Jocks&Nerds Issue 7, Summer 2013 by Jocks&Nerds Magazine

STYLE HISTORY CULTURE ©

A FREE QUARTERLY

SUMMER 2013

The The Peter Peter Werth Werth N.1 N.1 Project Project features features aa fishmonger, fishmonger,aa puppeteer, puppeteer,aa blogger, blogger,aa barber, barber,aa market market stall stall owner owner and and aa boxer boxer –– proud proud Islingtonians Islingtonians from from local local establishments establishments –– all all wearing wearing Peter Peter Werth Werth clothing. clothing. They They are are the the spirit spirit of of London London N.1. N.1.

STYLE HISTORY CULTURE ©

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 7 Cover star: Tricky photographed by Linus Ricard

Editor-in-Chief & Creative Director Marcus Agerman Ross marcus@jocksandnerds.com Associate Editor Chris Sullivan chris@jocksandnerds.com Editorial Assistant Chris Tang assistant@jocksandnerds.com Designer Colin Christie Sub Editor Julia Newcomb Staff Photographer Ross Trevail ross@jocksandnerds.com Intern Shanice Martin Financial Director Marcus Bayley accounts@jocksandnerds.com Subscriptions assistant@jocksandnerds.com &Communications &Communications offers white label creative solutions from the team behind Jocks&Nerds andcommsagency.com

Contributors Salim Ahmed-Kashmirwala, Benjamin Amure, Savannah Baker, Janette Beckman, Adam Beresford, Sam Christmas, Kingsley Davis, Naz di Nicola, Horst Friedrichs, Marine Gastineau, David Goldman, Nick Griffiths, Lee Vincent Grubb, Kusi Kubi, Tim Hans, Ben Harries, Paolo Hewitt, Adam Howe, Mark Lebon, Marcus Love, Karen Mason, Chris May, Laura Mazza, Gareth McConnell, Cameron McNee, Donald Milne, Luke Moran-Morris, Eric Musgrave, Phil Pegler, Mattias Pettersson, Linus Ricard, Derek Ridgers, Craig Salmon, Matt Squire, Chris Sullivan, Andy Thomas, Gisela Torres, Juan Trujillo Andrades, Paul Vickery, Gavin Watson, Lawrence Watson, Mark Webster, Kasia Wozniak Special thanks to Alisha Alexander at Viva Las Vegas, Nadia Almeida at Goodenough College, Mark Baxter at Mono Media PR, Tahita Bulmer from New Young Pony Club, Billy Grant at TwoPointNine, Stephanie Jones and Kit Arkwright from Great British Racing, Claire Mas, Ben Part at Sideburn magazine, Jon & Tea Pollock, Diptanshu Roy, Anne Skovrider at hummel Correction: Issue 6 Apologies to Jill Furmanovsky for spelling her name wrong Eric Clapton appeared at the Royal Albert Hall with The Yardbirds in 1964 not 1967 as we said in the Baracuta advertorial Jocks&Nerds Magazine, Tack Press Limited, 283 Kingsland Road, London E2 8AS Telephone +44 (0)20 7739 8188 www.jocksandnerds.com www.facebook.com/jocksandnerds Twitter: @jocksandnerds AIM: JocksAndNerds Jocks&Nerds is a free magazine published 4 times a year. Printed by Park Communications Ltd parkcom.co.uk If you would like a copy delivered to your door contact us at assistant@jocksandnerds.com Postage prices UK £5, Europe £10, North America £12, RoW £14 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions expressed in the magazine are that of the respective contributor and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. ©2013 Jocks And Nerds Ltd.

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Ian Bruce, Musician and Artist

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Contents

154–157 BULLETIN: Altamont Apparel

is a skate brand and cultural catalyst

158–165 CINEMA: The Iceman was

6–19 SEEN: Viva Las Vegas is the

78–83 MUSIC: Andrew Weatherall

largest rockabilly festival in the world

is a musician, not a careerist

20–33 NEWS: Things to excite you

84–91 GALLERY: Stratford Skaters

this summer

34–43 PEOPLE: A pride of

refined gentlemen

44–47 DETAIL: Kolkata

Photographs Luke-Moran Morris 48–57 HISTORY: Rowan Bulmer

photographed the 1960s London scene 58–65 PROFILE: Sabre Sales is the

last of the great army surplus stores

66–75 STYLE: Thomas Rudolph Contu

Photographs David Goldman Styling Marcus Love

76–77 BULLETIN: Nutters of Savile

Row × Peter Werth is a collaboration inspired by 1970s style p58

are appropriating an east London shopping mall

92–99 CULTURE: Jon Savage tells

the story of the birth of the teenager 100–115 STYLE: Φισκάρδο

Photographs David Goldman Styling Marcus Love 116–121 COVER STORY: Tricky

is still stirring it up

122–131 CINEMA: Kitchen Sink

Drama brought realism to British cinema in the 1950s 132–139 STYLE: Balls Pond Banditti

a prolific mafia hitman

166–173 STYLE: Jack Woodhouse

Photographs Horst Friedrichs Styling Karen Mason

174–181 SPOTLIGHT: Harlem is trying

to hold onto its roots as it changes 182–185 MUSIC: Little Richard

is still rocking at 80

186–191 STYLE: Goodenough College

Photographs Juan Trujillo Andrades Styling Salim Ahmed Kashmirwala

192–204 FOLIO: NTS Radio. Kempton

Park. Roadblock Thursday

206–207 ICON: Seersucker was

invented in Louisiana to combat the hot summers

Photographs Kasia Wozniak Styling Savannah Baker 140–147 HISTORY: Bill Ray

documented Watts after the riots for Life magazine 148–153 MUSIC: The Stone Roses

were the voice of the baggy generation

p84 p66

SEEN

Viva Las Vegas Photographs Janette Beckman

The Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend is an annual four day music festival and car show which began in 1998. Started by UK promoter and DJ, Tom Ingram, the event has centred 6

around the Orleans Hotel since 2009. Since then, it has grown into the largest event of its kind in the world attracting fans from all over the planet. The four days contain a wealth of activities,

shows and stalls for lovers of all things 1950s and rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll. vivalasvegas.net tompingramproductions.com

Alex, 51, fashion designer, from Hong Kong, China, wears shirt by MNA Rockabilly Chic; vest by Hanes; jeans by Levi’s Ice, 28, photographer, from Hong Kong, China, wears jacket by Lee; overalls by Go West; T-shirt by MNA Rockabilly Chic Describe your style. Rockabilly. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? Great music, cars and styles. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Heaven for Rockabillies. Who’s your style icon? Willy Moon. Who’s your favourite band? Space Cadets. What’s your favourite movie? The School of Rock.

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

The Rumble Cats of Badsville Describe your style. 1950s juvenile deliquent. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? It has the best range of music, cars, booze and tattoos. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Loud. Fast. Wild. Who’s your style icon? Marlon Brando. Who are your favourite bands? Lords of Altamont, Gamblers Mark and Ramblin’ James and the Billy Boppers. What’s your favourite movie? The Wild One.

Vince Rebel Cats, 29, musician, from Mexico City Describe your style. 1950s. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? Everything. Who’s your style icon? Elvis Presley. What’s your favourite movie? Back to the Future.

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

Roy ‘Ryszard’ Rysin, security director, from Bradford, UK, wears cap by Prison Blues Describe your style. Biker rockabilly. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? So much originality. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Really. Groovy. Poovey. Who are your favourite musicians? Hank Williams, Elvis and Johnny Cash.

George Tantardini, 26, custom painter, from California, US, wears T-shirt by Black Kat Kustoms Describe your style. Rockabilly. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? The culture. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Crazy as hell. Who’s your style icon? Johnny Bravo. Who’s your favourite band? Social Distortion. What’s your favourite movie? Two Lane Blacktop.

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

Crepe, 37, car builder, from Ontario, Canada Crow, 37, truck driver, from California, US Describe your style. Greasers. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? Cars. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Cars. Cars. Cars. Who’s your style icon? The Dead Sleds. What’s your favourite movie? The Outsiders.

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

Vicky Tafoya and The Big Beat

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

James Bringham, 28, barber, from California Describe your style. Mid century suburban. What’s so special about Viva Las Vegas? The sights and sounds. Describe Viva Las Vegas in three words. Shoop. Doo. Wop. Who’s your style icon? Cary Grant. Who’s your favourite musician? Artie Shaw. What’s your favourite movie? The Third Man.

SEEN | Viva Las Vegas

The Rockats

NEWS

Black Skulls

A new fashion and lifestyle label born out of a passion for motorbikes and bike culture, Black Skulls was founded by Reino Lehtonen-Riley of The Great Frog and Drew Esqulant. Based in an unassuming garage in Hackney, east London, the pair have been busying themselves creating jackets, T-shirts, accessories, helmets and motorbikes. blackskullslondon.co.uk Photographs Sam Christmas Bikers Drew Esqulant, Stacey Hare and Johnny Morales

NEWS Christian Stadil, Ami James and Daniel Agger

Tattoodo

Tattoodo is a brand new way of accessing tattoo art and craft online. The site has been created by star of TV show Miami Ink, Ami James and chairman of hummel, Christian Stadil. Launched at the Copenhagen Ink Festival in May, Tattoodo allows clients to source the best tattoo artists to create their own desired designs. tattoodo.com Photograph Marine Gastineau

Legends of the Blues

Worn With Love’s Floating Supper Club

Stylist and craft aficionado Emma Freemantle brings an individual dining experience to central London using seasonal and foraged ingredients. A three course meal for a maximum of four guests, Worn With Love’s Floating Supper Club takes place on a canal boat adorned with knick knacks from her global travels and her own creations. For bookings and further information contact emmafreemantle@hotmail.co.uk Photograph Gisela Torres

William Stout’s artwork has appeared in comics, on film, records and public murals and the Legends of the Blues contains 100 illustrated portraits of the most pioneering musicians of the modern era, each accompanied by a short text. The book comes with an exclusive CD with 14 tracks by the likes of Big Joe Williams and Cow Cow Davenport. abramsbooks.co.uk

Masters of the Airwaves. The Rise and Rise of Underground Radio

NEWS

As Seen in Blitz. Fashioning 1980s Style

In the greatest decade of style magazines, there were three great magazines: i-D and The Face are the more well known magazines of the 1980s but Blitz magazine came along with a more fun, creative view of fashion. Iain R Webb was the fashion editor between 1982 and 1987, creating some of the most striking fashion shoots of the era. He has lovingly put together a coffee table book that combines wonderful imagery from the magazine alongside personal accounts from a wealth of contributors and fans. accdistribution.com

Fans of music from reggae and rare groove through to all manner of house will be aware of the crucial part FM radio, both legal, and pirate, played in its development and spread in popularity. Those pioneering years still influence the way we listen to radio today, and have impacted two men who were involved in the early years. Lindsay Wesker and Dave VJ have compiled Masters of the Airwaves, a sumptuous book containing first hand testimonials from many of those involved in the formative years packaged up in the look and size of a 12in single. mastersoftheairwaves.co.uk Words Mark Webster

Eastpak Authentic Returnity collection

Few films capture the youth style of the 1980s better than Back to the Future from 1985. Sneaks, tapered denim jeans and a roomy jeans jacket. And, of course, a rucksack. This season, Eastpak has created an exact replica of the rucksack that Marty McFly (aka Michael J Fox) wore in the film as part of its Authentic Returnity collection which plunders their own archives. eastpak.com Photograph Chris Tang Skateboarder Oli Garnett

This grey is the only thing we do 72%

TotemCreative.com

NEWS

Flip The Script. A Guidebook for Aspiring Vandals and Typographers

New York graphic designer, typographer and art director Christian Acker analyses the art of the graffiti artist’s tag in his book Flip The Script. He methodically looks for typographic styles within this freehand style of wall drawing and has slavishly collected work from all over the US, identifying the differences and commonalities of seemingly disparate work for connections. Alongside almost academic, studies of graffiti typography, the book contains insightful interviews with a wealth of influential artists. gingkopress.com Photograph Janette Beckman

hummel J

The Danish lifestyle sportswear brand hummel prides itself on working on projects that excite them and that often champion lesser supported causes. Currently, it makes the football kits for all the Afghan Premier League and their national women’s team. Through their “Karma” projects, hummel supports a range of socially aware activities around the world. And with the hummel J line, the brand creates a microcollection, conceived in Japan, using high-end technical fabrics and creative designs. hummel.net Photograph Marcus Agerman Ross Sports coach Ken Ferdinandsen

Ace Cafe 75th Anniversary Celebrating its 75th birthday this year, the Ace Cafe is the spiritual home of the original Rockers and, in recent years, it has become a mecca for petrolheads of all persuasions. To mark the occasion, a compilation CD, created with Vee-Tone Records, has been released that captures the energy of those early years. Triumph bikes has also created a limited edition Ace 904S Thruxton Special. ace-cafe-london.com Photograph Chris Tang Mark Wilsmore. Ace Cafe owner

Puma Clydes

“Ironically, I didn’t like New York at first,” says one of the city’s favourite sons, Knicks basketball legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier. “I had a new car. It had dents all over it. I was walking over people. I didn’t know if they were dead or alive. Took a couple of years to get into it.” In 1967 the young Walt came up from Atlanta, Georgia, to Madison Square Garden having been drafted to ply his trade in the NBA. The following year he was named on the All Rookie team alongside one of the era’s great players Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and fellow Knick (later to be mercurial Chicago Bulls coach) Phil Jackson. By 1973, he had acquired the nickname “Clyde”. He explains, “New York people took to my style and gave me the name. I had the wide-brimmed hat and I stole the ball on the court. So it was “Clyde” from the Warren Beatty film Bonnie and Clyde.” And also a US sport first. Ten years before there were Nike Air Jordans, there were Puma Clydes; 40 years old this year. “I was the first guy. But to name a shoe after a player was unprecedented. And they let me tweak them. They were too heavy and like cardboard. I told Puma how I liked them.” Frazier still cuts a dash and can be heard broadcasting for Knicks games in the US. He loves the sport. “Every night I look forward to it. I’m amazed by what I see.” He admits it has changed a lot since his day. “I was a big guard; now I’m a shrimp! People ask, ‘How would the championship Knicks team do against the new guys?’ It would be a mismatch.” puma.com Words and photograph Mark Webster

Norman Rockwell’s Treasury for Fathers by Susan Homer and the Rockwell Estate

Creating some of the most enduring illustrations of the past 100 years, Norman Rockwell’s best remembered works, from the Saturday Evening Post, include “Rosie the Riveter”, his work of the female symbol of defiance and strength during the second world war in the United States It is still commonplace. This book focuses on the subject of fatherhood through his work and pairs them with songs, poetry, short stories and excerpts from novels. abramsbooks.co.uk

Take None. Give None

The Chosen Few motorcycle club was founded in 1959 in California. Initially an all black outfit, they quickly became a multiracial gang with white, Mexican, Indian and other riders. Their diamond “Take None. Give None” was created by 69 Jim, a radical Mexican and has been their mantra ever since. Photographers Gusmano Cesaretti and Kurt Mangum have been filming the club for the past few years to find out what is feels like “to ride with the oldest integrated outlaw motorcycle club in the United States.” takenonegivenone.com 28

NEWS Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s

The 1980s was an experimental time for UK fashion when graduates like John Galliano were creating designs influenced by club culture. Likewise designers such as Betty Jackson and Katharine Hamnett were creating bold patterns and recycling fabrics and firebranding their gear with incendiary political slogans. At this time, clubbers like Leigh Bowery, were creating homemade outfits that appeared more like works of art. The V&A museum will be pinpointing this movement in its forthcoming summer exhibition. vam.ac.uk Photograph The Derek Ridgers Archive

Ray-Ban Tech-LiteForce and Legend Icons

Ray-Ban have been busy updating some classics for this summer. LiteForce, a super lightweight and unbreakable material has been used to create a modern Wayfarer. The classic Clubmaster has also been given a modern hi-tech makeover with a comfortable aluminium in a range of subtle colourways. ray-ban.com Photograph Marcus Agerman Ross Filmmakers Danny and James Worsley from Autobahn madebyautobahn.com

Tootal scarves

Despite being more than 200 years old, Tootal has been the mainstay of dandies and mods since the early 1960s. The brand, famous for paisley and polkadot designed silks scarves, has recently been revitalised after having disappeared from the high street for several years, leading to fans having to track down expensive vintage versions. regencyshirtcompany.co.uk Photograph Chris Tang Mods Tim Fielding and Amy Ireland

Work Not Work

Etablished by stylist Adam Howe and Simon Taylor from design studio Tomato in 2012, Work Not Work is inspired by workwear from an age before denim and early youth street gangs. The duo recently opened their own standalone store in Tokyo. Work Not Work, Kitte Marunouchi JP Tower 1F, 2-7-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo worknotwork.net

NEWS

PEDaLED reflective belts

Cycle-friendly Japanese brand PEDaLED has created a range of neat belts using recycled Brooks England leather, with a stretch fabric containing a reflective strip so that cyclists can be more visible and safe on the road without having to forgo any sartorial choices. pedaled.com Photograph Marcus Agerman Ross

Horse Latitudes

London artist Chris Wilson delivers a punchy tale of his life that takes in his idyllic childhood in Africa before embarking on a life of drug addiction, prison and all around banned behaviour before discovering a new life as and artist. Horse Latitudes brings together a story of ups, downs and turnarounds alongside 16 colour plates of Chrisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings. Sorika is a new publishing house created by renowned photographer Gareth McConnell sorika.com Photograph Gareth McConnell

Some People DVD

Two years before The Leather Boys (1964) showcased the rocker scene that had torn up the roads from the Ace Cafe into the heart of middle England fears, Some People (1962) brought the newly invented youth biker culture onto the big screen. Set in Bristol, it follows the story of three young bikers, including David Hemmings pre Blow-Up, as they attempt to find their own path while the establishment writes them off as leather wearing hoodlums. networkair.com

Filson London store

Seattle outfitters Filson may have been around for more than a century but they recently opened their first store outside of North America. Focusing on field jackets, small leather goods, bags and luggage, the London store will continue the heritage of the brand which has been a favourite of hunters and engineers alike, attracted to the durable and rugged nature of their products. Alongside the new range, heritage fans can also buy archive bags that have been carefully restored. Filson, 9 Newburgh Street, London W1 filson.com Photograph Chris Tang

Sweet Tee and Jazzy Joyce. 1987

Shirt Kings. Pioneers of hip hop style

Described by Grandmaster Melle Mel as the “first hip hop designer”, graffiti artist, Edwin “Phade” Sacasa started developing clothing based on the artwork that he and his crew where more used to painting onto urban walls and trains in the late 1970s. As he explains, “I wanted to expose the world to what we were painting on the trains to another level of understanding without defacing property.” This early work soon exploded into a bona fide business that has influenced just about every street and skate brand since. Shirt Kings brings together some of those eye-popping styles from the 1980s and tells the tale of the first clothing brand to reflect the burgeoning hip hop scene in New York. dokument.org Photograph Janette Beckman

Ronnie Scott’s Late Show Jam sessions

Love Supreme

Since it launched officially in 1990, London-based radio station Jazz FM has been through several changes of sound and style. Its current DJ line up sets a new tone with Peter Young, Robbie Vincent, Jeff Young among others. In July, they’ll be showcasing the station with the Love Supreme festival at Glynde Place in Sussex. New Blue Note star Robert Glasper will be there, and singer Gregory Porter and Texas avant-fusion ensemble Snarky Puppy, while British talent includes Brand New Heavies and Soweto Kinch. Music legends Nile Rodgers and Bryan Ferry are also on the bill, the former with his band Chic, and the latter accompanied by his 1920s jazz-inspired orchestra. lovesupremefestival.com Words Mark Webster Photograph Benjamin Amure

NEWS

Kustom Monster Shirts by Von Franco for Levi’s Vintage Clothing

Following in the footsteps of artists such as Von Dutch and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Von Franco is perhaps the most famous airbrush artist today. Like his predecessors, he is inspired by American custom car culture. Levi’s Vintage Clothing recently commissioned him to create 35 hand painted sweats in recognition of its hot rod inspired collection. levisvintageclothing.com Photograph Horst Friedrichs Driver Brad Car 1950 Ford V8 Pilot

PEOPLE

Austin Vince

Always an adventurer, Vince studied civil engineering at army college thinking it the best route to a life of travel and high jinx, only to find he is a pacifist. He has however retained his love of machinery and travel, seeing him set off around the world on a motorbike. The film he made, Mondo Enduro, was shown on the Discovery Channel and Austin has started his own film festival dedicated to the adventurous travel with his wife, travel writer, Lois Pryce. He also sells a natty collection of reconditioned mechanicsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; overalls. austinvince.com Photograph Chris Tang

Shea Soul and Kid Kasino

To find a young musician from Britain who draws influence from the sounds of Harlem in the 1940s might be seen as surprising. To find two of them must be something of a miracle. But thankfully that has happened, and what’s more they have been brought together through the management company 2point9 music, whose track record has included Jay Sean, Craig David and Mis-Teeq. Kid Kasino considers the generally perceived sedate Eastbourne in Sussex as home. Nevertheless, it is something of a hotbed for musicians, and Kasino – having trained as both a classical and jazz musician – has been working his way out of there, playing guitar, bass and piano. At university, he developed his love of the formative swing sound, which he started to include in parties he’d organise, then on trips to the studio to record dance tracks. Shea Soul, a singer and songwriter from Croydon, has the unmistakable influence of smokey siren singers such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. She has frequently been the vocalist of choice for celebrated dance producers such as Toddla T, Phil Asher, MJ Cole and Joey Negro – the latter also nailed the 1940s vibe with Soul on the tune ‘No Sugar’. So it became perfectly natural for the two to collaborate, most pointedly for anyone who witnessed Soul’s recent solo shows, with Kasino at the piano as her Musical Director. The fruits of Kasino’s studio work can be found on his debut set Slaughter in the Suburbs, while Soul is also set to launch her first album, the Drew Horley-produced Grey Skies & Perfect Fingernails. thisisshea.com soundcloud.com/kid-kasino Photograph Mattias Pettersson Words Mark Webster

John Alfredo Harris

Today, John Alfredo Harris is an in-demand furniture designer whose work graces the interiors of Mayfair tailors’ stores and flies out the door of London department store Liberty. But it hasn’t always been that way for Harris. In fact, his path may be about as non-linear as it can be. His first job was down the mines in Nottingham in the early 1980s following in the footsteps of his father. But a certain Mrs Thatcher soon put pay to that which allowed Harris to pursue an education at the local art school. After college, Harris moved to London where he started a lounge style club in 1987, Violets, with tailor Mark Powell. With the other promoters, Harris next found himself in a jazz band, The Sandals, releasing a couple of albums. When the music career fell by the wayside, a new career opened up working as a fashion stylist in New York. Although into his clobber, Harris says this wasn’t his passion and went back to college to study horticulture, attracted by the outdoor life and nature. This in turn led Harris to his burning passion which he excitedly describes as, “WOOD,” more specifically fashion it into beautiful furniture. jaharris.co.uk Photograph Nick Griffiths

