The ArT School DAnce: ArT inTo PoP, PoP inTo ArT
The ArT School DAnce: ArT inTo PoP, PoP inTo ArT TATe liverPool, 21– 22 SePTember 2007
A symposium on cross-overs between art and music including an exploration of the links between art school education, the growth of post-1950s British pop music and the importance of art to pop and pop to art.
The ArT School DAnce: ArT inTo PoP, PoP inTo ArT iS hoSTeD by TATe liverPool in collAborATion wiTh liverPool John mooreS univerSiTy. SYMPOSIUM ORGANISED BY: Director: Prof. colin fAllowS (LJMU) Education Curator Public Programmes: JeAn Tormey (Tate Liverpool) Administrator: lynn hAlliDAy (LJMU) Research Fellow: John J. cAmPbell (LJMU) Technician: rob ferrier (Tate Liverpool) Cover Art: colin fAllowS Cover Photography: AlexAnDrA wolkowicz Design: mike cArney / mike’S STuDio ISBN: 978-0-9552820-9-6 Research Liverpool School of Art and Design Liverpool John Moores University 68 Hope Street, Liverpool L1 9EB UK Email artresearch@ljmu.ac.uk Tate Liverpool Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4BB
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Introduction Schedule
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Presentations
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Keynote Essay Biographies
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Popular Culture Archives
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Introduction
Researchers at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University, have a long and rich tradition of engagement and collaboration with national and international organisations promoting contemporary art and music. The special relationship with Tate Liverpool has included collaborations in exhibitions, events, lectures, workshops, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes – as well as the hosting of research seminars, international conferences and symposia. Researchers have also engaged in regular collaboration with other major arts organisations in Liverpool including the Bluecoat, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), National Museums Liverpool, the Liverpool Biennial, and numerous international festivals including Ars Electronica, Digital Weekend, Intermedia and Futuresonic.
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Art and music are central to the cultural life of the city of Liverpool, and the wider North West region of England supports a burgeoning art scene of artists, curators, musicians and venues. Liverpool School of Art and Design researchers seek to build upon the city’s unique position in this field through organising The Art School Dance: Art into Pop, Pop into Art, and advancing allied postgraduate research via pioneering Masters in Research and PhD programmes. Cross-overs between art and music are an historical and contemporary phenomenon explored at The Art School Dance: Art into Pop, Pop into Art. The symposium explores numerous examples of innovative dynamic creative practice crossing and blurring conventional categories and disciplinary boundaries, challenging assumptions about art and music.
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Schedule
DAy 1
FRIDAY 21 SEPTEMBER VENUE: FOYER – TATE LIVERPOOL, ALBERT DOCK
18:00
• Launch Reception and Symposium Registration Open to all Symposium delegates
• Welcome to Tate Liverpool
JeAn Tormey Education Curator Public Programmes, Tate Liverpool
• Welcome to The Art School Dance: Art into Pop, Pop into Art colin fAllowS Professor of Sound and Visual Arts, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University
• Soundworks
mAT GreGory Artist/Writer/Lecturer, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University
19:00
• Exhibition
Peter Blake: A Retrospective
20:00
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C LOSE OF EXHIBITION
SiDe one
DAy 2
SATURDAY 22 SEPTEMBER VENUE: THE AUDITORIUM – TATE LIVERPOOL
09:00
• Registration and Reception • Introduction to The Art School Dance: Art into Pop, Pop into Art
09:30
colin fAllowS
09:45
• Keynote
michAel brAcewell
10:30
• Moderated Question and Answer Session Moderator: colin fAllowS
10:45 11:00
BREAK
• Presentations
rob chAPmAn bArry mileS in conversation with colin fAllowS
12:00
• Moderated Question and Answer Session Moderator: cAThy buTTerworTh
12:15
• Presentation
Jon SAvAGe
12:45
BUFFET LUNC H
Peter Blake: A Retrospective – open to all symposium delegates SiDe Two
14:00
• Keynote
JAmie reiD in conversation with vicki mAGuire
14:45
• Moderated Question and Answer Session Moderator: vicki mAGuire
15:00 15:15
BREAK
• Presentations
bryAn biGGS Simon wArner
16:15
• Moderated Question and Answer Session Moderator: colin fAllowS
17:00
C LOSE 7
Presentations
michAel brAcewell re-mAke /re-moDel: ArT, PoP, fAShion AnD The mAkinG of roxy muSic, 1953 –1972 Roxy Music would be one of the most original and successful British groups to emerge in the early 1970s, citing an eclectic range of influences from modern music, popular culture and fine art. From their earliest public recognition, the group would also stand for an assertion of exclusivity – a conjuring of la vie deluxe, inculcated by a bravura use of style. Achieving fame within the pop mainstream almost immediately, Roxy Music became, as Bryan Ferry would observe in 1975, ‘above all... a state of mind.’ As researched with the assistance, for the first time, of all those involved, Michael Bracewell’s account of Bryan Ferry’s realisation of his pop vision identifies a rich network of art student friendships, forged across the span of the 1960s. The shared sensibility of these merging, semicasual cenacles, lay in their transposition of ideas from the worlds of fine art and the avant garde, to the front line of pop music and popular culture. From such a background, Roxy Music, in Brian Eno’s words, would thus emerge as a chart topping pop group ‘who in fact thought of themselves as a school of art, set up in opposition to all the prevailing ideologies of pop and rock music.’ Re-make/Re-model tells the story of their evolution.
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rob chAPmAn STreAm of conSciouS meSS
Drawing on his experience as a lyricist, singer, novelist, academic, music writer (‘please don’t put music-critic’) and rough book scribbler, Rob Chapman will talk about how crucial art school thinking has been in informing these different strands of his creativity and how more generally art bleeds into pop into life and back into art again. Themes to be discussed will include; Why Roland Barthes was the greatest rock critic we never had. Google as the new God. Typos as an art tool. Spam poetry. Punology. The irony-tic. Punk as career and anti-career. Oblique strategies for modern living. The politics of refusal. Theoretical music and ethnic forgeries. Dot-communism. The many uses of miscellany. Found objects. Outsider art. Insider art. Pataphysics. Metaphysics. Minimalism. Maximalism. Bag-ism. Drag-ism. Shag-ism, Pranksterism. Infantilism, and myriad other isms too tedious to mention. The cast will include; John Cage. Marcel Duchamp. Ken Nordine. Bill Burroughs. Anthony Burgess. Anthony Aloysius Hancock. Pete and Dud. Syd Barrett. Bryan Ferry. Brian Eno. Robert Wyatt. Moondog, and a bunch of itinerant and refusenik artists drawn from Rob’s ever growing list of cyberspace mouse pals.
