//Richard Hell + Jake Riviera, outside the Chelsea Arts Club, London, Feb 2014//

I’ve had few, if any, lunches as enjoyable as last week’s hook-up with Richard Hell and Jake Riviera for a piece I am writing for GQ magazine.

Richard and Jake first met outside CBGB in March 1976, having been introduced by photographer Roberta Bayley, who was working the club door that night.

With Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux, Jake had witnessed Richard in performance the night before with Johnny Thunders in the first – and soon to disintegrate – line-up of the Heartbreakers at Max’s Kansas City.

We dined less than half a mile away from Chelsea embankment, where Richard and the rest of his next band the Void-Oids spent a pretty miserable-sounding sojourn on a leaky boat when in the UK on tour with The Clash in 1978.

As Richard recounts in his fabulous memoir I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, he and Jake have shared a series of adventures over the years, some of which I will be covering in my GQ feature which should be out in the summer.

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp is out in paperback this week; buy here.

Tags: CBGB, Chelsea Arts Club, Dr Feelgood, GQ, I DReamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, Jake Riviera, Lee Brilleaux, Max's Kansas City, Richard hell, Roberta Bayley, The Clash, The heartbreakers

//Showing Price The Look Of London map.//

Conducting the in conversation with Antony Price at London’s Fashion + Textile Museum earlier this week was fun.

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Tags: Andrew Logan, Antony Price, Baillie Walsh, Cadbury Flake, Fashion & Textile Museum, Harpers & Queen, Keith Wainwright, Peter York, Stirling Cooper

I’m interviewed by Andrew Bunney about the Tommy Roberts book on Japanese lifestyle/culture blog Honeyee – read here.

This is Andrew’s own honeyee blog.

Buy Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero here.

Tags: Andrew Bunney, honeyee.com

Tonight I’m on Broken Hearts’ Jazz FM show Peppermint Candy talking about Teddy Boy style.

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Tags: 1956, 1959, Broken Hearts, Caldonia, Carl Perkins, Charlie Feathers, Jazz FM, King, One Hand Loose, Peppermint Candy, Sun Records

//Sketches for Lodger gatefold cover, 1979.//

//Front, Clash 2nd Songbook, Music Sales Ltd, 1978. 12" x 9", 60pp (inc covers).//

Artist Derek Boshier’s practice is marked by his engagement with contemporary culture; this has been a consistent aspect of his work since the earliest days of the British Pop movement.

When popular music has invigorated the wider world, Boshier has been present, incorporating Buddy Holly into his painting I Wonder What My Heroes Think Of The Space Race? in Ken Russell’s defining 1962 Monitor piece Pop Goes The Easel, and providing one of the most vivid visual documents of the punk and post-punk era, Clash 2nd Songbook.
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Tags: Arts Council, Bill Haley, Brian Duffy, Caroline Coon, Central St Martin's, David Bowie, Derek Boshier, Hayward Gallery, Ian Dury, Joe Strummer, Let's Dance, Lives, Lodger, Mick Haggerty, Monitor, Pallant House, Pop Goes The Easel, Pretty Things, Serious Moonlight, Texas, The Clash

With Cardin, Paris, January 2012. Photography: Matthew Frost.

Last month I spent a fascinating couple of hours in the company of one of the grand enigmas of the age, Pierre Cardin.

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Tags: Futurism, Matthew Frost, Modernism, Pierre Cardin, Vice

Pauline's Gone Digital (for Pauline Boty), Derek Boshier, 2011. Diptych, 5' x 10'. Acrylic on canvas from the series Paris Texas, Paris France, Paris Hilton.

This month’s arts calendar in London is marked by a rare treat: From Doris To Chemical Cowboys, a talk by the great British artist Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art’s lecture theatre on January 18.

Los Angeles-based Boshier will be discussing recent projects as well as providing insights into earlier achievements, including his part in the Pop Art explosion of the 60s and his Texas work of the 80s.

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Tags: 1973, Allen Jones, Chelsea College Of Art & Design, David Bowie, David Hockney, Hayward Gallery, Ken Russell, Lives, Lodger, Palisades, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Peter Phillips, Pop Goes The Easel, R.B. Kitaj, Ready Steady Go!, Reel, Royal College, The Clash

Talking Barney Bubbles with Billy Bragg in the Spirit Of 71 Cafe. Photo: Dom Chambers.

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Tags: 1971, Andrew kerr, Billy Bragg, David Bowie, Dom Chambers, Glastonbury Fayre, Mick Farren, Nik Turner, Spirit Of 71 Cafe

Place: Golden Square, London W1.

Time: 1pm

Coffee: Nordic Bakery Soho

Lloyd Johnson, Ben Olins and I met on a sunny Saturday for a chat about Rowan Joffe’s recently-released film Brighton Rock. The transposition of the storyline to 1964 has resulted in marketing which leans heavily on the backdrop of the Mods vs Rockers “riots” in British coastal resorts that year.

Pretty Green and Merc are among promotional partners; there lingers the distinct impression of an attempt to reach out to cinemagoers by creating a British version of the Mad Men buzz.

In fact the mod content is a gloss overlaying this stodgy interpretation of the 1947 film classic rather than Grahame Greene’s 1939 novel (despite claims to the contrary; Joffe even chose the first film’s climactic cop-out, against the author’s wish for an unremittingly bleak ending).

An original modernist raised in neighbouring Hastings, Lloyd has considerable first-hand knowledge of the subject and worked on the film which is a primary visual influence: Quadrophenia.

Ben’s fascination for the period is manifested in such activities as the club-night The Fabulous Cellar and certain aspects of his media company Herb Lester Associates.

As a cradle Catholic my heart sank when I heard the word on this; one of the great literary investigations into good and evil recast as a mod rite of passage. Mod really is the mainstream option these days isn’t? So codified as to be meaningless and square beyond belief: all those “rules”, all that conformity. For that, and many other reasons, the film lived down to my low expectations.

What do you reckon?

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Tags: Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, Ben Olins, Biba, Brighton Rock, Craig Parkinson, Cubitt, Densons, Hastings, Helen mirren, Herb lester Associates, John Hurt, Lloyd Johnson, Mad Men, Merc, Philip Davis, Pinkie, Pretty Green, Quadrophenia, Richard Attenborough, Rowan Joffe, Sam Riley, Sean Wilson, The Fabulous Cellar