Paul Gorman

1970s

Ian Harris’s hamburger shirt and the story of Strictly For The Birds

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My recent post about the Mr Freedom designs in the V&A collection sparked some memories from graphic artist Ian Harris, who sends this 1972 photograph of himself in a Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt:

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//Ian Harris with his then-wife Maggie, Brighton, UK, 1972. Ian Harris Collection//
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//Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt in the V&A’s collection. Note appliqué//

In the 1972 photo, the shirt’s hamburger appliqué is obscured; Harris had worked for Mr Freedom partner Tommy Roberts at his 60s boutique Kleptomania, and gave the late Roberts a number of items relating to his career a few years back. Included was the appliqué which Harris had kept for many years.

As Harris points out, his wife Maggie, a model, is sporting an Angie Bowie-influenced look in the photo above. Here she is in another early 70s shot, taken outside John and Lyris Mann’s Kensington boutique Strictly For The Birds:

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//Maggie outside 4 Holland Walk, Kensington, London, 1971. Ian Harris Collection//

Continue reading Ian Harris’s hamburger shirt and the story of Strictly For The Birds

Mr Freedom designs at the V&A: ‘When what has been considered bad taste is suddenly found to be invigorating’

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“There is a moment when ‘good taste’ becomes dead; what has been considered ‘bad’ is suddenly found to be invigorating. Fashion today has little to do with la mode and the tacky is often accepted as an essential part of the necessary ‘total’ look. It can be fun.”

Cecil Beaton, introduction to the catalogue for the 1971 V&A exhibition Fashion: An Anthology

Recent visits to the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design have proved fruitful, particularly a viewing earlier this week of the collection of  Pop Art clothing sold through London boutique Mr Freedom in the late 60s and early 70s.

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//Design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//
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//Kiss Off t-shirt, Jim O’Connor, 1971//
V+AArchive-MrFreedomRamalamadingdongtshirt
//Design Christopher Snow/Trevor Myles, body design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//
V+AArchive-MrFreedomUniversityofWishfulThinkingtshirt
//Design: Pamla Motown, 1971//

V+AArchive-MrFreedomSpottedJockeyJacket

Continue reading Mr Freedom designs at the V&A: ‘When what has been considered bad taste is suddenly found to be invigorating’

Photography: Inside Seditionaries and down the King’s Road 1977 with Homer Sykes

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD 1970S KINGS ROAD CHELSEA
//Vivienne Westwood in felt Inside Out Jacket with assistants Debbie Wilson and Michael Collins in Seditionaries, 1977//

While updating his rich and varied archive, photographer Homer Sykes came across these superb photographs taken inside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road in the spring of 1977.

The images capture the air of raw uncertainty surrounding the shop and the McLaren/Westwood coterie in this period. McLaren’s charges the Sex Pistols had recently been signed to their third record company in six months – Virgin Records – after being publicly excoriated for their behaviour and bounced out of EMI and A&M. The national media had seized upon punk as a source of sensationalism and the release of the Pistols’ explosive God Save The Queen was a matter of weeks away.

1970s FASHION KINGS ROAD LONDON UK
//Debbie Wilson (aka Debbie Juvenile) sports Hangman Jumper, Seditionaries, 1977. Note the studded Venus Top and leather jacket on the wall behind the counter//
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD 1970S KINGS ROAD CHELSEA
//Westwood expounding against the photographic mural of Dresden after WW2 air-raids, Seditionaries, 1977. Note Collins’ Cambridge Rapist design produced by Westwood’s partner Malcolm McLaren a couple of years earlier//
1970S INTERIOR OF VIVIENNE WESTWOOD BOUTIQUE
//Behind the customer in black bondage jacket is the wall-size inverted photographic mural of Piccadilly Circus, Seditionaries, 1977//

On Saturday August 20 1977 Sykes again took to the King’s Road to document the atmosphere of unrest embodied by the outbreaks of violence caused by marauding Teddy Boys targeting punks and such boutiques as Seditionaries and Boy.