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Presentations
bArry mileS in converSATion wiTh colin fAllowS
Barry Miles will discuss the Beats and the Beatles. The first member of the Beat Generation to pick up on the Beatles was without doubt Allen Ginsberg who met them in 1965 in Bob Dylan’s room at the Savoy Hotel in London; sent in by Dylan’s manager to try and break the ice. A few weeks later, John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon, George Harrison and Patti Boyd showed up at Ginsberg’s 39th birthday party in London. Ginsberg was naked at the time but it was an amusing incident and they stayed long enough for a drink. It was Ginsberg’s interest in the Beatles, and in the Merseybeat phenomena in general, that took him to Liverpool that summer. He was intrigued by the connection between the Liverpool poets, artists and art students, and the rock and roll groups that were emerging from the city. He was enormously impressed by what he saw and proclaimed Liverpool the centre of human consciousness. Ginsberg was not the only Beat with a Beatles connection. Later that year, Paul McCartney set up an experimental recording studio, managed by Ian Sommerville. Burroughs was a frequent visitor and watched as McCartney put together Eleanor Rigby there. McCartney in turn, learned all about cut ups.
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Jon SAvAGe reADinG from ‘TeenAGe – The creATion of youTh, 1875 –1945’
Jon Savage will read from his latest book Teenage – The Creation of Youth, 1875–1945 a landmark cultural history of the first half of the twentieth century chronicled through youth culture. Teenagers – as we have come to define them – were not, award-winning author Jon Savage tells us, born in the 1950s of Beats and Mods, where most histories would begin. Rather, the teenager as icon can be traced back to the 1890s, when the foundations for the new century were laid in urban youth culture. Teenage: The Pre-History is a monumental cultural history that charts the spread of the American ideal of youth through England, Europe, and around the world. From Peter Pan to Oscar Wilde, Anne Frank to the Wizard of Oz, Savage documents youth culture’s development as a commodity and an industry from the turn of the century to its current driving force in Western media. Fusing film, music, literature, diaries, fashion, and art, this epic cultural history is an astonishing and surprising chronicle of modern life sure to appeal to pop culture fans, social history buffs, and anyone who has ever been a teenager.
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Presentations
JAmie reiD in converSATion wiTh vicki mAGuire
Jamie Reid will discuss his visual work including his innovative music packaging and promotional artwork, his vision for the interior of the Strongroom recording studios, East London and the enduring principles behind his creative work of the past forty years. Internationally renowned for his pioneering work with the Sex Pistols and his role in defining the enduring image of Punk, Jamie Reid also directed the neo-Situationist Suburban Press and designed the influential magazine of the same name, which provided the inspiration for much of the Sex Pistols’ imagery. However, his links to the world of music do not end here, and his relationship with artists /musicians is an enduring one. Since the late 1970s he has created visuals and directed videos for musicians including Bow Wow Wow, Boy George, Dead Kennedys, Rhys Mwyn and Anhrefn, Cactus Rain, Half Man Half Biscuit, the Almighty, Afro Celt Sound System and the London-based collective Evolution. Jamie Reid will discuss how these collaborations demonstrate the potent power of graphic art within the music industry.
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bryAn biGGS The ArT School DAnce GoeS on forever
This paper looks at the mythologising, begun in the 1960s, of the art school as a site for cultural crossover, a place it seemed where if students were not forming bands they were making art about the material of pop music itself. Drawing on his own experience as an art student in Liverpool and since then as a curator of exhibitions and live art at the Bluecoat in the same city, Bryan Biggs traces a particular journey, starting at Liverpool Art School in the early 1970s. The emergence, witnessed first hand, of archetypal art school band Deaf School is examined in the context of both musical and artistic influences, and of the pre-Punk art school environment. The paper, unashamedly anecdotal and illustrated with rare archive images, explores Liverpool’s continuing fascination with the art / pop crossover. It describes the fertile ground the city provided for such manifestations as Eric’s club – always more than just a music venue – Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass performance and the Live From the Vinyl Junkyard commissions, and other musically inclined artists who demonstrate that the art school dance really does go on forever.
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Presentations
Simon wArner cover verSionS: how PoP ArT ShAPeD The Album Sleeve
Although pop music and Pop Art shared a common root, in the late 1950s they were regarded as rather different quantities with contrasting intentions. The new rock ‘n’ roll-inspired sounds were mass-produced records for an adolescent public, the artworks of Jasper Johns, Richard Hamilton, Robert Rauschenberg and others were sophisticated and literate critiques of a rising consumer culture. But by the mid-1960s, as rock wore increasingly mature clothes, Pop painters like Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and Jim Dine were being engaged to illustrate the album sleeves of groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Cream and the Velvet Underground. This session explores the context and meanings of this significant creative alliance. Why did visual artists linked to the world of high art become entwined with the practices of the pop music world? And why did rock musicians, whose work had been aimed primarily at teen audiences up to this point, feel the need now to wrap their LPs in images produced by established painters?
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Keynote Essay
colin fAllowS The ArT School DAnce: ArT inTo PoP, PoP inTo ArT
INTRODUCTION The relationships between art and popular music are rich and varied and can be traced at least to the beginning of the twentieth century. In February 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings transformed rented premises into the Cabaret Voltaire, ‘a combination artists’ club, exhibition hall, pub, and cabaret.’ 1 Kindred spirits, both artists and writers, converged in Zurich, where they became performers at the cabaret and formed the Dada group. As Dada progenitor Hans Richter puts it, ‘The Cabaret Voltaire was a six-piece band. Each played his instrument, i.e. himself, passionately and with all his soul. Each of them, different as he was from all the others, was his own music, his own words, his own rhythm.’ 2 As artists and writers became cabaret performers, a peculiar mix of forms emerged. Richard Huelsenbeck has described some of the song types at the cabaret:
These songs, known only in Central Europe, poke fun at politics, literature, human behaviour, or anything else people will understand. The songs are impudent but never insulting. There is no intention of hurting anyone, only the desire to express an opinion. Sometimes they are erotic... The intellectual level is low but not unpleasantly so. Usually, they subsist on refrains and popular music, but Ball made up the melody for every song he wrote. 3
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Richter notes that ‘Huelsenbeck was obsessed with Negro rhythms, with which he and Ball had already experimented in Berlin’ 4 , and Ball writes that Huelsenbeck ‘pleads for stronger rhythm (Negro rhythm). He would prefer to drum literature into the ground.’ 5 Richter comments further on the combination of ‘Ball’s piano improvisations, Emmy Hennings’ thin, unrefined, youthful voice (which was heard alternately in folk-songs and brothel songs).’ 6 The Dada group also developed sound-poems and simultaneous poetry such as ‘L’Amiral cherche une maison à louer.’ In his diary, Ball observes that ‘All the styles of the last twenty years came together yesterday. Huelsenbeck, Tzara, and Janco took the floor with a “poeme simultan” (simultaneous poem). That is contrapuntal recitative in which three or more voices speak, sing, whistle etc., at the same time in such a way that the elegiac, humorous, or bizarre content of the piece is brought out by these combinations.’ 7 Chance methodologies in writing were also employed, as outlined by Tzara in 1918 in ‘To Make a Dadaist Poem’ 8, which preceded similar cut-up and chance methods used by William Burroughs, John Cage, Brian Eno and David Bowie. Dada sound-poems, such as Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, were being performed in Europe during the same period as early jazz scat vocal performances and recordings, such as Louis Armstrong’s ‘Heebie Jeebies’ (1926), were being made.
