❚ THE TEAM BEHIND Lee Scratch Perry’s Vision Of Paradise need to raise $20,000 to finish a unique movie which promises to become a classic and tells a story of epic proportions. “It’s not a biography but rather a fairytale documentary,” says German film-maker Volker Schaner of his story about the 76-year-old Jamaican pioneer of reggae and dub. The director followed Perry for 13 years and discovered what he calls “a revelation, told about and with one of the major protagonists of contemporary music”. His encounter with “The Prophet” of the international Rastafari movement, will, he claims, create a movement that would be like a “spiritual revolution … to prepare a new paradise, a new world without problems”. Schaner is appealing through Kickstarter, the fundraising website, for your donation before March 5 to help finish the film and become part of it …
Filming Frank: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender and Domhnall Gleeson in the New Mexico desert. (Picture: Artificial Eye)
❚ WITH TIMPERLEY COMEDY LEGEND, Frank Sidebottom, cremated barely 18 months ago, a biopic titled simply Frank started shooting this week in New Mexico. Making his feature debut as a screenwriter is Jon Ronson, former member of Frank’s Oh Blimey Big Band in the 80s and investigator into The Men Who Stare At Goats. The comedy about a young wannabe musician is a fictionalised account of the life of Lancastrian cult comic Chris Sievey, who was revealed finally in death as the creator of Frank Sidebottom, a character recognised across the North by his outsize papier-mâché head.
Ronson is co-writing the script with the Oscar-nominated Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), while Film4, the BFI, the Irish Film Board are signing the cheques. The Irish director Lenny Abrahamson has marshalled an exceptional cast led by Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Scoot McNairy …
Dance-off Wigan fashion: The finale to the Nutter-Werth men’s collection at the Café de Paris. (Videograb from milavictoria)
❚ EXTRAVAGANT AND OVERSTATED could readily describe both the whole-body dance moves of Northern Soul fanatics, and the rock-and-roll men’s tailor Tommy Nutter, the Savile Row rebel who favoured gigantic hand-rolled lapels and Oxford bags. Last week the fashionistas attending a Café de Paris “runway” show during the London Collections for men certainly caught the uninhibited exuberance of the 1970s, as the videos here show.
An unexpected collaboration between high-street retailer Peter Werth and Nutters of Savile Row produced a show of two halves. It opened with regular jackety models in skinny pants who were upstaged by an explosion of casual soulboys in knitwear and baggies. The Café’s dancefloor suddenly became the fabled Wigan Casino, about 1975, climaxing with a jack-in-the-box dance-off to the stomping beats of Luther Ingram’s If It’s All The Same To You Babe.
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All very sporty for AW13 with classy fabrics and jaunty tailoring bringing a gentlemanly vibe to the look, described by designer David Mason as “Studio 54 meets Wigan Casino” (which closed in 1981). The dancers in fact turned out to be from the cast of a debut feature film titled Northern Soul, written and directed by Elaine Constantine, about two lads swept up in the subculture when they discovered uptempo American soul music. Creating a wardrobe for the film forged the alliance between the two London design houses. The current incarnation of Nutters decided it had to reach out to a ready-to-wear audience, and Peter Werth, today owned by JD Sports, is strong on working-class savvy.
❏ Tommy Nutter, the charmer and dandy whose father ran a North London caff, would no doubt have voiced some self-deprecating witticism at today’s move to widen his market. The young Nutter wanted to work for the 60s designer Michael Fish and when he bumped into him said, “Can I do something with you?” Fish said, “Don’t be silly. You’ve got your own style. Do something yourself.” Nutter died in 1992 aged 49, having designed for Elton John, David Hockney, both the Jaggers, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie (Pinups), and for three of the Beatles who wear his outfits on the Abbey Road record sleeve, likewise Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Batman, the 1989 film. Nutter shook up Savile Row by injecting softer cuts and bold fabrics into the bespoke man’s suit while respecting classic tailoring. His was the first shop on the prestigious Row to design for women such as his backer, the pop singer Cilla Black.
Tailor Timothy Everest concludes: “Tommy’s was a brand that people wanted to buy into but within that you could be an individual and I think that’s a very modern approach. That’s what bespoke is all about.”
British designer Tommy Nutter seen in New York
Nutter designs from 1969, 1973, 1977, 1982
Nutter suits for both Jaggers on their wedding day, 1971
Fabled charabanc outing in 1967: Find the Fab Four among fellow travellers on their Magical Mystery Tour. (Top left we see fanclub secretaries Jenni and Sylvia)
❚ ROLLING STONE CALLED IT “the most important rock’n’roll album ever made … by the greatest rock’n’roll group of all time”. Crowning the era of LSD-fuelled psychedelia in 1967 came Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its impact was extraordinary. The Beatles’ eighth studio album marked the height of their rise to global fame. With Dick Lester’s pair of high-octane feature films behind them — Help! and Hard Day’s Night — the Beatles decided to go straight on to direct their own unscripted, improvised film and it backfired in their faces.
Magical Mystery Tour was a dreamlike story of the Fab Four taking a typically British daytrip by coach with friends and family and a cast of crackpot characters exemplified in the eccentric humorist Ivor Cutler. Their adventures were intended to be “magical” and indeed the I Am the Walrus sequence has passed into legend. Generations of British comics such as Monty Python point to the film as their inspiration.
Yet its TV audience greeted Magical Mystery Tour with outrage and derision. It was seen by a third of the nation on Boxing Day when an expectant family audience, hoping for some light entertainment, were confronted by a drug-rinsed shambles in festive prime time. Paul McCartney told the press later: “We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.”
