Reflections on ... Another Kind of Life at The Barbican

/ A portrait of Evelyn from the series La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple) by Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz, 1983 /

The Barbican’s current exhibit Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins plunges the viewer into the subterranean outlaw world of the countercultural and disenfranchised. As they put it, it “follows the lives of individuals and communities operating on the fringes of society from America to India, Chile to Nigeria.” Think sex workers, biker gangs, junkies, drag queens, teenage runaways, circus freaks, punks, rockabillies, criminals, drop-outs, misfits. You know: our kind of people! Pal and I visited on Easter Sunday - and it was mesmerizing!

/ Medicine is Art, from the series Japan Photo Theatre, by Daido Moriyama, 1968. How covetable is that Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra mask! / 

/ From the series Brooklyn Gangs by Bruce Davidson, 1959 / 

Another Kind of Life opens with a room devoted to the mother of outsider photography, Diane Arbus then encompasses other exemplars like Larry Clark and Bruce Davidson. I’m obviously very familiar with the oeuvres of Arbus, Clark and Davidson (especially the latter’s luscious 1959 series Brooklyn Gangs depicting insanely beautiful young juvenile delinquent thugs!), but they’re always a joy to re-visit. To give you an idea of the flavor and subject matter, Nan Goldin, Karlheinz Weinberger and Peter Hujar aren’t represented in the exhibit – but they easily could have been. I loved discovering new photographers I’d never heard of (especially Japanese, Russian and Latin American ones). In some cases, I’d spot a photo I recognized but never knew who took it or its origins or context.  Noteworthy: Japan’s Daido Moriyama and Seiji Kurata (check out his studies of ornately-tattooed semi-nude Yakuza gangsters lounging at the sauna). Britain’s Chris Steele-Perkins (1970s Teddy Boy subculture; love their sartorial style. Their fondness for the National Front and the Confederate flag – not so much!). France’s Philippe Chancel (stylish multiracial / anti-fascist Parisian 1980s rockabilly gangs The Vikings and The Panthers).

/ Untitled, 1982, From the series Rebel’s Paris by Philippe Chancel, 1982 / 

Many of these tales of desperate living are devoted to troubled youth and transgender communities. Mary Ellen Mark documented the homeless kids of Seattle (focusing on a haunting 13-year old waif named Tiny). Jim Goldberg’s series Raised by Wolves (1987 – 1993) does the same for young drug addicts in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  (One of Goldberg’s cadaverous, doomed subjects called Tweeky Dave died of liver disease in 1997 and bequeathed him his grungy denim jacket customized with swear words. It hangs in The Barbican like a religious artifact).

/ Lillie with her rag doll, Seattle, Washington, from the series Streetwise, by Mary Ellen Mark, 1983 /

The main image for the exhibit is Paz Errázuriz’s commanding, defiant 1983 portrait of Evelyn, a transgender sex worker in an underground Chilean brothel. Dayanita Singh explores India’s maligned eunuch community. Teresa Margolles does similar with trans prostitutes in the desolate Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez. Behind Margolles’ room is slide show of grainy photos of strippers (most seemingly transsexual) working at an absolutely filthy fleapit dive bar from the 60s to the 80s. It’s spellbinding! Each slide tells a vivid story. 

Perhaps my favourite image of the entire exhibit is Danny Lyon’s photo Corky and Funny Sonny, Chicago (1965) below. Lyon followed and photographed the outrageously sexy Outlaw motorcycle gang in the mid-60s. I find this photo aesthetically pleasing!

The exhibit is on until 27 May 2018. Go! 

New Boots and Panties

Received delivery of a sparkling new pair of black leather engineer boots earlier this week — just like these as modelled by the delectable vintage physique/beefcake model Rock Granger (sadly, wearing them doesn't make me look like him. Granger is one of my favourite male pin-ups; I used a photo of him in a mesh posing pouch to illustrate my 6 February 2013 Wild Thing DJ set list -- and perhaps unsurprisingly, it became one of my most popular blog entries of all time!). 