THE ROLE OF ART SCHOOLS Following World War One, the Bauhaus, a revolutionary and hugely influential art school, was founded in Weimar in 1919 and subsequently moved to Dessau in 1925, where it remained until 1928. At the time of the move from Weimar to Dessau, Oskar Schlemmer, head of the stage workshop, described his aspirations for the Bauhaus learning. The artistic climate here cannot support anything that is not the latest, the most modern, up-to-the-minute, Dadaism, circus varieté, jazz, hectic pace, movies, America, airplane, the automobile. Those are the terms in which people here think. 9 17
As with many art schools that would follow, one of the extracurricular activities of the Bauhaus involved the student band. Although it was ostensibly a jazz band, the art student musicians also drew on a range of influences and musical references. Contemporary descriptions of the band are redolent of a proto-Spike Jones and His City Slickers or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: The Bauhaus Band started with the musical improvisations of a group of painters and sculptors on trips around Weimar. Accordion music and the pounding of chairs, the rhythmic smacking of table and revolver shots in time with fragments of German, Slavic, Jewish and Hungarian folk songs would swing the company into a dance. This dance music soon became known all over Germany and was played at artists’ festivals everywhere; but since it could never be successfully transferred to paper, it remained gaily impromptu, even later when the instrumentation was expanded to include two pianos, two saxophones, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, banjos, traps etc. 10 A contemporary journalist, Kole Kokk, wrote of the Bauhaus dances in the 8 Uhr Abendblatt in February 1924: All is primitive, there is not the least refinement... Everything has been done by the Bauhaus students themselves. First of all, there is the orchestra, the best jazz band that I have ever heard ragging; they are musicians to their fingertips. In invention and glorious colouring the costumes leave far behind anything that can be seen at our performances. 11 The influence of the Bauhaus was felt in art schools in the United States and England in the years following its demise in Germany.
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Since the 1950s, pop culture-conscious young art students have continued to be attracted to the idea of focusing their creativity in a musical direction. English art schools in particular have been successful in producing successive generations of popular musicians, from jazz and skiffle to punk and beyond, in the process creating popular styles and sensibilities. Writing about jazz in 1957, for example, Paul Oliver observes that ‘those in close contact with Art Schools and student groups in the early days of the so-called Revival Period must have noted the receptivity of Art Students to jazz.’ 12 He concludes that ‘from the art schools at this time came many of the musicians whose position in the jazz world after the war was established at an early date – Humphrey Lyttleton, Wally Fawkes, Monty Sunshine, Eric Silk.’ 13 The number of groups since the late 1950s that have had members with art school backgrounds – from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, the Kinks, the Who and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band to Queen, Roxy Music, Ian Dury, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Pulp, Blur, Franz Ferdinand – indicates that the process is ongoing. In the United States, ex-art students include Alice Cooper, Chris Stein, David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Chrissie Hynde, Laurie Anderson, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon and Michael Stipe. A symbiotic relationship has developed between popular music and the visual arts, with video, graphic design, photography, fashion and styling projecting its images. The individuals and group members responsible for these images are also, almost invariably, the products of art schools. Art Schools have provided access to further and higher education for creative individuals who may lack the conventional qualifications that educational establishments traditionally require of school-leavers. Students are recruited by means of an assessment of experiential learning evidenced in their practical portfolio. A number of the teaching and learning methodologies traditionally employed in art schools are transferable and mirrored in the process and production of pop – for example, practical studio-based, project-centred work, experimental approaches to media and exploration of self, presented for critique by the peer group. Moreover, knowledge of the works and activities of art movements of the twentieth century has provided a rich and fertile ground for inspiration and appropriation. References to movements such as Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art and Situationism, their images, imagery, attitude and stance, abound in a diverse array of examples in pop.
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The art school experience has affected aspiring musicians in a variety of ways and has provided an environment where musical activities valuing spontaneity and intuition over technique and technical ability can be explored – from social interaction (meeting like-minded people, forming bands, organising audio-visual collaborations), through the acquisition of art historical reference points, including the naming of bands, to a meaningful educational experience with a lasting effect on ways of seeing and thinking. These connections are evident in the following statement by John Lennon: I’m not interested in good guitarists. I’m interested in the game of all those things, of concept and philosophy, ways of life, and whole movements in history. Just like Van Gogh was or any other of those fuckin’ people – they are no more or less than I am or Yoko is – they were just living in those days. I’m interested in expressing myself like they expressed it, in some way that will mean something to people in any country, in any language, and at any time in history. 14 Throughout their career as a group, the Beatles developed strong associations with the visual arts both socially and through their work. Through John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe they were involved in the bohemian community surrounding the Liverpool College of Art in the late 1950s. Lennon was a contributor to Merseybeat magazine, which was founded and edited by fellow student (and Beatle chronicler) Bill Harry. Lennon, Sutcliffe and art student friends produced the now-restored murals in the basement of the Jacaranda Club where they also played. In Hamburg, their friendship with photographers Astrid Kirchherr, Jürgen Vollmer and artist/musician Klaus Voormann produced some of the archetypal (pre-fame) images of pop. During the Beatles’ second trip to Hamburg in 1961, they played at the Top Ten Club, where Astrid Kirchherr observed that: 50% of the customers... were art students, and Stuart became very friendly with them. One night they brought their teacher with them, Eduardo Paolozzi. He and Stuart got on well and Stuart explained his passion for art to him. 15 Artist and bass player Stuart Sutcliffe subsequently left the group to study with Paolozzi at the Hamburg School of Art before dying at a tragically young age.
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ART AND POPULAR MUSIC: CROSSOVERS AND COLLABORATIONS London in the mid-to late 1960s saw a particularly fruitful period in crossovers between art and pop on both social and creative levels. In the midst of the Beatles’ popularity, Paul McCartney was helping to set up Indica Books and Gallery (1966 –70) with his future biographer Barry Miles. Indica provided an important point of interaction for artists, dealers, and musicians and was the site of the famous meeting of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at an exhibition of her work. The art dealer and gallery owner Robert Fraser introduced the Beatles to artists Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, who subsequently created the record sleeves for Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album respectively. A newspaper photograph of Robert Fraser handcuffed to Mick Jagger was transformed by Richard Hamilton into Swingeing London (1968 – 69). This, and the portrait of a naked John Lennon and Yoko Ono used for their Two Virgins album sleeve, provide two of the lasting images of the 1960s, and they symbolise the close relationship that existed between art and pop at the time. The marriage and early creative collaborations of John Lennon and Yoko Ono produced the avant-garde tape pieces Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968), Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions (1969) and the Wedding Album (1969), as well as the track ‘Revolution 9’ (the White Album, 1968), which has been described by Ian MacDonald (1994) as ‘the world’s most widely distributed avant-garde artefact’. 16 The pioneering work of Yoko Ono has become an acknowledged influence on later generations of art-rockers including the B-52’S and Sonic Youth. In the CD-reissue packaging to Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth states: ‘I make sounds to look at. This I know from Yoko. I live in her shadow.’ There have been numerous collaborations between artists and pop musicians since the 1960s, often blurring the boundaries between these terms and involving a convergence of media. The German term ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, used by Wassily Kandinsky to describe a total work of art, is useful in this context. Andy Warhol’s creation of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia events in 1966, involving simultaneous films, slides, lights, effects, dancers and live music by the Velvet Underground, provided an influence for future generations.
