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“A passion for the sham…. A sickness of pretence“
I have noted here before the low regard for plastic in post-WW2 highbrow culture - which was transvaluated into a positive by Warhol and ...
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NME cartoon circa 1981 nicely skewers the self-declared aristocracies of club culture Apropos Oh the myopic narcissism of the young! Or ... -
He should at least have put on some make-up for the studio lights Russell wore hotpants in the promo video too - it was a unified look fo...
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Came across this snippet from Kevin Rowland 's The Q & A in The Guradian a few weeks back (Kev promoting his memoir Bless Me Fathe...
Quite a muscular-looking wrist/hand there.
ReplyDeleteThe top one definitely looks unfeminine.
DeleteI am tantalized by something Simon Napier Bell said when I interviewed him for S+A - at least I think it was him who told me this - something about an image of David Sylvian with shirt open to reveal female breasts. I don't think this androgynous image was used in an advertisement, it was projected behind them onstage.... maybe in Japan itself, when they toured there? I've not been able to find a trace of the image, or a mention of it.
Actually, there's a reference to it in a Sylvie Simmons looking-back piece:
Delete"Napier-Bell, meanwhile, was pulling out the stops to get the band press. He tried the lot: Oriental name angle (sumo wrestler cabs around to the rock mags delivering sake); androgynous image angle (the ad where David pulled open his jacket to reveal fake breasts); the gorgeous bloke angle. After a three-month campaign, the Japanese bit, the group were stars in their namesake country, with 30,000 girls in their fan club before the first album was even released."
I could be wrong, but I don't remember DS being a massive girlie heart throb in the UK; as mentioned in a previous post, he did inspire a male tribe of - largely straight I would say - wannabes (there were two in my sixth form college c. 1983). I guess he joins the company of Brigitte Bardot, Julie Driscoll and Julie Christie: fed up with being gorgeous & so they go on to do something a little unexpected.
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