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5/ Press articles and reviews [ Back ]
Richard is currently touring with the dance theatre company Protein Dance. He performs with this highly acclaimed company as an actop, singer and narrator. Click here for the press reviews
STRANGE: Punks
and Drunks, Flicks and Kicks by Richard Strange (Deutsch,
E20) PETE CLARK
The Evening
Standard
It would be wisest to declare an affinity with this book at the outset. When Richard Strange, the author of this autobiography, was growing up in Tooting, south London, he and his brother performed their weekly ablutions in a tin bath, on account of their dwelling place having no bathroom. When I was growing up in Manor Place, south London, I took a weekly tin-bath dip on account of exactly the same lack of facilities.
Richard Strange also got unbearably depressed by a radio programme called Sing Something Simple. So did 1.
I know all the places he went to, bought more or less the same records, and had the same sort of trials and tribulations with girls. in short, I am not the most objective reviewer in the world.' Which is not to suggest that Punks and Drunks, Flicks and Kicks is a book only to be savoured by gentlemen of a certain age. Richard Strange, throughout the half-century of a gregarious existence, has moved restlessly through those circles of society, which are dedicated to the creative impulse in its wildly diverse forms.
He probably achieved his highest profile as Kid Strange, guiding light of the Doctors of Madness, an angry pre-punk combo who influenced more musicians to change their thinking than punters to part with money for their records. Strange later ran the equally influential Cabaret Futura club in Soho in the early Eighties and more recently has made a career in the movies, with a forthcoming appearance in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York promising to be a highlight, provided it does not end up on the cutting-room floor.
As a result of these various endeavours, Strange has met an awful lot of People. When he writes of his 50th birthday party that he was surrounded by 100 friends, you tend to believe him, rather than make the mental adjustment, three friends and 97 liggers. He has stories in abundance, tales of madness, excess, jubilation and despair, plus a short mention of some business conducted between the late art-gallery owner Robert Fraser and the retired dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin, which caused a blink of disbelief.
Strange is evidently a decent fellow, but he is sharply opinionated about all that he encounters, and has the essential characteristic of self-depreciation when it comes to his role of hero in the story of a life.
This is a very particular social
history, but one which illuminates some of the most interesting nooks
and corners of the alternative lifestyles which bloomed and withered in
such profusion during the second half of the 20th century.
The Evening Standard
MOJO Magazine September
2002 by Paul Du Noyer
Strange; Punks And Drunks And Flicks And Kicks
Richard 'Kid' Strange was briefly almost famous in the 1970s, as singer in the art-rock outfit Doctors Of Madness. A solo career in the '80s failed to advance his cause. Since then he has mainly worked as an actor, still hovering just below fame's radar. A self-confessed expert in under-achievement, Strange is a cultured, gregarious chap, who moves through London's gilded salons like a gangling Mr Punch, observing his peersŐ foibles.
A bit-part player in rock, the arts and media, and movies, he observes the vanities of the glitterati with a witty, generally benevolent eye, but his shrift can also be short. He meets Kevin Costner through a fleeting role as executioner in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and notes: 'When Costner attempts gravitas he is laughable. When he attempts comedy, sadly he is not."
Richard's memoirs are a rich
mix of similar indiscretions. Of himself he says-, "My ambition and imagination,
as always, far outstripped my talent." But he has no self-pity. Lacking
a single hit record to his name, he reserves his sympathy for the one-hit
wonder Peter Sarstedt, perpetually chained to one rotten song: 'So much
better,' he decides, 'to fail and move on...'
Paul Du Noyer MOJO Magazine
September 2002
Adrian Dannatt ; The
Art Newspaper
full text below
Adrian Dannatt ; The
Art Newspaper
Is contemporary art the new
rock and roll? The proof is in the pictures throughout Richard Strange's
amusing memoir Strange.
The first section of photographs show the young rocker playing Olympia in 1973 with his band The Doctors of Madness, cavorting on stage with Dave Vanian of The Damned or drinking with a Sex Pistol. The second seam of photos includes artists such as Grayson Perry. Tracey Emin and Gavin Turk along with legendary London dealers, Jay Jopling and James Birch. Somehow one stream of bohemia, all leather trousers, beer and smeared cosmetics turns into a far richer river of champagne gallery receptions, conceptual millionaires and expensive suits.