The critical reception was so hostile that the film’s negative didn’t become properly archived, which makes tonight’s BBC TV premiere of its meticulous restoration, overseen by Paul Rutan Jr, a significant landmark. The new DVD with remixed 5.1 soundtrack is due to be released internationally on October 8–9, packed with special features.
What few of us remember is that, as well as its new Beatles songs, MMT gave a guest spot to the founding fathers of anarchic musical comedy, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, with Death Cab for Cutie, a spoof “teen tragedy” song from their own seminal 1967 album Gorilla. The Bonzos performed it onstage at the Raymond Revuebar as accompaniment to a stripper and the number turns out to be a show-stopper.
The mystery tour itself proves to be an affectionate travelogue about Britain’s quintessentially working-class hinterland (in the fish-and-chip shop, we hear marvellous strains of She Loves You rendered on a fairground organ). In contrast to his band’s reputation as fierce cultural pacemakers, McCartney concedes that “the whole film has a bit of a village fete atmosphere to it”. Even so, as deejay Paul Gambaccini remarks in a new Arena documentary also broadcast tonight, the film fizzes edgily with the very elements of advanced psychedelia the Beatles themselves had introduced into the culture. One surprise is Martin Scorsese saying this film influenced a lot of the work he has done! Restored to pristine colour, MMT emerges as a celebration of a defining moment in harmonic innovation and of the energy that made British pop glorious.
❏ Tonight’s Mystery Tour screening is preceded by a real treat from Britain’s leading arts documentary team, Arena, who have rounded up much unseen footage.
“ Series editor Anthony Wall says: “The idea that there’s anything you don’t know about The Beatles is startling enough. But the film was, consciously or unconsciously, suppressed. The out-takes were in the Apple vault, which is deep below the streets of London in a World War Two-type bunker. Sleeping down there for many, many years.”
Wall thinks Magical Mystery Tour will soon be re-appraised as “a piece of work in a very surreal, British, literary, visual tradition: from gothic to Lewis Carroll to H G Wells to William Golding to the Goons to what became Monty Python.
“For practical purposes it’s not been seen since 1967. The documentary tells the story — which in retrospect is hilarious, although it wasn’t for The Beatles at the time because they got such a drubbing — and contextualises it by looking at 1967 and what The Beatles were responding to: in London it was a very intense time, artistically.”
The cultural shifts of that specific part of the 1960s are key to understanding Magical Mystery Tour, Wall says, which meant the new Arena film had to represent the trends of the time accurately. “Very few films about the 1960s get it right. They usually mix things up hopelessly. It’s very important when you use archive to be precise — try to get it to the month. It invariably looks earlier than it is. When you see ‘1967’ it’s usually footage from 1970!” … / Continued online at Radio Times
❚ TWO BEATLES FANCLUB SECRETARIES recall how they hopped on board The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour bus at 7am one day in 1967 as special guests of the Fab Four. Sylvia Hillier was a 19-year-old receptionist in a factory who lost her job as a result, while 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenni Evennett bunked off school to join the week-long filming. They told this morning’s Saturday Live on Radio 4 that it was a bit like a “happening” where nobody was given lines or seemed to know what they were doing. Sylvia was dressed all psychedelic in orange, “my flower-power stage, with kaftan, flairs, bells and beads”. Jenni said that for continuity they couldn’t change for a whole week: “I wore a little brown spotted dress with white collar, bells and beads and lots of deodorant.”
Fan Sylvia Hillier from Bognor: seen here with Paul McCartney, she lost her job by ducking out of work to join the 1967 magical bus tour. (Pic from Facebook)
❚ GAME PLAN OR NO GAME PLAN, actor and musician Martin Kemp was booted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house having survived to become one of the final three housemates, along with Coleen Nolan and comedian Julian Clary who won by a clear margin of the public’s votes. Speaking at last night’s farewell dinner for the six finalists, Martin confessed:
“ There was one moment that taught me everything about myself and that was when we were playing gods on Mt Olympus and we decided whether or not we were going to make it easy for the mortals [fellow Big Brother housemates], or whether to make it hell on earth, and we made it hell on earth. What I’m saying is that power really does go to your head. And we enjoyed every minute. ”
“ What I see in the house is completely different to what you see as a viewer. You get to see much more than what I see… Was I going to mix it up in the house? I said I was in the pre-launch video, but I got in there and found what I was comfortable with was … to show people exactly who I am when I’m being a father to my two kids and husband to my wife. That’s what I really enjoyed about it. I found that instead of mixing it up, I was sorting stuff out. Being more of a mediator… ” / View more online
BACK TO REALITY
➢ Back on Twitter after CBB, Martin enjoys his freedom… Sep 8: In bed at 4am — now on the way to the studio for press. All day… The rest is over… Yurggghhh. Sep 8: Work over for the day… On my way home to get to know the fam’ again! Thanks to everyone for all your support…x Sep 9: Life on the outside this beautiful shiny morning is fantastic — topped off with a lock on the loo door!!! Sep 9: Right, back to the gym… headphones, guns and roses, protein shake and Nikes… Later guys…
Feature film debut: Roman Kemp in character for The Fall of The Essex Boys
➢ Sep 7: First look at film debut of Martin Kemp’s son Roman— “Roman Kemp is breaking a sweat to make his name in film while his dad Martin is still locked away in the Big Brother house. These are the first pictures of the 19-year-old in the gritty new Brit flick The Fall of The Essex Boys”
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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