La belle dame sans merci: Patti Smith: Horses (Arista Import) *****

Originally published in Sounds, 20 November 1975

 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I give you the record of the year. Or the record of 1976, since it won't be released here until January. 

Quite simply, this is one of the most stunning, commanding, engrossing platters to come down the turnpike since John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, and for the same reasons.

Like Lennon on that album, Ms Smith is concerned with finding the truth within herself, with seeing how deep she can travel in search of what makes her tick (and if Patti's really into Rimbaud, to discover whether she's worthy of being a poet). If you want to hook in for the ride, fine. If not, you won't be around for long.

You cannot put this record on and ignore it. On the office Dansette it got midway through 'Birdland' (side one, track three), to where Patti starts interminably moaning "up" with ever increasing madness and speed, before three people started screaming to take it off. It's that kind of record. John Cale has produced a stark, austere sound, much like the rock songs on his own albums. The band concentrate on overall effect, sounding like the Velvets in the way the music just sits there, and seemingly will for all eternity. Their music is skeletal, concentrating on Richard Sohl's piano and Lenny Kaye's guitar — in a dozen listenings I'm still not that aware of bassist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Daugherty.

Over this Patti swoops and sings and hollers and talks, her voice looping through a dozen styles and emotions — whatever seems right at the time — at one point she even thumps her chest while singing. Usually she sounds brash and appealingly harsh — when she breaks into a breathy soar in 'Birdland' and 'Elegie', the contrast is almost enough to make you cry. She uses lyrics as launching pads, taking off in wild, surreal improvisations, poring over dreams and images like aural cut-up. Verses and themes surface in later verses in disturbing juxtapositions, and her subject matter is invariably exotic. One dip in her universe and it's easy to see her sphinx-like attraction: what does "I fell on my knees and pressed you against me, Your skull was like a network of spittle, Like glass balls moving in light cold streams of logic and update is that lightning, The type that some will make it go crack" mean?

There is no one phenomenal song on this record they all are. The theme is set immediately as Patti creates herself as the young rebel — "Words are just rules and regulations" — bored by everything until she looks out the window and there, leaning against a parking meter, is 'Gloria' — a demolition version ensues.

'Redondo Beach': Soap opera over a dinky tune. Hit single.

'Birdland': Based on a dream described by Peter Reich (son of psychiatrist Wilhelm) about incessantly wandering in a field hoping his dead father would pick him up in a UFO. The first launching pad, it imples a huge epic of which we only see a splinter, Patti babbling about being un-human, vivisection, and eyes like white opals, the music shifting from grindingly harsh to quietly lyrical.

'Free Money': Short, sweet, and rocks like hell.

'Kimberly': To her younger sister. Lines like "The stars will shift and the sky will split, The jade will drop and existence will stop" over music that sounds like an offspring of the Ohio Express and Mickey and Sylvia.

'Break It Up': From a dream where Patti saw Jim Morrison lying on a marble slab trying to take off, but his wings were made of stone. She kept screaming the title until the wings broke and he ascended.

'Land': First prize for weirdness. Johnny slips in and out of realities, taking knife to throat, pulling out his vocal chords, seeing horses, floating in the Sea of Possibilities. For some reason, 'Land of A Thousand Dances' ties it together. A totally unbelievable song.

'Elegie': To Jimi Hendrix. Piano dominated, haunting. "It's much too bad and much too sad our friends can't be with us today."

On the basis of this record, Patti Smith reveals herself to be the most compelling primal exhibitionist since Jim Morrison, the saviour of all voyeurs who need rock and roll to stay alive. The queue begins on the left.