As many of you know, I freaking refuse to wear anything else (give me engineer boots or give me death!) and they’re increasingly hard to find. (In the 1990s, I’d just head to The Girl Can't Help It in Camden Market!). I always have to have two pairs: I need a spare pair while one is being re-heeled. Anyway, I got my last two pairs from Rockers England in Manchester: highly recommended. Here’s their website.

Which brings us to ...

Young Marlon Brando as sullen and defiant Johnny in The Wild One (1953) remains such a potent image (or as Camille Paglia would call it, “sexual persona”). As I've said before, the clothes Brando and his biker gang members in The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club wear are so covetable they have me virtually drooling. The buckled black leather engineer boots, the perfect dark indigo Levis with the perfect turn-ups, the t-shirts, the leather jackets, the caps, the sunglasses, the quiffs, the sideburns ... Brando and his gang remain the absolute visual / sartorial ideal for male rockabillies today in the way that, say, Bettie Page or Mamie Van Doren do for female rockabilly kittens.

Unwittingly, Brando in The Wild One also set a template or archetype for the enduring and essential homoerotic biker image (perhaps second only to the homoerotic sailor image in ubiquity). Browse through any collections of 1950s / early 1960s-era vintage male physique / beefcake / early gay pornography on tumblr like this one or this one (and I highly recommend you do!) and so many of the luscious male models are sporting tough guy / bad boy variations of the black leather jacket, rakishly cocked biker cap and engineer boots ensembles that seem directly swiped from The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. (Here -- I've saved you the trouble!). And of course in his eerie 1963 queer underground film classic Scorpio Rising (a true cinematic flower of evil!) Kenneth Anger would drag the gay biker persona up from the subterranean world of porn. Anger also deliberately spliced in a flickering black and white TV clip of Brando in The Wild One, implying his speed freak anti-hero Scorpio (played by Bruce Byron) is modelling himself on Brando. In fact he links Scorpio’s corrupt homoerotic narcissism with his identifications with James Dean and Brando. Beautiful!

Now I need to listen to Turbonegro. 

Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter

/Johnson's Mannequins Sophie and Steve. Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter exhibit at The Chelsea Space /

I moved to London in May 1992 (so this Spring marks 20 years of living in London. Now do you understand why I’m so jaundiced, so hardened? Let’s call it my “Twenty Years of Depravity”). Shortly afterwards I started discovering my social niche, tentatively exploring the subterranean rockabilly and retro club scenes: More than Vegas, Blue Martini, the Frat Shacks, rockabilly reunions at Dingwall’s, boozy Saturday nights at The Elephant’s Head. What to wear? As a student in Canada I’d lived in a uniform of black t-shirts and black Levis – which wouldn’t suffice now. This was long before vintage mania and eBay, so I was still able to score the occasional piece of (relatively) affordable original 1950s and 60s threads in Camden Market. My much-loved friends Gail and Jasja (aka Sparkle Moore and Cad van Swankster) still operated their boutique The Girl Can’t Help It from there and I would often swing by on a Sunday afternoon to hang out and scan the stock for incoming engineer boots and cool shirts.

For new "reproduction vintage" rock’n’roll clothes, there was Ted’s Corner in Victoria (I still wear a pair of winkle pickers I bought there in the 1990s), but I quickly determined that Johnson’s Modern Outfitters was the definitive source for sexy rockabilly clothes. There were two branches: Kings Road (close to Worlds End, so just around the corner from Vivienne Westwood) and Kensington Market. Visiting either of them was a heady, almost sensual experience. Rifling through the ultra-desirable clothes was certainly trance-inducing, but there was also the shops' wonderfully kitsch Tiki-inspired decor. The staff was charismatic and glamorous: in the 1980s, being a Johnson’s shop assistant made it almost inevitable you’d eventually appear in a Face magazine photo spread, like a model or rock star. In the nineties, some of the Johnson’s sales people would eventually become friends of mine, like the fabulous Mari Mansfield (musician, DJ, Trans-Atlantic sex kitten and today a psychotherapist-in-training) and Dean Micetich (the musician formerly known as Kid Rocker, currently in The Black Tibetans, co-founder of biker magazine DiCE). Even the atmospheric music playing in-store (a melange potentially encompassing twangy / sleazy instrumentals to tinkle-y exotica-lounge) was great. The whole Johnson’s ambiance was intoxicating.

