Bowie's Pinups: Punkoid Wimpasilic Adulation

December 11, 2023 Peter Stanfield

From Buffalo State University’s student paper, Strait, in its Shakin’ Street Gazette subsection, November 1973, comes Andy Cutler’s veracious take on Bowie’s Pinups and third-generation rock ’n’ roll.

‘the new saluting the old. What more could we ask for to paint an accurate picture of the current trend in pop music’.

On the way to that conclusion, Cutler sputters out a near half-a-dozen uses of ‘punk’ to describe what Bowie was delineating.

1964–67 British beat is labelled as the ‘English punk scene’, which might well be the first time the term for second-generation American suburban teenage delinquent rock ’n’ roll was rowed across the Atlantic to depict Britain’s most blueswailing.

Bowie’s retrospective take on his formative years is figured by Cutler as ‘neo-punk’, which leaves, even before the fact, the 1976/77 version as post-punk.

Rocks Off With Roxon: Lillian Speaks to OZ

November 8, 2023 Peter Stanfield

OZ #44 (September 1972)

A wonderful interview by Louise Ferrier with Lillian Roxon, given while she was in London to take part in the Bowie hype, July 1972.

Lillian talks about how quotidian Rolling Stone has become and how fanzines have filled the void it has left, she gives a name check to Who Put the Bomp and Greg Shaw, a thumbs up for a Kinks’ zine, is hip to one by ‘two crazy girls’ called Bilge (gotta read that) and a Linda McCartney hate-zine . . . Mick Jagger’s promo machine . . . The influence of the Cockettes and Marc Bolan on Jagger . . . Lennon and Yoko as media stars . . . Brigid Polk and Warhol . . . Germaine Greer (of course) . . .

On Bowie: ‘I really enjoyed Bowie. I think he is beautiful beyond belief. If you’re going to be a rock and roll star you’d better be beautiful . . . He’s a very sexy act’.

On Lou Reed: He is ‘one of the greatest song writers ever and at the moment is not at the highest point of happiness in his life. I don’t think his performance here would have been his best. His best is unbelievable. He generates incredible excitement’.

On Iggy Stooge/Pop: ‘The first time you see Iggy it is fantastic, but after that it’s not quite the same. The guy who handles David wants to put him in films. Iggy is beautiful. I would do different things with him. English audiences are just stunned when he does his things like prowling out into the audience’.

On being bitten on her tit by Angie Bowie . . . on bad sex in NYC . . . better in Boston . . . better still with a vibrator . . . on the cut of Tom Jones’ trousers and his shared love for Elvis . . . and EP on politics . . .

I wonder if the transcript or tape of Louise Ferrier’s talk with Lillian still exists . . . the unedited/unexpurgated version would be something else . . .

Lillian Roxon, Falling For Those Pale Skinny English Boys: Bowie and Bolan

July 26, 2022 Peter Stanfield

As 1972 moved into the Spring, Lillian Roxon had fallen in love again with pop and the teenage dream. Marc Bolan was her first true love of the new season.

Climbing out of her sick bed, Lillian sets off to meet her new teen idol. She is enchanted . . .

She’ll make at least two trips to London in 1972, in February she was part of the media circus to witness Bowie’s coming out as Ziggy Stardust. The Garbo look has been replaced by short-hair and Star Trek jumpsuits. . . ‘restoring a little of the stud image he’d lost’. The Lou Reed influence on Bowie is pushed to the fore

When in London, go shopping . . . This represents perhaps the earliest US press appearance of Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood’s Let It Rock. Lillian calls it Paradise Garage, which had ceased trading in November 1971. The confusion is understandable, as Paul Gorman reminded me the Let It Rock sign was not in place until March ‘72.

The salesmen have long hair, all right, but it is greased back into high shiny pompadours. When they’re not wearing motor cycle jackets they sport authentic drape shape coats with velvet lapels.

Bad sound and the wrong audience spoilt Lillian’s enjoyment of T. Rex’s Carnegie Hall gig. In her two accounts of the show she mentioned Marc ad-libbing sexually explicit lyrics: ‘You could actually hear people asking each other in amazement if they’d heard right’. So, what was he singing? I need to know.

In June she interviews Bowie during a 3 day promotional visit to NYC. Both watch Elvis. Bowie plays on the idea of being a fabricated pop star, imagining a doll in his own image with hair that grows and that can say things like ‘I love you’ and ‘I like to dress up’. Lillian hopes it will come with the full Ziggy wardrobe.