© Jonh Ingham, 1975

The Sex Pistols First Interview

The Sex Pistols are four months old, so tuned in to the present that it's hard to find a place to play. Yet they already have a large, fanatical following. So their manager, who runs a rubber and leather shop called Sex, hired a strip club where the two sides could meet

By Jonh Ingham
Sounds. April 24, 1976 _______________________________________________

THE SMALL, sleazoid El Paradise Club in Soho is not one of the more obvious places for English rock to finally get to grips with the Seventies, but when you're trying to create the atmosphere of anarchy, rebellion and exclusiveness that's necessary as a breeding ground, what better place? Name one kid who will tell their parents they'll be home really late this Sunday because they're going to a strip club to see the Sex Pistols.

The shop front is the customary facade of garish, fluorescent lit plastic and enticing tit pix, gold-flocked wallpaper and a life-size gold framed lovely beckoning you within. Conditioning expects one to go down a hall or some stairs but the minute you turn the corner you're there. A small room 20 to 30 feet long, bare concrete floor, a bar at one end, three and a half rows of broken down cinema seats. The other rows seem to have been bodily ripped out. It's an unexpected, shocking sight at first, but after it gets comfortable the thought occurs that perhaps it's not sleazy enough. It needs more black paint peeling from the sweating walls, a stickier floor . . .

With luck the second gathering occurred there last Sunday (the Maltese landlords can be a little difficult to unearth). The first such gathering accumulated entirely by word of mouth, and by midnight the joint was jumping.

Flared jeans were out. Leather helped. All black was better. Folks in their late twenties, chopped and channelled teenagers, people who frequent Sex, King's Road avant leather, rubber and bondage clothing shop. People sick of nostalgia. People wanting forward motion. People wanting rock and roll that is relevant to 1976.

At the moment, that criteria is best embodied in the Sex Pistols. They fill the miniscule, mirror-backed stage, barely able to move in front of their amps. They are loud. They are fast. They are energetic. They are great.

Coming on like a Lockheed Starfighter is more important to them than virtuosity and sounding immaculate. This quartet has no time for a pretty song with a nice melody. Guitarist Steve Jones doesn't bother much with solos, preferring to just pick another chord and power on through. ("There's two reasons for that - I can't play solos and I hate them anyway." As he said that, 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me' came on the juke box and we agreed the only good thing in it was the solo.)

But imitating the roar of the Industrial Age doesn't mean they're sloppy. Although earlier reports reckoned their time keeping somewhat off, to the point of cultivating an ethic of them being so bad they were good, Glen Matlock (bass) and Paul Cook (drums) seem to have the beast on the rails and in this stripped down form the beat is where it's at. One also has to remember that the Sex Pistols has only existed professionally since Christmas and that Steve has only played guitar for five months.

With inaudible lyrics the music is very similar from song to song but a cranial trigger says, that song is great (applaud) but that one is just okay (don't applaud). Everyone else seems to think similarly. Which annoys singer John Rotten endlessly. "Clap you fuckers. Because I m wasting my time not hearing myself." He begins a slow handclap; about three people join in.

John is a man who likes to confront his audience, not to mention the rest of the band. It's this Stooges-like aura of complete unpredictability and violence that gives the Sex Pistols that extra edge. Paul reckons the broken glass attitude will only disappear when they get as old as Pete Townsend and just do it for the money.

The Pistols' roots lie with Paul and Steve who left school with a healthy desire to avoid work. The obvious alternative was rock even though neither could play an instrument. Their musical models were the Stones and the Who and the early Small Faces, which doesn't say much for Seventies rock, and was a reason for starting a band.

Out of the last six years, Steve rates the Stooges. Paul admits to being fooled by Roxy Music for three albums. Later he added Todd Rundgren. "Yeah, there's what acid does to you," retorted Steve, adding proudly, "There's no drugs in this group."




Glen joined and they staggered on for a year, learning a Who/Small Faces repertoire ("but that didn't get us anywhere"), buying their threads from Sex and bugging Malcolm, the owner, to manage them. Having already spent seven months in New York handling the New York Dolls he wasn't too interested but he helped them a bit and they kept bugging and, well, London could do with a Seventies rock band.

