London Calling (65 page)

Rotten described how, on the Pistols’ Swedish tour, he and the photographer Dennis Morris had incurred managerial wrath for
staying in his hotel room listening to reggae when ‘Malcolm thought we should be down smashing things up and living up to
our image.’ Similarly, after John had chosen, amongst others, the likes of Captain Beefheart, Dr Alimantado and Tim Buckley
to play on the hour-long Capital Radio show he put together in the summer of 1977 with D J Tommy Vance, McLaren was equally
furious. Rotten: ‘It seemed to mean that if I liked records that I couldn’t be half as ignorant, moronic, violent, destructive,
etcetera, etcetera as they wanted to promote me as.’
²⁷
It was no surprise that Rotten eventually left the group in disgust: ‘The Sex Pistols just became a publicity fiasco rather
than something with actual content and purpose. All that was thrown by the wayside and we ended up as some sorry rock ’n’
roll sad, sad thing that I didn’t want to be a part of.’
²⁸

In 1978, Johnny Rotten used £1,200 of his Sex Pistols money as the down payment on a house on Gunter Grove, sw10, which was
used as the gathering place for his new group P I L. Rotten:

We lived near to the Chelsea nick. That’s apparently where they train the drug squads. So, you know, they needed places to
practice. I suited their purpose. They even sent me the bomb squad once: ‘Uh, we have reason to believe there are bombs on
the premises.’ ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because an Irish flag was raised through your window!’
²⁹

It was the Italian flag and it was being used as a curtain. Unfortunately the house became well known to fans and attracted
a large number of hangers-on and parasites. On 13 December 1980, the door was broken down in the middle of the night. Rotten
grabbed a ceremonial sword to defend himself before he realized it was the police making their usual entrance. As there
was no other thing they could charge him for, they got him on possession of a spray can of Mace, bought legally in the U S
A. They released him from the police station in his pyjamas and dressing gown and he had to walk home in the middle of the
night down the Fulham Road in his bare feet. The police continued a programme of harassment against him and in the end they
got what they wanted. Early in 1981 he moved to the United States, where he could live in peace.

I think the so-called punk movement is indeed a media creation. I have, however, sent a letter of support to the Sex Pistols
in England because I’ve always said that the country doesn’t stand a chance until you have 20,000 people saying ‘Bugger the
Queen!’ And I support the Sex Pistols because this is a constructive, necessary criticism of a country which is bankrupt.

WILLIAM BURROUGHS
to Victor Bockris

A few days after the Bill Grundy incident, McLaren and Westwood changed the name of their shop yet again. It became Seditionaires.
Punk had become too popular. Now the shop looked completely anonymous, more like a sex shop, with frosted-glass windows making
it impossible to see inside or out, and a small brass plaque, which Peter York likened to that of a provincial doctor, reading:
‘Clothes for Heroes. Open Monday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm’. It was very intimidating and kept out most of the sightseers looking
for punks. It was not long before they had to install metal grilles over the windows because Teddy boys broke them so often.
There was grey industrial carpet and the walls were painted grey, featuring huge blow-up photographs of the fire-bombing of
Dresden. Behind the counter was a floor-to-ceiling photograph of Piccadilly Circus, mounted upside down. To continue the wartime
theme, McLaren knocked a large hole in the ceiling to simulate bomb damage. There was a small table with a built-in cage containing
a live rat. The room was furnished with sixties Adeptus chairs with fluorescent orange nylon covers giving it a slight retro
look. Now that they were making money Vivienne had completely taken over the clothes line and was making coordinated outfits
aimed at the high fashion market. The shop’s new label read: ‘For soldiers prostitutes dykes and punks’ beneath the anarchy
symbol. The clothes were now very expensive – a week’s wages for a pair of bondage trousers with the legs constrained by a
strap – and were being bought by collectors. No real punks could possibly afford them.
¹
This was the inspiration for Poly Styrene’s famous song ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ She saw a pair of bondage trousers in Seditionaires
and it sparked a flow of images: of Suffragettes chained to the
railings of Buckingham Palace, and of David Bowie’s ‘Suffragette City’; scenes from the film
Moses
; pictures of African slaves, chained and shackled; the arguments in Wilhelm Reich’s
Sexual Revolution
– all combined to create her punk anthem. Poly Styrene: ‘I had an innate desire to be free. To be free from unwanted desires,
seemed desirable.’
²

