NAME: Jeff Dexter

RESIDES: North London

OCCUPATION: Man about town

Trace the progress of popular culture over the last six decades and you’ll find Jeff Dexter at some of its crucial stages of development: demonstrating the twist to modernists at The Lyceum Ballroom and advising the Beatles on which boots to wear in the early 60s; DJing for the noonday underground at Tiles a few years later and then moving into London’s counter-cultural underground as a mainman at Middle Earth and The Roundhouse, where his Implosion nights set the scene for the rise of such friends as Marc Bolan and David Bowie.

There’s Jeff hanging out at Hung On You, booking bands for the first Glastonbury and Isle Of Wight festivals, managing chart-topping America, announcing The Clash at one of their early gigs and DJing for Paul Weller at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire a couple of years back as part of the Island 50 celebrations.

And now he’s answered the Blokes Of Britain questionnaire:

Hi Jeff. What’s with your look these days?

Eclectic and vintage. I mix anything from the past, from another culture, with the standard look which has been ingrained in me since childhood. I looked at some photos today and realised I’ve been doing this since 1968!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bunny Roger, David Bowie, Implosion, Jeff Dexter, John Steed, Middle Earth, Paul Weller, The Clash, The Lyceum, The Roundhouse, Tiles, Trachten

This portrait of David Bowie was taken by Kate Simon at Olympic recording studios in Barnes, west London, on January 14, 1974.

Simon’s photograph captures a man on the cusp; furiously occupied in the studio, Bowie was tying up loose ends ahead of his departure for America 10 weeks later. He hasn’t lived in Britain since.

Three days before this was taken, Bowie’s production job on Lulu’s version of The Man Who Sold The World was released as a single. Applying himself to finishing Diamond Dogs, Bowie also recorded such eventually unreleased tracks as Take It Right (to become Right, a “plastic soul”  anthem on Young Americans) and a try-out of Bruce Springsteen’s Growin’ Up.

Sessions with vocal trio The Astronettes – including paramour Ava Cherry – had proved inconclusive, though an olive branch recently extended to erstwhile producer Tony Visconti soon bore fruit in the form of renewed collaboration.

A month after the shot was taken, Rebel Rebel was released ahead of the marathon US touring schedule over 1974/5 which marked the severing of business relations with Tony Defries and the faltering of his marriage to Angie.

I wanted to talk to Simon about the stories behind this image and others which deliver an emotional charge yet retain the reportage stance of the cool documentarist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Any Day Now, Bill Brandt, Caroline Coon, Dave Fudger, David Bowie, David Hearn, Diamond Dogs, Disc & Music Echo, Elton John, Gary Glitter, Joe Strummer, Jonh Ingham, Josef Kourdelka, Kate Simon, Kevin Cann, leonard Freed, Mick Jones, Olympic, Paul Simonon, Rod Stewart, Sex Pistols, Sounds, Stomu Yamashta, The Astronettes, The Clash, Tony Defries