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Iggy was part Inuit (or Eskimo to use the vernacular of the day). According to Duggie Fields she wasn't considered a girlfriend of Syd (Barrett) although he says she probably slept with Syd on more than one occasion. He goes on to say 'We didn't want her living with us at the time but she was so beguiling that it was a difficult situation'. She was a former girlfriend of Anthony Stern (Movie Director, writer and cinematographer who was a friend of Syd in the 60's (he lived on Eden Street in Cambridge in the 60's) and he was a flatmate of and film asssistant to Peter Whitehead [Tonite Let's All Make Love In London]). Apparently she was destitute when she arrived at Wetherby Mansions had no money, no job and few possessions. According to Duggie Fields she never wore underwear (when she was wearing anything at all!) and he recalls her getting off a bus wearing a scarf as a skirt!

Iggy apparently 'vanished as quickly as she had come' and a hippie couple Rusty and Greta (two casual friends of Syd) decided to move in and lived in the hallway for a while. Later there was Gilly Staples (who Syd apparently threw across the room on one occasion) and a girl called Lesley (who sometimes Syd would see and other times would leave her outside banging on his door to come in). After that Gayla Pinion moved in around late '69 and subsequently became engaged to Syd on October 1 1970 but they never married.

According to Duggie Fields after Iggy left Syd she apparently went off with some 'rich guy from Chelsea and lived a very straight life'.

Written by acidmandala at The Syd Barrett Archives.

Note: this was the Church's first blog post, basically to test how things would look in good old, and now depreciated, html 3.2.
Update January 2017: as of January 2017, the website has been refurbished and upgraded towards html5.

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. 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 an old and abandoned 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 Iggy, Eskimo Girl movie.

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.

On September the 17th the Croydon Guardian, a weekly free local newspaper covering South London, devoted an article to Iggy after the Church had revealed that Iggy had probably been a regular visitor at the Purley dancehall The Orchid. The article was brought to my attention by Matthew Taylor from Escape Artists who was so kind to point me to a scan of the article, neatly hidden in a dark corner from the (long deleted) City Wakes website.

It all started with a remark on the Late Night forum why no one had ever tried to locate Iggy. Pink Floyd biographer Mark Blake promptly denied this and added some extra titbits to the Iggy enigma. He had found out that she was probably a South Londoner who used to go dancing in dancehalls in or around Purley. More about the Church’s quest to locate Iggy’s dancing habits can be found on a previous entry on this blog: Shaken not stirred.

This ended with the promise that the Church would try to find some more information about the place and the people who visited it. A mail was send to a historian of the Bourne Society but without success. The same message however to a journalist of the Croydon Guardian was immediately replied. Some initial information was exchanged and journalist Kirsty Walley did an excellent job by getting testimonies, not only from Anthony Stern, but also from a DJ who used to spin records at the Orchid, Jeff Dexter, and who still remembers Iggy.

So, where did she go to, our lovely?
By Kirsty Whalley

In the Swinging 60s she was an iconic model who broke the heart of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. Known only as Iggy she is thought to have lived in Thornton Heath and was a regular at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley between 1963 and 1967. Then she vanished and for the past three decades the former 60's in-crowd has wondered where she went?

Former friends, director and artist Anthony Stern and DJ Jeff Dexter, are both searching for the enigmatic model, who featured naked on the cover of Barrett's solo album Madcap Laughs. She was nicknamed "the Eskimo" because it was thought that she was part Inuit. DJ Jeff Dexter, who regularly played at the Orchid, vividly remembers the beautiful girl who used to talk to him while he played his set. He first noticed her in 1963. He said: “Iggy was part of a group of very wonderful looking south London girls. She was unusual because she did not look like anyone else at the time. Since she disappeared, she has become a bit of an enigma.”

Dexter says that he met the director and artist Anthony Stern in 1967 and that Iggy became involved with him at about the same time. Anthony took many pictures of the model and also made a film of her, which will be shown for the first time at the City Wakes festival this October in Cambridge. Stern said: “Iggy was my muse. I met her at a Hendrix gig at the Speakeasy. She was a lovely inspiration and free spirit. I never knew her real name.” “We used to hang out together, occasionally dropping acid, staying up all night, going for walks at dawn in Battersea Park.” The artist said he recently discovered photographs that he took of Iggy on a houseboat near Lots Road in Chelsea. “She entirely captures the spirit of the Sixties, living for the moment, completely carefree.”

Photographer Mick Rock remembers turning up at Barrett’s to take photographs for his solo album cover. At an interview in 199 he said: “Syd was still in his underpants when he opened the door. He’d totally forgotten about the session and fell about laughing. Iggy the Eskimo was naked in the kitchen making coffee. She didn’t mind either. They both laughed a lot and it was a magical session.” The most iconic images of her appear on the album, where she poses naked in the background.

After she broke up with Barrett she disappeared. Felix Atagong, who has set up a website in her honour, said: “According to the painter Duggie Fields, she got married to a rich guy from Chelsea and led a ‘decent’ life after that.”

Anthony and Jeff both admit they have spent time looking for her. “the truth is, if she has not come forward by now, she probably doesn’t want to be found,” said Anthony.

(picture insert: It-crowd icon: Iggy the Eskimo). An online version of the article can be found here.