Malcolm decided that Steve was hopeless as a singer, got him to learn guitar and the search was on. Into Sex walks John, who couldn't sing but looked the part. They tried to audition in the conventional manner, but finally settled on standing him in front of the shop's jukebox, telling him to pretend he was on stage.

John had never even considered joining a band.

We're sitting in a tacky pub in Charing Cross Road. Until now John has been sitting politely, looking a bit bored while I talk to the others. He's wearing the ripped up red sweater he wears on stage, a safety pin dangles from a thin gold ring in his right ear lobe. So how come you're doing it John?

The intensity level immediately leaps about 300 percent. He looks manic. "I hate shit. I hate hippies and what they stand for. I hate long hair. I hate pub bands. I want to change it so there are rock bands like us."

This is delivered at full tirade, with a sneer to match the voice. He clocks my earring, the five weeks laziness straggling across my cheeks and chin and the sneer and the direct-eye blitz never stops. I'm inadvertently thinking 'Gosh, I'm not a hippie now - that was a childhood error,' and I never was one in the first place. The kid's got style. You know what end of a switchblade he would have been on in 1956. I'd love to be present when the middle-aged boogers who pass for rock critics on the national papers finally confront him.

But John's just warming up.

"I'm against people who just complain about Top Of The Pops and don't do anything. I want people to go out and start something, to see us and start something, or else I'm just wasting my time."

This last phrase is a favourite. He says it with just the right amount of studied boredom.

The Pistols found their first public by gatecrashing gigs, pulling up and posing as the support band. At the North East London Poly they succeeded in emptying the room, the same stylish feat being Shep Gordon's reason for signing up Alice Cooper. At St. Albans, where they supposedly played one of their worst gigs, they were asked back again.

In London they rapidly depleted themselves of potential venues. For a start they wouldn't play pubs.

Malcolm: "The trouble with pubs is that they're bigger than the bands. They're all full of people playing what a crowd wants rather than what they want because they can make a reasonable living from it. If you want to change things you can't play pubs. You don't have the freedom."

Paul: "The trouble with pubs is you have to please everybody If we wanted to please everybody we'd end up sounding like the Beatles."

That left the Marquee, 100 Club, and the Nashville. Eddie and the Hot Rods asked them to support at the Marquee. It was the first time they had ever used monitors and hearing themselves caused a slight o.d., John leaping into the audience and the others kicking the monitors about.

In the light of what the Pistols consider the Hot Rods' over-reaction to the incident, the group insist they did little damage to anything that wasn't theirs. They've also written a song on the matter.

I think the photos speak for the particular violence of the 100 Club gig, but the band and the Nashville seemed to enjoy each other. Allan Jones of the Melody Maker described it:

'Their dreadfully inept attempts to zero in on the kind of viciously blank intensity previously epitomised by the Stooges was rather endearing at first... The guitarist, another surrogate punk suffering from a surfeit of Sterling Morrison, played with a determined disregard for taste and intelligence.'

Taste. Intelligence.

"Who's Sterling Morrison?" asked Steve.

When last heard of he was a university professor in Santa Fe.

"Oh. That's alright then. What's 'surrogate' mean?"

They’re going to play the Nashville again, but their problem, apart from finding it impossible to find a band they're compatible with musically, is that it's still not the right environment.

Malcolm decided early on that France would understand much better and envisioned a couple of weeks in Paris. The French promoter saw the Marquee gig, and fired with visions of Gene Vincent and Vince Taylor has booked them across France and Switzerland for May. Meanwhile, El Paradise...If things work out, Malcolm will obtain the old UFO premises.

Apart from the difficulty of finding the El Paradise landlords, the police arrived about 2 a.m. the first night, what with the noise of the steel rolling door going up and down all the time as people left. And it's not really the right thing to have a minor pop band like Arrows spread-eagled against the wall being frisked as a nightcap to the evening's frivolities.

Basically, what Malcolm wants is a rumbling, anarchic, noisy energetic rock scene, the likes of which haven't been seen in this country since the mid 1960s. Any comparisons with New York rock/club scene are briskly brushed aside.