And then she’s part of the press junket arranged for American critics with a Bowie show at Friars, Aylesbury and the Lou Reed and Iggy and the Stooges sets at King Sound, King’s Cross.

Bolan is back and playing at the Academy of Music, but it’s still not working:

this is a man who should never be allowed to work without at least two hundred screaming young girls crammed into the first ten rows . . . Playing to the torpid mob at the Academy of Music, he was like Raquel Welch trying to do a strip for the Daughters of the American Revolution. Namely, not fully appreciated.

Meanwhile, Bowie is about to make his debut US appearance . . .

A star is born . . . whose ‘carefully stylized movements give us an updated (though deceptively frail) ‘70s version of the ‘50s teenage hood’.

*Sydney Morning Herald* (December 10, 1972)

Lou Reed given the ultimate plug for his forthcoming Transformer . . . evil

Glam! When Superstars Rocked the World, 1970–74

July 14, 2022 Peter Stanfield

Mark Paytress is among the best sleeve note writers, just a notch or two below the master, Bill Millar. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve bought a new package of T. Rex recordings because I wanted, most of all, to read what he had to say. The duplication of Bolan recordings in my collection can take care of themselves but Paytress, despite the familiarity of the material he is annotating and contextualising, is never repetitious. His observations are diamond bright and sharp. He never resorts to cliché. He has always found something new to say and a novel way to approach his story. His writing has added greatly to an appreciation of Bolan’s music.

His Bolan biography stands head and shoulders over any other, by whatever measure Paytress is a fabulous writer and a great story teller.

Glam! When Superstars Rocked the World, 1970–74 doesn’t disappoint. The topic is as familiar as any trend in post-first generation rock ’n’ roll – you already know the story and all its twists and turns. With Glam!, Paytress has not been as inclusive as Simon Reynolds with Shock and Awe (2016) but he is considerably less exclusive than Barney Hoskyns was with Glam! (also with an exclamation mark that promises MORE!), published in 1998 to coincide with Todd Haynes Velvet Goldmine, and my own Pin-Ups 1972: Third Generation Rock ’n’ Roll (2022). The key figures are of course, Bolan, Bowie and Roxy Music, but he gives generous space to Roy Wood, Slade, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Alice Cooper, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter and, I think, most significantly to The Sweet.

Extensively illustrated with a superbly curated mix of agency photographs and pop ephemera, especially the long lost essential Seventies’ adornment of the faux silk scarf, a fashion accessory that crossed-over effortlessly with football culture (I yearn for its return). Glam! is a joy to idly flick through and a pleasure to read. Paytress holds to a rough chronology, beginning with the withdrawal of the promises of the Sixties with the Isle of Wight festival. That event is figured as a moment of death and rebirth: Hendrix’s overdose and festival dj Jeff Dexter playing, again and again to the huddled masses, a test pressing of ‘Ride a White Swan’. The book’s coda refigures the trope with the death of Bolan and a rebirth with punk.

In between, even the most jaded of readers will find much to amuse, ponder over and debate. You might argue that, because Paytress is telling the story, T. Rex has been given the dominant role. This might be true, but I also think he makes the case for continuing to weave Bolan into the narrative after the rise of Ziggy. The fall of T. Rex is as important as any contender, any bright new challenger on the scene. It also works quite brilliantly alongside the travails of The Sweet: their acceptance that being the puppets of Mike Chapman, Nicky Chinn and producer Phil Wainman will give them the success they couldn’t earn on their own and their bid for autonomy, just as the train they rode on was about to run out of track, is the stuff of pathos. Someone really does need to write a pop history of The Sweet, Chinnichap and the British 70s pop machine. . . Step up, step up right up!.

Footnote:

I’ve always cherished Bolan’s wilful, creative acts of plagiarism in his song writing, ‘Beltane Walk’ as a rewrite of Jimmy McCracklin’s ‘The Walk’ and Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘You’ll Be Mine’ for ‘Jeepster’ being the two most egregious or brilliant of the many. Mark Paytress has brought a new one to my attention, Johnny Burnette Trio’s ‘Honey Hush’ as the basis for ‘Jewel’, the second track on side one of the first T. Rex album. Play the two recordings back-to-back to know this to be true, but also to realise just how inventive Bolan has been in making an abstract out of his source material. Marc Bolan – pop genius.