Gary Kennedy

Since graduating with a degree in fine art from St Martin’s College in London in the early 1980s, Gary Kennedy has gone to put his creative skills to use in several areas. To call them careers would undermine the sheer enjoyment Kennedy derives from the opportunities one can find in this world. Having already created a successful publishing company creating his own craft books, Kennedy then moved into the interiors trade, renovating and designing houses. His work has been published in too many books to mention and he has been described thus “Gary Kennedy is to house as Alexander McQueen is to clothes”. He spent the 1990s enjoying life, dividing his time between his treehouse in the Australian rainforest and a hunting lodge in the south of France; both of which required a hardy alertness to all forms of creepy crawlies. Today, Kennedy acts as the agent for designer Mark Brazier-Jones and the artist Calum Colvin. He is also working on a new stop animation programme for children’s television. Home, these days, is a beautiful house in the Cotswolds, Oak House No1, which is also doubles as a guesthouse packed full of delights from Kennedy’s global trekking. oakhouseno1.com Photograph Phil Pegler

PEOPLE Ibrahim Maalouf

Trumpeter Miles Davis shape shifted his way through a galaxy of styles during his 46-year recording career, taking in bop, big band, cool and modal, electric jazzrock and funk, dance music and more. Most musicians, when they find a winning formula, stick with it. Not Davis, “I have to change. It’s like a curse,” he explained. Davis’s diverse legacy continues to fascinate musicians, among them Ibrahim Maalouf. The Paris-based Lebanese trumpeter’s recent performance at London’s Rich Mix was a high-decibel homage to Davis’s 1970s incursions into rock and funk. By contrast, Maalouf ’s latest acoustic album, Wind, was inspired by the mysterious, melancholic soundtrack Davis recorded for Louis Malle’s film L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud (aka Lift to the Scaffold) in 1957. Wind has clear resonances, too, with Davis’s flamenco-flavoured 1960 album, Sketches of Spain. Rather than simply replicate Davis’s work, Maalouf scrolls back to reference flamenco’s North African roots – something he is qualified to do on the quarter-tone, Arabic scale-playing trumpet invented by his father. Standard trumpets have three valves, this has four. Maalouf ’s recording career took off around nine years ago, on Amadou & Mariam’s breakthrough album, Dimanche A Bamako. More changes seem certain. And that’s no curse. ibrahimmaalouf.com Photograph Linus Ricard Words Chris May

Cody Chesnutt

Atlanta-based Cody Chesnutt began his career as that rare thing, a black rock musician. His band Crosswalk, formed in 1997, followed the path blazed by Living Colour, Bad Brains and Arthur Lee’s Love. Hollywood Records pledged $420,000 for Crosswalk’s debut album, then walked away. Chesnutt went solo and recorded the lo-fi double-disc, The Headphone Masterpiece (Ready Set Go), in his bedroom. Twelve years on, you can hear traces of rock in Chesnutt’s music. But his recent album, Landing on a Hundred, is the stylistic descendent of Marvin Gaye’s soul classic What’s Going On (Tamla, 1971). Its sumptuous and, at times, neosymphonic arrangements cradle lyrics that focus on the grimmer aspects of US inner city life: welfare dependency, under-funded schools, dysfunctional families, dope, jail. “What’s Going On has always been on heavy rotation for me,” says Chesnutt. “It’s my benchmark. Four decades on, much of what Marvin was singing about is still going down. It’s time we as a community finally confronted that shit.” On Landing on a Hundred, Chesnutt urges America’s black community to take control of its destiny, to demand that black life is valued as highly as white. It is a beautiful, uplifting disc and it is Chesnutt’s true masterpiece. cchesnutt.com Words Chris May Photograph Mattias Petterson

Howie Nicholsby

When Grace Kelly’s son Prince Albert drops in to chair a meeting of the new Scotch whisky society in Monaco, he will be wearing a kilt from Howie R Nicholsby, the loudest, proudest exponent of Scotland’s national costume. Robbie Williams, Richard Branson and Scottish actor Kevin McKidd (Tommy in Trainspotting and Owen Hunt in Grey’s Anatomy) are among other celebrity clients of the man whose passionate quest is to produce – as his company name states – 21st Century Kilts. From his cosily chaotic shop at 48 Thistle Street in Edinburgh, the hyperactive Nicholsby spreads the kilted gospel to anyone who will listen. Born into a family that deals with traditional Highland dress, Nicholsby began producing unconventional kilt designs in 1996, aged 18. Having married his wife Charlie and produced sons Noah, now 7 and Otto, 3, this Caledonian creative set up his own business in 2009, determined to evolve the kilt for modern men while remaining respectful of its heritage. Despite its apparent simplicity, a kilt is a superb piece of skilled tailoring. At least 7 metres of cloth are required to create the precisely folded and stitched pleats at the back. It’s very important that the kilt moves with the wearer. With a good kilt, the swing is the thing. You can buy 21st century Kilts and Nicholsby’s covetable Highlandstyle jackets and waistcoats ready-to-wear or bespoke. Known for developing the external, detachable pockets worn over his kilts, Nicholsby, who will be 35 in June, primarily works with traditional tartans and fine Scottish tweeds but his personal take on the Highland reel also includes denim, leather, PVC, pinstripe suitings, and even camouflage fabric embroidered with flowers. 21stcenturykilts.com 38

Photograph Donald Milne Words Eric Musgrave

PEOPLE

Neville Watson

As documented by his famous photographer brother, Gavin, Neville Watson will forever be the most remembered image of the UK Skins scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But as the 1980s embraced dance music, so did Watson, working together with his brother on the book Ravinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 89 that captured the UK music scene through photographs and tales. By then, he had already moved in the DJing and started his own record label and store, the Mighty Atom. This in turn lead to a residence at the legendary techno club, Checkpoint Charlie in Reading where Watson has played along DJs including Laurent Garnier, Colin Dale and Craig Richards. Watson has just released his first album Songs To Elevate Pure Hearts through CrĂ¨me Organization. soundcloud.com/nevillewatson facebook.com/cremeorganization Photograph Gavin Watson

Tony Higgins

Having had a hugely successful career in the music business, Tony Higgins has an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz music. In fact, he even worked with DJ Gilles Peterson on a series of rare British jazz compilations called Impressed. His unrivalled knowledge of jazz is such that he is currently working on a series of compilations for Universal Records to be released later this year; Jazz Europa and Jazz Japan. As one might expect from such a fanatic, Higgins DJs at clubs such as the Black Cotton Club and belongs to the Shellac Collective, a group of DJs and collectors of old 78 records. ladyluckclub.co.uk facebook.com/shellac78 Photograph Marcus Agerman Ross

PEOPLE

Mark Probee

It’s probably fair to say there aren’t many cowboys regularly strutting around Kilburn in north London. In fact, most likely Mark Probee is the only one. A fitness instructor by profession, Mark has had a lifelong interest in the cowboy look. Initially this manifested itself with several purchases of bespoke cowboy boots from Paul Bond Boots in Nogales, Arizona. It was a few years before Probee actually made the trip himself to pick up his new purchases. While there, he discovered rodeo and has been making the trip annually ever since to compete in chute dogging and calf roping competitions. bootcamppilates.com Photograph Paul Vickery

DB Cohen and Snowboy

“He was pissed” aren’t necessarily the words you would expect to read to commemorate a momentous occasion. Nevertheless, they are the words used to describe the moment when an aspiring singer/songwriter approached a celebrated musician/recording artist/DJ in Soho and asked him if he’d be interested in listening to his music. And it is how latin percussionist extraordinaire Snowboy came to produce the debut album by DB Cohen. “My brother and I went to see The James Taylor Quartet and thought Snowboy was the bees knees,”recalls Dan (DB) of what led to them hooking up. “Then one night we went dancing at the Madame Jo Jo’s night Good Foot, and saw him. And I was drunk enough to think, ‘He’s just the kind of person I’d like to get involved with’”. Clearly though this moment of worked and the pair met up in Greenwich, not far from where Cohen lives. “When Dan had me check out his music I thought, ‘Bloody hell. This bloke’s incredible,” says Snowboy. “I got what he was about immediately.” This led to him sourcing studio time and, as Cohen puts it, finding “a calibre of musician I’d never have access to”, which included Mark Saunders and Rusty Bradshaw from Florence & The Machine on bass and keyboards. The plan was to “recreate my heroes” music – the sort of roots music both Snowboy and I love – but through my experiences,” and the result is Scratchcards & Wine, currently in the process of being signed for release. soundclash.com/dancohen snowboy.info Photograph Ben Harries Words Mark Webster

Rachid Taha

He is too busy making music to obsess about it, but Rachid Taha sometimes wonders, “Am I Oriental…. or disoriented?” The Algerian-born, Paris-based singer and composer winds a rock ’n’ roll aesthetic round his Arabic heritage, making the two disparate strands as difficult to separate as a double helix of DNA. Taha is back from a two-year hiatus with his strongest album since his 2006 masterpiece, Diwan 2 (Wrasse Records). The new disc, Zoom, is a trademark mash of rock ’n’ roll, Algerian rai, Moroccan gnawa, country & western, French chanson, old school Egyptian popular song, electro, techno and dub. It was produced by another cultural transgressive, the Egyptian-raised English guitarist Justin Adams ( Jah Wobble, Tinariwen, Robert Plant). Among the guests is guitarist Mick Jones. Taha and Jones met in 1981, when Taha stood outside the stage door of Paris’s Théâtre Mogador after a gig by The Clash, hoping to give the group a demo tape. He succeeded. ‘Rock The Casbah’ included nine months later on The Clash’s Combat Rock (Epic records), was inspired in part by Taha’s tape. Taha’s voice sounds like his face looks: been up all night. Like Louis Armstrong’s, it has more character than technique and laughs at genre boundaries. rachidtahaofficial.com Photograph Linus Ricard Words Chris May

PEOPLE

Pastor Winston Fitzwarren Brown

At 81 years old, Pastor Brown’s work with the Seventh Day Adventist church is restricted to the days his leg allows him to travel to the church but that doesn’t stop him communing with God. He says God came to him one day and instructed him to paint some stones in different colours and put them in a pile. Since then, he has been painting everyday. He says God instructs him what to paint while he sleeps and that he only receives these instructions if he sleeps outside under the stars. Currently, he is working on a camera that will capture God’s return to earth. facebook.com/pastorbrownja Photograph Savannah Baker

Subhadeep, 29, art director, wears trainers by Onitsuka Tiger.

Rohan, 32, musician, wears trainers by Converse.

DETAIL

Kolkata

Photographs Luke Moran-Morris Casting Diptanshu Roy Kolkatans Arka Das, Subhadeep Dawn, Rohan Ganguli, Arjun Mukherjee and Basab Roy

Arjun, 39, creative director, wears shoes by Polo Ralph Lauren.

DETAIL | Kolkata

Arka, 35, musician and journalist, wears trainers by K-Swiss.

Basab, 31, stock trader, wears trainers by adidas.

HISTORY

Rowan Bulmer Eel Pie Island. Chris Barber. Brian Jones. La Chasse. Crawdaddy. Biba Words Chris May

He introduced Mick Jagger to Chrissie Shrimpton, Jagger’s first great love. A penniless pre-fame Eric Clapton used to sleep on his floor. He managed Jeff Beck’s cusp-of-fame band, The Tridents, and hung out with Brian Jones. He photographed all these people, and many more, as they rose from obscurity during the first half of the 1960s. He was the official photographer for pop music TV programme Ready Steady Go! and for the Marquee Club during its mid 1960s R&B heyday, with a studio-cumdarkroom in the club’s Wardour Street basement. He was a face on the jazz 48

scene too. He smoked weed with Duke Ellington. Stan Getz tried to steal his girlfriend. Designer Barbara Hulanicki hired him when she opened the first Biba store in 1964. He documented the outsider society living under London’s Westway dual carriageway in the 1970s. He created large-scale sculptures on the Yorkshire Moors in the 1980s. His art has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Yet today, Rowan Bulmer is almost unknown. Thousands of his negatives were lost by the Marquee club when it moved out of Wardour Street in 1988. His photographs are not stored

by Getty Images nor published by Taschen. Driven by passion rather than careerism, Bulmer never bothered to archive his work; which is why, ironically, the Marquee had volunteered to store his negatives. At the time of writing, Bulmer does not even have a Wikipedia entry. Since 2010, he has lived in rural Dordogne in southwest France. There, Bulmer and his work might have remained, uncelebrated, but for his daughter, Tahita, who is the lead vocalist of post-punk band New Young Pony Club. In 2011 Tahita opened a big box of prints and contact sheets that her father had left unwanted in the UK, >

Rowan Bulmer doing the Twist. Eel Pie Island 1962

HISTORY | Rowan Bulmer

Jimi Hendrix. The Speakeasy Club 1967

Wendy Richards

when he moved to France. Despite the obvious historical value of this collection, Bulmer seemed surprised that anyone would be interested in his story. He also had more urgent concerns. The first time we spoke, he was halfway through replacing a blocked, seven metre length of drainpipe “in very rocky ground”. The next time, he was about to fix a water pump that had exploded the previous night. “Yes, life here can be hard,” said Bulmer. But I heard a smile in his voice. Bulmer’s story, particularly during the 1960s, is a spinning kaleidoscope of interconnected people, landmarks and locations. Relying entirely on his memory, he had to dig deep to get the chronology right when we spoke. It is a classic case of right place, right time. Born in 1943, Bulmer’s family lived in Chiswick, west London, but they were bombed out in the war. He was brought up in the home counties. When he was about nine years old, the 50

Fashion shoot. Yellow Submarine Club, London 1966

family returned to Chiswick. Bulmer hated school: “I am dyslexic and it was a sad, bad time for me. Dyslexia wasn’t known about then and I was caned a lot

‘ALL THESE MUSICIANS I KNEW STARTED TO NEED PHOTOS AND I THOUGHT, “I CAN DO THAT”’ for being dim.” Bulmer left school as soon as he could and at 16, enrolled at Chelsea College of Art in London.

Art schools were magnets for disaffected teenagers in the conformist 1950s and early 1960s and figure big in the story of British R&B. Many of the first musicians and enthusiasts were art students. “There were all these connections and they didn’t mean anything but did somehow mean something,” says Bulmer. Growing up in Chiswick, Bulmer was ideally placed to become part of the now legendary west London music scene, which fostered many of the great R&B bands of the early to mid 1960s. If Merseybeat’s destination venue was Liverpool’s Cavern Club, much of London’s early R&B scene revolved around the Ealing Club and Richmond’s Station Hotel, the Crawdaddy Club and Eel Pie Island. The Stones, The Pretty Things, The Downliners Sect, Cyril Davies All Stars, Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, Jimmy Powell and The Five Dimensions (featuring Rod >

Wendy Richards

Keith Moon

Geno Washington

Stewart), The Artwoods, early bands featuring Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood. These and many other, now forgotten musicians were nurtured at the Ealing and Richmond clubs. Of course, along with the right place and right time you have to add the right person. Bulmer was exactly that. “I first went to Eel Pie Island when I was 15. I became a pot boy, collecting empty glasses from the tables. It was a traditional jazz club and then they brought in R&B on Wednesday nights. I loved it all.” Bulmer says that it was a traditional jazz musician, trombonist Chris Barber, who played the first R&B in Britain. “That’s where it all came from. Lots of people, including the Stones, first heard R&B being played by Barber.” In 1955, Barber’s singer/banjoist Lonnie Donegan had a hit with ‘Rock Island Line’, a seminal record among nascent British rock ’n’ roll and R&B musicians. Barber also introduced Alexis Korner to British audiences. And he organised Muddy Waters’ first British tour. Mythology has a tendency to push inconvenient facts aside, and Bulmer’s late 1950s to early 1960s

socialising trajectory reveals some pioneering West End R&B outposts among the west London icons. Because they were not in Ealing or Richmond,

Drag artist.The Speakeasy Club, London 1966

they have been airbrushed out of history. As far as Bulmer can remember, he first heard live American music in 1957, aged 14, when his older sister took him to a Humphrey Lyttleton gig in Leicester Square. “Richmond

HISTORY | Rowan Bulmer

Biba advertising campaign. Kensington, London 1966

Agency model card

and Soho ran in parallel,” says Bulmer. “For me, Soho happened first.” The next key West End locations were two pubs, the Duke of York in York Alley, Soho, and the Cambridge on Cambridge Circus, around 1960, by which time Bulmer was a paid up member of the Beatnik Scene. “The Duke of York is probably where it all started,” says Bulmer. “It was very important. Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, they all hung out there. Everyone was drinking and smoking dope non-stop. Everyone was scoring and there was Benzedrine and heroin. I never got into drugs myself. I saw it wreck too many people and made a decision early on. “The Duke of York’s landlord was an interesting character known as The Major. He owned a very large dog that had been the hound in the film The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). On a typical evening, we’d move between there and the Cambridge. They were the places we would all get together.” From 1962, the Ealing Club and Richmond’s Station Hotel and Crawdaddy Club were added to Bulmer’s regular haunts. In 1963, Soho asserted itself with Ronan O’Rahilly’s > John Gee, manager of the Marquee Club

The Syn modelling for Dandies menswear store, Wardour Street, London 1967 Mick Jagger. 1967

Eric Clapton. National Jazz and Blues Festival, Windsor 1966

The Scene on Windmill Street and the Ship Inn on Wardour Street. “Everybody in the music industry and all the journalists would drink at the Ship,” says Bulmer. “Melody Maker used to run stories about it. Later it all moved down the road to La Chasse as the Marquee had moved to Wardour Street [from Oxford Street] by this time.” At some point around 1961, Bulmer became a photographer. “All these musicians I knew started to need photographs, and I thought, ‘I can do that’. And because they were my friends, I took a lot of shots just for myself.” Bulmer worked in all sorts of other on-scene jobs while he was emerging as a photographer. Ronan O’Rahilly, who in 1964 launched Britain’s first pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, employed him to bring fellow spirits to The Scene club in Soho. “I got paid by the number of people I brought in,” says Bulmer. “I did quite well. That was where Ronan made the money to open Caroline. The Animals had their first gig at The Scene. I shot Jimi Hendrix there several times.” “The DJ was Guy Stevens. He’d been an architecture student. He collected R&B records when nobody

HISTORY | Rowan Bulmer

Fashion shoot. Yellow Submarine Club, London 1966

else did and had the definitive collection. He was the first real DJ I ever saw. He went to the US to explore the whole R&B scene and sent reports back to New Musical Express. It was from his records that people used to get ideas. He pushed R&B to a new level through

‘WE THOUGHT KEITH RICHARDS WAS DYING AS WHENEVER HE TALKED BLOOD CAME OUT HIS MOUTH’ his contacts in the music press.” Stevens later worked with Mott the Hoople and Procol Harum. In 1979 he produced The Clash’s London Calling. Bulmer hooked up with Giorgio Gomelsky, who ran the Crawdaddy and

was the Stones’ first manager, in 1963, when Gomelsky was making a film about the Stones. “They were filming at the Station Hotel,” says Bulmer. “I was well known as a dancer and they were waiting for me to arrive before they started filming. The Stones were playing ‘Pretty Thing’ and the girl I was dancing with happened to be Brian Jones’s girlfriend, Linda Lawrence. She later married Donovan, hence the song ‘Linda’. Anyway, I went to a work-inprogress screening at the Intrepid Fox pub on Wardour Street and afterwards I was chatting to Giorgio and he realised that I knew everyone. He was worried that he would get troublemakers at the Crawdaddy and he asked if I would work with him and keep an eye out for these characters. So I stopped going to Eel Pie so often and I was with Giorgio. This was when I got to know the Stones well.” Family history has it that Bulmer and Brian Jones shared a flat around this time. “We didn’t actually,” says Bulmer. “What happened was that we went flat hunting together a lot. We looked at lots of places, but somehow it didn’t happen. Some people didn’t like Brian, but I did. He >

Ronnie Wood, Jeff Beck and Chris Barber. The Marquee Club 1967

Biba advertising campaign. Kensington Church Street, London 1966

Rod Stewart. 1967

was generous and he was really passionate about the blues.” Round about this time, Andrew Loog Oldham became the Stones’ manager. “He was alright,” says Bulmer. “A bit arrogant. I didn’t really know him before he took over the Stones. There were a lot of people trying to get the Stones at that time. I was surprised when he got them.” Shortly before Bulmer started working with Gomelsky, Ready Steady Go! approached him about finding new bands for the show. In 1964, on a photographic assignment with RSG!, Bulmer travelled with the Stones to the Golden Rose TV Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. “On the flight back, we thought Keith Richards was dying as whenever he talked blood came out of his mouth. He was so ill that he could hardly move. Everyone was worried about him. It turned out it was actually the volume of wine he’d drunk at some reception. There was too much to hold down.” A year later, Bulmer had his own dice with death. “It was summer 1965. I was making a film on the Walker Brothers for them to use in America. They were huge in Britain but had 56

yet to make it back home. We did a scene at an airfield near Brands Hatch in Kent. Gary Walker was piloting the plane. He was sitting there with the prop whizzing round and I was filming it. Then the sound guy said, ‘There’s hundreds of girls coming this way!’ I turned round and started filming them, they were charging across the field and they got closer and closer and

‘SOME PEOPLE DIDN’T LIKE BRIAN JONES BUT I DID. HE WAS REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT THE BLUES’ I started walking backwards. At that moment, Gary turned the plane round and the propeller hit me. It missed my

head by a whisker but scraped all the way down my back. I still have the scars. A little closer and I’d have been sliced in two.” We’re only up to the mid 1960s. The fun continued for the rest of the decade. In the 1970s, Bulmer moved into commercial and advertising photography. “I wanted to get into 10x8 photography, plate work – real photography.” Meanwhile, he also chronicled the world beneath London’s Westway and taught at Goldsmiths College, where he developed new printing and engraving techniques. He moved to Ilkley, Yorkshire in 1980, taught in Leeds, sculpted on the Moors, had an exhibition at the ICA, and joined the picket lines during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. “I’ve always been on the Left,” says Bulmer. “My parents were Tory county councilors; it’s a reaction to that.” He returned to London, with a studio on Chelsea’s Kings Road for a few years, before moving to France. You could write a book about Rowan Bulmer’s life and somebody should. I left him to his exploded water pump. And put Hendrix’s ‘Crosstown Traffic’ in the machine.

