Jamie Reid, the artist and graphic designer whose collage work for the Intercourse Pistols was a central pillar of the punk aesthetic, has died aged 76.
His gallerist John Marchant confirmed his demise alongside Reid’s household. In a press release he was described as an “artist, iconoclast, anarchist, punk, hippie, insurgent and romantic. Jamie leaves behind a beloved daughter Rowan, a granddaughter Rose, and an infinite legacy.”
Born in London in 1947, Reid enrolled at Wimbledon Artwork College aged 16, later shifting to Croydon Artwork College the place he met Intercourse Pistols’ future supervisor Malcolm McLaren.
Jamie Reid. {Photograph}: John Marchant Gallery
Reid’s finest identified work was for the covers of a collection of Intercourse Pistols releases: the pink and yellow textual content of their solely album By no means Thoughts the Bollocks, Right here’s the Intercourse Pistols; God Save the Queen, the hit single banned by the BBC that includes a Cecil Beaton picture portrait of Queen Elizabeth II defaced by Reid; the smashed empty image body for Fairly Vacant; and a doctored caricature for Holidays within the Solar.
His poster for the one Anarchy within the UK, that includes a torn union jack, was one other picture that outlined the iconoclasm of the punk period. He additionally created quite a few different designs for singles – one for God Save the Queen includes a security pin by means of the Queen’s lip plus swastikas for eyes, whereas an alternate French-market cowl for Fairly Vacant featured buses exhibiting the locations Nowhere and Boredom. Reid additionally labored on imagery for the Intercourse Pistols movie The Nice Rock’n’Roll Swindle.
His lettering mimicked the cut-and-paste type of an anonymised ransom observe, a method he first developed with the countercultural publication Suburban Press, which he started in 1970 alongside Jeremy Brook and Nigel Edwards. He was impressed by the choice politics of the late Sixties, and did graphic design for the 1974 guide Leaving the twentieth Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist Worldwide, which compiled translated texts by French situationist writers.
Reid defined his ethos in 2015: “Our tradition is geared in direction of enslavement – for individuals to carry out pre-ordained features, significantly within the office. I’ve all the time tried to encourage individuals to consider that and to do one thing about it.”
His web site described his work as mixing “gnosticism and dissent”, with spirituality additionally a significant part.
Gallery assistants put up Jamie Reid’s work as a part of the Stolper-Wilson assortment of Intercourse Pistols memorabilia in 2022. {Photograph}: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Pictures
His artwork is held in main establishments comparable to Tate Britain, New York’s Museum of Fashionable Artwork and Houston’s Museum of Advantageous Artwork, and in addition to the well-known collages, he additionally produced a whole bunch of summary work.
In later years, he collaborated with Shepard Fairey – the road artist finest identified for the Obama “Hope” picture – and supported the Occupy and Pussy Riot actions. In 2017, he created a riff on his swastika-eyed God Save the Queen paintings that includes Donald Trump, entitled God Save Us All.
He additionally collaborated with the punk historian Jon Savage on a guide of his work, Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid, revealed in 1987. “I first met Jamie in late 1978,” Savage says. “I keep in mind strolling upstairs in a home, and there have been these trunks filled with Intercourse Pistols paintings. The mixed influence of that made an indelible impression – it was like discovering the pot of gold on the finish of the rainbow. This was one thing essential that wanted to be preserved.”
Savage pinpoints Reid’s type as containing “advanced concepts in an apparently easy format. It’s not black and white, whereas quite a lot of punk iconography was – right here was one thing that was intensely vibrant and really, quite simple”.
He mentioned that Reid’s grounding in radical politics gave “an added factor of sophistication. Compared to a number of the quite tawdry and imitative punk graphics, Jamie’s got here from a deep place.”
“We got down to destroy music as a lot as create it,” says Child Congo Powers speaking about the Gun Club, a riotous punk-blues band he co-founded with Jeffrey Lee Pierce in 1979.
Powers additionally went on to be a guitarist for the Cramps and Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds, a journey he paperwork in his new memoir, Some New Type of Kick: a juicy and humble account of a joyful but traumatic life spent in three of probably the most beloved different bands of the Nineteen Eighties. In addition to a nod to a Cramps monitor, it’s an apt title for a person who spent a lot of his life in perpetual search of endorphin-spiking kicks. “Discovering pleasure was my holy grail,” he says. “The crazier and extra enjoyable, the higher.”
Powers by no means got down to be a musician. First he was only a zealous fan. Rising up in a Mexican-American household in La Puente, California, he would take the bus into Hollywood at age 15 to go Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, a mecca for glam rock. As a younger homosexual man who wore customised platform boots with rhinestone lightning bolts on, it was a haven. “Bowie and glam rock was my riot,” he says. “It was additionally a window into my budding sexuality. It gave me freedom. Being one thing that folks and mainstream America thought was so outrageous – androgyny, bisexuality, aliens from outer area – it was excellent for me.”
Nevertheless, it was throughout this formative interval that he additionally skilled a life-changing tragedy. In 1976 his cousin Theresa, alongside together with her good friend, have been murdered: shot within the head and located in an alley with no clear motive. The case stays unsolved. “It was a serious turning level,” he says. “She was my confidant and one in all my finest mates. It modified my whole household. It made me assume life will not be price a lot, and I’ve to take issues into my very own palms and expertise every part.”
Music, partying, medicine and intercourse have been intertwined in his quest to extract all life needed to provide. Residing with members of the electro-punk outfit the Screamers, he paints an image of an inclusive and experimental scene. “Intercourse was nice. Love was dumb. Sleaze was paramount,” he says. “There was no disgrace concerned. We have been very open-minded about our otherness, and one another’s otherness.”
