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.
++ McLaren outside the empty Centre Point, spring 1979. Photo: Barry Plummer ++
Rare and exclusive images will be on display during the forthcoming event about the late Malcolm McLaren’s London life at Fora Soho on June 9.
//The two maps are housed in handsome folders//
//The guide was designed by Ricardo Santos and includes photography of the band, quotes and a card for my Malcolm McLaren biography//
My new guide out with Herb Lester Associates is out now.
A celebration of the London lives of the Sex Pistols and their charismatic – some might say notorious – manager Malcolm McLaren, it comprises two fold-out maps with 100-plus addresses from birthplaces, schools, colleges, art schools, pubs, clubs, venues and boutiques to such diverse places as Buckingham Palace (where the Pistols signed to A&M Records), the Soho gay club Il Duce (frequented by McLaren after leaving art school in the early 70s) and the Shepherds Bush remand home where the teenage Steve Jones resided before being pulled up before various beaks on assorted burglary charges.
//There are nearly 60 entries charting the lives of the Pistols in London//
//The Pistols map shows how Punk Rock was at its dark heart a London thing//
The Pistols maps covers the group’s 29-month existence and the lives of the five members as they relate to the British capital, while McLaren’s shows how this fourth generation Scottish/Jewish provocateur used the city as a weapon of sex, style and subversion.
//Born in Stoke Newington, McLaren roamed the capital, from Lewisham and Clapham to Chelsea and Notting Hill to Fitzrovia and Oxford Street to Whitechapel and Rotherhithe//
//No coincidence that some of the major projects of McLaren’s life – a psychogeography of Oxford Street, the shop at 430 King’s Road and his campaign to become Mayor of London – were firmly rooted in the city//
SITUATION VACANT: Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren in London is available from Herb Lester Associates here.
At the bottom of page 66 of Melody Maker, September 13, 1975.
This is, I think, an exclusive. Much mentioned in the story of punk, I’ve not seen this ad published since it appeared 46 years ago.
Tucked away at the bottom of page 66 of the September 13 1975 issue of British music weekly Melody Maker was a relatively nondescript line advertisement offering the lease on premises in London’s Denmark Street, home to the British music publishing industry:
TIN PAN ALLEY. Must be
useful for some msicians (sic), agent
or such. To take over. Small lock-
up premises. Store gear, group-
meet, rehearse, hire-it-out, etc.
Sacrifice. – 455 7487.
Complete with that typo, this was the sole entry in the property section of the MM’s classifieds pages, which that week included hundreds of ads for musicians, instruments and equipment over seven pages.
The ad was tucked away at the bottom of the page.
The advert would have cost the leaseholder Bill Collins around £3.50 to post. The father of actor Lewis Collins, the Liverpudlian had made a name for himself in the music business, having been instrumental in the success of 60s powerpop quartet Badfinger, signing them to the Beatles’ Apple label when they were The Iveys. Collins even shared songwriting credits with the group, including those for Without You, which became a massive worldwide hit when covered by Harry Nilsson.
By 1973 Collins had been excluded from Badfinger’s affairs by the powerful US entrepreneur Stan Polley, who was soon accused of depriving the group of millions of dollars. In April 1975, a few months before Collins placed the ad, Badfinger mainman Pete Ham hanged himself at home, blaming Polley in the suicide note for the group’s misfortunes.
Another page of ads towards the back of the issue of MM with a news filler about a bomb scare interrupting a performance by a long-forgotten act called Screamer.
//In conversation with (from top left) RBP’s Mark Pringle, Jasper Murison-Bowie and Barney Hoskyns//
I’m the featured guest on this week’s podcast from the world’s premier music journalism site rocksbackpages.com.
I go way back with RBP founder and author Barney Hoskyns; he commissioned pieces from me when he was Mojo editor in the early 90s and we launched my music press book In Their Own Write, RBP and photographer Jill Furmanovsky’s rockarchive.com on the same night at a Shoreditch gallery nearly 20 years ago.
I had fun talking to Barney and his confreres Mark Pringle and Jasper Murison-Bowie. The chat ranged from my background in trade journalism to, of course, the new Malcolm McLaren biography. Listen to the podcast here.
//David Harrison in customised Sex t-shirt, 1975//
“With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock’n’roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas”
Victoria Segal reviewing The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren in the Sunday Times, April 5, 202
The first reviews of my Malcolm McLaren biography are carried today by Britain’s Sunday Times Culture section and in The New Review magazine of it’s broadsheet rival The Observer.
//T-shirt from the first run produced by Malcolm McLaren in March 1976. Photo courtesy Bonhams//
“This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I wanted to create something of a stir”
Malcolm McLaren, 2005
An extremely rare and controversial T-shirt from the first run produced by Malcolm McLaren in the early spring of 1976 for the new group he managed, the Sex Pistols, is up for sale tomorrow at London auctioneers Bonhams.
//Malcolm McLaren with New York scenester Eileen Polk at New York nightclub Hurrah, October 1978. Photo: © Joe Stevens. No reproduction without permission//
Today marks eight years since the death of visual artist, designer and cultural provocateur Malcolm McLaren.
His friend Joe Stevens sent me this photo a couple of years back. It was taken during the period when McLaren – wearing one of the tartan bondage suits he designed with Vivienne Westwood – was mounting the defence of Sid Vicious, then on the murder charge for having killed Nancy Spungen.
This extraordinary episode from an extraordinary life – during which time McLaren encountered the likes of Donald Trump’s vile mentor Roy Cohn, the legendary radical lawyer William Kunstler and criminal defence attorney F. Lee Bailey (the latter by way of an introduction by Allen Ginsberg) – will of course be covered in my book Malcolm McLaren: The Biography, which is to be published by Constable & Robinson next year.
//John Rotten performing with the Sex Pistols at Andrew Logan’s Valentine’s Ball, February 1976 in a hybrid Sex t-shirt combining the images from the ‘Tits’ and ‘Naked Footballer’ designs. Note Jordan Mooney (far left), Luciana Martinez (third right), Derek Jarman (with camera) and Vivienne Westwood (far right). Photo: Joe Stevens. No reproduction without permission//
Last summer I spent a pleasant afternoon in the company of American academic Benjamin Court, who has been researching a dissertation entitled The Politics of Musical Amateurism, 1968-1981.
//Jim French. Photo: SHOWStudio//
The American illustrator and photographer Jim French – best known for his pioneering endeavours in the field of homoerotic art – has died at home in Palm Springs at the age of 84.
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