‘This book solves the mystery of a spell that was cast on a time that won’t fade away’

Hiroshi Fujiwara

2024 has got off to a good start with the news that the Japanese edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is going to be published by East Press on January 26, four days after what would have been the great provocateur’s 78th birthday.

This translation includes a new photo selection, the above cover quote from Japan’s style guru Hiroshi Fujiwara and updated text, including much new detail on the visit McLaren made with Vivienne Westwood and Gerry Goldstein to Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York in the summer of 1973.

The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren Japanese edition is available to order here.

Tags: Hiroshi Fujiwara, The Factory

//From the presentation for tomorrow’s event//

Tomorrow I’ll be talking to interiors, homewares and textile designer Sue Timney about the fashion legacy of the King’s Road, the two-and-a-half mile thoroughfare in west London’s Chelsea where the late Mary Quant kicked off the boutique boom by opening her clothes shop Bazaar at 135a in 1955.

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Tags: Ace, Don Letts, Jeannette Lee, King's Road Music & Fashion Trail, Let It Rock: The Look Of Music The Sound Of Fashion, Mary Quant, Peter Golding, Quorum, Sheila Rock, Sue Timney, The Great Gear Market, Timney Fowler

++ 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.

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Tags: A&M Records, Buckingham Palace, Carysfort Road, Centre Point, Cheyne Walk, Denmark Street, Eve Edwards, Fora, Goldsmiths College of Art, Grosvenor Square, Herb Lester, London Society, Mayor Of London, Nostalgia Of Mud, Sex Pistols, Situation Vacant, Tin Pan Alley Club

In the evening June 9 I’ll be in Soho for a London Society event about the London life of the late cultural provocateur Malcolm McLaren.

At workplace venue Fora in Broadwick Street writer Helen Barrett and I will be discussing the ways in which the man born in Stoke Newington and buried in Highgate Cemetery used the city as the springboard for his dizzying range of creative and subversive activities.

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Tags: BRoadwick Street, Fora, Helen Barrett, Herb lester Associates, Highgate Cemetery, London Society

//Fax of treatment sent by Malcolm McLaren to Neal Purvis and Robert Wade on January 9, 1991//

These faded pages constitute a film pitch Malcolm McLaren sent by fax to screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade way back in 1991.

//The first page of the fax shows that this treatment was completed a couple of weeks before it was sent, on December 20, 1990//

//From my transcription of the now-very faded fax//

Purvis and Wade are responsible for many  film successes including the astounding run of screenplays for the seven James Bond movies from 1999’s The World Is Not Enough to the recently released No Time To Die. I’ve known them for a  while and Neal has mentioned their contact with McLaren during preparations for their first feature Let Him Have It, so made sure it was covered  in the hardback edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren.

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Tags: Impressions of America, James Bond, Leadville, Let Him Have It, Neal Purvis, No Time To Die, Oscar Wilde, Robert Wade, Screen International, Skyfall, The World Is Not Enough, Too Too Utterly

//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).

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Tags: Barbara Dane, Bella Abzug, Bob Gruen, Central Park, Cyrinda Foxe, David Johansen, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Kutie Jones & his SEX PISTOLS, Lenny Kaye, New York Dolls, Odetta, Ossie Davis, Patti Smith, Paul Simon, Peter Yarrow, Phil Ochs, Richie Havens, Sheep Meadow, The War Is Over!, Tom Paxton

//Outside my local “The Roebuck” in London SE1 yesterday//

//Barney Bubbles’ 1966 designs for Woodpecker and Strongbow ciders feature on the bus being used in filming//

This is freaky. Our local has been transformed into the King’s Road pub The Roebuck for the filming of Danny Boyle’s forthcoming FX series Pistol, based on guitarist Steve Jones’s memoir Lonely Boy.

The thing is I knew the Roebuck very well; it is in fact the place where I first met Malcolm McLaren, at the age of 15 in 1975. By happenstance I was drinking in the pub with an older brother the night McLaren recruited John Lydon  to the Sex Pistols.