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The neo-Dada collage approach to music and performance can also be evidenced in the work of Frank Zappa, especially with the Mothers of Invention, which also employed a visual parallel with the Kurt Schwitters-like collage packaging designs of collaborator Cal Schenkel. As Zappa put it: Dada has remained alive and well in my household since... forever. Even though the kids don’t have the faintest idea of what it is, they’re it. The whole house, and everything connected with what goes on around here, reeks of it. INTERCONTINENTAL ABSURDITIES (founded 1968) is a company dedicated to Dada in Action. In the early days, I didn’t even know what to call the stuff my life was made of. You can imagine my delight when I discovered that someone in a distant land had the same idea – AND a nice, short name for it. 17 The absurd features of Dada and Surrealism, now commonplace references in pop video, were also referenced to lyrical and musical effect by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (originally the Bonzo Dog Dada Band). The band was given its own vignette in the Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ film, and Paul McCartney produced the band’s hit single ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’. In an altogether different take on reference to art practice, ex-art student Pete Townshend was able to frame the instrument-smashing theatrics of early performances by the Who with terms like ‘Pop Art’ and ‘auto-destruction’ (the latter gleaned from contact with Gustav Metzger, a visiting artist while Townshend was a student at Ealing College of Art). Talking about his experience of art school, Townshend said: It was a great period for me. It got my brain going creatively and started me thinking. I soon decided I was going to get nowhere as an introvert and I’d become an extrovert – and that’s what I did.’ 18 Townshend’s experiments with volume, feedback and fuzz, together with the approaches that former art students Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page took to their instruments, helped redefine the electric guitar. Townshend’s knowledge of the work of British and US Pop Art also had an impact on the projected images of the Who in the 1960s.
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Also drawing on art history, and in many ways a product of the British art school system, Malcolm McLaren used the pop process as the material from which to fashion his art. As he said, ‘I learnt all my politics and understanding of the world through the history of art.’ 19 Malcolm McLaren’s idiosyncratic art of management was employed in his various entrepreneurial activities in the 1970s and after, including the clothing stores he established with Vivienne Westwood, the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow. A peculiar operational hybrid was established with reference to the manager/Svengali in the tradition of 1950s pop manager Larry Parnes and the Futurist/Dada/Situationist agent provocateur. His works, especially those produced in collaboration with fellow ex-art students Jamie Reid and Bernard Rhodes, often involved the engineering of the succès de scandale, usually via media hype/manipulation. Both the form and the content of these strategies invite comparison with those used earlier by the Futurists, Dada and Situationists. As McLaren put it: ‘People remember punk from a musical perspective, but to me it was an artistic movement.’ 20 Similar strategies can be seen later in the activities of ex-art student Bill Drummond in his work with KLF and the K Foundation, and in the post-Punk period art historical references can also be found in numerous band names including Cabaret Voltaire, the Armoury Show, Bauhaus and Art of Noise. The latter also released material on the Zang Tuum Tumb label, named after the phonetic poem by Italian Futurist leader Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti. The ethos of the artist/nonmusician can be found in the following passage from The Art of Noises (1913) by Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo: I am not a musician, I have no acoustical predilections, nor any works to defend. I am a Futurist painter using a much loved art to project my determination to renew everything. And so, bolder than a professional musician could be, unconcerned by my apparent incompetence and convinced that all rights and all possibilities open up to daring, I have been able to initiate the great renewal of music by means of the Art of Noises. 21
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The role of the artist/non-musician in pop, increasing with the accessibility of new recording technologies, is exemplified in the boundary-dissolving work of Brian Eno, from his ‘synth-noise’ complements to Bryan Ferry’s Pop Art imagery through to his recording studio as musical instrument production work. Roxy Music collaborator Bryan Ferry is also a former art student at the University of Newcastle, taught by Richard Hamilton. Hamilton had made his first Pop collage for the catalogue and poster for the exhibition This is Tomorrow (1956) at the Whitechapel Gallery, which he co-organised with other members of the Independent Group. At the time he met Ferry, Hamilton was researching the work of Marcel Duchamp alongside the production of his own brand of Pop Art. Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Batchelors, Even (the Large Glass) (1915 – 23) would later supply Ferry with the album title The Bride Stripped Bare (1978). Brian Eno attended Ipswich College of Art, where he was taught by electronic arts pioneer Roy Ascott, and later Winchester School of Art. Since 1995, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art. Eno has worked with a painterly approach to sound as an artist, composer and producer, creating music (with Roxy Music and others) and audio-visual installations, pioneering ‘Ambient Music’ and ‘Generative Music’. 22 Eno has explained: I was a painter at art school, trying to create visual atmospheres and I became drawn into music by sonic atmospheres and textures. Suddenly, I thought this is the best way to paint: painting with music. I was never a great painter, but with tape recorders and studios, I found that I was doing all the things I wanted to do as a painter... but better. 23 Eno has also collaborated with Robert Fripp, David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, James and U2, as both artist and producer. U2’s ‘Zoo TV’ exemplifies the degree of Eno’s influence on the band. This influence is evident in the following statement by Bono: The Dadaists... were powerful in their time because they had the ability to unzip the pants of the starched trousers of the fascists and mock them. And they were outlawed because of that. And I really feel there is a lot to be learned from that. I’ve certainly learned a lot from that, philosophically and in terms of expressing myself through our art. The potential for subversion in humour is something new to U2. 24
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In the 1990s, a new generation of art students emerged on the pop scene, Collaborations, in the spirit of previous generations, took place between so-called ‘Brit Pop’ musicians and ‘Young British Artists’. Damien Hirst directed videos for Blur, and Julian Opie produced packaging designs and publicity. Pulp front-man Jarvis Cocker presented his longstanding enthusiasm for Outsider Art in television documentary form. The technique of collage, used by visual artists and writers from Dada through to William Burroughs, has gone on to influence works by diverse pop musicians, including David Bowie, Brian Eno, Paul McCartney and Frank Zappa. McCartney’s Liverpool Sound Collage (2000) provides a link to his early tape collage experiments of the 1960s and contemporary practice in this medium. In the late twentieth century, copyright issues raised by collage and sampling in the pop music industry increased alongside the development of new technologies. The case of Negativland/U2 illustrates the complex nature of the art versus commerce debate in this area. The late twentieth-century/early twenty-first-century debate surrounding collage/sampling and copyright/ownership can be viewed as a collision between ‘traditional’ art practice and the commercial pop music industry.