Sadly, Johnson’s came to an end by 2000, a casualty of astronomically high rents and the changing London high street, which has become ever more faceless, bland and corporate since. Looking back, it’s miraculous something so niche, edgy and subcultural survived as long as it did. I numbly went to their closing-down sales and snapped-up some clothes I still wear today. Nothing similar has ever come along to remotely replace Johnson’s, and I pretty much thought that was the end of the story.

At the time I knew virtually nothing about Lloyd Johnson himself, the brains behind Johnson’s and whose vision the whole enterprise had been. I subsequently learned his fashion career dates back to the late 1960s (as an art school graduate Mod from Hastings, he started selling clothes at Kensington Market as early as 1967) and that Johnson was an unsung pioneer (hell, a visionary) of fusing music and fashion (what the more famous Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood - very much his contemporaries -- would also do). In the 70s and 80s Johnson launched his retail outlets (the Kings Road outlet opened in 1978). Obviously it was his rockabilly-inspired La Rocka! range that I gravitated towards, but Johnson’s clothing incorporated all the key British youth subcultures: Teddyboys, bikers, punks, Mods, Goths and jazz-beatniks could all find something to treasure at Johnson’s. And rock stars, too: pretty much all my favourite musicians (everyone from Billy Fury, Jerry Lee Lewis, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Sex Pistols, The Cramps, The Pretenders – even Hollywood show biz royalty like Fred Astaire and Liza Minnelli!) wore Johnson’s paraphernalia at some point. A true tastemaker and original, Lloyd Johnson deserves credit as one of the people who made London a cooler place and in a just world would be far better recognised for his accomplishments.

Around Autumn 2011 I saw something on Facebook about an upcoming exhibit (to be held at The Chelsea Space) honouring Johnson’s career, and that anyone with good condition Johnson’s clothes should get in touch. I contacted Lloyd Johnson himself via Facebook, we exchanged some messages, and I sent him photos of my La Rocka! clothes from the 1990s. He eventually came to my place in Archway in person one night after work to my to collect them, and he was modest, unassuming and gentlemanly – you couldn’t imagine anyone less “fashion-y.” He promised to ensure I’d be invited to the exhibit's private launch party.

/ (Clothes I loaned for the exhibit: Crocodile t-shirt. I also loaned an Indian motorcycle t-shirt and a pair of patent 70s Pimp Shoes. No, I can't believe I was ever this tiny / emaciated. This crocodile fetish t-shirt and the Indian motorcycle t-shirt both look like baby clothes to me now -- clothes for a very punky, kinky baby!) /



/ (Black shirt. When I first got it, this shirt was shiny and very young Johnny Cash. Washing it over the years has turned it matte) /



/ (Black Regency suit. I remember I was really skint when I bought this suit and it cost about £360 -- a lot of money for me in the early 1990s. I just thought, "Screw it!" and I wore it that New Year's Eve) /



/ (Clothes I loaned for the exhibit: Blue Sharkskin Suit. I definitely bought this at the Kings Road branch during their closing-down sale) /



Flash forward to the night of the preview party on 24 January 2012. Approaching The Chelsea Space, visible through the front window is the original frontage of the Kensington Market shop re-created -- enough to make me misty-eyed with nostalgia. First reaction: I’d forgotten just how beautiful the Johnson’s mannequins used to be! Second: None of the clothes I’d loaned made the final cut! Apparently over a thousand items were borrowed from customers and collectors around the world, and needed to be whittled down to a representative capsule of Johnson’s whole career. But hey, I’m not bitter. The collection they’ve assembled is exquisite and tells the story of how Lloyd’s ethos evolved over the decades, and it was a brilliant night.


Recreation of Johnsons front window: gave me a real pang of nostalgia! (I really should have taken this shot at the beginning of the night to give a better view, before the room was thronged with people! Doh!)

/ Better view Via /



/Johnson's rockabilly dreamboat male mannequins /

Apparently well over a hundred people crammed into a pretty small gallery: a testament to the affection and loyalty Johnson’s inspired in its clientele – and how much it’s missed. (The crowd spilled outside, where people could smoke and admire the row of vintage motorcycles the biker contingent had arrived on). I think I drank far more than my share of the flowing free beer and wine (at least judging by my thunderous hangover the next day) and it was great meeting up with old friends (and making some new ones). After the gallery kicked us all out, the party continued at the pub around the corner.

