Do you know what day it is today? It’s a veritable World’s End to end all days as 8 April 2025 marks the 84th anniversary of one Vivienne Westwood entering the establishment. Most freakily, Malcolm McLaren, shady Svengali swindler of the Sex Pistols, Adam & The Ants and Bow Wow Wow AND Viv’s one-time partner in crime from the celebrated Sex and Seditionaries era of London’s Kings Road, expired on the very same date 15 years ago.
So, to mark the occasion, a bite-sized Malcy featurette written by then Smash Hits newbie and confirmed Chelsea abstractor Neil Tennant, just as Soweto – and later, the far more earwormy Double Dutch – was being readied on the world as the follow-up 45 to Buffalo Gals, the slice of Trevor Horn-produced transcendence that‘s still a favourite of the future Pet Shop Boy to this day, whether he’s waltzing or not.
You don’t need hands to read this.
Malcolm McLaren: The Mud Club, London
Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 3 February 1983
ALL THE OLD dances are coming back, you know.
Debbie Juvenile, Siouxsie Sioux, Philip Sallon, Malcolm McLaren at Club Louise, 1976
© Ray Stevenson / Rex
“And the steps for that dance were first written down in 1793,” the square-dance caller informs the assembled crowd at the brand new Mud Club in Leicester Square this Friday night. Masses of big Malcolm McLaren-type hats are in evidence (as indeed is McLaren himself); chaps are wearing smocks over their trousers with ethnic patterns scrawled on the them; graffiti slogans and designs have been splashed over the walls and the lighting’s dim. From the side balcony it’s like watching the mating ritual of a long-lost tribe in a smoky cave.
Philip Sallon, who started the club, describes its venue as “a hole — in a really good way”: hence the graffiti-covered walls. The records being played include a selection supplied by Boy George who’s been the deejay at previous clubs run by Philip — a veteran of the London club scene — and plenty of hard new New York dance music.
The fun starts with the square-dancing organised by a middle-aged man with a beard and a straw hat who despairs at the time it takes the dancefloor crowd to get into pairs, make arches etc. But soon the floor is a complex tangle of twirling couples as the instructions of the venerable caller are followed.
It’s all great fun, but what’s the point?
Philip Sallon: “People having a laugh and doing something different.”
No complicated theorising here.
The square-dancing ends with Malcolm McLaren doing the calling for Buffalo Gals and then it’s back to the disco. Until next week, that is, because there’ll be square-dancing every Friday night at the Mud Club.
Before you know it, your local disco will be probably filled with country dancers.
Be there and be square.
© Neil Tennant, 1983
Introduction by Steve Pafford, 2025
Cover image: McLaren and the Double Dutch Girls, New York City, 1983 © Bob Gruen
