McLaren lover’s sex book is a real PUNK SHOCKER
He had a talent for pushing the boundaries beyond what was conventionally acceptable. So Malcolm McLaren, the Godfather of Punk, would have been delighted that, more than a decade after his death, he is embroiled in a marmalade-dropper aderibed of a memoir — described by one critic as ‘ the most graphically effective sex writing I’ve read in a long time’.
It’s the debut literary work of Young Kim, the petite Koreanamerican who shared the past 12 years of McLaren’s life after meeting him at a party in Paris, held after a show given by McLaren’s former lover, Vivienne Westwood.
Kim, then a fashion student, was 26; McLaren was 52.
She walked up to him and said: ‘I wanted to meet you’.
Within a week they were lovers and remained together until the impresario’s death from cancer aged 64 in 2010.
Young Kim assures me McLaren would have been thrilled by what she has written. ‘he would have loved it for its daring and originality and the act of turning one’s life into a work of art. he loved anything new.’
Yet Kim might have remained silent about their time together had she not embarked on a subsequent relationship six years after McLaren’s death with an american from the punk pantheon — Richard hell, who performed in cult 1970s bands such as Neon Boys, Television, The heartbreakers and Richard hell & The Voidoids.
‘Richard hell asked me to write something dirty for him — something I had never considered doing before in my life,’ Kim tells me from her home in Los angeles.
hell, who was 67 when they met, suggested that she write something ‘sexually provocative’ about their first night together.
She agreed because she ‘enjoyed giving him what he wanted’ and because she has ‘always enjoyed writing letters to friends and keeping a diary’.
The book — entitled a Year
On earth With Mr hell — evolved almost accidentally after that.
‘It was never planned. I never considered any artistic limits.
‘It never occurred to me that the book would be unusual in its frank and graphic nature about sex. It was just about happy moments.’
hell, alas, is ‘not happy’, says Kim, which disappoints her as, she explains, he has ‘written freely and openly about his sex life for many years.
‘Malcolm, on the other hand, once he got over the initial surprise, would have recognised and appreciated the work for what it is and he would have embraced it.’