I’m indebted to reader Dave Shaw, who has sent me the photograph above left of himself wearing a very rare rock fashion garment: one of the canvas and leather jackets made famous by Rod Stewart, who sported his on the sleeve of 1970 solo album Gasoline Alley.

The cream jackets with heraldic-style brown trim were made by the maverick British tailor and leatherworker Colin Bennett and co-designed with Lloyd Johnson for sale in Kensington Market in the early 70s.

“When I bought it the guy told me it was the last of three; the others had gone to Rod Stewart and Allan Clarke of The Hollies,” says Shaw. In fact, as Johnson reveals in the comment below, Bennett made around 20 (and Stewart’s has survived in a collector’s archive).

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Tags: Allan Clarke, Bona Clouts, Colin Bennett, Cream, Dave Shaw, Gasoline Alley, Granny Takes A trip, Hampstead, Lloyd Johnson, Rod Stewart

//My father in uniform on his wedding day, March 2, 1940, north London//

“Bad thing for a young man to lose his father” Charles Cheeryble, Nicholas Nickleby

My father died 35 years ago today.

I was 20 at the time, and witnessed him take his final breath. The narrow world of music and clothes I inhabited was preoccupied with Ian Curtis’s recent suicide; given the fact that my father had been diagnosed with cancer four years previously and spent the last 18 months on earth hospitalised and fighting like a bastard for his life, I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. PiL’s Death Disco was much more my speed.

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Tags: Death DIsco, Desert Rats, Eighth Army, El Alamein, Hampstead, Ian Curtis, LIly The Pink, North End Road, PiL, Primrose Hill, The Scaffold, Wildwood Grove, Ye Olde Corner Shoppe