23^rd Apr 2010

Malcolm McLaren part 1

Today’s show is a tribute to Malcolm McLaren who died last week. Once upon a time I travelled down to London from Leicester to visit a shop on the King’s Road called Paradise Garage which was owned by Trevor Myles who was photographed by my friend David Parkinson, sitting on the bonnet of a zebra skin flocked car outside the shop. Another friend; John Cramphorn, bought some white overalls from the shop, with the word Firestone stitched in red across the back, slightly ironic as he later became a tyre fitter in Leicester. The next time we visited the shop it was under new ownership, renamed Let it Rock and that was the first time I met Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. I remember bakelite radios on the pavement and I bought an American fleck jacket and some obscure singles on the King label. On subsequent visits the shop changed its identity to Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die and then Sex which is when I took some photographs of Vivienne in various rubber and leather garments posing in front of a sculpture of a severed leg with livid boils and blisters at the top of the thigh. One of these images signed in gold ink by Vivienne is coming up in the Resonance auction on May 1st. It was always possible to chat with Malcolm and Vivienne in the shop and then eventually David Parkinson told me he had encountered Malcolm one evening in Mayfair and he had adopted yet another persona; his hair was now up and permed and he was wearing tight black leather trousers with tassles and a small grey sports jacket, and he mentioned that he was now managing a band. So, one Sunday afternoon we found ourselves in a small strip club or porn cinema on Brewer Street and witnessed the Sex Pistols live on stage to a fairly bemused audience of about 40 people. At the time I thought it was some sort of hoax, like bad painting or something. The rest is well documented. The last time I saw Malcolm was about 2 years ago in Paris. He was having an argument with a woman in Place St. Sulpice. I passed within a few feet of him but decided not to encroach on what was obviously a private discussion. So, this programme is a tribute to an extraordinary character. The first track is Have Love Will Travel by The Sonics 1965 from Sex: Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, a compilation of 20 records that were on the jukebox in the shop compiled by Marco Pirroni in 2003. Next is No Fun (unedited version Oct 76) from Spunk which featured the Sex Pistols before Sid Vicious joined and Glen Matlock left the band. Followed by a mix of tracks from Revenge of the Flowers by Francoise Hardy and Malcolm McLaren including the title track and Driving into Delirium (extended version), and Buffalo Gals, Back to Skool.