//Malcolm McLaren between Patti Smith and David Johansen with Cyrinda Foxe and Lenny Kaye, Sheep Meadow, Central Park, May 11, 1975. Photo: Danny Fields//

//Close up: Malcolm McLaren refreshes himself behind Smith and Johansen//

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).

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Tags: Barbara Dane, Bella Abzug, Bob Gruen, Central Park, Cyrinda Foxe, David Johansen, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Kutie Jones & his SEX PISTOLS, Lenny Kaye, New York Dolls, Odetta, Ossie Davis, Patti Smith, Paul Simon, Peter Yarrow, Phil Ochs, Richie Havens, Sheep Meadow, The War Is Over!, Tom Paxton

//Window display for Impresario at the New Museum, Sept 16 – Nov 20, 1988. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

//Introduction to the show. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

My biography of the late Malcolm McLaren will now be published in April 2020, exactly 10 years after his premature death at the age of 64.

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Tags: Adam Ant, Art & Text, Catherine McGann, Impresario: Malcolm McLaren & The British New Wave, Keith Haring, Marcia Tucker, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, Paul Taylor, Vivienne Westwood, William Olander, Witches

When he was growing up in Minneapolis in the 1950s, the painter Duncan Hannah’s father advised him: “You never know what kind of squirrel cage a man goes home to at the end of the day.”

Hannah’s book 20th Century Boy allows the reader full access to the squirrel cage inhabited by this charming man in 1970s New York.

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Tags: 20th Century Boy, Amos Poe, Andy Warhol, Ashenden, Bryan Ferry, Claudine, Colette, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Duncan Hannah, Gato Barbieri, Harlem, John Cale, Justine, Last Tango In Paris, Lawrence Durrell, Roxy Music, Somerset Maugham, Unmade Bed, Vintage Violence

//Richard Boch, 4am, Mudd basement, 1980. Photo: Lynette Bean Kral//

//Fab 5 Freddy Brathwaite, The Times Square Show, 1980. Photo: Bobby Grossman//

Tonight’s DJ appearance at Manhattan’s’ Soho Grand by the city’s clubland legend Richard Boch – who will be joined on the decks by none less than Fab 5 Freddy and Club 57’s Dany Johnson – affords an opportunity to champion one of my favourite books of the year.

//Judy Nylon and transient tattoos, 1979. Photo: Lisa Genet//

//Cookie Mueller, 1979. Photo: Bobby Grossman//

Boch’s The Mudd Club is a visual and literary orgy of delight, packed full of striking images and tales of glory and excess from the late 70s/early 80s nightclub where he was the kingpin doorman and communed on many levels with the good, the bad, the deviant and the simply deranged of popular culture.

//Clockwise from top left: Vicki Pedersen’s membership card; staff member Debi Mazar by Rhonda Paster Corte; ID card flipside; Cookie Mueller, 1979 by Billy Sullivan; Lisa Rosen 1980 by Maripol; Richard Sohl + Richard Boch in Montauk by Ron Beck; Kate Simon’s ID card 1980//

//Clockwise from top left: Vicki Pedersen/Joan Crawford Mother’s Day Event 1979 by Marcia Resnick; Nan Goldin Night School at Mudd 1979 by Billy Sullivan; Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong 1980 by Robin Schanzenbach; Hal Ludacer 1979 by Eileen Polk; Eric Mitchell and Amos Poe 1979 by Marcia Resnick; Anya Phillips and James Chance, Mudd dance floor 1979 by Chris Stein//

You want to know how David Bowie corralled Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi to back him on Saturday Night Live? Read it here, along with hundred of other yarns to make your hair stand on end.

//Poison Ivy Rorschach post performance. Photo: Alan Kleinberg//

//Damita with cowgirl tattoo, 1980. Photo: Ebet Roberts//

Gossipy and jaw-dropping with a tone which is by turns sardonic and dewy-eyed for times long gone, The Mudd Club is a must-have.

The Mudd Club is published by Feral House; copies available here.

Festivities at the Soho Grand’s Club Room, 310 W Broadway, New York, NY 10013, kick off at 9pm tonight. No cover. Details here.

Tags: Cookie Mueller, David Bowie, Debi Mazar, Ebet Roberts, Fab 5 Freddy Brathwaite, Feral House, Joey Arias, Judy Nylon, Kate Simon, Klaus Nomi, Maripol, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Rhonda Paster Corte, Richard Boch, Richard Sohl, Saturday Night Live, The Mudd Club, Vicki Pedersen

“It’s like reconstructing the debris of old pop paraphernalia… what’s exciting about it is that you no longer need to buy guitars. You can choose a friend up the road, put your decks together with a beatbox and make your own records, demoralising [sic] the pop myth and beginning to find a way of using material yourself .”

