Paul Gorman

Malcolm McLaren

Rough Kids, Sex Pistols + Art School Babies: Tommy Roberts in the final issue of The Word

//Pages 108-111, The Word, August 2012.//

Out later this week, the final issue of The Word marks a significant staging post in the story of magazine publishing in the digital age.

Champions of the written word and intelligent discourse about popular culture, the editorial team headed by veteran double-act Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have assembled a fine last edition in which I’m stoked to be included, with an extract from Mr Freedom about Tommy Roberts’ involvement in the mid-70s British music scene (including never-previously revealed details of Roberts’ loaning of rehearsal space to the nascent Sex Pistols, the burglary of his shop City Lights Studio by members of the group and Malcolm McLaren’s interest in managing Ian Dury).

Continue reading Rough Kids, Sex Pistols + Art School Babies: Tommy Roberts in the final issue of The Word

Memories of Dandie Fashions + Paradise Garage + a return to Granny’s

Frederique Cifuentes takes photographs of Diana Crawshaw outside 430 King's Road. Diana Crawshaw was one of the team behind the shop's incarnation as Paradise Garage in 1971.
//Frederiques Cifuentes photographs Diana Crawshaw outside 430 King's Road.//

Filming continued yesterday for this summer’s King’s Road Fashion & Music Trail, which is is being launched to visitors to west London’s historic thoroughfare as part of Kensington & Chelsea’s InTransit festival in July.

We will be covering all the boutique manifestations at 430 King’s Road; for a start I plumped for its incarnation as Paradise Garage in 1971, operated by Trevor Myles with Chris Snow and Diana Crawshaw.

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Monster V&A design book: Bubbles, Hirst, The Queen + Bowie get special treatment…but where’s Malcolm?

British Design from 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age

British Design From 1948: Innovation In The Modern Age – the new book accompanying the forthcoming show at the V+A – is a bumper edition: 400 pages weighing in at 5lbs.

It’s cheering to see Barney Bubbles’ design Ian Dury With Love granted upfront prominence; the poster is in select company given special treatment by the book’s designer, Barnbrook’s Daniel Streat. The others are: Cecil Beaton’s 1953 coronation portrait of The Queen, a shot of Damien Hirst’s Notting Hill restaurant Pharmacy and Brian Duffy’s Aladdin Sane portrait of David Bowie.

Barney Bubbles' Ian Dury poster treated by Jonathan Barnbrook

Continue reading Monster V&A design book: Bubbles, Hirst, The Queen + Bowie get special treatment…but where’s Malcolm?

SXSW installations: The look of music


If you’re in Austin TX – and there’s a chance you might be since hundreds of thousands of people have descended on the city for the annual SXSW film/music/interactive conflab taking place there this week – try and nip along to the Ray Ban Legendary Visions house at 78 Rainey Street on the eastside for a gander at the room collages/installations I have engineered to reflect my take on the look of music.

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Marc Newson’s tribute to Malcolm McLaren for Performa

Malcolm McLaren award for Performa 11, designed by Marc Newson. Photo: Jean Vong.
//The Malcolm. Photo (c) Jean Vong.//

This is The Malcolm, the award designed by Marc Newson for the visual arts bienniale Performa; the inaugural award was presented a couple of weeks back by Greil Marcus and Lou Reed to the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson for his 12-hour piece Bliss.

Honouring the late Malcolm McLaren, The Malcolm goes to artists under 40 who demonstrate “the most innovative and thought-provoking performance” during Performa’s three-week bienniale.

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Interview for ARTE documentary on British music’s scenemakers

ARTE crew setting up in basement for interview for look of British music doc.
//TV crew sets up in the basement.//

Yesterday I was visited by a camera crew for an interview about the behind-the-scenes individuals who have made the difference to British popular music over the years.

The team, from Kobalt Productions in Berlin, are producing the documentary for Franco-German arts channel ARTE. The director is Simon Witter, who has a fine pedigree in journalism and broadcasting.

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The Cowboys came from Colt Studio

//Longhorns Dance by Colt (Jim French) from Manpower! issue 7, 1974.//

My theorising over the roots of the Cowboys t-shirt has uncovered the true source of the main image: a 1969 drawing by the artist Jim French reproduced in a 1974 issue of his magazine Manpower!.

French has an international following for his gay-themed photographic + illustrative work, via his Colt Studio image-bank and work as “Rip Colt” and “Luger”.

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Roots of the Cowboys t-shirt

MY SPECULATION HERE SPARKED A TRAIL TO THE TRUE SOURCE OF THE MAIN IMAGE: THE ARTIST/PHOTOGRAPHER JIM FRENCH, WHO DREW THE COWBOYS FOR A SERIES CALLED LONGHORNS IN 1969 (SEE LINK AT END OF THIS POST).

The late Malcolm McLaren said he could never remember the origins of one of the most potent designs to emanate from 430 King’s Road in its six-decade history as a fashion emporium: the Cowboys t-shirt.

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Malcolm McLaren January 22 1946 – April 8 2010

“Maybe somehow the desire for knowledge is back, and to be glamorous will be to have a big brain.
That’s why I believe that the stars of the future aren’t designers or musicians, they’re teachers. Because people are searching for answers, they’re searching for content. A college professor is much more glamorous than an actor.”

Malcolm McLaren, 1995.

Thanks to Steven Daly for sending me Holly Brumbach’s interview with Malcolm, Being And Nothingness And Kate Moss, New York Times, May 21, 1995.

Blessed & Blasted: You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On! 10.1974

Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt adopted the same truculent tone and diffuse dialectic to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.

You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in SEX in the late autumn of 1974 – was conceived by Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from friends Malcolm McLaren (who wrote the slogan) and Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the following band name: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

I investigated its history in THE LOOK and also here. By publishing the list with links today I aim to dive deeper to demonstrate the tract’s range beyond popular culture.

Hence the references to artists David Holmes, Mel Ramos and Patrick Heron (and his campaign against The Tate), the literature of Alfred Bester, David Cooper, George Dangerfield, Konstantin Paustovsky and Bernard Wolfe, the work of  radical journalists Alexander Cockburn and Mervin Jones and the campaigning of political activists Pat Arrowsmith and Marian and Doloures Price.

Such content dates the compilation to October 1974: The Guardian published Heron’s 14,000-word Tate critique over consecutive days between the 12th and 14th of that month; the shirt itself mentions a piece by Jones in the New Statesman on October 4 and also an Elton John interview in the NME on September 25 (in fact the issue was dated September 28).

Alongside the call-girl phone number taken from local newsagents there are such quizzical references as that for former Playboy Club UK head Victor Lownes: “To be avoided first thing in the morning”.

Is this because one of the contributors had encountered him leaving his club Stocks, just a few hundred yards from SEX along the King’s Road?

Continue reading Blessed & Blasted: You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On! 10.1974