‘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

//My essay on Malcolm For Mayor with stickers by Scott King and Matthew Worley//

“The sticker may be the most efficient art form ever invented”

Jeffrey Deitch, 2019

I have an essay in DB Burkeman’s just-published follow-up to his 2010 survey of the use of audacious and eye-catching stickers in art, design, fashion, music and social activism.

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Tags: Anthony Lister, DB Burkeman, Fiorucci, Hysteric Glamour, Invader, Jeffrey Deitch, Jenny Holzer, Marilyn Minter, Mark Mothersbaugh, Matthew Worley, Maurizio Cattelan, Rizzoli, Scott King, Shepard Farey, Stickers Vol 2: More Stuck-Up Crap, Stretch Armstrong

//Window display for Impresario at the New Museum, Sept 16 – Nov 20, 1988. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

//Introduction to the show. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

My biography of the late Malcolm McLaren will now be published in April 2020, exactly 10 years after his premature death at the age of 64.

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Tags: Adam Ant, Art & Text, Catherine McGann, Impresario: Malcolm McLaren & The British New Wave, Keith Haring, Marcia Tucker, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, Paul Taylor, Vivienne Westwood, William Olander, Witches

//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.

Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Constable & Robinson, Donald Trump, F. Lee Bailey, Hurrah, Roy Cohn, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Vivienne Westwood, William Kunstler

//Detail: Etching in steel toe-cap for the 80s collection. This image © Paul Gorman Archive. No reproduction without permission//

On the collapse of their design partnership in October 1983 after showcasing of the collection Worlds End 1984 in Paris and London, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood went their separate ways.

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Tags: Amanda Grieve, Andrea Linz, Blonde Ambition, Dinkie Heel, Fans, Hypnos, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Madam Butterfly, Madonna, Mr Freedom, Paradise Garage, Robert Erdman, Simon Withers, Susie Bick, Trevor myles, Vivienne Westwood, Witches, Worlds End 1984

A few years back I came across Malcolm McLaren’s annotated copy of Indian Rawhide, the anthropologist Mable Morrow’s study of the folk art produced by Native American tribes which inspired the late cultural iconoclast in the conceptualising with his partner Vivienne Westwood of their Spring/Summer 1982 fashion collection Savage.

//Frontispiece to Morrow’s book, published by University of Oklahoma Press in the Civilization Of The American Indian Series, 1975//

//From Indian Rawhide: design produced by the Apache Mescaleros in Taos, New Mexico, matched by McLaren and Westwood with book-end marbling on this Savage slip dress. No reproduction without permission//

//The Apache design as it appeared printed on the end of the train on a Worlds End jersey toga dress. No reproduction without permission//

McLaren obtained a copy of Morrow’s book during travels recording his debut solo album Duck Rock. Since the Pirate collection of March 1981 had established a post-Punk direction for himself and Westwood and their Worlds End shop and label, McLaren set about investigating the powerful ideas residing in pre-Christian ethnic cultures, selecting Indian Rawhide as the text with which to frame the next group of designs.

My McLaren biography, to be published in spring 2018, will reveal that research – particularly literary – was one of the life-long consistencies in his approach to creative acts.

The musician Robin Scott told me that McLaren was an avid attendee of art history lessons during their spell as students at Croydon Art School in the 60s, and a couple of years before his death in 2010 McLaren confirmed that he was inspired in part to open Teddy Boy revival emporium Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road in 1971 after reading Nik Cohn’s peerless post-WW2 youth cult history Today There Are No Gentlemen.

//This edition Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971//

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Tags: A General History Of Pyrates, Assiniboin, Bow Wow Wow, Dakota, Duck Rock, Frederick's Of Hollywood, Giorgio Morandi, I Want Candy, Jean Kerboull, Judy Nylon, Mable Morrow, Mescaleros, Nik Cohn, Norah Waugh, parfleches, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing The Flak-Catchers, The Cut Of Men’s Clothes 1600-1900, The Mass Psychology Of Fascism, The Strangeloves, Today There Are No Gentlemen, Voodoo And Magic Practices, Wilhelm Reich

//Malcolm McLaren, Las Vegas, January 1978. Photo © Fayette Hauser//

To mark the arrival in London of the legendary founder of The Cockettes Fayette Hauser for screenings of rare films featuring the transgressive troupe, here are some extracts from an interview she gave me for the forthcoming Malcolm McLaren biography.

I’m also featuring photographs Hauser took when she hooked up with the late McLaren on the West Coast after the Sex Pistols had splintered in San Francisco at the end of their January 1978 US tour.

With meetings arranged with record company and movie studio producers and financiers, McLaren stayed at West Hollywood’s infamous Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, home to the likes of Tom Waits and visiting musicians from Bob Marley & The Wailers to the Ramones and the Velvet Underground (Andy Warhol’s Heat and Trash were both filmed there).

//60s postcard for The Tropicana Motel and Motor Lodge, 8585 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA//

//The Ramones at The Tropicana in 1978. With Joey Ramone (right) is Linda Ramone (in Emmanuelle Khanh sunglasses) and next to Johnny Ramone is Cynthia Whitney (aka Roxy Ramone), who is wearing the Sex t-shirt I Groaned With Pain, designed by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Photo: © Brad Elterman/Getty//

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Tags: Bette Midler, Fayette Hauser, Granny Takes A trip, John Lydon, Johnny Rotten, Las Vegas, Linda Ramone, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Paul Cook, Ray Stevenson, Ronnie Biggs, Rory Johnston, Slash, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Steve Jones, The Cockettes, The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, The Ramones, The Tropicana Motel

//Sylvain in the streets of Austin last week//

On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I enjoyed many encounters with members of the region’s creative community, not least expat British sci-fi Titan Michael Moorcock and his delightful wife Linda, transplanted Westernwear expert Jerry Ryan and his Heritage Boot emporium and, as previously noted here, the charming duo Jesse Sublett and Lois Richwine.

I also had fun with the visiting New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain Mizrahi, in town for a residency at the Hotel Vegas, on the the city’s hip eastside.

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Tags: Austin, Billy Murcia, Heritage Boot Co, Hotel Vegas, Jerry Ryan, Jesse Sublette, Kensington Market, Let It Rock, Linda Moorcock, Lois Richwine, Michael Moorcock, New York Dolls, Paradise Garage, Sylvain Sylvain Mizrahi, Texas

The Bookseller has announced that British imprint Constable is to publish my book Malcolm McLaren: The Biography.

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Tags: Andreas Campomar, Constable, Margaret Hanbury, The Hanbury Agency