"Maybe it's because they're so close to the media, but they're all so scared by them. I used to talk to [journalist] Lisa Robinson and David Johanssen would pull me into the toilet and say, 'Don't you know who you're talking to? Don't say those things!' My God, if you worry about what you say to her...

"The trouble with the Dolls was that their hype was so much bigger than they were. They really had an opportunity to change it all around, but instead of ignoring all that bullshit about signing up with a company and a big advance, they got sucked in.

"They get dazzled by the process. Every time The Ramones have a picture of them published it lessens their mystique. There's no mystery about the New York scene. Pretty soon Richard Hell is going to leave the Heartbreakers and Sire Records will dangle a contract in front of him and he knows it won't help and won't do any good but he'll sign it because it's what's expected of him.

"The thing to do is just ignore all that. No-one came to sign up the Stones, no-one wanted to know. But when they saw a lot of bands sounding like that with a huge following they had to sign them. Create a scene and a lot of bands - because people want to hear it - and they'll have to sign them even though they don't understand it.

"The trouble with the pubs is that they’re free, and people come for that reason. If you're at a Sex Pistols gig you wanted to go, because you spent money to get in. I opened the shop because I wanted people to make a certain statement and they wore my clothes. The Sex Pistols are another extension of that."

As for what the band think of comparisons...

"The New York scene has absolutely nothing to do with us," sneers John. "It's a total waste of time. All anyone talks about is the image. No-one's ever mentioned the music."

But there's a remote connection with the aesthetic and they seem to be trying to get on with the future.

“I like that word, 'remote'” he says real blankly.

(Is he always like this? "No. He was rather polite tonight.")

Steve and Paul deliver the fatal blows.

"They're not like us. They all have long hair."

"Yeah, Anglophiles with Brian Jones mop heads."

So there they sit, waiting for a scene to build up around them, for the appearance of bands they can play with. They look rather glum at the prospect and, when you consider it, we can at least go and see the Sex Pistols.

"Yeah," sighs Steve. "I wish I could see us."

Sex Pistols/Buzzcocks - Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester - 31 July 1976

ABOVE MANCHESTER'S Free Trade Hall is a little known auditorium, capable of holding some 400, cunningly named the Lesser Hall. Until the Sex Pistols discovered it for a concert last month its functional Fifties atmosphere had been sullied only by the strains of the odd jazz recital.

After that concert, which attracted some 150 rough tuff raving Mancunians, conversation led to contact with the fabulously named Slaughter and the Dogs. With the coordination of Howard Devoto the Pistols organised another bout, the Dogs supporting. In the meantime Devoto whipped his own band, the Buzzcocks, into shape, making for a triple bill of critical mass potential.

Unfortunately, the PA was more expectation than actuality, the Pistols sounds man having to patch together a mismatched jumble of amps to gain results. Under the circumstances, it's a wonder the sound was as good as it was.

It was the Buzzcocks' first gig. Devoto stands and sings a lot like Johnny Rotten, and indeed the band sounds a lot like the Pistols, perhaps because Howard hauled guitarist Pete Shelley down to a London Pistols gig so that the light could be seen and the course charted. Whatever their inspiration, they're promising.

Howard, wearing sneakers, pencil thin Levis, t-shirt and baggy blue jacket, is singing love songs, the strangest love songs you've ever heard. They have titles like (and I can't vouch for their accuracy) 'Breakout', 'You're Shit', 'Put 'Em Down', 'I Love You, You Big Dummy'. One song goes 'I’ve been smoking in the smoking room, Now I'm in the living room, I want what I came for pretty soon'.

It's the Boston Strangler singing the dance of romance, his face getting redder, eyes popping, kicking and punching the air.

