46 years after music manager Danny Fields took the photograph of a group of New York’s 70s demi-monde at the top of this post I’ve spotted the previously unidentified person behind them: the subject of my latest book, Malcolm McLaren (who appears to be chugging a half-bottle of Smirnoff).
Today is the 40th anniversary of the gig at central London venue The Marquee by the Sex Pistols which generated their first substantial media coverage, a prescient 200-word review by Neil Spencer on page 31 of the February 21, 1976 issue of the New Musical Express.
If you are of a London gig-goer of a certain (getting on to be advanced) age you will remember “Jesus”, an enthusiastic audience member at many musical events in the capital from the 60s to the late 70s.
Jesus was notable because a) he was personable and b) would often discard his clothes as he energetically idiot-danced stage-front. Jesus liked to frolic with abandon, more often than not exposing much, or even all of his rail-thin body.
Patti Smith is the focus of the latest Beatbooks sale, which is accompanied by a printed catalogue up to the usual high standards of the archive’s curator Andrew Sclanders.
As a companion to today’s post on the Horses cover, here’s another Patti Smith item from the archive: a feature by Penny Green from the October 1973 issue of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.
Coinciding with the publication of Smith’s poetry book Witt, the photographs for the Interview piece were taken by Barbara Walz (who later produced The Fashion Makers with Bernadine Morris).
Continue reading From The Vaults: Patti Smith, Andy Warhol’s Interview, October 1973
This is my copy of Horses, battered but unbowed after 35 years.
The story behind the photo-shoot for the front cover lies at the heart of Just Kids, Patti Smith’s valediction for Robert Mapplethorpe.
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.