Shaken not stirred

Moviemaker Anthony Stern, who knew Iggy before she met Syd, has confirmed that the person at the Granny Takes A Trip boutique on the IN Gear movie is indeed her. On his turn he will present a home movie called Iggy Eskimo Girl at The City Wakes festival in Cambridge (see banner at the right side). A short teaser can be found on YouTube.

According to Mick Rock Syd was touched when she left him:

Once I’d developed the film (from The Madcap Laughs photo session, note by FA), I went round to show Syd the pictures. He took this one opposite (page 21 in the PR-book, note by FA) and scratched some lines and his name onto it. I think there was a bit of negativity directed at Iggy. He just started scratching the print, with a big grin on his face. (Taken from Psychedelic Renegades.)

It could be that the scratches on the picture were destined at Iggy, but why did Syd Barrett scratch (more or less) around her figure? Not (and I hope my shrink will never read this) her face or body, in my garbled opinion the logical thing to do if one would try to express negative or revengeful feelings on a photograph. Syd’s body and face is far more scratched than Iggy’s and Barrett also cut the letters SYD on the picture... Perhaps he was just trying to make clear to Mick Rock that he wanted to get rid of his pop-life alter ego.

Mick Rock writes further that he heard from Duggie Fields, the painter who was Syd Barrett’s roommate and who still lives in the same apartment today, that ‘she later went off with some rich guy in Chelsea and lived a very straight life’.

On my main blog (and also on the Late Night forum) I wrote that none of the Pink Floyd biographers have been really looking for Iggy. Mark Blake, author of Pigs Might Fly, responded: “I can't speak for all the PF or SB biographers, but I certainly tried.”

The only bit of new info I found was that there was a chance 'Iggy' may have gone to school in the South London area, as she was known as one of the regular teenage girls at the dancehalls around Purley and Caterham. This would have been around 1965. Duggie Fields recalls seeing her some time after the Madcap Laughs photo session and she was looking a lot more "sloaney". Most of the people I spoke to who knew her believe Iggy married a rich businessman and doesn't now want to be 'found'. (Taken from The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit on Late Night.)

Although scarce the above information is about the most relevant we have had from a biographer in about 30 years.

The most famous dancehall in Purley was the Orchid Ballroom where The Who, The Troggs and The Hollies gigged a couple of times. It started as a regular dance hall (and concert and sporting events hall) in the Fifties and had a local house band The Jackpots in 1963 and 64.

In the mid Sixties (1964 – 1966) the Orchid Ballroom was the meeting place for the Croydon mods who would assemble every Monday night. Witnesses remember Mike (?) Morton, Tony Crane, Jeff Dexter and Sammy Samwell spinning the records. Pete Sanders and Mickey Finn used to be part of the crowd.

Not all these names ring a bell. I could not trace back Mike Morton, but Lionel Morton was the singer and lead guitarist from the Four Pennies who had a hit in 1963 – 1964 with Juliet. Tony Crane was a member of The Mavericks, a band that became famous when they changed the name to The Merseybeats, later The Merseys (David Bowie would cover their Sorrow on his Pin-Ups album, a tune they had borrowed from The McCoys). Mickey Finn could be the man who was the drummer of T. Rex and who also played on the record made by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, the people who were behind the Granny Takes A Trip boutique.

Elizabeth Colclough used to work at the bar in 1968: "It was the place to go to meet friends old and new, weekday evenings and also at the weekend. We saw some great bands, some who are still going strong today.”

Another witness recalls how Cathy (Mc Gowan), the queen of the mods and presenter of the ever popular Ready Steady Go! Show, came to the Orchid Ballroom to spot for dancers to appear in her show. Seen the fact that Iggy was present at an RSG!-party, organised by the show's main choreographer, it is not improbable that she may have been present at some RSG! television-shows as well, as a dancer or as a pretty face in the public.

A book about the history of the Orchid Ballroom has been made and the Church will try to contact its author, there is the (very small) chance that Iggy is mentioned in it. (Update August 2009: Brian Roote, who studied the history of The Orchid confirmed later to the Church: 'I have no knowledge of this girl whatsoever'.)

An image gallery with stills of the movie Iggy, Eskimo Girl can be found at the gallery.

