Paul Gorman is…

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band: I’ll be in conversation with Harriet Vyner + David Stephenson at Gazelli Art House on February 5

Jan 21st, 2019
Swingeing London, Richard Hamilton, 1968. Etching and aquatint with embossing, 54 x 74cm © Richard Hamilton. Courtesy Gazelli Art House.

On February 5 I’ll be taking part in a conversation about the significance of the late art dealer Robert Fraser at Gazelli Art House, the London gallery currently hosting Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band, the exhibition of works by 13 of the cutting edge artists he represented between the 1960s and 1980s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band: Exhibition and limited edition double album in the New Year

Dec 8th, 2018

Next month British artists David Stephenson and Josh Stapleton’s music project Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band releases a limited edition double vinyl album to coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the same name at London gallery Gazelli Art House.

The show, curated by Stephenson and Gazelli’s Mila Askarova, celebrates the life and work of the art dealer Robert Fraser, the “Groovy Bob” of pop culture legend who represented cutting edge artists from the 1960s to the 80s.

Housed in a handsome gatefold sleeve designed by the great British artist Derek Boshier, the limited edition record features tracks dedicated not just to Fraser but also the constellation of artists in his firmament, including Boshier himself (on the track An Englishman in LA), Jean-Michel Basquiat (Samo), Brian Clarke (Dangerous Visions Of Brian Clark), Keith Haring (Keith Haring’s Pop Shop) and Ed Ruscha (I Want To Hang Out With Ed Ruscha).

Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band is available from January 10 from Gazelli Art House. Order copies here

The exhibition runs from January 11 to February 23, 2019. Details here.

Harriet Vyner’s must-read biography of Fraser is available here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The story of the Sex shop leather hood: From harmless fetish attire (as sported by David Bowie?) to theatre of cruelty design totem

Jul 14th, 2015

Gorman_03.tifDavid Bowie in Sex Gimp Mask 1974 copy
//Left: Detail of photo of model posing in leather Sex hood, autumn 1974. Photo: © David Parkinson. Right: David Bowie in leather hood, summer 1974, Sherry Netherland Hotel, New York. Photo: Dana Gillespie//

My recent post about David Bowie’s visits in 1974 to 430 King’s Road when it was in its Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die incarnation prompted Facebook friend and DJ Graham “Sugarlump” Evans to alert me to Polaroid photographs of David Bowie trying out make-up, hair and styling options in preparation for his Diamond Dogs tour of the US that year.

David Bowie in Sex Gimp Mask 1974

// Polaroid taken by Dana Gillespie in New York in 1974//

In one, as Evans points out, Bowie posed in a leather hood of similar style to the model sold at 430 as it was transformed over a period of six months from TFTL to fetish emporium Sex.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back in Duke Street: Derek Boshier at Robert Fraser Gallery 1965 + Whitford Art Gallery 2015

Mar 5th, 2015

Boshier_inside

//Detail from 1965 showcard: Derek Boshier and 1965 works. Photo: Annette Green//

Boshier_front and back

//Card for Boshier’s show at the Fraser Gallery, March 30 – May 1, 1965. Design: David Cripps. Courtesy: Pace London//

Thanks to Pace London for providing scans of the showcard for Derek Boshier’s spring 1965 exhibition at Robert Fraser Gallery in Mayfair’s Duke Street.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A Strong Sweet Smell Of Incense: Derek Boshier at the Robert Fraser show

Feb 16th, 2015

IMG_4337

//Sam Spade, Derek Boshier, 1966, on the back wall of this recreation of the office at Robert Fraser Gallery, Duke Street, London W1//

Derek Boshier’s 1966 work Sam Spade is given prominence in A Strong Sweet Smell Of Incense, the exhibition dedicated to the connoisseurship of the late art dealer Robert Fraser.

Boshier was a client until he foreswore painting for a decade or more in 1968. This was a particularly difficult period for Fraser, who was jailed over the infamous Redlands drug bust at Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ house the previous year.

Scan copy

//From Pace’s exhibition guide. The work in the background looks to be another of Boshier’s from the Sam Spade period//

Boshier has recounted how he became so frustrated over Fraser’s unwillingness to pass on payments in the 60s that he and his friend, the poet Christopher Logue, once broke into the Duke Street gallery and retrieved works Fraser had refused to release in lieu.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Return Of The Saint: Cameo by The Saints at The Marquee and Shinny in Seditionaries

Dec 3rd, 2014

saints2

//Shinobu Kanai aka “Shinny” in a Seditionaries top in Episode 9 of the first series of The Return Of The Saint, broadcast November 1978?//

lonely

//Kanai  in The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, 1980//

80654-9494

// As “Japanese Woman” in the opening sequence of Insignificance, 1985//

Currently doing the rounds of the punk groups on various social networking sites is this clip from the cheesy 70s revival of classic 60s British television series The Saint.

Entitled The Arrangement, episode nine of The Return Of The Saint was broadcast on November 5, 1978 and starred such UK TV drama stalwarts as Carolyn Seymour, seen here looking glam in a car in Soho’s Wardour Street outside The Marquee where the great Aussie band The Saints are crashing through Swing For The Crime from their Eternally Yours album.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Anita Pallenberg: 1967 and all that

Jan 27th, 2011

//Anita Pallenberg + film-maker Harmony Korine, 2008. Photo: Eva Vermandel.//

A couple of years back I interviewed Anita Pallenberg – who celebrated her birthday yesterday – for Mojo magazine.

The subject was the scene in and around the King’s Road in 1967. Crisp and funny, Pallenberg was just as buzzed about the present;  visiting Karl Lagerfeld in Paris the next day, her interests in gardening and photography, the bargains to be found in charity shops and the notion of a collection based on the MA show from her studies at Saint Martins in the 90s.

A few months later, with her friend Anna Sui, Pallenberg participated in a rock & roll event I organised at the Port Eliot LitFest; after the show it was an honour to give her a vintage Vive Le Rock tee, which, of course, she wore with her trademark élan.

Here’s a refreshed and re-edited chance to appreciate this bewitching figure whose combination of innate style, fashion-savviness and earthy sexuality brought Continental sophistication to Swinging London and turned it on its head:

Gawky gamins and dolly-birds melted into insignificance in the presence of the impressive 21-year-old who arrived in London in 1965 having already studied graphic design in her native Rome, assisted Vogue photographer Gianni Penati and modelled in Paris.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,