His rabid fandom, which he writes about with endearing attraction and adolescent zest, led him to turn into president of the Ramones fanclub. Then he took off for New York. He lived with Lydia Lunch of the no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and was so broke he ate out of dumpsters and would scour the ground for change at CBGB’s. When New York lastly defeated him he returned to LA. There he met Jeffrey Lee Pierce – one other superfan, who ran the Blondie fanclub – who invited him to affix a band. “I had no excuse to not, besides that I couldn’t play,” says Powers. “If somebody believed in me that I might do it, I used to be going to provide it a attempt.”
Sipping coconuts with Nick Cave in the course of the recording of The Good Son in Sao Paolo, Brazil, 1989. {Photograph}: Child Congo Powers archive
He describes their act as a mixture of “leisure and punishment”, with Pierce a wild and antagonistic frontman. Powers’ distinctive model of enjoying – which he describes as “cumbersome” and “like blocks of sound somewhat than easy transitions between chords” – caught the eye of the Cramps, one in all his favorite bands. When their guitarist Poison Ivy requested what he would sacrifice with the intention to be part of the band, Powers, ever the teenage fan, provided to chop off a finger. He received the gig with out having to amputate. Would he even have achieved it if requested? “I actually would,” he says with out hesitation. “I performed slide guitar, so I assumed, nicely, I might simply put a slide over it.”
It was an ideal match. “The second I noticed the Cramps, I noticed my tribe,” he says. “They let themselves be free. There was no restrict to sexuality, no judgment, simply encouragement.” Regardless of being a gifted and versatile participant, Powers is modest and credit others as being his impressed tutors. “Ivy advised me I ought to play the guitar prefer it’s a horn,” he says. “Squawking, honking and punctuating. Then each on occasion you get let go and wail. I assumed that was genius.”
Through the making of the band’s second album, Psychedelic Jungle, they compelled sleep deprivation upon themselves “so our animal minds would drive our artistic impulses”, he says. Pushing himself so far as he might go grew to become each a private and inventive mantra: “The extra chaos, the extra magic.”
However once they grew to become locked in a bitter royalties battle with their document label, the Cramps refused to put in writing new songs. With tensions mounting Powers grew annoyed and returned to the Gun Membership in 1983. Drink and medicines had all the time performed a job in that band however issues started to escalate. “We have been very likeminded about medicine,” Powers says of him and Pierce. “They have been part of our relationship. Alcohol was an enormous half too. Getting as drunk as attainable to let the spirits takeover. That was crucial.”
Immediately, with many years of sobriety now behind him, Powers feels he was masking the ache of Theresa’s homicide. “It was trauma,” he says. “So a part of my ‘I’m going to expertise every part’ perspective become issues like alcoholism and drug habit. Journey and wanderlust was simply self-medicating. Medicine, particularly heroin, at first, have been releasing for me. I used to be a shy child. I used to be a traumatised child. I used to be out and in of the closet at any whim, so there was confusion, and medicines calmed every part down.”
Powers on stage in 2022. {Photograph}: Scott Dudelson/Getty Photos
Seemingly a magnet for chaos, pulverising noise and unpredictable drug addicts, Powers quickly discovered himself within the Unhealthy Seeds. It was on the peak of Nick Cave’s heroin habit, when he was residing in Berlin and will usually be discovered strutting round with a handgun. Powers performed on the albums Tender Prey and The Good Son, with the previous an particularly torrid time. “Professionally I used to be on the up however everybody was in a downward spiral and crashing,” he says. “Once I began writing about this era I used to be like, ‘Wow, that was fucking terrible.’” He writes about an afterparty that ended up in his resort room the place “folks have been fucking and taking pictures up”; the police raided the resort after Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten began throwing glasses into the swimming pool.
Quickly Powers’ religious house, the Gun Membership, was calling once more. “I used to be caught between the satan and the deep blue sea,” Powers writes. “Between Nick Cave and Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Each immeasurably sensible and tortured artists, each extraordinarily fucked-up, high-maintenance people.” When Cave’s then girlfriend Bunny OD’d and died, it proved a second of readability for Powers. He entered Narcotics Nameless. Bunny’s loss of life, he says, “introduced again all the emotions of senselessness, frustration, and anger that had overwhelmed me when Theresa was murdered”.
The Gun Membership lastly petered out in 1995 and a 12 months later Pierce died of a mind haemorrhage, age 37. Powers ends his e book in tribute to Pierce, even skipping over the band he’s fronted since 2009, the superb garage-rock groove outfit the Pink Monkey Birds.
“The primary thrust of every part was my relationship with Jeffrey,” he says. “There are numerous methods folks have a look at Jeffrey: drug addict, personal worst enemy, proficient, tortured, all considerably true, however he was additionally an unbelievable good friend, trainer, dreamer and superb visionary. I felt privileged to be in his firm whereas he was on earth. I owe every part to him. I miss him. Simply from our fandom, we created magic.”
On the morning of the day the Queen dies, the artwork collectors Paul Stolper and Andrew Wilson occur to be observing an image of her face. It’s a bit of card, smaller than a vinyl LP, which artist Jamie Reid produced for a live performance by the Intercourse Pistols. He took the classic Cecil Beaton portrait, customised it with a security pin by way of her lip, printed it on a union flag, and later hole-punched it for potential use as bunting on the band’s infamous Jubilee boat trip on 7 June 1977, though it was by no means used. That is the piece that seeded the world’smost extraordinary assortment of visible iconography regarding punk rock’s most vital band. In the present day it fills a room within the west London storage facility of Sotheby’s, previous to going up for public sale subsequent month.
It started in 1990. Stolper and Wilson have been visiting Christie’s public sale home to see a portray by Patrick Caulfield. Stolper is now a profitable artwork vendor and Wilson was till not too long ago a senior curator at Tate Britain, however again then they have been younger males with straitened budgets and the Caulfield was wildly unattainable. Earlier than leaving empty-handed, although, they half-heartedly checked out a sale of rock and pop memorabilia, and the bunting card grabbed their consideration.
