Ben Westwood
First born son of Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren’s stepson during his youth. Interviewed in Chelsea during 1989: to the point but a little shy, certainly not the flamboyant figure he has since become. During the last couple of years, Westwood has become nationally famous, if not infamous, as a photographer with a ‘specific interest in erotic images and colourful culture and “adventure”.’ In 2008, he began a campaign against the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who had introduced a ban on ‘extreme’ pornography (Section 53 of the Justice and Immigration Act 2008). As he stated: “This proves that censorship and restriction of individual liberties in England is occurring because of members of the government’s personal hang-ups.” For more, go to his web site.
When were you born, Ben?
1963. The first thing I remember about it all was going along to Hammersmith to see them rehearse. I never actually saw them play. Nothing particularly changed when the Sex Pistols came along. All through my life I’d always been embarrassed to walk up the road with my mum. We went looking for boarding schools when I was about ten, and she wore this black mohair jumper and a really short mini-skirt, flared out, with black tights and high heels and her hair was all spiked up, blonde. All the little kids my age were all laughing. I’d try and be as far away from her as I could.
Did you wear the clothes yourself, or just normal kids clothes?
No, I was never a punk rocker in appearance. I did have a couple of things, a Let It Rock t-shirt in blue glitter. Until I was about nineteen I didn’t used to wear any of her clothes. I never used to tell anyone at school who my parents were. I tried to keep it quiet. I couldn’t, of course. Whenever she came to get me at boarding school everyone would go, ooh, I like your mum.
Why did you try to keep it quiet? You wanted to be your own person?
Nothing to do with that. It always got so much attention. Especially outside London, you’d get these people shouting out. We were in Cornwall once and these people were shouting at us, and my mum decided not to let it go by. She was shouting down the street, Bumpkins! Yokels! It was always like that. I was shy about being with her. Joe was different, he used to tell his friends who Malcolm was, and his mates all used to be really impressed. Somehow I was never like that.
How long did you live with your dad?
A year and a half. But it was then that they got the shop. Before I went we were incredibly poor. We used to go down the market after it had closed, and pick up all the vegetables, and down to the building sites and get dandelions, and blackberries and stuff. I think that’s why I went to live with my dad, it got to the stage where we couldn’t afford to survive. You could say that Malcolm was my dad, cos he was with my mum since he was three. But I never thought of him as dad. I always had to think of him as Malcolm. I was at home with him, I didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be in our house. He was never like a father, he was like a twenty-three year old man living in our house. I didn’t used to lie him that much. I used to keep out of his way as much as I could. He had no time for kids at all. He was very anti-family, due to the fact that the only family he ever had was his grandma. And his brother.
But Malcolm used to do a load of really good things as well. We went to Romney Marsh. We didn’t have any money but we got on the train, hitchhiked all over the place, through the army base there, saw the tanks sticking in the mud, ate blackberries, just got out of London. It was brilliant. We went to Anglesey, slept in a barn, washed in a wishing well. Nicked all the money. He used to go out every Saturday and leave me to look after my brother. One time he bought us a load of comics and sweets, The Hulk and Spiderman. He always used to have really good ideas, it was really nice. I suppose cos it didn’t happen that often. My dad used to do things, but I remember Malcolm doing it. My dad used to cycle to Devon at Easter holidays, go camping.
Where does your dad live now?
Leicestershire. He’s an airline pilot, Captain Derek Westwood. I last saw him at Christmas. Yeah I do see him. I don’t keep in touch as much as I should do, but we’re on good terms. In a way, he’s not really my dad either, I’ve never seen him enough for him to be my dad. Whereas its the other way round with Malcolm.
Has it ever bothered you, or are you quite happy with the situation?
I don’t think I ever used to care whether Malcolm left for good or not. He used to have rows with mum and stuff, a long time ago. They didn’t have rows like that for the last five or six years. But there were rows and punch-ups earlier. This was around the time I went to live with my dad. But I respect Malcolm, he’s done a lot. He’s been dealt a lot of nasty tricks. I don’t know if he deserves better or not. I don’t know what he’s doing… he’s doing alright, I think.
Were you the only son of your mum and your dad?
Yeah. My dad’s got two more sons with a new wife. He married again in 1968. My stepmother was really nice.
When did Derek and Vivien marry?
1962, I think. Something like that, July 23rd. I was born a year later, and three years later they divorced.
Did they ever tell you how they met?
Yeah, my dad used to run a night club. He did night clubs in different places with his brother and some other friends, and my mum used to like dancing, and she used to say the reason she started going out with my dad was she liked the way he danced. My mum used to do the cloakroom or something, my uncle would be on the door, and they used have the Who and the Rolling Stones, all those bands, just before they got famous. My mum loves jiving. They were both really good at it. I don’t know about Malcolm. I don’t think he was into dancing. He stood back. I don’t see him as a dancer. He used to clown about, if he danced. He used to mess about with us a lot. The only reason I never got close to him was he didn’t have time for kids. When he didn’t have time for you he used to whack you really hard. I just tried to stay away from him.
He’s interested in kids though in another way. Interested in the idea of a child’s view of the world.
He did this film once with Helen, the midget. He was filming me and Joe outside of Woolworths or somewhere, eating Fruit Pastilles with our feet up on the window. That’s all we did all day, he kept buying us Fruit Pastilles and filming us eating them. I don’t know what the film was about. This was when he was at art college.
He once went out in his underpants, off up the road. He came back after a minute, saying a bloke had looked at him funny. He used to make us laugh a lot. He used to tell us stories about him and his brother, what they used to get up to with their gang. I never met Stuart. I don’t know anything about him, except Malcolm didn’t used to like him. But he’s so against family that he never kept in touch.
How did Malcolm and your mum meet?
