The Hellfire Club - Daniel P Mannix

THE HELLFIRE CLUB - DANIEL P MANNIX

'The rise and fall of a shocking secret society whose sole interests were perversion and politics.' So says the blurb on the front cover and it's almost as if this book had been written especially for me. The Hell-Fire Club? Where do I join? But then I remember the Oscar Wilde quote with him saying 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,' and I'm stuck.

The Hellfire Club by Daniel P Mannix, first published in 1961, is the story of an elite club of men founded in the 18th Century by Sir Francis Dashwood whose main emphasis was on sex, drugs and the ridiculing of religion. A club that attracted the supposed brightest and the best minds of England that would secretly direct the fate of the nation, operating behind the scenes of government.

Members of the club included the Earl of Sandwich (who did indeed invent the sandwich), the Earl of Bute (who later became Prime Minister), Thomas Potter (the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury), William Hogarth (the English artist), Laurence Sterne (the novelist), John Wilkes (the British libertine), and Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The book is composed of large swathes of conjecture though based on a lot of facts that can easily be cross-checked. Amusingly, there doesn't actually seem to be any proof that any of these people were members though that doesn't stop Mannix from having a lot of fun with what is known.

When George III became king, his first act was to make Bute his prime minister, Sandwich the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Dashwood the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "I'll be the worst chancellor England ever had," Bute is reported to have told his friends, to which one of them disagreed: "But you have considerable experience with figures, My Lord. You have often helped chalk up how often each of us have had a go at the nuns."

Ah, the nuns. These were 'special' nuns, of course, who attended the parties and black masses held by the Hell-Fire Club where they would 'service' the attendees. Demonstrating, for example, new positions not found even in the Kama Sutra. Parties where sex and drink of only the most involved and esoteric kind would be served. Parties held under the maxim 'Do what thou wilt' and guided by the words 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

I know what you're thinking. It sounds like just a typical night down your local pub except there you've got Guinness on tap and a pool table to mess about on and then back to whoever's house is available that night until the sun comes up. And you wouldn't be far wrong, actually. Debauchery isn't the sole reserve of the ruling class. They might well have more money and be more lavish but when it comes to imagination, inventiveness and indulgence of extremes, they do not hold a monopoly. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the upper class and even the middle class so dislike the poor and the working class. Because the working class naturally know how to enjoy themselves, whilst the middle and upper class can only buy enjoyment. They cannot invent and make it themselves.

The thing of note about this book is that it shows the workings of such elite clubs as the Hell-Fire Club, Eton's Bullingdon Club and the goings-on at Epstein's island is nothing new. Secret societies, elite clubs, nepotism and the old school tie have been with us for centuries. So too has the machinations and the corruption of power and the way it's clung to and wielded for the benefit of the few and the exploitation of the many. And that is where the difference in debauchery lies. Not in the quality of it or in its highs and lows but in the level of the power games that go with it.

John Serpico

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

 HOMBRE - ELMORE LEONARD

The book on which the film starring Paul Newman is based of course, and I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff where a film is based on a book and vice versa. It's the interplay between the two mediums and the 'compare and contrast' that comes into play. It's only natural to match one medium against another and to let the best man win and though both have their own very unique strengths, nine times out of ten 'Het boek is beter' as the Dutch say. Which brings us to Elmore Leonard and I didn't realise just how many films have been made from his books - 23 in total - including 3:10 To Yuma, Valdez Is Coming, Jackie Brown, and this one, obviously - Hombre.

First published in 1961, Hombre by Elmore Leonard is concise, succinct and to the point. It's an example of storytelling in a very precise way. Lean, mean and clean in its structure though set in a hot, dirty and unforgiving landscape. One of the major themes running through it is the subject of racism, specifically in regard to the treatment of Native Americans, accentuated by the main character having spent half his life living with the Apache.

Without going into too much detail, the story involves a stagecoach holding a mixed-bag of passengers being held up by outlaws and them being left to die with no water in a barren, Monument Valley-type environment. A turn of events then leads to the passengers being chased-down by the outlaws across this same hostile landscape. The only one of them who has any survival skills and of any use with a gun is, of course, the one raised by indians so it's him they come to depend on for their survival even when only a day earlier they didn't want him in the stagecoach with them.