PROFILE

Sabre Sales

Army surplus. Beau Brummell. Portsmouth. The Shop Project Words Mark Webster Photographs Marcus Agerman Ross Styling Marcus Love Army surplus collector Matt Gardiner

It’s probably worth stating the obvious from the get-go: army surplus is not all about camouflage. Indeed, it’s also not just about army clothes. The fact is, shops that bear the “army surplus” description are fundamentally magnets for virtually all of the discarded diaspora of the armed forces, of which only one part will help you blend into your environment. Whether it be formal wear, battle gear, work uniform, or any of the tiny detailed things that fall inbetween, there remains a constant; one organisation’s “surplus to requirements”, is another man’s “great little find”. And when you delve inside these intoxicating, perhaps even slightly macabre, havens, it quickly falls into sharp focus that the influence of military clothing is, and has been for centuries, fundamental to the development men’s fashion throughout the generations. Indeed, if you go all the way back to the widely acknowledged Daddy of men’s style, Beau Brummell, it is said that he was the man who took a pair of the full length Cavalry pantaloons worn by the 10th Light Dragoons, slipped them on for a spot of fancy-danning 58

around London’s West End and invented the modern trousers into the bargain. Add to that, staples such as the bomber jacket, the trench coat, the tank top… The clue is in the names. Military clothing has contributed a ceaseless stream of smart, sensible, utilitarian ideas to a chap’s wardrobe. And if you didn’t want it in its original form, then turn to the designers who have been sourcing the look for decades by pillaging colours, patterns, materials, shapes and details. Back though to the shop that has been a relentless conduit between the quartermaster’s store and the public for 25 years; a commitment to the cause that will come to an end later this year. Owner Nick Hall was born in Portsmouth 72 years ago and has collected military memorabilia for amost as many years. Just 65 years ago, in a programme for a local theatrical production, you’d have found a credit that read “Swords by Nicholas Hall”. But, as the septuagenarian version of that fledgling entrepreneur told me on a recent trip to his shop, Sabre Sales, “They couldn’t print, ‘age seven’. There’d have been trouble.” Sabre Sales is at the sea end of Castle Road in the Southsea area of

the city, a stone’s throw from the birthplace of Peter Sellers, and “strategically sited”, as Hall puts it, among several celebrated military museums. On its street sign, it proudly announces to all visitors that the council had declared it “Best Dressed Street”, which probably means that whoever gave it that title never ventured inside Sabre Sales. The baywindows, like eyes bulging with the flotsam and jetsam of discarded military wares, only give you a hint of what is to come. The shop spreads wide into an old fashioned courtyard and then up along a weaving set of stairs to what once functioned as several flats. Every room is now home to a quite dazzling array of army surplus. Go into one and you’ll see a blur of sombre coloured tunics from Sweden and Germany. Another, a line of US olive drab. One particularly cavernous room has an array of lightweight, lightly coloured tropical outfits with the odd splattering of pale blue from American police uniforms. While in another room, a mound of green camouflage, like a moss covered Highland peak, makes it almost impossible to pick out >

the buttons and pockets that confirm it is in fact a giant pile of clothes. This is the legacy of a gregarious, boisterous former policeman who caught the bug for militaria as a small boy. Hence the swords. “I was Errol Flynn. I’m covered with scars from 60

them.” In the 1980s, he finally let his passion lead his work. And as you imagine for a man for whom it had pretty much dominated his life anyway, he found himself to be a natural. Or as Hall says: “I can remember every occasion in my life when I said, ‘I’m not

having those.’ And wish I had.” When he started, he was selling detailed, historical stuff, from insignia and buttons upwards, to collectors but the nature of the business has seen it expand beyond that into supplying authentic equipment for film and TV, >

PROFILE | Sabre Sales

fancy dress (“We always send them out looking sharp. We’re pedantic in extremis.”) and even, perhaps bizarrely, selling equipment back to the services. However, as Hall points out, this helps the men with boots on the ground because “if I can sell them something for a tenner to replace something, it can save them from a court martial”. The idea of this particular swathe of secondhand clothing being “fashionable”, Hall claims, is somewhat bemusing to him. Yet he does have previous. And

from a source that was, and remains, one of the most celebrated mix ’n’ match clothing cultures of them all. “The best example of ‘trends’,” he replies when I ask why military clothing can often become symbolic in fashion, “is the duck’s arse parka. And I wore one, because I was an original Mod. I had a floppy jumper, very tight KDs [khaki drills or, as we call them today, chinos] and the coat. Never had battles, though. I was one of the respectable ones. And in my day, it was

because of the cost; 7s6d. Like the earlier trad jazz fans with the naval duffle coat. But of course, we thought they looked good too”. So Hall had the eye as a teenager, and even if he wasn’t aware, it was still good for the odd twinkle as the decades rolled by, as he acquired clothing and accessories that fulfilled a multitude of functions. And if he ever needed confirmation that his vision wasn’t blurring, then the fashion industry would often be on hand to remind him. > 63

PROFILE | Sabre Sales

“Burberry used to come down here,” he recalls of one of the first major labels to blend military and civilian life in their clothing, “and they’d go around and buy one of this, one of that. Later, you’d see it on the catwalk. But now it’s in pink rather than olive green. And the drawstrings are in red. They’d say, ‘Let’s use the epaulettes of that one, the pockets on that one. Use some new buttons. But we’ll keep the original silhouette.’ And it’ll end up the a third of the weight of the original.” As well as the customers, there are also those who “help out” at Sabre Sales; essentially a small band of brothers who don’t actually work there but who share their enthusiasm and various areas of expertise with people who visit the shop. That is the description of Tim Connell, now a film and video producer, who has been going to the shop with his dad since he was a kid. It will be Connell Sr, though, “who’ll be going through the boxes and boxes of buttons out the back”, while Tim 64

will be rummaging through the clothes and thinking “that would look really good now”. When Connell heard that Hall would be calling it a day at the end of this year, he decided he couldn’t let the moment pass and he has turned his creative eye on this Aladdin’s cave that he simply refers to as The Shop. In fact, that will be the title of a forthcoming book featuring Connell’s attention to the myriad detail Sabre Sales provides while his partner Oanna Damir, a photographer specialising in portraiture, has set out to capture the

faces and characters. Which at least means that, like the amazing collection of room by room, wall to ceiling, the boots, badges, belts ’n’ all will now be remembered as caringly and affectionately as it was when it was on Hall’s watch. Sabre Sales, 85-87 Castle Road, Southsea will close at the end of 2013 sabresales.co.uk The Shop Project is at Candid Arts Trust, 5 Torrens Street, London EC1 between 13 and 18 June candidarts.net

Sweater by Lou Dalton; trousers and braces from Carlo Manzi; hat by Lock & Co; scarf and belt by Paul Smith; sunglasses by Sunday Somewhere.

STYLE

Jacket and shoes from Carlo Manzi; trousers by Balenciaga; vest by Sunspel; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Persol.

Thomas Rudolph Contu Photographs David Goldman Styling Marcus Love

Jacket, shorts, shoes and belt by The Vintage Showroom; hat by Borsalino.

STYLE | Thomas Rudolph Contu

Jacket from Carlo Manzi; shorts, belt and ring, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own; top by Vivienne Westwood; top by Issey Miyake; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Sunday Somewhere.

Jacket and T-shirt, stylist’s own; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Persol.

Jacket by The Vintage Showroom; trousers by Alexander McQueen; waistcoat and T-shirt, model’s own; hat by Borsalino; ring, stylist’s own.

STYLE | Thomas Rudolph Contu

Jacket, shorts and belt by The Vintage Showroom; hat by Borsalino.

Waistcoat from Carlo Manzi; shorts by Issey Miyake; sweater by Leviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Vintage Clothing; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Persol; belt by Paul Smith; comb, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

STYLE | Thomas STYLE | Rudolph Thomas Contu

Shirt and braces from Carlo Manzi; shorts by Issey Miyake; shoes, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Persol.

Jacket and belt by The Vintage Showroom; hat, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

STYLE | Thomas Rudolph Contu

Jacket, trousers, cardigan, shoes and belt by The Vintage Showroom; hat by Borsalino; sunglasses by Persol.

BULLETIN

Nutters of Savile Row x Peter Werth Photographs Kingsley Davis Styling Savannah Baker Band The Brand New Heavies

There was no tailor who defined the flared, excessive use of fabric in the 1970s better than Tommy Nutter who, in the 1960s, set up the first new establishment on Savile Row in 120 years with his business partner Edward Sexton. Over the next decade he would define the style of the times starting with the wedding outfits he made for Mick and Bianca Jagger in 1971. When the wardrobe department for Elaine Constantine’s film, Northern Soul, began sourcing outfits they approached

David Mason, creative director at Nutters. He was happy to help out, realising that the archive of Nutters would prove invaluable to creating the right look. The label Peter Werth were also asked to work on pieces for the film based on its production capabilities and the rather neat coincidence that the brand started in the same year that the film is set, 1975. While working together on the film, Mason and Peter Lynes, managing director of Peter Werth, had the idea to collaborate on an exclusive collection. It’s

not surprising to hear it described by them as “Studio 54 meets Wigan Casino”. The collection contains many features of Nutters signature tailoring such as roped shoulders and wide legged trousers and utilises Peter Werth’s expertise as a knitwear manufacturer. peterwerth.co.uk nutterssavilerow.com Forward by the Brand New Heavies, the first album from the band in six years, is out now. thebrandnewheavies.net

MUSIC

Andrew Weatherall

Boy’s Own. Screamadelica. Sabres of Paradise. The Raid. Two Lone Swordsmen. The Rotters Golf Club Words Chris Sullivan Photographs Marcus Agerman Ross

Over the past 30 years Andrew Weatherall has cut a trough through British sub culture so deep that most refer to him simply as Weatherall because, like Tyson or Sinatra, his first name is irrelevant to all but his mum and close friends. A fellow who is unique, I first spotted him in the early 1980s at my Soho nightspot, The Wag Club, when he, and a few other quasipunk/soul boy Windsor types, checked in for some old school funk. In 1986 he popped up at Gary Haisman and Paul Dennis’s club, The Raid, playing Jamaican dub plates alongside Terry Farley. (Downstairs, Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong were building their reputations as pioneers of the nascent UK house music movement.) This led to a residency the following year at Danny Rampling’s legendary club, Shoom. Around this time, along with Farley, Steven Maize and Cymon Eckel, he started the Boy’s Own fanzine, which documented club life alongside a variety of topics such as football, books and cinema. The Boy’s Own monicker soon morphed from print into club nights and a successful record label. Having already built a reputation as a producer/remixer, his first material as a recording artist was released under the name, Bocca Juniors in 1990. In 1992 Weatherall left Boy’s Own to form the group, The Sabres of Paradise. A short-lived project, the Sabres created one of the enduring Balearic classics, ‘Smokebelch II (Beatless Mix)’. Shortly after, he returned, with studio engineer Keith Tenniswood, under the name Two Lone Swordsmen. Together, they set up the record label he still owns today, The Rotters Golf Club. Weatherall has become regarded as one of the most important remixers/producers/recording artists to come out of the UK, not only pioneering new styles of music but also celebrating and introducing niche genres from yesteryear to an adoring audience. The body of work he has put out in his 78

career is necessary listening to all music lovers. His latest album, Ruled by Passion. Destroyed by Lust by The Asphodells (Weatherall and Timothy J FairPlay) was released earlier this year. As famed for his sartorial fussiness as his musical brilliance, it was hardly surprising that we found ourselves discussing his clobber when we met up. New hat? Yes, a 50th birthday treat from Bates on Jermyn Street. I went in for a beret and saw this. I had to have it but I didn’t check the price and then he said, “That’ll be £385, sir.” But you get what you pay for. And such a hat will last you a lifetime. Talking of longevity, what’s the secret of your success? I’m lucky to have a 25-year foundation of reasonably accomplished work so I can maintain a reasonably good career. There been a lot of luck too. There’s lots of people more talented than me who have not been able to do that. With a lot of pop culture it is about being in the right place at the right time. I may not be a particularly great musician or brilliant technician or producer but I have a talent for ideas. Anyone can be a craftsman but ideas are key to being original. It’s also important to maintain an almost amateur status even if you’re being paid really well. I’ve always had a reputation for not selling out. But it’s not from any great political stance; it’s just I don’t want to end up not liking music. I’ve maintained a career because I’ve never wanted a career. Well, what is success? People equate it with popularity or simply the amount of zeros you get when your painting gets auctioned at Sotheby’s. Damien Hirst is seen as a successful artist. But he’s not a very

good one, you need to be credible as well. I’m convinced that that whole Young British Artists thing is a bit like that scene in the 19XX film Trading Places where they say they can make anyone a multimillionaire. I’m determined to write a story about Saatchi in the toilet at Goldsmiths College going, “I bet you we can put a five million dollar tag on any of this rubbish in a couple years.” Where did your love of music begin? When I was 13 I’d invite people round and have parties. They were all busy getting off with each other and I was running around saying, “Have you heard the B-side?” I was buying a lot of records. By the time I was 20, I had a reputation as a guy with a good collection. But DJing isn’t always an easy journey. No. I’ve had a few bad nights. I remember one, in Hounslow, about 1985 before the house music invasion. They had a smoke machine so I whacked it on and played the theme tune to the film 633 Squadron. That was my big intro but the club owner said I was taking the piss and threw me off. What inspired you to carry on? I was about 23 years old and jaded. Then I got a phone call from Terry Farley telling me he’d found this new club. He said they played this new beat and everyone was on ecstasy. I’d tried E a few years before and I got into a fight. I lived in a council block and this drunk put in my next door neighbour’s window. She was an old lady so I knocked him out. There went my buzz, right there. For a couple of years I thought, “That ecstasy does nothing for me.” But in the end he convinced me to go to Shoom club and it was brilliant. Word got around that I had all these great records and before I knew it, Danny Rampling [who ran Shoom] asked me to DJ. That was the tipping point for my career. >

MUSIC | Andrew Weatherall Right time, right place. I wasn’t planning to use my own name but I kept forgetting to tell Danny, so he put my real name on the flyer. But that ended up being good. I wasn’t that great at mixing but I said, “If you put me on the main decks I’ll learn how to mix well.” Then I started hanging out with bands, and from there I moved into producing music. The Boy’s Own fanzine thing; when was that… 1989? No, earlier than that. It’s that ecstasy, wipes your memory. Yes, indeed. You know Walter Benjamin, the German essayist? He said, “Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.” I’m currently artist in residence for Faber and Faber. They’ve asked me to write a book and I’d like to do an autobiography. Truth isn’t necessarily the same as authenticity. There are so many great stories that don’t have to be authentic. If you take thosebrilliant stories and thread them together you can arrive at an engaging, truthful account. So I may take those stories. Like standing on Tilbury Hill on acid, dressed as a monk, holding a staff, and thinking I control the weather. That’s a good one. But not remembering things adds to the legend. I read a book recently on the effects of logging everything. For a long time psychologists thought being forgetful was bad but, now they think it’s a good thing because, if you have to remember things from the past all the time, you start using the parts of your brain that triggers imagination. How did Boy’s Own come about? It was hugely influential. [Terry] Farley and [Steven] Maize are football supporters which, back then, meant being competitive with rival fans and getting into scuffles. Liverpool fans had a fanzine called The End, edited by Peter Hooton, the singer from The Farm. Farley came in one day and said, “If those Scouse wankers can do it, so can we.” So, we found ourselves mastering the use of Pritt stick and Letraset. 80

Sounds very punk, DIY ideology. Yes. Punk rock was good for that – “I’m doing it myself and I love it.” But sometimes I think it was a bit of a lie that became the truth. It’s like when people look at modern art and say, “I could paint that,” but you didn’t and that’s the difference. It’s not the same as, “I have done that”. Or lumped in with people who shouldn’t have done it. Soundcloud and all of that. The democratisation of art is what we wanted but be careful what you wish for. Now we get so much shit, making it harder to find the worthwhile music. I saw some rubbish at the Whitechapel Gallery too. There’s a great quote about what modern art has become. “A bland mix of in-joke, academic exercise and investment asset.” That’s true of so much so-called creativity today.

‘ESTABLISH THE GROOVE. AND WATCH THE HANDS GO UP IN THE AIR.’ What was the first memorable piece of clothing you bought? The one I remember the most was a white linen 1930s inspired suit. It was 250 quid. In 1978 that was a fuck of a lot of money. I worked for the Sunlight Laundry that supplied restaurants and hotels. It was a scummy job and some of the tablecloths were full of maggots. So I had to load up washing for God knows how long to buy that suit. I lived in Windsor, which is a squaddie town. So, the first night I’m wearing it, I’m walking home; there’s a commotion behind me. This guy is being chased by four squaddies. But the guy got away so they turned to me and my girlfriend. They threw her over a garden wall and set about me with a vigour that only military training can do. Banging my head, I fell over and

as I stood up I looked like I was out of a cartoon with a ripped suit sleeve and claret all over it. I was annoyed but I couldn’t help but think that I’d won because, by the mere cut of my trousers, I had incited someone so much that they wanted to kill me. Was there anything that your parents said you couldn’t wear? I wasn’t allowed DM boots. This was 1976; the beginning of punk and “the end of civilisation”, according to our parents. I had to smuggle records into the house. It was a kind of a rite of passage. If you got slapped it meant you must be doing something right. Tell me about your journey through style from then onwards. I was always a mix-and-match merchant. Fucked up old jeans, motorbike boots and a pirate shirt. As I say, I loved punk rock AND I loved disco. At the time, it was, never the twain should meet. I was, and still am, a mixture of both. It was all a bit “magpie” for me. It was about seeing an image. I got my style fairly early but it was generally pertaining to an image; seeing a magazine or a film. Clothes are obviously important to you. It’s about approximation and aesthetic. You are making a decision when you dress, otherwise you’d have 20 boiler suits and wear them all the time. I like the Edwardian type of look. So I have to make that look. I won’t get the original pieces so I have to approximate by using stuff I find. Various fashion designers will have a collection that always has something, like an Edwardian style waistcoat that I’ll buy and slowly build an outfit around it. Sometimes this can take several years. You mentioned films. Any favourites? Brighton Rock (1947) because it’s sartorial. Graham Greene had a hand in the script but it’s rare that a film can be as good as the book because no director can create something better than the vision in my own head. I still haven’t watched Trainspotting (1996), even though I produced the soundtrack. There are certain films that are rites of

passage such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Wild One (1953). The films I like are story led. I’m not a massive horror film fan but I like the ones that are about glimpses of what is going on in the back of your head like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965). And what about books? The first book that transported me and gave me a sense of place was Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. I loved it. I could smell the Edwardian air. I’m such a voracious reader I’ve recently reread The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – you forget how brilliant it is. I like a lot of darkly malignant books. Another favourite is Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse. It has a brilliant passage about what’s hidden and not said. That’s Hesse’s thing; the struggle between aestheticism and spirituality. I’ve read pretty much all his books. There’s one about a guy in a monastery who leaves to lead an aesthetic life but ends up back at the monastery. He’s looking in a pond and he can see glimpses of fish but he can’t see the whole picture. And there’s this one paragraph where he says that’s what art and life should be; about the glimpses and not the whole story. I also love J-K Huysmans’ À Rebours. That influenced the Aesthetic Movement. And Là Bas, that tells of Satanism in the late 1880s. What is it that appeals to you about that era’s literature? I like the aesthetic. The 1920s and 1930s in Europe is the zenith of the European novel. Then, after the wars, the American novel came in. I love the style of writing. Was that who I was in my former life? It’s such a fascinating period. The build up to modernity, then all of a sudden there’s a war. What was the first record you bought? It was either ‘Solid Gold Easy Action’ by T Rex (1972) or ‘See My Baby Jive’ by Wizzard (1973). The first bit of music to make me feel funny was Terry Jacks’ ‘Seasons in the Sun’ in 1974. That reminds me of when I went camping as a 12 year old. I had Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust (1972) on

an old cassette recorder. I used to walk the streets, no head phones, playing ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’. Basically death ballads with a ghostly guitar. And that odour has stayed with me today. Just now I was playing The Psychedelic Furs first album (of the same name from 1980) and it’s scratched to fuck but I love that. It makes it sound like a ghostly recording from another time or universe. What was the song that really kicked it off for you as a remixer/producer? Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’. That was 1990. That was the second or third time I’d ever been in a studio and

I never thought it would be the launch of a career. I remember going to an interview for an A&R job at London Records with a test pressing under my arm and the guy going, “What the fuck are you doing here?” It was very, very slow, you know, only 90 beats a minute. Back then, the average was 100 or 150 BPM and I remember thinking it was a bit slow to be a house hit. That week, I played it at a gig and the place went berserk. And the band loved it. Did you add all the percussive stuff? Yes. Originally I did a version that was a bit polite, shall we say. The band was > 81

disappointed and said, “Just fucking destroy it, man”. So, I did. That’s what kicked down the door. I slung a breakbeat under it and rearranged it and it worked. That’s why they were asking me because I knew about dancehall structures and how it all worked. Establish the groove… And watch the hands go up in the air. What about The Sabres of Paradise? Yeah, I thought I’d better start making my own music. The name is taken from the B-side of Haysi Fantayzee’s ‘John Wayne is Big Leggy’. Jeremy Healy got the name from a book about the freedom fighter, Imam Shamyl. We found some like-minded people and did some live gigs. I’ve been doing it for 25 years and it may be a bit disingenuous to say there’s been no career trajectory but, in my mind, there hasn’t. I’ve never necessarily finished a project because I’ve never necessarily started one. I just continue to pour stuff out. I empathise. I get interviewed and, often, the underlying tone is, “You could have been a contender,” and I think, “Yeah all right, but that’s not what I think about.” Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong and Judge Jules made a decision to kick it up a bit and turn it into a business. I can’t deride them for that but it’s not what I want to do. They are mainstream now. But they did start underground. And you can’t pay the bailiff with artistic credibility; I have tried. Last year, I did a compilation for Ministry of Sound and I know I’m going to be mocked for saying it, but the main point is, “Is it any good?” If I’d compromised musically, then fair enough, but I don’t think I have. This is the week of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. Any thoughts? As soon as the news broke [on 8 April] that she’d died, journalists were phoning me asking about her effect upon Acid House. And I said, “As with any youth culture, it becomes politicised by default because the powers that be can be the guardians of morals because 82

it makes them look good.” When she came into power in 1979 I was 16; when she was voted out I was 27 and I was having the time of my life. So best go ask some Nottinghamshire miners how they felt. This may sound crass and insensitive. Let people buy council houses but also build new ones. If we weren’t living in times of austerity now, and if everyone had a job, then people may not focus so much on her. Her death is a reminder of bad times however the times we’re living in now are the same as before. Both the Left and the Right can have a black and white view of the world even though

the world is not black and white. The Left can be as tedious. I didn’t man the barricades in 1979, as you know. Just because I didn’t eat at times, it didn’t mean it was to due to Thatcher; it was due partly due to me too. What about a new record? A remix album of Ruled by Passion. Destroyed by Lust by musicians and DJs that Timothy and I like.The title is a neat six word summation of the inherent tragedy of the human condition but, in fact, it is also a strapline for a gay gladiator film from the 1970s. I’ve recently done the music

