Paul Gorman

Tommy Roberts: Peace ‘n’ love in Paris

//Kleptomania in Rave magazine, October 1967.//

Tommy Roberts reminisces about the look of 1967:

By 1967 Haight Ashbury hippie culture had taken off in London.

At Kleptomania – my boutique around the corner from Carnaby Street at 10 Kingly Street – it was embraced with gusto.

Out went red guardsman’s tunics, Union Jack kipper ties, Victorian-style lacy mini dresses, soul music and anything to do with “Swinging London”.

In came trumpet-sleeved kaftans, Gypsy fringed shawls, psychedelic posters, joss sticks, peace ‘n’ love badges, Frank Zappa and Jefferson Airplane.

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Books: Penguin’s Gormenghast trilogy

A recent conversation with artist John Frankland about the work of Mervyn Peake has brought me back to one of my most treasured possessions: the 1970 Penguin edition of Peake’s masterpiece Gormenghast.

Designed by Robert Hollingsworth, the three illustrated paperbacks Titus Groan (first published in 1946) Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959) were housed in a case decorated with Peake drawings.

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I like a bit of a cavort: Let It Rock

Can’t beat a bit of Chuck for a frolic.

Watch him move.

I saw him live a year or so later at The Rainbow. He played a 35-minute set and brought on his daughter for the lovey-dovey finale. It may have been South Of The Border.

When the Teds realised he had vamoosed rather than play an encore they tore up the place.

Twenty-odd years later I was in the green room for an edition of The David Letterman Show which featured him and was shot in London. What struck me was Berry’s bearing and the agile grace with which he moved among the throng of well-wishers and fans.

That and the fact he was wearing the same pair of yellow Lionels I’d seen on him at the Rainbow…

Stagger Lee selects: A Smashing Indictment Of Character – Slim Cessna’s Auto Club

Here’s another from from Stagger Lee‘s trick bag (click on the title):

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club – A Smashing Indictment Of Character (Alternative Tentacles)

Not well know in the UK, which is a shame, this Denver band operate somewhere between the Violent Femmes, The Bad Seeds, The Handsome Family and Th’Legendary Shack Shakers, so we’re talking a whole lot of southern gothic fire’n’brimstone’n’fornicatin’n’whiskey. Probably the best recent band I’ve discovered lately, even though they’ve been around a decade or more.

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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Books: I’ll Take You There

//From top: Stunt rider, Hines Farm motorcycle rodeo + The Atomic Pirates motorcycle club.//

A chat with photographer/Men’s File publisher Nick Clements at the opening of his show Revival –  which looks at the re-enactment of the styles surrounding American bike culture of the 50s for his Royal College Of Art research project – put me in mind of original black motorcycle clubs the Atomic Angels and the Gypsy Pirates.

I first came across them a decade or so ago when covering another academic study, Matthew Donahue’s I’ll Take You There, for Mojo magazine. Donahue’s book focused on a true cultural phenomenon: Hines Farm in Swanton, Ohio, whose owners Frank and Sarah Hines were the first African-Americans in the region to be granted a liquor licence.

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