//Jim French Polaroid studies//

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor is an exhibition of Polaroids taken by artist, illustrator and print-maker Jim French which opens tonight at New York’s ClampArt gallery.

These include studies for French’s 1969 Colt Studio print Longhorns Dance, incorporated by Malcolm McLaren in 1975 in his notorious Cowboys t-shirt design, as sold in Sex and Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road and worn by the Sex Pistols and others.

//Longhorns Dance by Colt (Jim French) from Manpower! issue 7, 1974//

//Wearing their Cowboys (clockwise from top left): McLaren 1975, Sid Vicious 1977, Siouxsie 1976, Steve Jones 1975. Photographs: Bob Gruen; Dennis Morris; Ray Stevenson; Mick Rock.//

//From queerclick.com//

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Tags: Antinous Press, Bob Gruen, ClampArt, Colt Studio, Dennis Morris, Jim French, Mick Rock, Ray Stevenson, Seditionaries, SEX, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Siouxsie, Steve Jones

//Richard Wernham, Nick Garvey, Robert Gotobed, Rob Smith on the front cover of Teenage Head/Lights Out by The Snakes, Dynamo Records, 1976//

I went to a good school (it was approved, as my first editor would have it in the late 70s. You had to be there).

I was taken on as a scholarship boy, one who showed enough promise for the fees to be paid by the council.

But I was lazy, not as bright as I made out, unhappy, an under-achiever. Aside from winning the cross-country race when I was 14, my life there was almost entirely undistinguished, so preoccupied was I with music, clothes and girls. I had pretensions to vast knowledge in all three areas undercut by lack of experience in the latter regard.

//Booklet with Quadrophenia, an album about "a cat with four personalities" according to me, 1973//

//School report 1975: "If Paul is as familiar with DG Mackean's Introduction To Biology as he is with the NME, he will pass his O-Level. As it is, he isn't, so I fear he won't." And I didn't//

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Tags: Ace Skudder, Acme Attractions, Bazooka Joe, Bull & Gate Kentish Town, DG Mackean, Dr Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe, Eddie & The Hot Rods, Flamin' Groovies, Hawkwind, Introduction To Biology, Keith Richards, Kickers, New Musical Express, Nick Garvey, Pink Fairies, Quadrophenia, Robert Gotobed, Rolling Stones, Royal College Of Art, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Sex Pistols, Shakin' Stevens & The Sunsets, Stewart Wernham, Teenage Head, the 101'ers, The Motors, The Snakes, Wire

//Photographer Kate Simon and performer Chrissie Hynde (lifting the front of her mohair jumper from Sex), London, 1976. (c) Joe Stevens//

This photograph – taken by Joe Stevens in early 1976 in Fulham, west London – is featured in the exhibition Just Chaos!, which opens tomorrow (May 7) at Marc Jacobs’ Bleecker Street NYC bookstore BookMarc.

The T-shirts worn by Simon and Hynde were among the first variants of a limited edition designed by Malcolm McLaren to promote the newly formed Sex Pistols. A few were also sold in Sex, the environmental installation/shop operated by McLaren with Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in World’s End, Chelsea.

“Malcolm dropped the shirts off at my Finborough Road studio; they were freshly silk-screened from a limited edition,” says Stevens, then working for the NME and living with Simon (who was employed by rival music paper Sounds). “Chrissie was living in a squat and cleaning offices for a living. She’d drop by the pad to take showers. I’d hear her singing in there and realised she had a wonderful voice.”

McLaren produced the designs with the express aim of promoting the new group. “This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt,” he told me in 2006. “I wanted to create something of a stir.”

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Tags: bernie Rhodes, Bleecker Street, Bob Gruen, BookMarc, Boys Express, Chrissie Hynde, Fulham, Glen Matlock, Godlis, Hans Herbert Hubermahl, Joe Stevens, Kate Simon, Lee Black Childers, Marc Jacobs, SEX, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Vivienne Westwood

//Photo: Tom Sheehan Collection//

As an addendum to my recent post about the staging of the very special late night London concert given by Ian Dury’s art-rock ensemble Kilburn & The High Roads in 1974, here’s the badge commissioned by manager the late Tommy Roberts to flag up the concurrent release of the group’s single Rough Kids.

Then a neglected pop promotional medium – badges were considered kids’ stuff; the sole prominent champion was Barney Bubbles, who produced a range to go with his branding of space rockers Hawkwind and pub-rock outfit Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers – the pre-punk barbed wire logo button was conceived and executed by Simon Haynes, designer of the ambitious stage set for the Kilburns’ gig at the King’s Road Theatre.

