Worlds End: click here. 

      Whilst Connor produced a number of drawings for the project that developed what Paul Gorman describes as the "twisted fairy-tale elements of McLaren's concepts" - three of which are included on the page linked to - Malcolm desired a much stronger-looking facade for his store; one that was rooted in history as well fantasy. See Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 457.

 

[2] Gorman informs us that whilst McLaren "oversaw the overhaul", it was carried out by Roger Burton and the electrician Andy Newman. But the latter were simply following instructions and the concept being realised was McLaren's own. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 457.

 

[3] This phrase, which I associate with Deleuze and Guattari, refers to a place and time that exists very much now/here rather than nowhere. I discuss the idea in relation to the land of Cockaigne and the Big Rock Candy Mountain in a post of 10 August 2018: click here. 

      As for the idea of a clock that might strike for a 13th time, this is one that resonates within English literature. The line at the top of this post, for example, is a paraphrase of the very famous opening line of George Orwell's novel 1984. Essentially, it's an idea that casts doubt on reality.

 

[4] See Paul Gorman's post of 28 August 2014 published on his (always amazingly well-researched) website paulgormanis.com - click here. 

      Readers might also be interested in Ben Westwood's post of 11 August 2017 on the Worlds End blog published on viviennewestwood.com: click here. 

 

[5] Interestingly, McLaren's relation to the Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie - creator of Peter Pan - is little dicussed, even though he was clearly much influenced by the latter's adventures in Neverland as leader of the Lost Boys; adventures which involved dealing with pirates and redskins, as well as fairies and mermaids. 

      In a list for The Guardian of his top 10 books, compiled in February 2000, McLaren places Peter Pan at number one, describing it as the "best sex story" he has ever read: click here. As a possible explanation of what he meant by this, see Philip Hensher's article in The Spectator entitled 'The creepiness of Peter Pan' (11 June 2005): click here.

      

 

For a recent post related to this one entitled 'Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy' (26 May 2024), please click here. 

Out of the Punk Ruins and Into the Age of Piracy

Jordan as SEX punk (1976) 

and Worlds End pirate (1981)

 

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

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

 

 

I. 

 

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

 

 

II.

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

 

III.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

Post-punk pirates Bow Wow Wow 

looking the part in 1981

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

[3] Ibid., p. 450.

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

Malcolm McLaren: screenshot taken from the video for 

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

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

 

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

II.

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

 

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