//Gary Crowley outside 93 Bell Street, London NW1, the address once occupied by Sex Pistols scenester/designer Helen Wellington-Lloyd, her fellow Goldsmith’s student Malcolm McLaren and Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook//
Interspersed with a personal selection of songs, I talked to DJ Gary Crowley about the new Punk London: In The City 1975-78 map for the second hour of his Punk & New Wave show on Soho Radio yesterday.
//Detail, Frederick’s catalogue. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//
Congratulations to our pal Johnny Deluxe for this fantastic spot; he happened upon this kitsch sketch of an original tits t-shirt while leafing through an early 70s Frederick’s Of Hollywood catalogue.
//Catalogue page. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//
//Hornik featured in the Telegraph magazine in 1969 and GTAT paperwork dating from 1972. The livery was taken from a design by Granny’s founder Nigel Waymouth//
//Hornik maintained his scrapbook from the 60s to his death in 2009//
I have just filed a piece for GQ about Granny Takes A Trip and the branches of the King’s Road boutique which opened in the 70s in Manhattan and Hollywood under the stewardship of the late Freddie Hornik.
The feature also scrutinises the scrapbook Hornik maintained from the mid-60s, when he worked at the rival Dandie Fashions at 161 King’s Road, through his acquisition of Granny’s at 488 King’s Road in 1969 from founders Sheila Cohen, John Pearse and Nigel Waymouth.
It charts in snapshots, magazine clippings, company paperwork and notes Hornik’s ambitious expansion plan which resulted in partners being brought on board at the Chelsea shop – in the form of co-owners Marty Breslau and Gene Krell – and for the launch of the New York outlet at 304 E.62nd Street, which was owned by John LiDonni and Richie Onigbene.
This strategy proved successful, and was capped by Hornik’s launch with Jenny Dugan-Chapman of an LA branch, first on Doheny in Beverly Hills and then on Sunset Strip.
By this time the Granny’s international operation had hit the moment when rock turned to glam. Existing customers such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were joined by the new raft of dandy peacock performers making the moves in the early-to-mid 70s, including Marc Bolan, Alice Cooper, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, Lou Reed, Todd Rundgren, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood.
Hornik’s scrapbook – which was updated for him for a time by LA store manager Roger Klein – makes for a pop culture treasure trove, one which offers rare insights into this exciting era of rock and roll fashion.
Having returned to the UK to live a quiet life in the late 70s, it is poignant to note that Hornik, who died in 2009, kept an eagle eye out for any mention of his outlets and his associates, adding to the scrapbook as the revival of interest in the clothes and characters of the period really started to roll.
I’ll keep you informed as to when the piece is due to appear. Access to the scrapbook courtesy Alex Jarrett.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s Hawkwind post here’s the James Last Orchestra taking on the group’s big hit Silver Machine and segue-ing it into T.Rex’s Children Of The Revolution and Alice Cooper’s School’s Out.
Fun facts: Last’s nickname is “Hansi” (he was born Hans Last). He has sold more than 70 million records in his career.
//Robert Watts in front of Products by Implosions Inc. Photographer: unknown//
Malcolm McLaren’s adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk’s most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold in SEX and Seditionaries, worn by members of the Sex Pistols and replicated hundreds of thousands of times since.
Such is its distorting androgynous power that a version was chosen along with another McLaren/Westwood design – the Cowboys shirt – to represent the core aesthetic of the movement when the forthcoming Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture was announced earlier this month.
The four albums released by Alice Cooper between 1971 and 1973 propelled the band’s international ascendance and the frontman into enduring superstardom.
Cooper and his bandmates never again attained the quality level of the dumb-but-delicious Detroit garage-glam they punched out with such aplomb on these records, enhanced as they were by the crystal-hard production of wunderkind Bob Ezrin.
What is it about the excellence of LP quartets by major artists in this period?
In my vinyl pantheon, the Cooper releases align with those comprising largely original material issued by Rod Stewart (in consecutive years from 1969: An Old Raincoat Won’t Let You Down; Gasoline Alley; Every Picture Tells A Story; and Never A Dull Moment), David Bowie (from 1971: Hunky Dory; The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars; Aladdin Sane; and Diamond Dogs), Roxy Music (from 1972: Roxy Music; For Your Pleasure…; Stranded; and Country Life), Stevie Wonder (from 1972: Music Of My Mind; Talking Book; Innervisions; and Fulfillingness First Finale) and The Wailers (from 1972: Catch A Fire; Burnin’; Natty Dread; Live At The Lyceum).
In these 70s shots Dennis Hopper and Iggy Pop are both wearing the so-called “tits tee” – the design which started out as an art-school project in the late 60s, became a novelty item, then a punk classic and more recently was a Haiti disaster fundraiser.
I investigated the story of the tits tee here.
Reading Amanda Lear’s engaging out-of-print memoir My Life With Salvador Dalí brings back memories of a visit to the Dalí Theatre-Museum (“the largest surrealistic object in the world”) in Figueres in 1988.
In the tower of the museum, the “seedy old conjuror” (per the description by John Richardson in his waspish collection of art world pen portraits Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters) was lying on his sickbed; Dalí died just a few months later, in January 1989.
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