New Gold Dream
Worlds End, Bow Wow Wow and McLaren’s exit-punk strategy
Following on from my previous post about Adam Ant asserting his authority on 1980, this lengthy post looks at Malcolm McLaren’s attempt to wrestle pop control with his Bow Wow Wow project and his (and Vivienne Westwood’s) move from punk into the new romantic scene with the rebranding of 430 King’s Road.
When I began defining my subculture and attendant fashions and styles in the late 1970s, the Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren Seditionaries bondage suit – the ne plus ultra of punk - was already in the past. John Krivine and Steph Raynor’s BOY on King’s Road was producing the clothing more cheaply, and it had further infiltrated the small adverts in the back pages of NME and Sounds with clearly substandard ‘snide’ copies. By 1980, the momentous year of The Face, i-D and Blitz, new looks were emergent. New twists on old themes such as rockabilly, strange non-fashion worlds dragged across such as work-wear, and the polymorphous world of new romantic (or ‘the cult without a name’) that had been brewing almost immediately on the edges of punk. Westwood and McLaren re-entered the fray at the end of 1980 with a new look, replaying their old game of harnessing fashion to a pop band and a set of ideologies and statements whose assemblage mirrored the bricolage of the influences on the clothing. Political attire. It is a story that has been told numerous times before, with detail and accuracy being sacrificed for apocrypha, but it remains an important story from an incredibly turbulent time of British subculture. A story of a dynamic of music, fashion, imagery and manipulation. So here it is again, retold as a subcultural excavation.
The pirate look, initially associated with McLaren’s project band Bow Wow Wow, became the ‘Pirate’ collection by early 1981, as the pair accelerated from the world of street fashion into the world of high-end fashion with its biannual collections and featuring in fashion shoots for Vogue, Cosmopolitan, etc. ‘Pirate’ was dazzling, both literally with its gold, and metaphorically with the strategic positioning of Bow Wow Wow in the pop culture image wars of 1981 and 1982. Like many of the bands, they looked so good, so different – super-sexed athletic aliens. McLaren’s early 1980 mentorship dalliance with Adam Ant had produced a successful pop-urchin/dream-boy hybrid, and he was now playing catch-up with something that was partly of his own creation but fiercely independent and defining its own path to subversive stardom. Not something he anticipated.
Even though we admired it and talked about it incessantly, the pirate clothing still seemed a world away. The area of London that gave shop its name being very apt: World’s End. It was an effort to get there (from Derby), intimidating to enter as a young teenager, and prohibitively priced – at best you felt like an unwelcome gawping tourist. The collection spawned the squiggle pattern, typically uncovered by Paul Gorman’s rigorous research in his biography of McLaren: “A recurring motif was the usage of a continuous, looping print which became known as ‘the squiggle’. McLaren had been introduced to this serpentine design by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac during his recent stay in Paris”. The twisting continuity of the pattern maps onto time, as this imprimatur of the pair’s creativity re-emerges every few years in contemporary collections by Westwood, having attained a classic status such as earlier work attributed to William Morris prints and patterns.
Westwood’s creative partnership with McLaren established its energy in the early 1970s and found its rhythm by the middle of the decade. The initial lines and designs ushered in one way of defining punk fashion: arty-vs-street, rich-vs-poor (there is no hard and fast metric that defines who purchased and wore this clothing). As Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas propose in their 2017 book Critical Fashion Practice, the partnership proved a watershed moment in a new concept of critical fashion. The working practices, energies and outputs of this partnership can be understood in terms of the famous ‘triangle of fire’ used in ubiquitous workplace safety training sessions. In the triangle, fire is determined by the presence of ALL of the parts heat, oxygen and fuel – and is quelled or extinguished by the removal of ANY part. Craig Bromberg, in his 1989 biography of McLaren, reaches a similar juncture of thought without the analogy, suggesting that “it was almost as if [McLaren] was naked without a new shop to show that his outrageous ideas had some practical value”.