X-Ray Spex were one of the best of the second wave of punk bands. Like the Pistols, the band had its origins in the King’s
Road, where Poly Styrene had a boutique stall in the Beaufort Market. She put a band together that was a model of today’s
multi-cultural London: Poly’s father was a dispossessed Somaliland aristocrat; the guitarist, Jak Airport, was brought up
by his Anglo-German mother; the bass player, Paul Dean, had a Polish father who escaped to Britain from the Nazis; Lora Logic,
the sax player, had a German Jewish father and a Finnish mother, and when her mother insisted she finish school – she was
only fifteen – she was replaced by Rudi Thompson, who was Australian. Only the parents of the drummer, B. P. Hurding, were
described by Poly as ‘true Brits’. X-Ray Spex got their start by playing a residency at the Man in the Moon pub on the King’s
Road every Wednesday night. ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ was their first single.

One of the best things to come out of punk was the proliferation of punk fanzines, a late-seventies version of the sixties
underground press. The first one was started by Mark Perry, a bank clerk from Deptford. Called
Sniffin
’
Glue
, it was named after the Ramones song ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’ on their first album and it was the Ramones that inspired
the magazine. Perry read Nick Kent’s review of their first album in
NME
and rushed out to buy it. After listening to it he felt the need to write about it, even though he had never written before.
‘I thought the Ramones were the most basic rock band ever. I decided that they should be written about on that level, a basic
street level, not intellectual.’ He took each track as it came and said how great they were, then set about getting his views
into print. He said that he had seen fanzines about country music and R&B and that another influence was a Scottish magazine
called
Bam Balam
, about sixties pop, but it’s hard to imagine that he had not seen John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil’s
Punk
magazine, which began publication in New York in December 1975 and was widely available in London by the time punk took off.
At one point
Punk
sold more copies in London than in New York (the final print run was 10,000 copies).
³

Perry: ‘I could see that it was possible to do a magazine without having loads of resources.’
⁴
The first issue, which came out in July 1976, was put together entirely with the materials available in his bedroom: a children’s
typewriter and a felt-tip pen. He just thought of it as a one-off. The headlines were scribbled in a loose freehand, the text
hand-typed on to single-sided pages stapled at the top left. His girlfriend ran off twenty copies on the photocopier at her
office and he took them into Rock On, the Soho music shop. ‘How many have you got?’ they asked, desperate for anything to
do with punk. They bought them all and advanced him money to get more copies printed. In addition to the Ramones, the first
issue of
Sniffin
’
Glue + Other Rock
’
n
’
roll Habits For Punks,
to give it its full title, featured stories on the Blue Oyster Cult and ‘Punk reviews’.

It quickly became the house organ of the punk scene. Perry told the
NME
: ‘I was a massive rock fan, and went to loads of gigs during that period’, but it was punk, and the newly formed Sex Pistols,
that transformed his life: ‘It seemed to be about the actual life you were living in 1976, it really was a lifestyle choice.
If you got into the Pistols, you changed your life. That’s how dramatic it was.’ In the third issue, he branched out and used
an illustration. The photographer Michael Beal offered him the use of his pictures free of charge and he ran a front-page
picture of Brian James from the Damned in what has become a classic
Glue
cover. The magazine filled a demand and sold well. Perry moved the office from his bedroom in Deptford to a spare room in
Rough Trade Records. He retained the rough-and-ready, amateur look because it encouraged other people to have a go. In issue
5, November 1976, he wrote: ‘All you kids out there who read Sniffin’ Glue, don’t be satisfied with what we write. Go out
and start your own fanzines… Let’s really get on their nerves, flood the market with Punk writing.’ And, just as punk bands
proliferated, within months there were dozens of punk fanzines, including 48
Thrills
,
Ripped and Torn
,
London
’
s Burning
,
Anarchy in the U K
,
Tomorrow the World
,
Bondage
, and my favourite,
Apathy in Ilford
, mostly produced clandestinely on office Xerox machines. Sarah Shosubi of
More On
fanzine told Virginia Boston: ‘We felt something special, part of a new thing, which was very radical – underground.’
⁵
When punk became commercialized in 1977, Mark Perry folded
Sniffin
’
Glue
, not wanting it to lose its edge. He was not in it for the money and it had served its purpose. The punk fanzines knew no
rules, and so constantly broke them, not just in the manner of layout and production, which was always amateur at best, but
in subject matter: they libelled the bands, they challenged the authority of the police, the army, the church and the government
and they usually did it with a big humorous ‘Fuck off!’ They were a breath of fresh air.

