This photograph – taken by Joe Stevens in early 1976 in Fulham, west London – is featured in the exhibition Just Chaos!, which opens tomorrow (May 7) at Marc Jacobs’ Bleecker Street NYC bookstore BookMarc.

The T-shirts worn by Simon and Hynde were among the first variants of a limited edition designed by Malcolm McLaren to promote the newly formed Sex Pistols. A few were also sold in Sex, the environmental installation/shop operated by McLaren with Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in World’s End, Chelsea.

“Malcolm dropped the shirts off at my Finborough Road studio; they were freshly silk-screened from a limited edition,” says Stevens, then working for the NME and living with Simon (who was employed by rival music paper Sounds). “Chrissie was living in a squat and cleaning offices for a living. She’d drop by the pad to take showers. I’d hear her singing in there and realised she had a wonderful voice.”

McLaren produced the designs with the express aim of promoting the new group. “This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt,” he told me in 2006. “I wanted to create something of a stir.”

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Tags: bernie Rhodes, Bleecker Street, Bob Gruen, BookMarc, Boys Express, Chrissie Hynde, Fulham, Glen Matlock, Godlis, Hans Herbert Hubermahl, Joe Stevens, Kate Simon, Lee Black Childers, Marc Jacobs, SEX, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Vivienne Westwood

Next month sees the opening of an exhibition of 53 collages tracking the fortunes of West Ham United FC over a season; they are all the product of expat football fan and music industry maverick Kosmo Vinyl.

The show’s title, Is Saitch Yer Daddy, is taken from 60s graffito adorning a wall near West Ham’s home ground. Residency in New York for many years hasn’t dampened the ardour for The Hammers of this figure who played key promotional and managerial roles for Graham Parker, Stiff Records, Ian Dury and The Clash.

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Tags: Bob Gruen, Eb & Flow, Graham Parker, Ian Dury, Is Saitch Yer Daddy, Janette Beckman, Kosmo Vinyl, Stiff Records, The Clash

In the late 60s, New Yorker Joe Stevens made a name for himself as an all-action photographer, covering riots, demonstrations and ant-Vietnam War marches for radical weekly The East Village Other (whose contributors’ list also included Allen Ginsberg, Robert Crumb and Abbie Hoffman).

But Stevens grew restless. “I wanted to do the same thing in London,” says Stevens. “I told my editor I’d probably return in a few weeks. By the time I did 10 years later, the US underground press had vanished.”

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Tags: Charles Shaar Murray, Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers, Chris Salewicz, Danny Baker, Dirty Projectors, Dr Feelgood, Dropkick Murphys, ELP, Frendz, Friends, Hoboken, International Times, Jim Thirlwell, Joe Stevens, Lady Gaga, Lydia Lunch, Nancy Spungen, NME, Oz, Paul Morley, Peter Gabriel, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, The Clash, The Est Village Other, The Jesus and Mary Chain, tUnE-yArDs, Vivienne Westwood, Yes

Artist Derek Boshier’s practice is marked by his engagement with contemporary culture; this has been a consistent aspect of his work since the earliest days of the British Pop movement.

When popular music has invigorated the wider world, Boshier has been present, incorporating Buddy Holly into his painting I Wonder What My Heroes Think Of The Space Race? in Ken Russell’s defining 1962 Monitor piece Pop Goes The Easel, and providing one of the most vivid visual documents of the punk and post-punk era, Clash 2nd Songbook.
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Tags: Arts Council, Bill Haley, Brian Duffy, Caroline Coon, Central St Martin's, David Bowie, Derek Boshier, Hayward Gallery, Ian Dury, Joe Strummer, Let's Dance, Lives, Lodger, Mick Haggerty, Monitor, Pallant House, Pop Goes The Easel, Pretty Things, Serious Moonlight, Texas, The Clash

Here are some iPhone images from last night’s talk by Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art & Design.

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Tags: Chelsea College Of Art & Design, David Bowie, David Hockney, Derek Boshier, The Clash

This month’s arts calendar in London is marked by a rare treat: From Doris To Chemical Cowboys, a talk by the great British artist Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art’s lecture theatre on January 18.