The vast amount of the story is centred on the play-offs and stand-offs between the characters, with the indian-raised character - the 'Hombre' of the book's title - being the pivot around whom everything circles. It's a familiar trope, admittedly, but what grips the attention is the masterly way the story is told and the suspense maintained.

But is the book better than the movie? Well, one of the major flaws in the film when watching it nowadays is seeing Paul Newman dressed as an Apache, which unavoidably doesn't really sit right. There's also the feeling when watching the film that it's an ensemble piece but usurped by Newman. So yes, the book - as ever - is better. Or again, as the Dutch say: 'Het boek is beter'.

John Serpico

Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version - Marian Kester

 DEAD KENNEDYS - THE UNAUTHORIZED VERSION - MARIAN KESTER

Another one of those scrapbook-type books but this time on the Dead Kennedys. Vocalist Jello Biafra has recently suffered from a stroke though by all reports he's slowly but thankfully recovering, so now is probably as good a time as any to revisit this: Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version, written by Marian Kester.

Jello is 68 years-old now and the last time I saw him was around the year 2000 when he appeared at the London Anarchist Bookfair, down at the Conway Hall. The night before, he'd stayed at a friend's house in Bristol who told me he'd found Jello to be a bit strange, though that was okay by me because after all - it's Jello Biafra!

I was manning a stall at the bookfair and the place was heaving. I knew that Jello was there but I thought he'd maybe just come along to pick up a few books or at best to do a talk in one of the meeting rooms? What I didn't expect was for him to get up on the stage and deliver a long speech-type rant to the assembled hordes. And neither did anyone else. Unannounced and (as far as I knew) uninvited, there he was: some guy with a funny American accent up on the stage telling the largest, genuinely anarchist crowd he'd probably ever encountered in his life just what was wrong with the world and what we all needed to be doing about it. I looked around and it was obvious that most people there didn't have a clue who he was and were thinking 'Who the fuck is this?' It was pretty embarrassing.

Maybe it was a cultural misunderstanding thing? Maybe Jello felt he was at just another concert? Maybe he genuinely felt that he knew best and needed to enlighten us? But did he not think it strange that of all the people there, that he was the only one important enough to mount the stage and explain everything to us as if we were one of his audiences? To put it gently, there was a slight lack of self-awareness on Jello's part that day, it seemed to me.

Relaying this anecdote is not to diminish the brilliance and even the importance of the Dead Kennedys as a band, but it's just to show we all have our flaws - though most us us don't usually choose to flaunt them in a self-important fashion from a stage in front of our peers in a weird-sounding Walt Disney-character-type voice.

Musically, the Dead Kennedys were really good. Politically they were... interesting. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of East Bay Ray's distinctive guitar-playing. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of Jello Biafra's politics as amplified by his vibrato vocals. The music carried the politics, the politics supported the music, and combined a force of exuberant energy was created.

Printed in 1983, Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version is, unfortunately, a bit of a cash-in. A vanity project, even. It's a muddle and a bit of a mess due to appearing not to know quite what its purpose is. A lot of the photos are lacklustre and the reproductions of Winston Smith's artwork are uninspiring. The interesting thing about it, however, is that it's almost a meditation on the Dead Kennedys. An attempt to try and understand what the Dead Kennedys are about and what they might represent. The writer, however, is on a hiding to nothing.  

Tucked away in the text of the book there's a line that acts as a clue as to why trying to pin down the Dead Kennedys is a fruitless task and to my mind it says a lot about them as a band: 'Perhaps being political in the US means choosing which conspiracy to believe in?'

For a band whose name rests on one of the biggest conspiracy theories in the world, led by a singer whose whole trip was to raise conspiracy theories as semi-alternatives to the New World Order and then shoot them all down; well, to try and come up with a viable explanation of what the band meant is like trying to nail-down jelly. Or jello. 

For all that, I'll say again, the Dead Kennedys were a brilliant band whose impact has been significant. Moreover, their song Police Truck is sublime: 'The Left newspapers might whine a bit, but the guys at the station they don't give a shit. Dispatch calls, "Are you doing something wicked?" No siree, Jack, we're just giving tickets. Let's ride, how we ride. let's ride, low ride.'