This beautiful original courtesy of The Seth Man

Andy Warhol's PORK – The View From The Penthouse

May 14, 2022 Peter Stanfield

“The maestro of the monotonous . . . The czar of somnabulism” Penthouse (v.6/n.8, 1971) covers Pork during it’s London run at the Roundhouse in August 1971. The esteemed journal of the arts was unimpressed:

With its unique blend of excremental obsession and blatant nudity, it transmogrifies the wholesome, exciting process of sexual stimulation into a degrading version of amateur night at the sewage works drama society. Warhol, if he’s demonstrated anything, has shown that even by going the whole hog, he can’t produce anything more appetizing than a pig’s dinner

Text was by Roger Finborough and photographs by Amnon Bar-Tur, who would become a regular contributor to Club International

L to R: Dana Gillespie, Tony Defries and David Bowie at The Roundhouse for a night of Pork. A good number of the cast and backstage hands would end up working for MainMan’s New York offices.

Glamour is a Dream Machine Says Nik Cohn

January 3, 2022 Peter Stanfield

‘Private and Public Glamour, Nik Cohn Sifts the Stardust’ Harpers & Queen (February 1973)

The bookends:

Once, in Las Vegas, I was sitting in the lobby of the International Hotel, browsing through a magazine, when I was suddenly afflicted by a buzzing in the back of my skull. I turned my head: there was nothing to look at but a stretch of bare wall and a corner. I stared at the wall for perhaps thirty seconds, feeling most foolish but unable to do otherwise. The buzzing trapped me; I knew that something enormous would happen.
It did. Suddenly Elvis Presley appeared round the corner, flanked by half a dozen body guards. I will not describe him; he was God. Shimmering, he swept away across the lobby and was gone. After a moment the buzzing subsided and I went back to my magazine.

Yet again, as so often when it comes to matters of weight, I return to P. J. Proby. I remember him once at a concert in Leicester, halfway through a riot, grovelling and shrieking on his knees, when suddenly he stopped dead, stared out into the darkness and, in that curious mock-prophetic style of his, spake with tongues. ‘It seems that I must be the greatest thing on earth’, he declaimed. ‘Why, look at you all – screaming and yelling and fighting, loving me, hating me, dying to touch me, dreaming of breaking my neck. You run behind me like lapdogs and shucks, I don’t even exist . . .’

In between, a disquisition on glamour. What is it? What isn’t it? Who has it? Who doesn’t have it?. He asks everyone, except Bobby Dylan, The Beatles and Timothy Leary. ‘New Generation’ artist Patrick Procktor told him glamour is ‘the essence of irresistible allurement, overwhelming all aesthetic judgements’, which works for me and part explains Cohn’s devotion to Proby.

Glamour changes down the decades marked by how the object of enthralment shifts: the fifties was about a sexual physicality, sixties a counter-reaction with aura replacing a sex-glam syndrome – ‘A triumphant return to freakishness, decadence, insanity; lots of violence, swilled down with a dash of perversity; early and melodramatic death where possible, or at least a glut of suffering.’

Andrew Loog Oldham had the ‘flair’ that defined glamour in the sixties and Cohn extols his virtues and vices in his profile of Marianne Faithful for Nova (April 1971), who, after the Stones, was Oldham’s greatest invention. When Cohn meets her she has moved away from the pop limelight, living with her child and mother in a timbered cottage in the Berkshire downs. He describes her as overweight and seemingly ‘exhausted and muffled by inertia’.

After the flair of the Sixties, the seventies had nowhere else to go but to turn to nostalgia, glamour as pastiche of lost dreams.

One of his chosen throwbacks, reincarnations, is David Bowie who Cohn had met and interviewed six months previously. Bowie wants to be a star:

Not a Superstar or a Rock star or any kind of star in particular; just a star, period.
And what was a star? He didn’t know, he couldn’t define it, but he could recognise it by instinct. Then he paused, looked coy; ‘a star is me,’ he said, fluttering his lashes, and suddenly it was.
Harpers & Queen (September 1972)

Rock Dreams, Peellaert and Cohn. Pop’s three generations

As if to make sense of all of this, Cohn returned to his own creation, Arfur the Teenage Pinball Queen. It was a postscript on the media mirage, the ways in which ‘Pop phenomena may be created absolutely out of nothing . . . ‘shucks’ said Proby, ‘I don’t even exist’.