“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.
Continue reading Extremely rare Sex Pistols/Smoking Boy shirt up for sale
“It’s like reconstructing the debris of old pop paraphernalia… what’s exciting about it is that you no longer need to buy guitars. You can choose a friend up the road, put your decks together with a beatbox and make your own records, demoralising [sic] the pop myth and beginning to find a way of using material yourself .”
On November 19 1982, the UK’s national weekly youth music programme The Tube included a segment marking the occasion when the terms (and concepts of) “scratching”, “break-dancing” and “hip-hop” were introduced to a mass British audience for the first time.
Continue reading Malcolm McLaren introducing scratching to the UK, November 1982
I’m grateful to British academic Matthew Worley for having enlightened me as to the identity of “Mrs Scully”, whose name was among those printed on the You’re Gonna Wake Up us-and-them t-shirt first sold in Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974.
I just had to write and tell you how much I love the book that has just been published. Your work really cascades over the decades and is utterly real and convincing.
Extract of email from David Bowie to Derek Boshier, November 2015
I guess it can be told now. David Bowie was at one stage going to contribute to Rethink/Re-entry, the monograph of the artist Derek Boshier, with whom the late rock star had worked in the late 70s and early 80s.
“It didn’t matter what side of the bed you were lying on, as long as you were lying on it. Everybody from (author/actress) Anne Lambton to (Sex Pistols guitarist) Kutie Jones to (socialite and writer) Anthony Haden-Guest – they were all flattered. Just goes to show how everyone loves to have their moment – good, bad or indifferent.”
Malcolm McLaren, The Look, 2006
It’s coming up to five years since I posted my marathon dissection – including extensively researched links to sources and references – of the divisive 1970s punk manifesto t-shirt design You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!
Here is a new version of that post, revised and updated with fresh links.
Enjoy!
Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up list t-shirt adopted a similarly truculent tone in an attempt to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.
You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974 – was conceived by fellow traveller and soon-to-be manager of The Clash Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from McLaren and their friend Gerry Goldstein.
Of course, it is best known for carrying the band name McLaren had recently granted to a bunch of teenagers hanging around the shop: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.
The installation of Rethink/Re-entry, the exhibition at central London gallery Flowers showcasing important works by Derek Boshier from the 1970s as well as collages and films made in the last year, is all-but complete.
These shots were taken yesterday as co-curator Guy Brett and I worked with the Flowers team on sequencing and final selection for the show, which opens tomorrow (October 7).
Next Thursday (October 8) I will be in conversation with artist Derek Boshier at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street in London’s Mayfair.
This marks the publication of Rethink/Re-entry, the Boshier monograph I have edited, as well as the exhibition of the same name I am curating at Flowers with the writer/curator Guy Brett.
Continue reading In conversation with Derek Boshier at Flowers Cork Street next week
Two of Malcolm McLaren’s t-shirts from the very first production run of I Groaned With Pain – the notorious text design produced with Vivienne Westwood in 1974 – will be featured in Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges, the exhibition I am co-curating with David Thorp at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery this autumn.
I Groaned With Pain is named after the first four words of the paragraph of text McLaren lifted from beat writer Alexander Trocchi’s erotic novel Helen And Desire (published in 1954 by Olympia Press under the pseudonym Francis Lengel).
“Without hesitation, CLASH 2nd Song book is a masterpiece of graphic art”
Guy Brett, writer/curator
Interrogating materials for the Derek Boshier monograph has brought home the meshing of the artist’s sensibilities with punk in the 70s.
Continue reading Derek Boshier: Clash art guru + original punk rocker!
While interrogating materials for Rethink/Re-Entry – the monograph of artist Derek Boshier I am editing – I’ve come across many delights, including these sketches in the Flowers Gallery archive for one of the most visually striking documents of the post-punk era, CLASH 2nd Songbook.
Continue reading The Clash: Rare sketches by Derek Boshier in the Flowers Gallery archive