“We thought wow, we are able to afford this, it speaks to us when it comes to visible language, and it’s steeped in Twentieth-century cultural historical past,” Stolper remembers. “We understood early on what we needed to gather and learn how to do it. We have been on the proper second to construct a very vital assortment, and that not often occurs. You couldn’t put this assortment collectively now.”
A lot of the gadgets within the Stolper Wilson assortment value simply tens or lots of of kilos to accumulate. Within the Nineteen Nineties, expensively fascinating artefacts reminiscent of signed information and guitars didn’t curiosity them, whereas the issues they did care about – posters, flyers, letters – didn’t excite punk collectors. The truth is, there isn’t any music within the assortment in any respect. “Intercourse Pistols was not like some other band, some other state of affairs, as a result of proper from the start it was about artwork as life lived,” Wilson says. “Sure, it was music, but it surely was additionally a couple of approach of being on the earth.”
The 2 mates visited public sale homes and memorabilia merchants whereas scouring file store partitions for Blu-Tacked previous handbills. As soon as phrase acquired round, characters from the band’s interior orbit started to come back ahead with gadgets to promote. “I’d come residence with items of paper and my spouse would say, ‘What have you ever purchased?’” Stolper recollects, laughing. “And I’d say: ‘That is actually vital. It’s the primary Pistols press launch!’”
Comical look … Paintings from the Stolper-Wilson assortment. {Photograph}: David Levene/The Guardian
Though Stolper and Wilson may by no means be mistaken for ageing punks, they have been followers on the time. Wilson, who was 14 in 1976, remembers shopping for God Save the Queen within the week of launch. Stolper, who was 11, was dwelling in Sloane Sq., not removed from the boutique Sex, owned by the Intercourse Pistols’ supervisor, Malcolm McLaren. “I’d stroll up and down the Kings Street and see all of the punks. I used to be so younger that I didn’t perceive the politics of it, however I acquired the tradition as a result of I used to be proper there.”
By 1996, the gathering was giant sufficient to benefit an exhibition, titled “I Groaned With Ache” … Intercourse, Seditionaries and the Intercourse Pistols, within the Eagle Gallery, above a pub in Clerkwenwell. Stolper and Wilson selected clear white frames on clean partitions to sign that this was about artwork, not rock. Guests included a number of of the Younger British Artists, who have been usually in comparison with punks then, although much less so now. “Each up to date artist I do know got here to that present,” Stolper says. “Everybody our age was totally conscious of the visible imagery.” Damien Hirst even named a quadtych of medication cupboards after Intercourse Pistols songs.
McLaren got here, too, and was overwhelmed by this monument to his youthful endeavours. He had moved on so rapidly after the Intercourse Pistols resulted in explosive acrimony in 1978 that he had by no means thought to curate this era of his life. “It was a really ephemeral tradition,” Wilson says. “These items weren’t as valued then as they’re now.”
Phrases of fact … A be aware by Malcolm McLaren. {Photograph}: David Levene/The Guardian
The collectors sat down with him for a protracted dialog. “We weren’t serious about asking what was Sid actually like?” Stolper says. “We needed to ask, the place did this come from? We completed the interview with an ideal query: ‘So, Malcolm, did you suppose it was artwork?’ There was a protracted silence, then he mentioned: ‘In a approach, it was larger than artwork.’”
If Pistol, Danny Boyle’s recent TV series, was the story of a rock band, then this assortment is the story of an thought: a collaborative multimedia artwork venture during which Reid and McLaren, who met at Croydon artwork faculty, have been not less than as important as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. “All of them introduced their very own distinctive visions and the Intercourse Pistols was the pot that everybody threw the whole lot into,” Stolper says. Most of the photographs, ostensibly created to advertise gigs and information, maintain up as artworks in their very own proper. You can see them with out having heard a be aware of the Intercourse Pistols’ music and know that they represented a radically important second in British youth tradition. “That is all on the service of one thing else,” Wilson says, “and figuring out what that one thing else is is the intriguing a part of it.”
An artefact from the Stolper-Wilson assortment. {Photograph}: David Levene/The Guardian
The 2 males circle the room, proudly explaining the tales behind their favorite artefacts. The gathering defamiliarises well-known imagery by contextualising it because the product of high-speed, low-budget experimentation. Two flyers for reveals on the 100 Membership in 1976, simply 10 weeks aside, present how Helen Wellington-Lloyd’s unique block-capital emblem led to Reid’s ransom-letter collage. Reid’s tatty Lion Model train e book charts the venture’s closing days, with sketched concepts for the brutally cynical 1980 compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse and scribbled reminders to chase up cash owed by McLaren. Pink lyric sheets for Vicious’s first band, the Flowers of Romance, reveal surprisingly delicate penmanship, each i dotted with a flamboyant globe. The huge poster for the band’s first and solely studio album, By no means Thoughts the Bollocks, Right here’s the Intercourse Pistols, is the copy that Vicious pinned to the wall of his room in New York’s Chelsea lodge earlier than his loss of life in 1979. It nonetheless bears the stains from when he cleaned his heroin syringes.
Foolish factor: a poster stained with Sid Vicious’s blood. {Photograph}: David Levene/The Guardian
As for McLaren, his dedication to position the band in a protracted custom of English dissidents and wild boysis vividly expressed in his hand-lettered poster for his or her closing UK live performance, on Christmas Day 1977. “This true and soiled story has BEEN CONTINUING THROUGHOUT 200 years of teenage anarchy,” he wrote beside a George Cruikshank illustration of Dickensian urchins. McLaren and Reid’s shared love of situationism led to the détournement of a poster for the Belgian vacationer trade into an commercial for the caustic single Holidays within the Solar. “It’s taking one thing acquainted and presenting it in a approach that adjustments your perspective to the world you reside in,” Wilson says. “All the pieces was about not essentially a refusal however a reversal.”
