Barney Bubbles – Ain’t That A Shame

Well readers, I’ve been cajoling Barney Bubbles boffins Rebecca and Mike to dip into their folder of ‘stuff Barney did that not many people know about’ and they’ve come up with some goods for us all to admire.

Pictured here below is a sleeve Barney (born Colin Fulcher) designed for former Damned punk band member Brian James in 1978. Marvel at the dextrous flicking of Barney’s favourite ink-laden toothbrush across carefully cut masks. R&M tell me that as well as creating the entire front illustration, the design of the front, back and label design is all Barney’s handiwork. They also point out to me the design of the record company name on the label (BJ Records) uses the spindle hole to not only hold the record in place, but also provide the ‘O’ of ‘RECORDS’ and the dot of the letter ‘j’; a typical economy of means.

Want to know what the track sounds like? Listen here:

And maybe check this blog entry where Brian talks a little about another sleeve designed by Barney, and muses on his personal dislike of folks like Malcolm McLaren.

Barney Bubbles – Stiff Records Stiff Sentence

Classic Barney Bubbles Stiff Records “If it ain’t STIFF, it ain’t worth a fuck” t-shirt.

This t-shirt illustrates nicely the music hall/vaudeville aspect of Colin Fulcher/Barney Bubbles’ work and is probably influenced, if not actually composed or passed on by his dad, who was a working class man of the people sort of bloke. Dad had a fairly extensive mental joke book. He was a fan of Max Miller the radio joker who was banned from the BBC for 5 years for telling a bawdy tale of which Lord Reith (founder and director of the BBC) did not approve. Goes like this, ” I was walking along a narrow mountain pass, so narrow that nobody else could pass you, when I saw a blonde walking towards me. A beautiful blonde without a stitch on, yes lady, not a stitch. Cor blimey. I didn’t know whether to toss myself off or block her passage. “

There is some confusion as to whether it was a Max Wall or a Max Miller joke, but I’m fairly certain it was Miller. Don’t matter either way, Mr. Fulcher, a News Of The World sort of man, liked ‘em both. I can remember the day in 1962 when Barney showed me his Paolotzi lookalikes standing in the entry to their house on Tranmere road, and ol’d man Fulcher telling that very same joke along with the story as how Miller got banned by the Beeb.

(I got my copy of this t-shirt in ’83 when I swapped with Barney for my T-shirt celebration of the repeat integers date 7 7 77.)

Note to readers unfamiliar with colloquial English, “Cor blimey” is a cant phrase derived from the medieval curse “God blind me if I tell a lie.”

It is amusing that until recently there was no Googlable picture of this t-shirt except for an inferior Bowdlerized knock off.

Barney Bubbles – In Graphic Detail

Barney Bubbles artwork (detail)

Revelations.

Today I’m in a mixed time awareness of the ages, reading a slew of overlapping novels, from 1948′s 1984 Orwell to the 1996 or so Ladbroke Grove of M. Amis. I’m also reading Northanger Abbey, by the eighteen-year old Jane Austen of 1799 and sitting on a fold-out mattress in the company of my eighteen-year old daughter Alessandra and her Chinese friend Dghzou here in 2012. The young women discuss the boys in the Occupy Oakland demo they were at last night, “They should have left when we did. No sense those men. I expect they got arrested. Let’s send them pictures of our food.”

As they chat, I listen to the now six week old recording of The BBC Radio-4 programme about Colin Fulcher, alias Barney Bubbles, on Dghzou’s lap-top, a show about how my ol’ friend Barney went nuts.

It’s a clever and emotional piece of detective reportage from the front lines of Barney’s life.

Such a revelation, I had no idea he was so troubled. We were the best of friends but in the style of blokes of the time we shared no intimacy of the sort that might lead to telling it all in such a forthright way. Not like in California today when every body tells their woes.

During my visit to his place in Islington in May of 1983, six months before he died I didn’t hear his hidden voice telling me his troubles. Not so hidden in retrospect, he said it to me out loud, something like, ‘I have a date with death.’ But I took it as metaphor at the time.

No matter that death stared us down, that both of our parents had gone in a moment, his the year after mine, we’d never admit such a sentiment as loss to each other, no, not cool. No, he wryly looked away as I asked, “So. How did your parents die?”

He dismissed me with, “They just died, di’n't they.” Not a flicker of emotion.