On November 19 1982, the UK’s national weekly youth music programme The Tube included a segment marking the occasion when the terms (and concepts of) “scratching”, “break-dancing” and “hip-hop” were introduced to a mass British audience for the first time.

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Tags: Adam & The Ants, Afrika Bambaataa, Bond's, Funkapolitan, Gaz's Rocking Blues, Grandmaster Flash, Jools Holland, Meard Street, Melle Mel, Michael Holman, Nick Jones, Sugarhill Gang, The Clash, The Gargoyle, The Tube, Tom Dixon, Wham, Zulu Nation

//Catalogue cover featuring detail of Tête Cultivée, Nicola L, 1970//

As befits a sorely-missed man of singular style and taste, the catalogue for the forthcoming sale Furniture Pimp: The Collection Of Jim Walrod is an absolute treat.

//Right: Walrod at home photographed by Collin Hughes; Left: works featured in the forthcoming sale//

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Tags: Allessandro Mendini, Budgie, Collin Hughes, Creative Review, Denise Scott Brown, Ettore Sottsass, Fiorucci, Furniture Pimp: The Collection Of Jim Walrod, Ingo Maurer, Jim Walrod, Nicola L., Peter Gee, Robert Venturi, Shimo Kuramata, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Stephen Sprouse, Superstudio, Toland Grinnell, Wright

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Tags: Janette Beckman, Kosmo Vinyl, Sonos

I am again partnering with Sonos for a fresh brace of exhibitions at the home audio specialist’s London and New York stores.

Following the successful Song Stories: David Bowie displays in each outlet, I have organised two shows to mark the recent publication of my book The Story Of The Face. Each has site-tailored exhibits, including original articles and covers from my magazine library, scaled-up enlargements and precious archival material provided by The Face founder, editor and publisher Nick Logan.

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Tags: Annie Lennox, Chloë Sevigny, Greene Street, International Women's Day, Madness, Method Man, Mobb Deep, New York Fashion Week, New York Times, Nick Logan, Peter Ashworth, Seven Dials, Soho, Sonos, Village Voice

//Song Stories: Bowie at Sonos New York City. Photo: Mary Kang//

//Song Stories: Bowie at Sonos New York City. Photo: Mary Kang//

Song Stories: Bowie, the display of photographs I selected to track the late superstar’s relationship with the city of his adoption, is at the Sonos store in New York’s Soho until January 7.

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Tags: Andy Warhol, Booth Theatre, Devo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jim Walrod, Kevin Mazur, Mark Mothersbaugh, Marty Lederhandler, Mary Kang, Masayoshi Sukita, Meredith Graves, Mick Rock, Mötley Crüe, MTV News, Nikki Sixx, Perfect Pussy, Radio City Music Hall, Song Stories: Bowie, Sonos

//Jim Walrod, 2012. Photo: Jeremy Liebman//

I said many times to Jim – and have reflected on this over the last few days – that not many people get to pursue their passion every day of their adult lives. Jim did that. He never went to ‘work’. He did not care if he made money doing it, he just wanted to be able to have you understand what he saw and to have your opinion on it.
Kathy Walrod

Jim Walrod, who has died aged 56, occupied a unique position in the world of international design.

A collector, curator, writer and sometime retailer, as well as an interior designer and locator of unusual and one-off furniture and lighting pieces for a diverse selection of celebrity and private clients, the rangy, sandy-haired Walrod cut a singular figure.

Enthusiastic, informed and slyly humorous, Walrod was founder with Jack Feldman and Fred Schneider of the B-52s of New York’s important 90s/00s store Form & Function and described as “the ultimate design raconteur” by hotelier André Balazs.

To Mike D of the Beastie Boys he was “the furniture pimp”, an accolade won in part for having sourced Memphis designs for David Bowie (Jim revealed to me just a few weeks ago that some of these Italian PoMo pieces came via Tommy Roberts, subject of my book Mr Freedom).

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Tags: #fucktrump, André Balazs, Ang Lee, Apartamento, B-52s, Beastie Boys, Dear Ivanka, Emilie Hawtin, Fiorucci, Form & Function, Fred Schneider, I Knew Jim Knew, Jim Walrod, Kathy Walrod, Mel Ottenberg, Memphis, MIke D, Richard hell, The Ice Storm, Tom Sachs