POPULAR MUSIC AS THE SUBJECT OF ART Popular music and its images have been made the subject of art (see for example Cassidy 1997 . In the context of jazz, Henri Matisse created a series of twenty coloured-paper cutout and text compositions entitled Jazz (1947) that can be seen as a visual analogy to jazz music. On moving to New York, Piet Mondrian painted his Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942 – 43), which is simultaneously analogous to boogie-woogie piano-playing rhythm and the grid-like structure of New York. Of his painting Hot Still Scape for Six Colours – 7th Avenue Style (1940), Stuart Davis wrote that ‘six colours were used... as the instruments in a musical composition might be, where the tone-colour variety results from the simultaneous juxtaposition of different instrument groups.’ 2 6 Furthermore, in paintings such as Owh! In San Pao (1951) and Rapt at Rappaport’s (1952), ‘Davis’s hip visual poetry created an iconographic language, composed of hot colours and modern slang, that captured the harmonic rubs and angular, syncopated grooves of the music he loved. It was as if jazz had come to three-dimensional life through his art.’ 27 Jazz was also the subject of paintings 25 )
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by artists of the Harlem Renaissance. In her book on Aaron Douglas, for example, Amy Helene Kirschke describes the way the artist ‘employed jazz themes as a background in many of his paintings and often used the cabaret as a source of inspiration.’ 28 Popular music, its images and the industry itself have continued to be made the subject of art, from the paintings and prints of the Pop Artists in the mid-twentieth century – for example, Andy Warhol and Peter Blake, through artists such as Guy Peellaert and David Oxtoby – to late twentieth-century works by artists who have recontextualised or refashioned pop artefacts, vinyl records, CDs and pop packaging within gallery spaces, as in the work of Christian Marclay. Elvis Presley, in particular, has provided inspiration for a broad variety of visual artists (see, for example, Biggs 1994 29 ). Art-Pop videos by groups such as the Residents are held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The historical objects and artefacts of popular music, including musical instruments, articles of clothing, posters and tickets, can also be seen presented in the context of art objects in the gallery or museum space. A number of musicians have continued to draw and paint in parallel with making music, notably Miles Davis, Paul McCartney, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, David Bowie, Patti Smith and Mark Mothersbaugh, and a number have prioritised painting over music, including Paul Simonon (ex-the Clash), Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. When asked about his production studio in Switzerland, Reggae recording pioneer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry answered: I don’t have one. Speaking frankly, I’m not really so interested in music these days. I love music, of course, but when I’m at home, I like art. I like to paint. There are paintings all over my studio. Not machines. 30
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referenceS 1. huelsenbeck, richard. 1991 (1974). Memoirs of a Dada Drummer. berkeley, cA: university of california Press, p.9. 2. richter, hans. 1978. Dada Art and Anti Art. london: Thames and hudson, p.27. 3. huelsenbeck, richard. 1991 (1974). Memoirs of a Dada Drummer. berkeley, cA: university of california Press, p.10. 4. richter, hans. 1978. Dada Art and Anti Art. london:Thames and hudson, p.20. 5. ball, hugo. 1996. Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John elderfield, trans. Ann raimes. berkeley, cA: university of california Press. (originally published as Die Flucht aus der Zeit. luzern: J.Stocker, 1946.), p.51. 6. richter, hans.1978. Dada Art and Anti Art. london:Thames and hudson, p.20. 7. ball, hugo. 1996. Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John elderfield, trans. Ann raimes. berkeley, cA: university of california Press. (originally published as Die Flucht aus der Zeit. luzern: J.Stocker, 1946.), p.57. 8. Tzara,Tristan. 1992. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, trans. barbara wright. london: calder Publications. (originally published as Sept manifestes Dada, lampisteries. Paris: editions JeanJacques Pauvert, 1963.), p.39. 9. Quoted in willett, John. 1978. The New Sobriety 1917 –1933: Art and Politics in the Weimar Period. london:Thames and hudson, p.119. 10. bayer, herbert, Gropius,walter, and Gropius, ise, eds. 1975. Bauhaus, 1919 –1928. london: Secker & warburg, p. 85. 11. ibid, p.94. 12. oliver, Paul. 1957. ‘ Art Aspiring.’ Jazz Monthly 2 (12): 2– 6, p.2. 13. ibid, p.2. 14. wenner, Jann. 1973. Lennon Remembers:The Rolling Stone Interviews. harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 162 – 63. 15. Quoted in Get Rhythm (August 2001). 16. macDonald, ian.1994. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. london: fourth estate, p.230. 17. Quoted in zappa, frank, with occhiogrosso, Peter. 1989. The Real Frank Zappa Book. london: Picador, p.255. 18. Quoted in Q The Who Special Edition (october 2004). 19. Quoted in Savage, Jon. 1991. England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. london: faber & faber, p.24. 20. Quoted in Radio Times (2 – 8 December 2006).
21. Apollonio, umbro, ed.1973. Futurist Manifestos. london: Thames and hudson, p.88. 22. eno, brian. 1996. In A Year with Swollen Appendices. london: faber & faber, 293 – 97 and 330–32. 23. eno, brian. foreword in cunningham, mark. 1996. Good Vibrations – A History of Record Production, castle communications plc, Surrey. 24. Quoted in VOX (August 1993). 25. cassidy, Donna. 1997. Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910 –1940.washington, Dc: Smithsonian institution Press. 26. Quoted in Sidran, ben. 1997. ‘The Jazz of Stuart Davis.’ in Stuart Davis, ed. Philip rylands. milan/new york: electa/Solomon r. Guggenheim foundation, 13–16, p.15. 27. Sidran, ben. 1997. ‘The Jazz of Stuart Davis.’ in Stuart Davis, ed. Philip rylands. milan/new york: electa/ Solomon r. Guggenheim foundation, 13–16, p.16. 28. kirschke, Amy helene. 1995. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance. Jackson, mS: university Press of mississippi, p.41. 29. biggs, bryan. 1994.‘kitsch elvis has Surely come: elvis in Art.’ In Aspects of Elvis: Tryin’ to Get to You, ed. Alan clayson and Spencer leigh. london: Sidgwick & Jackson, p. 244 –58. 30. Quoted in FutureMusic (issue 181, november 2006).
A version of this essay first appeared as ‘Art and Art Schools’ in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 1: Media, Industry and Society. ed’s: John Shepherd, David horn, Dave laing, Paul oliver and Peter wicke. continuum, london and new york 2003.
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Biographies
bryAn biGGS
michAel brAcewell
Bryan Biggs has been closely involved in the arts in Liverpool since he first came to the city in the early 1970s. He has written a chapter entitled Welcome to the Pleasure Dome in the Tate Liverpool publication accompanying the exhibition Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde (2007), looking at art in Liverpool between the arrival of Tate and the first Biennial. He is an arts administrator and curator, working in various roles at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, where he is now Artistic Director. He has curated many exhibitions, including the 2002 Liverpool Biennial International and Walk On an exhibition for the 2006 Shanghai Biennale. He has written about contemporary art and popular music for publications such as Bidoun, Third Text, Strange Things Are Happening – and is an artist in his own right known for his drawings.