TEENAGERS 1970S KINGS ROAD TEDDY BOY FASHION
//Young Ted bops while another’s jacket mourns Elvis Presley’s recent death, King’s Road, 1977//
TRACY BOYLE GARY HOLTON KINGS ROAD CHELSEA LONDON 1970S
//Musician/actor Gary Holton and girlfriend Tracy Boyle lead a demonstration against violence between Teds and Punks along the King’s Road. Far left is punk Mick Bladder//

Some of his photographs feature the punk Mick Bladder, whose arrest on that day in August 1977 was featured in Wolfgang Büld’s Punk In London. This documentary  shows how the movement’s initial creative burst swiftly dissipated, while Sykes’ images capture the ways in which a cult movement had entered the mainstream, infiltrating the media, music, fashion and the wider culture.

Sykes’ archive covers the waterfront, from social unrest including the Notting Hill Carnival riot of 1976 and the riots in Toxteth and Brixton in the early 80s, to the on-the-road antics of Paul McCartney & Wings and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the New Romantic haven the Blitz club, Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World and Quentin Crisp . Visit www.homersykes.com.

Johnny Moped at the ICA: A cure for cookie-cutter rock-doc fatigue

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Here’s a cure for year-end cookie-cutter rock-doc fatigue.

Basically Johnny Moped, Fred Burns’ exemplary documentary about Paul Halford (aka punk rocker Johnny Moped), has been selected for a week of screenings at London’s ICA.

The mini-season kicks off next Tuesday night with a post-film chat and q&a with Moped conducted by Burns.

Tickets available here.

Find out more about the film here.

 

Bravura + brilliance: Tommy Roberts, February 6 1941 – December 10 2012

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//Tommy Roberts, 1987. Photo: Christopher Clunn//

Sad to note the anniversary today of the death of Tommy Roberts, flamboyant design entrepreneur and subject of my book Mr Freedom.

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//Dedication (right) with (left on cover-flap) list of abiding interests (courtesy Eve Ferret + Mark Summerfield) and Brian Aris portrait//
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//Roberts opened Kleptomania with Charlie Simpson in Kingly Street, central London, in 1966//
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//Neon arch sales counter display designed by Jeffrey Pine for Mr Freedom, opened with partner Trevor Myles at 430 King’s Road in September 1969//

Here – with a selection of images from Mr Freedom – is an extract from an essay I have written about Roberts’ role in the development of design in Britain for Chris Breward and Ghislaine Wood’s book British Design: Tradition & Modernity, which will be published by Bloomsbury next year.

It is arguable that wider recognition for Tommy Roberts’ audacious innovations in the promotion of street style, furniture, gastronomy, home-wares, interiors and collectables was undercut by his refusal to observe the sensitivities of England’s post-war design world.

Roberts adopted an ebullient public persona to match his stout physique and broad Cockney accent. “I’m the most vulgar man in fashion, darlin’!” Roberts proclaimed to the no-less outrageous Sunday Times fashion editor Molly Parkin in the heyday of his Pop Art fashion and objects emporium Mr Freedom.

Continue reading Bravura + brilliance: Tommy Roberts, February 6 1941 – December 10 2012

Photography: Grab a chance to go see Tom Sheehan’s Analogue

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//Courtney Love, backstage, Reading Festival, 1994. © Tom Sheehan//

Tom Sheehan may be known as a “rock photographer” – a déclassé term for any old snapper with access – but is really an exacting and highly adept portraitist who chooses musicians as his subjects because, put simply, music is his abiding passion.

I write as someone with the inside, having first encountered Sheehan in the late 70s glory days of one of the finest London pubs of our individually but carefully compiled experience, the eccentric Wickwood Tavern, situated in Camberwell’s Loughborough Junction, hosted by the glorious Syd and his pot boy Roy and populated by a wild and wonderful set of attendees from Mad Pat Collins to No Neck Neenan to George O’Dowd.

Right back then, when Sheehan was making his bones as a freelancer for Melody Maker and various record companies, his love for, and knowledge of, music knew no bounds. Consequently, as I devoured everything I could get my hands on at that age, I gained an education in the distaff likes of, say, John Cooper Clark or Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks.

We reconnected a couple of years ago; following Tom’s Instagram adventures is but one of the pleasures of falling back into Sheehan’s circle.

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His current exhibition Analogue has been rightly acclaimed a success, and the run justifiably extended until December 17. If you’re in town do yourselves a favour and grab the chance to take in Sheehan’s cool, calm and collected body of work.