This dichotomy is equally well reflected by the puffs on the back of the jacket. These are divided between Damien Hirst proclaiming, "It's a Strange world", and Shane McGowan of The Pogues calling him "A diamond geezer." Here Sam Taylor-Wood terms him, "The best gargoyle in town" next to Depeche Mode's own praise. This fusion of rock mu4c and art is, of course, not entirely new and it is indicative that the last two photos from Strange's musical youth are of artist Brian Clarke coming out of a Fiona Thyssen party in 1981 and a picture of Warhol in London. For, if Warhol was ultimate model for all those who wished to fuse music and image, there were many creative figures in Britain obsessed with just such glamour and trans-cultural celebrity; yet not until the 1990s was such wild style allowed within the parochial UK act world.
Brian Clarke, now best known as executor of the Bacon estate, is something of a hero throughout Strange, and quite rightly. As the author points out, Clarke was deeply loathed in the art world for his famous friends and party lifestyle, while "Today, nearly 20 years later, a high social profile is, it goes without saying, a sine qua non for artistic success,"
The sheer dreariness of the London art scene in the 70's, and even 80's, is painfully recalled, along with those bright compensatory figures such as Robert Fraser, here throwing his hand-made shoes at a performance group, while shouting. "Dada lives. You die" and walking out barefoot. Here is coke at The Titanic nightclub with Keith Haring, sculptor Richard Wilson making outrageous noises at Strange's Soho venue Cabaret Futura, and a cricket team including Mark Wallinger, Anthony Reynolds and Robin Klassnik of Mats Gallery.
Strange was born in Tooting Bec in 1951 and his autobiography is rich on the atmosphere of such a time and place and, by contrast, the huge liberation provided by the forces of popular music, psychedelics, dandyism and drugs. Strange describes being a 16-year old, corresponding with a friend studying with Richard Hamilton up it Newcastle, sharing their wild excitement about discovering Bacon, Rauschenberg, Johns and especially the films of Warhol.
This liberation-through-culture is key theme of any British working-class memoir, often later compounded by an equally obligatory "Poshlust" which few seem able to resist, whether Bryan Ferry, Jagger or Strange himself, leading to a salubrious listing of society weddings and toff friends. But this itself is a core part of Brit Pack art, in which aristocrats and privately educated plutocrats are as integral to the myth as Ur-proletarian genius.
Strange is packed with celebrity anecdotes a truly amazing range of famous people he has worked with, encountered or fought, which sometimes recalls the name-dropping bouts of Stephen Spender's journals. But the comic set-pieces, which are genuinely hilariously funny, feature the lesser-known or obscure, whether the mad land-ladies or the publisher Michael Dempsey. Indeed as a proud English eccentric Strange has an enviable repertoire of improbable acquaintances and impossible events within his long boho career as musician, actor and raconteur.. The only mystery is what has happened to Strange's notorious story featuring Marlon Brando and an Indian breakfast.
Strange launched his long music career with The Doctors of Madness and still continues to record, producing and publishing his songs. But his lust for culture, in every sense, was always larger than the merely sonic, and thus he can wisely compare today's shock-artists with the Punk performers he once shared a stage with.
Indeed Strange is perhaps the
only figure alive who has traversed so many art, performance and music
movements. He can really understand the complex interplay between the
elements of glamour, trash, provocation and outrage within British culture
of the last 30 years. For anyone interested in such a theme this is the
least academic, but most intelligent entertaining, analysis one could
hope to read of a very specific London milieu, whose ramifications and
rewards extend across the Western world. Equally importantly, Strange
has clearly followed the advice of his great great Uncle Sir Arthur Quiller
Couch as stated in his 1916 guide On the art of writing: "To persist in
striving to write well"- and demonstrably succeeding.
Adrian Dannatt ; The
Art Newspaper
Today Program; BBC Radio 4
The Times
