When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

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Tags: Alan Lewis, Andy Warhol, Anton Corbijn, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Barbara Ellen, Bob Geldof, Caitlin Moran, Cameron Crowe, Carl Gayle, Caroline Coon, Chelsea Clinton, Chrissie Hynde, Corinne Day, Danny Baker, Darby Romeo, David Salzman, Erica Smith, Grace Jones, Harry Styles, Jann Wenner, Jason Donovan, Julie Burchill, Kate Moss, Kerin Morayata, Lawrence Wright, Mat Snow, Max Jones, Micahel Winner, Miranda Sawyer, Neil Tennant, neville Brody, NIck Cave, Quincy Jones, Roisin Murphy, Stevie Wonder, Time Inc, Truman Capote, Tupac SHakur

I’ll be joining contemporary music magazines including Disco Pogo and Ambit Pop at a celebration of the music press then and now at London’s premier magazine outlet Magculture a week on Thursday (October 27).

Magculture currently stocks a dozen music magazines, so is the appropriate place to talk about the past, the present and the future of the media sector which has spawned so many exciting publications as well as writers, designers, photographers and editors.

Starting at 6.30pm, I’ll be discussing the themes raised in my book Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press with magCulture’s Jeremy Leslie,and then we’ll be joined by editors including Paul Benney of Disco Pogo (and also co-founder of 90s mag Jockey Slut) and Kirsty Allison of Ambit + Ambit Pop.

Details and tickets for the event are available here.

Tags: Ambit, Ambit Pop, Disco Pogo, Jockey Slut, Kirsty Allison, Magculture, Paul Benney, Sam Ford, So Young

I’m really jazzed about getting my hands on the first finished copy of Totally Wired, my history of the music press which is published by Thames & Hudson this autumn.

Designer Daniel Streat has done wonders with the day-the-world-turned-dayglo jacket concept and my choice of cover star Poly Styrene.

There are 60 or so illustrations, all magazines from my archive. The diversity reflects the content of the book, which covers the usual suspects – NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone – but will hopefully turn readers onto the unexpected and surprising, from Black Music and Collusion to WET, Ben Is Dead and Girlfrenzy.

Totally Wired is published in the UK and elsewhere on September 22 and in North America on November 29. It is available to order now from all good booksellers as well as my Bookshop page at uk.bookshop.org/shop/paulgorman or by clicking on this panel:

Tags: Ben Is Dead, Black Music, Collusion, Daniel Streat, Girlfrenzy, Melody Maker, NME, Rolling Stone, Thames & Hudson, WET

What with Pistol and all, it seems timely to discuss Malcolm McLaren’s place in the scheme of things so tonight journalist Helen Barrett and I will be in conversation at a London Society event about the late cultural iconoclast’s relationship with the city of his birth. Here is a selection of visuals from this evening’s presentation.

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Tags: Abraham Corre, Andrew Edmunds, bar mitzvah, Channel 4, Cumberland Hotel, Fora, Helen Barrett, Mayor Of London, Rozetta Corre, Selfridges, Sex Pistols, Solomon Corre, The Ghosts of Oxford Street

//Subscribe exhibition ident//

//Artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (right) featured in The Uniform Backlash, The i-D Bible Part 2, 1989. Photography Daniel Kohlbacher, styling Simon Foxton. Paul Gorman Archive//

Beginning in the early 1970s—as under-represented groups were demanding new forms of visibility following the emergence of political movements such as Black Power and the Stonewall Rebellion—a handful of British and American photo-driven alternative magazines came on the scene.

The Face, i-D, Rags, Out/Look, and other new publications amplified marginalized voices, especially those of queer makers and makers of colour, and made room for those makers to question who and what was accepted as mainstream. These publications introduced a hybrid model within the magazine industry: combining the high production standards and engagement with fashion of “powerhouse” publications such as Vogue and Life with the use of collage in zines and the text/image provocations of underground newspapers. In the end, these alternative magazines transformed their industry.

From the introduction to Subscribe.

Two years ago, just as the enormity of the pandemic was emerging, I met American curators Solveig Nelson and Michal Raz-Russo in London to discuss making a contribution to an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago about the significance of alternative magazines to Western culture.

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Tags: After Dark, Andy Warhol, Art Institute of Chicago, Ben Is Dead, Boulevard, Daniel Kohlbacher, Deluxe, Ed Ruscha, Gordon Parks, i-D, International Times, LA Riots, Michal Raz-Russo, Peter Blake, Simon Foxton, Solveig Nelson, Somerset House, Steve McQueen, Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines 1970-1995, WET

//Fax of treatment sent by Malcolm McLaren to Neal Purvis and Robert Wade on January 9, 1991//

These faded pages constitute a film pitch Malcolm McLaren sent by fax to screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade way back in 1991.

//The first page of the fax shows that this treatment was completed a couple of weeks before it was sent, on December 20, 1990//

//From my transcription of the now-very faded fax//

Purvis and Wade are responsible for many  film successes including the astounding run of screenplays for the seven James Bond movies from 1999’s The World Is Not Enough to the recently released No Time To Die. I’ve known them for a  while and Neal has mentioned their contact with McLaren during preparations for their first feature Let Him Have It, so made sure it was covered  in the hardback edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren.

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Tags: Impressions of America, James Bond, Leadville, Let Him Have It, Neal Purvis, No Time To Die, Oscar Wilde, Robert Wade, Screen International, Skyfall, The World Is Not Enough, Too Too Utterly

Among the many things the world doesn’t need now is another book of record covers, but DB Burkeman’s Art Sleeves, which is published today by Rizzoli, is something else entirely.

For once the publisher’s blurb is spot-on; this is “a tightly curated exploration” of record covers which challenge the distinctions between art and design, between object and product.

This means that there are many surprises in the book, and a minimum of the usual suspects.

Art Sleeves also contains a bonus in a series of artist spotlights and conversations featuring such exponents as Christian Marclay, INVADER, Ryan McGinley, Genieve Figgis  and Marilyn Minter.

And Barney Bubbles receives a mention as DB’s “personal design hero” in the introduction.

I recommend Art Sleeves highly. Order your copy here and follow Art Sleeves on Instagram here.

Tags: Art Sleeves, Christian Marclay, DB Burkeman, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, Genieve Figgis, Invader, Marilyn Minter, Richard Prince, Rizzoli, Ryan McGinley

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.

Tags: Angelo Flaccavento, Eugene Rabkin, Jian Deleon, Sabrina Tanzi, Simon Foxton, Stone Island, StyleZeitgeist

//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.

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Tags: Pam Hogg, Pippa Brooks, The Standard Library, virtual book launch

“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.

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Tags: Chrissie Hynde, Constable, Dave Vanian, David Harrison, John Lydon, Masters Of The Backside, Rat Scabies, Sean O'Hagan, Sex Pistols, Sunday Times, The Observer, Victoria Segal