MUSIC | Andrew Weatherall for a Nokia commercial. They gave me free rein so it wasn’t so much sucking cock, rather licking the bell end, and gently, just so you know. Even so, we thought we’d better not make it too dark. We sent it off and they were like, “We were expecting something a bit darker.” So, I will flick Satan’s bell end if there’s not too much interference from Satan himself. I do get offered gigs and I get a good wage, not like [Paul] Oakenfold, though. I occasionally get offered gigs for ten grand but I turn them down. People ask why and I say there’s no amount of money in the world that could make me stand up in front of 5,000 people. And they’d hate you anyway. Yes, but I’d be a little bit gutted if I didn’t get complaints. It’s that juvenile thing: “They don’t understand about the music”. But then if they do like it, you’re like, “Oohhh”. You want everyone to accept what you’re doing but, at the same time, you want to be in your own little private members’ enclosure. It’s like people with blind faith. Many years ago. I was living in Brixton, south London, and some Mormons knocked on my door and I said, “Come in,” and they were like “Really?”. So we had a discussion about religion for a few hours. In the end I said, “Look guys, a lot of it’s down to nurture. If your name was Mustafa and you lived in Syria or Lebanon you wouldn’t even know what a Mormon is.” And this guy pondered it and he said, “No, I’d be a Mormon”. And I said, “We’ve had two hours of vaguely rational discussion and now you’re into realms of blind faith where you’re believing this is black and white and there’s no space inbetween. Part of me admires you for that and the other part of me hates it.” The musical purist part of me loves blind faith and I wish I could be that focused but a bigger part of me is saying think of all the other things; all the experiences I’d be missing by going down that path. And I think that’s why so many fundamentalists get so riled because a part of them is thinking, “Fuck. Maybe they’re right. Look at the fun we’re missing. What if we’re wrong?” I think that’s why people go blowing themselves

up. There’s that nagging doubt. I read that it says in the Koran, “The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” The Bible is two books bolted together; one, all fire and brimstone and then the other is like, “Hey guys, chill out.” Back then when they heard voices and saw visions they didn’t realise it all came from their own heads. They thought it must be God. What would be your advice to any would be DJ or creative type? Whatever art you’re involved in, don’t get hung up on originality when you start. It’ll drive you round the twist because you’ll make a bit of music, or whatever, and you’ll think its original and someone at the back of the room

‘I FIND JOHNNY BURNETTE RECORDS MORE SPACE AGE AND FUTURISTIC THAN TECHNO RECORDS’ will pipe up, “Er, I did that already in 1962”. When you start, have the authenticity rather than the originality. If you do an authentic approximation about something you love, almost by default you will become original. Look at, say, The Cramps or Billy Childish; it’s not original, per se, but it is because it’s authentic and thus original for them. It’s never out of fashion, never in fashion. But I don’t like careerists and professionals. They scare me. Maybe because cultural consumption is so fast today, there’s so much out there; there’s this obsession with originality. So just stay true to yourself. I read a Jah Wobble interview and he quoted William Blake, “Each man must create

his own system or else he is a slave to another man’s”. I would say that is pretty sound advice. We’ve talked a lot about your involvement in the dance music scene over the past 25 years but you also have a love of rockabilly music, don’t you? Yes. Among the first music that really moved me, that I thought was space age and weird was not only glam rock but also 1950s rock ’n’ roll. There was a big teddy boy revival in the 1970s. And there’s that film That’ll Be The Day with David Essex and Ringo Starr about that 1950s era. So I loved so all that and 1960s rock ’n’ roll and quickly sussed out that glam rock is basically the same. Mark Bolan is Howlin’ Wolf. Bryan Ferry essentially styled himself on a 1950s pink cadillac. Back then, I didn’t know it was “rockabilly”. I thought it was “rock ’n’ roll”. I didn’t know it had come from the collision of poor white man’s music and poor black man’s music. I find Johnny Burnette records more space age and futuristic than the majority of techno records because they are ghostly and other worldly. Let’s face it, if there was no blues there’d be no rhythm ’n’ blues or boogie woogie. Without that going to Jamaica and them playing it backwards, there’d be no ska, no reggae, no Studio One, without which there’d be no disco, and without that there’d be no techno or dance music. So even if you’re one of those avid panel beaters, heavy techno fans, it all come from the blues. And when you start on a musical journey you will always end up back where it started. I hate using the world spirituality but there’s something about the rockabilly rhythm drum sound and the Nyabinghi conga drum that directly connects with my soul. To me, that’s the closest I’m gonna get to God until they’re about to cut off the machine in my Swiss private clinic. A remix album of Ruled by Passion. Destroyed by Lust by The Asphodells is out in September rottersgolfclub.co.uk Andrew Weatherall is currently artist in residence at Faber and Faber faber.co.uk 83

GALLERY

Stratford Skaters Photographs Cameron McNee Words Adam Beresford

Stratford Shopping Centre in East London is unremarkable and dwarfed by its glitzy neighbour, Westfield, Stratford City. The original mall has served the community since the 1970s, but Newham Council deemed it ugly enough to warrant camouflage. That’s why there’s now a shoal of titanium fish surrounding the outside. But dive into the centre on most nights of the week and there’s a frenzy of activity more graceful than any

sea creature. As weary late night commuters, movie goers and locals pass through, Stratford’s roller skaters whizz around them. Mostly teens and twentysomethings, they come here to socialise, strut and to show what they can do. And they do it with style. A sound system blasts out Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, followed by Justin Timberlake’s ‘Like I Love You’. JT’s falsetto is echoed by some of

the girls, who are outnumbered by the boys by three to one. But everybody mixes, and while some newcomers may initially loiter around the edges, there’s an inclusive atmosphere. Standing in the mall while the skaters race around you can feel risky. But most of them are so skilled that they take pleasure in speeding as close as possible without colliding. They’ll spin round in formation, doing circuit

after circuit. Then it’s time to do some tricks – one guy sets his left skate free and catches up with it while it’s still rolling, and slides his foot back in. Ask any of them to describe what motivates them to come and the word “fun” crops up more than any other. And it shows. Laughter rings out above the hip hop soundtrack and locals passing through are smiling. The skaters are dedicated to perfecting their

moves, but they don’t take themselves seriously. Any minor falls are met with a good natured laugh and brushed off. This centre feels safer than it might if this group weren’t here, and what is essentially a dead space at night is now being utilised by any energetic, young community who have formed a tribe. And it’s one based on freedom, movement and self-expression. As the London 2012 Olympics fade into

the collective memory, one corner of Stratford is still a blur of activity, but without needing a medal’s tally. stratfordshopping.co.uk

GALLERY | Stratford Skaters

CULTURE

Jon Savage

England’s Dreaming. Jesse Pomeroy. The Montgomery Guards Words Paolo Hewitt Portrait Mattias Pettersson

Starting his career on Sounds music paper in the late 1970s, Jon Savage, now one of this country’s best literary critics on popular culture, then moved to The Face magazine and the national newspapers in the 1980s. His writing is defined by his accessible erudition, matched by his infectious enthusiasm for his subject. He has published several books including 1991’s England’s Dreaming, viewed as the definitive history of punk, and Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture (2007), which examines the birth of the teenager in the western world from the late 1880s through to the end of the second world war. As Savage explains in the book’s introduction, “This story ends at the beginning”. Teenage brilliantly mixes in all kinds of wonderful youth cults, such as the Wandervogel in Germany, the Zazous in France and the Bright Young Things in London with new psychological and legal thinking of the period. It is a landmark work; compelling 92

and fascinating, it challenges conventional wisdom. A new film based on the book has recently been premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. How long did Teenage take to write? Seven years. And it drove me nuts. I could never do that again. Who was your favourite cult in the book? What did you want to be? I was bowled over by the Swing Kids. In the film of the book, there is this amazing footage of a 1938 Chicago Swing Jamboree held in a stadium, and there are more than 100,000 kids there, an integrated audience, and they are going absolutely mental. In one scene there is a black guy in a bowler hat pogoing across the stage. You get this sense of white kids being ahead of their time, and of white kids wanting to integrate and act as part of the American democratic process. Which also ties in with the second

world war and America saying, “We are fighting against fascism,” yet at the same time, they are using segregation against black people. It was like in 1966 when Muhammad Ali said, “I ain’t got no problem with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me ‘nigger’”. So these Swing Kids were ahead of their parents? Does that apply to all the cults you looked at? I am a romantic and I am a great believer in the ability of youth in whatever time it is, to come up with creative solutions to the problems they face. Like kids are doing now. Kids embody and represent the future and because of that, they are ahead of their time. There is a fantastic quote in the book where one of the kids says, “Our parents don’t get it. Ours are a speedy lot and they are old!” (laughs) “There you go,” I thought. I recognise that. And what is amazing is how much you recognise from your own experience. >

Wandervogel on LĂźneberg Heath 1909

Rupert Brooke 1913 by Sherrill Schell

There is a documentary about Soho in the 1940s. In it, a woman recalls how they went to jazz raves â&#x20AC;&#x2122;til dawn and everyone was on speed. Nothing new under the sun, eh? Absolutely. And the most poignant thing for me when writing in the book, and that upset me, was the story of the Hamburg Swing Kids. They just wanted to be pop kids, hang out, play music, wear great clothes and be a bit obnoxious, which is what kids have done all through the ages. Yet they got locked up and sent to concentration camps and the Eastern Front, because they were different. They got hammered by the Gestapo. The other person who moved me was Anne Frank who wanted to be a teenager and a writer but instead got taken off to Auschwitz. The German army was made up of young kids. Youth is always at a premium in war. It is something that came up a lot in the 94

CULTURE | Jon Savage

The Montgomery Guards: A Growler Gang In Session c1890 by Jacob Riis

first world war, and also in Vietnam (1959-1975). It is reflected in that Wilfred Owen poem ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’. We decided to start the film pretty much around then.

‘KIDS EMBODY THE FUTURE AND BECAUSE OF THAT, THEY ARE AHEAD OF THEIR TIME’ Not only is it poignant but there isn’t much footage before that time. And you can’t tell a story without it. In the 1920s, that is when you really get the start of youth culture.

American Adolescent 1910s

Those early New York street gangs in the 1880s had no template. They were trailblazers and pioneers. What really got me about them was how desperate those kids were. Take a look at Jacob Riis’ book, How The Other Half Live (1890). It is an amazing photo documentation of the tenements of New York. He was the first person to see them as underprivileged and shine a light on the social problems of the day as America became massively urbanised. Look at the photos and see how desperate the kids are. Also read Luc Sante’s Low Life (1991), which tells you all about the Bowery bars where they did things like put Benzedrine in the beer slops. That book is about people who are really, really poor and therefore desperate. Most of those kids did not make it to the age of 25 mainly because they were taking so much stuff. There was a gang called the Hudson Dusters who gained that name because they took so much coke. >

Portrait of “B. 1 (aged 15 7/12)”

Unemployed youths, the north of England 1935

High school students in the Tulare migrant camps, Visalia, California 1940 by Arthur Rothstein

What were you like when you were a teenager? Moody. I was stuck in a public school I didn’t like. I was withdrawn; I used to sit in my room and listen to strange records and read strange books. All my peers were listening to Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, which I hated. I was brought up on Ready Steady Go!, the TV music show in the 1960s. RSG! played a lot of black artists so I was aware of Motown and a lot of soul. Later, I discovered Radio Caroline. They played a lot of soul, so my pop vision is very holistic.

This boy had been on the road for four years 1932 by Thomas Minehan

How did you get into music? I was bought up in Ealing in West London, which was a big Mod area. Before I went off to public school, I was a suburban child and very aware of pop culture from 1962 onwards.

What is your view of pop culture and class? I think it is very interesting. My parents moved from being middle-middle class to upper-middle class when I was about 13 years old. I was suburban until that

‘I THINK MY TRUE EDUCATION BEGAN WITH PUNK ROCK’ age and then they moved into the centre of town to Kensington. My father was an underwriter and had done well at his work, even though he had left school at 16 and was a self-made man from Ireland. I think Britain is still a class-ridden society and one of the

Going to the “movies”, 2.30pm, Jersey City, New Jersey 1912 by Lewis Hine

things I love about pop culture is that this is a place where the classes meet on equal terms. That was very much my vision of punk. Suddenly, I had been thrust into a world where people like Buzzcocks leader Pete Shelley and I found ourselves in the same room but there were no class barriers because we were into the same thing. That must have been your experience. Not really. At NME, especially, I ran into a lot of class prejudice. Well, I got it the other way, I got shit for being posh and because I’m gay. But I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t. As for my view of the English establishment and the class system. Put it this way: I live in Wales. I don’t like England. I went to Cambridge university and I didn’t like the people there. I am in the strange situation of having that education but not wanting to be like them. None of my friends are from there. Most people who go to >

Youths at an anti-German riot, Poplar, east London 1915

Young American Sheik in suit 1920s At the Savoy in Harlem, early 1940s

American teenagers in a record store in West Grove, Mississippi 1944 by Nina Leen

CULTURE | Jon Savage

Zoot-suiters on parade, New York City 1943

public school or Cambridge never leave it. My true education began with punk rock and when I lived in Manchester in 1979. I saw what life was like in the North West and it was pretty fucking terrible. But I learnt so much there. How do you approach writing about music? My first response to music is always emotional. I am a very emotional person and also very intuitive, so that come into play, and, on top of that, comes the education. Although I don’t write novels I like telling stories so that is what I try to do. And you have to be fan and I still am. A couple of weeks ago I wrote 16,000 words on ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ by The Stones, ‘Shapes Of Things’ by The Yardbirds, and ‘Substitute’ by The Who. That took me six days. I still get really passionate about music. Do you think that because you are writing about pop culture you are not

given the respect that other writers who write on other subjects are given? I’ve thought about this a lot and it is an interesting question. In general, I am now really upbeat. I wasn’t when I was

‘POP CULTURE IS A PLACE WHERE CLASSES MEET ON EQUAL TERMS’ a teenager. I was a moody wanker like everybody else. Now, I think you have to count your blessings. I have written two really great books. I am very proud of them, whatever

anybody thinks. Now, it is probably true that I don’t get the respect you are talking about but to be honest, I have never really liked the literary world. I have never done anything for Granta literary magazine or the London Review of Books or anything like that. It doesn’t seem to work between me and them. I am published by mainstream publishers so I am not a total outsider but I simply go my own merry way, which is what I have always wanted. It goes back to my school experience and what I wanted then, which was not to be bothered by anybody and that is what I have now. Teenage directed by Matt Wolf and written by Matt Wolf and Jon Savage, is currently screening at various film festivals around the world teenagefilm.com jonsavage.org 99

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Photographs David Goldman Styling Marcus Love Villagers Andros, Theodoros Asimacopolos, George Dendrinos, Panos Dendrinos, Xkristos Drogkidis, Aleckos Galanis, Thanasis Galanis, Freddie Iosif, Kostas Katsabiris, Yannis Katsaouni, Spiros Katsabiris, Minas Tselentis and Stavros Vandoros

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Thanasis, fisherman, wears waistcoat from Carlo Manzi; shorts by Issey Miyake; shirt by Palmer Harding; shoes by Paul Smith; hat by Lock & Co. Xkristos, fisherman, wears waistcoat, trousers, shoes and hat from Carlo Manzi; vest by Sunspel; belt, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own. Spiros, fisherman, wears waistcoat from Carlo Manzi; dungarees and sweater by Leviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Vintage Clothing; shoes by Vivienne Westwood; hat by Lock & Co. Aleckos, fisherman, wears top by Issey Miyake; trousers, boots, braces and hat from Carlo Manzi; belt by 7 For All Mankind.

Freddie, designer, wears jacket, shoes and braces from Carlo Manzi; trousers and shirt by Farrell.

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STYLE | Φισκάρδο Minas, restauranteur, wears waistcoat and shirt by Carlo Manzi; hat by Borsalino; glasses by Archibald Optics.

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Xkristos wears sweater by Peter Jensen; hat from Carlo Manzi.

Aleckos wears cardigan by Vivienne Westwood; top by Leviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Vintage Clothing; hat by Lock & Co.

Kostas, fisherman, wears tank top, waistcoat and hat from Carlo Manzi; vest by Sunspel.

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Andros, shepherd, wears jacket and cardigan from Carlo Manzi; hat by Lock & Co; necklace, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

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Spiros wears sweater by Lou Dalton; trousers and hat from Carlo Manzi; necklace, model’s own; belt, stylist’s own.

Freddie wears top and trousers by Farrell; shoes and braces from Carlo Manzi.

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Theodoros, fisherman, wears coat and belt from Carlo Manzi; trousers, model’s own; hat by issey Miyake.

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Stavros, shopkeeper, wears jacket and waistcoat from Carlo Manzi; shirt by Paul Smith; glasses by Archibald Optics.

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Aleckos wears jacket, trousers and hat from Carlo Manzi; shirt by Woolrich; T-shirt, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own; shoes by Vivienne Westwood.

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Panos wears shirt, trousers, shoes, braces and belt from Carlo Manzi. George, restauranteur, wears jacket, trousers and shoes from Carlo Manzi; shirt by Levi’s; hat by Borsalino; pocket square by Paul Smith.

Yannis, lavender farmer, wears jacket and belt by Carlo Manzi; jeans by Edwin Jeans; waistcoat from Carlo Manzi; shirts by Farrell; hat by Lock & Co.

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Yannis wears jacket, trousers, shoes, hat and braces from Carlo Manzi; shirt by Farrell.

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Aleckos wears top by Issey Miyake; hat and braces from Carlo Manzi.

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COVER STORY

Tricky Paris. Bristol Beat. Pollen

Words Chris May Photographs Linus Ricard

Unexpected as it might be, the singer and trumpeter Chet Baker provides part of the back story to Tricky’s new album False Idols, his first since Mixed Race in 2010. The connection is the jazz standard ‘My Funny Valentine’, which was Baker’s signature song for more than 30 years. Tricky’s haunting, half-sung, halfspoken performance of ‘Valentine’ on his album resembles Baker’s. But that is not the point. “The idea goes back to when I was with Björk,” says Tricky when I tell him how much I am enjoying the track. “When I was going out with her. It was a horrible relationship.” I raise my eyebrows. “For her. ’Cos I was all over the place. Nellee [Hooper] warned Björk that if she entered my life she would be overtaken by chaos. And it was horrible for her. She played me that song by Chet Baker once. What a voice! I can remember the day she sat me down and played it. It was the first time I’d heard it. It blew me away. So 116

‘Valentine’ is like an apology to her. The lyrics ain’t about Björk, but vibe-wise it’s me trying to remember something good from when I put her through some bad stuff. I’m trying to remember something beautiful from that time.” Tricky’s relationship with Björk began shortly after the release of his 1995 debut album Maxinquaye, and continued during the recording of the 1996 follow-ups Nearly God and PreMillennium Tension. Tricky cannot remember how long the relationship lasted. “A year maybe. Two years?” But, however long it was, it straddled what have arguably been Tricky’s most gloriously productive years. And more than any other album since, False Idols taps into a similarly filigreed, intimate musical landscape. “It’s getting the best response since Maxinquaye,” says Tricky. “On that one, I did what I wanted and [record producer and founder of Island Records] Chris Blackwell left me alone to do it. That’s what made it what it

was. Then, in 1997, Chris left Island Records and things started going wrong. Now, with !K7 label, it’s like Island again. No one peering over my shoulder; no one trying to steer me in a particular direction; I had complete creative control. The first time I met Horst Weidenmüller [!K7’s founder], he said: ‘Just look on me as a button. You push me and I’ll make it happen.’ You can hear it. I love every track.” Tricky’s career since Blackwell left Island has been a 15-year search for another compatible label. It has not been easy, but he may have finally found one. I met Tricky at the Union Club in London’s Soho on Wednesday 17 April; Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. It was 10 o’clock in the morning and Greek Street was deserted. So was the ground floor of the unlocked club, where I waited unattended for more than long enough to make off with the silverware. Thatcher’s funeral procession a mile or so south had blanketed the area in neither grief nor celebration, but a pall of ennui. >

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A few minutes later, Tricky arrives, radiating enough energy to light up a ballroom. Wiry and slightly built, he is wearing a beaten up leather biker jacket. At 45, his face looks lived in too. Talking to him is a pleasure. He is empathetic and straightforward. At times, there is an almost feminine gentleness about him. There is no selfcensorship. When he says he is not motivated by money and only by a compulsion to make great music, it sounds like the truth. He has spent long periods in the US, and has lived in Paris for the past few years, but he still has that sonorous Bristol burr in his voice. And he has some fine Moroccan pollen in his pocket. “I prefer pollen. They do some funny stuff with weed now. It’s like taking acid. I won’t smoke it, because I can’t talk afterwards. It’s not meditation, it’s lockdown.” Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws was born in the economically impoverished Knowle West area of Bristol. His father was Jamaican and his mother Ghanaian and English. His father left the family before Tricky was born and his mother committed suicide when he was four years old, so his grandmother brought him up. I mention the feminine quality I sense. Is this the source? “I was brought up by only women,” says Tricky. “Women have been my main role models: my grandma, aunty and cousin. Some of the men were in prison, some of them were violent. I was always with my grandmother; I was in the kitchen cooking with her, sewing with her, all those things. I mean, I can crochet. “I’m a bit feminine because of that. But I know what my sexuality is; I’m not worried about it.” Tricky continues, “I’ve seen women in my family bring up people through all conditions, feed them, clothe them, by any means. The men in their lives were not that strong. They might have been tough, they might have had reputations, but they weren’t the glue. Men are too selfish. “When my aunty got married and her brother, my uncle, was bit of a nut job. He used to go round and smash the house up ’cos he didn’t like her husband. One day he went round there, banging on the door and my aunty 118

opened the door, threw pepper in his eyes and stabbed him in the stomach twice. And my grandmother, if someone said something bad to me when I was a kid, she’d say, ‘Fight him’. That’s the sort of women I grew up with. “But I was never a bad boy,” he says. “I was from a bad area but I was never into violence. I’ve seen it at an early age, so it always scared me. I was never a tough guy. But we liked having fun and, to us, chaos was fun. When I was 13 years old or so, getting into trouble and being chased by the police was fun. And I’ve always had that ‘them and us’ attitude. Being in trouble with the police and going to prison was part of my lifestyle really, a rite of passage.” By the time he was 15, Tricky was writing songs. “I like to rock, I like to dance, I like pretty girls taking down their pants”, being an early example of his lyrics. Soon afterwards, he met DJ Milo and started hanging with the Bristol posse The Wild Bunch, who