Westwood and McLaren, in these early years, produced their own fire – a volatile and rebellious creativity that took no prisoners – and this is nurtured through the presence of fashion, a constructed and fiercely autonomous (retail) space, and a pop band. For example, the themes of their clothing shifted more so to synchronise with both the music management interests of McLaren and the wider gesamtkunstwerk of the premises at 430 King’s Road and its role as a convergence point for early punks. In turn, the restlessness of the space of retail, of dwelling, of hatching and scheming, drives on perpetual renewal and change. If something proved successful and garnered attention, McLaren detected potential stasis and his instinct was to rip things up and start again, always fearing the complacency and counter-productivity of subcultural inertia. It was an odd dynamic or dialectic, aspiring something (success and recognition) that would immediately initiate its obliteration – a cultural take on Hegelian aufheben in which impetus, process and outcome are all open to transcendence. From Let It Rock, to Too Fast…, to Sex, to Seditionaries, punk was ushered in. As a fashion output, these clothes, according to Geczy and Karaminas, constituted a “social rebarbative mechanism” through a “visual syntax of cruelty that was meted on the self as much as on society”, an exogenous display of bindings, bondage and exposures.
As the novelty of a monolithic punk fashion system wore off at the end of the 1970s, and the Sex Pistols imploded messily, Westwood and McLaren drifted in different directions. This is putting it mildly, as in fact their relationship was significantly fractured and compromised by McLaren’s multitude of misdemeanours. There was now no band, and so one part of the triangle was suddenly removed. The fire of creativity was snuffed out. Without redressing this, the other sides of the triangle would follow. Thus, the shop at 430 King’s Road hit a stasis, with little development on the clothing occurring aside from tweaking of designs and new tee-shirts. The original punks who had alighted on the scene as a shock-tactic fashion culture had in fact moved on to new things – the new romantic scene had birthed new outlets, new designers and new pop stars that weakened the previous hegemony held by Westwood and McLaren. Key here are shops such as PX, inaugurated in September 1978 in the semi-derelict Covent Garden by a mix of Steph Raynor, Roger Burton, Helen Robinson and Rick Carter. PX borrowed aspects from Seditionaries such as an intimidating and shuttered outer, but added to the mix with brutalist fittings apparently salvaged from redundant MI-5 offices, including a blinking TV screen mounted on the outside of the entrance. Very JG Ballard. The clothing, designed by the shop owners, ploughed a different furrow to the Seditionaries bondage-punk uniform, instead exploring new romantic tendencies with changing themes from space-age futurism, to sci-fi utilitarianism, to Byronesque splendour, to gothic glam. Prominent faces on the scene such as Steve Strange and Jay Strongman worked behind the counter, every bit as essential to the avant-garde streetstyle pulse set by Seditionaries staff such as Jordan. And Seditionaries was increasingly catering to newer punk customers from the provinces who were making a pilgrimage to the shop to buy into a pre-digested and identikit image.
As the philosopher Michel Foucault proposes in his key work Archaeology of Knowledge, these periods of lull or events that do not constitute a positive teleology of moving forward with a mission tend to get obscured from view, but they can tell us an interesting counter-history. What came next is undoubtedly important and rightly celebrated, but the pre-conditions are also a crucial part in the picture and need excavating. The history of 430 King’s Road sees it being smoothly reborn as Worlds End for 1981, announced in a feature in The Face (January 1981) based on a lengthy interview with Westwood. This feature is part of a wider retrospective feature on McLaren, his new project Bow Wow Wow, and an insight into the pirate-themed clothes that now chime with the new romantic times ushered in at the end of 1980 (it is worth noting the often-ignored fact that PX had already worked through some buccaneer-themed clothing as part of their rapid cycling of new romantic looks). The history books jump to this point where all three elements that constitute the preconditions for their rebellious creativity are back in play, but this does not tell the complete story. During 1980 there are indications of 430 being shuttered over and closed to add to its unsettling mystique. This is not unexpected, as parts of the mechanism that drove the creative partnership forward stalled, though we do not read in official histories of the premises being out of action. It is not solely about clothes, or musicians, or a retail space, but about how all of these can be brought together to achieve a desired effect.
