Festival Books
Clockwork McLaren Malcolm McLaren talked to us about his upcoming Edinburgh Festival appearances, where he’ll be telling the story of his life. Kirstin Innes listened.
S o, I had an interview with Malcolm McLaren, to talk to him about his two upcoming Edinburgh appearances, one at the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s NYC live storytelling import, The Moth, and a follow-up, History is for Pissing On at The Pleasance the night after. I was terrified. My questions were prepared meticulously in advance, and I’d thoroughly researched the history of punk, which is a very un-punk thing to do. I needn’t really have bothered. Here’s why:
The List: So, really I was just hoping you could tell me a little about your Edinburgh performances . . . Malcolm McLaren: ‘Well, I don’t really have that much to say about them, to be honest. I’m there to tell a story. The crazy people who work for me thought it an excellent idea that I tell my stories, my life and times, at the
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Edinburgh Festival – no matter how hardcore or shockingly provocative, or whatever, they might be – and wanted me to work directly with a man called David Johnson. If you don’t know, he is known for putting people like Michael Moore and Malcolm Gladwell on the road to tell stories, to comment, whatever. He madly agreed with my associates and assistants over drinks, in London, at the Wolseley restaurant a few weeks ago. I really didn’t know where to put myself, to be honest. I was surrounded by people I knew, all the illustrious kinds that live in London, and close by – Lucian Freud, his daughter Bella, Alan Rickman, Justin Timberlake, other Americans, old record producers that seem to have climbed out of the closet from my not-so distant past – all seemed to be huddling around the restaurant that night. It’s very strange, how fate often plays a card and you use it. Certainly, if
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there’s a gauntlet thrown down, I usually pick it up. And so I decided, that’s what I’m going to do. A solo performance, as David Johnson says – at The Pleasance, which is apparently a theatre, I don’t know, some form of theatre in Edinburgh.
‘Outside the restaurant later that night, David, before he disappeared into the ether, asked me, “So what should we call it? Confessions of a Rock and Roll Swindler?” and I thought, oh no, that sounds awful, I feel like I’m treading old ground. I said, ‘History’s for pissing on!’ He said “that’s okay” and cleared off, and that inadvertently became the name of the talk. I stood there and gazed across the road across from the Wolseley in Piccadilly. It was once upon a time a tidy little Dickensian-like alley, which I would crawl down every morning at the humble age of sixteen to my first, and really the only job I ever had, as a trainee wine-taster. That very lane was where my humble beginnings were, sort of almost savaged from me. There were certain ex-army folk, often captains, lieutenants, maybe even generals, I can’t recall, because London was strewn with such figures, cause that was when the Empire was truly crumbling by the hour, and so these guys who must have been living the life of Riley in the middle of Borneo with a crate of Beaujoulais under their hammock, were back on Civvy Street, teaching wine- tasting.
‘They didn’t teach you how to drink wine as you might imagine, if you read those colour supplements these days where they talk voraciously about citrus and blackberries. They taught you wine from the point of view of sex. So basically I got my rites of passage about sex through the tasting of wine by these ex-army captain thugs, and my mind is still rattled with their commands. They used to say, “this wine’s got too much fat under the arm. This is virginal, this wine, so it needs to open up a bit, let it air between its legs.” ‘I decided one day I’d had enough, I just couldn’t handle it anymore, I needed something else. And so I hid in an alcove on the way to lunch. Suddenly, I looked around and realised that the alcove I’d been hiding in was the gate to a doorway, the entrance to St Martin’s Art College. And I saw these girls, who looked fabulous in odd green cashmere sweaters, and black fishnet stockings and I followed them up the stairwell until I came across this wall with little lead windows in it. I gazed upon this huge, voluptuous woman with enormous breasts, completely naked on a stool, people sitting around her with easels and chalk, all drawing her, and I thought, oh God, this is a much better job. I want to do this now. ‘So that was the beginning of my life and times, the road being long and I thought that this was how I might begin my story at The Moth, and thereafter continue at this theatre that David wants me to appear at, and tell further.’
The full transcript of the interview, which ran to 58 minutes, and in which our hero meets Vivienne Westwood and Charles Saatchi and discovers the beginnings of something he called ‘punk’, can be read at www.list.co.uk. The List did not get round to asking a second question.
The Moth, Edinburgh International Book Festival, 22 Aug, sold out. History Is For Pissing On, Pleasance Courtyard, 226 0026, 23 Aug, 2.30pm, £15.50