Paul Gorman is…

Lunch with Messrs Hell + Riviera

Feb 10th, 2014
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//Richard Hell + Jake Riviera, outside the Chelsea Arts Club, London, Feb 2014//

I’ve had few, if any, lunches as enjoyable as last week’s hook-up with Richard Hell and Jake Riviera for a piece I am writing for GQ magazine.

Richard and Jake first met outside CBGB in March 1976, having been introduced by photographer Roberta Bayley, who was working the club door that night.

With Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux, Jake had witnessed Richard in performance the night before with Johnny Thunders in the first – and soon to disintegrate – line-up of the Heartbreakers at Max’s Kansas City.

We dined less than half a mile away from Chelsea embankment, where Richard and the rest of his next band the Void-Oids spent a pretty miserable-sounding sojourn on a leaky boat when in the UK on tour with The Clash in 1978.

As Richard recounts in his fabulous memoir I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, he and Jake have shared a series of adventures over the years, some of which I will be covering in my GQ feature which should be out in the summer.

I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp is out in paperback this week; buy here.

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Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-Entry – assembling the materials for long overdue monograph

Feb 5th, 2014
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//Exhibition cards and private view invitations, 1973 to date//

I’m assembling materials for Rethink/Re-Entry, the long-overdue monograph of the great British artist Derek Boshier I am currently editing.

The book takes its title from the early Boshier painting which inspired rock’s ultimate art-directed star Bryan Ferry to choose the name Remake/Remodel for the first track on Roxy Music’s game-changing debut LP.

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//Rethink/Re-entry, oil on canvas, 1962//

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Junior Murvin: Memories

Dec 4th, 2013
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//My copy of the Tedious/Memories 12in//

Junior Murvin – who has died aged 67 – will forever be associated with the rebel cool of his 1976 Lee Perry-produced single Police & Thieves. Yesterday morning’s BBC Radio 4’s Today news programme displayed it’s trademark ham-fisted approach to pop culture when eagerly proclaiming the song his shining achievement by managing to misname Paul Simonon “Mick Jones” in an interview introduction and rushing to gush unconvincingly over an excerpt of The Clash’s version.

Personally, I favour another Lee Perry collaboration from the same period, the epic single B-side Memories.

I bought the UK 12inch mix on a shopping spree in a record shop tucked away in an Earl’s Court side street one late afternoon in 1977 on the recommendation of the shop assistant.

At 8mins 45secs, Memories is not only a sonic adventure to match the very best of 70s dub, but also a sweet, romantic song, the yearning, regretful theme over Perry’s bubbling cauldron of rhythms perfectly matched to Murvin’s falsetto whoop (I found Police & Thieves too preaching, which I guess is why it made sense for The Clash – always complaining about being told what to do, they tended towards dictating to their audience).

The flip, Tedious, is pretty good, as were other Black Ark explorations such as Closer Together, but nothing in my view in Murvin’s body of work touches the tenderness of Memories.

Remember him this way:

 

 

 

 

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Sunglasses Ron in rocking rabble-rousing mode at The Rainbow 1977

Jun 26th, 2013

//"Sunglasses Ron" Fahey, top right, leads the applause onstage at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park, London, spring 1977. Photo: Neal Purvis//

The photograph above – taken by a friend, Neal Purvis – captures one of the leading lights of London’s Ted scene at the height of his rabble-rousing powers.

Here is “Sunglasses Ron” Fahey taking to the stage of north London venue The Rainbow during The Sun Sound Show, which ran on the nights of April 30 and May 1 1977 and featured rockabilly giants Charlie Feathers, Buddy Knox, Jack Scott and Warren Smith.

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Chrissie Hynde + Kate Simon in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols Smoking Boy T-shirts

May 6th, 2013

//Photographer Kate Simon and performer Chrissie Hynde (lifting the front of her mohair jumper from Sex), London, 1976. (c) Joe Stevens//

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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Is Saitch Yer Daddy: Collages by Kosmo Vinyl

Mar 13th, 2013

//Vinyl with The Clash, 1981.Photo: Bob Gruen //


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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Derek Boshier: David Bowie + The Clash at Pallant House this summer

May 2nd, 2012

//Sketches for Lodger gatefold cover, 1979.//

//Front, Clash 2nd Songbook, Music Sales Ltd, 1978. 12" x 9", 60pp (inc covers).//

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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Derek Boshier at Chelsea College Of Art

Jan 19th, 2012

//Boshier (right) with Hockney at the Royal College of Art, early 60s.//

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

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Derek Boshier: From Doris To Chemical Cowboys, Chelsea College Of Art January 18

Jan 5th, 2012
Pauline's Gone Digital (for Pauline Boty), Derek Boshier,  2011.

Pauline's Gone Digital (for Pauline Boty), Derek Boshier, 2011. Diptych, 5' x 10'. Acrylic on canvas from the series Paris Texas, Paris France, Paris Hilton.

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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Derek Boshier In The ’70s

Apr 5th, 2011

//Detail, Lodger, David Bowie, 1979. Album sleeve design Boshier/Bowie/Duffy.//

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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