Westwood’s own autobiography, co-written with Ian Kelly and published in 2014, moves the focus and extended time frame away from the partnership and wider connected creative output. This is understandable; it gives Westwood the ontological ground to claim retrospective autonomy as a person and a designer, but it shifts the context solely to a fashion front. She claims that the design and manufacturing of the pirate-themed clothing, inspired by her own forensic reading of Norah Waugh’s The Cut of Men’s Clothes, leads to the initial shirts and trousers that spearhead the new collection-to-be. McLaren is said to offer nothing more than a name to the collection, and that the design partnership is ended at this moment in time. It is typical of the autobiographical bitterness and selective remembering that comes after a creative partnership falls apart. Paul Gorman’s 2020 biography of McLaren promotes a different view, but more importantly, it maintains the extended context of the fashion, the shop and the music working in conjunction. Westwood herself seems to acknowledge this but disavow it at the same time, compounded by her disdain towards McLaren’s choice of ‘house band’ – Bow Wow Wow - at the time. Clearly, the year 1980 requires a bit more unpicking, or archaeological work as Foucault puts it.
Contra Westwood, we can start with the music side, and the small announcement in NME on 1 March 1980 that something is afoot. Having poached the trio of musicians from Adam and the Ants at the start of the year, McLaren spends early 1980 nurturing his complex project that would become Bow Wow Wow. This is initially tied in with plans for television production and an ill-conceived and thankfully abandoned project to create a semi-pornographic technology and lifestyle magazine for children under the proposed title Chicken. For McLaren, Bow Wow Wow are many things. Firstly, a way in to score points against the music industry again (EMI take the bait even after their still raw experiences with McLaren and the Sex Pistols). Secondly, an opportunity to shock and titillate audiences in equal measure with an underage singer moaning and groaning whilst appearing in a state of undress. And finally, a vehicle to tie together the many disparate cultural influences he had gathered whilst in Paris and had imparted to Adam Ant. These included Burundi drumming, pirates, and Indians - all to the fore as cultural bricolage.
McLaren would tether this visual and sonic admixture to socio-cultural themes such as media piracy via encouraging home taping, overt displays of ostentation-in-adversity (surrealist gestures such as proposing dole payment be replaced by gold dust) and the dystopic-utopic dilemma of the post-work technological society. So, typical for McLaren, a heady mix of dense ideas. Whereas Ant ploughed a more straight-ahead rock furrow to push through his embryonic pantomime pop persona, McLaren – starting with the press announcement of the fully-formed band in early July 1980 - fastidiously managed Bow Wow Wow’s infiltration into the media with a series of strategic missives and curated appearances. At this point of announcing Bow Wow Wow, Adam and his new Ants were still struggling to gain a commercial foothold – this would shortly change and change radically. Adam and the Ants hitting number one with his ideas would give McLaren a more primitive competitive incentive to make his new band a success.
Principally, a new fashion emerges in the background as Westwood adds her own creative and technical genius to the mix. The clothing is tethered to the McLaren-inspired ethos of the band – piracy, plunder and celebration against gloominess. It is also distinctive – ostensibly divorced from the Seditionaries punk look on every level whilst also standing alongside the new romantic attire of the time. Of course, it goes further - Westwood has the design edge for pushing shapes, folds and the ‘rules’ of clothing beyond their currently expressed part. It is crafted, eye-catching, awkward and distinctive. As Cynthia Rose recounts in her book Design After Dark, the pirate clothing is the first serious attempt to channel the energy and creative spirit that punk encouraged.
