Relics of punk worth $6M burned in protest
JOE Corré, the son of Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols manager who defined the band’s direction in its brief heyday in the late 1970s, set fire to what he claimed was £5 million (about $6.25 million) worth of punk memorabilia aboard a boat on the River Thames in London on Saturday.
“Punk has become another market- ing tool to sell you something you don’t need,” Corré said to a crowd of dozens gathered on the shore in London’s Chelsea district, as flames licked at a trunk of punk paraphernalia and fireworks shot from the boat into the late afternoon sky. “If you want to understand the potent values of punk, confront taboos. Do not tolerate hypocrisy. Investigate the truth for yourself.”
Corré, a household name in Britain, is known as the son of McLaren and the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, and as a founder of the racy lingerie brand Agent Provocateur. He announced this spring that he would burn his personal punk collection to protest Punk London, a celebration of the genre, timed to the 40th anniversary of a 1976 Ramones concert in the city that is said to mark punk’s arrival in Britain.
Saturday’s bonfire coincided with the anniversary of the release of the Sex Pistols’ single Anarchy in the UK, which put the band on the map.
The items set on fire included a pair of bondage trousers that had been tailor-made for Corré as a child; rare posters; live punk recordings; and pants that had belonged to Johnny Rotten, the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, according to a news release sent by a publicist for Corré.
Punk London, which includes exhibitions at venues like the British Library, has drawn protests from diehard fans, who lament the movement’s co-option by mainstream culture.
Corré has called the series a betrayal of punk’s values and has claimed that Queen Elizabeth II endorses it.
(The queen has issued no public statements on Punk London, and a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace reached by phone said the palace had no comment on the events.)
As the blaze died down on Saturday, Westwood, a last-minute addition to the proceedings, poked her head out from a green double-decker bus carrying some members of Corré’s crew.
“By the end of this century, by 2100, there’ll only be 1 billion people left,” Westwood said to the crowd in a speech that argued that a super-elite of bankers and politicians was driving climate change. “We’ll all be migrants, all trying to get to the green part.” In addition to the trunk of punk memorabilia, Corré incinerated several human effigies modelled on conservative politicians, like Boris Johnson, London’s former mayor and an advocate for Britain’s exit from the European Union, and the prime minister, Theresa May. A band on board the ship played drum-heavy music as the bonfire burned.
A few leather jackets and purplehaired heads bobbed about in the crowd gathered on the street, as did some more stereotypical Chelsea denizens: Early in the proceedings, a woman in a chic knee-length coat, sun hat and heavy red lipstick emerged from a Bentley to watch the fire.
After the bonfire, Corré returned to shore to speak with journalists. When one reporter noted that the entire event could be a hoax, as the press was not able to verify the value of the materials on board, Corré dismissed the comment with an expletive and said: “You’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. What are you talking about, a hoax?”