Revised and updated with fresh links: My marathon trawl through the references in You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!

“It didn’t matter what side of the bed you were lying on, as long as you were lying on it. Everybody from (author/actress) Anne Lambton to (Sex Pistols guitarist) Kutie Jones to (socialite and writer) Anthony Haden-Guest – they were all flattered. Just goes to show how everyone loves to have their moment – good, bad or indifferent.”

Malcolm McLaren, The Look, 2006

It’s coming up to five years since I posted my marathon dissection – including extensively researched links to sources and references – of the divisive 1970s punk manifesto t-shirt design You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!

Here is a new version of that post, revised and updated with fresh links.

Enjoy!

Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up list t-shirt adopted a similarly truculent tone in an attempt to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.

You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974 – was conceived by fellow traveller and soon-to-be manager of The Clash Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from McLaren and their friend Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the band name McLaren had recently granted to a bunch of teenagers hanging around the shop: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

I investigated the history of this design in THE LOOK and also here. By publishing the list with links I’m diving deeper to demonstrate not only the tract’s range beyond popular culture but also the resonances felt today.

Among those referenced in the text are artists David Holmes, Mel Ramos, John Lacey (COUM Transmission’s technical director also known as John Gunni Busck) and Patrick Heron as well as the literature of Alfred Bester, David Cooper, George Dangerfield, Konstantin Paustovsky and Bernard Wolfe, the work of radical journalists Alexander Cockburn and Mervin Jones and the campaigning of political activists Pat Arrowsmith and Marian and Doloures Price.

Such content dates the compilation to October 1974: The Guardian published Heron’s 14,000-word Tate critique over consecutive days between the 12th and 14th of that month; the shirt itself mentions a piece by Jones in the New Statesman on October 4th and also an Elton John interview in the NME on September 25 (in fact the issue was dated September 28).

Alongside the call-girl phone number taken from a card in a local newsagents there are such quizzical nods as that to former Playboy Club UK head Victor Lownes: “To be avoided first thing in the morning”.

Is this because one of the contributors had encountered him leaving his club Stocks, just a few hundred yards from Sex along the King’s Road?

It’s worth pointing out Lownes was to earn the soubriquet “Disgusting” from Private Eye (whose distribution problems with WH Smith at that time are described as “censorship”).

Is “D.H.” DH Lawrence? Who was Mal Huff? And why did automotive manufacturer GKN come in for a kicking? Was this down to foreign investments or had Rhodes had a run-in with the company as a result of operating his Renault dealership in Camden Town? Undoubtedly it was he who contributed the reference to the UK’s long-established French car dealer Arthur Prince.

It is only right that questions remain about this multi-layered slice of invective; 41 years after the fact, You’re Gonna Wake Up retains mystery as it portrays a divided country and fragmented culture.

First up are the “blasted”, followed by the “blessed”. NOTE: spelling mistakes etc have been retained.