Maybe the funniest merchandise within the assortment is the press package put collectively by Warner Bros Information for the US launch of By no means Thoughts the Bollocks, with its inside-out T-shirt and comic-strip retelling of the band’s story. Its company travesty of the Intercourse Pistols’ underdog aesthetic foreshadowed all the following ersatz appropriations of punk signifiers, from promoting to boutique lodge rooms. “The imagery is rehashed always,” Stolper says. “If there’s a brand new younger pop star and he’s the ‘insurgent’, there would be the punk perspective. It’s rebelling by numbers. That is the touchstone of all of that.”
Punk queen … Elizabeth II is a recurring picture within the assortment. {Photograph}: David Levene/The Guardian
Stolper and Wilson thought of their work carried out by 2004, after they acquired the unique lyrics to Holidays within the Solar, No Emotions and Submission. That yr they held two extra exhibitions, on the Hospital gallery in Covent Backyard and Urbis in Manchester. Within the spirit of punk, they felt that it was changing into too huge and business, in order that they by no means did one other. “The viewers on the Eagle was an artwork viewers and the viewers on the Hospital was everyone,” Wilson says.
They did, nevertheless, mortgage gadgets to museums around the globe. The work of taking care of the gathering and travelling to oversee the set up is one purpose why they’ve chosen to promote it. Having made the troublesome choice to interrupt it up, they now speak about it like proud mother and father watching their youngsters fly the nest. “It’s acquired to steer one other life now,” Wilson says. “The arc of amassing inevitably results in dispersal – this sense of letting it out on the earth so different folks can have the enjoyable that we’ve had.”
This, then, is their final likelihood to see the gathering in full and mirror on the story it tells in regards to the Intercourse Pistols, and about their very own lives. “Once I was a child the music appeared actually vital,” Wilson says. “Now I discover it fairly onerous to hearken to a few of the music. However this” – he sweeps a hand across the room – “I nonetheless discover endlessly fascinating and enriching. It’s extra than simply the music. And it’s extra than simply the imagery. It’s complete artwork.”
The DJ Tim Westwood is going through allegations from a lady who says he first had intercourse together with her when she was 14 and he was in his 30s.
The lady claims Westwood had intercourse together with her on a number of events within the early Nineteen Nineties, when the age of consent in England and Wales was, as it’s now, 16. “I sit right here immediately and face what I’ve been working from for a very long time,” she mentioned.
Her testimony varieties a part of a joint Guardian/BBC investigation that may elevate recent questions over the behaviour of the previous Radio 1 DJ.
They make new allegations regarding separate incidents of alleged abuse, misconduct and inappropriate behaviour that date from 1990 to 2020.
The Guardian put the entire allegations to Westwood, who’s now 64. He didn’t reply.
He strenuously denied the allegations of the seven girls who featured within the unique investigation in April.
Attorneys appearing for Westwood mentioned on the time that he was a well-respected and extremely profitable DJ. They mentioned he denied of their entirety the intense allegations being made towards him, saying they had been false and defamatory, and he needed to clarify that he didn’t behave within the method described.
In 2020, Westwood mentioned claims of inappropriate behaviour made towards him on the time on social media had been fabricated, false and with out basis.
In a press release, he mentioned: “I can categorically say that I’ve by no means had an inappropriate relationship with anybody beneath the age of 18.”
4 girls who’ve determined to inform their tales after the primary investigation say they had been beneath 18 when the incidents they allege occurred. An additional six girls say they had been younger adults on the time.
The lady who alleges she was 14 when the DJ first had intercourse together with her describes herself as having been a susceptible teenager, and says she had needed to place the expertise “in a field and throw away the important thing”. After listening to the testimony of others, she says, she felt compelled to inform her personal story.
Now in her 40s, she says she desires girls with related tales to really feel much less alone. “It wasn’t their fault, they’re to not blame that they obtained taken benefit of and there’s no disgrace in any of that. None no matter,” she mentioned.
A second girl says she was 16 in 1997 when when Westwood began a sexual relationship together with her that she alleges was unhealthy and controlling.
Two different girls accuse Westwood of sexually assaulting them after they had been of their mid-teens. One says she was 15 and dealing for Westwood’s promotional “road group” in 1999 when he kissed her, whereas one other alleges she was in 12 months 9 at college when the DJ grabbed her breasts at an under-18s membership evening he was acting at in 2006.
Undated photograph of Westwood with Talia*, one of many girls making allegations towards him. {Photograph}: BBC
An additional girl alleges she was 20 when the DJ compelled his penis into her mouth as she resisted in 2012. This seems to represent a critical sexual offence.
Different girls say they skilled predatory sexual encounters after they had been younger adults. One girl who labored for the DJ when she was 18 in 2003 alleges that he took benefit of his place as her boss and a a lot older man to have intercourse together with her. One other described two sexual encounters with the DJ after they met in 2019 as “uncomfortable”, as a result of she was 19 and the DJ was in his 60s and older than her mother and father.
4 additional girls allege different inappropriate encounters.
Other than two associates, the ten girls aren’t identified to one another and have by no means met. Not one of the girls – who’re all black – reported their interactions to the police. All however one have requested to stay nameless and have been given pseudonyms.
One of many girls mentioned she thought racial discrimination meant that black ladies and younger girls had been too usually handled like sexualised adults as an alternative of youngsters and younger individuals.
Westwood has been one of many best-known names in hip-hop and rap within the UK for the previous 40 years. He started internet hosting BBC Radio 1’s first rap present in 1994, welcoming the largest rappers on the earth – from Public Enemy to Jay-Z – on to his present.
He has courted a level of controversy. In 1999, he was injured in a drive-by taking pictures, with one bullet going by way of his arm and one other by way of a seat of the automobile he was in.
After virtually 20 years Westwood left the BBC in 2013. He moved to Capital Xtra, however after allegations towards him surfaced in April his employer World mentioned he was stepping down from the present “until further notice”.
