Paul Gorman

What is your name and where are you from?
Paul Gorman, from London.

Describe your style in three words
All in place.

How did you first discover Barney Bubbles’ work?
I listened to lots of different music growing up as a teenager in the mid-seventies. At that time, it’s a bit like now in that you kind of listened to everything. Chart music, Marc Bolan, reggae. If you went to youth clubs or whatever, you danced and they played soul as well.

I used to follow this band called Hawkwind who were very underground. They had naked dancers and psychedelic lights. They were kind of post-psychedelic, like an English version of the Grateful Dead. They did 10-20 minute songs that were just based on rhythms and they used lots of ring oscillators and all those kind of things to create a psychedelic experience.

Barney Bubbles designed for them and I liked their posters and visual imagery just as much as their music. A couple of years later, when punk broke in ’76-’77, Barney started designing for Stiff Records. He designed the Damned’s first albums and Generation X’s first single. He designed a lot for punk back then and he seemed to me to be really interesting. I was really into design, and visuals, and the design studio Hipgnosis were very much aligned with Pink Floyd and those kind of stadium rock bands, but they wouldn’t design for new-wave and punk and post-punk, whereas for Barney Bubbles it didn’t really matter. It was just about excellent design matching excellent music and that’s why I liked him.

What did you find most compelling about his work?
It was quite often that the music he designed for was good. The first four or five Elvis Costello albums, they were really amazing, they were really surprising. The thing that grabs people about his work – and I only learnt this retrospectively – is its immediacy. It really grabs you. And what he trained as was a commercial artist, which was basically to sell products, so he designed packaging mainly. He actually designed the Strongbow archer logo in the ‘60s, and the thing about successful branding is that it has to engage you straight away. If you want to sell the product, baby, you’ve got to engage the consumer. So in a weird way, he flipped that in a very underground way and so to sell records or to grab listeners’ attention, he drew on that experience. When you look at his work you get an engagement and that was what he was trained to do. That’s why people loved him. Sometimes the best thing about the record would be the design, and they knew that Barney’s work would enhance the offer. He redesigned the NME, and I was a keen reader of NME at the time, as were lots of people, and that immediately got better because it was more readable and more immediate. It had stylish use of photography and logos and layout. So I was just responding as a punter, so that was it, that’s what grabbed me.

What made you begin to trace his story for the Reasons to be Cheerful book?
I’m a collector and a hoarder and I’d kept stuff from my early to mid-teens when I first started going to gigs and consuming music. I had a body of work which were Barney Bubbles designs, whether it was a Hawkwind album from 1972 or an Elvis Costello album from 1981. I had some posters and I just knew a bit about him. I knew he directed Ghost Town by the Specials and I really loved his work. It seems one of my missions is to throw light on activities and people which are I think are important but may be under-appreciated. I think it’s been proven that he was really important to the development of graphic design in this country. I was talking to my wife - we had a late-night record playing session one night – and I showed her a few things by Barney and she really responded. She’s a graphic designer too and she said, there should be a book about this guy. So that’s how it came about and she ended up designing the book.

Talk me through the process of gathering together all the information.
Initially, I thought an exhibition would be better, but it became apparent that a book was needed. He didn’t sign anything, his work is incredibly diverse, across furniture, to paintings, to album sleeves, so without really decent, substantial information, an exhibition would be a bit diffuse. So the book came about. And the first person I knew I had to talk to was someone that I’d always admired. Jake Riviera is an extraordinary bloke who shook things up from the mid-70s onwards. Somebody else said about him: the thing about burning bridges is that Jake liked to stand in the middle, while they were getting burned. He just wanted to shake things up. He formed this revolutionary record label called Stiff and employed Barney. He was basically Barney’s patron. He and Bubbles worked together a lot and were very close. He’s a very private person, but we met up and he was kind of wary at the beginning, but he liked my book The Look, which is about music and fashion. Again, he’s a very visual person and he loves style and rock and roll and clothes. He was justifiably wary because this was his dear friend. But afterwards, he went "yep, it’s fine." And I asked him what tipped the balance and he said it was because I was wearing a spotted scarf, like him.

He spoke to Nick Lowe who he managed for a long time and who benefitted greatly from Barney’s work and, of course, his design for Cracking Up is on the pink shirt in the Fred Perry x Barney Bubbles collection. Nick Lowe said he was the closest thing to a genius we’ll ever know, so let’s get involved. Jake and I established a solid bond. It’s a cliché to say it was a labour of love, but I think I got a good response from the people that had been carefully nurturing their memories of him. I got to know his sister and his son. It was like detective work really, because he was quite a private person himself. He was quite eccentric and he often used to give stuff away so it’s like putting pieces of the jigsaw together to come up with the book. 

Do you have a favourite Barney Bubbles piece?
I do! It’s a poster that I clearly remember seeing in Camden Town in North London, in 1975 because I went to the gig. It’s a gig for Hawkwind and this band called the Pink Fairies, who were really hairy. I was a big fan of Hawkwind, and there were various other people on this bill. It was on a Sunday afternoon at the Roundhouse, from 3-11 at night. Retrospectively, I met loads of people who used to go there. John Lydon, Jah Wobble, Shane McGowan… It was a bit like a youth club for teenage dropouts really. He did this great poster which was of a Native American chief, which is kind of psychedelic, with writing in red and green. This was my favourite because I was at the gig with my friend Matthew, who I still know and he’s still got the ticket from the gig. 

What was the first song you played on repeat?
'Don’t you Worry ‘bout a Thing' by Stevie Wonder. It was so great to hear it because it’s got that kind of Latin thing, he’s kind of babbling at the beginning. It's such a great dancer as well.

What sort of music defines the teenage you?
Probably quite eclectic. I listened to a lot of Bowie, Alice Cooper, but I also listened to reggae. My brother bought me my first Wailers album for my 12^th birthday. I listened to a lot of soul because I’ve always liked dancing. I like those English underground eccentrics, like Hawkwind, Kevin Ayers, Kevin Coyne, Robert Wyatt, Henry Cow, Slapp Happy. They all played some quite left-field, quite bonkers stuff, but it’s got that sort of English innocence about it that I really like.

A song from your favourite album?
My favourite album is a compilation album called 'Your Last Chance: Frontline 2'. Frontline was the reggae label set up by Virgin in the ‘70s. The song is by The Gladiators, called Jah Works.

A song you wished you’d written?
A drama-laden disco song from ’77 which was remixed by Frankie Knuckles and became big on the Voguing scene: 'Let No Man Put Asunder' by First Choice. Mary J Blige covered it later and Hot Chip have sampled it.

Which British icon inspires you?
Anthony Burgess, the great British writer. I just really admire him and think he’s very funny. He’s my hero.

What was the last piece of music you bought?
'Bad Liar' by Selena Gomez.

Best song to bring people together?
'Let’s Make a Better World to Live in' by Dr John.

Your all-time favourite gig?
Frank Sinatra at the Albert Hall in 1970, or Nina Simone at the Palladium in 1978. 

Best love song of all-time?
'She Makes My Day' by Robert Palmer.

A song that you like that people wouldn’t expect?
'Roar' by Katy Perry.

Any new musicians that you’re into at the minute?
A New York artist called Delia Gonzalez. Her latest album is just amazing. She’s an artist, sculptor, performance artist. It’s kind of contemporary classic, but it really gets its claws into you.