07/04/2022
Boy George has led the tributes to Jordan Mooney, who has passed on at the age of sixty six after a brief battle with bile duct cancer. Ms Mooney was a figurehead in the 1970’s first wave of punk rock, modelling for Vivienne Westwood at the famous Sex Shop on the King’s Road in London. George described Mooney as a “teenage obsession” of his, when he was growing up absorbing influences including punk, reggae and glam. Mooney worked with Adam and the Ants in their early days and with the Sex Pistols. Wikipedia lists her as an early innovator of the punk rock aesthetic. Punk was a vital movement in energising women and queer people in music. Politically, it inspired a generation to protest against war, militarism, and for individual self expression. Some punks advocated political and social anarchism, meaning, co-operative living based on mutual aid and self organisation. Mooney was also immortalised in film. In 1978, she played a character named “amyl nitrate” after the gay disco drug, in gay filmaker Derek Jarman’s brilliant and controversial film “Jubilee”. In a formal tribute to her, family members described Ms Mooney as living punk ideas through to the end, always being true to herself and committed to the wellbeing of other people.
