Post-Pistol – a timely look at Malcolm McLaren’s London at Fora Soho tonight
What with Pistol and all, it seems timely to discuss Malcolm McLaren’s place in the scheme of things so tonight journalist Helen Barrett and I will be in conversation at a London Society event about the late cultural iconoclast’s relationship with the city of his birth. Here is a selection of visuals from this evening’s presentation.
//Great grandfather Abraham Corre was born in Whitechapel in 1867 not long after his parents Solomon and Rozetta arrived in the country from the Sephardic diamond ateliers of Amsterdam//
//McLaren – then Malcolm Edwards – at his bar mitzvah at Mayfair’s Cumberland Hotel//
//Arrested for obstruction and threatening behaviour during the police raid on the Sex Pistols Jubilee boat party in 1977//
The fourth-generation Londoner McLaren was seduced by the city from his earliest years, travelling to Soho to pick up on the latest youth fashions as a 13-year-old, having been introduced to the delights of the West End and in particular Selfridges department store as a boy by his domineering grandmother.
//In his first 25 years, McLaren lived, studied, socialised and generally acted up from Walthamstow in the east to Chiswick in the west and from Hendon in the north to Croydon in the south//
McLaren’s roamings around the capital by the age of just 25 – by which time he had attended at least eight art schools and attempted a film about the history of Oxford Street – make for the dizzying spaghetti junction of addresses alone.
//Christmas TV special The Ghosts of Oxford Street absorbed all of Channel 4’s arts budget for 1991//
//McLaren and friends drew up the manifesto for his 2000 bid to become Mayor of London in his favoured Soho restaurant Andrew Edmunds//
Helen and I will be talking about the ways in which McLaren used the urban environment as the springboard for all manner of creative and subversive activities.
There are a few places left – kick-off is at 6.15 at Fora in Broadwick Street if you’re in the area.
Tickets and more details here.
Catch up with Helen’s work here.