Paul Gorman is…

Talking Barney Bubbles in the Los Angeles Review of Books

Jan 25th, 2022

I’m featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books in conversation with the journalist and musician Elizabeth Nelson about the life and times of the late graphic designer Barney Bubbles.

Read the LARB piece here.

Nelson has also recorded a tribute to the late graphic artist with her band The Paranoid Style. The track was released yesterday and is available to stream/download via Bandcamp.

Here’s the song lyric video complete with customised Bubbles artworks:

The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, the third edition of my monograph, is published by Thames & Hudson this summer accompanied by specialist imprint Volume’s limited edition A Box of Bubbles. Order your’s here.

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The Rise & Fall of the Music Press: The brilliance of Black Music, Carl Gayle and Alan Lewis

Jan 20th, 2022

Working on my forthcoming book The Rise & Fall Of The Music Press has brought home to me the brilliance of publications and journalists who have been marginalised in the story of the media sector inaugurated by the launch of The Melody Maker (as it was then known) in 1926.

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Recent journalism: Baggies with attitude for MacGuffin + the colour black in street style for Fred Perry Quarterly

Jun 4th, 2019

//MacGuffin No 7, spring 2019//

//Fred Perry Quarterly Issue 2, Spring 2019//

Here’s a couple of pieces of recently published journalism, one filed for the Netherlands-based biannual MacGuffin, the other for the second issue of Fred Perry Quarterly.

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“As if Vogue was being put together above a kebab shop in the Ball’s Pond Road’: My piece on The Face in Vanity Fair’s The A-List

Nov 24th, 2017

I have written a piece about The Face magazine and Britain in the early 1990s for Vanity Fair’s The A-List.

Read it here.

Copies of my book The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture are available here.

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I’ve picked Shop for i-D’s list of legendary London stores

Nov 9th, 2015

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Asked by i-D’s Stuart Brumfitt to chose a favourite London fashion outlet I plumped for Shop, which was run  by Pippa Brooks and Max Karie for a decade from the mid-90s in Soho’s Brewer Street (I mistakenly referred to it being at number 5 – as you can see in the photo below it was at number 4).

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//Shop in the early 00s. Photo: Pippa Brooks//

Read my reasons and the rest of London’s Legendary Stores – which includes contributions from Nicola Formichetti, Stephen Jones and Mandi Lennard – here.

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À la mod: My piece for The Guardian on the enduring appeal of Mod

Aug 13th, 2015

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From the SS16 menswear collections to the people flocking to Somerset House’s current celebration of The Jam, the aesthetic of “clean living under difficult circumstances” (as summarised by The Who’s first manager, Pete Meaden) is at one with what’s happening now in fashion…

Read the rest of my piece – with quotes from Dylan Jones of GQ/London Collections: Men, Soho tailor Mark Powell and Man About Town’s Ben Reardon – on the enduring appeal of Mod here.

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PRINT @SHOWStudio: Interviewed by Lou Stoppard and shots from my magazine archive

Jul 21st, 2015

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The launch of SHOWStudio’s new series PRINT features an interview with me by editor Lou Stoppard about my magazine archive.

There is also a section dedicated to images from the archive, including front covers, spreads and ads.

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The Spice Girls: My part in their rise and my non-appearance in the Wannabe video

Jun 24th, 2015

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Just when boys with guitars threaten to rule pop life – Damon’s all over Smash Hits, Ash are big in Big! and Liam can’t move for tabloid frenzy – an all-girl, in-your-face pop group have arrived with enough sass to burst their rockist bubble.

From Music Week, April 1996

I see that next week marks the 19th anniversary of the release of Wannabe. Coincidentally I came across this cutting while ferreting around my magazine archive: the first published interview with the Spice Girls, when they launched the promotional campaign for the single and I was a contributing editor at industry publication Music Week.

I remember quite a lot about my encounter with the five of them at Virgin Records hq in Ladbroke Grove, not least that they afforded opportunities for digs at the full-of-itself British rock cabal which had grown out of the damp squib which was Britpop.

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//It wasn’t me. From Wannabe//

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I’m featured in the Almost Famous slot on Rock’s Back Pages

May 1st, 2015

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I’m the featured writer this week in the Almost Famous slot on Rock’s Back Pages, the world’s leading resource of music-related journalism.

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‘Designers + Customisers in 3D’: Electric Colour Company in new issue of GQ Style

Apr 9th, 2015

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Electric Colour Company were intent on enlivening the visual landscape of grey London town by desecrating polite notions of decor and good taste

My feature on the pioneering but sorely undervalued design studio Electric Colour Company appears in the current issue of UK GQ Style.

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