Paul Gorman

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Totally Wired: Music publications that made a difference

When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

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Fashion: An Anthology – the brilliance of Cecil Beaton x Vern Lambert at the V&A in 1971

//Cover, Fashion: An Anthology catalogue, V&A, 1971//
//Frontispiece: a Beaton photograph of a model wearing a 1961 Balenciaga dress//
//Vern Lambert in Milan in the 80s. Photo: Alfa Castaldi//

My recent Rocketman post gave me cause to dig out my copy of the catalogue produced for the groundbreaking exhibition Fashion: An Anthology, staged by London’s V&A from October 1971 to January 1972.

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Rarely seen images from the 1988 Malcolm McLaren exhibition Impresario with news that my MM bio will be published in April 2020

//Window display for Impresario at the New Museum, Sept 16 – Nov 20, 1988. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//
//Introduction to the show. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

My biography of the late Malcolm McLaren will now be published in April 2020, exactly 10 years after his premature death at the age of 64.

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We’re keeping the dialectic open: Final week of PRINT! Tearing It Up at Somerset House

//The first vitrine contains original copies of Blast 2 (1915), Crash! 1 (1997) and gal-dem 2 (2017). Photo: @hellenelleliang//
//Enjoying browsing the magazines on the PRINT! newsstand. Photo: @jasonthien//
//Contributor Alpa Depani talking about her zine Romp with members of the New Architecture Writers group. Photo: @paul_g0rm4n//

PRINT! Tearing It Up, the exhibition about the resurgence and history of independent progressive British magazines, has entered its final week at central London’s Somerset House.
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Jasper: Memories of the London fashion label and a Barney Bubbles connection

//But Is It… ART, t-shirt design, Ian Harris for Jasper, 1979//

I’ve dug into collector and graphic artist Ian Harris’s rich archive again and turned up a brace of t-shirts he designed in the late 70s for Jasper, the eponymous London-based fashion label operated by entrepreneur Jasper Hamilton Holmes from showrooms in central London.

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Was it The Fool or Alexander Trocchi? The mystery of Warhol Waking at Kensington Town Hall in May 1971

//Front of folded flyer, 6.5 x 8″//

Graphic artist, musician, fashion and interiors designer and all-round all-rounder Ian Harris has granted me access to more items from his amazing archive; this is in the intriguing category –  a flyer for a most unusual art project he visited in the early 1970s.

Warhol Waking was staged over one day in the foyer of Kensington Town Hall in west London in the spring of 1971. This tumultuous period of creative experimentation in public and private spaces was later described as representing either “the immense variety and talent of the London arts scene or its condition of cultural confusion” by artist and art historian John A. Walker.

The installation/intervention proved challenging for visitors: it comprised a typical domestic bed with sheets and blanket drawn back to reveal excrement juxtaposed with a towering orchid which drooped as the day passed and flies gathered.

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The Filth & The Fury: Punk Fashion at the NFT tomorrow with Amber Butchart + SEX & Seditionaries superstar Jordan Mooney

jord

Tomorrow I’m a guest of historian Amber Butchart at London’s National Film Theatre for a conversation and q&a about Punk fashion with her special invitee Jordan Mooney, SEX and Seditionaries superstar and inner member of the Sex Pistols circle.

I’ve put together a presentation from my archive to run during our chat, including images of Jordan’s striking series of visual personae and slides showing how the designs by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road were regularly featured in the fashion and national press from the early 70s to the time of Punk later in the decade.

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//Selection of Let It Rock designs showcased in a May 1972 issue of The Sunday Times Magazine. Photos: Hans Feurer. Paul Gorman Archive//

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‘Progressive, provocative, beautiful and belligerent’: 52-page Malcolm McLaren extravaganza in new issue of Man About Town

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//Cover, Man About Town SS16. Otto in Buffalo hat and Rigby & Peller bra (prototype for Nostalgia Of Mud, 1982). Photography: Alasdair McLellan. Styling: Olivier Rizzo//

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//Above left: Frankie in Buffalo hat, white Nike socks and my George Cox Diano creepers. Right: Natalie in Malcolm McLaren’s Chico hat (Witches, 1983), Buffalo jacket (Nostalgia Of Mud, 1982) and Bondage Trousers (Seditionaries, 1976). Photography: Alasdair McLellan. Styling: Olivier Rizzo. Hair: Duffy: Make Up: Lynsey Alexander. Man About Town SS16//

On a warm London afternoon last July I enjoyed a meeting with Ben Reardon, editor-in-chief of the biannual Man About Town, the magazine’s senior fashion editor Danny Reed and Young Kim of the Malcolm McLaren Estate.

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