Analogue is at Lomography in Spitalfields – see here.

Visit tomsheehan.co.uk

 

Junior Murvin: Memories

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//My copy of the Tedious/Memories 12in//

Junior Murvin – who has died aged 67 – will forever be associated with the rebel cool of his 1976 Lee Perry-produced single Police & Thieves. Yesterday morning’s BBC Radio 4’s Today news programme displayed it’s trademark ham-fisted approach to pop culture when eagerly proclaiming the song his shining achievement by managing to misname Paul Simonon “Mick Jones” in an interview introduction and rushing to gush unconvincingly over an excerpt of The Clash’s version.

Personally, I favour another Lee Perry collaboration from the same period, the epic single B-side Memories.

I bought the UK 12inch mix on a shopping spree in a record shop tucked away in an Earl’s Court side street one late afternoon in 1977 on the recommendation of the shop assistant.

At 8mins 45secs, Memories is not only a sonic adventure to match the very best of 70s dub, but also a sweet, romantic song, the yearning, regretful theme over Perry’s bubbling cauldron of rhythms perfectly matched to Murvin’s falsetto whoop (I found Police & Thieves too preaching, which I guess is why it made sense for The Clash – always complaining about being told what to do, they tended towards dictating to their audience).

The flip, Tedious, is pretty good, as were other Black Ark explorations such as Closer Together, but nothing in my view in Murvin’s body of work touches the tenderness of Memories.

Remember him this way:

 

 

 

 

Delirious New York: Legends Bobby Busnach + Gerry Visco, The Park Royal Hotel, the South Bronx scene and Boston’s The Other Side

//Gerry Visco in SEX Cowboys t-shirt and leather miniskirt, The Park Royal, NYC, 1976. © Bobby Busnach//

These captivating 70s images stem from the amazing photographic archive of New York DJ legend Bobby Busnach.

Many feature Busnach’s friend and muse, the fabulous writer/photographer/performer Gerry Visco, as well as the circles they moved in at NYC’s Park Royal Hotel, Boston disco/bar The Other Side and the nascent hip-hop scene in the South Bronx.

//Visco, Hillside Avenue,Boston, 1973. (c) Bobby Busnach//
//Donnie Ward, Hillside Avenue, 1974. © Bobby Busnach//
//Tony Roldan (centre) at the handball courts at 146th Street and Brook Avenue, the Bronx, 1976. © Bobby Busnach//

Continue reading Delirious New York: Legends Bobby Busnach + Gerry Visco, The Park Royal Hotel, the South Bronx scene and Boston’s The Other Side

Jim French: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor exhibition + new Colt apparel collection

//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//

Continue reading Jim French: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor exhibition + new Colt apparel collection

Last few days of Punk @ SHOWStudio: Why this exhibition is true to the wit, elegance and design skills of the McLaren/Westwood partnership

//One wall of the ShowStudio Punk exhibition//

In the period 1972-78 when the body of the partnership’s punk fashions were created, Malcolm McLaren’s art education and development as a largely conceptual visual artist was applied with Vivienne Westwood’s intuitive and sophisticated technical skills.

The resultant potency of the work was achieved by such factors as: balance in the proportions; deft use of juxtaposition; confidence in realisation; jarring harmony in the use of colour; wit in the application of motifs; and astute sense of framing, particularly of text and visual imagery.

Excerpt from introduction to my review of the McLaren/Westwood designs in the Costume Institute collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, summer 2013.

Precision, deftness, balance, harmony, these are terms unjustly omitted from the standard  critical lexicon applied to punk’s central design aesthetics as conceived and realised by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and their coterie.

Which is why Punk @ ShowStudio, the elegant exhibition which is now moving into its final week at photographer Nick Knight’s Belgravia gallery, is to be applauded, since it avoids the run-of-the-mill in favour of recognition of the importance of these qualities.

“I was very impressed. It was inspiring to see what I like to call ‘the origins of Punk’ as opposed to the usual well documented ‘greatest hits of Punk’,” the collector/archivist/author Paul Burgess wrote to me recently.

//Part of Judy Blame's contribution to the exhibition//
Read more about Punk @ ShowStudio here.
The exhibition is open every day 11am-6pm until Friday at 19 Motcomb Street, London SW1X 8LB.