Pose of the Day

Warhol accolyte, Studio 54 stalwart, drag queen Potassa de la Fayette poised at Coyote Hookers Ball, The Copacabana, New York City 1977.

Strike a pose. There's nothing to it.

All I want is a photo in my wallet, a small remembrance of something more solid

[Photos from the great lady's photoshoot with Andy Warhol in 1980]

It's our Patron Saint of Pouting's 74th birthday today! How did that happen?

Not resting on her laurels one iota, Miss Debbie Harry (for it is of course she) has written her autobiography - titled Face It - which is due out in October. Of it, she said in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year: "I realised I have led a very full life and couldn’t possibly cover everything... It’s such a long period of time, and there’s so much to tell, that I couldn’t really isolate a lot of little stories and events... [it's about] the way we got through and maintained and continued and carried on through all that time from my sort of warped little perspective.”

Well, that's my birthday present sorted...

Many happy returns, Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble, 1st July 1945)

Shaved her legs and then he was a she

"If I'm wearing pants, call me a man. If I'm wearing a dress, call me a cab!"

“The boys at the baths loved me. Of course, they were all drunk and high and would've loved a French poodle barking out "Jingle Bells"!”

“I'm tired of straight people playing drag queens. Why can't drag queens play drag queens? They're talented, they're fabulous, they're gorgeous!"

“I felt like Elizabeth Taylor! Little did I realise that not only would there be no money, but that your star would flicker for two seconds and that was it. But it was worth it, the drugs, the parties, it was fabulous.”

She inspired a timeless classic...

Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side

...RIP Holly Woodlawn (born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl, 26th October 1946 – 6th December 2015)!

He probably wore boxer shorts

So whose denim-clad crotch did grace the infamous Warhol cover for the Rolling Stones' 1971 Sticky Fingers album cover?

From the New York Times in 2003:

"Of course, I always thought it was Mick Jagger. I had to wait until the grand old age of 15 to find out it was Joe Dallesandro," said designer Michael Kors.

"Not so", said Glenn O'Brien, the writer who was working for the Warhol magazine 'Interview'. "Joe wasn't up to it or something, or they wanted someone skinnier." Mr. O'Brien said it was he who posed for the inner sleeve photo, in his Carter's briefs. As for the cover star, he said it was Jay Johnson, the decorator, then a model.

"It's not me," Mr. Johnson said, pointing the finger at Corey Tippin, a 'Factory' habitué, now a photo stylist. [Mr Tippin] said that, yes, the jeans and their contents were his, and he thought, but was not positive, that the inner sleeve was him as well. Both he and Mr. O'Brien were photographed, he said, but in his recollection, "Glenn O'Brien seemed like he probably wore boxer shorts."

Corey Tippin

And so, twelve years on from this article (and many decades of debate and conjecture after the album was first released) - do we now have the truth at last?

Radio Base Camp seems to think so...

Unlikely conversations, # 361 in a series

Sylvia Sidney and Hermione Gingold


Andy Warhol and Tennessee Williams


Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett


Marilyn Monroe and Karen Blixen

Oh, to be a fly on the wall...

I just play leading roles

Dolly by Warhol.

Life is a show and the show will go on
The world is stage, loves an act we perform
There's always some new act somewhere up the road
And I'll always be starring in somebody's show

I don't play second fiddle in nobody's band
And I'm no back-up singer and I won't be a fan
And I'm nobody's co-star
I just play leading roles
And I don't want the part, don't want a part
Won't play a part unless it's star of the show

Dolly Parton (born January 19, 1946)

Utterly Brill!

In 1992, the consummate guide to feminine charm Boobs, Boys and High Heels: Or How to Get Dressed in Just Under Six Hours was published - and soon became essential reading for club kids, society dames and drag queens everywhere.

It was the product of the fertile imagination of Miss Dianne Brill, legendary hostess, sex-kitten, sometime actress, party-goer and "face" of the 80s New York nightclub scene.















Crowned "Queen of the Night" by Andy Warhol, she emerged from Florida to hit New York with a bang. She become a fashion model and muse for Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, and launched her own menswear line, worn by such luminaries as Prince, the Rolling Stones and Duran Duran.

Throughout the 1980s, she seemed to be everywhere and seen with everyone who "mattered". As David Hutchings, writing in People magazine in 1985 put it:

The door of the rented limo opens and out comes a vision in outrageousness: a Valkyrie by Fellini. In five-inch stiletto heels and a three-foot blond mane that's been streaked, permed, sprayed, pressed and fried, she stands a formidable 6'2". For this grand soir at the Palladium, New York's club of the moment, she's wearing "something simple - rubber with fringe." The dress is fluorescent white, unthinkably low-cut and as tight as Saran Wrap.

The lady in latex is Dianne Brill, a 26-year-old fashion designer who has become, seemingly overnight, First Citizen of Manhattan nightlife. If there's an opening, a party, a lotto drawing, anything where cameras are clicking from Harlem to Tribeca, she is there. In an era when status is determined by visibility, her bursting hourglass figure is the highest profile in town. When she arrives, the party begins.