‘I DON’T SELL TO COLOUR. WHOEVER FINDS ME, FINDS ME’ morphed into Massive Attack. After rapping on Massive Attack’s 1991 debut album Blue Lines, Tricky played the band a tape he had made of his girlfriend, Martina Topley-Bird, singing his song ‘Aftermath’. When the band rejected it, Tricky pressed up some labels, and lucked out when one of them reached Chris Blackwell at Island Records. An old school, patrician label boss in the tradition of Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records from the mid 1950s through the mid 1970s, Blackwell’s modus operandi resembled Lieberson’s: find talented artists, nurture them, and give them the freedom to follow their muse. “Chris was simultaneously a curse and the best thing that ever happened to me,” says Tricky. “He was all I knew

at that time and I thought the entire industry was like that. What I didn’t realise was that there’s no one like Chris Blackwell. When he left Island [in 1997], that’s what fucked me up. I’d started at the top, then I went downhill.” By 1997, Tricky had released three albums on Island (Maxinquaye, Nearly God and Pre-MillenniumTension) and had a fourth, Angels With Dirty Faces, ready to go. “I had a meeting with the new management and they told me, ‘We got to get your black audience up’. I said, ‘I don’t sell to colour. Whoever finds me, finds me.’ I had to do one more album with them to get out of the deal [this was Juxtapose in 1999] and then I was floating around.” In 2000, Tricky signed with Hollywood Records in Los Angeles. “I had this meeting with Bob Cavallo who had signed Prince. He had this huge office with a big chair and I was sat in this little one. He had all these Prince stories of how he’d steered his recordings and made him a star. I thought, ‘What do I care about Prince?’ He was back then and I was now. So I called Chris and said, ‘Please pretend you’re managing me.’ Cavallo flew to New York to meet Chris. Cavallo was kissing his arse, saying, ‘Oh, you had Bob Marley, all those great artists.’ And Chris points to me and goes, ‘Well, you got one now.’ For me, that was like the muscle.” In 2001, Tricky released Blowback on Hollywood records. But, despite Blackwell’s intervention, the partnership soured. Next up was another LA based label, Epitaph Records, who released 2003’s Vulnerable. “Epitaph were very good,” says Tricky. “When I signed, they bought me a bag of weed, Rizla and two bottles of water.” Sales of Vulnerable were disappointing, however, and dipping his feet in film work, a soundtrack for film producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a documentary about setting up his own record label, Brown Punk (now reborn as False Idols), Tricky took a break from releasing his own records. In 2008, he signed to Domino, which released two albums, Knowle West Boy (2008) and Mixed Race (2010). It was a dysfunctional relationship

COVER STORY | Tricky

from the start. “Chris let me do my thing. When I was ready to mix, I mixed. Chris didn’t hear anything until I put it out. But Laurence Bell [Domino’s founder] would get on the Eurostar and come to the studio in Paris to listen and to tell me whether I was ready to mix. Well, he’s paying for it, so fair play. But how is Laurence going to tell me if I’m ready to mix? I’m a funny person. If you get on a train and come to tell me whether I’m ready to mix, I’m the sort of person who thinks about that. I take it personally. And I get to dislike it. It’s a negative part of my personality, I wish I could let things go, but I’m an obsessive. “Take for example my last two albums; the people who mixed them, I don’t think they should have mixed them. They had one guy who’d worked with [songwriter and artist] M.I.A. and I said to Laurence, ‘What have I got to do with that?’ And the reply

was, ‘He is hot at the moment.’ If you have to go with people because they’re hot, that’s saying to me, ‘I don’t feel safe with you’. There was a remix done that I hated, and I got the same thing: ‘This guy is hot at the moment.’ “It was like being told to do something by a teacher. I thought, ‘Fair play, he has every right to come and hear this as he’s paying for it. But I need a different situation.’” So far, things are going swimmingly with !K7. “I’m pleased with the situation,” says Tricky. “I’m led by the music, I don’t care about money. I’ve paid for Maisie [Tricky’s 18-year-old daughter with Martina Topley-Bird] to go through school and that’s all I’ve ever cared about. The people at !K7 are not really in the industry, they’re not part of the celebrity thing. And I don’t want to deal with people like that any more. “Don’t get me wrong. They’re not bad people at Domino, and it’s not their

fault it didn’t work out – it is mine. It just isn’t the way I do business. “Like, one of my videos on Domino cost fifty grand. And it was shit. We had to pay for some director because… he was ‘hot at the moment’. We were going to shoot the video, and I said, ‘I want it very simple, just a piano in a bar. I got there and they’d got a pit bull terrier, covered in jewellery. And he says: ‘Oh, we want to make it a little bit ghetto.’ The dog probably cost five grand. “I’ve just done three videos and a short movie for !K7 for five grand. I shot them myself, so all I have to pay for is the editing. On Domino, it would be fifty grand and I’d be worried about it because I’d have to pay that out of my royalties. You get into the mentality of, ‘This album’s got to do well because I’ve got to recoup.’ Domino doesn’t do anything with electronic music, they’re guitar based. I realised quickly it was not the right label for me, but I had > 119

a deal with them. The records I did were just business,” says Tricky. “It makes you nervous and stressed. You get to the point where everything is a worry, and if you don’t feel good it’s hard to create. Sometimes I’d go on tour with Mixed Race and I’d think, ‘Why am I on tour? I’m still touring the same album after two fucking years.’ Making money on tour is not enough. It’s tiring, it’s soulless, and it’s not healthy. But touring False Idols now, I’ll do it because my soul is in there.” Tricky says his priority with !K7 is to reconnect with his audience because he lost touch with them on the two Domino albums. “I’d be touring Knowle West or Mixed Race and people would be bringing Pre-Millennium Tension or Nearly God for me to sign and they’d tell me, ‘I was having bad times but this album has helped me through.’ I realised those two albums were not doing anything for anybody. “Making music is not about me, it’s for other people. I get a lot of people who tell me they were at the end of their tether and that I’ve helped them through. I don’t know how I help people emotionally, but I do.” Three times during our conversation, Tricky refers to Maisie’s schooling. He has another daughter, Stacy, who is 24 and a social worker. “What’s funny,” says Tricky, “it’s me and her mother who could have done with some social work.” I ask Tricky if he is still hurt by accusations made in The Face in 1996 that he was a bad father to Maisie. “This journalist met me the day Maisie started walking. We were all in a TV studio and he didn’t think I was being attentive enough to her. But the things he said, I mean how could he know about my relationship with my kid after meeting me for an hour? Usually, I don’t give a fuck what people say about me. But that was a no-no.” Tricky’s response was to diss the journalist on record. I tell him how, in the 1970s, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi responded to a similar personal attack by a Melody Maker writer. When they were next in the same room, Iommi wrapped his Rolex watch round his knuckles and punched the writer. “I heard a story about Paul Weller a couple of years ago,” says Tricky.

“Apparently, this writer had been personal when reviewing his album. So the story goes that Weller took the guy out to dinner, stayed there drinking with him for a couple of hours, then went outside and beat him up.” The memory prompts Tricky to mention another person who has bugged him, BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley. “She won’t play me because she knows I don’t respect her. I was on a TV show [in the late 1990s] and she asked me about the new opera house that was being built in London and I’m like, ‘Come on, there’s people starving, there’s people living on the streets, who gives a fuck about opera? Get some youth clubs open.’ She hasn’t played me since. “I don’t mind speaking about it. This is what gives me problems, the

‘THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS A CELEBRITY INDUSTRY NOW. MUSIC COMES SECOND’ way I talk. It’s like the Brit awards. All these people flock to the Brits every year, but do you really need an awards ceremony to tell you who you are? That’s the problem with the music industry now, it’s a celebrity industry. Music comes second. They don’t want to rock the boat ’cos they don’t want to threaten their celebrity.” By now, the pollen is kicking in nicely and Tricky segues to the one time TV sports presenter David Icke. “I don’t like him. He’s a nut job, but he does all that conspiracy stuff, the reptilian stuff. He was a regular TV commentator and then he saw God. In Wigan. But he has got some great points of view. He did this conference and he put up this picture of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, where he takes her top down. And he says, ‘That’s sensational.’ Then he has a picture of a woman and her child being killed in Iraq. And he

said, ‘Now this is more sensational, but they don’t want you to see this.’ There are rumours about him being hooked up with MI6.” Jo Whiley and celebrity culture aside, 2013 is looking good for Tricky. In his new manager, Phil Howells, previously best known as the owner of Manchester café Caffeine & Co, Tricky says he has found another person who is in his corner, unconditionally, like Chris Blackwell was. “Phil’s a bit crazy, a bit eccentric. More than just wanting to be successful, he understands what’s going on. I haven’t had this for a long time. I need someone like that. You get people in this industry who critique you, but they’ve never done anything themselves. Like how can Jo Whiley not play me? She should be calling my management and saying, ‘Has Tricky got anything new out?’ When it comes to the music thing beyond that woman. Really what the BBC should be doing, if they want some good music, is to give me her fucking job. “It’s good to have Phil saying, ‘These people should kiss your fucking arse.’” Above all, Tricky feels lucky. “Today, I’m doing an interview for an album that isn’t out yet, I’ve got another album we’re mixing, and I’ve got further one ready to record. I could do two or three in a year. And !K7 have given me an internet base where I can put out new tracks any time I want. I work very fast and this way I’m not sitting on my music. “I’m very lucky. I’ve got a studio at home and I can record for a few hours, then I can cook. If I don’t want to work, I don’t, but if I want to work all night, I can. How many people have a life like that? I love what I’m doing. So when I go in the studio I know I’m lucky to be doing this. And if you put thoughts of your talent aside and realise you’re lucky, everything gets golden. “There’s things that can’t be explained going on in this world and one of them is music. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m very naive in the studio. But I get to travel around the world, and get to meet people. How lucky can you be?” False Idols by Tricky is out now on !K7 Records trickysite.com

COVER STORY | Tricky

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CINEMA

Kitchen Sink Drama Working classes. Post-war Britain. Free Cinema movement. Alan Sillitoe. Tony Richardson Words Chris Sullivan

The actor Tom Courtenay is sitting in the Savoy hotel in London discussing his first film The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner. “It’s hard for me to grasp that almost 50 years ago I was sitting here waiting to go to the Bafta awards,” he comments We are here to discuss his groundbreaking debut ahead of the release of the 50th anniversary DVD. The film tells the story of a Borstal boy, Colin Smith, played by Courtenay, with a knack for running. It was at the vanguard of the New Wave of British film. Post second world war Britain was a depressing place and the country was in introspective mood. The class system seemed antiquated at best; monstrous at worst, not dissimilar to the common enemy that everyone had come together to defeat. The younger generation were going to utilise that freedom they and their 122

fathers had fought so bloodily for. This newfound liberation meant speaking one’s mind and fighting for equal rights. Among them was a new group of working class British writers, actors and cinemagoers who hither to had been severely underrepresented and simply ignored both on stage and screen. “Do you know what I’d do if I had the whip hand?” says Smith in the film. “I’d get all the coppers, governors, posh whores, army officers and members of parliament and I’d stick them up against this wall and let them have it ’cause that’s what they’d like to do to blokes like us.” Tough words now but back then they were positively incendiary. Written by Alan Sillitoe, a former bicycle factory worker, the film is a rather punky two fingers to authority

and the privileges and comforts that come to those happy to kowtow. Stationed in Malaysia with the RAF in the second world war, Sillitoe was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In an attempt to recover, he moved first to France and then Mallorca. There, he met the poet Robert Graves who encouraged Sillitoe to write stories about what he knew. His debut novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, published in 1958, truly set the cat among the pigeons. A tome that dealt with the disillusionment of post-war Britain and the lack of opportunities for the working man, it was adapted to the screen by Karel Reisz in 1960 starring Albert Finney as the protagonist, Arthur. Courtenay leans in to tell me something. “You have to remember that no one had really made any serious films about the ordinary British person >

This Sporting Life. 1963

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Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. 1958

We Are The Lambeth Boys. 1958

before then. When I was growing up all you heard on the radio were these BBC received pronunciation accents that I quite liked, and in the cinema all we had was a comic interpretation of the lower classes. The films we did then, called ‘“kitchen sink dramas”, were something that the working man on the street could identify with and were quite contentious. They called us the “angry young men” but to be honest none of us were, as we were all quite pleased because we had gone from nothing to being the biggest thing since sliced bread in a matter of months. So why complain?” Of course, today, Courtenay can look back with pride at his long and successful career but his comments are poignant. Before the late 1950s and early 1960s, cinema and the theatre were the preserve of the rich and wellto-do. Until then, if there had been examples in film, such as the East End noir, It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), they were most definitely the exception, not the rule. (Curiously, this film was made by Ealing Studios who we associate with comedies which, I suppose, says a lot). Both on stage and on screen, British identity had been defined by characters who populated the works of Noel

Coward or Terence Rattigan. Picture louche, cravat wearing scallywags whose vowels were the product of an expensive public school education. Working classes tended to be sketched out in comedic “Cor blimey, Guv’nor” deferential characters. Not since the days of Marlowe and Shakespeare, when theatre attracted brigands,

THESE FILMS WERE DRIVEN BY A DESIRE TO PRESENT SOCIAL ISSUES beggars and bourgeoisie, were well rounded, varied characters acted out. Now that was changing. The first mass communication medium to sit in living rooms up and down the country was the radio. The wireless played its part in said change during the depression hit 1930s. Families huddled together the listen

to shows from the big stars of the day; Arthur Askey, George Formby, Gracie Fields, Tommy Trinder and Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen. Although from working class backgrounds, all these acts were entertainers, singers and comics, vaudevillians essentially, offering light entertainment after a hard day’s work. With the arrival of talking pictures, initially these stars were transported from one medium to the another, carrying on their acts. Although not without their merits, these films didn’t reflect the harsh day to day realities of the times. And definitely, didn’t dare to reveal what one might be thinking, let alone dreaming. Curiously, the most successful films in British cinema of the 1930s were American. Gangster films like Little Caesar (1931) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) couldn’t be described as kitchen sink dramas but they certainly revealed the aspirations of US steerage class in their own way. Perhaps more importantly the film’s actors, Edward G Robinson and James Cagney, had both been brought up in the slums of New York’s Lower East Side. Real life proof, if needed, that if one dared to dream… One of his few works not to centre on the upper and middle classes, Noel Coward’s play > 125

Cosh Boy. 1953

This Happy Breed (1939) is an intimate portrait of the life of the ignoble Gibbons family between the wars. Yet, when it was adapted for the big screen a couple of years later, the cast was not made up of working class actors who could portray and understand the characters presented. The political landscape changed dramatically at the end of the second world war. Despite Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s heroic status, the Labour government won a landslide victory. Clement Attlee’s new government brought in sweeping reforms, including a nationalised healthcare system, expanded state funded education and a new housing policy. These policies not only reflected the shifting sands of British society, they also empowered the working classes in a way never seen before. Courtenay tells me, “Getting into grammar school was the single most important thing that ever happened to me. God knows what I’d have become without the 11-plus as it enabled working class youth to go on to university. Working class families couldn’t afford to put their kids through higher education and there were a lot who deserved 126

to go.” Fellow actors Albert Finney and Alan Bates were also educated at Grammar schools. All of them went on to study at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic

THE TERM FITTED THE THEMES OF THE DOMESTIC, GRITTY DRAMAS Arts before making their names in kitchen sink dramas. John Osborne’s ferocious 1956 play, Look Back in Anger was made into a film in 1959, starring Richard Burton. His character Jimmy Porter rat-a-tatted vitriolic diatribes against the mediocrity of middle-class English life. Laurence Olivier

described it as “a travesty on England”. No better approval was needed. Anger and the desires of the young were becoming the fore of character-led stories that reflected the vagaries of everyday life of the time. Freedom of expression among the younger generation naturally enough manifested itself in dress codes and haircuts. The first truly identifiable youth style movement were the teddy boys in the 1950s who appropriated and mocked the style of aristocratic ex-guardsmen who had taken to wearing Edwardian-era frock coats. Cosh Boy (1953), among first films to receive a X-rated certificate, highlighted the attitudes and escapades of the rebel teenagers who would soon morph into the teds. The film’s director, Lewis Gilbert, was born into a family of music hall performers in Hackney. (He would go on to make Alfie, starring Michael Caine, in 1966.) Tony Richardson, who had staged the Royal Court production of Look Back in Anger, started the English Stage Company in 1956, aged 28. Around this time, he also set up the Free Cinema movement with fellow directors Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Lorenza Mazzetti. This was the first >

CINEMA | Kitchen Sink Drama

Room At The Top. 1959

It Always Rains On Sunday. 1947

CINEMA | Kitchen Sink Drama

The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner. 1962

time a group consciously thought about creating films that were driven by a desire to present social issues instead of box office appeal. Their collective films were shown at the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank. Reisz’s films Momma Don’t Allow (1955), a documentary on the trad jazz scene and We are the Lambeth Boys (1958) are still regularly screened today and are seen as pioneering examples of social documentary film making. Actor Laurence Harvey’s breakthrough movie, Room at the Top was a sharp indictment of the British class system that was given a X certificate on its release in 1959 and was banned by the Association of British Boys Clubs, lest its members were tainted by its content. Based on the bestselling novel by John Braine, its protagonist, Joe Lampton is a caddish former prisoner of war, who attempts to rise above his station through marriage while carrying on with a careless love affair behind his fiancée’s back. That aside, much of the furore was due to Lampton’s nonchalant assurance that being interned by the Hun was a good thing because he could then study accountancy,

while his self assured rise was seen as rather gauche. The picture was thus considered simply unBritish. This was the attitude towards most kitchen sink dramas at the time. The term “kitchen sink” was, in fact, first used by art critic David Sylvester in 1954 after seeing a work by painter John Bratby. The critic noted that a group of artists were putting emphasis

ANGER AND DESIRE WERE BECOMING THE FORE OF CHARACTERLED STORIES on the “banality of life”. The term perfectly fitted the themes of the domestic, gritty dramas that were now peppering both the theatre and cinema and it wasn’t long before the “kitchen sink drama” was regarded as a genre. One of the most impactful stories from this new genre was A Taste of

Honey, first a play (1958) and then a film (1961). The story took a unbiased look at bold subjects for the time; racism, personal and sexual freedom, sexuality and teenage pregnancy. Perhaps, most remarkable of all, it was written by an 18-year-old daughter of a Manchester bus conductor, Shelagh Delaney. Written in 10 days, she was inspired after seeing Terence Rattigan’s play Variations on a Theme, which she felt showed a lack of sensitivity towards homosexuality. Today, it is part of the English Literature school curriculum. Tony Richardson, who directed both Look Back in Anger and A Taste of Honey, also directed The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. “He cast me I think because he knew he had to have someone who was from the same background as Colin Smith,” explains Courtney. “Same as he did with Rita [Tushingham] for A Taste of Honey. Even though we weren’t really experienced [actors], we knew our characters and he knew that the audience would sense that. Still it was very brave of him to do so and I will always be very grateful. He knew how to get the best out of me, and that was to handle me very gently. I was terrified > 129

A Taste Of Honey. 1961

at first but after a week or two I got used to it. And I started to enjoy it. Loneliness still holds up, I think.” Of course, these brave new directors didn’t get their inspirations out of thin air. In the mid 1950s, Soho was a social mecca for the creative youth, in particular the wealth of Italian owned coffee shops. And if you wanted to look sharp, you could pop next door into the Italian tailor for a nice little “whistle”. It’s fair to say that the 1950s hipsters were switched on to all things Italian. And Italian cinema was no exception. Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (1948) is a landmark film in what is now called Italian neorealism. Shot on the streets, casting real people in real clothes, it aimed for an emotional realism that must have seemed a million miles away from the Hollywood-lit starlets portrayed from across the pond. Today, it is still regarded as one of the greatest works of cinema. Even closer to home, the French, who always regarded cinema as “art”, had made films such as Francois Truffaut’s semiautobiographical The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), which kickstarted the French New Wave cinema. Although the term “kitchen sink drama” may refer to a particular period 130

of theatre and cinema, the legacy of that body of work it still evident today. By the 1960s, television was taking over as the mass audience medium. Series such as The Wednesday Play, Play for Today and Armchair Theatre on ITV. In 1966, a TV drama called Cathy Come Home caused uproar and revolutionised television. It told

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION MANIFESTED IN DRESS CODES AND HAIRCUTS the story of a homeless young mother who has her children taken away by social services. The director’s realistic approach confused some quarters. The Sunday Telegraph complained rather vigorously that it “deliberately blurs the distinction between fact and fiction... [viewers] have a right to know whether what

they are being offered is real or invented.” It inspired the formation of the charity for the homeless Shelter and was once, in an industry poll, given the accolade of the best British television drama ever made. The director’s name was Ken Loach, who would create a cinematic masterpiece a couple of years later; Kes (1969). Britain has continued to make dramatic cinema focusing on the tough realism of working classes; directors such as Mike Leigh, Peter Mullan, Alan Clarke and Shane Meadows and, of course, Ken Loach. Meadows, whose films include Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) and This is England (2006), says that period of British cinema has been hugely influential on his work. “A Kind of Loving, The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner and, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. They were the first films I understood; that said something to me. They dealt with subjects I could empathise with; and to be honest, that they are more relevant today than ever.” The 50th anniversary DVD of Billy Liar is available now filmstore.bfi.org.uk

CINEMA | Kitchen Sink Drama

Look Back In Anger. 1956

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Benjamin, musician, wears shirt by Edwin Jeans.

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STYLE Christos, painter, wears polo shirt by Sunspel; trousers by Vivienne Westwood; hat, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own; watch by HMT.

Balls Pond Banditti Photographs Kasia Wozniak Styling and Casting Savannah Baker Banditti Benjamin H Baker, Troy Baker, George Jessel, Aynzli Jones, Harry Mundy, Jonathan Ross, David Spence and Christos Tolera

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Troy, music producer, wears jacket by Pretty Green; trousers by Edwin Jeans; shirt by Barbour.

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David, photographer, wears cape by Agnes b; jeans, model’s own; T-shirt by Stüssy; shoes by Dr Martens.

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Harry, menswear designer, wears suit by Harry Mundy; shirt from The Vintage Showroom; braces by Vivienne Westwood; hat by Lock & Co.

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George, artist, wears sweater by Pretty Green.

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Jonathan, curator, wears waistcoat by Gurteen; trousers by Joseph; shirt by Pretty Green; hat by Agnes b.

