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.
//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.
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//
//Clockwise from top left: @vieux.wave, @pippabrooks, @luxoramor, Nick Vivian, @ladyacss, @chrissalewicz//
//Clockwise from top left: @belmaczmayfair, mr + mrs @adamskiofficial, @joebrookks, @pippabrooks, @ourmanincairo, @mrsgorman//
We have to take our pleasures where we can during these grim times, and last night’s virtual book launch of my Malcolm McLaren biography provided a much-needed tonic.
The plan was to celebrate the publication with a party at the library bar of London’s hotel The Standard, with a relaxed congregation of friends and contributors and DJ sets by Pippa Brooks and Pam Hogg.
“With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock’n’roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas”
Victoria Segal reviewing The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren in the Sunday Times, April 5, 202
The first reviews of my Malcolm McLaren biography are carried today by Britain’s Sunday Times Culture section and in The New Review magazine of it’s broadsheet rival The Observer.
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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“Within the slippery divides between disciplines and media – fashion, art, music, interiors, commerce – one finds Malcolm McLaren, roaming and creating.”
Lou Stoppard in her essay in The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren
Disruption to the publication of a book is extremely small beer at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has set the world in disarray, so I’m sanguine about the postponement of several events and signings which were due to occur around the publication of my biography The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren.
//The back of the book jacket features this 1976 portrait by photographer Joe Stevens//
//Flyer for Ludus performance at Cabaret Futura, London, 1981//
//One of two hand-painted t-shirts given to the author, depicting him and Linder’s sister Nettie in a lover’s embrace in 1983. No reproduction without permission//
On the eve of the opening of Linderism, a new exhibition by the great contemporary artist Linder, I’m publishing a guest post by a follower of this blog who, like many, was introduced to her work via the sleeve artwork for Buzzcocks’ 1977 single Orgasm Addict.
“To me, it was punk for the eyes rather than the ears,” writes the contributor, who has asked for anonymity and was a 17-year-old school-leaver living in south London at the time.
He went on to forge a connection with Linder by following her post-punk group Ludus and encountered many in her circle, including the pre-Smiths Steven Morrissey.
Here he tells his story and shows a selection of the artworks Linder gave him:
The message I received from the Orgasm Addict sleeve was: “Think A.N.Other way. See it as it is”. A few months later I purchased The Secret Public, Linder’s print collaboration with Jon Savage. Again I’d never seen anything like it, hardcore pornographic imagery redirected into a cocktail of consumerist lust.
//Back page of The Secret Public, Linder + Jon Savage, 1978//
// In George Cox creepers: Malcolm McLaren, 430 King’s Road, January 1972. Photo: David Parkinson / Slowthai, Northampton, 2018. Photo: Ewen Spencer for Arena Homme + //
“Those blue suede shoes had a magical association that seemed authentic. They represented an age of desperate romantic revolt to change your life.”
Malcolm McLaren, notes on his life in fashion, 1997
I’m celebrating the 70th anniversary of the introduction of George Cox & Co’s first creeper at the Port Eliot Festival next week with Adam Waterfield, the fourth generation owner of the great independent British brand, and his son Alistair, a Central Saint Martins student and model who is very much involved in the family business.
| 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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