//T-shirt purchased by Malcolm McLaren at The Pleasure Chest, Los Angeles in January 1978. Private collection/Malcolm McLaren Estate. Photo: Paul Gorman Archive. No reproduction without permission//

//Prick Up Your Ears, t-shirt design, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood for Seditionaries, 1979. Courtesy: Hiroshi Fujiwara Collection//

The trickster’s function is to add disorder to order, and so make a whole; within the fixed bounds of what’s permitted, an experience of what is not permitted.

Karl Kerenyi quoted in Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography Of Joe Orton, John Lahr, 1978

In January 1978, after the break-up of the Sex Pistols in San Francisco on the last date of the group’s ill-fated US tour, their manager Malcolm McLaren shifted base to Los Angeles for a few weeks to work out his next move.

Discussing options with record companies and holding meetings with movie companies to drum up business for biopic The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, the late McLaren had a ball, staying at the legendary rock’n’roll hang-out The Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, hard by Duke’s Coffee Shop and a few blocks west of the sex shop The Pleasure Chest.

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Tags: Alasdair McLellan, Ben Reardon, Cowboys, Dances Of The World's Peoples, Duke's Coffee Shop, Folkways, Joe Orton, John Lahr, Karl Kerenyi, Man About Town, Olivier Rizzo, Pop Porn, Prick Up Your Ears, Pussycat Theater, The Pleasure Chest, The Warriors, Tropicana Motel, Vive le Rock!, Walter Hill