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Aynzli, singer, wears top by Vivienne Westwood; hat by Agnes b; necklace and bracelet, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

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HISTORY

Bill Ray Watts Riots. Life Magazine Words Andy Thomas

In the summer of 1966, a year after the Watts Riots, Life magazine sent photographer Bill Ray deep into South Central Los Angeles for an issue entitled, “Watts: Still Seething”. The world he discovered was far from that being portrayed by other media. In a collection of raw, incredibly vibrant, colour photographs Ray captured the people living in the aftermath. Children at play among the rubble, locals and police in tense standoffs, child militants being drilled for resistance and the stylish young men who a year before had been burning Watts and whose rage continued to smoulder. “We know it don’t do no good to burn Watts again. Maybe next time we go up to Beverly Hills,” one seethed, decked out in Ivy League style and rudeboy swagger. Where did your interest in photography begin? When I was very young and growing up in a small town in the US state of Nebraska. My mother was an artist and when my brother came home from the second world war he went off to 140

art school. The one thing that always came into the house was Life. Those photographers were so famous and I loved the pictures. So I gravitated towards that and my photography became useful for my mother and brother as I used to take photos that they could paint. Once I’d got my developing kit it escalated rapidly. My mother was also generous in supporting this habit and bought me cameras like Leica, Rolleiflex and Linhof. There were some incredible photographers working for Life back then. Who in particular inspired you? Alfred Eisenstaedt above all but there were so many great photographers who I idolised. W Eugene Smith, David Douglas Duncan, Leonard McCombe. You don’t hear about these photographers so much any more. What do you think these Life photographers had in common and what defined them? They were all wonderfully graphic and spontaneous. For Life the picture was

everything. There was no place too far, too difficult or, for that matter, too expensive. To maintain their standing as the world’s greatest picture magazine they kept a stable of great photographers. Some specialised in science, art, nature and underwater photography. Some were more gifted with people. How did you get your first assignment? My father had a lumber yard and he would have been happy to turn that over to me. So my big decision was whether I was going to really pursue this intense, insane relationship with photography or run this damn yard. I bought myself a plaid suit and walked into the lobby of the Lincoln Journal Star and said I was applying for a job. It was the early 1950s and I was only 16 years old but because a lot of people were on vacation for the summer they hired me on the daily paper. So how did you end up working for Life? Well, my work at the Journal Star was a big success as I had all this background >

Hanging out in Watts

HISTORY | Bill Ray

At the Watts Tower

even at that age. Of course I always had my eye on getting to New York and Life. I had seen enough of overalls and shit Kicker shoes. I wanted to be like Fred Astaire dancing in Central Park with a Leica dangling from my neck. I managed to move up pretty quickly to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which was known nationally for its photography. After a while I got a call from the Chicago bureau chief to ask if I would like to work for Life. So I just packed up my cameras and all the clothes that I had into the back of my car and headed for New York. I started by doing 142

freelance assignments, making about the same money in a day as I had been making in a week.

up to date on what had changed and what had stayed the same. The good, the bad and the ugly.

How did the Watts project assignment come about? As a freelancer, I had to develop a lot of ideas to keep getting work. Every morning when I would get up Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d look through The Times, Wall Street Journal and those goddamn papers for stories. When I moved to be a staff photographer in Beverley Hills the editors of Life agreed to me revisiting the area to bring their readers

Did you know Watts before you went on the assignment? No, so there was a big learning process for me and it was really interesting trying to get acquainted with the area and meeting people. How did you decide what to photograph? First, I wandered the streets looking at what was going on, but I was also >

Throwing Molotov Cocktails in Watts

Young Lions in Watts

introduced to people by all these selfappointed spokesmen who came out of the woodwork following the riots. I would also talk to these young kids and try to think of a photograph that would tell their story. And then some things just presented themselves naturally, like African American activist Ron Karenga marching these little troops. He was a hugely important figure in the Black Power movement, of course, and feared by the establishment. Was there some posturing in those pictures? It was definitely posturing but he was certainly hoping that if he turned 144

around and looked there would be a little army behind him. He would have led the mob all the way to Beverley Hills if he could. What was the young people’s reception to you and your camera in what must have been incredibly paranoid times? How did you gain their trust? They were very wary, of course, until you got to know them. The main thing was to convince them that I wasn’t a policeman. I was still young so maybe I just didn’t look like one. Soon they were inviting me to watch them practice throwing Molotov cocktails. They loved to go out practicing;

lighting and throwing these makeshift bombs as many nights as possible. It took a few days and nights but I gained their trust. It was amazing that I’d end up making friends with them and that we would help each other so much. Then I started to try and understand what the problem was down there; the frustration and lack of opportunity. What you have to have is empathy. I think I had that and projected it, which helped me to ingratiate myself to their circle. How important is it to have that understanding as a photojournalist? It’s all part of the package. When you start out, you have to master >

HISTORY | Bill Ray Kids in Watts

Hanging out in Watts

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HISTORY | Bill Ray photography, then you have to move on to find out about light and composition, but a part of photojournalism is to be able to deal with people, and get them to trust you. Then you get your pictures. These were very tense times in Watts. Did you ever feel in danger? No. Right now I can’t remember the name of the guy throwing the Molotov cocktail but I got to know him and to like him and he kind of protected me. That is kind of what happened with the Hells Angels. One of them had a crash on his bike and split his head open. I got him to the hospital to get sewn up. After that they started to trust me and to look after me. The Watts project was a year after the Hells Angels. What did the assignments have in common? These were both groups that I knew nothing about; scary groups. You were certainly aware of the potential danger and had to be careful. But it’s amazing how you could find these people who were so unlike you but who you liked and you actually became friends with. What did you learn from those young people who you met in Watts? Well, like the guy with the Molotov cocktail, you are dealing with a person who doesn’t know a lot about the world or anything but has a hell of a lot of street smart. And you can learn from him. It was interesting to meet someone who on one level was frightening but on another level it was like, “Show me how you do this”. This street smart thing is a different way of thinking, especially when you come from the sheltered life that I had.

was going to happen. For example, the guys practising throwing Molotov cocktails told me they did that every night and asked me if I would like to photograph them. I might have asked them to keep throwing the bombs until I got the picture right, but I would never tell them what to do. Then, in the case of Karenga, he’s out there marching these kids around every day. I had talked to him about photographing them, so after a while I would ask if he could line them up differently or something. But, believe me, he was not drilling them for me. It’s tricky because there were people

‘IF YOU CAN’T MAKE INTERESTING PICTURES THEN NOBODY IS GOING TO SEE THEM’ in the neighbourhood who did not like Karenga and were suspicious of Life magazine. There was even a rumour at the time that it was my idea but nothing could be further from the truth.

Were you surprised when you saw the clothes the young people were wearing? Yes. I didn’t know where the inspiration came from but they certainly had it. Ghetto fashion is always amazing. I remember New York with all the fur coat, pimp style.

Was it important for you to shoot in colour? For me, the main thing was not to make it downbeat. You know, a gritty and grimy sort of thing. I wanted to show Watts as it looked. You have to remember that Watts was not some awful slum. It’s a nice looking place with little houses and palm trees, you know. Add the Californian sun and the opportunities for colour photographs were great.

To what extent were you simply documenting or was there any staging? I wouldn’t use the word “staged” but in some cases I would know something

Did you know you were going to shoot in colour before you went there? Yes, the thought of doing that gritty kind of thing was not the kind of mood

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or message Life wanted. I think they were hoping to not only get a lot of good colour pictures that would look good in the magazine but also to show the hope. And it’s easier to get that across in colour. What equipment did you use? The standard thing was two or three Leicas with wide angled lenses. I used a Nikon F for telephoto images. This camera is great because it’s so light you could carry three of four. There is a lot of beauty in the pictures. Did you ever feel there was a danger of romanticising the situation? That’s a tough question. There is always someone who says, “You exploited this…” or, “You shouldn’t have done that,” but if you are trying to tell a story you need emphasis and to put punch into the pictures, otherwise they are not going to make it into print and no one’s going to see them. There was the British photographer who was happy that he missed General Nguygen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon in 1968 because he didn’t think it was decent to take the picture. Well, my friend Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for it. If you are there in the street and you’re a photographer, my attitude is, “For God’s sake, take the picture, jackass.” You have to be tough and if you can’t make interesting pictures then nobody is going to see them. What tips do you have for budding photojournalists today? Well, you have to start with the basics and understand photographic technique. There is always something to learn but you need that first. One of the best ways to learn about lighting and composition is to go to museums. I never get tired of looking at paintings and looking at the light. And then you have to have the ability to deal with people, so when you ask them do something they will respond. The other important factor is to be able to carry all this equipment. At my age, my feet and back are giving out on me but I’m still here, in Paris, walking around taking pictures. billray.com Photos by Bill Ray © Time Inc.

Hanging out in Watts

MUSIC

The Stone Roses Spike Island. Second Summer of Love. Madchester. Heaton Park Words Chris Sullivan Photographs Matt Squire

After years of “will they, won’t they” speculation The Stone Roses reformed last year, touring together for the first time in 16 years. But for a band who created one great album almost 25 years ago, why does anyone care after all this time? The fact is, they do. And in their droves. In fact, the 220,000 tickets for their homecoming gigs at Heaton Park, Manchester sold out within 14 minutes while the entire tour sold out within an hour. This is the question that film director Shane Meadows poses in Made 148

of Stone, his forthcoming documentary about the band. Meadows, who sites The Stone Roses as his favourite band in the film’s trailer, says, “The making of the film was driven by my love and respect for the band. Other films I’ve made, such This Is England (2006), had a very particular political agenda but this is a personal film and a bit saddo. I was a young skinhead but those clothes and the music were someone else’s taste. The Roses were the first band I really got into and this whole project has come out of me being a huge fan.”

The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album, which came out in April 1989, initially made little impact on the music media and radio. Subsequent singles ‘Made of Stone’ and ‘Fools Gold’, however, caught the attention of the public and, ultimately, they took home four awards at that year’s NME Readers Poll Awards. (Best Band, Best New Band, Single of the Year, Album of the Year.) Like many great bands before them, The Stone Roses, were not an overnight success. Ian Brown and John Squire met at school in the late 1970s. >

The Stones Roses, with bassist Pete Garner 1987

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With a shared love of The Clash, they formed their first band, The Patrol, in 1980. Initially, Brown played bass. Andy Couzens was the band’s singer, while the drummer, Simon Wolstencroft, went on to join various Manchester bands, including The Fall in 1986. Despite making some demo tapes, the band split up before the end of the year. Brown is reported to have sold his bass guitar for £100 in order to buy a scooter. Without his guitar, Brown’s musical focus switched to a Northern Soul night he started in Salford. Couzens and Squire went on to form a new band called The Fireside Chaps, which also included new bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield. After a line150

up and name change (The Waterfront), Squire approached Brown to join, this time as the band’s singer. Initially unsure, Brown met soul legend Geno Washington at a house party who told him he was going to be star. Soon after, Brown joined the band. Many years later, I was with Mani in New York. He recalled coming to see my band at the time, Blue Rondo a la Turk performing at the Ritz in Manchester in 1982. “We fucking loved you,” he confides, explaining the mysterious disappearance of much of our equipment that night. “So when we saw all that percussion on the stage, we had it away and then we tried to sound like you. ‘Fools Gold’

was us trying to do Blue Rondo.” Praise, indeed. (I didn’t ask him to give our gear back, by the way.) Again, this band fizzled out. Yet a determined Couzens put together a new band with Squire and Brown, and Squire’s friend Pete Garner on bass. Wolstencroft, who had recently left Johnny Marr’s band, Freak Party, also returned to the fold. This was the first time the name The Stone Roses was used. Around 1984, Wolstencroft left again, this time joining Terry Hall’s new band, The Colourfield. Fortunately, Alan “Reni” Wren was his replacement. Reni is invariable described as the greatest British drummer of his generation. Pete Townsend of The Who,

MUSIC | The Stones Roses

first met the band when they played at an anti-heroin concert he was hosting,

A WHOLE GENERATION EXPERIENCED A EUROPHIA THAT’S NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE described him as “the most naturally gifted drummer since Keith Moon”.

Now, the band determined themselves with writing a credible body of songs. Their first single ‘So Young’ (1985) was produced by Martin Hannett, best remembered for his work with Joy Division and Factory Records. He also produced an accompanying album that never saw the light of day at the time; in 1996, it was released without the band’s permission, entitled Garage Flower. Brown said of their first single, “I wouldn’t pay 20p for that.” This gives some indication of how much the band were to grow creatively, starting with the release of their next single ‘Sally Cinnamon’ (1987). Around this time, early demos of songs that would later appear on their first album

were being demoed by the band. And Couzens and Garner left the band. Mani, who had played in The Fireship Chaps was recruited and the classic Stone Roses line-up was complete. “When Mani joined it changed almost overnight,” Brown recalled. “It became a totally different groove. Straight away, everything just fell into place.” By 1988 the whole country was awash with acid house and ecstasy. This new dance music was starting to make an appearance on the radio and in the charts but, more importantly, it was taking a grip on the whole nation through unlicensed raves and huge all-night parties, bringing together thousands of young people. Through the music, the drugs and the settings (fields or pop art decorated warehouses), a whole generation experienced a unifying sense of euphoria on a scale not seen before or since. (Something that not only snubbed, but also frightened, Thatcher’s Britain.) Unsurprisingly, it has subsequently been dubbed “the second summer of love”. The Stone Roses’ guitar music was infused with dance beats and rhythms as well as a psychedelic, blissed out undercurrent, which perfectly captured the spirit of the times. Beyond their simply superior musicianship, The Stone Roses’ first album perfectly captured the mood of the time, soundtracking many people’s lives along the way. Other Manchester bands of the time, such as Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets, would soon be referred to under the collective banner “Madchester”. Despite the Mondays having already released two albums by the time The Stone Roses’ first album was released, the Roses were the leaders of this Manchester music. Their clothes at the time, flares and trainers, even gave rise to the term “baggy generation” as people adopted looser, almost stoner cartoonish, outfits. These comfortable outfits were perfectly suited to drugfuelled all night dancing. Of their songwriting ability, Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher once said of the Roses, “Musically, they could have been bigger than The Beatles. Cos they had it.” Yet, tragically, this is where the mystery and cultism of the band begins. > 151

Through gross mismanagement and a record deal that is often described as tantamount to “slavery”, aside from the non-album single ‘One Love’ (1990), they weren’t able to release a single note for another five years while legal wrangles were played out in court. When they were finally able to release their next album, suitably titled The Second Coming (1994), musically the world had moved on. Guitar music, now called Britpop, was owned by bands like Oasis and Blur. This was a more simplified type of music that appealed to a broad, “chant-along” audience. Despite Brown’s explicit Mancunian swagger (shoulders back, clenched fists), his lyrics displayed sensitivity, even spirituality. By the time their second album came out, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act gave the police the power to disperse any gathering of more than five people. This led to the commercialisation of club culture and the death of the spirit of freedom that had existed when their first album had come out. Music journalist Simon Reynolds wrote the following in Spin magazine in 1995: “Back in Britain, Second Coming got a mixed reception, seemingly less to do with the record (which most reviewers concede is excellent, bar the odd misguided stab at pure blues) and more to do with the resentment that the Roses, divorced from the cultural moment that gave them meaning, were now just another band.” It is said that they recorded the second album in 10 hour sessions over 347 days. It’s not difficult to imagine how frustrating it must have been to continue to get motivated by their music, not knowing what they may be able to do with it. Also, they started to find other important things in their lives, most significantly starting their own families. With the album not being as well received as hoped and finding playing live difficult, the inevitable happened when drummer Reni left the band in March 1995 before they began touring. A year later, Squire left the band with Mani and Brown calling time on The Stone Roses shortly afterwards. And that is where the story should end. Brown has gone on to have a very 152

successful solo career, while Squire has returned to his first love, art. Mani has spent the past 16 years in Primal Scream (longer than he was in The Stone Roses). And Reni has stepped away from the limelight. Yet, no one seems prepared to let the band rest quietly on their laurels. Almost every British guitar band since has name checked them as an influence and legions of devoted fans, like Shane Meadows, still have an itch that needs scratching where The Stone Roses are concerned. On Sunday 27 May 1990, The Stone Roses staged a huge concert at Spike Island in Widnes. The concert has now entered folklore, sometimes described as the “Woodstock for the Baggy Generation”; and like

THEIR CLOTHES – FLARES AND TRAINERS – EVEN GAVE RISE TO THE TERM ‘BAGGY GENERATION’ Woodstock, many more people claim to have been there than actually were. Meadows is big enough to be honest about being one of the ones who wasn’t. Although, he could have been there. “I had a ticket for Spike Island and I gave it away cos I wasn’t feeling very well. It was in the days when I experimented with certain substances and one didn’t agree with me, so I gave away my ticket and I have regretted it for the rest of my life.” Maybe it is this “second chance” that has inspired him to make the film. “What I’ve done is get the feeling of not only the band but the fans who follow them.” Even for the world renowned director, with an impressive body of cinema releases under his belt, making this film was a new experience. “I went to the concert in Heaton Park and saw the huge stage and went from

using two cameras to 35. When I did This Is England I thought using two cameras was a luxury.” Interspersed with archive footage, the film begins with the band’s announcement that they are reforming in 2011 and follows them all the way up to the homecoming gigs in Manchester last summer at Heaton Park, including their show in Amsterdam on 12 June 2012, which was only their third live date at the time. Despite an impressive set something clearly happens between members of the band as the assumed encore of ‘I am the Resurrection’ is replaced with a solitary Brown coming back on stage to speak to the fans. “The drummer’s gone home. I’m not kidding you. The drummer’s gone home. So there you go. I’m not kidding you. The drummer’s gone home. Sorry about that. Get it all out. Get it all out. The drummer’s a cunt.” It’s fair to say there is little ambiguity in the final statement and Meadows is careful not to over egg a situation that can be poured over on the internet these days. “A lot of film makers would have stuck their cameras right in but I didn’t because of my love for the band. So I made my crew keep out of the way. I understand that some things are private. I wasn’t making a Jeremy Kyle show. But it went in my favour as the band realised I wasn’t doing a Michael Jackson exposé like Martin Bashir. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t hold back from what everyone saw, it is a wartsand-all documentary but I believe that some respect should be shown.” What is clear is that The Stone Roses still have the power to excite and upset. Whatever they do or don’t do after this, Brown has no fear of not being adored, and the band will remain a yardstick by which all other British bands will be compared to for decades to come. The Stones Roses are touring throughout the summer thestoneroses.org The Stone Roses: Made of Stone directed by Shane Meadows is out in June thestoneroses.channel4.com Limited edition prints are available at mattsquire.co.uk

MUSIC | The Stones Roses

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BULLETIN

Altamont Apparel Photographs Tim Hans Styling Laura Mazza Photographic Assistant Angelica Jadiel Styling Assistant Ashley Taylor Skaters Ryan Belli, Ryan Rich, Steven Spilker, Ashley Taylor and Victoria Zengo

Co-founded by skater Andrew Reynolds in 2006, Altamont Apparel has developed clothing beyond the usual skatersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; style. Named after the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, 154

the brand has functioned as much as a catalyst for creativity as a clothing brand, reflective of the outdoor, community ethos of sunny California. Today, they are creating a range of

work with artists and musicians who reflect the lifestyle and ideas of the skating community. altamontapparel.com

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BULLETIN | Altamont Apparel

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CINEMA

The Iceman Mafia. Hitman. New Jersey. Cyanide. Mister Softee Words Chris Sullivan Photographs Anne Marie Fox

For almost as long as there has been cinema, there have been films about killers and gangsters. DW Griffith, the father of modern cinema, made The Musketeers of Pig Alley in 1912 which is perceived as the oldest surviving film of what we now consider to be a genre, the crime movie. But even before feature length films were being made there were notable one reel films focused on the more salubrious facets of the human condition such as The Moonshiners (1904) and The Black Hand (1906). Alfred Hitchcock captured the menace and anonymity of the serial killer in his silent classic The Lodger in 1926. Barely had the talkies taken over from silent cinema when true crime classics were the most popular films of the day. Little Caesar (1930) sees Edward G Robinson play a thinly veiled version of American gangster Al Capone. The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1931) shone a light on the underworld of crime, both vilifying and glorifying it at the same time. Fritz Lang’s M (1931) was based on a real life child killer in Germany and ushered in the era of the psychological crime movie such as Orson Welles’ The Lady of Shanghai (1947) and, the daddy of them all, Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). It seems murderous types have always made for good cinematic drama whether it be Mafia/gangster tales such as The Godfather films, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese’s 158

Goodfellas (1990) or films about psychopathic killers, like Taxi Driver (1976) and Silence of the Lambs (1991). Today, cinemagoers are still attracted to the dark underbelly of society. The Iceman brings together the organised, methodical killing of the mob with the inaccessible, callous thought processes of the crazed individual. Richard Kuklinski was born on 11 April 1935 in a small apartment in New Jersey, US. His parents were poor, no doubt about that, but that was the least of his worries. Born to a first generation Polish immigrant and an Irish mother, his father, Stanley, was a violent man who regularly beat his family, including his wife. His mother, Anna was brought up in the local orphanage by Irish nuns who exercised their ruling hands with excessive violence and belittling put downs. Anna became an insecure, God fearing adult who had ambitions of entering the sisterhood until she was swept off her feet by her future husband. The young Kuklinski found solace from this life of hell through his love and friendship of his older brother, Florian. But that relationship was suddenly and callously ended when Richard was just five years old. Apropos of nothing, his father, Stanley beat the 11 year old Florian to death. This was explained away to the police as a tragic fall down the stairs. It’s impossible to say exactly what lasting effect this had

on the young boy. Lying to the authorities was not only acceptable, it worked without any recrimination. His parents had shown a complete disregard for the life of one of their children; the people most trusted to support, care and nurture the young boy. Perhaps through guilt, or weak-mindedness, his mother became ever more insular, more interested in kneeling before Christ at the Catholic church than taking care of her family, providing food and clothing. As a result, Kuklinski took to stealing food for himself and his younger brother and sister. (Later in life his younger brother Joseph was convicted of raping and murdering a 12 year old girl. When asked about Joseph’s crimes, Kuklinski replied, “We come from the same father.”) Dyslexic, Kuklinski was physically chastised by the nuns who taught at St Mary’s School were he was a pupil. Yet with her religious fervour still very much intact, Anna demanded that Kuklinski become an altar boy. One of the priests made sexual advances towards the young boy. It seemed everywhere Kuklinski turned both trust and authority were completely abused by the adults around him. Both the family and religious construct massively and irreversibly corrupted Kuklinski. How much this tragic childhood influenced his later behaviour will no doubt be debated until the cows come home. But it is the fascination with >

