Where’s Malcolm?! McLaren spotted with downtown punk royalty at the May 1975 Central Park peace rally
//Malcolm McLaren between Patti Smith and David Johansen with Cyrinda Foxe and Lenny Kaye, Sheep Meadow, Central Park, May 11, 1975. Photo: Danny Fields//
//Close up: Malcolm McLaren refreshes himself behind Smith and Johansen//
46 years after music manager Danny Fields took the photograph of a group of New York’s 70s demi-monde at the top of this post I’ve spotted the previously unidentified person behind them: the subject of my latest book, Malcolm McLaren (who appears to be chugging a half-bottle of Smirnoff).
//Sylvain Sylvain and McLaren (wearing Let It Rock tie, shirt and ‘Alan Ladd’ suit jacket) at The War Is Over! event © Bob Gruen / www.bobgruen.com
Please contact Bob Gruen’s studio to purchase a print or license this photo. email: websitemail01@aol.com phone: 212-691-0391//
Fields’ photo was taken at The War Is Over! concert and peace rally held in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow on May 11 1975 to celebrate the end of the America-Vietnam conflict. More than 50,000 people attended to hear speeches and performances by such figures as politician Bella Abzug and folkies Peter Yarrow and Joan Baez.
//Poster for the rally in the V&A Collections//
I write about McLaren’s attendance – with friends such as New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and photographer Bob Gruen – in The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren. One of Gruen’s photographs taken that day appears in the book.
//Patti Smith wore the clothes she was captured in by Robert Mapplethorpe around the time of the peace rally for the cover of her album debut Horses. Pic: Teresa Zabala/New York Times//
The event was extensively covered in the New York Times which reported that speakers and entertainers also included the singers Barbara Dane, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, Paul Simon and Odetta, actor and activists Harry Belafonte and Ossie Davis,the American Indian Movement drummers, representatives of veterans’ and labour groups and Vietnamese and Cambodian US residents.
//’End-of-War rally brings out 50,000′ on the NYT front page on May 12, 1975//
It’s a milieu one wouldn’t associate with McLaren but Sylvain told me the Londoner was in an upbeat mood that day. The pair had recently returned from a road trip from New Orleans after the collapse of the New York Dolls, and McLaren was fired up about working with the young musicians who had gravitated to his shop Sex in the King’s Road (whose group he had dubbed Kutie Jones & His Sex Pistols).
//From The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren//
McLaren had raised funds for his return after five months in the US by selling clothing from Sex and left for England the very next day, taking with him Sylvain’s Gibson guitar and Fender Rhodes keyboard on the basis that the ex-Doll might follow him.
The paperback of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is published on Tuesday (November 4). Support local book shops by buying from Bookshop UK.