This clothing is glimpsed primarily through the band via numerous magazine features from summer 1980 onwards, with the important presence of Caroline Baker as stylist for Westwood helping to give the clothing an added factor. It is interpreted as a rich and colourful pirate palette with an overabundance of gold; as well as gold clothing there are gold braids in the hair, gold body make-up and gold teeth (said to be foil from cigarette packets). It is supposed to send a message about flying in the face of austerity, that anyone can look like they live in a colourful and exciting other-world (the actual expensive price tag of the garments is like a buried footnote to the plan). The video for Bow Wow Wow’s July 1980 debut single ‘C∙30 C∙60 C∙90 Go’ is filmed at the EMI pressing plant at Hayes with jump cut scenes to a dreamy bedroom with singer Annabella Lwin surrounded by a pack of discombobulated poodles (this is possibly pop art gallerist Robert Fraser’s Piccadilly flat). Sometimes on the roof, and at other times marching through the shop floor of the pressing plant, the three band members line up behind the singer and jump through a number of moves whilst hoisting early style oversized ghetto blasters onto their shoulders. The lyrics and accessories are a deliberate taunt to the music industry, suggesting that home-taping and piracy can unlock creative potential and topple entertainment capitalism. The band certainly do not have the choreographic finesse, suppleness and sense of timing that Adam Ant would very soon exhibit on his pop videos, but they sport the first of the new fashions created by Westwood and McLaren – Annabella wears the tricorn pirate hat and the band members have the billowing pirate shirts, tied pants and waistcoats. It’s a bold and unique look.
Bow Wow Wow then feature in The Face for October 1980, about to undertake their first live appearances through a series of Saturday shows at the roller disco Starlight Rooms in Hammersmith. Testimony and timelines here are erratic, but it is thought that the first anticipated event (8 November 1980) is cancelled at short notice due to a potential electrical problem. Reports from music newspapers of the time confirm that at least two weekend shows were completed, before a short sequence of dates around the country as the band find their feet. The pirate clothing is now a fully-fledged uniform – the squiggle print is prominent, the pirate trousers with a fly and belt loop combined, tropical stripe fabrics, more billowing shirts. In The Face article they are posed as they appear in the video for the single, sporting an arsenal of ghetto-blasters and portable cassette recorders. Interestingly, the clothing is noted as being “advance copies”, indicating that the collection is not yet in retail outlets. Further, there is no mention of 430 King’s Road and it is feasible that the shop is in hiatus at this point in time. There is also a fashion spread, designed by Caroline Baker, for the London Standard edition dated 10 November 1980, stating the clothes will be in the shop next week.
The iconic pirate boots are not yet in use, with band members going barefoot, but a double page feature for Sounds at the end of November 1980 would see the boots worn by the band, wrapped in multiple layers of pirate garments. This feature also includes a photograph of McLaren and Westwood’s 12-year old son Joe, dressed in a pirate shirt. The Sounds feature follows the band’s debut gigs at the roller rink in mid-November, playing upon the new romantic tactic of spontaneity and impermanence of location. Annabella Lwin is given a chance to speak about her experiences of being at school and entering into the world of McLaren and Bow Wow Wow, with the furtive and exploitative machinations of McLaren’s Chicken project embroiled in the mix – the article suggests she has just turned 15, but that is a year out and she is only turned 14. A crowd of bemused punks and excitable new romantics (all donning roller skates) are also recorded in the pages of NME, simultaneously treated to the new band, the new bricolage philosophy of McLaren, and the new clothes. Around this time they also have their first album (of sorts) – an eight track cassette with flip-pack packaging which falls between classification of album and single. The collection of songs is a straightforward explication of McLaren’s themes of sun, sea and piracy, constantly self-referencing the construction of the look through the two-minute frantic and breathless workouts: famous Indians, decadent figures in history, wearing gold in your hair, impossibilist escapism.
