I’m really grateful to Lizzie Walker for inviting me to be part of her Gnostic Sonics presence at the Groovy Fayre being held next Saturday (November 14) at Stoke Newington’s Mildmay Club.

Lizzie is handling sales of my Granny Takes A Trip book and I’ll be signing and selling copies of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren and The Wild World of Barney Bubbles as well as my Herb Lester guides The Look of London and the maps of the lives and careers of David Bowie, The Clash and the Rolling Stones in the capital.

We’ll also be making available for the first time in public the limited edition jewellery pieces based on Barney Bubbles designs.

The Mildmay is at 33-34 Newington Green, London N16 9PR. Doors open at 9am for early birds who have paid £10 for entry; after 10am it’s free.

Drinks and food will be available throughout the day and a music quiz starts at 7pm with dancing from 9pm.

More details here.

Well, it’s been a while but I’m posting here again with takes on the usual, unusual and out-there from the world of visual culture.

There’ll be some changes made over the coming months and also some exciting announcements in regard to new projects but meantime here are two events to which I’m contributing in the next couple of weeks.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 16 September) I’m taking part in Facade Charade, a conversation about the relationship between architecture and fashion with writer/curator Priya Kanchandani and architects Sheila O’Donnell, of Irish practice O’Donnell + Tuomey, and Zaha Hadid’s Melodie Leung.

And on Sunday 27 September I’ll be in conversation at the annual countercultural fest Convenanza with publisher Lee Brackstone, major domo of the towering White Rabbit Books imprint, about the Granny Takes A Trip book we produced together last year as well as my earlier book The Look, which was admired by Convenanza’s figurehead, the late Andrew Weatherall.

Details on the Activities + Events page.

I’m really looking forward to What About Dancing? at central London’s Garden Cinema on May 14.

The evening comprises screenings of three short films about grief made by artists/filmmakers/writers Tara Darby, Annie Frost Nicholson and Lara Haworth:

• Into Your Light (Darby and Frost Nicholson 2019)

• All The People I Hurt With My Wedding (Haworth 2019)

• Grief Is A Hungry Ghost (Haworth and Frost Nicholson 2023).

Afterwards I’ll be mediating an in-conversation and Q+A with the three filmmakers on their shared and individual approaches, as well as their current project The Triumphant Return of Harriet Frost.

Do come along. Details and tickets are available here.

Here’s the trailer for All The People I Hurt With My Wedding:

‘This book solves the mystery of a spell that was cast on a time that won’t fade away’

Hiroshi Fujiwara

2024 has got off to a good start with the news that the Japanese edition of The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren is going to be published by East Press on January 26, four days after what would have been the great provocateur’s 78th birthday.

This translation includes a new photo selection, the above cover quote from Japan’s style guru Hiroshi Fujiwara and updated text, including much new detail on the visit McLaren made with Vivienne Westwood and Gerry Goldstein to Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York in the summer of 1973.

The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren Japanese edition is available to order here.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking to interiors, homewares and textile designer Sue Timney about the fashion legacy of the King’s Road, the two-and-a-half mile thoroughfare in west London’s Chelsea where the late Mary Quant kicked off the boutique boom by opening her clothes shop Bazaar at 135a in 1955.

We’ll be in conversation and welcoming questions and participation from attendees to the sold-out event, which is being held as part of the Chelsea History Festival. See details here.

As well as a broad selection or rarely seen images from the 50s to the 90s, we’ll also be showing a series of short films tracking the development of fashion sensibilities in the road including Granny Takes A Trip at 488 in 1966, a Quorum catwalk show in 1968, Mr Freedom at 430 in 1970 and Seditionaries and Worlds End at the same address in 1977 and 1982 respectively.

I’ll also be revealing publicly for the first time my next book project which is very much related to the subject under discussion.

Next Thursday (August 3) I’m going to be in conversation with the prominent writer and photographer Mark C. O’Flaherty at central London’s library/bookshop/bar Reference Point.

We’ll be talking about the music press – the subject of my book Totally Wired, which is out now in paperback –  it’s history in relation to LGBTQ+ communities and Mark’s experiences working for such magazines as Melody Maker and Boyz.

Afterwards I’ll DJ a vinyl set of music-press-related sounds.

Bag your spot here.

