Tag Archives: Books

➤ The true story of how love helped Gary Kemp write the next line

Posted on 6 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

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❚ WHY DID MUSICIAN GARY KEMP find it so “hard to write the next line” in the biggest smash hit love-song of his career? He was not hobbled by writer’s block, but was tongue-tied in admiration of a “wee Celtic pixie” who sang in a Scottish pop group and starred in the hit British romantic movie of 1981.

At exactly the moment his band Spandau Ballet were desperately trying to rescue their flagging fortunes in 1982, Gary was smitten with the pretty girl. The trouble was that she had two other rivals vying for her affections. Honour required discretion, and his love remained unspoken while the three admirers stood hopefully in line. When his beloved gave Gary a book as a gift, suddenly its “words bubbled up inside, percolating through me”, he said years later. He knew he had to send them back to her in a song “so she’d know it was about her” and for double measure added the tell-tale line “I want the truth to be said”.

books, Lyrics of Gary Kemp,Lyric Book Company,

As it happens the Spandau songwriter has recently published an 88-page coffee-table book, titled The Lyrics of Gary Kemp from Lyric Book Company

Gary pretty much identified his never-to-be sweetheart in the autobiography, I Know This Much, published in 2009, where he convincingly dovetailed the one-sided romance with a sequence of other events to account for the genesis of his band’s first No 1 hit, True. In the light of which, perhaps fans can better relish the song-words, when they are re-published this week in a book titled The Lyrics of Gary Kemp.

The very keen will want to invest in the special limited edition signed personally by Kemp and available exclusively through his own website Garykemp.com. The collection represents a songwriting career that has spanned four decades.

All the lyrics from all his songs for Spandau Ballet, plus his solo album Little Bruises, make up this anthology of 60 tales of love, loss and of course London… from growing up in Soho in the 1970s (Chant No1) to the entirely autobiographical 1983 hit about unrequited love (True) through to bittersweet reflections on life (An Inexperienced Man, the solo single in a Celtic groove, released in 1995).

BMI MillionAir, awards, True, Del Bryant, Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet

Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp and BMI President and CEO Del Bryant: at the 2011 BMI London Awards in October, Kemp received a BMI MillionAir award for the song True. (Photo by Brian Rasic)

Kemp is widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s finest songwriters, and won this year’s prestigious BMI Multi Million Award for True after it notched up 4 million radio plays in the US — a significant achievement for a song released in the 1980s — partly because it embodied enough of “the sound of my soul” to be played on black stations too. The song was written on his bed in his parents’ north London house at the age of 22, while he competed with his mum’s vacuum cleaner. At the awards ceremony, he said he’d never imagined True going on being used in films and TV shows as different as The Simpsons, Modern Family and Ugly Betty.

“If you can write one song that’s still being played 28 years later, you’re lucky! We were playing at a time when a lot of people only bought records, they didn’t buy computer games. Music is much more important to that generation.”

The 88-page coffee-table book, The Lyrics of Gary Kemp, is presented bound in a cloth cover, and the first 250 will be personally autographed.

➢ A regular hardback edition of The Lyrics of Gary Kemp (from The Lyric Book Company Ltd) is also available through Amazon

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1980 ➤ Ribald tales of excess as the kids from The Blitz took over West End clubbing

Posted on 6 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

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❚ FRIDAY NIGHT WAS AN EXCUSE for the wags to tell their tall tales of clubbing in the 80s. This was the first reunion in recent memory of the bright sparks the media once called Blitz Kids and New Romantics. We’re talking about the straighter faction tonight — the make-up brigade had their day at Boy George’s 50th birthday party in June. All of them, whatever their persuasion, were diehard nightowls, the spiritual offspring of the mighty innovator who shaped the 1970s pop scene almost singlehandedly, David Bowie. He taught them to adopt stances: individualism, transgression. He bequeathed them principles for living amusing lives: disposable identities, looks not uniforms. In turn, they then shaped the sounds and styles of the Swinging 80s set in motion by 1976 and the birth of punk, along with a passion for black dance music, on through the decadent glamour of the Blitz Club years, to the watershed of Band Aid in 1984.

On Friday, photographer Graham Smith took over Soho’s newest rendezvous, the Society Club, for a gallery show of his 80s photographs, which capture the panache and derring-do of style leaders such as PX, Stephen Jones, Kim Bowen Melissa Caplan, Stephen Linard, Fiona Dealey, John Maybury and such nascent popstars as Spandau Ballet, Visage, Animal Nightlife, Sade, Blue Rondo à la Turk and others.

