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| ROCK IS SICK AND LIVING IN LONDON PART FOUR |
| ROLLING STONE OCTOBER 20TH 1977 ROCK IS SICK AND LIVING IN LONDON PART THREE Malcolm McLaren, who has a reputation for being two hours late to 'everything, is also two hours late to meet me at his apartment. Vivian Westwood ushers me into their bedroom, where I waft until she finishes cutting a half-inch or so of her two-inch hair, presumably to make it stick out better. The room is modestly furnished in black and white, a constantly recurring color theme that � along with the incessant rain, bad telephones, warm beer, incompetent hotel service, yellow journalism, cretinous newspapers, lack of time with the band, money that weighs more than it's worth, cricket on television, geographically separate streets having the same name within London's city limits, riots between Marxist and neo-Nazi splinter parties, and a hang�over � is convincing me to change my name to Chuckie Suicide and go Sid Vicious one better. The only colour in the room is a poster of the equally depressing Red Ballet. The book shelves include Orwell, Dickens , de Sade and Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology Of Fascism. First in a pile of albums on the dresser is 'The World Of Billy Fury.' When McLaren finally arrives after midnight, he is still wearing the mangy black sweater I saw several nights back. The long strings of matted wool keep reminding me of Johnny Rotten's piles hanging out of his pants. I ask why he presented the New York Dolls as communists. "It was just an idea that came out, like a can of new soup" he says. "Rock & roll is not just music. You're selling an attitude too. Take away the attitude and you're just like anyone else, you're like American rock groups. Of course, maybe there's just too wide a market there for a good attitude. The Sex Pistols came about because on the streets of Britain they're saying, 'What is this 1960's crap, paying five pounds to see some guy the size of a sixpence when I'm the dole?' The kids need a sense of adventure, and rock & roll needs to find a way to give it to them � wham out the hardest and cruelest lyrics as propaganda, speak the truth as clearly as possible." "What did the Dolls as communists have to do with the truth?" "I don't know," McLaren admits. "I'm not a communist. I'm rather anarchistic. I was trying to make them more extreme, less accessible. Most bands won't do that sort of thing, but they must find a means to provoke." "Aren't there easier ways to break a band?" "I love to go the hardest route. It keeps you up. It keeps the truth happening. Too many of the new groups are getting sucked up by the record companies too early. The movement will get dilluted." Since his own problems with record companies are by now legendary, I ask about his negotiations for an American deal, "Well, Clive Davis called the other day: bullshit artist number one, this guy," he says. "I said, 'Weren't you the bloke who told the press not to identify itself too closely with the punk movement? 'He said he didn't mean the Sex Pistols � you must look on groups as individuals, not as part of a movement. I said I believe in movements: 'Get it straight. We're not part of your talent roster. We'll have none of your stars.' He said Patti Smith was on Arista and she was a punk. 'I don't want your old hacks,' I said. 'You should have signed the Kinks in 1964 when they had something to say.' (Reached in New York later, Davis commented, "This cannot be typical of what McLaren thinks because he's told me that he's heard many good things about Arista, and I or my representatives have had about 20 conversations with him. This sounds like a hatchet job, like an isolated and fragmentary quote, since it is from a man who is very interested in signing with me and my company. My reaction is amusement.") "These record company presidents, they're all whores. Two months ago, their doormen would have thrown us out. We sell a few records and they phone and want their pictures taken with us. Mo Ostin [of Warner Bros.] is flying in with his lawyer tomorrow, and I couldn't get past his secretary before. I've been in and out of CBS many times. Walter Yetnikoff [president of CBS Records Group] sang me 'Anarchy in U.K.' at breakfast at the Beverly Wilshire to prove he knew the group. He said he wasn't offended by Johnny Rotten saying he was an anti-Christ. 