Michael Bracewell is a writer, novelist and cultural commentator. His first novel, The Crypto Amnesia Club, was published in 1988. It was followed by Divine Concepts of Physical Beauty (1989), The Conclave (1992) and Saint Rachel (1995). His most recent novel, Perfect Tense (2001), explores the minutiae of office life. His non-fiction includes a cultural history of England, England Is Mine (1997) and his writing is included in The Faber Book of Pop (1995) and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Fashion Writing (1999). He writes about contemporary art for Frieze and has also written exhibition catalogues for many contemporary artists, including Jim Lambie, Sam Taylor-Wood, Ian Davenport and Gilbert & George. He has written and presented two documentaries for BBC television, a profile of Oscar Wilde and a film about architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner’s guide to Surrey. His most recent books are a nonfiction portrait of the last decade of the 20th century, entitled The Nineties: When Surface was Depth (2002), and published in October this year, Re-make/ Remodel: Art, Pop, Fashion and the making of Roxy Music, 1953–1972. He is a contributing editor to the Conde Nast publications, and one of the judges of this year’s Turner Prize.
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cAThy buTTerworTh
John J. cAmPbell
Cathy Butterworth is currently undertaking PhD research into curatorial practice with a focus on Live Art, at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University where she has also recently worked as a lecturer in History of Art and Museum Studies. From 1999–2005 Cathy was Live Art Curator at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, where she curated many performance programmes and organised a number of seminars and conferences, most notably You Are Here in 2002 and Liverpool Live in 2004, both in partnership with Liverpool Biennial. She was a founding member of Live Art UK, a consortium of Live Art promoters and agencies, set up to research and develop innovative curatorial projects that subsequently included a collaboration with curators from Beijing and the production of a UK wide tour of Live Art from China. Cathy has published articles in the British Council’s On Tour publication and Dance Theatre Journal and has presented papers at a number of conferences including Mid-West American Theatre conference, Performance Studies International 2000 and The Arts Symposium at New York University.
John J. Campbell is an artist and musician whose work encompasses electronic soundworks, installation and group performance. Compositions and recordings with his group It’s Immaterial include the acclaimed CDs: Life’s Hard and Then You Die (1986, Virgin Records) and Song (1991, Virgin Records). Its Immaterial has gained chart status in the UK, Europe and the USA with titles such as: Driving Away from Home (1986, Virgin Records) and Space (1987, Virgin Records). He has performed internationally and appeared on television and radio programmes including: Top of the Pops (BBC1), Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2), In Concert (BBC Radio One), John Peel (BBC Radio One). His composition Gigantic Raft in the Philippines features in the Jonathan Demme film The Manchurian Candidate (2004, Paramount Pictures). His sound installations include: Baby 96 (1996) at the Bluecoat Liverpool; Two Seconds Nine Months (1996) at Bankside Gallery London; and Walk (2004) at Urbis Manchester. The soundwork Backwaters (2002) featured in Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art (2002); and Forgotten Seconds (2002) in Feedback at Digital Weekend, British Academy Sofia, Bulgaria, and Radio France International. His most recent sound art CD 40 (2007), was recorded for the Audio Research Editions imprint. John J. Campbell is Research Fellow in Sound at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. Co-funded by Arts Council England.
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Biographies
rob chAPmAn
colin fAllowS
Rob Chapman was singer and lyricist with Bristol post-punk band Glaxo Babies. Their great lost psych-pop album The Porlock Factor has just been released by Cherry Red. He has also written books on pirate radio and record sleeve art and written sleeve notes for artists and movements as diverse as The Last Poets, John Fahey, English psych-pop and Loungecore. Currently residing in Manchester he is a freelance music journalist for The Times and Mojo Magazine, and is a Senior Lecturer in Music Journalism at the University of Huddersfield. His debut novel Dusk Music will be published by The Flambard Press early in 2008. He has just been commissioned by Faber and Faber to write a biography of Syd Barrett.
Colin Fallows is Professor of Sound and Visual Arts, Chair of Research, and Head of Department of Contextual Studies at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. He has explored crossovers between sound and the visual arts as an artist, researcher, curator, lecturer and he has produced work for live ensemble performance, recordings, exhibition, installation, radio and the Internet. His artistic and curatorial projects have featured in numerous international festivals including Video Positive, ISEA98, Intermedia, Ars Electronica, and Futuresonic. He has directed and managed numerous national/international conferences including: ISEA98: Revolution – the ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art; Sciart and Science on Stage and Screen Symposium in partnership with The Wellcome Trust; and ArtPlace-Technology: International Symposium on Curating New Media Art in collaboration with FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Arts Council England. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Audio Research Editions, a limited edition imprint for artists’ soundworks, which since 1998 has published over two hundred works by artists from over twenty countries.
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mAT GreGory
vicki mAGuire
Mat Gregory is an artist, writer and lecturer at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University where his research focuses increasingly upon experimental music and sound art. He has a First Class Honours degree in Art History (2001), and was awarded a postgraduate scholarship from the AHRC leading towards his PhD (2006). His doctoral thesis, entitled Towards a Universal Language, examined the history of radical experimental music in Japan. In 2001, he was also awarded the Stuart Sutcliffe Fellowship in audiovisual arts, and developed a body of immersive and extended improvised soundworks that were subsequently performed at the Liverpool Biennial 2002 and Futuresonic 2004 festivals. He was also the founder and songwriter with the band The Little Flames, who signed to Deltasonic Records / Sony in 2004, releasing several well-received recordings – one of which (Put Your Dukes Up, John) was recorded and released by Arctic Monkeys (2006). The band also completed a large number of high profile tours and performances worldwide. He is currently engaged in various art, music, and sound-based projects. His most recent sound art CD October (2007), was recorded for the Audio Research Editions imprint. He has also continued to produce artwork for a number of bands, recently designing the sleeve art for The Dead 60s second album.
Vicki Maguire is a postgraduate researcher at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University where she has also recently worked as a lecturer in History of Art and Museum Studies. She has a particular interest in 1960s counterculture and the impact of the Situationist International on Britain and the USA. Her MRes / PhD research is concerned with unearthing relationships and cultural links between the legacy of the French Situationists, English pro-Situ groups, and the birth of English Punk. She has also worked for a number of arts organisations including Tate Liverpool, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Liverpool Biennial. In 2006 she co-curated ReNew06: A Collaboration and redskyatnight, two exhibitions which featured new work by artists from across the UK including several pieces by the artist Jamie Reid. She also worked closely with Canadian video artist Kelly Mark at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) on the Liverpool A to Z project for Liverpool Biennial 2006. Her research into the work of Jamie Reid is ongoing.
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Biographies
bArry mileS
JAmie reiD
Barry Miles was the co-founder of Indica Books and Gallery in 1966 and International Times (IT), the first European underground newspaper. He was the London based host to Allen Ginsberg’s visit to England in 1967 – including the periods immediately before and after his visit to Liverpool. In 1968 Paul McCartney appointed Barry Miles head of Zapple, the Beatles’ spoken word label. He specialises in writing about the Beat Generation and is the author of many books including: A Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive (1973), Allen Ginsberg: A Biography (1989), William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible (1992), Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats (1998), Beat Hotel (2000), the best selling Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now (1997), Frank Zappa (2004) and Pink Floyd: The Early Years (2007). International Times: The Barry Miles Archive is housed at Liverpool John Moores University and Barry Miles is the chief consultant and associate researcher on all aspects of the archive. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University.
