Paul Gorman

0:19Are there can you hear me I don't need to use that no no okay right thanks for thanks for having me as they say I'm also a nicer Tuesday's virgin and I want to be a travel blogger that's what I'm going to call myself from now on.

0:33But I'm actually a writer and yeah I'm a writer I write books and I like journalism when it still pays but I came up with this idea to mark the 40th anniversary of punk which I'm sure you're all really bored of hearing about already you know terminal punk fatigue is setting in as I speak but I came up with this idea of mapping it out in London which is really where it started and I went to the mapmaker herb Lester I produced a map with them before and just taught them about my experiences in London at the time.

1:16This is me in 1977 at an address which doesn't appear in the map this is Elizabeth photo library in Cleveland Street just north of Soho about 20 minutes later I'm going to be beaten up by Teddy boys for looking like that the policemen who came to save me told me that I deserved it because I shouldn't go around looking like that and at the time. Actually punk wasn't really accepted as a as a means of visual expression or a lifestyle that we recognize it as being now.

1:47And this clip from the Sex Pistols biopic the great rock and roll swindle kind of talks about that first of all we're gonna hear from Malcolm McLaren the late Malcolm McLaren who managed the Sex Pistols and then we're gonna hear from reading London councillor right well that was burner Brook Partridge who later became leader of the general London Council which was kind of the mayor's office of its day and this is 40 years later this website was launched at the beginning of the year there's a punk at the back of the audience was in trouble already designed by with a bespoke typography by Neville Brody as they call in the revolutionary graphic designer and this is very much part of the establishment now it's part of the tourist industry if you will Punk's not dead so says the London Fashion Week daily so it's said on Saturday at least in the alphabet pointing out all of this activity that's going on. And so I talked to her blister about the ways in which we could approach this in an unpredictable way. And we hope that we pulled it off as I said I worked on another map with them based on the mother of my books called the look a few years ago.

4:13So I knew that they use different designers for each project and the designer they suggested for this map was a Canadian he's under 30 he's by no means of Pangkor in thrall so any of that imagery his name's Mike Haddad and I liked his work. And in particular I liked the way sort of invoked the spirit of this early seventies graphic designer called George Hardy who I happened to know.

4:38And I admire a lot and he produced a lot of the graphics for hypnosis the records lead designer and they produced a lot of the work for the antithesis of punk pink he did the graphics for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. So it'll be interesting to tuck him into the mix this is the stuff that we were aware of but we wanted to avoid it's the first Flyers produced for the Sex Pistols by McLaren who've been an art student and so knew his stuff and it's very cut and paste then he's got this black male lettering and it became the visual language of punk pretty pretty quickly this is sniffing glue the DIY fanzine from the period Jamie Reid kind of formalized that the graphic designer an art director for the Sex Pistols with his work for them.

5:29And then others got on board that's Jamie Reid's album sleeve there and Beatle record sleeves by Bonnie bubbles at the top and below Linda Linda sterling for the Buzzcocks so Mike Haddad came up with some variations some quite nice ones but they were still very too close to what we knew would be the gles look of punk we liked his design which looked like a bit of archaeology he was kind of suggesting this is all a very long time ago but he had to vibe it up a bit.

6:09And we think that he did a good job this doesn't quite capture this energetic sort of pinky color the we achieved there and he also used London iconography we think in a in a new and exciting way.

6:27That's the map there. And that's the back of it which contains and resolves all the information.

6:36There are a hundred and eleven addresses in the map and then there's a 28 page booklet which contains all of these snippets of information about them. So it was quite a task I think for him to to get there we broke it down into sections such as routes and we talked about those things that have gone predictably of eight of the art schools mentioned because punk was very much an art school movement six of them I think have closed five of clothes and the major t-shirt company and the venue where both coincidentally both branches of the Mexican food chain what hacker I've not been there.

7:16But I don't imagine it's very Punk we wanted to kind of get on piggyback on the bandwagon at the anniversaries quite early and so we chose the 40th anniversary of the game which the Sex Pistols played which garnered their first big coverage in the enemy and this piece ends with this great quote from the guitarist where he tells the journalist we're not into music we into chaos and so they kind of lit the touchpaper for the very chaotic and brief history of punk in terms of music I've done the rounds of appearing on various radio stations that nobody ever listens to but this is Gary Crowley and he was one of those people who kept on asking me what about punk now it doesn't have a live relevance does it really well I think it does but it's not in music it's not in bondage trousers it's escapes the stylistic confines of fashion or music you know it's recalled kind of wrong but you can see in the spirit of things like the mosh pit and also in most surprising places I think this is Julian mutton Berg who is a jeweler by trades and she operates this art space in Mayfair and she got me involved in a project quite recently which absolutely coincided with the creation of this man and I think you know herb non-conforming attitude is really quite punk-rock she she put on this show generated by this gentleman Paul Kindersley called the conformist - which I contributed and we have the opening last night so excused the bags under my eyes we included you know such people as Julie Verhoeven the ideas of transgression which have always been present in punk were there it wasn't Howard Lee Punk but I wanted to include one of the originals this is my friend John Wardle also known as Joel wobble the musician who was the original member of public image and he created a sound track for us it kind of loops back in a way because he appears in the map he tried to beat up the radio the TV presenter whispering Bob Harris because they wouldn't play punk music and that resulted in the Sex Pistols being dropped by the record company I also provided a design by McLaren and Westwood from their shop sex and then that loop back into the map because they're short at 4:30 Kings Road was a major fulcrum for all of the ideas which were disseminated by poem I think it was in a way even though I was going over this quite well-known turf a bit of a voyage of discovery because we found that punk they 111 addresses were based mainly in three areas the lower the lower part is Chelsea and Fulham the upper part is Notting Hill and Paddington.

10:30And then Soho where nearly 20% of the addresses that appear in the map were and it was quite instructive because where we are now and the area around here.

10:43There isn't a single address this didn't make a mark at all at the time I think in 40 years obviously this area will be what estate agents call the creative quarter but I wonder whether we might have it inverted II sort of discovered that maybe we've reached peak in this area and so where is it going to be next because is this going to be the next Chelsea well. That's just one of the things that was thrown up by the map and I hope you enjoyed that presentation about it