Copies of Totally Wired are widely available, including from bookshop.org

Next week sees the opening at London’s Canary Wharf of artist Annie Frost Nicholson’s Fandangoe Discoteca, the mini-disco installation where we can shake out our grief and help maintain daily mental health – the programme covers all intersections of grief from bereavement to climate angst to political rage to break-ups.

The design of the kiosk was inspired by De Stijl and Ettore Sottsass and holds up to eight dancers at a time.

Nicholson invited various people to create ‘playlists for these interesting times’ to play at the Discoteca, which will be in Canary Wharf from July 26-30 before moving on to public spaces in Milton Keynes in August and Berlin in September.

Annie’s invite came at a sad time, when our dog Rita went for the big sleep after 17-and-a-half years, so it was a salve to contemplate music which is hopefully joyous, uproarious and communal, all the things that she loved (as well as particularly expensive Scandinavian blankets, treats, steak, prawns and Jumbones).

Included in this post are a few clips to illustrate my choices; amazing playlists have been contributed to the Discoteca by Stephe Haus, Lara Haworth, Harris Elliott Studio, Dorothy, Linnet Kamala, Raissa Pardini and Timothy Wang and Romboyd and Street Soundsystem are providing music.

This is from Rom Boyd’s very limited edition vinyl EP made for the Discoteca and available here:

Fandangoe Discoteca is a collaboration with The Loss Project and the kiosk is provided by k67 Berlin and About Space Berlin.

The Discoteca also marks an important stage in Nicholson’s journey; with this she is bidding farewell to her artistic persona The Fandangoe Kid. If you’re in the area or fancy travelling to enjoy the experience the Discoteca will be at Wren Landing, Canary Wharf E14 4DA.

Full details here.

When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

In turn musicians bristled at the power of the critics by lashing out: in the 60s Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man sneered at Melody Maker’s jazz nabob Max Jones, and Nick Cave’s 1980s song Scum considered NME and Sounds writers Mat Snow and Antonella Gambotto-Burke in scabrous terms (listen above). Ten years on, the late Tupac Shakur objected to an editorial about him in influential hip-hop zine The Rap Pages by physically threatening the journalist responsible.

My book Totally Wired – the paperback is published next week – charts the unbound talent, blind ambition and sometimes bitter rivalries which accompanied the dominance of the music press, when specialist publications from Q and Kerrang! to Vibe, Details and Spin sold hundreds of thousands of copies of every issue.

This story is dominated by straight white males, so I balance their collective contribution by tackling the entrenched racism and sexism of the business, uncovering the voices from marginalized communities and highlighting publications and individuals whose contribution has been unfairly overlooked.

I also track the music press’s dizzying fall at the dawn of the 21^st century, when celebrity and lad culture, comedy, gaming and sports diverted attention as print’s potency was fatally undermined by the onset of the digital era: readership, sales and advertising income plummeted, swathes of titles were shuttered and a smorgasbord of writing about music became freely available online.

//Disco Pogo’s current issue cover stars Roisin Murphy and Grace Jones//

Sure, music publications continue to emerge today. Though niche in comparison with the mass-market decades, titles such as Disco Pogo prove that print continues to packs  a punch.

Here are six of the greats that made a difference:

Rolling Stone April 12 1973

Last year’s sell-out of Rolling Stone’s Harry Styles cover issue underlined the contemporary relevance of the magazine founded as a means of harnessing hippie lifestyle by Jann Wenner in San Francisco way back in 1967. The strength of Rolling Stone – which Wenner sold a few years back – was always that it used music as a springboard to cover the waterfront from sports to the space race and from politics to literature to art, as this early 70s issue demonstrates with a fascinating encounter between two big American cultural beasts: Andy Warhol and Truman Capote.

Black Music December 1973

The late Alan Lewis was an unsung hero of music magazines, having been the editorial powerhouse behind Sounds and NME and founder not only of Kerrang! – still going today – but also the era-defining Loaded. Black Music was Lewis’s first venture, conceived by the life-long soul music fan while working as a sub-editor on Melody Maker. Featuring Stevie Wonder on the cover of the first issue, Lewis enlisted such excellent writers as Carl Gayle and produced a monthly which struck a chord with people of colour whose interests in disco and reggae were not reflected in the pages of the rock press.