Los Angeles-based Boshier will be discussing recent projects as well as providing insights into earlier achievements, including his part in the Pop Art explosion of the 60s and his Texas work of the 80s.

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Tags: 1973, Allen Jones, Chelsea College Of Art & Design, David Bowie, David Hockney, Hayward Gallery, Ken Russell, Lives, Lodger, Palisades, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Peter Phillips, Pop Goes The Easel, R.B. Kitaj, Ready Steady Go!, Reel, Royal College, The Clash

Derek Boshier In The ’70s is the self-explanatory title of an exhibition of the great man’s work running from this Saturday (April 9) through to May 7 at San Francisco’s Steven Wolf Fine Art.

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Tags: Barney Bubbles, David Bowie, Derek Boshier, Lodger, Pauline Fordham, San Francisco, Steven Wolf, The Clash

NAME: Jeff Dexter

RESIDES: North London

OCCUPATION: Man about town

Trace the progress of popular culture over the last six decades and you’ll find Jeff Dexter at some of its crucial stages of development: demonstrating the twist to modernists at The Lyceum Ballroom and advising the Beatles on which boots to wear in the early 60s; DJing for the noonday underground at Tiles a few years later and then moving into London’s counter-cultural underground as a mainman at Middle Earth and The Roundhouse, where his Implosion nights set the scene for the rise of such friends as Marc Bolan and David Bowie.

There’s Jeff hanging out at Hung On You, booking bands for the first Glastonbury and Isle Of Wight festivals, managing chart-topping America, announcing The Clash at one of their early gigs and DJing for Paul Weller at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire a couple of years back as part of the Island 50 celebrations.

It’s time JD’s National Treasure status was officially confirmed, particularly since he’s answered the Blokes Of Britain questionnaire:

Hi Jeff. What’s the vibe with your look these days?

Eclectic and vintage. I mix anything from the past, from another culture, with the standard look which has been ingrained in me since childhood. I looked at some photos today and realised I’ve been doing this since 1968!

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Tags: Bunny Roger, David Bowie, Implosion, Jeff Dexter, John Steed, Middle Earth, Paul Weller, The Clash, The Lyceum, The Roundhouse, Tiles, Trachten

This portrait of David Bowie was taken by Kate Simon at Olympic recording studios in Barnes, west London, on January 14, 1974.

Simon’s photograph captures a man on the cusp; furiously occupied in the studio, Bowie was tying up loose ends ahead of his departure for America 10 weeks later. He hasn’t lived in Britain since.

Three days before this was taken, Bowie’s production job on Lulu’s version of The Man Who Sold The World was released as a single. Applying himself to finishing Diamond Dogs, Bowie also recorded such eventually unreleased tracks as Take It Right (to become Right, a “plastic soul”  anthem on Young Americans) and a try-out of Bruce Springsteen’s Growin’ Up.

Sessions with vocal trio The Astronettes – including paramour Ava Cherry – had proved inconclusive, though an olive branch recently extended to erstwhile producer Tony Visconti soon bore fruit in the form of renewed collaboration.

A month after the shot was taken, Rebel Rebel was released ahead of the marathon US touring schedule over 1974/5 which marked the severing of business relations with Tony Defries and the faltering of his marriage to Angie.

I wanted to talk to Simon about the stories behind this image and others which deliver an emotional charge yet retain the reportage stance of the cool documentarist.

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Tags: Any Day Now, Bill Brandt, Caroline Coon, Dave Fudger, David Bowie, David Hearn, Diamond Dogs, Disc & Music Echo, Elton John, Gary Glitter, Joe Strummer, Jonh Ingham, Josef Kourdelka, Kate Simon, Kevin Cann, leonard Freed, Mick Jones, Olympic, Paul Simonon, Rod Stewart, Sex Pistols, Sounds, Stomu Yamashta, The Astronettes, The Clash, Tony Defries