//Front and back of Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco and the radical political and military texts used as source material for the design//

There were T-shirts left over from the Wembley Rock & Roll revival festival in our cupboards in South Clapham; we had to do something with them. Sid Vicious liked them just the way they were and was often photographed in the original Vive Le Rock! design. But I needed to throw a few messages across them and reinvent them. So, I married the slogan and images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with words and drawings from various texts, using the title of The Anarchist Cookbook as well as the famous phrase of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti.

Malcolm McLaren 2008

Imogen Hunt is a recent graduate from London College Of Fashion who tells me she was inspired by my work to write her thesis for the college’s history of fashion and culture course.

Part of Hunt’s dissertation – on the importance of the Situationist International and King Mob to the development of punk style – is dedicated to an examination of the influences and source material for the double-sided design Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, which was printed on the front and back of t-shirts and tops first sold in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road store Seditionaries in 1978.

I’ve already covered here the sources of the base images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and the slogans “Vive le Rock!” and “The ‘Killer’ Rocks On!’, but Hunt has also dug deep and turned up previously-unpublished information, some of which challenges received opinion, including my own.

Note: I’ve used the front of a white-on-black and the back of a blue and red-on-white Seditionaries shirt to illustrate the detail. The images of these shirts have been kindly contributed by the McLaren/Westwood collector and design entrepreneur Hiroshi Fujiwara for the purposes of this piece.

The graphic explosion on the front to the left of Little Richard bears the text “Ours is the best effort so far to leave the 20^th century in order to join the punk rock disco”. The first part of this statement originates from a dispatch by Situationist International [From “Now, The SI”, the introduction to Issue 9 of the SI’s journal, 1964]* and was included in  Christopher Gray’s 1974 book Leaving The 20^th Century.

Below this are pictures of two filled bottles, bearing the text “The Famous Molotov”; one is labelled “Throwing” and the other “Timing”. Beneath the bottles are instructions for the assembly of a Molotov Cocktail.

Many researchers such as Gorman (2014) and Andrew Wilson (2004) have attributed the bomb-building instructions and images on this shirt to The Anarchist Cookbook (William Powell, 1971), perhaps due the title featuring in large letters on the back of the design. However, the text and illustrations on this shirt bears little resemblance to those contained in Powell’s book.

While some references are similar – both refer to the use of a “quart bottle” and gasoline-soaked rags – the text from The Anarchist Cookbook does not contain the level of detail used in the McLaren and Westwood design (Powell, 1989, p.148).

In fact, the instructions are more in line with those provided in [Yippie leader] Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 book Steal This Book. Although Hoffman’s wording is slightly different, he too advocates the use of Styrofoam in the mixture, including the half-gasoline and half-Styrofoam recipe as described in the design. Hoffman also recommends soap flakes in lieu of Styrofoam, as both these ingredients make the Molotov mixture work in the same way as napalm, a fact not mentioned in the design although it notes the “sticky” nature of the mixture.

Another crucial element that differs from The Anarchist Cookbook is the inclusion of instructions for timing and throwing versions of the Molotov Cocktail. Although the construction of the Molotov Cocktail differs slightly between the Seditionaries design and Hoffman’s instructions, both employ cigarettes to delay the explosion and a firecracker (M-80) or Cherry Bomb to ignite the bomb.

The images contained in Hoffman’s book are also very similar to those which appear in the McLaren Westwood design: both contain chunks of Styrofoam and the use of cigarette fuses. Neither the image from the design, nor Hoffman’s depiction, bears any resemblance to the image used in The Anarchist Cookbook.

On the upper right hand side of design, a sign-post bears the phrase “We are not in the least afraid of ruins”.* This text is correctly attributed to Buenaventura Durruti, an Anarchist militant fighting against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Durutti was employed by Situationists in their rhetoric. Ken Knabb writes that SI hoped to emulate the anarchist’s military tactics, “moving from town to village, liquidating the bourgeois’ elements and leaving the workers to see to their own self organisation” (Knabb, 2006, Loc 3374). The situationists clearly held Durruti in high esteem, with one comic strip entitled The Return of the Durruti Column created as part of a student protest at Strasbourg University in 1966 (Knabb, 2006).

Beneath this text is an image of a packet of matches under the title “A Simple Device”. The text accompanying this image are also lifted from Hoffman’s work, which describes the use of a matchbook and a lit cigarette as a fuse to ignite a pool of gasoline or a trash can, an Americanism that is added into McLaren and Westwood’s altered version of these instructions.

Also lifted from Steal This Book is the accompanying image to the fuse instructions, albeit simplified with the text and shadowing removed.

In a large stylised print with musical notes forming parts of each letter, the phrase “The Anarchist Cookbook” is featured running vertically and horizontally around two sides of the print.

Adjacent is an image of a round tin filled with nails and other objects with the words “The Sterno Device” and beneath this are instructions for its construction.

This text is similar to a Hoffman description of a Sterno bomb, although he does not include an accompanying picture or recommend filling the Sterno bomb with BB pellets or other objects. Perhaps McLaren and Westwood chose to make this addition to present a more overtly dangerous device than the one presented by Hoffman.

Opposite the Sterno device instructions is an image of the Sterno bomb taped to a Molotov as a method of detonation. This image or any variant of it does not appear in Hoffman’s text, but his text states that the device may be taped to a Molotov for use as a detonator.

On the bottom left hand side of the design, there are instructions and images that appear to be describing the adaption of a lightbulb to create an explosive device. Nothing of this sort is featured in either The Anarchist Cookbook or Steal This Book.

However, both bibliographies for these texts reference US Army field training manuals. Steal This Book references TM-31-200, Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques in particular and this text contains one of the images from the light bulb detonator instructions.

TM-31-200 references another training manual which has the full instructions for this device: TM-31-210, Improvised Munitions, published in 1969. Interestingly McLaren and Westwood lifted the images and text completely from this book rather than altering them as they had done with the other instructions.

On the right hand side of the light bulb detonator instructions, there is a largely illegible (due to the size of the font) list of incendiary chemicals, which I have been unable to trace to any particular text. Perhaps this list was compiled by McLaren and Westwood using their resources, as they had access to at least three different bomb-building texts.

It’s somehow fitting that not everything in the chaotic design is nailed down but it’s only a matter of time before this element slots into place, I am sure.

Imogen has contributed a sterling work of analysis which further illuminates McLaren and Westwood’s working processes in producing the serious body of designs in the 70s and 80s which resonate to this day.

Next: I have discovered how a separate work of revolutionary literature informed one of McLaren’s choices for this design.

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* The paragraph in Situationniste International #9 in which the text appears is:

“While contemporary impotence blathers on about the belated project of ‘getting into the twentieth century’, we think it is high time to eliminate the dead time that has dominated this century and to put an end to the Christian Era with the same stroke. Here as elsewhere, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Ours is the best effort so far toward getting out of the twentieth century.”

**From an interview by Pierre van Paassen published in The Toronto Daily Star, August 5 1936:

Durruti: “I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any Government in the world. . . . We expect no help, not even from our own Government, in the last analysis.”

Van Paassen: “But you will be sitting on a pile of ruins.”

Durruti: “We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.”

Tags: Abbie Hoffman, Buenaventura Durruti, Christopher Gray, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Imogen Hunt, Internationale Situationniste, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ken Knabb, King Mob, Leaving The 20th Century, Little Richard, London College Of Fashion, Pierre van Paassen, Seditionaries, Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Return of the Durruti Column, The Toronto Daily Star, US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, Vivienne Westwood, William Powell