Jamie Reid is a British artist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines helped define the image of Punk particularly in the UK. He created the graphic look used with the Sex Pistols while he was designing Suburban Press, a radical political magazine which he ran for five years. His works from the 1970s include all artwork and packaging design associated with the Sex Pistols including the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. He produced the innovative interiors for the Strongroom recording studios, London and he is Art Director for the world music fusion band Afro Celt Sound System. He has also produced visuals for numerous bands and political causes. Recently he has been exhibiting and publishing prints with the Aquarium gallery London and for 2008 is planning to tour a major retrospective exhibition around the world starting in the USA.
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Jon SAvAGe
Simon wArner
Jon Savage is a leading UK based writer and cultural historian. In 1976, he published a fanzine called London’s Outrage and during the following years he has written widely for British and American newspapers and magazines on music, pop culture and social history including: Sounds, the Village Voice, Melody Maker, the Guardian, The Observer, the Face and Mojo. His book England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (1993) won the Ralph J. Gleason Book Award in 1993 and is now regarded as the definitive history of the late seventies. He has also published a collection of journalism, Time Travel (1996), and co-edited (with Hanif Kureishi) The Faber Book of Pop (1995). His film and television credits include the BAFTA award-winning documentary The Brian Epstein Story (1998) and Joy Division (2007), a history of group, time and place premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (2007). His most recent book, published to great acclaim, is Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875–1945 (2007). England’s Dreaming: The Jon Savage Archive, the largest single collection of Punk related material in the world, is housed at Liverpool John Moores University. Jon Savage is the chief consultant and research associate on all aspects of the archive.
Simon Warner is a lecturer, journalist and broadcaster who has taught popular music at the University of Leeds in the UK since 1994. A live rock reviewer for the Guardian between 1992 and 1995, he is now Senior Teaching Fellow in the university’s School of Music, where he launched and curates the Peter Blake Music Art Gallery. His publications include Rockspeak: The Language of Rock and Pop (1996), a chapter in Remembering Woodstock (2004) and, as editor, the collection Howl for Now: A Celebration of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Protest Poem (2005). His most recent work considers Ginsberg’s celebrated visit to Liverpool in 1965, an essay which appears in the volume Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde (2007). In June, he hosted a 40th anniversary conference on Sgt. Pepper and, in November, will direct Back On the Road, a halfcentenary commemoration of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel in Leeds. A featured columnist for the cultural webzine Pop Matters from 2001– 2006, he is a regular commentator on rock topics to BBC radio.
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Popular Culture Archives
Several important world-class archives have been purchased as part of Liverpool John Moores University’s stated ambition to acquire archives of popular culture and to develop a repository of international significance for the study of popular culture. Recent related acquisitions include: enGlAnD’S DreAminG The Jon SAvAGe Archive (AcQuireD 2002) inTernATionAl TimeS (iT) The bArry mileS Archive (AcQuireD 2006) The beATleS inTerviewS The rAy colemAn Archive (AcQuireD 2006) The frAnkie vAuGhAn Archive (AcQuireD 2000) Further archive acquisitions are planned to sit within the larger context of creating a significant archive resource that resonates with the City of Liverpool.
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enGlAnD’S DreAminG: The Jon SAvAGe Archive
England’s Dreaming: The Jon Savage Archive is the biggest single central source of Punk-related material in the world. Jon Savage is one of the UK’s leading cultural historians and the archive contains the resources collected by him for his seminal research and writing. The archive consists of mainly print material and is currently housed in 26 boxes. Most of the five thousand plus items are from Britain, but there are many examples from Europe and America. As well as photographs by most of the name photographers of the day, there are fanzines, individually produced fan magazines, from Britain and America, including a complete set of the first Punk fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue. There is a collection of interviews with leading figures of the Punk scene (including musicians and artists). The archive also contains a considerable amount of documentation about the Sex Pistols, ranging from handbills to press clippings and photographs.
The England’s Dreaming Archive is the archive of England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, the book written by Jon Savage now regarded as the definitive account of Punk Rock and British society in the mid to late 1970’s. England’s Dreaming tells the story of Punk and Britain in the late 1970’s through the brief rise and fall of the Sex Pistols. Over the fourteen years since its first publication in 1991, England’s Dreaming has sold over 100,000 copies, and has seen editions in America, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. It was re-promoted in a second edition in the United Kingdom during 2002, and was republished in Spring 2005 in a third edition. Punk Rock was not just a music / style phenomenon but a national issue, and the archive reflects this. Contextual material for the time is also provided by many national newspapers and magazines, as well as many editions of the weekly music press. This unmatched archive presents a unique opportunity to examine further a hotly contested period that is now recognised as a crucial point in British 20th century history.
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Popular Culture Archives
inTernATionAl TimeS (iT): The bArry mileS Archive
With the growth of youth culture in the mid-sixties came an entire counter-culture of boutiques, clubs, bookshops, record labels, heath food stores and media. The underground press began in the USA but quickly spread to Britain, then to the Continent, filling the need for news and information in those areas that the commercial press did not cover: antiVietnam war news, articles about drugs and drug culture, essays on Eastern and esoteric Western philosophies and religion, news and interviews covering the burgeoning underground and psychedelic rock music scene, coverage of the avant-garde and experimental art that was being created beyond the confines of the gallery system. Fleet Street provided none of this and so IT came into being. IT was the first European underground newspaper and lasted the longest. It began in October 1966 and was closely allied to the Beatles who helped it financially, with interviews, drawings and once even helped to lay it out. It was also closely connected to the UFO Club – it shared staff and directors – the all night multi-media performance and psychedelic music club where Pink Floyd, the Soft Machine, Arthur Brown, Procul Harem and many other bands first found an audience. IT covered everything from
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the avant garde – interviews with Morton Feldman and Claes Oldenberg – to flying saucers and ley-lines and Eastern mysticism: Allen Ginsberg on the Maharishi. John Peel, Mal Dean and Jeff Nuttall all had regular columns. William Burroughs used IT to publish a number of important essays. IT not only reported on the London underground scene but was central to it, with close connections to the Indica Bookshop and Art Gallery, Soma, Release, the Arts Lab, the Exploding Galaxy, Yoko Ono, Bit and other underground organisations. The archives of the paper include detailed critiques of each issue in the form of the editorial minutes and also internal memos concerning finances, printing, content and reaction to the various police raids, palace revolutions and take-over attempts that occurred. Of great interest are the letters from prison written by co-founder John Hopkins to his colleague Miles concerning the paper and the UFO Club. Miles’s replies keep him informed of week-by-week developments of all aspects of the paper, providing valuable insight into the actual business of running an underground newspaper and the contradictions inherent in trying to operate outside normal commercial society.
