//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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Moore, Amanda Harlech, Andrea Linz, Arena Homme +, CBS Theatrical Films, Drew Vickers, Fashion Beast, Heavy Metal Surf Nazis, John Galliano, Lauren Hutton, Paul Frecker, Simon Withers, St Mark's Comics, St Mark's Place, Tom Guinness

In October 1974 Malcolm McLaren conjured an unusual group name for four young musicians who congregated at his shop at 430 King’s Road.

//The group name as it appeared on the ‘right’ side of the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt//

At the time the transition from the premises’ previous incarnation as Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die to Sex was nearing completion; in fact the teenagers Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock (who was also a sales assistant on Saturdays) and Wally Nightingale assisted McLaren in applying the finishing touch with the erection of the pink vinyl shop sign constructed at his direction by carpenter Vic Mead.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Moore, Archie Shepp, Bernard Rhodes, Bob Marley, Bryan Ferry, Continental Keyholes, Continental Kuties, Eddie Cochran, Gerry Goldstein, Glen Matlock, Iggy Pop, James Brown, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, King Tubby’s Sound System, Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, Lou Stoppard, Marianne Faithfull, New Musical Express, Nick Kent, Paul Cook, QT, Sam Cooke, Steve Jones, Vic mead, Wally Nightingale

//T-shirt from the first run produced by Malcolm McLaren in March 1976. Photo courtesy Bonhams//

“This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I wanted to create something of a stir”
Malcolm McLaren, 2005

An extremely rare and controversial T-shirt from the first run produced by Malcolm McLaren in the early spring of 1976 for the new group he managed, the Sex Pistols, is up for sale tomorrow at London auctioneers Bonhams.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Moore, Babalu, Bernard Rhodes, Bonhams, Don Busby, El Paradise, Finchley Road, Glen Matlock, Jordan Mooney, Lou Stoppard, Lynn Procter, Sex Pistols, Smoking Boy, Ted Polhemus, The Clash

Described by Alan Moore as William Blake’s “fellow impoverished south London angel-headed nut-job”, Austin Osman Spare has slowly but steadily ascended from obscurity since the critic Mario Amaya‘s mid-60s declaration that Spare was responsible for “the first examples of Pop art in this country”.`

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Moore, Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant, Mario Amaya, Ossian Brown, Steffi Grant, Strange Attractor, William Blake