Let's be Frank

London is in a roil of Malcolm McLaren reminiscing but as a true measure of the man may I suggest considering how many of the artists McLaren "managed" would be able afford cancer treatment in Switzerland? I'm picking a number between zero and none.

McLaren was the only phone interview I did where I hung up on the subject. After over an hour of his raving I had all I needed and a lot more that I didn't so I literally put the phone down on him in mid-sentence. It was at the time of Waltz Darling, which featured some stellar songs ('Something's Jumping in Your Shirt', 'Deep in Vogue' and the title track). In the same month I got to talk to Neneh Cherry and parrot McLaren's line that she had stolen from him. Which worked, because she jumped and gave me a better interview.

As that old skirt chaser Goethe said, folks, how short life must be if something so fragile can last a lifetime. It all seemed important at the time and if I go back to the music I remember why: Cherry's Raw Like Sushi still sparkles, and her duet with Youssou N'Dour on 'Seven Seconds' (from Man, I think) is one of my top 20 tracks eva. McLaren's 'Buffalo Girls' is fun but consider that the Beastie Boys have pulled the same or better tricks of wit and funk every other year since 1988. He was never that great, but now he's dead, he's perfect. The British press are trying to pull the same trick with Ian Drury and that's not working either. It's a great compliment to appraise someone as a small influence on the world, which McLaren was -- and that's more than many will be.

Obituaries piss me off because they're always too late (sic). I was more pleased to read Manohla Dargis's piece on Dennis Hopper while he is still alive: it's a great warts and all look at someone I will miss far, far more than McLaren. Hopper is dying and has had the grace to let it be known, and what I love about him (although he's far from loveable) is that he's dying in the same way he lived: pissed off and out of control, but at the same time way more in control than is necessary (he's placed a restraining order on his wife and is filing for divorce).

Hopper has been called one of Hollywood's few Republicans, which is saying something. He was a Ripley (not a good one), he made Easy Rider (with a lot of help, based on Terry Southern's great writing) and The Last Movie (which I saw when I was way too small and really, really loved), and he was Frank in Blue Velvet, which I still rate as the best movie ever, period. Hopper played the villain Frank Booth, and Lynch had the idea that the actor, as Frank, would inhale helium before reciting his lines to give him a squeaky, childlike voice. Hopper suggested it would be better if he simply acted as if he was inhaling something - an amyl nitrate like vapour - so Lynch went with that. Good move for the movie.

Like David Lynch, Hopper is an artist with a nailed-down sense of structure, going wide but always covering the basics. Both share a very 1950s sensibility. Hopper's police movie Colors was really only a very big version of Adam 12; The Last Movie is about as deconstructed as, say, a Pink Floyd album (by comparison Zabriskie Point or any given Godard blows it away) -- it sits very happily with Vanishing Point and Rebel Without A Cause. Hopper was 33 years old when he made Easy Rider: not a rebel but a pro.