Sources (other than the above internet links):
McAleer, Dave: Beatboom!, Hamlyn, London, 1994, p. 57-59.
Rock, Mick: Psychedelic Renegades, Plexus, London, 2007, p. 20.

Anthony Stern Photoshoot

A couple of posts ago it was prophesised that some of Anthony Stern’s unpublished Iggy pictures would find their way to the public. And they will… the City Wakes website now has an Iggy gallery as well.

The 15 pictures, sadly in a very small format, come from different photo-shoots, and with exception of the ironic black and white pictures, most of them are very representative for the psychedelic era they were shot in. Signed prints of the Iggy pictures will soon be exclusively available from the City Wakes website.

The gallery with Anthony Stern's pictures can be visited here (broken link).
Update (2010): Anthony Stern's website still contains the same gallery and also the Church has stored these for pure academical purposes: Iggy Triptychs.

Pictures at an exhibition

It is far from a coincidence that this blog started more or less when The City Wakes project was announced. The City Wakes is an official Syd Barrett tribute, held in the city of Cambridge, and it has been officially opened past week. But the history of the instalment of the Church will be told on an other day, promised.

Supported by Syd’s family and friends, The City Wakes is the first ever official tribute to Syd Barrett – original front-man and songwriter for Pink Floyd. A celebration of Syd’s creativity, The City Wakes focuses on Syd’s early life in Cambridge, providing a showcase for his remarkable talent and painting a picture of the explosive and vibrant early 1960s cultural scene in which he grew up.

Involving many of Syd’s former friends – not least Storm Thorgerson and Mick Rock - The City Wakes includes concert performances, exhibitions, guided tours, music workshops, a 1960s style ‘happening’, talks and a new book of interviews and memorabilia.

The City Wakes has been developed by Escape Artists, a UK arts and mental health charity and professional production house. Working with clients in both institutional and non-institutional settings, it aims to improve quality of life, health and social welfare, by recognising the vital importance of creativity to an individual’s well being. Funds generated through The City Wakes project will be used to support the charity's work in the mental health sector. Escape Artists has been working in the mental health sector in Cambridge since 1999. (Taken from The City Wakes)

One of the exhibitions taking place is called The Other Room, it is held in the Ruskin Gallery at Anglia Ruskin University, and is open from 24th October to 2nd November 2008.

At the Ruskin Gallery visitors can see over fifty of Syd's paintings, the majority of which have never before been seen in public. Also on display are rare archival-quality prints from Syd's photo-biographer Mick Rock and original pieces from Pink Floyd's legendary designer Storm Thorgerson. The exhibition features rare Syd-related memorabilia, including diaries and correspondence. (Taken from Anglia Ruskin University)

But of course the Church is far more intrigued by the pictures from the personal collection of Anthony Stern that are exposed as well: Pink Floyd performing at UFO (1967-ish) and his Iggy pictures.

The Other Room: Syd Barrett's Art and Life
Date: 24 October - 2 November 2008
Time: 10am - 9pm Monday to Friday, 10am - 5pm Saturday and Sunday

(Thanks to Dark Globe for the picture, other pictures of the exhibition can be seen at Inside The Other Room)

The Other Room

The Other Room: Syd Barrett's Art And Life was a Cambridge exhibition that ended a couple of days ago. More details about it could be found in a previous post: Pictures at an exhibition.

A lucky wind (thanks SgB!) brought me a copy from the catalogue, an 18 pages booklet. The following can be found inside:

Page 2 & 3: introductions by Stephen Pyle and Anji Jackson-Main, curators of the exhibition.

Pages 3 to 9 are dedicated to the paintings of Syd Barrett. This is far the most interesting part of the catalogue as many unseen works of Syd Barrett are represented here, albeit in a rather small thumbnail format. I’m pretty sure those pictures will find their way to the specialised Syd Barrett websites and blogs so I’m not going to put them here.

Pages 10 to 12: photograps by Mick Rock. This reminds me that the Church still hasn’t dedicated some of its holy space to Mick Rock’s excellent Psychedelic Renegades book. This will be done during the long winter days when a lonely hungry wolf howls at the suburbs of Atagong Mansion.

Page 11: some family snapshots taken by Syd's relatives. I don’t want to sound too snotty, but I’ve seen these before.