Sometime in the 90s she gave it all up, married film producer Peter Völkle, moved to Switzerland and had three children. However, married domesticity did not stop her flair for beauty and fashion, and in 2008 she bounced back into the spotlight with the launch of a range of cosmetics including the fabulously titled "Eye Underwear". Her lipsticks have names such as "Silk Stockings", "Thigh-High Nylons" and "Leopard Brassiere".

Facts about Miss Brill:

• She reinvented the infamous "pencil test", suggesting that women wear a corset or push-up bra and put a pencil in their cleavage - if the pencil doesn't fall, the woman's cleavage is perfect.
• Her rules of survival in the hedonistic 80s club world were: "no drugs, no booze, no weekend gallivanting".
• A mannequin was created in honour of her buxom figure and is still used by Agent Provocateur today.
• Her son Keenan is a male model in his own right.

An interview with Dianne Brill on the Societé Perrier nightlife website.

Dianne Brill official website

Warholflower

"Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all"
- David Bowie

Photographic portraits of pop artist Andy Warhol that lay forgotten in a filing cabinet for more than 30 years are to go on show for the first time.

As one of the senior photographers at The Daily Express, in the summer of 1981 Steve Wood travelled to France for the Deauville Film Festival to photograph the celebrities attending. By chance he ran into his longtime friend, Elaine Kaufman, her new husband, and their friend Andy Warhol - and took the opportunity to badger the great artist for a photoshoot.

Once back in the UK, Wood apparently developed the images on to slides, filed them away under the letter "W" and promptly forgot all about them.

Last year, friend and fellow photographer David Munns was helping Wood to clear out the contents of his London studio. Among the myriad papers, notes and films, Munn came across the Warhol slides.

The photos will go on display at the appropriately-named Lost Then Found exhibition in New York from 2nd to 12th May 2013 - but some of the images will also go on show in London from 10th to 12th May 2013 as part of a pop-up exhibition at the brand new Conran-designed luxury South Place Hotel in Finsbury Square, near Moorgate.

Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci...

From the BBC website:

"There was always a ton of people outside waiting to get in - people from all walks of life," says Myra Scheer, an early fan who later became Steve Rubell's assistant.

"Most never got in, but if you caught the eye of Steve or of (doorman) Marc Benecke suddenly a path opened up.

"Beyond the velvet rope was what I used to call the Corridor of Joy. It had ornate chandeliers and everybody there was screaming with joy that they got in. You could hear the pulsating music as you walked through and then you turned left and there was this dance floor. Everybody on that floor had the energy of being a radiant star."

Among them: Margaret Trudeau, Elton John, Marisa Berenson, Diane Von Furstenburg, Debbie Harry, Vladimir Horowitz, Jerry Hall, Margaux Hemingway, Brooke Shields, Ginger Rogers, Cher, Salvador Dali, Richard Gere, Divine, Ivana Trump, Calvin Klein, Amanda Lear, Halston, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Truman Capote, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Grace Jones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Liza Minnelli, Gloria Swanson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol and of course the ever-present Bianca Jagger...

New York's notorious Studio 54 opened its doors 35 years ago tonight.

The past keeps knock knock knocking on my door

In honour of the great man's 70th birthday today, I here reprint in full a marvellous 1997 article on Lou Reed by Jane Appleby for Bambi fanzine. Full credit to the lady for a revealing examination of his life...

TRANSFORMER or fragments of the life of Lou Reed
Lewis Allan Reed was born in Brooklyn in 1942 to a Jewish middle class family. At the age of 17 he received electro-shock therapy three times a week to discourage his homosexuality.

"They put that thing down your throat so you don’t swallow your tongue and they put electrodes on your head. That’s what was recommended in Rockland County then to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. I wrote ‘Kill Your Sons’ about that."

In 1961 he went to Syracuse University to do a degree in English Lit. and Philosophy. One of his biggest influences was his teacher the writer and critic Delmore Schwartz. He also had his 1st gay love affair at university before graduating with honours. (He also had a long term affair with a woman who went on to inspire many of his songs such as ‘Pale Blue Eyes’.) He also met up with Sterling Morrison and continued playing in bands. Lou Reed considered studying journalism before opting for drama but he was asked to leave due to his involvement in narcotics. He evaded the draft and went to work for Pickwick records in 1964-65 writing pop songs. One of these songs ‘The Ostrich’ was wanted on TV and that was how Lou Reed came to hook up with John Cale who was impressed with his other songs like ‘Heroin’.

By November 1965 Mo Tucker had joined them and The Velvet Underground had performed in public for the first time. They came to the attention of Andy Warhol who introduced Nico who had affairs with first Lou Reed then John Cale. She performed with them and had several songs written for her. They completed their first album in August 1966 but it wasn’t released until March 1967. That year they dumped Nico and Warhol and signed up with a new manager releasing another album containing ‘Sister Ray’.

