Memories of Summer '84: Stringfellows

Bev Hillier photographed in the office at Just Seventeen 

(Soho, 1984)

 

Entry from The Von Hell Diaries Wednesday 11 July 1984 

 

As I had nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, I spent the afternoon hanging around Soho ... 

 

Crossed paths with Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni on Wardour Street. I was tempted to say hello, but didn't. After all, what can one say without immediately adopting the position of a fan? 

 

Called in to see Lee Ellen at Charisma [1]. She was going to a party at Stringfellows [2] to celebrate the launch of Music Box [3] and invited me along. 

 

Can't say I was particularly impressed by the venue or the crowd and, alarmed by the bar prices, felt every inch the society boy on social security ... [4] 

 

Dave Vanian and Rat Scabies from the Damned were there; as was Feargal Sharkey and Midge Ure. Couldn't decide if I was in pop star heaven or pop star hell and wasn't sure they'd know either. 

 

Was more impressed by the Amazonian-like cocktail waitresses; tall, leggy blondes wearing tutus and skimpy leotards. At some point, one of them squeezed the square-padded shoulders of my jacket and said: 'Are they real?' 

 

I suppose she was just trying to be funny, but it seemed a bit cheeky at the time and I couldn't help thinking that one might squeeze her breasts and ask the same. 

 

Before leaving, I made small talk with the photographer Neil Matthews and the video director Tim Pope. I like the former: not sure about the latter; friendly, but don't really know him. 

 

Also stopped to say hello to Bev Hillier, the features assistant at Just Seventeen, who I have always had something of a crush on. 

 

She looked sexy dressed in a stripy sailor outfit, but told me she hoped one day to meet a rich man who would take her away from everything, as she didn't want to still be on the party circuit and working all hours for a magazine when aged forty. 

 

Made me wonder on the way home if anyone is ever really happy with their job (with their life)?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lee Ellen Newman was the Press Officer at Charisma Records, a label founded in 1969 by Tony Stratton Smith and home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, but also the label to which Malcolm McLaren was signed. 

 

[2] Music Box was a pioneering pan-European 24-hour cable and satellite television channel operated by Thorn EMI and Virgin Vision. It broadcast from 29 March 1984 to 30 January 1987, before the world decided that what it really wanted to watch was MTV. 

 

[3] Stringfellows was a London nightclub opened by Peter Stringfellow in 1980. A venue at which the rich and famous loved to party throughout the 1980s and early-1990s. 

 

[4] An amusing phrase taken from a song entitled 'The Suit' found on the album Metal Box (Virgin Records 1979), by Public Image Ltd. Click here.

 

 

For further memories of the summer of 1984, please click here and/or here.  

 

Get It On and Punk It Up With Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan with Dave Vanian of the Damned 

and Siouxsie Sioux in 1977

 

According to Sebastian Horsley, Marc Bolan was super-plastic profound:

 

"A curious hybrid of dandy and poseur, street urchin and visionary. The mass of contradictions could be held together only by the unifying power of art. The only real philosophy he had was that a human being was an art form in itself. He was entirely his own creation: A creature lovingly constructed from the materials of his imagination. He was important for being trivial yet deep, poppy yet interesting - all the things I came to love in one person." [1]

However, whilst this loving description is undoutedly true, I have to admit that back in the day - i.e., the 1970s - I was never a great Bolan fan and when I stomped around the bedroom wearing my sister's platform boots, I was pretending to be a member of Sweet or Slade, not T. Rex. 

 

As was also the case with David Bowie, I was just a little too young - and perhaps a little too straight - to fully appreciate the queer sophisticated pop genius of Bolan and his "gorgeously nonsensical and deliciouly fey lyrics" [2]. 

 

And so, although I remember listening to his songs on the radio and used to love watching him on TV, it was Gary Glitter's poster which hung on my wall and Gary Glitter's singles I used to buy with my pocket money at the local record store. 

Only retrospectively, can I now see that I should've given my heart to this East London boy who, unlike many of his peers, embraced punk rock and was - again unlike many of his peers - embraced by the younger punk generation, as the photos above illustrate [3]. 

 

Whether Bolan genuinely loved the so-called New Wave, or simply wanted to ride along on it as he had once ridden a white swan in order to sustain his own career, I don't know. But I like to think this one-time hippie folk musician who became a glam superstar was more of a punk at heart than many might imagine [4].

 

Sadly, we never really got to find out, because Bolan was killed in a car crash on 16 September, 1977, aged 29.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), pp. 29-30. 

      Horsley borrows the title for his autobiography from the T. Rex single released 30 May 1977 (from the album of the same name released 11 March 1977 on EMI). Click here to enjoy a performance of this song on the children's TV show Get It Together, presented by Roy North (sans Basil Brush).

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, p. 27. 

 

[3] There are also photos of Bolan with the Ramones and Billy Idol - and, speaking of the latter, Generation X performed their debut single, 'Your Generation', on the final episode of Bolan's own TV show Marc (broadcast 28 September 1977): click here.  

[4] This is further evidenced by the fact that he chose the Damned to support him on a short tour in March 1977, which began at City Hall, Newcastle (10/03) and ended at the Locarno, Portsmouth (20/03), where the Damned joined Bolan and T. Rex on stage to perform 'Get It On' as an encore.    

Autobiographical Fragment: Eine Schöne Romanze

A lover of mine / From down on the Rhine

Whilst for most of the time in 1987 I was holed up in Blind Cupid House reading poetry, assembling Pagan Magazine, painting t-shirts, and endlessly listening to Killing Joke, some of my happiest days were spent in Germany in the company of deutsche girl Carolin Loerke ...

For although Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government would win an historic third term in this year, it was actually a golden age in which to be voluntarily unemployed (i.e. free). Having signed on on the Tuesday, I would cash my giro on the Thursday, and then Interrail it all the way to Mainz and the arms of Fräulein Loerke.

Carolin was a good friend of a London-based punkette called Angelika Mischling, whom I was very keen on at the time. Unfortunately, the latter was romantically unavailable, living as she did with her English boyfriend who sang in a band and looked a bit like a young Dave Vanian. And so, Angelika decided to play Cupid and arranged for me to stay with Carolin, whom she insisted was sehr nett ...

And, to be fair, she was very nice: a physiotherapist who loved existentialism, Joy Division, and making fresh pesto sauce. Her English was excellent and, as well as having a cheeky smile, she had what many would describe as perfect breasts; i.e. slightly fuller below the nipple meridian than above, so that the nipple points upwards at a 20 degree angle. 

Her apartment, I remember, was close to a zoo or wildlife park of some kind; at night you could lie and listen to the animals calling out. During the day, I would wander around the town and see the sights, although most of the historical buildings were destroyed in air raids during the War. Sometimes, I would take a stroll by the River.

Alternatively, I would visit nearby cities including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Heidelberg where I met (and shared a hot chocolate with) an extraordinary American, Laura Carleton, who would later find fame as Berlin's Singing Mermaid and is today better known as the artist Miss LaLaVox.

Still, that's another story. All that remains to ask here in closing is: Was ist mit Carolin Loerke passiert? Sadly, I cannot say; we fell out of contact as quickly as we had fallen into bed. But I've never forgotten the curls of this Deutsche girl.

Play: Adam and the Ants, 'Deutscher Girls', from the Jubilee soundtrack album (Polydor Records, 1978): click here. The track was later re-recorded and released as a single on E.G. Records in Feb. 1982, but with slightly altered lyrics: click here.