Our two videos capture the essence of Smith’s collaborators, Robert Elms and Chris Sullivan, powering through their often unprintable anecdotes, edited on video down to bite-sized chunks and garnished with Graham’s images. The highspot was meant to be Sullivan as guest speaker, but when he was reportedly “still on his way”, in stepped writer and broadcaster Elms to recall the early one-night clubs he also helped to run. He sounded genuinely shocked by the precociousness of his peers — “We were kids!” — who persuaded West End nightclubs to hand over door control to them as teenagers. Eventually, Sullivan arrived in the guise of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and of course excelled at spinning his “ribald tale of excess” about the mayhem he helped cause in clubland, en route to running Soho’s Wag club for 19 years.

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The photos form a dossier creative endeavour, as we’ll soon see in We Can Be Heroes, a 320-page coffee-table book containing 500 mostly unseen images and 100 voxpop interviews by Graham Smith. Warts-and-all main text is penned by the mellifluous Welshman Sullivan, with other contributions from Robert Elms, Boy George, Steve Strange and Gary Kemp.

We Can Be Heroes, Graham Smith, Chris Sullivan, Robert Pereno, Society Club , Soho ,books,Unbound Publishing,photography, exhibition,afterparty, Aviary Bar, Robert Elms, Boy George, Gary Kemp ,Steve Strange, Blitz Kids,Wag club,

Smith & Sullivan’s invitation to a party

➢ Visit the publisher Unbound.co.uk to place your order for We Can Be Heroes and secure your name in the limited first edition. This month the authors aim to hit an advance sales target by this new “crowd-funding” technique in order to guarantee publication.

➢ Visit The Society Club, London W1F 0JF where Graham Smith’s photographs are on sale until Christmas. Subjects include Boy George, Sade, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie Sioux, the Sex Pistols and many more.

➢ Skimmable list of media coverage of We Can Be Heroes so far

Making up the rules of 80s clubbing: Robert Elms, Phil Dirtbox and Chris Sullivan at Friday’s nostalgia fest. Photograph by Shapersofthe80s

Fanatical about music: Chris Sullivan, Jo Hagan (remember 1983’s Gold Coast?) and Darrell Gayle at the Society Club. Photograph by Shapersofthe80s

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Posted in Clubbing, Fashion, London, Media, Pop music, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged Blitz Kids, Books, Boy George, Chris Sullivan, Gary Kemp, Graham Smith, Interview, New Romantics, photography, Robert Elms, Steve Strange, Swinging 80s, theblitzclub, Unbound publishing, Video, Wag club, We Can Be Heroes

➤ Meet Smith & Sullivan, the wags behind the story of the heroic 80s

Posted on 27 Oct 2011 | Leave a comment

Wag telling tales: Sullivan in full flow at an earlier photography show by Smith, right. Photograph by Shapersofthe80s

Update Nov 22:

➢ Although the first edition of We Can be Heroes has sold out, a special cloth-bound edition is now on sale for £35, plus a Deluxe edition for £350, at the Unbound Publishing website

❚ HERE’S AN IRRESISTIBLE PARTY INVITATION. As their fund-raising barometer hits 60% of target, the authors of We Can Be Heroes, a ribald account of Britain in the 80s, announce another soirée  to raise public awareness. Their nightlife peers changed the face of the UK club scene which created dozens of new bands, artists and designers. Born with the mutant party-animal gene, Graham Smith & Chris Sullivan are taking over Robert Pereno’s new Society Club in Soho for two reasons: to show off Graham’s stylish clubland photos, which will be selling there until Christmas; but chiefly to win over buyers who are dithering over investing £30 in their huge coffee-table book that is garnished with tall stories from Sullivan as well as 100 other club-world collaborators.

Come along next Friday to meet them over a drink and to hear the garrulous Welshman Sullivan “in conversation with eminent journalist Michael Holden” — in other words, talking hind legs off donkeys. Orders for the book can be placed only online at Unbound Publishing (where Graham has an explanatory video) so they won’t be prising your wallet open on the spot. Inevitably, a further high point of the evening will be a free-entry after-party where Sullivan will be deejaying classic club tunes from 1976-84 half a mile away at The Aviary Bar.

As of today there are only 16 days left to buy your prestige  limited first-edition of We Can Be Heroes (there won’t be a second edition unless they reach 100% on the first) and you get your name printed in it. You’ll be within the same hard covers as starry contributors such as Robert Elms, Boy George, Gary Kemp and Steve Strange. The clock is ticking because of the new “crowd-sourcing” technique to raise funds. This is being pioneered in books by Unbound, a new offshoot of Faber, whose authors include Python Terry Jones, cultural taste-maker Jonathan Meades, and creator of TV’s This Life series, Amy Jenkins.

One of the reasons fund-raising has been a slow burn for S&S is that, uniquely on the Unbound list, We Can Be Heroes is the only photo-book, requiring quality paper and classy printing. Sullivan says: “Ours needed six times as many pledges as the other text-only titles.”

Smith says: “Dig out your espadrilles and book yourself a baby sitter now!”

