Title Spin/3 Magazine: Action Time Vision Type Article URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/3868/ Dat e 2 0 0 8 Citation Bestley, Russ (2008) Spin/3 Magazine: Action Time Vision. Spin/3 Magazine: Action Time Vision. ISSN 1752-6442 Cr e a to rs Bestley, Russ Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Spin/3 ACTION TIME VISION Spin/3 Spin/3 ACTION ACTION T IME VI IME S ION Action Time Vision Contrary to the red-top myopia of the time, Punk wasn’t a singular spiky, dyed, Tony Brook white or black-haired leather-jacket-wearing gobbing entity – it was a broad (anti) church encompassing a range of innovative musical and visual styles. Genres and sub-genres developed with appropriate monikers – New Wave being the most obvious, but as far as I remember it, pretty much everything that was ‘new’ and less than three minutes long was, in the beginning at least, lumped together under Punk. I realise that this is contentious, but for simplicity’s sake let’s say that in Spin/3 we take a look at what is for us, a rich and vibrant form of inspiration, and let’s agree to call it The Punk Single. It is also important to note that back in the day these covers weren’t just seen as exciting, they were potentially explosive. Devoured by hungry eyes as messages from the front line, they were taken very seriously. Graphics set the Punk agenda as much as the music. For those of you who weren’t born when many of the covers featured in Spin/3 were made, the sense of anger, danger and outrage may be dissipated by the knowledge that the UK wasn’t plunged into Anarchy, and that there wasn’t another English Civil War. But if you can set aside your natural scepticism and accept that it was a vital and energetic time to be alive, some of the excitement will surely touch you. Many renowned Punk singles have, over the course of 30+ years, become torn paper clichés, their power worn away by over familiarity. With this in mind, some of the sleeves we have chosen are deliberately off the beaten track. We have also ignored chronology, choosing covers we like the look of and laying them out in a way we think works on the page. By this approach we hope to encourage you to look at this innovative and challenging work through fresh eyes. Thanks A huge thank you goes to Russ Bestley, who not only wrote an acute and insightful essay that gives context and meaning to Spin/3 — a wonderfully generous act – but also gave us access to his magnificent collection allowing us to fill some rather large holes. Some things are meant to be. Not having the wit to look on Wikipedia, I had given up any hope of talking to Malcolm Garrett (designer of the great Buzzcocks sleeves amongst many other things) about the possibility of contributing to Spin/3. Imagine my surprise when I bumped into him a couple of days before this publication went to press! Malcolm not only agreed to help, but worked over Easter in order to meet our deadline. Thank you so much — your contribution is the icing on the cake. As we have, I hope, made clear, this is not by any means THE history of the Punk single. That is, perhaps, a job for Russ himself. ION S IME VI IME T ACTION ACTION Spin/3 Spin/3 Orgasm Addict Unplugged I met Buzzcocks early in 1977 through a mutual friend, Linder, who was an Punk, Graphic Design and the Seven Inch Single When I first started buying punk records, at around fifteen years of age, graphic Malcolm Garrett illustration student in the year above me at Manchester Polytechnic. I was mid- Russ Bestley design was an unknown phrase to me. In fact, like many punk fans, though I found way through the second year of BA in Graphic Design, and had become very a certain fascination with the record sleeves of the new wave groups causing excited by punk, the Sex Pistols and The Clash, following a a short stay in London such a backlash in the national press, I had no idea what process might have led at the end of 1976. The energy of the movement provided a ready vehicle of to these iconic images which seemed to have come from a new age of rebellion expression for me, previously stimulated as I was by a passion for music, pop art, and possibility. The ways in which I had been persuaded to part with hard-earned anti-art and particularly the typographic manifestoes of the various isms of early cash for any number of odd vinyl outpourings by some obscure punk outfit didn’t 20th century art. arouse any questions in me. It wasn’t until much later, when I went to Art College, After an introduction to Buzzcocks manager, Richard Boon, I was initially that I discovered the ‘cool’ image on a Siouxsie & The Banshees sleeve had asked to design a poster which could be used to promote live appearances. been taken from a 1930s photomontage by John Heartfield, and that the debut This was to be a ‘blank’ on to which venue details etc could be hand written as single by Generation X featured a sleeve echoing the typographic experiments of required. I took the opportunity to use School facilities to screenprint a small El Lissitzky, Henryk Berlewi and the Russian Constructivists. Adam Ant’s 1978 run of posters in various colourways, having spent considerable time in the print lyrical tribute to “Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, Balla, Palasechi” and the “Futurist room in the Fine Art department learning screenprinting skills during my first year. manifesto” also remained a mystery to me for many years, and the complex In this way I’d already resolved to develop a graphic style for Buzzcocks that internal and external discourse of punk took some time for me to become familiar was as distinct from what was the visual norm in the rest of music and pop world, with. However, when I began a research project into UK punk and graphic as it was from the rough and ready, cut and paste vernacular of the Sex Pistols. I design, back in 2001, some interesting facts started to reveal themselves. wanted to set Buzzcocks apart from this Punk look, which merely exploited a style Firstly, punk graphic design was not limited to the clichéd stereotype often which was already proving clichéd and consequently locked in time. described in history books — it was far more diverse, eclectic and unfocused This poster saw the first appearance of the Buzzcocks logo, with its than that. And secondly, it was also more intelligent and innovative than might be distinctive double-Z. The logo itself was produced in a very DIY manner, from assumed, using new and old branding and marketing strategies to great effect, Letraset rub-down lettering, modified and redrawn to achieve the desired incorporating unusual materials and lo-tech design strategies which caught the edginess and individuality. The main image on the poster was a very low mood of the time. Punk graphics, like the music, tended to embrace elements resolution line drawing taken from a small ad in a weekend newspaper (for one- of protest and agit-prop or ‘street’ politics, and these themes have become legged tights!) and enlarged to such an extent that the shaky line quality was a entrenched as the stereotypical — or perhaps archetypal — punk approach. key feature. However, punk design also included parody, humour, satire, self awareness and a Following the band signing to United Artists in mid-1977, my next brief from particular kind of ironic, self-effacing and reflective wit. them was for the sleeve for the single Orgasm Addict. UA was a label we all liked because it was also the home of most of the best bands from Germany, whose Three Minute Heroes music influenced many Punk and post-Punk bands in sublime ways. Despite the relatively sophisticated look of this sleeve all aspects of its The punk movement between 1976-84 represented a distinctive period in the production drew on materials and opportunities to hand in a very ‘bedroom development of youth culture in Britain. Whilst certain principles paralleled earlier style’. It was in fact completed and marked up for the printer on a small portable generations and youth movements, they were married to an outspoken ideology drawing board in my bedroom at home in Manchester. that declared ‘anyone can do it’ and an overtly nihilistic attitude toward the music The logo on the sleeve was tweaked slightly from the poster version. The industry itself. This led to a situation where ‘anyone’ did, in fact, ‘do it’, and the lettering on the front was hand drafted with an architectural stencil I had found resulting deluge of independent, do-it-yourself records, concerts and networks whilst on a summer work placement in the drawing office at Chloride Technical, a of activity threatened to seriously disrupt the commercial stability of the popular company based in Bolton that developed electric vehicles. The sleeve montage music business, albeit temporarily. The seven inch single sleeve might be taken as of the iron-headed woman was created by Linder, the iron came from an Argos the central graphic design focus for this sub-culture.