I thought it was like a film
reviewed but never seen
where everybody played themselves
as a drama king or queen
The music was overwhelming
glittering and thin
solemn and shabby like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
I visualised the flashbacks:
school, punk rock, success,
parties, too much of everything
the clichés, the candles, the mess
Lucian in the scene with David
Brian in a tux
A copy of Ritz in Zanzibar
Old Hollywood redux
Ossie’s last collection
Biba’s closing sale
A little more rouge on the powdered cheeks
but the base is pale
This is our last chance for goodbye
Let the music begin
Shining and soaring like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
It ended with a motorbike
a search for evidence
poring over old photographs
to make it all fake sense
Glamorous in its own way
Solemn and shabby like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
Johnny’s wearing brothel-creepers
Malcolm’s round the block
Adam’s in a Jarman film
The look is ‘Let It Rock’
A Johnson’s leather jacket
Hair by Keith at Smile
All you need to make it big
is sex and style
This is our last chance for goodbye
Let the music begin
Shining and soaring like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
2008. One of three funeral songs in this collection (see also ‘The survivors’ and ‘Your funny uncle’). Lynne Easton, a friend and collaborator of ours, died suddenly. At her funeral, the coffin was brought in on the sidecar of a motorbike with her leather jacket lying across it. From an early age, she had been a music fan and in the early eighties became a successful make-up artist and part of the London music scene. Leopardskin was one of her trademark looks. The two bridges are ‘flashbacks’ to her inspirations in the early seventies and then her emergence on the scene in the early eighties: Lucian Freud and David Hockney; Ritz was a fashion magazine launched by David Bailey in the mid-seventies (on the record I mistakenly sang Blitz but I’ve shamelessly corrected it here); Zanzibar was a fashionable restaurant and bar; Ossie Clark was a brilliant but doomed fashion designer in the seventies; Biba was a boutique with a signature art deco style which took over a Kensington department store in 1973 and crashed (I went to the closing sale) – there was a famous Biba poster which pictured a young woman’s face with rouged cheeks over a pale base; Johnny Rotten sometimes wore the ‘brothelcreeper’ shoes associated with Teddy boys; Malcolm McLaren was the presiding genius with his then wife Vivienne Westwood – their first shop was called Let It Rock; Adam Ant starred in Derek Jarman’s punk film, Jubilee; rock stars bought their clothes from Johnson’s; Keith at Smile was court hairdresser to the scene for several decades; ‘Work on those three S’s – Subversion, Sex and Style’, Malcolm McLaren advised Adam Ant. The funeral ended with the coffin departing on the motorbike sidecar (Lynne loved bikes and bikers) and everyone adjourned to a nearby pub where her favourite music played and photographs of her glory days were scattered on the tables.