But he went on to say that the Australian Aborigines had given him a death, had put a stone on him and that he would die to protest the ways of the world, did I believe such things?

“Yeah, they work, I’m sure.” We both agreed that how killing stones worked was that they were believed in, and that objects were alive, like shapes, a conversation we’d had over the years.

On the radio show Fulcher’s sister, Jill, was astonishingly and appealingly forthright, so dramatically different than my remembered youthful fear of her, of what I imagined was her dangerous wrath and disapproval of me, her brother’s odd friend. No, Jill showed, through her clear telling, some of her brother’s hidden emotion. She sounded so real and poignant, with that radio sound effect of a ticking clock in the background, giving off a powerful whiff of the suburban, glassy-tiled fireplaces of Whitton, as I sat eight-thousand miles away on a fold-out here in San Francisco.

What a great piece of BBC magic, of emotional and you-were-there detective work this is. I grew up listening to the radio and this show is as good as it gets. Now all this telescoping of time muddles the world of radio and novels into a confused memory, with Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, editing a movie of Barney Fulcher slicing his face mask, all the while adding adding bits of Burrough’s Naked Lunch to the mix.

A minor point of fact about the radio programme, I don’t think ‘Colin Fulcher’ become ‘Barney Bubbles’ in 1963, He adopted ‘Barney’ in maybe ’66(?) and it wasn’t until 1967 when he started his light show that he adopted ‘Bubbles’. Hmm, I seem to recall I am wrong by a couple of years.

Another thing of which I’m less certain, but do feel, is that I don’t think Barney was ever really in ‘fashion’, so I don’t think he ever really went ‘out of style.’ He was always too far out in front to be really accepted for the seer he was by his paymasters. I think the reason he got used so much was because his employers were connived at by Barney’s force of personality. His “Cheap and Cheerfiul,” won the day despite their misgivings about his ideas. But when things went wrong for him in ’83, probably I now realize because of a bad cocaine and speed habit, he was less able to cope, and so off he flew with the Australians.

Colin Fulcher went in a ritual which was Barney Bubbles’ ‘Look what you made me do’ to the music industrial-complex. Plus I think warmonger Margaret Thatcher had just been or was going to be re-elected. His arch-enemy, Town mag publisher Michael Heseltine, then Minister of Defence, was weaseling for PM. Elvis Costello. HM Govt. There were many reasons to protest but his seedy metaphor turned deadly. It wasn’t just the disease, as Wiki calls it, that killed him, he was saying something. The bag and the cuts were masks in a performance.

Stupid idea. Don’t do it Barney.

Barney Bubbles – Turned On, Tuned In, Dropped Out

Barney Bubbles artwork detail

Mark Hodkinson’s BBC Radio 4 documentary about Barney Bubbles now has a broadcast date: 2 January 2012 at 16:00 GMT. Or for us folks in California, 8:00 PST. Also available at other times in other locations around the world. Turn on, tune in, drop out. The visual accompaniment to this newsflash shows two antennaed daschunds, and are of course, a product of Barney’s tripped-out imagination.

(Thanks to R&M for the image.)

Barney Bubbles – Are Y’ Courtin’?

Barney Bubbles Chilli Willi sticker (courtesy R and M)

Here we see Barney Bubbles in cheap and cheerful mode, rapidographing up an image with references.

There’s Walt Disney’s Pluto’s bent ears – but with four fingers and thumb style hands, deliberately non-Ub Ewarks-like (Ub was the originator of the Disney three fingered hands).

The Harris Tweed jackets are amusing, each with their own weave. Improbably for a time of experiment in all things garment, we were still wearing such things back then, a tweedy jacket with elbow patches being useful for its pockets. In ’73 I was featured in the Times on the fashion page doing a layered clothing strip tease in Covent Garden by Ed Bell, in which I believe I was wearing two such jackets as well as an overcoat or two, and many underlayers.

Talking of layered clothing, it was Barney, back in his ‘Colin Fulcher’ days who preached the no-underpants style of dressing, with a view to avoid the presumably unseemly seam lines viewable through skin-tight denim trousers (OK, ‘Levi’s') that he shrank wearing them in the bath so he said (I don’t believe he did). This was a person at Conran Design inspired piece of fashion sense.