Final week, the BBC/Guardian investigation revealed that the company was reviewing six complaints against Westwood, having beforehand mentioned it had no information of any complaints. On Tuesday, it mentioned it could publish an inner investigation into the allegations within the next two weeks.
A spokesperson for Westwood mentioned in April that there had been no official or unofficial complaints towards him in his profession.
The ladies
Esther
Esther: ‘I used to be a little bit of a troubled teen … I simply went by way of with it, mainly.’ {Photograph}: BBC
Esther* says she met Westwood in 1990, when as a hip-hop-loving 14-year-old she would go to the Arch nightclub in Vauxhall, south London. She says she and her associates grew to become regulars and the DJ would allow them to in totally free. She remembers him asking her age. “I mentioned ‘I’m 14’ and he didn’t look shocked or something,” she says. He mentioned it wouldn’t be an issue if she continued coming to the nights, she says.
She says he requested for her quantity, saying he would go away her identify on the door. He referred to as and requested her to fulfill him, she says, and she or he remembers being picked up from Hammersmith station and being taken to a flat. She says he obtained her a drink of juice, they talked after which he kissed her.
“I used to be like, OK, I don’t have an issue with that. After which it progressed from there,” she says. “We had intercourse.” In England and Wales the age of sexual consent is 16.
Trying again, Esther says she didn’t really feel she had the facility to say no. On the time she thought it was “regular”. “I used to be a little bit of a troubled teen … I simply went by way of with it, mainly,” she says.
She says this occurred a number of occasions, and the DJ would name her on her house landline after her mum left for a nightshift and organize to fulfill her for intercourse, which she says felt like a “soiled little secret”.
“I form of thought it was regular however that’s as a result of I didn’t perceive the gravity of the scenario. It wasn’t a relationship and it wasn’t about love, it was only a factor, and a factor you couldn’t focus on with anyone.”
When she was 16, she says, she began a relationship and subsequently reduce contact with the DJ. Her ex-boyfriend has informed the BBC that Esther informed him about her alleged sexual encounters with Westwood after they began going out.
“I believe once I obtained to the age the place I knew it was unsuitable and I ended, though I’d stopped … there’s nonetheless a label that hung over you,” Esther says. “If you considered even addressing it, you recognize, you’re scared – who’s gonna imagine you, who’s gonna be in your facet?”
She says it feels just like the DJ groomed her, and describes Westwood as a “predator” and herself as his “prey”.
She says holding this secret had a big impact on her – she tried to kill herself thrice. She determined to contact the BBC after seeing the documentary Tim Westwood: Abuse of Power on BBC Three.
Requested how she feels now about her expertise, she says: “Disgusted. Offended. Upset. Soiled. Yeah, soiled. I want I might fake it by no means occurred nevertheless it did.”
Lydia
Lydia: ‘On the time I didn’t really feel like I might say no.’ {Photograph}: BBC
Lydia* says she was 16 and at sixth-form school in London in 1997 when she met Westwood at a membership in Streatham. She says Westwood, then in his early 40s, requested for her quantity and referred to as her the following day. “I suppose if you’re 16 and a half all of it appeared actually thrilling,” she says. “We had intercourse and issues just about moved on from there.”
She alleges she was in a sexual relationship with him for about 18 months. She says she was susceptible and residing on her personal on the time and he knew she was beneath the age of 18 as a result of she was at sixth-form school and he inspired her to go to college.
She says she felt Westwood grew to become controlling and claims he would ask for the code for her landline voicemails to take heed to her messages, would touch upon what she was carrying and would flip up unannounced.
She says he would take her with him when he travelled to different cities to DJ. “There was various disruptions to my schooling,” she says. “And on the time I didn’t really feel like I might say no.”
She says she would usually go to the BBC, the place Westwood began his rap present in 1994. A BBC spokesperson mentioned that in 1997 it was normal process for individuals working in BBC buildings to sign up friends, and that the broadcaster launched a frequently up to date little one safety and safeguarding coverage in 2004 and a customer coverage in 2010.
A spokesperson mentioned: “At present, the BBC’s safeguarding preparations have by no means been stronger and are frequently up to date consistent with greatest apply. The place under-18s are permitted entry to BBC premises, beneath our safeguarding coverage they are going to all the time be accompanied by a chaperone and are by no means left alone.”
Lydia says that by the top of the connection her psychological well being had deteriorated to the extent that she tried to take her personal life. “I used to be fairly depressed, I wasn’t spending any time actually with my associates by then. More often than not I’d spend with him.”
She provides: “I really feel actually unhappy for that 16-year-old lady. I really feel I used to be very naive. I used to be simply swept up by the entire thing … I want the adults who had been round him … had stepped in to do one thing as a result of by the point the connection had ended I used to be 18 years previous, however I wasn’t 18 once I met him and I used to be very susceptible.”
Her brother has informed the BBC that he confronted Westwood as a result of he was indignant concerning the relationship, whereas one other pal has mentioned she remembers the psychological impression it had on Lydia.
Lydia says she needed to inform her story after Westwood “categorically denied” having any inappropriate relationships with anybody beneath the age of 18 in 2020. “At that time I believed: truly, that’s a lie,” she says. “I used to be actually beneath the age of 18 when he met me.”
Lydia says she had believed Westwood was in his 20s, till she noticed his passport. “I opened it and … he was born in 1957 and I believed: oh, that’s virtually as previous as my mom. And that was surprising. I felt actually sick.”
She provides: “He didn’t power me to have intercourse with him, it was by selection, nevertheless it didn’t really feel like a wholesome sexual relationship as a result of he was a grown man and I used to be a youngster.”
Paige
Paige: ‘Younger black girls are hyper-sexualised from a really younger age.’ {Photograph}: BBC
Paige was in 12 months 9 at college, aged 13 or 14, when she says she met the DJ in 2006. She had gone to an under-18s evening at a nightclub in Cardiff the place Westwood was enjoying.