"It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of Sister Ray as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them and shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear."

In 1968 John Cale was ousted and replaced with Doug Yule. They began to record their 3rd album containing ‘Candy Says’ supposedly about Candy Darling. In 1970 Mo Tucker left to have a child and was replaced by Billy Yule. They recorded their 4th and final album. Lou Reed then left the band and moved back home to live with his parents even working as a secretary for the family business. (The Velvet Underground even carried on for a few years without him.) By 1971 Lou Reed was writing poetry and dating a girl named Betty Kronstadt. He was eventually persuaded to return to writing songs and released the album ‘Transformer’ in 1972. The cover featured a TV and a leather clad clone rumoured to be Lou Reed himself but in fact Ernie Thormahlen.

"There’s a lot of sexual ambiguity in the album and two outright gay songs - from me to them but carefully worded so the straights can miss out on the implications and enjoy them without being offended.

"The gay life at the moment isn’t that great. I wanted to write a song which made it terrific, something you’d enjoy.

"Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you have to camp around in make-up. The make-up thing is just a style thing now. If people have homosexuality in them, it won’t necessarily involve make-up in the first place."

Lou Reed married Betty Kronstadt late 1972-early 1973.

"You can’t fake being gay. If they claim they’re gay, they’re going to have to make love in a gay style and most people aren’t capable of making that commitment. That line that everyone’s bisexual - I think that’s just meaningless."

He began work on ‘Berlin’ in 1973. When it was finished he separated from his wife after writing a song about her suicide attempt. The producer Bobby Ezrin also had a breakdown and had to be hospitalised after completing the record. Lou Reed’s divorce came through in autumn 1973. His behaviour began to deteriorate and then he met Rachel (transvestite/transsexual - nobody knows which).

"It was in a late night club in Greenwich Village. I’d been up for days as usual and everything was at that super-real, glowing stage. I walked in there and there was this amazing person, this incredible head, kind of vibrating out of it all. Rachel was wearing this amazing make-up and dress and was obviously in a different world to anyone else in the place. Eventually I spoke and she came home with me. I rapped for hours and hours, while Rachel just sat there looking at me saying nothing. At the time I was living with a girl, a crazy blonde lady and I kind of wanted us all three to live together but somehow it was too heavy for her. Rachel just stayed on and the girl moved out. Rachel was completely disinterested in who I was and what I did. Nothing could impress her. He’d hardly heard my music and didn’t like it all that much when he did.

Rachel knows how to do it for me. No one else ever did before. Rachel’s something else."

He recorded ‘Coney Island Baby’ which was all about how his new relationship had transformed his life even dedicating songs to Rachel. In July 1975 his tour was called off in New Zealand as Lou missed Rachel so much. He would spend hours on the phone to her, sleeping at night with the receiver off the hook and the call connected to New York so he could resume his conversation as soon as he awoke. Mick Rock photographed them for Penthouse - clad in matching black leather supported by pencil-thin legs, the couple embrace, Lou in front facing the camera with a dazed smile on his face while Rachel supports him from behind, her hands clasped possessively over his crotch, a look of serene composure in her eyes. In March 1977 they celebrated three years of friendship with a party cutting a three tier wedding cake emblazoned with a Valentine heart.

"All the albums I put out after this are going to be things I want to put out. No more bullshit, no more dyed hair, faggot junkie trip. I mimic me better than anyone else, so if everybody else is making money ripping me off, I figure maybe I better get in on it. Why not? I created Lou Reed. I have nothing even faintly in common with that guy but I can play him well - really well."

Lou Reed split up from Rachel in late 1977-early 1978. He stated that his album ‘Street Hassle’ was mainly about this breakup including the lines "Love has gone away / took the rings off my fingers / and there’s nothing left to say / but oh, how I need him baby."

"They’re not heterosexual concerns in that songs. I don’t make a deal of it but when I mention a pronoun, its gender is all important. At the end of ‘Street Hassle’ that person really exists. He did take the rings right off my fingers and I do miss him.

"I have such a heavy resentment thing because of all the prejudices against me being gay. How can anybody gay keep their sanity.

"I just wouldn’t want listeners to be under a false impression. I want them to know, if they’re liking a man, that it’s a gay one - from top to bottom.

"You want to know the real Lou Reed. Turn around. Now bend over."

Lou Reed married Sylvia Morales in 1980 after meeting her in a gay SM club. He continued to release his solo albums and towards the end of the 1980s he collaborated with John Cale on ‘Songs for ‘Drella’ - their tribute to Andy Warhol who died in 1987. The early 1990s saw a short-lived Velvets reunion and Lou Reed divorced Sylvia. He is currently dating Laurie Anderson and apparently refuses to discuss his past relationships particularly Rachel who is rumoured to have died around this time.

"You’ll never see those faces again / The past keeps knock knock knocking on my door / And I don’t want to hear it anymore" - Halloween Parade by Lou Reed

More about the Transformer album

Lou Reed (born 2nd March 1942)