At first they are rhythmic to the point of rigidity, Shelley – who is wearing tight salmon pink Levis, sleeveless 'Buzzcocks' t-shirt, shades and short hair – not even bothering with the concept of a middle-eight, let alone a solo. The top half of his red, £18.49 Audition guitar is snapped off; he got excited at rehearsal one day and threw it against the wall.

But soon he begins to open out. By the time they fire up a high rev version of the Troggs' 'I Can't Control Myself' he's pulling out all manner of interesting riffs and changes. Drummer John Maher is solid, maintaining a fast, precise rhythm with plenty of cymbal flicking. Bassist Steve Diggle, who has a fair resemblance to Johnny Ramone is equally strong.

The climax came with a wild feedback solo, Shelley throwing his axe at the amp. When he went on a little too long, Devoto came out of the wings and pulled the guitar from him. He pulled it back. Devoto grabbed all six strings and yanked ripping them asunder. Shelley propped the now screaming guitar against the speaker and left via the audience. Thus finished the set.

Apart from gigs, the only thing the Buzzcocks need is a hell of a lot more volume.

WHILE EQUIPMENT was changed the capacity audience posed. The David Bowie lookalikes all had the distinct advantage of looking like their skinny hero, perhaps the benefit of plastic surgery. There was a profusion of Neanderthals in stringy hair and leather, one of whom dug the Pistols by bellowing "Stooges!" and pounding seats to oblivion.

There was a profusion of homemade Slaughter and the Dogs badges, and one trendsetter sported a high-class homemade Sex Pistols t-shirt. Then there were the six rows of very straight looking people at the back who sat there very vacant all evening, even those who loathed it.

Depending on who you talk to, Slaughter and the Dogs have been alive between eight months and two years: the new order's ground rules are still being formed and no-one is quite sure what's cool to admit and what isn't. Their age is 15 and 16, except for vocalist Wayne Barratt, who sheepishly admits to an ancient 19. Their reason d'etre, he says, is to relate the energy of 60s Stones to the 70s. An admirable notion, but what this means is that all the fast songs sound like 'Jumping Jack Flash' and the slow ones like 'Angie'.

Anyway you slice it, it is rapidly apparent that the Dogs are well outside the boundaries being drawn by the Pistols. They open with a meandering bass/guitar interchange, the band suddenly bursting on in a blaze of light and noise. For the first tune they generate reasonable excitement, kind of like a high-energy Faces routine.

Barratt, who sports immaculately combed green tinted hair, is wearing Captain Blood style brown satin trousers tied at the cuffs, which brush red Anello and Davide shoes. The belt turns into a sash across his chest and then somehow into a scarf. A codpiece is equipped at no extra charge. The others – Brian Granford (drums), Howard Bates (bass), Mike Day (lead guitar) – look pretty normal, but rhythm guitarist Mike Rossi, who's so punky he can hardly be bothered to mumble his name, is decked out red and white striped t-shirt, black vinyl vest and white Strat; it's a wonder he hasn't dyed his Ronno hair cut that just so Mick Ronson shade. Ah yes, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. And naturally, Diamond Dogs.

Just how the Dogs see themselves as being like the Pistols, which is how they approached the group, is an entertaining mystery. It is said that on a local radio show they defined 'punk' as being a cross between David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. But fuck definitions, Pete Shelley reckons they're an offence just to the word itself.

It is also said that a lot of interest is being expressed in them, which is easy to see. They could quite easily replace any of the current crop of Top Of The Pops groups with no drop in visual quality.

They should also learn to differentiate between genuine demand for an encore and a huge scream of relief at their exit. It would save their outnumbered fans a lot of bother.

THE NOTORIOUS Sex Pistols, the band the promoters of the French Punk Rock festival claim are going too far – "Who do they think they are? The Rolling Stones?" – were greeted with a wild ovation. John stood there and beamed. Then Steve jumped to the front of the stage and started ripping off the opening to 'I Want To Be You', legs apart, swinging his hips from side to side. He has great style.

After 'Pushing And Shoving' John takes off his red mohair sweater, the right sleeve of his shirt casually rolled up to show the cigarette burns on his forearm.