She remembers the evening being a “college disco” evening with everybody dressing up in uniforms. Paige says she received a dance competitors and was informed to go to the DJ sales space. She says that when she requested Westwood to signal her shirt, he grabbed her breasts.
“He, like, grabbed my boobs from beneath and went: ‘Whoa, take a look at these!’ and simply continued to signal my shirt,” she says.
She feels this type of expertise is frequent amongst black ladies who’re handled as adults regardless of their age. “Younger black girls are hyper-sexualised from a really younger age. We’re so used to it,” she says.
Paige’s mum mentioned she recalled choosing up her daughter up from the membership that evening, and informed the BBC that Paige informed her concerning the alleged grope a couple of years later.
Emma
Emma: ‘He leans [in] very quick, like he’s speaking to me. After which he sticks his tongue down my throat.’ {Photograph}: BBC
Emma* says she met Westwood when she joined his promotional “road group” in 1999, when she was 15. She was an enormous hip-hop fan and would hand out flyers on nights that the DJ was enjoying, and work backstage.
She says that when Westwood requested her to hang around she didn’t suppose it was a romantic proposition. “He’s like an older man, so simply asexual to me in a approach,” she says. She says she remembers being picked up from her London house and the DJ saying he needed to cease by his flat. They went inside and listened to music however the environment modified and she or he began to really feel anxious, she says.
“I didn’t really feel secure already and I used to be like I don’t need the rest to occur, like I must get the hell out of right here.”
She says she made excuses to go house, and claims that after they had been within the automobile he leaned to kiss her. “He leans [in] very quick, like he’s speaking to me. After which he sticks his tongue down my throat,” she says. “I keep in mind … pursing my lips, making an attempt to deliver them collectively as tight as potential. [I] tried to be simply non-sexual.”
She informed him she was solely all in favour of working with him and wanted to get house, she says. “He was in a strop. He simply obtained quiet. It was the injured ego of the person, and also you be taught it very early on to not bruise that ego.”
She says he dropped her off and she or he was not referred to as on to work on the road group once more.
Sophie
Sophie* was 18 and at school when she began engaged on Westwood’s road group in 2003.
She says individuals would drink collectively after his present. One evening she says he provided to take her house, however as an alternative drove her to a flat and “issues did occur”. She says: “[He] didn’t, like, power me down and maintain me all the way down to do issues; nonetheless, issues occurred that I wasn’t snug with.”
Sophie says her reminiscences are fragmented, however she alleges that intercourse occurred and that she wasn’t snug with it. “I even query myself: why did I’m going there? As a result of I’m not the form of particular person to go to an individual’s home. However on the similar time, possibly as a result of I labored for him. Perhaps as a result of I used to be intoxicated as effectively … I used to be younger.”
She says it appears apparent to her now that it was an abuse of energy. Afterwards, she says, he dropped her off house “like nothing had occurred”. She says she didn’t work for him once more.
Talia
Talia* says she was 20 when she met Westwood on the Oceana nightclub in Nottingham in 2012. She says the DJ pointed her out to his bodyguard, who came visiting and requested her to attend behind.
She says she and her pal had been planning to return to their college halls, and the DJ provided to drop them off. The plan modified and his driver drove again to the lodge the DJ was staying at, she has informed the BBC.
“Perhaps this was simply me being naive,” she says, “as a result of [my friend] and I believed it was simply gonna be a chat and that will be it and, you recognize, I’d return to halls.”
Talia says she went to his lodge room alone they usually talked briefly after which he kissed her. She says she was “OK with” this, however she says that in a short time he obtained bare and she or he began to really feel uncomfortable, and she or he says she informed him she didn’t need to “do something like that”.
“I stored saying: ‘No, you recognize we’ve simply met, let’s simply speak,’” she says. “Then clearly the battle began and I stored saying no.”
She says he was then straddling her on the mattress and was making an attempt to get her to present him oral intercourse. She alleges her legs had been pinned between his and he was holding one in all her arms.
“I used to be simply pondering: ah God, this may’t be occurring. Right here is that this tall man like simply towering over me and I simply felt, you recognize, caged, like I couldn’t get out. And I used to be saying no. So I felt actually, like, actually powerless, I’d say, in that second.”
Talia remembers repeatedly saying no, and she or he alleges Westwood pushed his penis into her mouth. She says she mentioned “no, simply let me go” and shuffled from beneath him, grabbed her belongings and left.
“I used to be fairly disturbed by the entire thing,” she says. “Trying again I simply really feel used and I really feel disgusted in a approach. I simply really feel prefer it’s fairly demeaning.”
She says she considered going to the police however she didn’t suppose her criticism can be taken critically. “The police would suppose, effectively, it was an evening out, you’re 20 years previous, they usually simply wouldn’t have taken it any additional.”
Tatiana
Talia’s pal Tatiana* has informed the BBC she remembers the evening in Nottingham in 2012 and going to the lodge. A month or two later, she says, she noticed Westwood once more in Nottingham. She says she talked about Talia and was shocked when he mentioned he didn’t keep in mind her. “[He] mentioned: ‘Oh, I don’t keep in mind,’” she says. “I used to be like: huh? How? Why don’t you keep in mind her?”
She claims he then touched her backside. “I rotated to look and he acted prefer it wasn’t him. Nevertheless it was me and him and my two ladies there. He was appearing like nothing occurred. I used to be in shock,” she says.
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Different girls have alleged to the BBC that the DJ groped or behaved inappropriately with them. Isla* says she met Westwood in August 2017 at Boxpark in Croydon, and alleges he rubbed his genitals on her behind. Josie* says she met Westwood in the summertime of 2018, when she was 22, and that after she gave him her quantity he “pestered her” to return to his home and tried to flash her on a FaceTime name earlier than she hung up. She says he messaged afterwards to say he was sorry and that he had been joking.