Malcolm knew my mum’s brother first, Gordon. I forget where he met him. At some party or other, and ended up sleeping at my uncle’s house, and my mum went round, and that’s how they met. There were other people who used to live there as well. Some bloke who used to do drug running, or something like that. A jar of LSD on the mantelpiece, and sugarcubes soaked in it in the fridge. One day I came in and I was just about to eat one of these sugarcubes, but he stopped me. At least I think he stopped me, maybe I had it.
Malcolm claims that your mum pursued him for a bit, maybe that’s just his fantasy.
I don’t know about that. You’d have to ask my uncle Gordon, or her. I don’t remember her splitting up with my dad. I just have memories of my dad, then the next thing, there’s Malcolm. I don’t know what happened.
Where did you go to school?
Loads of places. I went to boarding school for two years, after I came back from my dad’s. I came back cos I was homesick for my mum, and after about six months I was sent off to boarding school. I was about ten. Joe was about six. He went to three or four boarding schools.
It was Malcolm’s idea, he didn’t want kids about. He had no time for anything to do with family. He just wanted to get on with his life, have his girlfriend and do his things, and didn’t want kids about, even though one of them was his. It’s only now that he writes to Joe, phones him when he’s in London and stuff. I did see him at the fashion show about a year and a half ago, and he said to come over and see him, if I went to America. I did, but he was in England when I was in America, so I didn’t see him there. But I’ve got nothing bad to say about Malcolm. If I got a girlfriend who had a five year old kid… I’d try not to do anything, but it might really get on my nerves.
I was round at his grandma’s, who lived up the road once. My mum was there and his grandma was there, and mum said for him to feed me. I was about six, and I could feed myself, but he was spooning this soup into my mouth, and it kept coming in, when I opened my mouth to say, can I use the spoon myself, and he said, shut up, and slapped my leg. I was wearing shorts. It gave me such a shock, I just wet my pants, there and then. I was so shocked. I didn’t know what to do.
I used to be really weepy, I used to hate going to this boarding school, and he came over once and without mum seeing he trod on my foot, ground it down and walked off. I knew why he was doing it, he wanted me to toughen up. I used to think he was a real bastard.
Where was the boarding school?
In Sussex. It was okay, it was a lovely place, lovely surroundings.
Did all the punk rock stuff just wash over you, really?
No, cos I never saw the Sex Pistols play, but I used to think they were great, and I used to be interested in what was happening. I used to know Steve Jones and Paul Cook. I used to like Steve Jones. They used to come round the house sometimes. We went to this party once in Queenstown Road. Steve wasn’t there when I arrived, cos he’d already found some girl and he was off in a car with her, having it off. It was the first time I got drunk. I went to the dentists with Johnny Rotten, the first time he’d been for about five years.
Was he nice to you?
Yeah, he was, he was a bit like Malcolm, going down the shops to get the paper, pretending he wasn’t Johnny Rotten. As if people wouldn’t recognise him. The dentist said he had the worst teeth he’d ever seen, and if he didn’t have something done to them they’d all drop out. The reason he hadn’t been before was he was really scared of dentists. The previous dentist had been bad, or something.
Were the kids at your school into it?
No. I went to boys’ public schools, and I just kept quiet about it. I did reveal the secret once. I told him who my mum and Malcolm was, and they said, can’t you get them to stop it? That was it.
Kids are very cruel to anyone they think is different.
Yeah, but if you’re proud of it, they see that and think, yeah, maybe it’s good, but because I kept it quiet, I think I brought it on myself.
Were you at home when Malcolm and your mum split up?
No, I wasn’t cos when I was eighteen I was kicked out of the house again, I had to go and find somewhere to live, and I ended up in a bedsit up the road. It was gradual, over a year. I used to see them during work. He used to always be involved, half and half, with the fashion shows, like the pirate one. But gradually he had music things to do and became less and less involved with the fashion things, until, in the end, he just came in for the last week and styled it, added a few accessories and stuff, and the last time he came in and did all that, mum wasn’t there, and when she came back, she tore all his ideas down and told him to fuck off. Ended up having a fight with him in the office. They were fighting till about 1983. I suppose going out with Malcolm was emotionally stabilising for my mum. She came out of it a stronger person. She is a strong personality, she’ll wear spiky hair if she’s the only person in the world to do it. She said to me the other week that her idea of a relationship is nothing at all to do with sex. If you had babies from somewhere else, sex would be no different from a handshake or giving someone a kiss. But her idea of a relationship was more like a friendship. It was to do with who she decided to have children with, she’d want them to be faithful, Mister Wonderful… I didn’t explain that very well, forget all that. She believes in True Love, in other words, but the way she describes Mister Right it doesn’t sound very likely that she’ll find him. But she’s not bothered if she doesn’t.
How do you think they worked together?
I’ve got a tape at home, which I’ll lend to you, an hour and a half of them discussing ideas. That was when I was about fourteen. On the beginning of the tape there’s some songs that Malcolm recorded to play to Bow Wow Wow, to give them ideas for songs.
It was a real collaboration, wasn’t it?
Yeah, everything. Malcolm would come up with an idea and mum would come up with a way to make it work. That’s one thing they used to do. Malcolm use to come up with ideas about styling. Why doesn’t this shoe have three tongues, for example. That was mum’s idea, but that kind of thing. Malcolm used to do a lot of research. Look at these pictures of pirates, that kind of thing. Mum had a lot to do with deciding the cloths to use, and the making of things. But she used to do research herself. It’s hard to explain, but Malcolm was good at styling. It was a good team, a very fortuitous meeting between the two of them. They brought out the best in each other, more of an intellectual relationship than a love affair. That’s most of what mum got out of him. She got someone to back her up, and a way to express her own ideas through Malcolm. And so did Malcolm. They backed each other up.