The beATleS inTerviewS: The rAy colemAn Archive
The Ray Coleman Archive contains over 200 cassette tapes comprising the interviews for Ray Coleman’s definitive biographies of Brian Epstein (1934 –1967) and John Lennon (1940 –1980), together with additional recorded material. Over his long career Ray Coleman (1937–1996) instilled a sense of formality and professionalism into rock journalism. From 1960 to 1965 he worked his influence as a journalist at the music magazine Melody Maker, returning as editor from 1970 to 1980. While Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager, was transforming the scruffy Merseyside quartet into slick-suited Mods, under Coleman’s influence the magazine entered its heyday, reflecting the growing dynamism of the British popular music scene. Coleman was welcomed by The Beatles and Epstein on their historic trips to North America and became a close friend and confidante. ‘They enjoyed his enthusiastic support and his perceptive interviews gave them a chance to be witty and outspoken.’ These relationships proved to be a strong foundation for the biographies Coleman worked on during the 1980s, including the two-volume work John Winston
Lennon/John Ono Lennon (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984) and Brian Epstein: The Man Who Made the Beatles (Viking, 1989). His knowledge of and regard for his subject matter is apparent in these interviews, conducted with colleagues, family members and even early acquaintances, for example Astrid Kircherr, a German friend who designed The Beatles’ ‘mop top’ haircut. For his exhaustive work on Lennon, Coleman succeeded in gaining the confidence of both of Lennon’s wives. ‘It was quite a coup’ music historian Mark Lewisohn has been quoted as saying ‘Ray managed to bridge the gap between the two widows, who were usually at loggerheads. The book was very successful and it was the first exhaustive biography of Lennon.’ Cynthia Lennon subsequently agreed with reviewers, describing Coleman’s book about her former husband as the best account of his life. This collection features extensive tapes of Coleman’s complete interviews with both Cynthia Lennon (ten reels) and Yoko Ono (four reels). An account of the life of Brian Epstein, written with the close assistance of Epstein’s mother Queenie; Coleman’s conversations with her and his interviews with an impressive range of figures from Epstein’s life, are included in this collection.
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Popular Culture Archives
The frAnkie vAuGhAn Archive
The Frankie Vaughan Archive was donated to Liverpool John Moores University by Stella Vaughan, Frankie’s widow, in the summer of 2000. It consists of sheet music, scores, orchestral and band parts for his most popular commercial recordings and short pieces of music used as introductions to his live appearances. Many of the scores and parts have handwritten notes relating to the occasions they were used, including stage directions, lead-ins and running orders for stage and television appearances. Frankie Vaughan CBE (1928 –1999) was born Frank Abelson to a Jewish family in Liverpool and enjoyed a long career as a pop singer both in the UK and the USA. In his early life, he was a member of the Lancaster Lads Club, which was a member group of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs in the UK, and in his career he was a major contributor to the clubs, dedicating his monetary earnings from one song each year to them. He started out at the club intending to be a boxer. At the age of 14 he received a scholarship to the Lancaster College of Art, where he also sang in the dance band. After a period in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II (where he continued with boxing) he returned to art school, at the Leeds College of Art. After winning a prize to design a furniture exhibition stand, he left for London, where he won second prize on a radio talent show.
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He started out in variety theatre in the 1940s, progressed to film and television appearances and made a large number of very successful recordings in the 1950s and 1960s. He is perhaps best remembered for his signature tune Give Me the Moonlight, Give Me the Girl recorded in 1955, and his cover versions of USA hits such as Green Door, Kewpie Doll and Seventeen. Frankie was a stylish and relaxed live performer who headlined at the London Palladium Talk of the Town, which attracted family audiences. His television appearances included Sunday Night at the Palladium and The Ed Sullivan Show in the USA. In 1960 he featured in the film Let’s Make Love with Marilyn Monroe and was an actor in several other films. He continued performing until 1985, when he starred in a stage version of 42nd Street at Drury Lane, London. As well as his musical career, Frankie carried out significant charitable work on social projects for which he received an OBE in 1965 and a CBE in 1997. He was a life-long supporter of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs and in 1964 was appointed to a committee dealing with juvenile delinquency, successfully negotiating a deal with young Glaswegian gang members to turn in their weapons and accept an amnesty agreement. He was also influential in attracting new resources and investment to the area.
SPeciAl collecTionS AnD ArchiveS AT lJmu
The special collections and archives on popular culture are held at the Aldham Robarts Learning Resource Centre and described on the Learning and Information Services web pages at www.ljmu.ac.uk/lea/77343.htm. All audio tapes are currently being assessed for preservation and digitisation purposes and are not available for consultation at present. Access to the special collections and archives for researchers is by prior arrangement with the Information Officer, Emily Burningham. Contact: Emily Burningham Aldham Robarts LRC Liverpool John Moores University Off Maryland Street Liverpool L1 9DE Telephone 0151 231 3813 Email e.burningham@ljmu.ac.uk
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Postgraduate Research Opportunities at the Liverpool School of Art and Design Masters in Research (M.Res.) M.Res. Art and Design History offers an exploration and critical appraisal of individually negotiated research projects in Art and Design History.
M.Res. Curatorial Practice offers both a theoretical and practical negotiation of the working methods of Curatorial Practice and the wider gallery system.
M.Res. Sonic Arts offers both practical and theoretical negotiation of individual research projects concerning historical, current and emerging practice in Sonic Arts. The MRes programmes draw upon the expertise of established researchers at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, and the postgraduate culture is supported by international Visiting Fellows, artists, designers, curators and writers. M.Res. provides a bridge between established undergraduate study and Ph.D. research at the Liverpool School of Art and Design. Thesis/practice and thesis only modes are possible. Awards within the programmes are PG.Cert.(Res.), PG.Dip.(Res.) and M.Res. Graduates of M.Res. are able to progress to Ph.D. study. The programmes are delivered at the Liverpool School of Art and Design and the Research and Graduate School. M.Res. students may also link with key local organisations as appropriate, including: Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tate Liverpool, Bluecoat Arts Centre, National Museums Liverpool and FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology).
The M.Res. Award The M.Res. programmes are open to both full-time and part-time, home and overseas students. The programmes offer an avenue into research for individuals from a range of backgrounds including: students with a first degree but with no training in research methods, employees in the cultural industries who seek a formal training in relevant research techniques, and international students. The programmes also offer a postgraduate qualification for potential research students unsure about committing themselves long-term to a doctoral programme. The M.Res. award indicates formal training in research methods. It is a qualification in its own right, equivalent to a modular Masters degree on a taught programme. It can also operate as the base from which a doctoral programme (Ph.D.) is mounted. Students successfully completing are eligible to apply for Ph.D. direct without undergoing the normal M.Phil. registration and subsequent transfer application to Ph.D. Structure of the M.Res. Programme The programme entails 180 credits comprising modules including: generic training in research methods, personal skills development, professional skills, and research subject modules. The M.Res. culminates in a research project (60 Credits) which can, for example, serve as a pilot for a projected Ph.D. programme. Support and Guidance Each student on the M.Res. is assigned to an academic mentor. This member of staff is likely to become the Director of Studies should the student progress to a Ph.D. programme. The programme as a whole is overseen by the M.Res. Programme Leader at the Liverpool School of Art and Design from whom further information can be obtained in the event of any queries. Entry Requirements Normally students should have a good first degree in an arts related subject, although applications from students with other degrees will be considered. Experience in lieu of an honours award may be taken into consideration.
For further information email: ArtMRes@livjm.ac.uk