The border lines are drawn sharp (real sharp!), in contrast to his oft-used wiggly jagged line that was deliberate and not the product of a shaky hand. His ‘shaky hand’ drawn line was evident in the drawings he did for the Book of Egg Cookery in 1967, but which I in my innocence redrew, much to his annoyance.

Hand lettered, the type seems to vary in weight with ‘Chilli Willi’ perversely appearing lighter, I wonder if that was intentional? It was quite likely a product of not particularly caring if it was or wasn’t, just the way it came out of his fingers.

The line up of jolly chaps is a tip of the hat to Music Hall’s ounce of flash and wit, which influenced him in his BBC radio Light Programme Arthur Askey “Are y’ courtin’?” mode. He did enjoy that pounding the boards scene.

Barney Bubbles – Damned Review in NME

Seems like not all folks thought much of Barney Bubbles’ work at the time, particularly NME journalist Mark Ellen who in a review of the ‘John Cooper Clarke Directory 1979′ book which Barney designed, slammed it with criticisms such as “dreadful punk-chic composition”, “cheap geometric artworks”, “hung at irritating angles”, “simplistic overtures”. Surprised readers of this blog will be happy to hear that four years later, the NME did write Barney a glowing obituary.

***

Further. This review reminds me of all the other space blind writers and publishers I’ve worked with, who payed cash for paper or space and proceeded to waste it.

Thanks to the ever-helpful R&M for a copy of the original article that can be read below.

David Wills and Barney Bubbles – Blow Up Oz 12

Welcome to a digitally inflatable copy of Oz 12. Click on an image once, and then when it has opened in a new screen click on it again and it’ll go supersize XXXL as never seen before on the world-wide-web.

Many of Colin Fulcher’s (AKA Barney Bubblles) album covers to be seen

I just found this

http://www.discogs.com/lists/Sleeve-Artists-Barney-Bubbles/5944

Which means it’s probably been around a while. ’Tis a view of much of the Colin Fucher (AKA Barney Bubbles) ouvre, I could correct one or two things in the biography, but a it’s good show and worth a visit.

A few observations

***
I’ve been recalling that graphic wiz Colin Fulcher (AKA Barney Bubbles) in 1959 (or it may have been before art school in 1958, possibly could be) worked with his Twickenham art school friends, Roy Burge, Bax (1st name ?), and Jim Bunker in the Kent hop yards picking the ingredients to flavor beer. This is/was a traditional summer job of gypsies and their caravans and London Eastenders who camp, or used to, in growers’ tents or modified old WW1 prisoner of war shacks.

If he didn’t have all the three Bs with him in the hop fields, I know for certain that he did pick hops and told me about it. I have a feeling he got the idea for the job from his dad, who may have been an Eastender hisself.

Fulcher said he didn’t get along with the other ‘traditional’ workers, they probably picked on him because he was not of their ilk and easily riled. The living conditions were awful, cold hard beds and lousy food. But he did like the fact it was a real working class hero sort of experience. They had “a regular knees-up” of an evening “round the camp fire” said Fulcher. The Eastender pearly kings and queens may have put on a show too
.
***
After the Hop picking, Bunker, Burge and Fulcher went off to the Norfolk Broads and looned about. Next year they went to Cornwall and King Arthur’s whatsit? Tintagel Castle.

***
His three friends, Burge, Bunker and Bax were the impetus for him to find a name beginning with B, which gave rise to the idea for ‘Barney’ but which he didn’t start to use use ’till 1966. The ‘Bubbles’ was even later, in ’67.

***
Bax left school fairly early, Jim B went on to be art ed of Mayfair, perhaps he might contact us. Roy Burge (see Inspector Burge Investigates) went into video and seems to prefer being silent, most likely because Fulcher/Bubbles most definitely wasn’t the ‘sweet’ person that some have described him as in this weblog, and he treated Burge to the skilled malevolent slow burn of Fulcher Fury. Having experienced the gnarly acid of the Fulcher wrath myself I can see why Burge may prefer to forget about it. As for me I got over it easily enough with passing time, although the full Fulcher Fury did sting when it happened to me in in 1968.

***
Barney’s relationship with beer was mixed, he hated the idea of business meetings in pubs, but designed the Strongbow Beer label, was into PubRock – but mostly disliked drinking the stuff, acid was his brew.

