Shoot the talcum to me, Malcolm

Press, 22 November 1989, Page 26

Shoot the talcum to me, Malcolm

By

COLIN HOGG

“I’ve had to be very smart,” says the man with the cackle at the other end of the line. Which is a little like suggesting that the Kennedys are gun shy, that China has a tertiary education problem, that John Banks might be ever so slightly Right of centre. Malcolm McLaren (for it is he who is cackling gleefully all the way from London) has had to be very smart indeed. It’s tough enough to invent yourself in the first place, never mind having to reinvent yourself every few years.

McLaren threw a handful of musical mud called The Sex Pistols in to the face of pop 13 years ago. Like the big kid he is, he still happily gives in to

the urge to occasionally make more mud pies. This year’s is an aural insanity called “Waltz Darling,” a soundtrack album for a movie that may never be made. He calls it “house meets Strauss,” as good a brand label as any, for it blends the pop dance music of a century ago, the waltz, with the pop dance sound of today (house music).

It sounds for all the world like a “Hooked on Strauss,” and it is McLaren’s slickest and dullest achievement to date.

After all, this is the man who with his “Duck Rock” album and “Buffalo Girls” single in

the early ’Bos, virtually invented hip-hop and delved into the nowvaunted “world music,” and in the mid-80s, whipped up a grand blend of operatic excess and pop rhythms with an album called “Fans.” But McLaren never meant to make another record. Anyway, with this man it isn’t what he does so much as how he does it.

With The Sex Pistols, he invented what should have been the worst pop band in the world. They were awesomely ugly, they couldn’t play, they didn’t give a toss about anything or anyone else. With McLaren pulling

their strings, Johnny Rotten and has ratgut band insulted and assaulted their way into the media spotlight. One record company after another signed the band, paid huge advances, then fired them for a variety of carefully, contrived (by McLaren) offences. They were rich beyond their most depraved and acquisitive dreams before they even had to make a record. Of course, when they did, they were perfect, The Archies of anarchy.

In the process, McLaren invented himself, which of course was his prime intention all along. McLaren’s single talent, or “genius” as he would have it, is as a professional catalyst, an inspired, eccentric ideas man. You can’t measure the talent, but you can sure as hell feel the con. He’s happy to agree. “I’ve had to be very smart about finding my own method, my own style. And often that was about not having a style and getting everybody else to do something, a bit like Andy Warhol did when he started to paint. He created The Factory and got everybody else to do it for him. “I make records the same way. I write a beautiful gourmet menu and I get all the musicians to do the cooking. “I might put in the occasional herb. I might even burn it at some point and make a dreadful mess. But then someone will recook it and somehow it ends up as it does. Not maybe as a brilliant meal, but one that was interesting and curious.”

The cooks on “Waltz Darling” include unlikely names like American super-funk bassist Bootsy Collins and English master guitarist Jeff Beck, a man who would have been written off by McLaren, Rotten and Co, 13 years ago as a boring old fart, a popular accusation at the time.

But Beck, whom McLaren is now more likely to describe as “the Stradivarius of the guitar” is an enormous fan who had been aching to work with the master manipulator.

“The most extraordinary thing you find is the people you would never believe would be fans of you, coming from such another end of the musical spectrum. Jeff adored what I’d done and wanted very much to make a record with me.”

McLaren, despite an admitted total lack of musical talent, never has any trouble communicating with his cooks.

“They tend to never be very bright. I have a marvellous ability to fool musicians by appearing to be very intelligent and terribly, terribly articulate, which often the musicians aren’t.

“So you can usually bluff your way through more than you would ordinarily in any other medium.”

But “Waltz Darling” is the album McLaren never really meant to make. Four years ago he set his manic gaze on a new target.

“I didn’t think I had anything left to say in that area, and quite frankly I didn’t see the point any more. It was something I felt I wasn’t brilliantly successful at. “I thought I’d be much better served to mix and connive and romanticise and glamourise my way around Hollywood. Coming from London, it seemed such an extraordinary place, and I thought, ‘Well, if I'm going to change my life, I’d better change it now’ and I went off to Hollywood four years ago. “The problem was that they saw me coming, I’m afraid, from 10 miles. I looked like this extraordinary eccentric from England, who was, as they’d read in the press and conversed about, a musical genius. They constantly asked me to do only one thing, and that was to make music. Music, music, music.

“And whatever I said to try and dissuade them from thinking that, they still preferred the idea that music was what they were interested in me doing. ‘Come up with a new musical idea for a movie.’

“Finally, I resorted to thinking the only way I was going to exist in the

world of movies was to continue using records as a sketchbook for musical movie ideas. And that’s how, in many respects, this album came about. It was a prelude to a movie idea that I’d sold to Steven Spielberg’s company. That idea now has a screenplay and is being posted to a variety of directors to consider for making next year.” If “Waltz Darling” ever does hit the silver screen, be prepared for a new slant on the “Amadeus” theme. “It’s a nineteenth century rock ’n’ roll musical ... people think rock ’n’ roll was invented in 1950. I’m suggesting it existed in 1850.

“It’s always wonderful to take things back and make them appear to be more old-fashioned than people normally think.

