I am the subject of the My Design London page in today’s edition of the capital’s Evening Standard newspaper.

In Liz Hoggard’s piece, I talk about some of the places which help make this the greatest city in the world, from our local patisserie WA Cafe and picture framers For Art’s Sake to Mayfair jewellers/art space Belmacz, Hackney Road’s Two Columbia Road and M. Goldstein and the galleries Richard Saltoun and Chelsea Space.

Copies of the Standard are available free to commuters on Greater London’s transport system. The piece will be posted on the Standard’s site soon.

Tags: Belmacz, Chelsea Arts Club, Chelsea Space, Evening Standard, For Art's Sake, Liz Hoggard, M. Goldstein, My Design London, Richard Saltoun, Two Columbia Road, WA Cafe

//When they met, Bowie was scrutinising this portrait of Sex, Seditionaries and Jubilee superstar Jordan Mooney at Bell’s exhibition Larger Than Life//

“I, too, had to maintain a certain degree of detachment, and indeed to want and expect nothing of him; the paradox will always remain that, if David Bowie had not been David Bowie, then David Bowie and I could have been friends.”

Edward Bell, 2017

Edward Bell first encountered David Bowie when the rock chameleon turned up unexpectedly at a private view for the British visual artist’s first exhibition in 1980.

They last spoke in 2013, a few years before the musician/performer’s untimely demise. In the intervening period Bell and Bowie hung out in London, Venice and Los Angeles, collaborated on record sleeve projects and maintained sometimes sporadic contact, via a Swiss letter drop address and out-of-the-blue phone calls.

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Tags: Ashes To Ashes, Brian Duffy, Chelsea Arts Club, Coco Schwab, Edward Bell, Jonathan Ross, Jordan Mooney, Lodger, Marcus Thompson, Neal Street Gallery, Royal College Of Art, Scary Monsters... And Super Creeps, Steve Strange, Tin Machine, Unmade Up...

This is nice; pal and fellow Chelsea Arts Club member John Wardle talks about the importance of the immediate neighbourhood, its artistic tradition going back to the likes of Whistler, the licentiousness of the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens in Victorian times, the Bohemian atmosphere engendered by the 70s slums around the Lots Road Power Station and how all of this combined to create the breeding ground for punk.

John also talks about his love for Hawkwind, Sid Vicious, how he sold the bass he played on Metal Box to the Jesus & Mary Chain for a drink and why he should really have done the interview topless…

Tags: Aswad, Chelsea, Chelsea Arts Club, Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, Hawkwind, Jah Wobble, Jesus & Mary Chain, Jill Furmanovsky, John Wardle, Metal Box, Public Image Ltd, Sid Vicious, Under The Bridge

//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

//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

//Acid Aalto 1, Donald Smith, 2011.//

My friend Donald Smith’s exhibition Acid Aalto opens at London’s Chelsea Arts Club tonight.

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Tags: Alvar Aalto, Burro, Chelsea Arts Club, Chelsea Space, Donald Smith, Tim Parker