By the end of 1980 the reconvening of the trio of elements is completed with the shop re-opening. This is covered in a further article in The Face for January 1981, which mentions that the clothing has been made available in branches of the upmarket King’s Road and Sloane Square boutique Joseph, with their Norman Foster designed flagship store having opened in 1979. This connection to Joseph is not something that is remarked upon at the time, nor in recent historification, but it evinces a potentially important link that I return to in a later article. A series of connected moments in i-D #3 from early 1981 gives more clues to the lineage of the pirate clothing as a part of avant-garde street fashion: a feature on the clothing and shop, a ‘straight-up’ from someone who appears to have bought the full kit like a 12-year-old football fan, and a vox-pop feature on the audience at one of the Bow Wow Wow Starlight Rooms gigs. The inclusion of white Woolworth’s trainers indicates that the pirate footwear is still in short supply whilst providing a sudden wrench back into the ordinariness of 1981.
The radical overhaul of 430 King’s Road that births the famous sloping floor, the large backward-running 13-hour clock, and naked lightbulb fittings is detailed in the article, and Paul Gorman again offers his typically forensic blow-by-blow account of this in his recent biography of McLaren. The theme is evocative of a galleon embarking for distant shores away from an England of punk proliferation that the pair had created but apparently no longer wanted. The shop is renamed Worlds End, minus the apostrophe that came with the name of the area of London where the shop stands. There is a subtle consideration here: the toponymical use of World’s End conjures a spatial reading, a physical point where the world ends, the edge of the map. In comparison, the naming of the shop Worlds End connotes a temporal reading, a point in time when the world itself (and other possible worlds) cease to be. This sense of nihilistic finality would have chimed with the counter-cultural context of McLaren, and much later in a kind of reversal of perspective with Westwood and her commitment to movements like Extinction Rebellion.
The clothing and its availability at the newly minted shop is launched with a series of tactical strikes, a precursor to the current time with products like Apple i-phones infiltrating simultaneous events and publicity features. Firstly, there is a national tour by Bow Wow Wow bookended by typically curated gigs at the Rainbow Theatre at the end of February 1981 and at London’s Lyceum in early April. This builds upon the Starlight Rooms gig and the growing press interest in the band stoked by McLaren’s methods. However, the tour is punctuated by cancellations, a push-and-pull antagonism between McLaren and the various authorities (including Lwin’s mother) who are concerned about the young age of the lead singer. This is also the initial brief encounter between George O’Dowd (soon to be Boy George) and the band, with O’Dowd considered by some as a replacement for Lwin, whom other band members deemed substandard. O’Dowd more than adequately matches the fashionable prowess of Lwin, as a receptacle for the pirate clothing, but his singing and dancing talents are at this point in time little better and his tenure as ‘Lieutenant Lush’ in the band is fleeting.
Again, actual details and timelines are erratic within the various subsequent biographies, but it is understood that O’Dowd performed at least one song at the initial Rainbow Theatre event and stayed with the band for their next appearance to co-front a gig at Manchester University on 14 March. There’s evidence: O’Dowd and Lwin are captured performing side-by-side by Manchester-based music photographer Kevin Cummins at this gig. Craig Bromberg’s biography of McLaren offers details and anecdotes for this period, and in typical fashion O’Dowd learns of his ‘no longer required’ status through an announcement in the music press. As Bromberg states, O’Dowd rejected the offer (possibly requirement) of being kitted out in the Worlds End pirate clobber, and took the stage in his usual mix of gender-defying clothing.
A separate launch for the Worlds End clothing occurs at the opening night of Planets, a club night put on by Philip Sallon prior to his more renowned Mud Club (launched in 1983 with McLaren). How much this was an official launch is disputable, with a suggestion that Westwood simply had a stall selling the new garments in an exit vestibule to Sallon’s fashionable crowd of new romantics. Sallon was closely connected to Worlds End (he’s in the i-D feature), and remained a great supporter of Westwood. Meanwhile, O’Dowd was also still looming large, now employed as a DJ and starting out in this trade as much as he was starting out as a singer.