There's talk of the La Rocka! range being revived on a small-scale ... fingers crossed this happens.

Anyway, here's a sampling of my photos from the night:



/ Gold leather fringed biker jacket (with matching gold leather jeans) as worn by Lux Interior of The Cramps . A silver version of this jacket was worn by Liza Minnelli on a 1989 issue of Vogue magazine. Who would have thought Lux and Liza had anything in common?! /



/Red leather-fronted pony fur jacket (as worn by Jerry Lee Lewis!). (To see a photo of the man himself wearing it, click here) /



/ Pale blue with red fleck zoot suit /



/ Scorpio Rising / The Leather Angels: Ultra beautiful and fetishistic biker jackets on the leather jacket wall /



/ Mari (who used to work as a glamorous Johnson's sales assistant in the early 1990s when she was a scary Tura Satana/Bettie Page-style brunette) and Julian /



/ Julian (whose "flamejob" cardigan is from Johnson's), Kayee and I /



/ Gold Leather Fringed Biker Jacket (as worn by Lux Interior of The Cramps) and I. (I wish I'd taken off my camera bag for this shot!) /



/ The great man himself: Lloyd Johnson and I /



/ The Leather Boys: Bikers Thomas and Jake (this was taken at the pub afterwards) /

See the rest of my photos from the party here

Read a nice interview with Lloyd Johnson on The Guardian website

Paul Gorman co-ordinated the exhibit at The Chelsea Space and blogged about it day by day in the lead-up to the opening

There were some other bloggers at the party who got some better, more detailed shots of the clothes than I did: try this one and this one

Naked Under Leather: Marianne Faithfull Reminisces About Girl on a Motorcycle

/ Naked Under Leather, Part 1: Marianne Faithfull in the 1968 film Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) /

It’s easy to forget Marianne Faithfull has been acting as long as she’s been singing. Obviously her musical career as rock’s quintessential tortured torch singer has dominated the popular imagination, but over the decades she’s had an erratic but interesting sideline as an actress in films, stage and television. She’s worked with art cinema auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard (Made in the USA, 1966) and Kenneth Anger (Lucifer Rising, 1972), and on the other extreme schlock-meister Michael Winner: Marianne Faithfull was the first person to say the word “fuck” in a mainstream studio film (she screams, “Get out of here, you fucking bastard!” to Oliver Reed in the Winner’s 1967 I’ll Never Forget What’sisname). More classily, she’s performed in Chekhov’s Three Sisters onstage (1967) and portrayed Ophelia both onstage and onscreen (1969), and Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Empress of Austria, in Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette (2006). Faithfull has a new film (Belle du Seigneur) due out in 2012.

Perhaps suitably for someone with such a wild child / bad girl /fallen angel image, Faithfull’s filmography seems conceptually bookended by two notorious sexually explicit films maudits: the kitsch soft core sexploitation flick Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and the strange, low-budget indie black sex comedy Irina Palm (2007) in which she plays a respectable suburban grandmother turned Soho sex worker. In most of her film work, Faithfull appears in supporting roles – decades apart, these both represent her two cracks as leading lady.

In the past Faithfull has spoken dismissively about the campy Girl on a Motorcycle (alternate titles: Naked Under Leather in the US and La Motocyclette in France) as an embarrassing disappointment and source of regret. Certainly in her lacerating 1994 autobiography Faithfull, she mentions it only in passing. “I made a couple of terrible films that year” is pretty much all she has to say about both I’ll Never Forget Whatshisname and Girl on a Motorcycle, while noting her gorgeous leading man on the latter (32-year old French heartthrob Alain Delon) made an arrogant, desultory (and unsuccessful) pass at her. (She was still with Mick Jagger at the time).