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the “nature versus nurture” debate that makes his story particularly compelling. Unsurprisingly, Kuklinski became a painfully shy child with no real friends. He retreated into his own world spending much of his time reading crime story books. He would later recall that he got lots of ideas from these tales and learnt how to evade the police. The other boys on the block singled him out. On one occasion his father saw him being bullied so hit him across the face with his belt and sent him out again to fight the two Irish brothers who had picked on him, “No kid a mine’s gonna be a chicken shit,” he roared. Catching the siblings off guard Kuklinski gave them a ferocious beating. That afternoon the adolescent realised that force came first and that the meek did not inherit the earth. Eventually, Stanley, a drunk and a womaniser, left the family home. His departure didn’t put an end to the violence in the household. “My mother 160

was cancer. She destroyed everything. She’d hit me with a broomstick so hard that one day the stick broke on my back.” Given all he had experienced, it is perhaps unsurprising that Kuklinski turned his burning anger on stray animals. He’d tie two cats together by their tails, hang them over a clothesline and watch as they tear each other apart. He’d set dogs on fire with petrol or bludgeon them to death with lead pipes. The killer who’d became known as the Ice Man had thus been created. All he had to do now was to kill a human. He was 12 years old when the gang from the projects started on him. They beat him so badly on one occasion that he couldn’t leave his home for a week. The gang’s leader, Charley Lane, had been the most vicious when beating the boy. Kuklinski’s answer was to take a wooden pole and lie in wait for the older bully, confront him and beat him to death. He knew from the true crime magazines he read that the authorities

could identify Lane by either his teeth or fingerprints so he drove the corpse out to a remote South Jersey marshland called the Pine Barrens, cut off the dead teenager’s fingers, knocked his teeth out and dropped the body into a pond. He was 13 years old. “As a young guy I realised that if you hurt someone they will leave you alone. Good guys finish last. I’d taken enough as a kid so I attacked and to everyone’s surprise I was no longer taking but giving it. I learnt it was better to give than receive. I didn’t mean to kill Charley. I was sad at first but then I felt this rush because for once I had control. It was like, ‘If you mess with me, I will hurt you’.” Not particularly academic and resentful of the nuns’ behaviour, by the time Kuklinski was a teenager he was barely attending school, spending a lot of his time in pool bars where he became a gifted pool shark. Still young, he hustled an Irish Jersey cop

CINEMA | The Iceman called Doyle who didn’t take too kindly to been thrashed by this young whippersnapper. Doyle, drunk and arrogant, took to name calling and derision. Big mistake. Kuklinski waited for Doyle to leave and while he slept in his car, Kuklinski torched him. “I could smell his burning flesh and hear his screams as I walked away,” Kuklinski said. “I liked it. He made me mad.” He later said that the bullying Doyle reminded him of his father. “Stanley was a first grade sadistic prick. He should never have been allowed to have children. I’ve wondered a thousand times why I didn’t kill him.” By now, Kuklinski had built a reputation as someone to steer clear of. Conversely, the other juvenile delinquents in town were drawn to him. Together, they started robbing, hijacking and burgling. They called themselves the “Coming Up Roses”. They each had a tattoo of a parchment with those words on it on their left hand. (In the film, it is replaced with an image of the Grim Reaper.) The money piled in and Kuklinski, describing himself as, “nigger rich”, always had a roll, gambled incessantly and dressed in garish bespoke yellow or pink suits and if anyone commented on his attire, he’d pull out his knife and stab them. Word spread that if you fucked with the Polack (as he had became known) chances are you’d end up on a slab. It wasn’t long before the local mob got wind of him. Carmine “Meatball” Genovese summoned the gang for a meet at his house, handed them a photograph, an address and a contract to kill. Kuklinski subsequently carried out the assignment with ease. Soon he and his gang were doing jobs all over until two members stupidly robbed a card game sponsored by a made man in the De Cavalcante family, Albert Parenti. Kuklinski, as leader of the gang, was ordered to kill them, the two people whom he was closest to. He shot them both. “They didn’t suffer. They were dead before they knew what hit them.” Word reached De Cavalcante that Kuklinski was a reliable killer. A new career as a Mafia hitman beckoned. He was 19 years of age. His next contract for Genovese came with instructions for the man

to “suffer”, which he did by slowly smashing his ankles and knees with a hatchet. To prove the man was dead he was asked to bring a piece of the victim back. When he handed over a bag containing the victim’s head to Genovese, his reputation as a highly efficient contract killer was assured. And he was 10 thousand dollars richer. And as the contracts rolled in Kuklinski warmed to the role. “Richard became addicted to killing,” writes author Philip Carlo in his book about Kuklinski, The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer (2008). “After he committed a murder he felt relaxed, whole and good, at peace with himself and the world. Murder became like a fix of heroin for him.” Despite his auspicious start, his natural ability and the wealth, Kuklinski tried to go straight in the early 1960s when he married

‘I REALISED IF YOU HURT SOMEONE THEY WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE’ Barbara Pedrici. As he said, he became “a working stiff; a civilian”. He found a job in a film lab in Manhattan, got on the bus with his packed lunch into work every day and printed off Disney cartoons making $90 a week. It wasn’t long however before he sprang an angle and began pirating the films and making a bit on the side but after Barbara gave birth to their daughter Kuklinski was in financial trouble. “The harder I worked, it seemed the less we had,” he told De Carlo. “I felt like I was drowning and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stay afloat. This straight life wasn’t for me.” It wasn’t long before Kuklinski was hijacking lorries and using his printing expertise to pirate and trade in porno films. Consequently, the latter activity

brought him to the attention of Gambino associate and head of a gang of serial killers, Roy DeMeo. In August 1973, under the watchful eyes of his large muscular goons, DeMeo pistol whipped Kuklinski over a debt, requiring 38 stitches in his head. A few days later, the money paid in full, the Polack made the journey to Brooklyn to see DeMeo face to face at his headquarters, the Gemini Lounge. DeMeo, a former butcher’s apprentice, and his goons are thought to have dismembered an estimated 100 to 200 men there. Having made enquiries about each other, DeMeo and Kuklinski, realising each other’s capabilities, decided to go into business together; Kuklinski proving himself to be a cold blooded freelance killer and very useful to DeMeo. Likewise, working for the Mafia proved very lucrative for Kuklinski. Over the coming years, Kuklinski worked regularly for DeMeo and Gambino family capo, Anthony Gaggi. He later claimed that he killed union leader, Jimmy Hoffa, whose body was never found and who was officially declared dead in 1982. Despite the large sums he received for his “hits”, Kuklinski had no sense of money and was completely incapable of saving any of it. “I had no idea what money was, and I spent it like water. I should’ve been investing it, buying property, but I threw it all away,” he said. Throughout his life, Kuklinski was a sucker for gambling whether it be a private card game in a back room or the tables in Vegas as a young man where he also enjoyed seeing his favourite entertainer, Liberace. Not Italian, Kuklinski could never be a member of a Mafia family, something that suited his independent personality well. This helped him remain completely anonymous to the authorities for so long. But it wasn’t the only reason. “Richard Kuklinski went undetected for decades because he killed with guns, poison, knives, bats, explosives, garrotes, fists, crossbows, chain saws and even a bomb attached to a remote control toy car and disposed of the bodies far from where the murder’s took place,” attests New Jersey State trooper Pat Kane, the man who is responsible for finally putting him > 161

behind bars. “He was one of the most dangerous criminals in the history of New Jersey and New York.” Often Kuklinski wondered why he was capable of such atrocities. In the book he said, “I’ve always felt like an outsider. Like I didn’t belong and now because of these things I did, I was feeling that way again, But from another angle. For the most part it didn’t bother me but I wondered, ‘Why am I like this?’ I mean so cold, so indifferent to people’s feelings. I thought about going to a psychiatrist to see if I could get some help or medication but I couldn’t do that. I mean what would I say to a shrink? ‘I torture and kill people for money and I like my work’. I don’t think so.” In 1980 Kuklinski met army trained demolitions expert Robert Pronge, another contract killer who also worked for the Mafia. In fact, it is thought they may have been contracted for the same “hit” by a very determined boss. Pronge was nicknamed “Mister Softee” because he drove a ice cream truck that acted as 162

his cover. It was also useful for storing dead bodies. Although Kuklinski later killed Pronge, for a while they struck up a close friendship and Pronge taught Kuklinski many new and ingenious ways of killing people discreetly. His favourite was an adapted vaporiser that

HE WENT ABOUT HIS MURDEROUS BUSINESS UNKNOWN BY HIS FAMILY sprayed cyanide into people’s faces. The victims would simply drop dead and the coroner would always report a heart attack. Not even the remotest suspicion of foul play. “Unless you’re looking for cyanide as a cause of death it’s really

almost impossible to detect,” states Michael Baden, a New York medical examiner. “And it is also lethal. You can kill someone just by tipping it on their clothes.” Bonanno family lieutenant, Tony Scavelli liked to strut his stuff on the dance floor of Xenon, Studio 54’s main rival where Madonna’s boyfriend Jellybean Benitez was a DJ. Kuklinski simply brushed past Scavelli sticking him with a syringe of cyanide. He died within seconds and poison was not suspected. While all of this was going on, Kuklinski lived in a quiet upper middle class neighbourhood in New Jersey where his family and friends believed he was a businessman. He worked as an usher in the local church on Sundays, gave his children a private education and happily flipped burgers on the barbecue while his kids and their friends splashed around in the back yard pool. He was careful to keep his two lives separate. He used a pager to communicate with his Mafia contacts and they never knew where he lived. He >

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was so careful to avoid being tailed that even the police gave up when they started investigating him. His wife Barbara said after his arrest, “We were the perfect allAmerican family. We had wonderful times. He just wanted to be home all the time and hated going away, rarely went out with friends.” Amazingly, he managed to go about his murderous business unknown by either his family or the police for 20 years. But things began to unravel in the early 1980s as he had always suspected it would. “My luck had to run out at some point,” he said. One of the few people he described as a friend who he trusted was Phil Solimene, a fellow New Jersey crook who he had worked with and killed with for many years. When Kuklinski killed some people linked to Solimene, the police were now able to coerce Solimene into acting as a police informer. After six years of piecing together disparate information and hearsay, state trooper Pat Kane was able to put an undercover cop, Dominick Polifrone, on the ground and to finally trap the elusive Ice Man. Finally, one of the prolific killers in United States history was brought to trial. In fact, at the time

he was only tried for five murders but that was enough to ensure he would never leave prison. His seemingly ambiguous life, one of a suburban family man and a freelance Mafia hitman, made him a media sensation. First, as headline news in the papers but this was followed by three programmes for HBO where he was interviewed. Here he revealed

“I WONDERED ‘WHY AM I LIKE THIS?’ I MEAN, SO COLD, SO INDIFFERENT” far more of his gruesome life than had even been suspected by the police. Sheila Nevins, the producer, explained the curiosity thus: “Richard is both as fascinating and as frightening as your worst nightmare. He represents the worst of who we are. Yet he is

absolutely fascinating to listen to.” Tom Shales writing in the Washington Post in 1992 about the series felt differently. “[Kuklinski is] the ultimate misanthrope, unapologetic and irredeemable. After watching, you may feel some minds are better left impenetrable.” It seems the public, however, disagree. After the HBO series, came Philip Carlo’s extensively researched book The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer and now the film. Almost 10 years after his death, Kuklinski will forever remain a mystery. Because many of us might have entertained murderous thoughts, a desire for revenge but our sense of right and wrong prevents us. What is it that enables a man to be such a brutal, cold killer? Perhaps, the last words should be left to Kuklinski: “I’ve never felt sorry for anything I’ve done, other than hurting my family. I am not looking for forgiveness and am not repenting but I have hurt the only people that matter to me.” The Iceman is in cinemas in June theiceman-movie.com Photographs courtesy of Lionsgate UK lionsgatefilms.co.uk 165

STYLE

Jack Woodhouse Photographs Horst Friedrichs Styling Karen Mason Styling Assistant Jane Anderson

Jacket by Eastman Leather; top, stylist's own; hat by Stetson; sunglasses by Ray-Ban.

Jacket by Baracuta; trousers by Gant Rugger; boots by Red Wing Shoes.

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STYLE | Jack Woodhouse

Jacket and sweater by Belstaff; T-shirt by Sunspel; goggles by Davida.

Toolcase and tools by Speedking Tools.

Jacket by Levi's Vintage Clothing; jeans by Paul Smith; T-shirt by Folk; boots by Red Wing Shoes; sunglasses by Persol; toolcase by Speedking Tools.

STYLE | Jack Woodhouse

Jacket by Magic of Motoring; trousers by Gant Rugger.

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Jacket by Lewis Leather; jeans by Edwin Jeans; T-shirt by Sunspel; sunglasses by Persol; neckerchief by Polo Ralph Lauren.

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SPOTLIGHT

Harlem Photographs Janette Beckman Words Chris May

Jazz and Harlem have a shared history that goes back a century. Each is a repository of wisdom and culture and, right now, both is experiencing a potentially shape-shifting change. The first is driven by musicians determined to drag jazz back into musical and social relevance, the second by rising property prices. When photographer Janette Beckman suggested documenting some of the New Yorkbased players in the vanguard of today’s jazz, it was an opportunity to find out what Harlem means to each of them. Respect for the jazz tradition is embedded in Robert Glasper, Kris Bowers, Jason Moran, Graham Haynes, Taylor McFerrin, Nasheet Waits, Duane Eubanks and Greg Tate of improvisational band Burnt Sugar. So, too, is the conviction that if the music does not connect with broader contemporary culture, it will bury itself. Hip hop, rap, rock, pop, R&B, funk and electronica are among the music which, to the distaste of conservative jazz musicians, have variously, to greater or lesser degrees, informed their work. Glasper, a prominent spokesman for the new jazz, told US jazz magazine Downbeat last year: “I’ve gotten bored with jazz to the point where I wouldn’t mind something bad happening. Slapping hurts, but at some point it’ll wake you up. I feel like jazz needs a big ass slap.” Harlem has had its brushes with mortality too. During the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, a good chunk of the area’s housing was burnt out. Much of it was left to crumble and has only recently been rebuilt. The crack plague of the late 1980s and 1990s caused another kind of devastation. But over the past few

years, property developers have moved in and shiny refurbishments have sprung up. There is, everyone agrees, something in the air. The wrinkle is that Harlem’s burgeoning new look is being driven by people unable to afford downtown Manhattan’s property prices. And most of those people are white. The positive aspects of what New Yorkers call “gentrification” are the same uptown as anywhere else. Renovated buildings, new clubs and restaurants, potentially fruitful new cultural interactions, improved public facilities, the reopening of iconic venues. But the pattern of gentrification elsewhere, not least in New York’s Brooklyn, dictates that, in direct proportion to the number of incomers and their impact on property prices, Harlem’s defining character must be under threat. The area’s heritage has been created by the concentrated presence of black people, many of them on low incomes. If they go, Harlem as we know it goes too. This has not happened yet, but several of the musicians featured here express concern. Others are more relaxed, or perhaps pragmatic, about it, putting it down to progress. Nothing, after all, stays the same, least of all in New York. However you look at it, there is a lot of cultural history in Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s embraced all human endeavour, not only jazz. Artists, sculptors, writers, dancers, choreographers and political activists were among the masses of black Americans who migrated north after the US joined the world war in 1917, creating a need for new labour to replace conscripted workers. By 1919, uptown New York had a creative

critical mass big enough to produce the Renaissance. Its luminaries included band leaders Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, photographer James Van Der Zee, painters Aaron Douglas and William Johnson, and sculptors Meta Warwick Fuller and Augusta Savage. The achievements of the Harlem Renaissance were as momentous, and have proved to be as enduring, as those made in Paris and Vienna during the 1900s and 1910s. Harlem continued to define the black American cultural cutting edge through the depression of the 1930s. Swing came of age in a plethora of uptown venues such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club. In the early 1940s, bop was forged at afterhours clubs such as Minton’s Playhouse and Clarke Monroe’s Uptown House. Harlem figured large in the story of soul music too. In 1962, James Brown recorded his album Live at the Apollo at the Apollo Theatre, where many other musicians, including Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, subsequently sealed their major league status. Pre-fame Jimi Hendrix, King Curtis, Ronnie Spector and Charlie & Inez Foxx were among the winners of the Apollo’s Amateur Nights. The complexion and consequences of the new Harlem renaissance have yet to play out. If “old” Harlem is enriched rather than overwhelmed by “new” Harlem, everyone will be a winner. For the moment, at least, says Tate: “There are complete blocks that have been gentrified, but the culture continues to be defined by the people who walk the streets every day. Harlem is a place where American street culture survives.”

Nasheet Waits, drummer and music educator “The whole demographic of New York is changing and the music scene is changing as well. At the same time, we see this Harlem resurgence. It might not be exclusively black any more, but the flavour is still present. You get a different feel uptown than you do downtown. The African American experience still has a stronghold in Harlem. “When my father [percussionist Freddie Waits] moved to New York in the 1960s, the music had moved downtown but the musicians still came uptown to hang. Small’s Paradise club, places like that. And there was the Jazzmobile project which took jazz on to the streets, got people learning how to make music. In the early 1990s, when I started playing, you still had places to hang. La Famille, Showman’s, Lenox Lounge, St Nick’s. “I’ve lived in the Village all my life, but I went to preschool in Harlem. I learnt the basics of black history there at a very young age, and about heroes like Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman. It was a good start.”

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Kris Bowers, pianist and film composer “I grew up in Los Angeles but I learnt about the Harlem Renaissance at school. My uncle lived in Harlem for a while. That was in the early 1990s, when New York was different to how it is today. He told stories that really scared me. I came to New York in 2006 to study when I was 17. When I moved out of the dorms I moved straight to Harlem, despite my uncle’s stories. Right away, I felt at home. It was good just to walk around and be where bebop was born, where so many writers, poets and black thinkers had lived and worked. It’s still a place where creative people gather. You can walk a block to a friend’s house and jam. “Today, businesses are starting to move to Harlem and lots of renovations are being done. What’s happening in Harlem now is like what happened in Brooklyn. They’re redoing Minton’s Playhouse and reopening Lenox Lounge. But they’re also opening a Whole Foods store on 125th Street and a W hotel on 150th. You have to wonder who they think they’re going to be catering. But until it gets too expensive, Harlem is the place to be.”

Robert Glasper, pianist and composer “For me, Harlem is more of an historic thing rather than something that’s happening now. The history of jazz is there, but definitely not the future of it. Most musicians live in Brooklyn now. Although nobody’s going to forget Harlem. However much you change it, the history will still be there. And maybe there’ll be some iconic clubs that can hang on. But honestly, times have changed; music has changed, people have changed. That’s the reality. “You don’t go to Harlem to hear jazz any more. Everything’s in midtown and downtown Manhattan now. Birdland, Iridium, Dizzy’s Club at the Lincoln Center, Jazz Standard, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, Small’s, Fat Cats, those are the main ones. “When places start being gentrified you start getting better places to eat, better schools. But all the rent goes up. It’s the same in my neighbourhood in Brooklyn. People have to move out because they can’t afford it. That’s definitely going to happen in Harlem. For a lot of musicians who’ve just arrived in New York, who’re not totally on their feet yet, it’s going to be a problem.”

SPOTLIGHT | Harlem

Greg Tate, musician, producer and writer “I came to New York in 1982 and I’ve lived in Harlem since 1984, in the same apartment in Sugar Hill. I moved here just before the crack plague. I lived very close to that: guns going off every night and no cops in sight. It was worse in central Harlem. We didn’t have people dealing in the building lobby. I don’t look back on it as a horrifying experience for myself but it had a devastating impact on the community. It’s where I learned that people can adapt to anything. “Most of my life was lived downtown then – where all the action was because there wasn’t a whole lot to do in Harlem. The Lenox Lounge was definitely happening and there were a few clubs. But the stuff I was interested in, free jazz and black rock for example, there wasn’t much going on. Now downtown is defined by the super wealthy and there are no great clubs there any more. And what’s happened is that the venues we have uptown have really opened up and started to flourish. We’ve got some cutting edge places. Harlem Stage and the Apollo are still there, of course, and new places are opening. Along with some great restaurants. I don’t need to go downtown any more.”

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Graham Haynes, cornetist, composer and sound manipulator “My first trips to Harlem were as a kid with my dad [drummer Roy Haynes] in 1968 and 1969. I remember 125th Street all lit up, all these clubs and sharp dressers. It was special – different. I couldn’t connect it with anything I’d seen except in films. When I started playing in Harlem in the 1980s, there were still a lot of clubs, but then crack and rising taxes closed them down. Back then you didn’t see many white people in Harlem. “There’s another renaissance happening, but it’s gentrified. On the positive side, new clubs are opening and buildings are being renovated. However what I dislike is that now there’s white people here there’s a police presence. Before, there was no police presence. And of course the police are trying to round up blacks, because now they have to protect the white people who are coming in. I have friends who have been coming out of the subway and they got followed and questioned by the police. It’s happened to me a couple of times. So there’s two sides to this period of change and I’m not sure how it’s going to play out.”

Duane Eubanks, trumpeter and composer “There was a time when Harlem was a meeting place for intellectuals: artists, musicians and writers… a meeting of minds. It was somewhere for jazzmen to share their ideas. It was where guys could be themselves, speak their minds and didn’t have to go with the norm of society to be accepted and heard. “The fact of the Harlem Renaissance is remembered by musicians today, but Harlem’s nowhere near what it was. It’s not because of Harlem itself; it’s a social issue. The American concept of life, which has become very materialistic, has fallen on the American people. They have a very slim scope on things. They watch reality TV to feel like they know what’s going on. And the musicians of the golden age – they pretty much kept together. Today, artists and musicians don’t commune as much. When people put their minds together and concentrate on things, a lot can happen. Now they’re in a culture that is all about me, me, me. People no longer feel part of something bigger than themselves. That is what made Harlem great to begin with.”

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Taylor McFerrin, musician, beatboxer, singer and producer “My dad [singer Bobby McFerrin] was born in Harlem. But I’ve lived in Brooklyn since I arrived in the city 11 years ago. There was a time when Harlem was full and the new black neighbourhood became Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. The A train is like an umbilical cord running from Bed-Stuy to Harlem, so even though the two places are on opposite sides of the city, they feel kinda close. I got to know the area through a girlfriend who lived up in Spanish Harlem. “I played the Apollo Theatre in 2009 as I was opening for Duffy. It was slightly weird as all the great black performers like James Brown have played there. I got a lot of love from the stage crew. They had seen hundreds of shows at the Apollo, so that meant something to me. A year or so ago, I did a Gil Scott-Heron tribute show at the Harlem Theatre. That was something. Recently, I sat in with Robert Glasper at the Supper Club downstairs at the Red Rooster restaurant, right by the Apollo. The audience were all hardcore music heads. I felt like I was being transported back to the jazz era. Definitely one of those moments.”