And not to mention, the lyrics to Holiday In Cambodia still stand as almost perfect punk lyrics, up there with the best of them: 'Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo... You're a star-belly sneech, you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you. Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich, but your boss gets richer off you...................      Pol Pot!!! 

John Serpico

Access All Areas - Barbara Charone

 ACCESS ALL AREAS - BARBARA CHARONE

When working as a music journalist in the Seventies, Barbara Charone was put on The Who's guest list for when they were playing Madison Square Garden but then found herself being denied backstage access by a security guard who presumed the only reason a girl would want to go backstage is because she's a groupie. Back then, rock critics were almost exclusively male so Barbara Charone was nothing less than a trailblazer, leading the way for other female writers to follow.

Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, by the age of 22 Charone had freelanced for among others the NME and Rolling Stone magazine before moving to London in 1974 to be a staff writer for Sounds music newspaper. This was the era of rock and pop exuberance when bands and singers would not so much walk the earth but soar above it. When private jet planes were de rigueur, payola part of the rule book, and cocaine a measure of success.

Access All Areas is the story of Barbara Charone's journey through the peaks and troughs of the music business - though mostly the peaks. The lofty heights where you'd find the likes of the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton and Madonna. A place, in fact, that on maps of old would be marked as 'Here be monsters'.

Two years after arriving in London, Charone was failing to heed the advice of Lester Bangs when in the film Almost Famous he says to the Cameron Crowe-inspired journalist about musicians: just remember 'they are not your friends'; with this actually being key to her whole book.

'You'd be surprised how many people who work in the music business make the mistake of believing the artist is your friend,' Charone writes 'That's really where the trouble starts. I saw so many people try to copy the Stones' extracurricular habits and fall by the wayside.'

Ten pages later she's writing 'At this point I must confess that by now I had developed quite a fondness for cocaine.' And then 'I was unprepared when Roger Daltrey burst into tears when discussing his struggles with Pete and I loved him even more for it. It was this kind of personal relationship that really made this era of journalism unique, something never to be repeated.'

By autumn of 1976, however, Charone was becoming restless: 'Punk was just round the corner, and it just wasn't for me. I was enamoured with more mainstream music and didn't really relate to this soon-to-be next big thing. I could feel the sea change fast approaching and began to feel it was time to move on from being a rock critic.'

So after approaching Keith Richards and him giving consent for her to write a book about him, that's what she did. Coinciding, by chance, with Richard's arrest in Canada for possession of heroin. From there she went to work for WEA Records in their press office before finally starting her own PR company called MBC, taking on (or rather, being taken on) over the years by the likes of Madonna, REM, Rufus Wainwright, Primal Scream, and Foo Fighters.

Access All Areas is a rollercoaster ride of namedropping and as Guardian journalist Alexis Petridis rightly points out in a blurb on the back cover, Barbara Charone is nowadays a music industry legend. In her book she comes across as a really likeable person who would make a good friend - though this doesn't mean, of course, that her book is above criticism.

The main problem with it is in the editing and the question of who it's being aimed at and written for. As an example, is it really necessary after mentioning somebody to put in brackets who they are? I mean: Jim Morrison ('lead singer of The Doors'), Keith Moon ('the infamous original Who drummer'), Ian Hunter ('the fab Mott The Hoople frontman'), Kiki Dee ('famous for a duet with Elton John'), etc, etc. Really?

And then she does Marianne Faithful a disservice when talking about Keith Richards by writing 'Back in 1967 he was infamously arrested at Redlands along with Mick Jagger (remember Marianne Faithful and the infamous Mars bar).' This is when Charone would know full well that the Mars bar incident is a myth and a lie, as stressed by Faithful herself. So why refer to it and in doing so dress her in that lie yet again?

There's also the question of Charone being rather too diplomatic for her own good. She calls Stephen Stills 'plain nasty' and Max Clifford 'despicable', and that's fine but when it comes to Sun tabloid newspaper editor Victoria Newton she calls her 'a credit to women everywhere'. Really? Let's not mention phone-hacking, shall we, particularly during Newton's tenure as deputy editor at the News Of The World before its closure in 2011?