/ The trailer for Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) /

Happily, Faithfull’s attitude has since mellowed considerably and she’s now able to look back at Girl on a Motorcycle with affection. When I interviewed her in January 2011 for Nude magazine about her latest CD Horses and High Heels, I seized the opportunity to ask her about it. (This didn’t make the final cut of the article). She told me:

“I had no idea it was going to become such a cult movie, that people would still like it so many years after. I didn’t really like it at the time; I thought it was a bit stupid! But I loved (director) Jack Cardiff and I was very grateful to Jack Cardiff for making me look so beautiful. He really did. I mean, the lighting – the whole thing is just gorgeous. So I’m very grateful for that, that one day I’m able to look back at Girl on a Motorbike (sic) and say, Wow! That wasn’t too bad. And also, I think one of the most lovely things about Girl on a Motorbike is, do you know where it’s most popular? In India! I saw it myself, the first time I saw it was in Delhi, in Hindi. And it was absolutely great, but what was really great was how much the Indian audience loved it. And even now on the net there are articles – long, evaluating articles about this film. I’m delighted!”

It’s been years since I’ve seen Girl on a Motorcycle, but for such a trashy and misjudged film it made an indelible impression on me. The first time I ever saw it was circa 1992 when I first moved to London, onscreen at the much-missed, wonderfully dilapidated and grungy art house cinema The Scala, in Kings Cross when it was still a really seedy and dangerous neighbourhood. It was on a typically inspired Scala double bill, paired with Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966), another biker-themed exploitation film of the same vintage starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra.

The risible dialogue in Motorcycle is truly dreadful and makes it one of those so-bad-it’s good, unintentionally funny and perversely enjoyable films. I definitely remember a sequence where Faithfull (as frustrated young bride Rebecca, abandoning her callow husband to be with her intellectual French lover Daniel, played by Delon) zooms past a graveyard on her glistening black Harley-Davidson and rhetorically ponders in the voiceover, “Why don’t the dead rebel?” Her worldview, she exclaims, is “Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!”

Poor Faithfull actually has to do a lot of ersatz hippie / revolutionary 1960s philosophising in the interminable voiceover, over seemingly endless footage of her astride her bike zipping across lush European countryside. (The footage of her “driving” is clearly fake – it’s been pointed out Faithfull never turns the motorcycle’s handlebars). Zipping herself into her sensational ultra-fetish-y fleece-lined, skin-tight black leather cat suit, she muses, “It’s like skin. I’m like an animal.” Later, when Rebecca and Daniel are finally reunited, she lies across his lap and instructs him, “Peel me ...” As he begins to unzip her cat suit, a stony-faced Delon purrs in his thick French accent, “Your body is like a beautiful violin in a velvet case.” Later, lovingly contemplating Faithfull’s bare feet, he solemnly intones, “Your toes are like little tombstones ...” (I suspect Delon – who would go on to work with all the major European art cinema directors in his distinguished career – has wiped Girl on a Motorcycle from both his résumé and his memory).

To be fair, though, Motorcycle has its fluffy redemptive charms. For better or for worse, it’s a real period piece: the clothes, music, decor and whole ethos are pure 1960s pop art -- the film is catnip for aficionado of kitsch. The psychedelic sex scenes remain eye-popping. Jack Cardiff is far better known (and skilled) as a cinematographer than a director and while the film’s acting is stilted and the pace fatally sluggish, he ensures the film looks spectacular – especially the adoring close-ups scrutinising Faithfull’s exquisite face. Perhaps the best you can say about Girl on a Motorcycle finally is it documents the 21-year old Faithfull at the height of her 1960s beauty: throughout she suggests an English rose version of Brigitte Bardot. (Delon looks pretty devastating, too). The image of Faithfull in her sleek, clinging cat suit, with her mane of tousled blonde hair remains – alongside Bardot singing "Harley-Davidson" in her 1968 TV special in mini skirt and thigh boots, Jane Fonda as Barbarella and the album covers of the go-go booted Nancy Sinatra – one of the definitive archetypes of the 1960s sex kitten.

/ Naked Under Leather, Part 2: Faithfull photographed in Paris by Helmut Newton circa 1978-1979, around the time of her post-punk comeback album Broken English /

/ Naked Under Leather, Part 3: Faithfull photographed by Helmut Newton again, in 1999 /

/ Naked Under Leather, Part 4: The 64-year old Faithfull in 2011. Promotional shot for her new CD Horses and High Heels /