A Safe Place To Be

*

So the saddest times, deliberately askew, couldn't beat the adventures that we had had; those sad little dollops down through the gloom. Richard was dead long ago. But even he would have been interested in the news that Malcolm McLaren was dead. She said it in the muffled, muggy heat of a Pnom Penh backyard in 2010, but it immediately took him back some 30 years, perhaps more, to that day when, as per arrangement, he and Richard went to interview Malolm McLaren. They were the boys from Australia, bum f... nowhere as far as these London boys were concerned, and Madam Butterfly was just about to come out and opera kept soaring through their chaotic European experience. Who was to know that this would be our last? That this wasn't a precursor to an ever more fabulous life, but this was it. Richard drinking heavily in the early hours, shooting ridiculous amounts of speed. He was always up at three am, perfectly ready for a visit. That was the sort of friend he liked. He spent his life waiting for Richard to show up again; a sunny smile in that ever so handsome face, giving him a big hug and sometimes even a sloppy kiss; not bad for a supposedly straight boy. They all adored him.

So when Richard died it didn't seem as if he was really dead, so much larger than life had he been, so firmly loved by all of us who had received free drinks from his bar, who had been instantly served above a sea of aspirants, who had watched as he jiggled and shaked and did what he did; and late at night the holy rituals led us to states of euphoria no normal human could endure. So he took him to a meeting years later; when the times were not so fabulous and they had all returned to Australia, that little partying gang of dipsos, and 12-step-programs were fashionable and many of his old friends had surrendered to a sober life. Richard couldn't think of anything worse. There wasn't anything he didn't know about alcohol; or mixing drinks; the proper way to make and serve any concoction you could think of; barman par excellence. Handsome barman par excellence. And that flash of a smile when he recognised you in a crowded bar. He would always be loyal. There would always be privileges.

So he took him to a meeting when the slide had already begun, when all the good times were in the past and massive parties they remembered for months were just more objects in the litter, when the crates of fine beer and the bottles of the best booze began to clutter his apartment in an embarrassing way, and how now he was pathetically glad to see you, when once you had just been another friend in a crowded scene, the pied piper perhaps, the older one, or just another supplicant in a wild crowd. Passed out on the squat floor, his towel wide open. So he took him to a meeting; the town was full of recovery talk in those days and anyone who was anyone was getting with the program, making up stories of dereliction and despair and their own supposedly terrible rock bottoms just so they could fit in; and it was a terrible meeting, chaotic, disorganised; the God bit was always a choker, guaranteed to drive away the dissolute, but this one was even worse: an old junky, obviously stoned, droned on for 30, 40 minutes, and nothing they heard gave a shred of hope or even so much as a glimmer of alternative fate lines. They were all idiots.

So Richard couldn't wait to get to a drink after the meeting; just couldn't wait, and they went straight down the road to the pub on the corner and drank furiously, anything they could to wipe that dreadful meeting out of their minds. So Richard drank and was determined not to stop; and that dismal meeting, that one attempt at rehabilitation in the soggy streets of Darlinghurst, became just one little point on the highway to no return. Grow old? Forget it. So that precocious boy, gorgeous boy, adored by the girls as much as the boys, retreated to that bedroom in his mother's giant house in North Adelaide, thousands of miles away; and never returned. For the last year or two he heard stories; and wanted to go and visit, and never did; and then Richard was dead at barely 30 and there wouldn't be any visit anyway. But way back then, three decades or more ago, Richard had been an aspirant young photographer amongst other things, and the idea of photographing Malcolm McLaren had excited him greatly; and they had shown up at McLaren's offices in Soho and Richard had all his gear, fussing as if he knew everything, trying to pretend he did this all the time.

He on the other hand had become increasingly used to interviewing famous people; and had worked out all the tricks with the PR people to interview whoever he wanted. Basically it was a way to meet his idols; Gore Vidal, Anthony Burgess, Dirk Bogarde, Al Alvarez, Salman Rushdie. And London was the place to do it. McLaren was an interview he had already sold to a magazine in Australia, back home, was it ever home? Or a place of long standing duration. A place to endure. They did the interview in Malcolm's offices. He couldn't have been more charming; while not exactly on time. But it was that rarest of interviews. He typed up the transcript, changed the order of a couple of sentences and sent it; and it made perfect sense, read beautifully, from beginning to end. Malcolm disappeared once or twice into his own offices and then would reappear; sniffling slightly, even more articulate than he was before, expansive on the nature and fate of everybody, of fashion, of music, of cultural trends. Richard fussed, his young earnest face. He was so glad to see him there because he hated doing these jobs on his own; what was the point of meeting famous people if you couldn't talk about it later? And Richard took photo after photo. And in later years would talk about the day he met Malcolm McLaren. And now McLaren is dead and Richard is dead; and everyone in those little rooms and past adventures has passed away; and that handsome face and precocious smile; and that fine body so lusted after; nothing but a skeleton in a grave yard many miles away. "Malcolm McLaren is dead. Can you believe that. I loved Buffalo Gals. I loved the Sex Pistols," the mother of his children said in the muggy Pnom Penh heat. He just nodded. Said nothing. Saying nothing was a safe place to be.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/world/asia/12thai.html?src=me

BANGKOK — A political standoff intensified Sunday following the worst civil violence in nearly 20 years, with protesters standing their ground on the streets of Bangkok and the government ignoring their demand to step down and call new elections.

