Regulars on both sides of various Soho bars having been mourning the familiar figure the vast majority of us knew simply as Pam.

This portrait by photographer Carla Borel captures Pam’s charm, sweetness and light. And she’s in her element, outside The French.

Alastair Choat, landlord of The Coach & Horses, is hosting the wake for Pam after the funeral next Wednesday (January 30) from 3pm.

Read the obituary of Soho Pam here; at the time of writing this had been shared online more than 1,000 times within less than 24 hours of posting.

View Borel’s exemplary portfolio here.

Tags: Alastair Choat, Carla Borel, Coach & Horses, French House

This just in from Joe Stevens, following yesterday’s post about his new website: the story behind the photo with Johnny Rotten above, taken in London in 1978.

We were at his Gunter Grove digs in Fulham. Malcolm (McLaren) had left his grotty leathers in my flat in NYC during the Sid and Nancy murder doings. I had them dry cleaned. Never got the $90 for that one.
He had Glitterbest problems in London. So did Rotten. I was over there to do pictures of Public Image Limited.
He made a nice curry. I crashed there with him and Nora (Forster). Ari (Up, Forster’s daughter) would pop by often.
We watched her and The Slits record Heard It Thru The Grapevine and Chrissie (Hynde) rehearsing with her new Pretenders.
Yeah, he’s holding up his trousers with a strand of white cord.
I was later a witness at the High Court trial involving the band versus Glitterbest.
I tried on Malcolm’s leather trousers. Fell in love. It was a first. Went to London in them. Never took them off. Returned two weeks later to NYC wearing them.
Had them cleaned again. This time they didn’t survive. All I got back was swatches of leather in a bag.

Stevens’ new website is here.

Tags: Ari Up, Chrissie Hynde, Fulham, Glitterbest, Gunter Grove, Joe Stevens, Johnny Rotten, Nancy Spungen, Nora, Public Image Ltd, Sid Vicious, The Pretenders, The Slits

Here’s another gem from Herb Schmitz’s photographic goldmine: model Ika Hindley at west London restaurant Julie’s in an early 70s shoot for Dutch agency Kippa.

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Tags: C20 Vintage, City Lights Studio, Deborah Woolf, Dominic Lutyens, Herb Schmitz, Ika Hindley, Kirsty Hislop, Laura Noble, Liz Eggleston, Maudie Adams, Nicky Samuel, Norman Parkinson, Sacha, Vogue

//Marrion Womble + Barbara Trentham in City Lights Studio clothes, London, 1973.//

Herb Schmitz proudly describes himself as a photojournalist.

From the start of his career in London in the late 60s, the Dusseldorf-born Schmitz has turned an unerring eye to all manner of subject matter: seascapes,Turkish gangsters, the WW2 head of the Polish government in exile, the social scene in latterday Shoreditch (where he has operated a studio for more than 25 years)…

//Ika Hindley models Hamnett bangles, 1973.//

In the wake of a recent exhibition at Amsterdam’s Unseen Photo Fair, Schmitz has opened his archive of early 70s fashion photography for me, revealing images of a lost London demi-monde clad by such hallowed enterprises as City Lights Studio (the Covent Garden boutique operated by the subject of my latest book, Tommy Roberts) and Katherine Hamnett’s label Tuttabankem.

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Tags: Barbara Trentham, Bertortelli's, City Lights Studio, David "Piggy" Worth, Derek Morton, Herb Schmitz, Ika Hindley, Jay Johnson, John Yong, Julie's, Katharine Hamnett, Malcolm "Percy" Raines, Marrion Womble, Neal Street Restaurant, Piggy, Pirates, Ronnie Melia, Terence Conran, Tuttabankem, Yves St Laurent, Yvonne Gold

The Random House/Penguin takeover prompted a visit from photographer Sarah Lee to shoot my collection of Penguin books for illustrative material for The Guardian.

One of her shots has already been used – a set of early 70s Raymond Chandlers with James Tormey jackets.

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Tags: James Tormey, Oliver Wainwright, Random House, Raymond Chandler, Sarah Lee, The Guardian

//Trixie Merkin, 1968. Photo: Baron Wolman.//

My appreciation for the visual culture surrounding popular music was given a leg-up at an early age by a Christmas 1973 gift: Rolling Stone‘s photography compendium Shooting Stars.

Edited by Annie Leibovitz, Shooting Stars lined up a number of the magazine’s photographic contributors who had recorded the American rock music scene in its pomp.

//Front cover, Shooting Stars, Straight Arrow Books, 1973.//

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Tags: Annie Leibovitz, Baron Wolman, Doug Sahm, John Fogerty, Rock Paper Photo, Rolling Stone, The GTOs, Trixie Merkin

Tucked away at the back of an issue of British soft-porn magazine Club International was a fashion shoot featuring clothing elements which denoted the crystallisation of the new art-directed glam aesthetic inaugurated by the release of Roxy Music’s first album a couple of months previously.

The photographer was Karl Stoecker, the New Yorker who had been resident in the UK since the mid-60s and was coming into his own with important contributions to Roxy’s visual identity across that LP and its successors For Your Pleasure and Stranded.

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Tags: Antony Price, Che Guevara, Club International, For Your Pleasure, Gwenda Saar, Karl Stoecker, Manolo Bahnik, Mick Jagger, Norman B, Quincy, Roxy Music, STanley Adams, Stranded, The Squire Shop, Them, Village Gate, Zapata

Thanks to photographer David Reed for this portrait of Tommy Roberts and John  Paul in much satin finery in the office hallway above their Mr Freedom boutique at 20 Kensington Church Street in 1971.

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Tags: 1971, David Reed, John Paul, Kensington Church Street, Mr Freedom, Nova, Radio Times, Sunday Times Magazine

Continental Europe appears to have gone bananas for British popular culture this Jubilympics* summer, hence Franco-German arts channel ARTE’s new four-part series London Calling.

The programme was made by seasoned documentarist Simon Witter and looks to be a treat (particularly the intelligent use of archive material; great to see rare footage of John Stephen striding along Carnaby Street).

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Tags: Andrew Loog Oldham, ARTE, Boy George, Carnaby Street, Central Saint Martins, Fred Deakin, Jill Furmanovsky, John Stephen, Jon Savage, London Calling, Paul Morley, Simon Napier-Bell, Simon Witter

//According to artist Kevin Whitney, the "strange boy in drag" was the German fashion model Jurgen (surname not known).//

A couple of months back I wrote about a photo-session conducted at David Hockney’s Notting Hill house* in May 1974 by photographer Willie Christie.

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Tags: Antony Price, Celia Birtwell, Frances Lynn, Jonathan Meades, Jurgen, Kevin Whitney, Marianne Faithfull, Michael Roberts, Ossie Clark, Pierre Laroche, Thems, Willie Christie