Pages 14 & 15: artwork by Storm Thorgerson (Syd Barrett album cover, Barrett album cover, The City Wakes green doors poster.)

page 17: colofon.

But The Church is of course most interested in pages 12 and 13 that contain some pictures from the collection of Athony Stern (see also: Anthony Stern Photoshoot).

Antony Stern’s Iggy pictures can be seen on The City Wakes website, a link to that particular gallery can be found at the Galleries (dead link) section of their blog. And if you have a quick peek you might find something more...

I want to thank the members of the Late Night forum, who visited The City Wakes, for their impressions, their pictures, their testimonies and the goodies they have been distributing amongst the other members who couldn’t attend the festival.

The Other Room's catalogue can be visualised at the gallery.

Chelsea Cloisters

A rather long post about Mark Blake's Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly has been published on Felix Atagong's (that's me) Unfinished Projects. It contains some bits and pieces about Iggy as well.
Update 2010: this review has recently been added to the Holy Church blog as well - Si les cochons pourraient voler… 

Speaking about Iggy, Anthony Stern's movie was shown at The City Wakes festival during the first weekend. Unfortunately one of the technicians mistakenly gave the film back to Anthony Stern. As the absence of the film wasn't noticed until just before the next screening it was too late to retrieve the DVD.

After the presentation there was a Q&A round with Anthony Stern. One member of the audience maintained that Iggy is currently living in Chelsea. The Church will try to investigate further into this matter.

The Iggy Bank

The Reverend has got this small, but nice, hobby project that is called the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. It is destined to serve a molecularly small, but dedicated, fraction of the Syd Barrett peer group and is only visited a couple of times per day.

Most of you may have heard from a band called Pink Floyd who have had global success with albums such as The Wall, Wish You Were Here or (The) Dark Side Of The Moon. Some of you may be aware of the fact that the band evolved out of a mid-sixties British rhythm and blues outfit that listened to quite ridiculous names as The Abdabs, The T-Set and even The Meggadeaths, before baptising itself The Pink Floyd Sound at about the same time when psychedelia hit London.

The man who (literally) put Pink Floyd on the charts in 1967 was its band leader Syd Barrett. Six months later he was kicked out of the band and while the rest would grow into mega-stardom, Barrett, a so-called drug victim of the permissive London Underground days, lived a recluse-life in his home-town Cambridge. Not that he was really a poor boy, when he died in 2006, he had a few million pounds on his bank-account thanks to the loyalty of his ex-band-mates.

Iggy the Eskimo

Syd Barrett made a couple of solo albums and the first of them has a photo of his girlfriend who was only known to the outside world as Iggy the Eskimo. Her iconic picture became a psychedelic avatar and can be found on thousands of record and CD sleeves and is repeated on virtually all press articles, magazines and books related to Syd Barrett.

2008 saw the creation of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit and soon after Mojo magazine found Iggy back, interviewing her after four decades of silence. Iggy Rose wasn't even aware that her picture had been used for a legendary record sleeve, nor that photographers Storm Thorgerson and Mick Rock have made a small business out of the Syd Barrett & Iggy the Eskimo photo shoot. Every time her picture gets published, their cash register goes ka-ching.

The Iggy Bank

To cut a long story short, Iggy Rose has never seen pounds, shillings or pence for these pictures and in these harsh days of economic crisis she can't afford a high electricity or phone bill. Facebook is her connection to the outside world, but Internet connections on a phone are way too expensive, so a couple of friends have decided to donate her a laptop and pay for her monthly broadband connection.

But we can't do it all by ourselves and that is why we would like you to join in and donate to the Iggy Bank.

The Iggy Bank is and will probably never be something official, we are just a bunch of Internet friends who happen to care about Iggy and we give our word that all proceedings will go to her. We are proud to say that our president, guardian angel and ruthless supervisor is none other than Libby Gausden who will kick our butts if we fail.

So press that button and donate. Now.

The Iggy Bank are: Libby Gausden (GB), Alexander (DE), Amy (US), Antonio (ES), Bill (US), Eva (NL). Felix (BE). You can contact us or leave a message at the Iggy Bank Facebook page: http://facebook.com/iggybank. Thanks to Brett for starting the idea and all our friends for supporting us.