‘What goes into a Continental Keyhole?’ How Malcolm McLaren conjured the name ‘Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols’ from the seamy 50s and 60s Britporn mags strewn around 430 King’s Road
In October 1974 Malcolm McLaren conjured an unusual group name for four young musicians who congregated at his shop at 430 King’s Road.
//The group name as it appeared on the ‘right’ side of the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt//
At the time the transition from the premises’ previous incarnation as Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die to Sex was nearing completion; in fact the teenagers Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock (who was also a sales assistant on Saturdays) and Wally Nightingale assisted McLaren in applying the finishing touch with the erection of the pink vinyl shop sign constructed at his direction by carpenter Vic Mead.
//Continental Keyholes no 6. Universal Publicity, Holland Park, London, 1959. 40pp, 7.5 x 5in//
McLaren had scored the youngsters rehearsal time at a community centre run by the residents of Covent Garden, and made suggestions as to which songs to cover. He was also against their plan to call themselves The Strand, since this was drawn from the Roxy Music song Do The Strand; earlier that year McLaren declared to the New Musical Express’s star journalist Nick Kent that Roxy’s leader Bryan Ferry was “too reserved, too ‘English’. I dislike how he puts it all together. I hate anything chic – that’s terrible!”
//QT no 16. Concord Publications, Wardour Street, London, 1964. 54pp, 7 x 4.5in//
//QT no 16 contents and credits page//
//QT no 16 centre tri fold//
And so McLaren’s new name for the group made its first appearance on You’re Gonna Wake Up And Know Which Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!, the manifesto t-shirt McLaren produced for sale in Sex with his collaborators Bernard Rhodes and Gerry Goldstein.
“Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS” lined up with references to other musicians and performers revered by Goldstein, McLaren and Rhodes, including James Brown, Eddie Cochran, Sam Cooke, Marianne Faithfull, Jimi Hendrix, King Tubby’s Sound System, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Archie Shepp, producer Guy Stevens and Gene Vincent.
“Kutie” – for the group’s then-vocalist Steve Jones – came from the seamy vintage sex magazines strewn around McLaren’s shop: not only was it a variant of the early 60s title QT but also a direct reference to the 50s soft porn publication Continental Kuties.
A sister magazine was Continental Keyholes, and it was this which prompted McLaren to make an imaginative leap which also promoted his new retail business. “I thought, ‘What goes into a continental keyhole?’ McLaren told an audience at the 2009 Venice Biennale a year before his death.
“That’s how I came up with the name Sex Pistols. I saw them as sexy young assassins. Pistols, since they were only eighteen their privates were probably very small, so the idea of little pistols was perfect. I thought, ‘Yeah, they are going to go out and kill all the other pop stars’.”
After McLaren expelled Nightingale from the group the following year and instructed Jones to move to guitar, in the process making way for the incoming John Lydon, one of his first moves was to lease a permanent rehearsal space for the nascent Pistols in Soho’s Tin Pan Alley. Since this also provided the peripatetic Jones with a home, he christened it “The QT Rooms” as an acknowledgement of the roots of the group’s name in the seedy Britporn scene of the post-war era.
Read more about this and other previously untold stories of the late cultural provocateur in my new biography The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren, which is published in April by Constable & Robinson and includes an introduction by writer, magician and performer Alan Moore and an essay about McLaren from a 21st century female perspective by curator and writer Lou Stoppard.
Order your copy of The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren here.