The latest allegation dates to 2020. Elizabeth* says she met Westwood in a nightclub in East Sussex in 2019 and that over the course of 2020 that they had two sexual encounters, which she says had been “uncomfortable”. She says she felt beneath stress to drink, and notes that the DJ was older than her mother and father. She alleges that when she informed Westwood she was about to show 20, he replied: “I want I’d had extra time to fuck you if you had been a youngster.”
*Names have been modified.
Hip Hop’s Open Secret: Tim Westwood airs on BBC Three at 10pm on Wednesday 13 July and might be on iPlayer.
Wright here is Mick Jagger proper now? “I’m in Frahhhnce the place it’s moderately gray,” drawls the 78-year-old singer with exaggerated languor. “I can’t even in my wildest creativeness name it spring-like.” Even down a crackling telephone line, the voice is hypnotically wealthy: the dense scrumptious timbre, the sudden leaps between excessive and low notes. Then there are these vowels. Maroon 5 had successful in 2010 singing about his strikes, however nobody does vowels fairly like Jagger.
That a lot is evident from Unusual Sport, the grungy theme music he has recorded for the six-part adaptation of Mick Herron’s acerbic spy novel Slow Horses. The collection considerations a workforce of disgraced spooks relegated to an insalubrious workplace tucked behind the Barbican. Jagger sneers at these rejects on the music, branding them “losers, misfits and boozers” earlier than saying: “You’re completed, you’re silly, you faiiiled.”
Their boss is a bitter, flatulent outdated bully performed by Gary Oldman. “It’s barely written from his viewpoint,” the singer explains. “I figured I’d make it form of about him and his frustrations along with his crew. You recognize, ‘Surrounded by losers’ blah-blah-blah. However I additionally tried to make the purpose that all of them need to redeem themselves. They’ve this ambition to do good someway, and to show they’re not nugatory.”
Wickedly feral … Jagger in Nic Roeg’s 1970 movie Efficiency. {Photograph}: 44/Goodtimes Enterprises/Allstar
Unusual Sport was written remotely by Jagger and the composer Daniel Pemberton, who nonetheless haven’t met in individual. “What’s unbelievable is how a lot Mick conveys and distils the temper of the ebook,” says Pemberton. “That’s exhausting to do however he hit it out of the park immediately. We had been anticipating to get a cool music which may not have any relevance to the story however he immediately units up that entire world. From a sonic viewpoint, he has this wonderful mastery over his voice. Inflections that appear off-the-cuff are all extremely managed. It’s like working with a valuable materials that’s in restricted provide.”
The squalid temper of the lo-fi manufacturing is enhanced by Jagger’s camp, taunting supply: swaggering one minute, whispery the following. “Daniel favored it wordy,” he recollects. “However I stated, ‘You’ll be able to’t simply have me saying hundreds and a great deal of phrases’, so I put in a couple of ‘ooh-ooh’s and issues to provide it that barely eerie ambiance.”
I begin to ask if I can take him again half a century to a different specifically written composition of his, however he interrupts earlier than I can end the query: “Please don’t,” he says, a theatrical tremor in his voice. Then he continues in a tone of mock-outrage: “Half a century? Half a century to what?” To his music Memo from Turner, that writhing electrical eel of a quantity which he belts out halfway by the 1970 movie Performance – the cult favorite through which Jagger is a debauched rock star holed up in his Notting Hill pad with a gangster performed by James Fox.
How did writing Unusual Sport evaluate to that? “Weeeell,” he says, stringing the phrase out in such a method as to counsel he considers the inquiry moderately spurious. “That was a music which slotted within a film so it’s not likely comparable. Insofar because it pertains to the story, I suppose it’s obtained some obscure similarity but it surely’s not the identical form of gig in any respect.”
How does he really feel now about his efficiency in Efficiency? “Blimey, it’s so way back I can’t bear in mind! It was various exhausting work and I’d by no means executed a movie earlier than, so I used to be actually studying and didn’t know what I used to be doing. I needed to be fairly targeting getting it proper. It’s an odd film in some methods. However in sure methods it holds up.” Maybe modesty forbids him from calling it a masterpiece, which it absolutely is, or from recognising that it brings intact to the display screen his most wickedly feral qualities.
His ultimate movie? … with Claes Bang in The Burnt Orange Heresy. {Photograph}: Rumble Movies/Jose Haro/Allstar
Having adopted Efficiency with an eccentric flip because the infamous Australian outlaw in Ned Kelly, Jagger expressed the need to be a “character actor”. He hoots on the concept now. “Did I say that? The factor is that in these days, you didn’t get many provides. It’s a lot simpler immediately for folks in music to get movie components. There was lots of prejudice towards folks within the music enterprise – it was like they may solely try this one factor, and it was simply stunt casting actually that you just had been provided.” Do actors and singers are inclined to share a skill-set? “There are similarities and crossovers. You do need to challenge and turn into another person however they’re utterly totally different disciplines. What little performing I’ve executed, I’ve all the time loved. However simply since you’re on stage entertaining 50,000 folks, it doesn’t comply with essentially that you just’re going to be an excellent actor.”
But he’s. The director Sean Mathias found as a lot when he solid Jagger alongside Clive Owen and Ian McKellen in his 1997 movie of Bent, Martin Sherman’s play in regards to the persecution of homosexual males beneath nazism. Jagger has a small function as Greta, who croons Philip Glass’s Streets of Berlin whereas sitting atop a trapeze in a black sheer robe, curly wig and drop earrings. If stealing a film had been against the law, he would have gotten life with out parole.
“Efficiency is the rationale I considered Mick for Greta,” says Mathias. “It’s his presence, isn’t it? The wonder, the androgyny. He’s so strange-looking, so sexual and exquisite. A little bit of an animal. He’s obtained the face of a a lot older individual however the skinny physique of a teen. He has that enviable metabolism. He was nonetheless with Jerry Corridor on the time, and he instructed me: ‘Jerry needs to kill me. I can eat no matter I like, whereas she solely has to take a look at a chip and she or he places on weight.’”