Bow Wow Wow’s touring rumbles on with O’Dowd and the clothing takes off on its own, with Westwood and McLaren invited to show at the London Designer Collection at Olympia at the end of March 1981. This is a key moment, a clinamen, a chance opportunity that results in a different path. The show is energetic and spontaneous, with non-professional models cavorting to Bow Wow Wow tracks, as if Westwood and McLaren are doing things on their own terms as a kind of intervention into fashion show formalism. However, the clothing has power; the iconic squiggle print pirate boots are on show, as well as the square-toed shoes such that the collection is substantial, coherent and like nothing else.
In this short period Westwood and McLaren move from street to couture, going into step with the formalised biannual fashion system such that the collection is officially christened as ‘Pirate’ for A/W 1981. The traditional way of preparing, showing and releasing a collection chimed more with the definition of the fashion dynamic as being a congealed snapshot of a designer’s genius or intent, and this was in conflict with how the pair had worked previously through designing non-stop for their own retail outlet. Their synergy with a pop band in the public eye and having complete control of their retail space had allowed ideas to ferment and grow, to filter in, and for fashion to be understood in terms of an idea or impetus, both a jumping off point (against formal fashion) and a jumping in point (to encourage people to experiment and explore). In the hallowed circles of high-end fashion the unveiling of collections at formal shows was normally a year before they went into stock in the boutiques, but these clothes by Westwood and McLaren were for sale in their own shop at the time of their first showing.
This surge of creativity suddenly posits the pair in the fashion hierarchy such that the ‘Pirate’ collection shirts feature in Vogue for May 1981 and Annabella grabs the cover for The Face in the same month. At the same time they are resituated at the pinnacle in the burgeoning UK scene of street-meets-designer. Westwood will briefly occupy both positions before the colonisation of street fashion by high-end fashion becomes the dominant theme of the later 1980s. Now working to the six-month schedule, the pair are pressed to develop the ‘Savage’ collection for S/S 1982 (launched in autumn 1981). Without previously having a forced imperative to reinvent from scratch every six months, the new collection flows from ‘Pirate’ in that it is based upon bold ethnic prints mixed with experimental tailoring that draws from, and disrupts, historical techniques. The quasi-heraldic designs used for ‘Pirate’ are flipped for primitive and pagan cultures, with many ideas directly lifted from Mable Morrow’s source book Indian Rawhide. McLaren throws in typically left-field influences from contemporaneous culture such as nebulous trunking on garments that reference David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man. So, in parts, it feels like both reinvention (high fashion) and continuity (street).
With this new focus on the fashion system, an overemphasis on a part so to speak, the wider assemblage starts to unravel. Firstly, Bow Wow Wow’s immediate commercial fortunes are not so good. They are ousted from EMI after the March 1981 single ‘W.O.R.K.’ (espousing McLaren’s situationist-lite politics of anti-work) fails to chart, though (in a rerun of the Sex Pistols) they were quickly re-signed to a new label. In this case RCA, who release two singles in the second half of the year in advance of the debut album. Commercially successful or otherwise, the band are doing it the hard way by touring and earning music press accolades. They feature at the displaced Futurama 3 festival in September 1981 at Stafford Bingley Hall and the MTV New Year’s Eve Ball. Lwin seems to be freed from the clutches of those looking out for her wellbeing, and the anecdotes have her receiving her bold Mohican look with an impromptu haircut on the tour bus by guitarist Matthew Ashman (who would also sport a similar look). Lwin grabs the cover of Record Mirror (7 November 1981) with her striking new haircut. McLaren is still trying to direct their every move, and (as usual) mires this in controversy with the famous re-imagining of Manet’s 1862 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, an image he employs for the debut RCA album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!, reusing the image for the official invites to the autumn launch of the ‘Savage’ collection. There is a palpable tension in this fraught process, with the vestiges of McLaren’s Chicken project still gnawing away. It is an unhealthy tension that Fred Vermorel recalls in his own telling of the McLaren and Westwood story.