At the Lyceum, like a nonchalant robot he'd stuck out his right fist, ground his fag out on it and chucked the butt over his shoulder, all in one fluid, mechanical motion.

The best thing about the Pistols is the rapid improvement they make from gig to gig. Finally hearing John's lyrics gives it quite a push but Steve and Glen are really beginning to rein in the power, both piling on the energy through the solos. Unfortunately, Paul's drumming was practically inaudible, but some of the bass runs were real eye-openers, while Steve was rewriting the whole Guitar Hero's Stances textbook, pulling his axe up alongside his cheek (great expression of exquisite pain), firing off early Pete Townshend dive bombs, rockin’ out on the beat with precise, soaring feedback endings.

It's all summed up in 'I'm A Lazy Sod': 'Lotta noise. It's my choice. What I want to do'.

Pretty soon a guy was doing the Wilko Johnson Robot Zigzag at high speed up and down the aisle. People near the front began to jump about more. As the band blasted into 'New York' a guy came leaping down the aisle, each bound taking him about five feet into the air, his feet somewhere around his ears.

'Anarchy In The UK', a new song, was a highpoint: 'Give me the MPLA, Or is it UDA, Or is it IRA, Or is it the UK, Or just another country, Or just a council tenancy'. 'Satellite', another hot number, has yet to have the lyrics dug out of it, the only visible hook being the chorus, 'I love you'. But honey this ain't no romance, as John disdainfully clarifies. "It's a comment on suburbia, a wife. 2.4 children, a mortgage and a car in the garage."

The closest John Rotten gets to love is the soon-to-be-classic 'No Feelings': 'You better understand I'm in love with myself'.

At John's encouragement the front rapidly filled with wildly bopping people. One enthusiastic couple pushed each other back and forth in time to the express train rhythm, and God help anyone in the way. By the time 'Problems' had blasted to a close the joint was screaming.

For an encore, John tore up his shirt.

© Jonh Ingham, 1976

You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On!

This piece was written for 'SEX & Seditionaries', a book on the clothing designed by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren for The Sex Pistols (and punks in general).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dateline: London A Ron Wood - Keith Richards concert is not the place you expect to see the sartorial future. After all, the guitar heroes on stage define 1975 rock ‘n’ roll aristo cool: snakeskin boots, denim, turquoise jewellery, flowing scarves, eye kohl, feathercut hairdos. And yet, here in the lobby, a future time machine among the leather jacket cool cats and mini-Keiths, stands Chrissie Hynde. She is wearing a black rubber mini-skirt. Her pink t-shirt appears to be two squares of jersey cotton sewn together, thread ends hanging willy-nilly. On the front is silk-screened a text ripped from the pages of a badly written porn novel: Softly she undulated her hips…Her legs fell like a broken gate…She willed him to be acetylene at her core… If rock and roll is the rebel music of outsiders and their clothing a statement of identity, then this is the most rock and roll clothing in the house. Frankly, it’s unnerving. It’s not an appropriation of other pop trends or subcultures, it’s unique. No wonder Chrissie looks defensive.

Anyone interested in rock and roll fashion – and who isn’t? – knows about Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Let It Rock at the end of the Kings Road, Chelsea. The teddy boy fashions make great rock star clothing and it’s the only place in London you can buy socks with Day-Glo pink lurex stripes. But after a couple of years McLaren does something unfathomable; he changes the name of the shop and reinvents the clothing. Too Fast To Live lasts only a few months but has the distinction of being the strangest clothes shop in Britain, if not the world. Is anyone else selling a t-shirt with burlesque queen playing cards sewn to it and lettering made out of chicken bones? And do they display it in the main window?