Mathias remembers Jagger as “a collaborative firm member. He had an entourage however by no means abused his energy. He’s obtained a tremendous mind. He’s occupied with an enormous array of topics, and may speak about all of them. And he’s super enjoyable at dinner – he’s obtained a very camp sense of humour.”
‘A little bit of an animal’ … Jagger as Greta in Sean Mathias’s Bent. {Photograph}: Channel 4 Movies/Allstar
Delays throughout one of many movie’s evening shoots pushed Jagger’s scenes again into the early hours of the morning. “I needed to go to his caravan and say, ‘Mick, I’m sorry however we’re operating late.’ It was about 4 within the morning, he appeared fairly outdated and drained, and he stared at himself within the mirror and stated: ‘Oh take a look at that face. It’s wretched. You’ll be able to’t shoot me now!’ I bear in mind saying, ‘Oh Mick, you look completely implausible.’ I assumed, ‘I’m such a phoney!’ As a result of he did look very drained. However I knew if I gave into his ego, I’d be sunk and I’d by no means get him on set.”
Provided that he acts so not often, what kind of function is more likely to enchantment? “One which sparks one thing in you,” says Jagger. “If it makes you assume: ‘I can take this character and convey him to life. I could make him fascinating or amusing.’ You don’t wanna be taking part in your self, or too near your self. I’ve turned that down.”
He by no means had the film profession that his good friend David Bowie did. Then once more, he wasn’t the solo entity that Bowie was: he had the outdated ball-and-chain to hold round, or the Rolling Stones as they’re identified. Within the mid-Nineties, Jagger hatched the concept of a comedy live performance film that will intersperse reside footage of the band with scripted scenes exhibiting two devoted Stones followers, to be performed by Brad Pitt and Ben Stiller, clambering to see their idols at any value. Jagger introduced Stiller and Judd Apatow in to pitch the movie at a band assembly. In Apatow’s telling, Keith Richards was the stumbling block. Every time Ronnie Wooden expressed enthusiasm for making the movie, stated Apatow, Richards would shoot him down: “And ’oo are you, Alfred ’itchcock?”
Round 5 years in the past, Jagger let or not it’s identified inside the business that he was searching for a “final” film outing. He obtained his want with the small however memorable function of a millionaire artwork collector with a sinister agenda in The Burnt Orange Heresy, a sly, slippery thriller shot on Lake Como. How did it really feel to be performing once more? “Er, properly it was a bit odd to be trustworthy,” says Jagger. “I hadn’t executed any for ages. I used to be like: ‘Oh. Um. Sure. Appearing. Let’s assume now. How can we do that?’ I as soon as requested Jack Nicholson, ‘While you construct a personality, the place do you begin?’ He stated, ‘His intercourse life.’” He provides an amused little snort.
Mapping out the background of a personality has normally helped. “It might not essentially match with the script but it surely’s good to have. In any other case you’re simply saying the strains. And also you don’t wanna simply say the strains. Nicely, you can, but it surely’s higher if you recognize what kind of individual he’s. I made notes about whether or not the man was married, what his education was like. Was he a criminal? Did he like rugby? The standard stuff. It’s all fairly humorous however in the event you’re going to do a job, you may as properly do it correctly.”
‘Did I actually say I needed to be a personality actor?’ … in Ned Kelly. {Photograph}: Wooden/Allstar
The movie’s director Giuseppe Capotondi can attest to that. “Mick actually did his homework,” he tells me. “He stated, ‘Possibly the character ought to communicate with a Chelsea accent however from the times earlier than Chelsea turned posh, again when it was nonetheless working class.’ That every one got here from him. He additionally spoke to a couple of his gallerist mates to know how the market works.”
One scene, through which Jagger flips from affable to intimidating within the area of a single line, means that he would have been a pure at Pinter. “That’s superb, isn’t it?” agrees Capotondi.“He managed to alter tone there, all whereas sitting down and smoking his digital cigarette. He’s very efficient. Mick can convey feelings with out doing a lot. Most of his performing is completed along with his voice moderately than his face. It may be giggly then very deep. He makes use of it as an instrument and that’s a plus for any actor.”
What kind of presence was he on set? “He was very humble, possibly as a result of he felt a bit out of his depth. Earlier than we began, he stated, ‘I give my finest within the afternoon. Can I do all my scenes then?’ I instructed him: ‘Mick, we solely have 4 days with you! We are able to’t solely shoot within the afternoon!’ I watched him getting off his boat and coming to the villa at seven within the morning, and he appeared a bit grumpy. However the second he reached the set he was good.”
Did he speak about this being his ultimate function? “He was saying, ‘I’m getting older. I don’t have a lot time.’” How does it really feel to have directed presumably the final ever Jagger movie? “Oh God, that’s an enormous accountability,” he laughs. “I hope he does one other one. I’m positive he’ll. He’s simply busy with the day job.”
Certainly, tickets have simply gone on sale for the Rolling Stones’ sixtieth anniversary European tour, which begins in June; seven weeks in, Jagger will flip 79. “We’re engaged on the brand new stage, which I hope is gonna look good,” he says. “I’m trying ahead to touring Europe and talking numerous totally different languages, regardless that I don’t know what I’m speaking about. We’re simply understanding which songs we’re gonna do. It doesn’t appear very lengthy since we completed doing the US so I’m up for it and prepared for it.”
He and Richards have even been engaged on new materials. “Yeah, we’ve been performing some banging round. It’s been enjoyable.” What he may take into account “banging round”, others would put in additional exalted phrases. Pemberton is amongst them. Requested how he feels to have written a music with Mick Jagger, he says: “It’s like I satisfied Picasso to return spherical and paint my entrance room.”