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Tags: Dawn, Handsome, Humphrey Ocean, Ian Dury, Kilburn & The High Roads, Let It Rock, Pye, Roberta Bayley, Rough KIds, SEX, Sex Pistols, Simon Haynes, Will Birch

//Keith Lucas and Ian Dury onstage at the Kings Road Theatre, November 1974. Photo: Simon Haynes Collection//

As these rarely seen photographs show, when the subject of my last book the late Tommy Roberts took over management of Kilburn & The High Roads he sought to elevate them from the pub-rock scene by upping the visual ante on every front.

//From left: Lucas, Dury, David Rohoman, Charlie Sinclair and Davey Payne//

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Tags: Andy Fail, Chris Spedding, City Lights Studio, Davey Payne, David Rohoman, Glen Matlock, Ian Dury, Keith Lucas, Kilburn & The High Roads, King's Road Theatre, Kosmo Vinyl, Let It Rock, Martin Cole, Mr Freedom, Quorum, SEX, Sex Pistols, Steve Jones, Sue and Simon Haynes, The Rocky Horror Show, The Sweet Shop

//Photo detail (from left): SEX customers Danielle, Alan Jones + Chrissie Hynde; Vivienne Westwood; assistant Jordan.//

As a follow-up to my recent post about the rarely seen 1975 interview with Malcolm McLaren in soft porn mag Gallery International, here is another exclusive: for the first time since publication in June 1976, the full article featuring McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop SEX in British sex guide Forum.

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Tags: 1975, 1976, Bryan Derbyshire, Chrissie Hynde, Country Cousins, David Dagley, David May, Earl's Court, Forum, Gallery International, Icognito, IT, Jordan, Len Richmond, Rick Szymanski, SEX, Sex Pistols, Steve Jones, Street Life, Vivienne Westwood, Zipper

//Sex assistant Jordan, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4.//

It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though.

Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world.

David May, Gallery International Vol 1 no 4.

In November 1975 – by which time his charges the Sex Pistols had just embarked on live performances – Malcolm McLaren was interviewed by journalist David May at 430 King’s Road, then in full bloom as radical retail venture SEX.

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Tags: Alan Jones, Bob Guccione, Cambridge Rapist, Chelsea Arts Club, David May, Forum, Gallery International, Hendon, Jeremy Thorpe, Jo Buckley, Jordan, Len Richmond, Let It Rock, Michael Collins, Michael Roberts, MIddlesex Polytechnic, Naked Cowboys, New English Library, Ravensbourne College, SEX, Sex Pistols, Simon Barker, The Economist, The Sunday Times, Time Out, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die

//Pages 108-111, The Word, August 2012.//

Out later this week, the final issue of The Word marks a significant staging post in the story of magazine publishing in the digital age.

Champions of the written word and intelligent discourse about popular culture, the editorial team headed by veteran double-act Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have assembled a fine last edition in which I’m stoked to be included, with an extract from Mr Freedom about Tommy Roberts’ involvement in the mid-70s British music scene (including never-previously revealed details of Roberts’ loaning of rehearsal space to the nascent Sex Pistols, the burglary of his shop City Lights Studio by members of the group and Malcolm McLaren’s interest in managing Ian Dury).

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Tags: David Hepworth, Ian Dury, Mark Ellen, Rough KIds, Sex Pistols, The Word

//Back + front cover, Point-Blank! pamphlet 1973.//

//Top: Page 3, Space Travel, Point-Blank!, 1973. Bottom: Sleeve back cover, Pretty Vacant/No Fun, Sex Pistols, 1977.//

In the week of the opening of Jamie Reid’s exhibition Peace Is Tough, the founder of the 70s American Situationist group Point-Blank! is challenging claims that Reid originated one of the key graphics of the punk aesthetic: the so-called “Nowhere buses”.

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Tags: Anarchy In The UK, David Jacobs, Isis Gallery, Jamie Reid, Nowhere Buses, Peace Is Tough, Point-Blank!, Pretty Vacant, San Francisco, Sex Pistols

//From a review of the Queen Elizabeth College All Night Christmas Ball by Kate Phillips, New Musical Express, December 27, 1975.//

This is something of an exclusive.

Not published in the 36 years since appearing in the issue of the New Musical Express dated December 27, 1975, this is the very first media mention of the Sex Pistols (just seven weeks after their live debut).

These sentences were written by NME staffer Kate Phillips in her review of the All Night Christmas Ball on November 27 1975 at Queen Elizabeth College (then in Campden Hill, Kensington, west London).

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Tags: Chelsea College Of Art, Chris Salewicz, Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames, Kate Phillips, King's Road, Malcolm McLaren, Manresa Street, Mike Absolom, Neil Spencer, NME, Queen Elizabeth College, Sex Pistols, Slack Alice, Tony Tyler