And then there's Russell Brand who Charone was doing PR for at the time when he was hosting the NME Awards at the Hammersmith Palais in 2006, when Bob Geldof called Brand a cunt. The incident was used to escalate and enlarge Brand's public profile but behind the clash was the issue of 29 year-old Brand briefly 'dating' Geldof's 16 year-old daughter.

Access All Areas is good but if I was her editor I would have advised her to take the whole thing away and start again, and then to come back with a 'take no prisoners' attitude and with all guns blazing. She might well have lost friends and alienated people in the process but it would have made for a much better book.

John Serpico

Triggers - A Life In Music - Glen Matlock

 TRIGGERS - A LIFE IN MUSIC - GLEN MATLOCK

If you know your punk rock history then you'll know the sleevenotes to Honey Bane's 'You Can Be You' EP on Crass Records where Honey wrote (to paraphrase it a little) 'Do you know the difference between reality and fantasy? No you don't because you're still buying the Sex Pistols'. The year was 1979. Today getting on to almost 50 years later, I obviously still don't know the difference because here I am still buying.

Is there anything really left to learn from the Pistols? Well no, of course not. Or is there really anything left to learn about them? Well, there's always more than one way to skin a cat as shown by Steve Jones' autobiography 'Lonely Boy' a few years ago and even by John Lydon's stand-up speaking tours he's been doing. And now we have Triggers - A Life In Music by Glen Matlock.

An interesting thing about the Sex Pistols' legacy nowadays is that it's Steve Jones who has ended up being the most likeable member due in no small part to his radio show in America and his Tik-Tok videos. Steve has ended up as a very chilled-out guy possessed of a really good sense of humour. John Lydon on the other hand has ended up as being untrustworthy and conservative to boot, not helped in the slightest by his endorsement of Trump, MAGA, Brexit and even to a point, Nigel fucking Farage.

This is where Glen Matlock now comes in. In his book when talking about God Save The Queen, he says about how a couplet such as 'God save the Queen / The fascist regime' was impactful and powerful stuff and how still to this day it rings true. 'Anything that embarrasses the royal family,' he writes 'or exposes their hypocrisy and brings them to account, can only be a good thing.' He points then at the irony in Lydon now subscribing to the Trumpian MAGA bollocks as it's 'just fascism under a red cap'. 

Matlock also tells us about his television interview with BBC Breakfast that went semi-viral after he slammed Brexit and the loss of freedom of movement that it entailed. Online he received a lot of positive feedback and people thanking him for saying what they were thinking but alongside this came the negative feedback also, particularly on Twitter where people would post comments such as 'Glen, you don't understand. The Right is the new Left'. On clicking on their profile, Matlock says you would find the Brexit supporters to be Public Image Ltd fans.

There's no love lost between Lydon and Matlock and even more so now following the Danny Boyle film palava and the replacing of Lydon with Frank Carter, but where does it all stem from? Lydon has always been notoriously difficult to get on with, which can be seen by even Jah Wobble's disintegrated relationship with him nowadays but Lydon's and Matlock's relationship has historically always been fraught. What was it about Matlock that Lydon didn't like because going by Triggers, Matlock is a really good, very amiable bloke.

Lydon has always proclaimed himself as being working class and indeed, the issue of class has always been an important factor in regard to the whole Sex Pistols project. Matlock, for some reason, was cast as the middle class member of the band but this seems to have been based on him going to art school which is something Matlock suspects Lydon was resentful about, what with Lydon being a talented painter himself.

'Not that it should matter, but I wasn't middle class.' Matlock tells us 'I'm a working class guy who just managed to make it work somehow.'

In fact, when talking about the time when he, Jones and Cook first met Lydon and his gang he says 'They weren't anything like us. We were more working class, like the hoi polloi, and they were kind of druggy types. They struck me as a bit weird, but in a contrived way.' Lydon's gang, of course, included John Gray, John Wardle (Jah Wobble) and John Beverley (Sid Vicious).

There's also the whole thing about Matlock liking the Beatles and this being the reason why he was 'kicked out' of the Pistols. Matlock is almost at pains to point out that this is all 'total bollocks'. He was never sacked, he walked out.