Then one cold grey day I find myself standing across the street from Malcolm’s shop, staring at another name change that would be juvenile if the sign isn’t so unsettling. Above the shop front are three-foot high letters spelling SEX, wrapped in bright pink PVC or rubber. What makes it unsettling is the brazenness of both the colour and the material – it’s obvious that (1) this isn’t a Soho porn shop (so what is it then?) and (2) the owner is quite happy, proud even, to stand outside the crowd. In repressed, repressive 1975 England it goes against everything that polite culture represents. I need more lurex socks so I step inside.

The few pieces of clothing are all about detail: jeans with red plastic pockets and belt loops! With pointless zips inside the pockets! Boots with the tongue on the outside! In brown and green! But what sticks in the mind are the nine-foot rubber curtains fronting the dressing rooms and the row of mannequin heads sporting bondage masks and straps. They don’t have lurex socks.

I meet Malcolm in March 1976. I want to interview his band The Sex Pistols for the music paper Sounds, but first I have to pass an audition with him. On a hot, humid, noontime day he strides into a stuffy cafe in black leather jeans, black jacket and pink nylon polo neck t-shirt. It isn’t so much what he wears that’s impressive, it’s the complete indifference to the heat. From his enthusiasm for leather gods like Gene Vincent and peacocks like Little Richard he obviously identifies with the wilder shores of rock ‘n’ roll, music and clothes. So the leather and nylon points both backward and forward; revolt and style walking hand in leather glove with history.

Wearing SEX clothes requires an attitude. And what makes the sartorial Sex Pistols interesting is how they adopt and adapt their own clothes. A too-small sweater ripped up the side so that it fits. Jeans with a busted zip repaired with three giant safety pins to accentuate the problem. A Pink Floyd t-shirt with “I Hate” felt-tipped above the band’s name. Pretty soon the attitude seems normal. Pretty soon I’ve got the t-shirt, got the shoes, got the attitude.

The Sex Pistols are in Paris. John is wearing Vivienne’s latest creation, a boxy black suit covered in straps and zips, later enshrined as the Bondage Suit. In the same way that Chrissie Hynde seemed unique and strange and slightly threatening, John looks unlike anything previously seen. It really makes you think about the role of clothing. Strapped together trouser legs to restrict your stride…Why? Why not? John looks very pleased with himself.

A balmy summer evening, talking with Malcolm and Vivienne. For such a technicolour couple they’re awfully monochrome – Malcolm in his uniform of black leather drainpipe jeans, charcoal pinstripe jacket and white shirt, Vivienne wearing matching ensemble of bleached spiky hair and white muslin. She has just made this outfit, the first of what will become a Punk uniform, and with its clips and offbeat proportions I’m reminded of a freshly wrapped Mummy. It looks really cool.

She’s describing how she developed her fashion style, how Malcolm would come home and look at her work and go, ‘I like this and this, but I don’t like that’ and tear or rip the offending detail. She started to leave his modifications in the finished garments and then developed it as part of her overall style. She pulls something out of her bag, her latest idea, and gives it to me: a red heart cut from felt with the word POLITICS stamped on it. It’s brilliant in its ambiguity. Like all the other slogans -- Dangerously cLOse To love; only AnARCHists aRe PRETTy – it means whatever you want it to, or nothing at all.

As Punk dominates 1977, Vivienne’s creations become a uniform. The sulphuric whiff of anarchy is an expensive £50 for a bondage suit (up there with St Laurent and Armani), but the t-shirts are cheap. Among all the Anarchy t-shirts at the punk clubs it’s easy to tell the rich girls – they’re the ones wearing Vivienne from bleached head to painted toe.

Thirty years later, the new tribes wear clothing that blends into the landscape. With TV and newspapers full of both rock star antics and worthiness, it’s no longer rebel music. It no longer needs rebel clothing. But wearing Ben Sherman, Polo, Nike, Gucci, Stussy or Quicksilver, just like everyone else, means you are just like everyone else. When you pulled on an Anarchy shirt or bondage trousers you were special, wearing something that was spelled out on the label: Clothes For Heroes.

[text and photos © 2007 J. Ingham]