Paul Gorman is…

My playlist for the Fandangoe Discoteca opening at Canary Wharf next week

Jul 18th, 2023

//Annie Frost Nicholson with the Fandangoe Discoteca. Pic courtesy of anniefrostnicholson.com//

Next week sees the opening at London’s Canary Wharf of artist Annie Frost Nicholson’s Fandangoe Discoteca, the mini-disco installation where we can shake out our grief and help maintain daily mental health – the programme covers all intersections of grief from bereavement to climate angst to political rage to break-ups.

The design of the kiosk was inspired by De Stijl and Ettore Sottsass and holds up to eight dancers at a time.

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Totally Wired: Female music writers kicking against the pricks

Jun 27th, 2023

//Ellen Willis, c. 1970. Photograph: Ellen Willis’s family//

One of the narrative threads of my book Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press – which is published in paperback next week – traces the ways in which women writers have been forced to fight long and hard against white male dominance of the field.

//Gloria Stavers photographs Jim Morrison 1967. Photographer: Unknown//

This process was kicked off in the 1950s by Gloria Stavers, who transformed the US teen scene as editor and photographer at the huge-selling 16 magazine and went on to champion the likes of the Beatles and others in the 60s on her own terms: while she recognised the charisma of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, she was also his equal and lover.

//Lillian Roxon, mid-1960s. Photo by unknown, Fairfax Archives//

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Oh Bondage! Up Yours! My piece in the latest issue of MacGuffin

Aug 19th, 2022

//The opening spread of my piece, with images from In The Gutter. Left: Pleasant Gehman, right: Caroline Coon//

//The new issue of MacGuffin//

I’ve returned to the excellent MacGuffin magazine with a piece in their latest issue, which adopts the theme ‘The Chain’.

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All my yesterdays: King’s Road pub The Roebuck and key Barney Bubbles designs recreated on our doorstep

May 21st, 2021

//Outside my local “The Roebuck” in London SE1 yesterday//

//Barney Bubbles’ 1966 designs for Woodpecker and Strongbow ciders feature on the bus being used in filming//

This is freaky. Our local has been transformed into the King’s Road pub The Roebuck for the filming of Danny Boyle’s forthcoming FX series Pistol, based on guitarist Steve Jones’s memoir Lonely Boy.

The thing is I knew the Roebuck very well; it is in fact the place where I first met Malcolm McLaren, at the age of 15 in 1975. By happenstance I was drinking in the pub with an older brother the night McLaren recruited John Lydon  to the Sex Pistols.

//The Roebuck in the late 70s. Photo by Barry Beattie/ANL/Shutterstock (5823647a)//

At The Roebuck I came across such individuals as the gangster John Bindon and his well-born paramour Vicki Hodge and the male model David “Piggy” Worth. One night we spotted the infamous art dealer Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser with some ne’er-do-wells. It was that sort of place.

//The Roebuck was a couple of minutes’ walk east of 430 King’s Road where the Mini driven by Vivienne Westwood, Steve Jones and others could often be seen. This recreation even includes balls of mohair wall in the back//

I returned there over the following years, particularly after I moved to neighbouring Kensington in 1977 – it was a 15-minute walk away. By that time Punk was shifting overground and the upstairs snooker room was the scene of much nefarious activity.

A wild twist is that pioneering 60s designs by the late graphic genius Barney Bubbles have been recreated as period adverts on a bus which is being used for filming.

The conjunction of two of the subjects of my books with a fondly remembered venue 20 yards from where I live is kind of wild.

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When Steve McQueen modelled for i-D

Apr 1st, 2020

 

A few years back over dinner in New York when I was working on The Story of The Face, the British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen mentioned that he (“well, it was mainly my back and my arse”) had appeared in an i-D fashion shoot when he was a student.
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Rocketman: Mr Freedom, Tommy Roberts and Jim O’Connor’s winged boots

Jun 14th, 2019


//Above Taron Egerton as Elton John and Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin meet “Tommy Roberts” in Rocketman. Stills from Kii Arens promo video for Egerton and John’s new single (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again//

//The pair of Mr Freedom winged boots acquired by Cecil Beaton for the V&A 1971 exhibition: Fashion: An Anthology//

During the production of Elton John biopic Rocketman there were plans for a scene set in London’s groundbreaking pop-art boutique Mr Freedom in the early 70s.

This was to set up the central character’s visual transformation during visits to the store under the influence of its charismatic founder and frontman, the late, lamented Tommy Roberts.

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‘Cheap bottle red wine (£1.20p)’: Life on the margins in Marble Arch in 1978 with Pat Booth, Roddy Llewellyn and Joe Strummer

Jun 13th, 2019

//Shopping list/instructions written for me by my employer in 1978. Advance was the dry cleaners in Edgware Road. I’m not now sure about Stanton Freres; was it the local off-licence?//

I left school and home when I was 17 and, on the dole in 1978, supplemented my income working for a woman in her late 30s whose sugar daddy had put her up in a flat in a mansion block off Edgware Road. He rarely visited, and in fact died while I was in her employ. The family forbade her from attending the funeral and I realise now her tenancy was likely quite shaky.

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The Story Of The Face x NYC at Sonos in SoHo

Jan 9th, 2018

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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Exciting David Bowie x London photographic display + map to celebrate the opening of Sonos in Seven Dials

Nov 15th, 2017

I have organised a photographic display and a map celebrating David Bowie’s relationship with the city of his birth to mark the opening of the first European outlet of home sound system specialists Sonos.

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Champs, chumps + charlatans: No time like the present for John Claridge’s Soho Faces

Apr 25th, 2017

“I started taking portraits of people at The French House in the 70s when I took a picture of Gaston Berlemont. Then, while taking Spike Milligan’s portrait, we got to talking about Soho. At the time, I was living in Frith St, so Ronnie Scott’s and The French were both very familiar to us and, even then, both of us voiced our sadness at changes we saw – lovely delicatessens, independent restaurants and specialists shops closing down, all of which had been there for years.

“In 2004, I decided to document the customers at The French in earnest. For me, it was the one place in Soho that still held its Bohemian character, where people truly chose to share time and conversation, and I became aware that many I had once chinked glasses with were no longer around.

“These portraits of the regulars are a cross-section of those who sat for me, but there is no rhyme or reason to my selection.”

John Claridge, 2017

There is no time like the present for a project documenting the champs, chumps and charlatans* who have imbued Soho with its gamey character over the decades; dreaded “gentrification” in the form of drastic changes being wrought by property developers is steadily defanging the central London area.

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