The problem of not having anywhere to play was a serious one and was partially solved by Andy Czezowski, who opened a dedicated
punk venue,
the Roxy Club. When Malcolm McLaren was away in New York, attempting to manage the New York Dolls, Andy Czezowski had stepped
in to manage the books at the shop. After this, he joined his partner Sue Carrington on the team at Acme Attractions. Acme
Attractions was owned by John Krevine, and began, like Malcolm and Vivienne’s shop, by selling retro clothing. He had a stall
at the Antiquarius Antiques Market on the King’s Road, but the other stallholders objected so much to their jukebox that they
were forced to move down into the basement. Here they could do what they liked; as you descended the stairs you were hit by
the body-thump of heavy-duty dub, straight in the gut, enough to stop people in mid-step. Don Letts, one of the few black
punks on the scene, was the shop manager and D J. The clothes may not have been as innovative at those at SEX, but they
were much cheaper and the music was far far better. Acme was often the only place you could hear some of the records Don Letts
played. Letts: ‘It was the best club in town… It reflected the multi-cultural way that London was heading. All tribes were
represented and I was the Don.’
⁶

Among the regulars were Boy George and the members of the Damned. Often overlooked by punk historians, the Damned were the
third pole in the punk triumvirate along with the Pistols and the Clash. They were among the most articulate of the punks
and never fell for the press image of punk. Captain Sensible told Jon Savage: ‘I don’t think there was such a thing as punk,
it was an attitude that existed before punk, and it still exists now. It was a way of me existing without the state infringing
on me, as little as possible, anyway.’
⁷
The Damned were friends with John Krevine and used his storage space in Deptford for rehearsals, and it was through Acme
Attractions that they met Andy Czezowski, who offered to manage them. All of this activity irritated Malcolm McLaren, who
soon saw Acme Attractions as his arch rival. McLaren felt very proprietorial about the punk scene and when Czezowski opened
the Roxy, he refused to let the Pistols play there because he had no part in its ownership or organization. It was all to
do with selling more trousers.

The Roxy Club, at 41 Neal Street in Covent Garden, was the premier punk club. It had previously been a gay club called Chaguaramas,
and members of Spandau Ballet had been among its customers as early as spring 1976. Named after Chaguaramas Bay in Trinidad,
it had been one of the many gay clubs frequented by Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley Contingent, Sue Catwoman and Gene October,
the lead singer with the newly formed band Chelsea. It was Gene October who introduced Andy Czezowski to the owner, a one-armed
Swiss barrister called René Albert. He charged Czezowski £300 to rent
the club on Tuesday and Wednesday nights which, as the club was normally closed those nights, was a risk-free deal for Albert.
Czezowski brought in Barry Jones as a partner to help raise the money.

Inexplicably, before the club opened its doors, the owner changed the name to the Roxy, presumably for mysterious legal reasons
connected to the fact he had been given ninety days to vacate. The first gig was on 21 December 1976, when Generation X did
a preview gig, but the official opening was by the Clash on 1 January 1977. It was a dark, cavernous basement with round metal
pillars supporting a low ceiling. This meant that the stage also had to be low, less than a foot high, which didn’t stop some
bands from smashing the polystyrene tiles when they swung the mic stand or leapt in the air with a guitar, puncturing the
ceiling with the machine head. Pogoing punks often smashed the polystyrene tiles above them to show how high they could jump.
Repairs had to be paid for the next day. One of the main reasons people pogoed was because unless you were in the front row,
you couldn’t see the band. Andy let the audience do whatever they wanted: they smashed the plastic glasses by jumping on them,
sprayed graffiti on the walls, took drugs and gave blowjobs in the toilets. The floor was always sodden with spilt beer, spit,
blood and vomit. It was a wild club and people were free to do their thing.