//The Roebuck in the late 70s. Photo by Barry Beattie/ANL/Shutterstock (5823647a)//

At The Roebuck I came across such individuals as the gangster John Bindon and his well-born paramour Vicki Hodge and the male model David “Piggy” Worth. One night we spotted the infamous art dealer Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser with some ne’er-do-wells. It was that sort of place.

//The Roebuck was a couple of minutes’ walk east of 430 King’s Road where the Mini driven by Vivienne Westwood, Steve Jones and others could often be seen. This recreation even includes balls of mohair wall in the back//

I returned there over the following years, particularly after I moved to neighbouring Kensington in 1977 – it was a 15-minute walk away. By that time Punk was shifting overground and the upstairs snooker room was the scene of much nefarious activity.

A wild twist is that pioneering 60s designs by the late graphic genius Barney Bubbles have been recreated as period adverts on a bus which is being used for filming.

The conjunction of two of the subjects of my books with a fondly remembered venue 20 yards from where I live is kind of wild.

Tags: Danny Boyle, David "Piggy" Worth, FX, John Bindon, John Lydon, Lonely Boy, Robert Fraser, Steve Jones, The Roebuck

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.

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Tags: Apple Records, Badfinger, Ben Kelly, Bill Collins, Denmark Street, Glen Matlock, Harry Nilsson, Historic England, John Lydon, Jon Savage, Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, Melody Maker, Pete Ham, Sex Pistols, STan Polley, the Beatles, The Iveys, The QT Rooms, Tin Pan Alley, Vivienne Westwood

//The postcard, which measures 230 x 150mm (6 x 9in), is printed in a numbered limited edition of 150//

“Fashion seemed to be the place where music and art came together. Creating my own clothes was like jumping into the musical end of painting. The shop became a natural extension of my studio.”
Malcolm McLaren. The Look, 2001.

Featuring a rare portrait of Malcolm McLaren displaying his wares inside the recently opened Let It Rock in January 1972, this limited edition large-size postcard is a companion to my biography of the man published earlier this year.

The photograph on the front of the card was taken by the late David Parkinson, who documented the refurb of  the premises at 430 King’s Road carried out by McLaren and his art school friend Patrick Casey; the address had previously housed Trevor Myles’ Americana boutique Paradise Garage.

//The postcard arrives clad in black, McLaren’s favourite anti-colour. “Black expressed the denunciation of the frill,” he wrote in the introduction to my book The Look//

The card shows McLaren revealing the detail on a flamboyant drape jacket made to his design by the East End tailor Sid Green, while he is surrounded by the accessories and ephemera which constituted Let It Rock’s environmental installation. Against the black walls, Day-glo socks from Whitechapel wholesaler Kornbluth vie with Frederick Starke red rockabilly shirts, Sun Records 45s, French rocksploitation movie posters and deadstock clothing.

It makes for a beguiling image: the 25-year-old – then still legally Malcolm Edwards – is caught making the leap from art school to fashion retailing by, as he later described it, “jumping into the musical end of painting”.

Limited edition numbered postcard hand-numbered and printed 4/1 col. offset on 350gsm single sided board stock, trimmed to size.

Printing: Something Else.

Price: £12.50 each or £20 for 2. P+P: £5 UK, £10 rest of the world. All postage with tracking and/or signature.

Payment via PayPal to this address.

I’m happy to sign cards on request.

Tags: David Parkinson, Frederick Starke, Patrick Casey, Something Else, Sun Records, Trevor myles

Excerpts from the annual summer music jamboree broadcast as part of UK TV station Channel 4 youth programme The Tube have been posted this week on Youtube.

//Jools Holland interviews McLaren about his “Duck Rocker”, one a number of customised boomboxes McLaren commissioned for promotional appearances//

One clip from the so-called Midsummer Night’s Tube of 1983 features an interview with Malcolm  McLaren about his recently released album Duck Rock and single Double Dutch.

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Tags: Channel 4, Dave Walker, Double Dutch, Duck Rock, Duck Rocker, Jools Holland, Ruza "Kool Lady" Blue, The Midsummer Night's Tube, The Roxy, The Tube