'I'm Jewish,' he said." (Walter Yetnikoff commented later: "I was saying it as a gag. I'm not looking to pick a fight with Christianity.") I ask why he places the press right down in the sewer along with record company presidents. "Because the music press are basically Sixties culture freaks. They imply we're not original, they try to maintain the facade of knowing every song, every riff, every lyric, as if they invented it. One recent headline had us as 'John, Paul, Steve and Sid,' like we were the Beatles! That's fucking disgusting! They were trying to make us fun. It shows the vampire nature of the Sixties generation, the most narcissistic generation that has ever been!" "So why are you putting up with me?" "My man in America told me to. If we do rolling stone, we might not have to do another interview for two years. This band hates you. It hates your culture. Why can't you lethargic, complacent hippies understand that? You need to be smashed... .This is a very horrible country, England. We invented the mackintosh, you know." McLaren gestures as if he is opening his coat for a lewd display. "We invented the flasher, the voyeur. That's what the press is about." Seeing no need for elaboration, I change the subject to why he selected Russ Meyer, of all people, to direct the film. "Right from the beginning, I knew he was the right guy. He was an action director, and he was an outcast from the regular studios. I liked his sense of color. We didn't want a grainy, black and white, Polish, socialist, realist movie...." The phone rings and McLaren answers. "What's that? Elvis Presley died?.. .Makes you feel sad, doesn't it? Like your grandfather died. . . .Yeah, it's just too bad it couldn't have been Mick Jagger." |
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| Russ Meyer, a grandfatherly man with a small, well-manicured mustache, shows me into his nicely furnished apartment the next day and motions to a slightly pudgy young man on the other side of the room. "This is Roger Ebert," he says. "He won the Pulitzer Prize for film criticism and he's writing the movie with me. At the Chicago Sun-Times , he's Dr. Jekyll. With me, he's Mr. Hyde. He's really into tits." Ebert laughs and says, "Remember, without me, there wouldn't be any mention of Bambi in this movie." Meyer turns around and motions to the couch behind me. "This," he says, "is John." Sid Vicious could not have described him more accurately: All misshapen, hunchbacked, translucently pale, short hair, bright orange � undoubtedly the vilest geezer I have ever met too. He is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with destroy and a swastika, black leather pants and these bizaire black shoes shaped like gunboats. |
| His handshake is the Iimpest of all. "You, uh, prefer to be called John?" I ask. "That's right," he says. "I despise the name Johnny Rotten. I don't talk to anyone who calls me that." His voice could turn the Lord's Prayer into brutal sarcasm. Having learned, probably, that if you stare at anyone long enough he will think you know he's a fraud (because everyone is a fraud), Rotten glares with demonic self-righteousness that threatens to reduce me to incoherence. The overall effect, though, stirs a maternal instinct I didn't know I had. The idea of this sickly dwarf bringing the wrath of an entire nation down on his shoulders is, well, heart�warming. Maybe, just maybe, if someone this powerless could cause that much uproar, maybe words still mean something. "You got any comment for the world on the death of Elvis?" "Fuckin' good riddance to bad rubbish," he snarls. "I don't give a fuckin' shit, and nobody else does either. It's just fun to fake sympathy, that's all they're doing. "Is it true you used to tell people you had to cut off your piles with a razor blade?" "Yeah, I didn't go to school for about three weeks. The teachers sent me flowers. I'm an atrocious liar." "How did you get that way?" I regret the question by the time it's out of my mouth, but there's no taking it back. "Through dating people who ask that kind of crap. Assholes who believe that sort of thing.don't deserve to be spit on." "You look like Mel Ferrer," says Meyer to me. "Has anyone ever told you that?" "No," I reply. "They usually compare me to Charlie Watts." "We're lookin' for a journalist who looks like Mel Ferrer for the movie," says Rotten. "He gets murdered." He glares at me again. This time I glare back, and we end up in an unstated contest for about ten seconds. He seems to withdraw more than lose concentration, not leaving me much of a victory. Meyer asks him about certain English slang words to give the script some authenticity. "A tosspot is even lower than a jerk-off," Rotten answers. "A weed is a pansy. If you don't "know that, it's just an indication of how