Excerpts from the annual summer music jamboree broadcast as part of UK TV station Channel 4 youth programme The Tube have been posted this week on Youtube.
//Jools Holland interviews McLaren about his “Duck Rocker”, one a number of customised boomboxes McLaren commissioned for promotional appearances//
One clip from the so-called Midsummer Night’s Tube of 1983 features an interview with Malcolm McLaren about his recently released album Duck Rock and single Double Dutch.
I have an essay in the Stone Island monograph Storia which is published today by Rizzoli Books.
Edited by Eugene Rabkin of StyleZeitgeist and art-directed by the supreme Simon Foxton, Storia is an extremely handsome volume featuring texts by Angelo Flaccavento and Jian Deleon, as well as my piece, From The Streets To The Stadium, which traces the Italian label’s place in popular culture.
Storia is available from all good booksellers – a special edition has been published in a slipcase with a poster.
This is available from Stone Island stores around the world, but hurry; within a few hours of publication I’ve been hearing tales that it has sold out in certain territories.
Photos of book by Sabrina Tanzi.
To coincide with the US release of my book The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren I’m taking part in an online event hosted by Atlanta’s premier independent bookstore A Capella next Thursday (September 24).
From 6pm EST (11pm BST) I will be in conversation with US music journalist Chad Radford about McLaren and his creative legacy. Our chat will be followed by a q&a session.
I’ve already signed a bunch of personalised bookplates for those purchasing copies directly from A Cappella.
Look forward to digitally seeing you there – more details from A Cappella.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is available to buy in the US from next week from all good booksellers as well as amazon.com.
//From The Times, July 29, 1966. Paul Gorman Archive. No reproduction without permission//
The late Malcolm McLaren made his first national media appearance in a 250-word item on the Law Report page of The Times in the summer of 1966.
This is an extract from my biography The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren:
In 1966 while he was attending a painting course at Chelsea College of Art, Malcolm McLaren – who had been forced to take his step-father’s surname Edwards a few years earlier – came under the influence of Stan, a fellow student whose last name is lost to memory.
“Stan was a Trotskyist who played a mean jazz saxophone and politicised Malcolm,” says Fred Vermorel, a friend of McLaren’s who had been at Harrow art school with him a couple of years previously.
For McLaren, radical politics opened up a world of possibilities when entwined with his investigations into art. Encouraged and initially accompanied by Stan, McLaren began attending rallies and demonstrations protesting on behalf of the causes célèbres of the day: against the war in Vietnam and South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Long gone were the polite CND parades peopled by earnest chaplains and fresh-faced Home Counties youth in duffel coats chanting Kumbaya. Taking their cue from the US uprisings such as that among the African American community on Chicago’s West Side, the British protestors of 1966 brought activism to new heights in direct confrontation with the authorities. A turning point was the July central London rally calling for the British government to disassociate itself from US military policy in south-east Asia.
In response to inquiries about signed copies of The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren, I’m offering the socially distanced solution: I’m happy to send signed adhesive bookplates (personalised if you like) gratis anywhere in the world.
Send your postal address to my contact address stating whether you want a random or personalised message, and I’ll send you your very own bookplate.
The photo at the top of this post shows variants I have already signed for the virtual event being staged by Atlanta’s A Capella Books next month. I’ll post about that and other US activities coinciding with the book’s American release on September 22 in the coming weeks.
//Musician Sam Parkin sports the Teenburger Designs t-shirt//
Infused with the personal freedoms and camaraderie experienced on a trip to San Francisco, the graphic artist Barney Bubbles (born Colin Fulcher 1942; died 1983) took occupation of the three-storey building at 307 Portobello Road in 1969 and transformed it into a creative commune at the heart of the Notting Hill counterculture.
With musicians rehearsing in the basement and a shifting set of unusual and interesting inhabitants and collaborators, Bubbles established his Teenburger Designs studio on the ground floor of 307 and set about servicing all manner of clients from livery for posh grocer Justin de Blank to record sleeves and posters for such rock, raga and prog groups as Brinsley Schwarz, Cressida, Gracious!, Quintessence and Red Dirt.
//Bubbles checks Justin de Blank artwork at Teenburger Designs, 1970//
//Teenburger Designs letterhead, March 1969//
Bubbles styled his Teenburger letterhead as a square wrapper with one side featuring a composition of Letraset fragments arranged in the form of a hamburger.
From today, this very limited edition shirt is available in S, M, L + XL and celebrates the brilliance of Barney Bubbles, evoking his wish for “a groovy scene… with lots of hard work and fun play”.
Order yours from daniel@somethingelse.gg
//Box advert for the Beckenham Arts Lab run by David Bowie and Mary Finnigan in IT #59, July 1969//
//News story about the Goldsmiths Arts Festival organised by Malcolm Edwards and his fellow student Niall Martin in IT #59//
Researching my archive during lockdown for a project has given me the opportunity to thoroughly assess individual publications, none more so than the 59th issue of underground paper IT, which hit the streets in early July 1969.
This particular edition features a couple of small items which provide clues as to the countercultural activities at the time of two Londoners who would go on to define pop culture in the 1970s: David Bowie and Malcolm McLaren.
//Introductory spread from the Fashion Beast feature in Arena Homme + 53, Summer/Autumn 2020//
//Above: Fashion Beast story, AH+ 53. Photography Drew Vickers; fashion Tom Guinness//
The new issue of Arena Homme + – which is available to read through Exact Editions here for those who can’t obtain physical copies – includes a 28-page extravaganza on Malcolm McLaren’s activities across cinema, fashion and music during the mid-80s.
With an extract from my new biography of McLaren, the feature homes in on Fashion Beast, the unrealised film collaboration with Britain’s dark magus of comic book writing Alan Moore. It also includes my interview with Moore as well as an ingenious fashion story photographed by Drew Vickers and styled by Tom Guinness.
//In conversation with (from top left) RBP’s Mark Pringle, Jasper Murison-Bowie and Barney Hoskyns//
I’m the featured guest on this week’s podcast from the world’s premier music journalism site rocksbackpages.com.
I go way back with RBP founder and author Barney Hoskyns; he commissioned pieces from me when he was Mojo editor in the early 90s and we launched my music press book In Their Own Write, RBP and photographer Jill Furmanovsky’s rockarchive.com on the same night at a Shoreditch gallery nearly 20 years ago.
I had fun talking to Barney and his confreres Mark Pringle and Jasper Murison-Bowie. The chat ranged from my background in trade journalism to, of course, the new Malcolm McLaren biography. Listen to the podcast here.
//David Harrison in customised Sex t-shirt, 1975//
Tomorrow night (April 14) I was supposed to be appearing at London’s regular event Word In Your Ear, the live successor of the much-missed The Word magazine founded by publishing titans Mark Ellen and David Hepworth.
//Smash Hits, January 6-19, 1983//
In the era of social distancing Mark and David have come up with the online Word In Your Attic, the results of which are posted on Youtube. For the episode to coincide with the publication of my Malcolm McLaren biography they asked me talk about 10 objects relating to McLaren from my archive.
//Mayoral campaign materials, 2000//
| Paul Gorman is a writer. This is his blog: art, books, conversation, cults, dancing, design, encounters, environments, events, film, galleries, groups, individuals, invitations, magazines, music, opinions, performance, photography, places, press, privacy, spaces, style, thoughts + views. |
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