“It’s old fashioned enough if you start thinking of Little Richard, but then if you start thinking of Little Richard’s greatgreat - great - grandfather and decide he was doing something kind of similar back in 1850, you suddenly get an idea that suggests, ‘How come it wasn’t as popular then as it is today’ and if I could write a story and explain to you, why then perhaps I had a movie there.

“So I sold it to Spielberg’s people. The only problem was what would the music sound like? Well, if it was to sound like anything, it might sound a little like the music I’ve made on this album. So this record is, in a way, a demo of what I could make if this movie does get made.”

Whether this marks the end of the McLaren recording career remains to be seen. The man with at least three minds is in two minds about it.

“At the moment, I'm still very much somebody people don’t quite understand and haven’t got to grips with. “If you are a painter, you don’t necessarily have to stand next to the canvas in order for the painting to exist. But when you make a record, it’s only a product of the star. The star has to exist as big if not bigger than the record.

“If I continue to make records, particularly if they’re not associated with a movie, then they have to exist in their own right with some star affixed to them. If I was to make a ‘Malcolm McLaren as star 1 record next time, I think I’d have to, whether good or bad, be all over it in order for it to really make sense to a lot of people. “That’s something, after making three records, that I’m very, very conscious of. Otherwise they’re just ideas for other musicians to use as a blueprint three years down the line.”

The master manipulator sounds passingly bitter. "Pioneers are often forgotten. It’s those who have great success who are remembered. You have to live with that “There’s Neneh Cherry with ‘Buffalo Stance’ making a record 10 years after mine (Buffalo Girls) and having a host more success, even lifting off my record and scratching on to hers. I think that’s great I take my hat off to her and the producer for making that record work. “That’s the problem, man. You can’t ever feel sour grapes.” But you don’t go back to the beginning again either, says McLaren. “I wouldn’t consider managing a rock ’n’ roll band again. I don’t know if I could get it up for that any more. You don’t get good girls if you’re managing rock *n’ roll bands. You’re always having to worry about the blokes getting up in the morning. “It’s not a very romantic job. It was at the beginning because it was |U so new, and I was •eating madness and I

was thrilled with the opportunities that went with it, but now it would be more of a perfunctory duty. “On the basis of that, I would feel very jaded as a character. Very boring. It’s something that accountants could do much better than someone like myself. People still proffer my ideas about managing groups because of my absolute brilliance at marketing. “What they don’t realise is that my brilliance at marketing comes from being completely and utterly mad. “But you can’t be completely mad all the time as years go by. That was then, this is now. Being mad then was because I was mad. Since them I’ve been going to psychiatrists, trying to learn how to be romantic with women. You get a little less mad.

“Your world changes and you’re not sure you want to throw bricks through windows and coax the singer to puke up over the managing director’s table. I’m not sure I care enough about musicians anyway. "Having done it once, you can’t do it again. It’s deja vu. I’m too much of an artist for that.” He’s an artist on the move these days. After the failed Hollywood invasion, he moved to New York, where he formed an on-again, off-again relationship with model/actor Lauren Hutton. He has recently returned to London. Though he’s not sure about Blighty these days. “England is very jaded and fed up with rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t think they ever really liked it. England is an incredibly resigned nation. They hate anything that is different, only ‘the middle classes talk .about, and then they’re considered not gentlemen because of it. ‘That breeds a snobbisrf that goes right down to working class people and particularly the media. And so you live in a society that breeds resentment to honestly new ideas. They’re quick to shoot you down, and they don’t have the confidence to break out of the class system as much as they talk about it. “I'm not anti-English, but I’m not terribly pro, either.

“We live under the dictatorship of the headmistress. That was half the reason I left this country and went to live in Hollywood for the years that I did.

“I’m partly happy to be back, but I’m not sure I wouldn't prefer to live in Madrid or Paris instead of London.”

Surprisingly, McLaren hasn’t even considered the career swerve other great English rock ‘n’ roll eccentric like Screaming Lord Sutch tried — politics.

“I’m not sure they’d have me. The last thing they want is me treading Parliament. I’d be the first guy to rule that Prince Edward marry a black woman instantly. “Having thought of all the bloody places they’ve exploited all over the world and proclaimed wonderful hospitality for black princes and princesses, the last thing they could do for them all is just marry a beautiful Nigerian princess into a dreadful white homophobic royal family.” There is, of course, the considerable danger that Malcolm McLaren could end up just another lonely eccentric treading the tired talk show circuit.

“Exactly. I don’t want to do that I’d better look a little serious on that front. I’ll either go back to America and live with Lauren Hutton or come back to Europe and marry some exotic European lady.” If McLaren suddenly sounds the insecure middle-aged man, that’s half right. He is 43 years old and just a little sensitive about it. "I live a life that's not very much like my counterparts. You tend to be more in association with generations beneath you. You seem to be more wizened. It doesn’t worry me, but I guess I’ve got to put some stakes in the ground pretty soon, and I’m thinking seriously along those lines. “I expect we all do when we get to my age. You just think you’d better put a couple of blinking anchors somewhere. I don’t know where, though. I'nr constantly living in an aeWplane.”

Master manipulator sounds passingly bitter