Paul Gorman is…

Fashion Beast: Arena Homme + pays tribute to Malcolm McLaren’s collaboration with Alan Moore

Apr 22nd, 2020

//Introductory spread from the Fashion Beast feature in Arena Homme + 53, Summer/Autumn 2020//

//Above: Fashion Beast story, AH+ 53. Photography Drew Vickers; fashion Tom Guinness//

The new issue of Arena Homme + – which is available to read through Exact Editions here for those who can’t obtain physical copies – includes a 28-page extravaganza on Malcolm McLaren’s activities across cinema, fashion and music during the mid-80s.

With an extract from my new biography of McLaren, the feature homes in on Fashion Beast, the unrealised film collaboration with Britain’s dark magus of comic book writing Alan Moore. It also includes my interview with Moore as well as an ingenious fashion story photographed by Drew Vickers and styled by Tom Guinness.

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Rock’s Back Pages x 3: Guest on the podcast, McLaren bio extract about David Harrison’s tryout as Sex Pistols frontman and archival pieces by me on the Spice Girls (1996) and US alternative zines (1994)

Apr 14th, 2020

//In conversation with (from top left) RBP’s Mark Pringle, Jasper Murison-Bowie and Barney Hoskyns//

I’m the featured guest on this week’s podcast from the world’s premier music journalism site rocksbackpages.com.

I go way back with RBP founder and author Barney Hoskyns; he commissioned pieces from me when he was Mojo editor in the early 90s and we launched my music press book In Their Own Write, RBP and photographer Jill Furmanovsky’s rockarchive.com on the same night at a Shoreditch gallery nearly 20 years ago.

I had fun talking to Barney and his confreres Mark Pringle and Jasper Murison-Bowie. The chat ranged from my background in trade journalism to, of course, the new Malcolm McLaren biography. Listen to the podcast here.

//David Harrison in customised Sex t-shirt, 1975//

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Word In Your Attic: Around Malcolm McLaren in 10 objects

Apr 13th, 2020

Tomorrow night (April 14) I was supposed to be appearing at London’s regular event Word In Your Ear, the live successor of the much-missed The Word magazine founded by publishing titans Mark Ellen and David Hepworth.

//Smash Hits, January 6-19, 1983//

In the era of social distancing Mark and David have come up with the online Word In Your Attic, the results of which are posted on Youtube. For the episode to coincide with the publication of my Malcolm McLaren biography they asked me talk about 10 objects relating to McLaren from my archive.

//Mayoral campaign materials, 2000//

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We dressed up to mess up: Virtual book launch of the Malcolm McLaren biography

Apr 8th, 2020

//Clockwise from top left: @vieux.wave, @pippabrooks, @luxoramor, Nick Vivian, @ladyacss, @chrissalewicz//

//Clockwise from top left: @belmaczmayfair, mr + mrs @adamskiofficial, @joebrookks, @pippabrooks, @ourmanincairo, @mrsgorman//

We have to take our pleasures where we can during these grim times, and last night’s virtual book launch of my Malcolm McLaren biography provided a much-needed tonic.

The plan was to celebrate the publication with a party at the library bar of London’s hotel The Standard, with a relaxed congregation of friends and contributors and DJ sets by Pippa Brooks and Pam Hogg.

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Malcolm McLaren: Ten years after

Apr 8th, 2020

//The post featured a grab of Pennie Smith’s portrait for Nick Kent’s The Politics Of Flash article in an April 1974 issue of the NME//

Ten years ago I posted this on The Look blog upon returning home from a gathering at London gallery Chelsea Space.

The venue was fitting; Chelsea Space is within the grounds of Chelsea College of Arts which was in Manresa Street off the King’s Road until a few years back. This was among the arts institutions attended by the student painter Malcolm Edwards in and around London in the 1960s.

Our friend the writer Chris Salewicz broke the news; among the company was guitarist Mick Jones, whose life, like many of us, had been improved by connection with McLaren.

Naturally, Jones expressed sorrow, and his immediate response to the news of McLaren’s passing struck me hard. ‘We’ll never hear Malcolm’s latest thoughts again,’ said Jones. ‘All those brilliant, wild ideas which seemed to pour out of him on a daily basis, that’s over. And that’s really sad.’

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‘Excellent… exhaustive… never dull’: First reviews of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren

Apr 5th, 2020

“With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock’n’roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas”
Victoria Segal reviewing The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren in the Sunday Times, April 5, 202

The first reviews of my Malcolm McLaren biography are carried today by Britain’s Sunday Times Culture section and in The New Review magazine of it’s broadsheet rival The Observer.

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When Steve McQueen modelled for i-D

Apr 1st, 2020

 

A few years back over dinner in New York when I was working on The Story of The Face, the British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen mentioned that he (“well, it was mainly my back and my arse”) had appeared in an i-D fashion shoot when he was a student.
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