The Face July 1990

Having toppled the music weeklies’ dominance by launching Smash Hits,  ex NME editor Nick Logan was also responsible for the game-changing The Face. Initially focused on 2-Tone and New Romantic, the brief soon widened to take in architecture, art, design, fashion, interiors, photography and politics, enhanced by Neville Brody’s radical neo-Constructivist page layouts. In the 90s, having survived a cancer scare and the loss of a £150,000 libel case brought by Jason Donovan, Logan and his team took on the blissed-out post-acid house era of inclusivity, with this issue celebrating what was described as ‘The 3rd Summer of Love’ and marked by the emergence of Kate Moss, who has recently revealed the pain she suffered as a 16-year-old while posing topless for the shoot for the late photographer Corinne Day.

Girlfrenzy 1992

Coinciding with the vigorous rush of the pawky, punky Riot Grrl movement (which minted the phrase ‘girl power’ five years before the Spice Girls), illustrator Erica Smith’s occasional zine celebrated female energy and took hilarious pot shots at male music nerd pomposity. One rock journalist is depicted as exasperating his partner with so many stories about the time he interviewed Nick Cave that she shuts him up by alarmingly inserting rolled-up copies of Melody Maker and NME in his mouth and up his arse…

Ben Is Dead 1995

Edited by and written for young women and people from disadvantaged communities, 30 issues of LA-based Ben Is Dead (named after the ex-husband of prime mover Darby Romeo) were published over 11 years from the late 80s and distributed free through an alternative network of record stores, coffee shops and boutiques. Each issue adopted a theme – ‘Sex’, ‘Broke’ and ‘Disinformation’ – and combined wiseass humour with kaleidoscopic visuals. Romeo and her partner-in-crime Kerin Morayata were hired as contributing editors at Vanity Fair and their ‘Sassy’ edition featuring cover star Chelsea Clinton made it to the White House.

Vibe November 1995

Launched in 1993 by Quincy Jones with producer David Salzman in partnership with Time Inc, Vibe was an ultra-successful blockbuster branding move into Rolling Stone’s lifestyle terrain with an editorial mix with black music at its centre. The Vibe empire soon expanded into book publishing, TV shows, online content and awards with a successful spin-off, Vibe Vixen, geared towards female readers. At its height Vibe‘s monthly sales were claimed at 500,000-plus.

The paperback of Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press by Paul Gorman is published by Thames & Hudson next Thursday (July 6).

One of the narrative threads of my book Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press – which is published in paperback next week – traces the ways in which women writers have been forced to fight long and hard against white male dominance of the field.

This process was kicked off in the 1950s by Gloria Stavers, who transformed the US teen scene as editor and photographer at the huge-selling 16 magazine and went on to champion the likes of the Beatles and others in the 60s on her own terms: while she recognised the charisma of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, she was also his equal and lover.

Stavers’ trailblazing was followed by the likes of the patronisingly dubbed ‘mother of rock’ Lillian Roxon, the Australian who went on to write the first Rock Encyclopedia, Patricia Kenneally at Jazz & Pop and Ellen Willis, whose highbrow-with-hips take on pop and rock in her New Yorker column influenced such writers as Jaan Uhelszki at Creem and Lisa Robinson at Rock Scene, NME and more recently Vanity Fair.

Simultaneously in the UK in the 60s and 70s, the photographer/writer Val Wilmer provided key access to and appreciation of visiting jazz and blues performers at Melody Maker while Penny Valentine cut her teeth at pop weekly Disc before directly taking on music industry misogyny at the short-lived Street Life as the future Pretender Chrissie Hynde cut a swathe at NME.

In the mid-70s the activist and artist Caroline Coon was hired to write for Melody Maker, where she was subjected to the outright sexism erected to block her attempts to champion the early punk movement, but Coon prevailed and was followed by such writers as Mary Harron at NY’s Punk, Julie Burchill at NME and Jane Suck, Vivien Goldman and Betty Page at Sounds, Lucy Toothpaste at Temporary Hoarding and Antonella Gambotto-Burke and Barbara Ellen at ZigZag.

//Left: Fiona Russell Powell; right Sheryl Garratt//

In the 1980s The Face‘s gender-blind hiring policy opened the door for waves of superb journalists including Deanne Pearson, Lesley White, Fiona Russell-Powell, Carol Cooper, Sheryl Garratt, who became editor, Lindsay Baker and Amy Raphael. Writers such as Sue Steward, at various titles including Collusion, and Sylvie Simmons at Kerrang! and later Mojo also rocked the boat.