'Can't you just pretend you like John?' he quotes Paul Cook as saying, to which he replies 'Like you two? Never saying boo to him?'

Lydon had always wanted his friend Sid in the band, something he obviously regrets to this day, given what happened to Sid. In fact, Matlock confirms it was Sid whom Malcolm McLaren first had in mind when it came to auditioning for the lead singer role, but it was Lydon who auditioned instead.

Matlock tells it straight and he acknowledges that everyone involved with the Pistols had a part to play in their success. That it wasn't just McLaren being the puppet master and it certainly wasn't all just down to Johnny Rotten. He even acknowledges the role that Freddie Mercury played in him having to attend an emergency dentist's appointment and subsequently enabling the Pistols to appear on the Bill Grundy show instead of Queen.

A whole series of events, in fact - or 'triggers' as Matlock calls them - led from one thing to another. The letting go of Wally Nightingale in their very early days, for example. Or Matlock taking McLaren along to the Hammersmith Odeon (pre-managing the Pistols) to see The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and McLaren when there and looking around and asking how much the tickets cost? About 75p, Matlock tells him, to which McLaren then asks how many people does the Odeon hold? About 3,000 Matlock tells him. To which McLaren does some quick maths - so that's 3,000 x 75p for a night's work - and the cogs in his brain begin turning. Kerching! 'Tell you what,' McLaren says to Matlock 'Let's have a little chat tomorrow about this band of yours.'

Life for Matlock didn't just stop on him leaving the Pistols, of course, which means a large chunk of his book is also devoted to the rest of his career and the countless anecdotes in regard to the Rich Kids, Iggy Pop, Blondie and all the other bands he's played with. 

Apparently he was approached by Paul Weller at one point to potentially join The Jam as a second guitarist but balked at the idea after realising he'd have to wear one of those horrible, cheap-looking suits they used to wear in their early days. From working at McLaren's shop, Matlock knew a bit about good fashion and those suits were most definitely not it.

Matlock also let's us know that on being nominated for entry into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, Steve Jones was left a message on his answering machine by Cliff Richard singing 'Congratulations'.  Can you imagine?

Unusually for a book such as this, there are no photos included in it though it must be said, the picture of Matlock on the cover is a good one and that's a beautiful guitar he's holding. Triggers is a good read and is probably an important addition to the Sex Pistols story and their oeuvre because it's coming from the horses mouth. Matlock was there whilst hundreds of other writers on punk weren't. So who to believe? Who to sort out the myths from the truth? Well, Matlock comes across as a really decent, forthright and sincere person so more than most he's probably your man for the job.

John Serpico 

Brendan Behan's New York - Brendan Behan

 BRENDAN BEHAN'S NEW YORK - BRENDAN BEHAN

What better person to have as a tour guide of New York than Brendan Behan? Playwright, author, poet, raconteur, rebel and alcoholic. 'To America, my new-found land' as he once famously said 'The man that hates you, hates the human race.' It was New York specifically that Behan loved, so much so that he wrote a love letter to it in the form of a book entitled Brendan Behan's New York that was first published in January of 1964. By March of that same year, however, Behan was dead.

'The person who says that he's not impressed by the New York skyline' Behan writes 'he's either half blind or he's just simply a liar'. And how can anyone possibly disagree with that? In fact, from every angle New York is mightily impressive. From the window of an aeroplane at night it's like the final scene from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where the mothership ascends and all that can be seen is a dazzling lightshow.

From the streets of New York when looking up it's like being at the bottom of a canyon with the tops of the buildings obscured by clouds.

There's also the sound of New York, best heard from the top of the Empire State Building, that's like a gargantuan machine pounding and rumbling away at the centre of the earth.

And then there's the phenomenon of the setting sun aligning perfectly with Manhattan's east-west street grid, forming a corridor of shimmering gold.

Above all, however, there's the people. From all corners of the world they come. From the lowliest, poorest and most desperate to the richest, most successful and decadent. New York is the melting pot. The world's plug hole where all humankind is washed down. One of whom, of course, being Brendan Behan.