➢ Exhibition and talk, Friday Nov 4 … 7–10pm at The Society Club, 12 Ingestre Place, W1F OJF … and afterwards 10–3am at The Aviary Bar, 17 Little Portland Street, W1W  8BW … Graham Smith’s photos remain in exhibition and on sale here until Christmas

➢ Skimmable list of media coverage of We Can Be Heroes so far

Smith & Sullivan’s invitation to a party: click to enlarge

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➤ Jarvis as heir to Alan Bennett: If I’m a national treasure, dust me off

Posted on 17 Oct 2011 | 2 comments

Mother Brother Lover, Selected Lyrics, Jarvis Cocker, Faber, Albertus, Guardian, interview,

Intercity to Sheffield: a first-class seat on the train and his name in Faber’s house-font Albertus on the cover of his selected lyrics. (Picture grabbed from Faber video)

❚ PULP’S FRONTMAN JARVIS COCKER had returned to his old school in Sheffield to launch his book, Mother, Brother, Lover – a compilation of song lyrics spanning 30 years, out this week from Faber. In the assembly hall he stood on the stage where Pulp – then a bunch of schoolmates he’d harangued into forming a band – performed their very first gig in 1978. He was telling a now-familiar yarn. Because the band was his idea, he explained, he had been lumbered with writing the songs. As we see in the video below, he picked up his guitar and sang the first lyric he ever wrote: “I said, baby why you ignoring me?/ She said, To be or not to be? / Shakespeare rock, Shakespeare roll./ ” A hall full of teenagers tittered with embarrassment… Fortunately, this one is not in his published collection.

➢ As Decca Aitkenhead observes in today’s Guardian interview titled ‘Music has changed, it’s more like a scented candle’ . . .

“ Afterwards, staff queued up with their old Pulp CDs for him to sign. One had an original copy of the 1995 Sorted for Es and Wizz hit single, whose infamous sleeve featured instructions on how to fold a wrap to keep drugs in. I’d clean forgotten Cocker was once the voice of youth drug culture – and I suspect the kids he’d just addressed would be astonished – for these days he’s more like the heir to Alan Bennett. ” / continued online

Mother Brother Lover, Selected Lyrics, Jarvis Cocker, Faber, Pulp ➢ Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp’s songs — The Guardian has an exclusive extract from his new book of selected lyrics, and reveals the blueprint for the band’s signature style of narrative pop

➢ Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics by Jarvis Cocker, is published by Faber & Faber on October 20 at £14.99, reduced to £7.94 at Amazon — A collection of 66 lyrics with commentary by Jarvis Cocker, it features such modern classics as Common People, Disco 2000, Babies, This is Hardcore and more. The selection reveals to Pulp fans a chronicle of the rare, bookish wit that Cocker brought to the pop charts.

➢ More at Shapersofthe80s: Thrilled-to-bits video interview when news of Cocker’s Faber contract first broke

➢ Jarvis Cocker joins Faber: national treasure as literary arbiter

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❏ iPAD, TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You may see only a tiny selection of items from this wide-ranging website about the 1980s, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and site index either click on “Standard view” or visit Shapersofthe80s.com on a desktop computer. ➢ Click here to visit a different random item every time you click

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Posted in Culture, London, Media, Pop music

Tagged Books, Decca Aitkenhead, Faber, Guardian, Interview, Jarvis Cocker, Mother Brother Lover, Pulp, Selected Lyrics

➤ Jarvis Cocker joins Faber: national treasure as literary arbiter

Posted on 12 Oct 2011 | Leave a comment

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❚ JUST LISTEN TO THE POPSTAR AS SEER, Pulp’s singer Jarvis calling a grey wall heroic, “It says a lot, that wall, to me”, and calling himself “a workshy fop” who has never done a proper day’s work. This South Bank Show from 2007 [above] is compulsive. Just read the comments people have posted beneath it! Now Britain’s most prestigious publisher has asked pop’s national treasure to become its editor-at-large, a broad commissioning role similar to that filled by the 20th-century poet T S Eliot…

➢ Excerpt from today’s Guardian report:

❏ Home to 12 Nobel laureates and six Booker prize winners, venerable publisher Faber & Faber is now looking to bring a little Britpop magic to its list after hiring Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker as its new editor-at-large. The appointment will see Cocker given an open brief to acquire books for a small list at Faber from January 2012.

Jarvis Cocker, Pulp, pop music, Faber,editor,publishing “Jarvis felt like a natural fit with the Faber sensibility, both as author and editor, and I’m sure the small list of books he will develop will represent his eccentric and yet popular touch,” said publishing director Lee Brackstone. “We now have an excellent portfolio of authors from the pop world and our intention is to develop these relationships and continue to build a reputation as the home for exciting and original writing on music.”