SPOTLIGHT | Harlem

Jason Moran, pianist and composer “I live on 135th Street and Riverside Drive, the far western edge of Harlem. The idea I had when I arrived here in the 1990s was that Harlem was the place where everybody in the arts could meet and discuss ideas, from literature to dance to fashion to music to art. The Harlem Renaissance model. When I walked along 125th Street back then, it was like a market. People could set up a stall and sell anything on the street. I have bought a lot of things on that street, a lot of records, a lot of instruments. Then the mayor tried to clean up the city. “I just hope they won’t price out the people who make the city what it is. There’s a 40-storey building near me that used to be subsidised public housing. It’s a great location, it looks out over everywhere and has unobstructed views. Over the past five years I’ve watched it change from a place where people of colour could live, to getting totally renovated on the inside, and now they’re charging market rents to kids from Columbia University. That building houses thousands of people. The complexion of Harlem is shifting. It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening.” 181

MUSIC

Little Richard

Architect of Rock ’n’ Roll. Orgies. A-wop-bom-a-loo-mop-a-lomp-bom-bom Words Chris May

It is just after midnight on 30 December 1970. The Dick Cavett Show is going out live from New York. Seated on the sofa to Cavett’s left is John Simon, a ferociously combative critic from New York magazine. To his right is Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, Rita Moreno, the singer and dancer, and at the far end of the couch… Little Richard. A row is going on between Segal and Simon. Simon is attacking Segal’s bestseller, which has just been released as a movie. Segal is defending it. Tempers are rising, insults flying. Richard keeps trying to make a point but every time he attempts to speak Segal or Simon beat him to it. “You’re only a critic,” Segal tells Simon. “What have you ever written? What do you know about art? Never in the history of art…” Segal pauses for a nanosecond. And Richard seizes the moment. He leaps from his seat… “Why, never in the history!” Wild eyed, Richard advances on Segal, Cavett and Simon, who shrink from his approach. For a few seconds, Richard goes off-camera. Then his face fills the screen. 182

“Why, yes, in the whole history of aaaart! That’s right! Shut up! Shut up! What do you know, Mr Critic? Why, when the Creedence Clearwater put out with their ‘travelin’ band everybody say, ‘Wheee-ooo,’ but I know it cuz they only doing ‘Long Tall Sally’ just like the Beatles andthestonesandtomjonesandelvis – I am all of it, Little Richard himself, very truly the greatest, the handsomest, and now to you [to Segal] and to you [to Simon], I have written a book, myself, I am a writer, I have written a book and it’s called… “‘He Got What He Wanted But He Lost What He Had’! That’s it! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! He got what we wanted but he lost what he had! The story of my life. Can you dig it? That’s my boy Little Richard, sure is. Oo mah soul!” Richard throws himself back on the sofa. “Wheeeeee-oo! Ooo mah soul! Oooo mah soul…” The Cavett Show story is told in the prologue to Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train, written in 1974 and still an essential book on the genesis of rock ’n’ roll. In it, Marcus precisely nailed Richard’s historical importance by

observing that he was the only one of Cavett’s guests that night who had “disrupted an era”. Legions of musicians, from Elvis to Motörhead’s Lemmy, have expressed similar sentiments. Keith Richards, in his 2010 autobiography Life wrote that, on first hearing Richard, “in an instant, the world changed from monochrome to Technicolor”. Bill Haley may have beaten Richard to the charts. (Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Shake, Rattle And Roll’ hit in 1954, Richard’s first big seller was ‘Tutti Frutti’ in 1955). But it was Richard who had gone feral and exploded the norm. Richard calls himself the “Architect of Rock ’n’ Roll” and he has a stronger claim to the title than any of his contemporaries. In the decade or so following Richard’s mid 1950s glory days, only a handful of black artists shook things up to the extent that Richard did. Foremost among them were guitarist Jimi Hendrix (a member of Richard’s band through most of 1964 and into 1965) and saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Richard, though, stands apart. Hendrix, Coltrane and Coleman each owed their biggest >

musical debts to the blues, as did most of the early black rock ’n’ rollers. Richard, by contrast, came to rock ’n’ roll through gospel. He has consistently named gospel diva Mahalia Jackson as his biggest and most enduring influence. Richard kept gospel’s wailing operatic intensity at the centre of everything he did, welded on to a 12 bar boogie template. God and rock ’n’ roll are uneasy bedfellows and they have been conflicted partners through most of Richard’s life. Starting in the late 1950s, he has periodically disavowed rock ’n’ roll, choosing instead to sing “pure” gospel, but always coming back to secular music. Richard is more than the architect of rock ’n’ roll music. If his records shook up an era, his stagecraft and sartorialism styled the future. In the 1950s, at a time when it was unthinkable for a male singing star to present himself as anything but 100 per cent “manly” and heterosexual, Richard, who once described himself as a “practising omnisexual”, was so hautecamp he almost made flamboyant pianist Liberace look butch. Shimmering capes dripping with costume jewellery, stack heels, massive diamanté rings, heavy eye make-up and lip gloss, shrieks and queeny gestures, spectacular pompadour wigs. But in crotch-throttling trousers, Richard was clearly as male as anyone. The inspiration for the cucumber down the inside leg joke in Spinal Tap probably started here. Some of James Brown’s stage shows probably started there too. One year younger than Richard, and one year behind him in achieving chart success, Brown would have been well aware of Richard’s act. It is hard to watch a video of Brown performing his 1956 hit ‘Please, Please, Please’, repeatedly, histrionically falling to his knees and being helped to his feet by an assistant, without detecting some of Little Richard in the scene. With the exception of a few other unmistakably heterosexual, carnivalesque R&B acts such as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, among Richard’s near contemporaries back in the day, only jazzman Sun Ra dressed more flamboyantly. But Ra, who as the obituary writers used to put 184

it “never married”, averred that he was only dressing like they did on Saturn, his home planet. David Bowie, Prince, Boy George, Tricky and other artists who have more recently played with gender stereotypes have cited Richard as an inspiration. In a 2012 interview on the American public service TV programme Speaking Freely, Richard told his interviewer, “It’s easy now, but back in the day, dressing like I did, it was rough. I was called dumb and crazy, and my brothers and sisters didn’t like to be seen in public with me. But even then, I was determined to dress as I wanted.” Richard has always done it his way or not at all. The photographer and

GOD AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL HAVE BEEN CONFLICTED PARTNERS THROUGH MOST OF RICHARD’S LIFE filmmaker William Klein began a documentary about Little Richard in 1979, during one of the singer’s spells away from rock ’n’ roll. Speaking to The Observer in 2012, Klein, who in the 1960s made critically acclaimed films about, and with the cooperation of, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver, said that Richard walked away from the film after only a few weeks. “He disappeared on us,” said Klein. “He was crazy like that. We organised a Little Richard day in his hometown and he didn’t show up. I got on well with him, but he was managed by these white hustlers who were like a mafia. They wanted him to endorse a bible for black people. They said, ‘We’re gonna organise your big comeback, but no crazy hairdos and no wild costumes.’ The thing is, without that stuff, there was no Little Richard. He

knew that, so he just disappeared.” (Klein rescued the project by filming Little Richard impersonators and their friends at a convention in Hollywood). The photographer Rowan Bulmer also witnessed Richard’s singlemindedness. Bulmer remembers seeing Richard onstage after a British performance in 1963. “He was sitting at the piano. The first thing he did was take his wig off and put it on the piano and wipe his head. Then he wouldn’t move. He just sat there. The stage crew were saying, ‘Come on, we’ve got to start clearing up, you can go to your dressing room.’ He said, ‘I’m not moving. You know how I get paid; in cash, right after I’ve finished.’ They had to bring it to him in pounds, shillings and pence before he would leave the stage.” The flair with which Richard staged his performances was as novel as everything else he did. Describing a gig in the mid 1950s, the arranger HB Barnum said, “It was the first time I saw spotlights and flicker lights used at a rock ’n’ roll concert show. It had all been used in showbusiness, but he brought it into our world.” In Life magazine, Keith Richards recalls the then novice Rolling Stones’ 1963 UK tour with Richard and spends the best part of a page describing Richard’s gift for stage presentation. “It was outrageous; brilliant. You never knew which way he was going to arrive [onstage]. He had the band pumping out ‘Lucille’ for 10 minutes first. The whole place blacked out, nothing to see but the exit signs. And then he’d come out of the back of the theatre. Other times he’d run onstage and then disappear again. He had a different intro almost every time. He had checked the theatre, talked to the lighting people. ‘Where can I come on from? Is there a doorway up there?’ and figured out how he could get the most effective intro possible.” Offstage, Richard’s lifestyle was as outré as his dress sense. He was a practising omnisexual from an early age and he practised a lot. Lurid stories surrounded him from the start of his career. Orgies and voyeurism were among his enthusiasms. In 1956, for instance, he began a long term

MUSIC | Little Richard relationship with Lee Angel, a 17-yearold female stripper. Richard later ungallantly told a Canadian magazine that he paid other men to have sex with Angel while he watched. There are many other similar stories. Richard’s reputation preceded him. In his speech inducting Otis Redding into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, Richard self-mockingly spoke about an occasion when he invited Redding to his hotel room. “I just wanted to hear him sing,” Richard deadpanned, before adding that Redding elected to stay in the lobby. Drugs and alcohol were constants until the late 1970s. A weed smoker, drinker and pill head from the mid 1950s, by the late 1960s Richard was also occasionally using heroin and habitually using cocaine. During one spell away from rock ’n’ roll, he told a TV interviewer that he used to spend “ten thousand dollars an hour” on cocaine. It was a characteristically rhetorical statement, but one that made its point. In 1967 Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones unwittingly told an undercover News of the World reporter that the first time he used LSD was on the band’s 1963 tour with Richard. The dates do not really stack up, as LSD did not hit the music world until 1965, but with Richard around, who knows? In 1977 Richard’s contemporary, rock ’n’ roll singer Larry Williams, threatened to kill Richard over unpaid drug debts (Richard talked his way out of the situation). It took the death of one of Richard’s brothers from a heroin overdose a year later to finally get Richard off hard dope. The son of a preacher man, Little Richard was born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia in 1932. Slightly built, the family knew him as “Lil’ Richard”. His mother was a devout churchgoer, his father a church deacon who multitasked, selling moonshine liquor on the side and running a nightclub. From an early age, Richard was singing in Pentecostal church choirs. It is not far-fetched to trace the provenance of “Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom”, the introduction to Richard’s 1955 breakthrough single ‘Tutti Frutti’, back to Pentecostal services Lil’ Richard

might have witnessed that featured “speaking in tongues”. When he was 15, Richard has said that he was thrown out of the band at his local church, where he played organ, for “messing” with the music. A year later, his father threw him out of the family home, allegedly for his effete behaviour. Undeterred, Richard took the stage name Princess LaVonne and toured the South doing a gospel-laced drag routine in vaudeville tent shows. In 1950, in Atlanta, Georgia, Richard met the R&B bandleader Billy Wright, a legendarily flamboyant, though otherwise little documented, performer, on whose act Richard is said to have based his Little Richard stage

persona. In 1951, Wright helped Richard get his first record deal, with Camden Records. In 1953, he moved to the Peacock label. With Camden and Peacock, Richard recorded in a generic jump blues style, sometimes using Johnny Otis’s band as back up. Around 1954, by now out of tent shows and on the TOBA (Tough On Black Asses) chitlin’ circuit of clubs and theatres, he formed his first straight up rock ’n’ roll band, The Upsetters. Richard’s breakthrough came when he signed to the rock ’n’ roll independent, Speciality Records, the first label with big enough ears to give him free rein. At Richard’s request, Speciality sent him to New Orleans to record with producer Bumps Blackwell and members of Fats

Domino’s band. Legend has it that the session failed to take off until, during a break, Richard stood at the piano and began hammering out a double entendre-strewn original titled ‘Tutti Frutti’. Blackwell knew a hit when he heard one, but was concerned that Richard’s lyrics were too sexually explicit. He asked career songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to come down to the studio and clean them up. (In a TV interview in 1987, Richard said he was too embarrassed to look LaBostrie in the eye when she asked him to run through the song). LaBostrie returned to the studio with the amended lyrics just 15 minutes before the session was due to end. Later, co-authorship with LaBostrie led to disputes over copyright. But on an artistic level, conventionally written lyrics were unimportant to Richard. He could express as much, if not more, with a string of onomatopoeic sounds and nonsense phrases as he could with carefully crafted narrative verses. Among his classic 1955/56 singles, most of them part-written by Blackwell, ‘Rip It Up’ had conventionally strong lyrics, but it was an exception. ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, ‘Lucille’ and ‘HeyHey-Hey-Hey’ were barely more complicated than their titles. Like the Pentecostalists, at his most intense Richard was beyond known language. ‘Tutti Frutti’ was released in November 1955 and became an instant hit, reaching No2 on the Billboard’s R&B chart and crossing over to make No17 on its Top 100 pop chart. Though he has never ceased to fascinate and be loved, Richard’s purple period on record was short, lasting only until 1958. During those three years he had 14 Top 10 hits on Billboard’s R&B chart, most of which crossed over to the middle reaches of the Top 100 Pop chart. In 2013, Richard is still performing. His stage act is, inevitably, more sedate than it used to be; he sits at the piano and plays it exclusively with his hands, rather than standing up and using his hands and feet. The surprise is, that in his 81st year, he is doing it at all. Once again, Little Richard is laying down a marker for Mick and Keef. Wheeeeee-oo! 185

Kenta wears jacket and shirt by Ralph Lauren Black Label; tie by Pokit.

Kenta wears suit by Viktor & Rolf; shirt and tie, stylist’s own; shoes by Dsquared2. Victor wears suit and shirt by Ralph Lauren Black Label; shoes by Polo Ralph Lauren; tie, stylist’s own. Stefan wears suit, shirt and tie by Ralph Lauren Black Label; shoes by Dsquared2.

STYLE

Goodenough College Photographs Juan Trujillo Andrades Styling Salim Ahmed-Kashmirwala Hair Roku Roppongi at Saint Luke using Kevin Murphy Styling Assistant Fahd Ahmed-Kashmirwala Postgraduates Stefan Ciric, Victor De Los Santos Bernad and Kenta Otani Location Goodenough College, Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1 goodenough.ac.uk

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Victor wears jacket by Victor & Rolf; shirt by Ralph Lauren Black Label; trousers by Pokit; cravat, stylist’s own.

Victor wears suit by Ralph Lauren Black Label; sweater by Missoni; scarf, stylist’s own; pocket square by Ermenegildo Zegna; hat by Lock & Co.

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STYLE | Goodenough College

Kenta wears suit by Missoni; shirt by Z Zegna; shoes by Dsquared2; hat by Lock & Co.

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STYLE | Goodenough College

Stefan wears suit and sweater by Z Zegna.

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Leyla Pillai and Jonathan Hampton

Pia Ebrill, 30, freelance producer, wears jacket by Maharishi; jeans by Acne; shirt by C.E. Describe your style. Jean-Michel Basquiat meets Aaliyah. What’s so special about NTS radio? It doesn’t alienate listeners; it involves them. Describe NTS radio in three words. Community. Love. Music. Who are your style icons? Sade and Prince. Who’s your favourite musician? Prince.

Kim Plotel, make-up artist, wears jacket by Human Made; jeans by Levi’s; shirt by Urban Outfitters

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Describe your style. Hippy/R&B. What’s so special about NTS radio? NTS represents the now. Who’s your style icon? Chaka Khan. Who’s your favourite musician? Stevie Wonder. What’s your favourite movie? The Fifth Element.

FOLIO

NTS Radio

NTS is an online radio station operating out of a small hut in Dalston, east London founded by Femi Adeyemi and Clair Urbahn. Bringing together an eclectic mix of DJs including Dalston Superstore founder, Dan Beaumont. Despite humble beginnings, NTS is already attracting more than 10,000 listeners a day. ntslive.co.uk Photographs Gavin Watson Styling Naz and Kusi Grooming Bobaba Parojcic

Femi Adeyemi, 32, founder of NTS Describe your style. Comfortable. What’s so special about NTS radio? The hosts. Describe NTS radio in three words. Unique. Progressive. Entertaining. Who’s your favourite musician? Sun Ra. What’s your favourite movie? Henry Fool.

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Fergus McDonald, 27, station manager at NTS Radio Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so special about NTS radio? The diverse range of people who put together the shows. Describe NTS radio in three words. Nuts to soup.

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Leyla Pillai, 29, mover and shaker, wears jacket by Belstaff; sweater by Maharishi; T-shirt by Human Made Describe your style. Sometimes a bit Great Gatsby; sometimes a bit Gary Glitter. What’s so special about NTS radio? The independent spirit of pirate radio is alive here. Describe NTS radio in three words. Dalston’s dirty dancing. Who are your style icons? Bikini girls with machine guns. Who’s your favourite musician? Barry White. What are your favourite movies? In the Mood for Love. Paris, Texas. Last Tango in Paris.

Mischa Notcutt, 27, DJ and stylist, wears jacket by C.E.; skirt by Topshop; shirt by Céline Describe your style. Men’s clothes styled in a feminine way. What’s so special about NTS radio? Its uncensored radio. Describe NTS radio in three words. All your favourites. Who are your style icons? Sade and TLC. What’s your favourite movies? Mystery Train and In the Mood for Love.

Steven Tony Julien, 27, producer/DJ wears shirt by Human Made Describe your style. Heritage workwear. Biker bastard. What’s so special about NTS radio? No corporate pressure. Describe NTS radio in three words. Sound. Frequencies. Vibrations. Who’s your style icon? Super Cat. What’s your favourite movie? Californication.

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Kempton Park kempton.co.uk

Photographs Juan Trujillo Andrades

Aidan Coleman

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Jamie Moore

Sam Thomas

FOLIO | Kempton Park

Colin Bolger

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Roadblock Thursday

Roadblock Thursday is a street dance that takes place outside Cristal nightclub in Port Antonio in Jamaica. Run by Peter Richards and Halais Headache, it’s where the locals gather until sunrise. Dance styles include the “6.30” where the girls raise their asses in the air and put their hands on the floor. This, is turn, inspires the men to perform their “daggering” moves. Need we say more? The dancing is called “bruk out”. facebook.com/cristalexnytclub Photographs Savannah Baker

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R E S T R I C T E D

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ICON

Seersucker Words Chris Sullivan Photograph Craig Salmon Southern gentlemen Jack Gerson and Phillip Odom

A legendary fabric with a potent patronage, seersucker is the perfect summer textile, both light and relaxed. It has an air of the Mississippi gambler or Ivy League style and it’s crumpled look alludes to a ne’er-do-well charm. Simply put, it is a classic. The cloth first made an appearance in its current guise in 1907 when New Orleanian menswear manufacturer Joseph Haspel seized on the material. He saw the potential to create a suit that could cope with the sweltering heat of the Louisiana summer. The nature of the fabric also had another benefit, as Haspel discovered. “My great-grandfather wore a wash-and-wear suit,” says Laurie Aronson, president and co-owner of the Haspel Clothing company. “In one advertising campaign, there is a picture of him wearing a seersucker suit as he walks into the Atlantic ocean. Then he wrings it out, hangs it up to dry and when he puts it back on, he goes straight to a cocktail party that night.” “Classic seersucker is a cotton/ polyester mix,” explains London tailor Charlie Allen. “That is why you can throw it in a washing machine, tumble dry it, pull it out and put it on. It’s the ideal cloth for those who hate ironing. “Almost every stylish American male star has worn it in the past,” 206

continues Allen.”Cary Grant, Paul Newman, James Dean, Steve McQueen, you name them. Seersucker is as American as penny loafers, chinos, jeans and the plain white T-shirt.” Despite its obvious attributes, initially, the pinstriped fabric was met with derision from the more snobbish quarters of Southern society due to its relatively low cost and crumpled appearance. But all that changed, when after the first world war, President Franklin D Roosevelt famously teamed his seersucker suit with a bow tie and saddle shoes. In the 1930s, major silver screen idols such as Clark Gable and Errol Flynn were wearing them, accessorised with California sun tans and Hollywood starlets. Seersucker now seemed glamourous. “It is the archetypal playboy summer fabric,” expounds seersucker aficionado and tailor, Mark Powell. “It’s got that Miami mobster connotation. It was a favourite of the Rat Pack, who wore theirs with straw pork pie hats, polo shirts with the collar turned up, and loafers without socks. “It’s a fantastically adaptable fabric that’s so cool and comfortable when the temperature rises but can still look really slick. I’ve seen people dress it right up with a bow tie and

horn rim glasses or dress it down over a plain white T-shirt, Levi’s and biker boots accompanied by a head full of pomade.” Although seersucker has been adopted across the States and beyond, its roots are undeniably Southern. In 1996 Mississippi senator Trent Lott started Seersucker Thursday, a day in June when all the senators don a seersucker suit on the floor of the US Senate. “Even Gregory Peck wore a Haspel seersucker suit in the 1962 film To Kill A Mockingbird,” Aronson recounts. “It is part of our make up.” Yet, despite this link to the South, seersucker, in fact, originated in India. Initially, it was an expensive silk and linen concoction, particularly popular with the British Raj in the 19th century. It’s curious sobriquet, a Hindi corruption of a Persian phrase “shiroshakar” (translated as “milk and sugar”) refers to the alternating rough and smooth textures of the stripes. Universally, gentlemen tend to sacrifice style for comfort in the heat, sometimes with hideous results. Thankfully, seersucker can keep men comfortable and stylish, for everyone’s benefit. haspel.com

Jack, 57, divisional vice president of print and pattern at Coach, wears suit by Thom Browne; jacket by Lee; shirt by Brooks Brothers; trainers by Converse; hat by American Apparel; bow tie by Alexander Olch. Phillip, 50, founder of Totem Creative, wears jacket and trousers by Black Fleece by Brooks Brothers; shirt by Polo Ralph Lauren; shoes by Paul Smith; scarf by Engineered Garments.

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Levi’s www.eu.levi.com Lewis Leathers www.lewisleathers.com Lock & Co. www.lockhatters.co.uk Lou Dalton www.loudalton.com Magic of Motoring www.magicofmotoring.com Maharishi www.maharishistore.com MNA Rockabilly Chic www.mnarockabillychic.com Nutters of Savile Row www.nutterssavilerow.com Onitsuka Tiger www.onitsukatiger.co.uk Palmer Harding www.palmerharding.com Paul Smith www.paulsmith.co.uk PEDaLED www.pedaled.com Penfield www.penfield.com Persol www.persol.com Peter Jensen www.peterjensen.co.uk Peter Werth www.peterwerth.co.uk Pokit www.pokit.co.uk Polo Ralph Lauren www.ralphlauren.co.uk Pretty Green www.prettygreen.com Prison Blues www.prisonblues.net Puma www.puma.com Ralph Lauren Black Label www.ralphlauren.co.uk Ray-Ban www.ray-ban.com Red Wing Shoes www.redwingshoes.com Redline Denim www.redlinedenim.com Speedking Tools www.speedkingtools.com Stetson www.stetson-europe.com Stüssy www.stussy.co.uk Sunday Somewhere www.sundaysomewhere.com Sunspel www.sunspel.com The Vintage Showroom www.thevintageshowroom.com Thom Browne www.thombrowne.com Tootal www.tootal.co.uk Topshop www.topshop.com Urban Outfitters www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk Victor & Rolf www.viktor-rolf.com Vivienne Westwood www.viviennewestwood.co.uk Woolrich www.woolrich.co.uk Work Not Work www.worknotwork.net Z Zegna www.zegna.com

‘I’M TRYING TO MAKE THINGS AS UNFASHIONABLE AS POSSIBLE’ TOM DIXON

Disegno. disegnodaily.com

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