There's an awful lot of name-dropping in Brendan Behan's New York but then Behan seemed to know an awful lot of people, and those he didn't know all seemed to know him. Of those he knew personally, he would always have an anecdote about them or an opinion, almost always funny or complimentary. In regard to Samuel Beckett, for example, Behan writes: 'Samuel Beckett is an old and very dear friend of mine and a marvelous playwright. I don't know what his plays are about, but I know I enjoy them. I do not know what a swim in the ocean is about, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the water flowing over me'.

In regard to Allen Ginsberg, Behan tells us he's a very interesting and important man, whilst Jack Kerouac is easily the most controversial person he met (in Greenwich Village, at least). 'I think the beatniks are highly dangerous men. They are all after a job and they're dangerous. I don't mind people going after a job, but the job that the beatnik is after is my job.' Written with tongue firmly in cheek.

'I never felt so much at home anywhere as I do in New York' he tells us 'I am not afraid to admit that New York is the greatest city on the face of God's earth'. There are other great cities in the world as well, of course, but in regard to New York, Behan was probably right. His ode to it in the form of Brendan Behan's New York serves as a last will and testament and though it doesn't make for a brilliant book as such, it's a very generous one. A returned compliment to a city he so obviously loved and that so obviously loved him back.

John Serpico

Suedehead - Richard Allen

SUEDEHEAD - RICHARD ALLEN

Joe Hawkins is out of jail and the world's now his lobster. He's got himself a job as a junior clerk and even his hair is growing: 'In another month or two it would be suede... in between being a skinhead and being what the Establishment liked to call normal styling. Suede - smooth, elite, expensive'.

No longer is Joe the king of the skinheads though it's a constant battle to temper his instincts and natural inclination toward violence and confrontation. Deep down he's still the same character except now he's more refined. More determined to get what he wants but by using other more varied means besides rampant bloodlust. Joe is now more in control, which means he's probably more dangerous than ever.

Written in 1971, Suedehead by Richard Allen is the sequel to his 1970 classic, Skinhead, where Allen had simultaneously struck gold and a nerve. Allen was a hack who wrote only for the money so after hitting paydirt with Skinhead it was a given that he'd immediately knock-out a follow-up. But hang on a minute. What exactly is a 'suedehead'? Well, Allen cuts to the chase and tells us:

'Suedeheads are difficult to define. They belong to no known bands nor do they amalgamate into gangs as their skinhead predecessors did. They are an enigma. An ant-social anti-everything conglomerate affecting status as their protective cover whilst engaging in nefarious pursuits more savage, more brutal than other cultists we have seen rise and fall in this past decade. Suedeheads have been known to use their umbrellas as weapons. Many adherents of this strange, loosely-joined cult have resorted to sharpening their umbrella tips...'

So does Joe Hawkins - psycho-skinhead extraordinaire - now walk around with an umbrella? You bet he does. And he's even started wearing a bowler hat rather like Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange.

For all its violent elements, a noticeable thing about Suedehead is that there is actually a lot less brutality in it than in Skinhead. Joe still gets into scraps and still vents his rage upon those he hates - and Joe hates everything and everybody - but his violence is now more nuanced. Now he stabs rather than stomps. Moreover, there's a lot more sexual frustration on show in Suedehead than there was in Skinhead. It all still adds up to an enjoyable read but the prose does seems to be more diluted, meaning it has less of an impact upon the reader than its predecessor. If anything, it stands nowadays primarily as a signifier to a youth cult that never really hit the same heights as a lot of others.

Interestingly, at one point in the book one of Joe's friends designs an ad board listing a code of ethics for the suedehead gang they have just formed. Essentially it's a list of all the things they hate but the thing about it is that it's very similar to Vivienne Westwood's famous t-shirt 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On' that she would come to design years later.

At another point in the book, one of Joe's gang members says 'I hate skinhead punks and ex-skinheads trying to look like suedeheads'. The interesting thing about this being the use of the term 'skinhead punks' because Richard Allen wrote this in 1971, which was obviously some years before the word 'punk' even came into use in England come the rise of the Sex Pistols.

So rather than the sex, violence and misanthropy on display, it's more the cultural stuff going on within its pages that makes Suedehead noteworthy nowadays. And for all this, Suedehead hasn't really dated at all and still makes for a relevant read.

John Serpico