kaleidoscope – Page 5 – { feuilleton }

Quite a performance

As mentioned earlier, I designed the jacket for this excellent biography of Donald Cammell some time ago. The book is reviewed in today’s (London) Times by Barry Miles.

Quite a performance
review by Barry Miles

DONALD CAMMELL: A Life on the Wild Side
by Rebecca and Sam Umland
FAB Press, £24.95 hardback, £16.95 paperback; 304pp

THERE IS A PERSISTENT rumour that after shooting himself in the head the filmmaker Donald Cammell lived on in a delirious, euphoric state for 45 minutes. The story is that he asked his wife China to place a mirror so that he could watch himself die and said: “Do you see the picture of Borges”? This is a reference to the death scene in Performance, his best known film, when the gangster Chas (played by James Fox) shoots the rock star Turner (played by Mick Jagger).

In a profoundly shocking sequence, the camera follows the bullet into his brain, only to find there a photograph of the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges who is much quoted in the film. This is but one of the many myths surrounding Cammell that these authors debunk — he died the instant the .38 bullet entered his skull.

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Strange Things Are Happening, 1988–1990

A NOTICE TO OUR PUBLIC…………
It’s now a shade over twenty years since Rolling Stone was launched, complete with a brave new broadside on its interests and purposes.

So we too now announce our aims and prejudices and strive to clear a path laying bare our hopes and inspirations. Strange Things will deal from the heart and feature items that we would wish to find on offer. Music, from whatever era, will always be the core, with in-depth studies of a sound or an individual, or a laugh and a picture whenever the situation arises. There will be discographies, reviews, rare photographs; there will be threads or themes across several issues or even, instead, a one off appreciation.

That aside, there will be literature, film and television; cult curiosities or mainstream geniuses. In short, the boundaries are limitless. Over the next few issues the tale of Greenwich Village will unfold; so too the life and work of Richard Brautigan. Frantic new pop will sit beside English folk-rock, the Silver Surfer will meet the San Franciscan scene and white Chicago Blues will rock with Thunderbirds. “Whatever Fits” is our new motto – we’re there wherever strange things are happening.

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