Last week I recovered this from the back pocket of a pair of trousers; a page torn from a copy of Mojo found on the tube a few months back.
New York
Herb puts Jimmy’s Corner on the map
I am delighted to see that Jimmy’s Corner, my favourite Manhattan bar, features on the latest map from Herb Lester Associates.
Jimmy’s epitomises the map’s celebration of “old” New York.
Photography: Kate Simon
This portrait of David Bowie was taken by Kate Simon at Olympic recording studios in Barnes, west London, on January 14, 1974.
Simon’s photograph captures a man on the cusp; furiously occupied in the studio, Bowie was tying up loose ends ahead of his departure for America 10 weeks later. He hasn’t lived in Britain since.
Three days before this was taken, Bowie’s production job on Lulu’s version of The Man Who Sold The World was released as a single. Applying himself to finishing Diamond Dogs, Bowie also recorded such eventually unreleased tracks as Take It Right (to become Right, a “plastic soul” anthem on Young Americans) and a try-out of Bruce Springsteen’s Growin’ Up.
Sessions with vocal trio The Astronettes – including paramour Ava Cherry – had proved inconclusive, though an olive branch recently extended to erstwhile producer Tony Visconti soon bore fruit in the form of renewed collaboration.
A month after the shot was taken, Rebel Rebel was released ahead of the marathon US touring schedule over 1974/5 which marked the severing of business relations with Tony Defries and the faltering of his marriage to Angie.
I wanted to talk to Simon about the stories behind this image and others which deliver an emotional charge yet retain the reportage stance of the cool documentarist.
Letter from Ian Dury to Roberta Bayley
Ian Dury sent this letter to Roberta Bayley in May 1977.
As the late songsmith’s biographer Will Birch explains here, Dury was just a few months away from achieving nationwide fame.
“It ain’t the Sistine Chapel…”
I heartily (groan…) recommend Alistair Sooke’s half-hour radio documentary on Milton Glaser’s I ♥ NY logo.
Glaser is interviewed, as are Seymour Chwast and Steven Heller among others.
A personal loss and the rash of suicides among young gay individuals in the US has prompted the creation of a two-sided poster as the latest project by art collective 2-UP .
No More Suicides is a collaboration between Adam Shecter (who founded 2-UP last year with partner Joe Winter) and poet Matthea Harvey, who suffered the loss of a friend at their own hand.
“One side is fantasy; Matthea’s poem imagines a fox constellation that looks after kids, and I draw an imaginary mascot for a LGBT kids TV show,” says Shecter.
Beat This: A Hip Hop History
Excerpt from 1983 BBC documentary Beat This: A Hip Hop History.