The Bow Wow Wow album, released in October 1981, sells reasonably well, but is ferociously outstripped by Adam and the Ants’ album Prince Charming. Licking his wounds, McLaren begins to focus his music attention elsewhere with his interest in nascent American hip hop and world music to the fore, whilst Bow Wow Wow follow advice from the record label as to the mix for their January 1982 single ‘Go Wild in the Country’. Going against McLaren accelerates the breakdown in relationship, and the fact that the single proves him wrong by making the top ten distances him even further.
There is a last visual hurrah as the artwork for the single reuses the Déjeuner image, followed by Annabella and the band debuting on Top of the Pops in February 1982 sporting her reinstated Mohican haircut. The performance is introduced by Tommy Vance, taking a more enthusiastic and respectful role than his previous introduction of Adam and the Ants over a year ago, with the band decked out in remnants from the ‘Pirate’ collection. The record climbs the charts, the performance is repeated two weeks later, and further scheduled two weeks later as it hits the hallowed top ten. Simon Bates introduces a new live performance with Annabella now sporting the new ‘Savage’ collection key garment – the iconic print dress derived from the Dakota design with the ‘BREAKER’ stencil. Alongside Annabella, Matthew Ashman oozes style with his Indian brave Mohican, lithe body and pushed down guitar playing style – he wears a cut-off tee-shirt with the Seditionaries era ‘tits’ design. For a brief moment Bow Wow Wow are something.
The band were seemingly still part of the Worlds End fashion machine, but with McLaren’s interest waning, Westwood’s animosity to the band constantly simmering, and the fashion side now eyeing up the new world of seasons and collections, the days of being a clothes horse for the brand are clearly numbered. The wider system and pecking order of dressing bands in a style and getting exposure in magazines such as The Face is still evident around this time. In the November 1982 issue of The Face there is a box feature on the new band Wide Boy Awake (featuring achingly good-looker ex-Ant Kevin Mooney and ex-Seditionaries stalwart Jordan as manager) wearing the ‘Savage’ collection pieces. On the sleeve of their debut single they are immersed in an assemblage of strange clues to the occult and exotic, akin to a painting by 16th century artist Holbein such as The Ambassadors with its innate secular tensions and announcement of the Renaissance through signifiers of the seven liberal arts. The Wide Boy Awake sleeve feels like a further extrapolation of McLaren’s desire to surreptitiously surface an underground in an overground, a delicate visual conceit with clues such as books by Colin Wilson – it is as if he is turning back on the Renaissance and Enlightenment and embracing the primitive, debauched and occult. Another clue for McLaren’s presence is the title of the single alluding to the ill-fated chicken project, a last squawk so to speak. Even though the flipside track ‘Slang Teacher’ stands the test of time as a great early-80s clubbing sound, Wide Boy Awake sink without trace.
At the same time, McLaren’s new project based upon New York hip-hop is starting to push out the ‘Nostalgia of Mud’ clothing which would form the A/W 1982 look – a dramatic shift. There are also snarky magazine reports in late 1982 saying that Bow Wow Wow guitarist Matthew Ashman was refused service in Worlds End as Westwood finalises the disinvestment in McLaren’s now estranged pet project band. The differing understandings of how fashion could or should be used – as a vehicle for a wider cultural affront such as through pop music, or as a serious intervention in the rarefied fashion system – polarised as the partnership of the two accelerated towards an ultimate break up.
Thanks Ian . I'm enjoying your writings very much. I grew up in Spondon, born in 1961, so it's right on the money. Two things here; I thought I saw Boy George working in PX once, a consideration that was retrospective and, that I saw Bow Wow Wow playing the Boat Club in West Bridgeford on 8/12/80[ the night after John Lennon was shot]. Annabella had perfected the 'mike-grab', grabbing it off its stand as a purposeful onstage gesture and did it throughout.