***
In Marianne Faithfull’s excellent bio she talks of the misogyny of the ‘boys club’ rockers and ain’t that true, In one of Barneys letters to me (see the post on it somewhere back in the older posts) he mentions “getting over misogyny” or similar, and I think that although he may have been surrounded by beautiful women, they were a problem for him. Lady Wordsworth recently described how at school he was a “sharp mod,” but when she met him later in about ’65 at an art galley he appeared to be a “slow druggy.” He told me at the time he did that act just to annoy her. Yup Barney was a real piece of work all right.

***
I just read that often the principal reaon for suicide is to get back at those who have crossed you and, boy, can I see that at work in Barney’s case, watch out Elvis and jake! (Not to mention a certain author who is haunted by the ghost of Barney, taunting him at night with snidely put-downs for printing such a bodge job rip-off of the Muleskinners ‘Lorry’ T-shirt design.

***
Moron the ‘re-created’ T-shirt thing – I’m riled. Here’s what I have to say about it.

This attempted reproduction of the award winning and brilliant Muleskinners ‘Lorry’ T-shirt by some Johny-come-lately rip-off person was a flaccid dry-bob cock-up.

The type was the wrong, the logo of the circle and heart graphic was wrong, and wrong was the fact it was done at all.

More wrongnesses are that it was printed in white text on a black t-shirt whereas the Lorry t-shirt, as photographed by Barney, was black text on a white T-shirt, and when it appeared on the final printed poster it appeared as white and orange text on a blue t-shirt.

Out of respect for Barney’s memory and his original intentions, you might think that any ‘re-creation t-shirt’ would be done in either one of these two ‘original’ ways, with white and orange text on a blue t-shirt being the more sympathetic way.

So why did the ‘recreation t-shirt’ get done in white text on a black t-shirt? Why? I think the thing was based on a black and white picture of the muleskinners poster instead of a colour one, with cheapness of production and modern convention as futher unimaginative reasons.

Of course it may all have been a ruse to change the design so that any copyright claim by whoever owns the copyright can’t sue, but that just shows how pig-ignorant the perp is of copyright law. So there. Grrr.

Nik Turner pictured and Lemmy named in Elvis Costello advert

pic: courtesy of Rebecca and Mike*  To see it up big, click on’t.

hi David. well, we plunged into the Barney Bubbles tombola and pulled out this item for you. hopefully your readers will enjoy seeing this.

okay… so… this is an advert Barney designed for Elvis Costello’s LP ‘This Years Model’ 1978. this is one of a series of adverts that Barney designed for the LP, all were on different themes. this one (as you can see) is themed ‘Drugs’. the pic is big enough for you folks to be able to read the labels and have a go at decoding it; we can argue between ourselves in the comments department over who is who and what means what, and warm Siberia up a bit.

of immediate interest to Hawkwind readers might be that Nik Turner and Lemmy both make an appearance in this Elvis Costello advert (that’s Nik in the top middle picture, and Lemmy is name-checked under the top right picture).

David W writes: Down in the comments dungeon it is explained that the top right picture is of Little Tony, not Hawkwind’s Lemmy although that is what the caption implies.

I would expect that this was designed as a center spread with no split, and got shoved elsewhere by Jarvis in production, I don’t think Barney would have designed an everything-centred layout if he had known it was going to be split. Factis, if I recall aright, it was a bit unusual for the Ol’boy to center anything if he could help it. So prove me wrong. I remember having some circles with type in them, I asked “Flush left or centred?” and he answered quick as a spark, “Flush left!” with the implied “Of course, you idiot.”

*Who may, in due course, resend another shot of this ad, perhaps with a sheet of glass on top for extra flatness, with the full-frontal of Nik showing in the across-the-back split at the fold so that our Nik T fans can admire his charm.

Outraged Barnophiles gibe: there’s a lot of centred barney texts, like there’s a lot of ranged left (or right) texts.

there’s also a lot of barney design that is willfully designed to not fit the format…

DW: And so it is that wise things are said that refute my mumblings and wise me up – especially when used with the word ‘wilfully’ to describe The B. Wilfull is of the essence.

RM: glass?

DW: Ok, no glass then, how ’bout showing all the ink that is currently hid by overlapping pages?

RM: words split by a fold?

boy, you is gettin old and cranky

DW: Got that right. I called myself ‘Eric Stodge’ for a reason.

RM: but, we are still friends okay! LOL!