By the 1990s Barbara Ellen and Lisa Verrico were on the rise at Vox before becoming high-profile national media journalists, Lucy O’Brien was at NME and Q and the talents of Siân Pattenden, Sylvia Patterson and Miranda Sawyer were first introduced to the wider world via the pages of Smash Hits.

By this time Grrl Power had been championed by zines such as Karren Ablaze’s Ablaze and Erica Smith’s Girlfrenzy with rock, metal, rap and goth featured by Lori Majewski in Spin and abrasive, humour-filled punky feminism was on the march at LA’s Ben Is Dead, where a largely female staff led by Darby Romeo included contributions from such trans artists as Vaginal Davies and Glen Meadmore.

Tina Brown recruited Romeo and co-editor Kerin Morayata as contributing editors at Vanity Fair while Caitlin Moran joined the UK nationals from Melody Maker as the most notable British music journalist of her generation.  Her prominence was matched in the US macho world of hip-hop where Sheena Lester ascended as editor of such national hip-hop titles as Rap Pages and XXL.

These days the most incisive pop commentary across traditional and online media is in my view more likely to be produced by women, whether Kate Mossman and Jude Rogers, who both emerged from the text-led 00s independent publication The Word, authors Holly Warren-George, Sinéad Gleeson, Kate Molleson, Arusa Qureshi and Caryn Rose, critics Laura Barton, Kitty Empire and Laura Snapes in The Guardian/Observer, Elizabeth Nelson at Oxford American or the legions of female writers and editors now realising the ambitions of the likes of Stavers, Roxon and Willis when they started kicking against the pricks all those decades ago.

There are so many links to excellent female writing on music – for starters check out the rocksbackpages writers archive – but here’s a random selection to be going on with:

Lilian Roxon’s friendship with Germaine Greer recalled here.

Dani Garavelli meets the generation of female writers changing whose stories are told and how for The Scotsman here.

Read about Fiona Russell-Powell’s 2009 encounter with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge for New Humanist here.

Sheena Lester appears in this podcast about The Greatest Day shoot.

An archive of Ann Powers’ NPR music criticism.

The New York Times on The Essential Ellen Willis.

The Totally Wired paperback is published next Thursday (July 6) and available from all good booksellers including Rough Trade and bookshop.org.

The September 1975 issue of US music/proto-lifestyle magazine Rock Scene contains an absolute curio in the form of a report on Angie Bowie’s visit to Eton College – ‘Hogwarts for wankers where you’re taught Latin and tax avoidance while wearing full evening dress’* – that year.

Bowie was invited by 18-year-old pupils Craig Brown, today Britain’s leading satirist, and Nicholas Coleridge, now the chair of the V&A and formerly a big wheel at Condé Nast.

Coleridge, who preferred to be known by the more rock’n’roll ‘Rick’ at the time apparently, explained in his memoir The Glossy Years that the schoolboys set up a club called The Contemporary Arts Society as a cover for their attempts to become matey with rock stars by inviting them to give guest speeches at Eton. Bowie was the first (her husband had left England never to reside here again in the spring of 1974) and they later enticed Brian Eno and Elton John.

Bowie, who was accompanied by friends Roy Martin, photographer Leee Black Childers and musician Simon Fisher Turner, acquitted herself well.

‘There are enormous advances which must be made to enable the world to last another century,’ she told the privileged audience. ‘We must wean ourselves away from reckless consumer preoccupation, make do with what is necessary, strive to preserve the natural resources of this spaceship Earth and always be aware of the cycle of history.’

During the q&a session a large number of boys raised their hands when she asked how many were set on becoming Prime Minister in adulthood, though it’s worth noting that arch-wankers David Cameron and Boris Johnson were not present; they didn’t start at Eton until 1979 and 1977 respectively.

In the evening the visibly excited schoolboys dined with Bowie and her retinue at local restaurant The Cockpit where they were joined by classmates. The racism of the day rose to the fore when the name of one was deemed unpronounceable so he was designated ‘the son of the president of Nigeria’ (for more on that front read Dillibe Onyeama’s terrifying account of his time at the school, A Black Boy At Eton).

Rock Scene was a great, gossipy magazine, where weird events such as this appeared alongside the abiding editorial interest in New York music as glam turned to punk as well as fashion, art, design, clubbing and movies.

Find out more about Rock Scene, its editor the late Richard Robinson and his partner and Vanity Fair music editor Lisa Robinson in Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press.

*Jonathan Pie