fuckin' stupid you Americans are." "Just a minute, boy," laughs Meyer. "In '44, we saved your ass." "Like fuck you did..." Rotten trails off, suddenly realizing he's put himself in the position of defending his country. "You can slag off England all you want. There's no such thing as patriotism anymore. I don't care if it blows up. There's more tourists in London than Londoners. You never know what accent you're going to get when you ask directions." "Hasn't anyone defended you from the standpoint of freedom of speech?" "Not one," he replies. "England was never free. It was always a load of bullshit. I'm surprised we aren't in jail for treason. Where's the bog?" "Down the hall to the left," says Meyer. "There's ale in the refrigerator and on the counter, if you want it warm." "No, the bog, man," says Rotten. "You know, the shithouse, the wankhole." "Oh! The bathroom!" says Meyer. "Straight down the hall." Rotten trots off. "Hmmm," Meyer continues, "what do you think about 'Bog' for a movie title ? 'Bog,' with an exclamation point." |
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| When Rotten returns from the bog, I ask if he shares Vicious' views on love. "Love is two minutes and fifty seconds of squelching noises," he says. "It shows your mind isn't clicking right." Meyer suggests that we go have dinner and asks Rotten what kind of food he likes. "I don't like food." "Come on," says Meyer. "You have to eat something to survive." "Very little." "What do you eat when you eat very little?" "Whatever is available. Food is a load of rubbish." Rotten finally agrees to a fish restaurant named Wheeler's Alcove and the five of us � Meyer, Ebert, Rotten, me and this roadie who showed up halfway through the talk � stuff ourselves into a subcompact that would be cramped for two. "You can't blame him for being difficult," whispers the roadie. "Journalists ask the most unbelievably stupid Questions. They've been calling all day asking now he felt about Elvis." On the way, we stop at a store so Rotten can pick up the following day's groceries � two six-packs and a can of beans. At the restaurant, Ebert entertains me with a joke about an elephant having his testicles crushed by two bricks until the waiter arrives. "I'll have a fillet with nothing around it and a green salad on the side, mush," orders Rotten.et, mush?!" The waiter finally hustles off to the kitchen, much relieved to get away. |
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| "What's a mush?" asks Meyer. "Someone whose face is all beaten in and looks like a cunt." "He didn't like that. He'll spit in your salad." "I know it. That's why I said it. The mush couldn't take a joke." As the food arrives, I ask Rotten about the close friendship of reggae and punk. The first single by whites ever carried in some of the record shops In Brixton, the Jamaican ghetto, was ''Anarchy in the U.K." But neither movement seems to have made much of an impact on American blacks, who still very much believe in the middle-class dream, at least according to a New York Times poll which showed that of any racial group, blacks have the most optimism about New York. "Punks and niggers are almost the same thing," says Rotten, oddly echoing a theme of the last decade which substituted "students" for punks. "When I come to America, I'm going straight to the ghetto. And if I get bullshit from the blacks in New York, I'll just be surprised at how dumb they are. I'm not going to hang out wrth the trendies at Max's and the CBGB. I'm not asking the blacks to like us. That's irrelevant. It's just that we're doing something they'd want to do if they had the chance." Rotten seems to be at his most sincere of the evening. He leans forward, almost urgently. "Listen, this band started by nicking every piece of equipment. I sing through David Bowie's microphones. |
| Punk fashions are a load of bollocks. Real punks nick all their gear from junk shops." I ask Meyer if, as a Hollywood outcast, he feels any kinship with the punks. "Not really," he says. "I don't consider myself an outcast. I'm the only independent who can compete with the major studios. I thought this would be a good transitional thing to get out of the straight bosoms-amd-brawn thing. They're also paying me one percent of the U.S. gross." "You mean you don't believe in what they're saying at all?" "Don't you know that all directors are whores? John, wouldn't you make yourself look like a cunt for a million dollars?" "How could you make me look like a bigger cunt than I am?" says Rotten. "The joke's on you." |
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