The sudden eruption of violence, in which 21 people were killed and nearly 900 wounded, stunned Thailand after nearly a month of protests in which both sides were scrupulously nonviolent.

Both had feared that if violence was unleashed, it would grow uncontrollable. To halt any such momentum, it was the government side that pulled back Saturday night. The protesters remained standing.

They continued to occupy an area in the heart of old Bangkok as well as at an intersection in its shiniest, most modern quarter where their amplified chants and speeches echoed off the walls of shopping malls and five-star hotels.

The aggressiveness of the antigovernment forces, some among them using firearms and explosives, raised the possibility that provocateurs — the “third force” bent on destabilizing the government that some analysts had feared — had escalated the violence.

Talk of a possible coup resurfaced in Bangkok as it tends to do at times of tension in a country where the military has seized power by force 18 times over the past 80 years.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2010/04/11/2003470270

THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, Apr 11, 2010.

British impresario Malcolm McLaren delivers a speech during the International Punk Congress at the Caricatura in Kassel, Germany, on Sept. 24, 2004.

The impresario and iconoclast Malcolm McLaren, who died aged 64 from the cancer mesothelioma on Thursday, was one of the pivotal, yet most divisive influences on the styles and sounds of late 20th-­century popular culture.

He was best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols, the punk-rock band that swept the UK in 1977, their anti-establishment youth force making a colorful counterpoint to Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee. With his first partner, the designer Vivienne Westwood, he popularized looks from punk to fetish, which still dominate the fashion world.

McLaren’s provocative influence can be detected in everything from Damien Hirst’s art and contrary bands such as the Libertines and Oasis to the mainstream punk clothes on sale in Top Shop. The claim by the British journalist Julie Burchill that “we are all children of Thatcher and McLaren” was not that fanciful. McLaren’s partner, Young Kim, likened him to Andy Warhol, describing him as the ultimate postmodern artist: “I think Malcolm recognized he had changed the culture, he saw he had changed the world.”

He was one of the first Europeans to spot the potential of US hip-hop, and his 1982 hit single Buffalo Gals introduced the art of scratching to the British charts. The former Sex Pistols singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), who fell out with McLaren before quitting the band in 1978, described him as the most evil man on Earth for his tendency to treat people like art projects or cash cows. McLaren reveled in this svengali image, casting himself as The Embezzler in the punk film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle (1980).

His death has melted one of music’s most bitter feuds.

“For me, Malc was always entertaining,” Lydon said. “Above all else, he was an entertainer.”

McLaren was born on Jan. 22, 1946, in Stoke Newington, north London. His father left home when he was two and Malcolm was raised by his grandmother, Rose, who home-schooled him and fed him slogans such as “it’s good to be bad and it’s bad to be good,” along with a general distaste for the royal family.

He attended various art colleges in the 1960s, was influenced by the French situationist movement and at Harrow Art School he met his muse, Westwood (with whom he lost his virginity), and Jamie Reid, the graphic artist who later designed the artwork for the Sex Pistols’ record covers.

By 1971, McLaren was seeking to “rescue fashion from commodification by the establishment,” as he later put it. With Westwood, he opened a boutique on Kings Road in Chelsea, southwest London, called Let It Rock (later renamed Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die), selling then unfashionable Teddy Boy clothing. After a trip to New York in 1972, McLaren’s career in music management began with the camp/aggressive glam band the New York Dolls. Supplying the group with stagewear and using a hammer and sickle logo to promote them, he developed the shock tactics he used to far greater effect later with the Pistols.

By 1975, the shop had transformed into a subversive S&M boutique called Sex (later Seditionaries), and McLaren was putting together another band lineup with three of his customers, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock.

When Lydon walked in, sporting green hair and an “I hate Pink Floyd” T-shirt, they found their frontman. McLaren came up with the Sex Pistols name (he wanted something that sounded like “sexy young assassins”), and together they took on the torpor of mid-1970s British pop.

Wearing safety-pinned Westwood gear and bondage trousers, the Pistols played on a boat on the Thames (it was raided by the police), took God Save the Queen to No. 2 in jubilee week, teased huge sums out of successive record companies and were banned from playing by local councils.

An infamous, swearword-laden TV interview with Bill Grundy led to tabloid headlines such as “the filth and the fury,” and their position as the most controversial, rebellious British pop group was assured, assisted by John Beverley (Sid Vicious), who joined in 1977. He later died of a heroin overdose while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. The band fell apart in early 1978, later suing McLaren for mismanagement and royalties, but the svengali simply stated that he planned their demise and used this claim as the plot for The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle.

After working as a consultant for Adam Ant and forming and managing Bow Wow Wow, Mclaren released 1983’s Duck Rock album, included the top 10 hits Double Dutch and Buffalo Gals, the latter cited by Herbie Hancock as the inspiration for his own influential electro single, Rockit.

McLaren scored another hit with one of his most audacious experiments, the 1984 single Madam Butterfly, a mix of opera and electronics.

McLaren continued to record music, co-produced the 2006 film Fast Food Nationand worked on radio and TV programs.

Young Kim and his son by Westwood, Joe Corre, survive him.

http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=post+apocalyptic+art&gbv=2&aq=2&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=post+a&gs_rfai=