An entirely new and previously unreleased picture of Iggy accompanies the newspaper article. This comes out of the personal collection of Anthony Stern. It is believed that more pictures from his collection may be unearthed on a later date.

A couple of posts ago it was prophesised in Where did she go? 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. (Update: this website no longer exists.)

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.

Update (2010-2016): Anthony Stern's website no longer contains these pictures and so the Church has stored these for pure academical purposes: Iggy Triptychs.
Update (2016): Anthony Stern's 2016 BBC documentary Memory Marbles contained some new Iggy pictures, they have been published on Tumblr: Memory Marbles.

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 - deleted)

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 - link no longer available)

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 (link has been deleted).

Thanks to Dark Globe for the picture, other pictures of the exhibition can be seen at Inside 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: photographs 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 Anthony 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 section of their blog. And if you have a quick peek you might find something more... (Update: The City Wakes website no longer exists.)

I want to thank all 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.

Did I already mention that the people of the Late Night forum are a bunch of fantastic people? Probably yes, but I will keep on repeating it. Eternal Isolation found a lecture by Anthony Stern, held at La Cinémathèque in Paris in June 2008. Here is how our fellow Europeans describe him:

Anthony Stern était l'un des secrets les mieux gardés de la cinématographie anglaise. La Cinémathèque française lui offre sa première rétrospective. Camarade de classe de Syd Barrett et de David Gilmour, assistant de Peter Whitehead, Anthony Stern a réalisé certains des plus beaux poèmes documentaires des années 60 et 70, à la fois sensuels, endiablés et railleurs. Taken from La Cinémathèque.

(Translation) Anthony Stern is one of England's cinematographic best-kept secrets. The French Cinémathèque offers him his first retrospective. Friend from Syd Barrett and David Gilmour, assistant of Peter Whitehead, Anthony Stern has realised several of the most poetic, sensual, boisterous and mocking documentaries of the 60’s and 70’s.

The lecture, videotaped by a member of the audience, has been issued on YouTube in three consecutive parts, but part 3 is the most interesting for Iggy fans. After the tiresome lecture, due to the fact that Anthony’s English explanation is translated into French and back, a copy is shown of his 1969 movie Wheel, followed by Iggy, Eskimo Girl. Unfortunately only snippets of the different movies have made it onto the web, but any additional material from our goddess is appreciated.

An image gallery with stills of the movie can be found at the gallery.

Update: the Church made a compilation of Anthony Stern's lecture at La Cinématèque (removing the French translation parts). You can watch it here: Anthony Stern Movie Talk.

Update April 2017: replaced invalid YouTube link (2008) with a new one.

Ranting is normally destined for the main site of this domain, Unfinished Projects, thank you for visiting once and so often… but rules are to be broken, even Church rules…That horrible blasphemy of a browser, truly a work of the devil and its main representative here on earth, Mr. Bill Gates, messed up the Holy Church’s website the last couple of weeks… but only if you browsed the Holy Church with the dreadful Internet Explorer.

The Reverend found out that the objects that broke the layout were the recently added YouTube movies. It took his holiness hours of his precious time and a couple of Guinness beers to repair the damage done but he appears to have miraculously accomplished this gargantuan chore.

The fact that not one single congregant spotted the mistake fills his Reverend’s heart with joy. Apparently none of you uses Satan’s little browser. But of course it could also be that none of you actually visits this blog or gives a damn about it. In that case the Reverend can only give you Father Jack Hackett’s advice: feck off!

But let us forget and forgive and lead you through the narrow path that leads to all things Iggy. Anthony Stern’s movies are distributed by Chimera Arts and this is what they have to say about our favourite subject:

Iggy The Eskimo Girl
UK/2008/4’/16mm/stereo
Produced by Sadia (2008) and Anthony Stern (1968) • Directed by Stern • Edited by Tayler/Sadia/Stickley
Based on footage originally shot in 1968, this is a portrait of Syd Barrett’s girlfriend Iggy, referred to ubiquitously and affectionately by those who knew her in the late 1960’s as ‘Iggy The Eskimo Girl’. Taken from: Chimera Arts New Films.

The text is accompanied by 5 stills of the movie that have now been added to the gallery.

Have you ever seen President Sarkozy on the telly giving a speech? He always thinks he is doing a bloody Hamlet. His performances, because that is what he thinks they are, remind me more of Louis de Funès (or for the non-Francophiles among us: Benny Hill) than Napoleon Bonaparte, another one of those short short-tempered little men with a short fuse who think they can rule the world.

This post contains a fairly well hidden review of the Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly by Mark Blake.

Contents:
1. Flamingoes might fly, about the very first Pink Floyd biography, written in French, by Jean-Marie Leduc.
2. Floydstuff, a rant about merchandising and tribute albums.
3. Pigs Might Fly, review of the Mark Blake biography.
4. A final word about Jean-Marie Leduc.

Flamingoes might fly

Eloquence is a French way of speech but that was not what I was thinking of when I read the following, decades ago:

Je ne sais qui doit le plus à l’autre! La France ou le Pink Floyd? Le Pink Floyd peut-être.
(translation) I don’t know who owes the other more! France or Pink Floyd? Pink Floyd perhaps.

The above is the start of a French rock biography (1977 edition), called Pink Floyd, written by Rock & Folk journalist Jean-Marie Leduc and issued by Albin Michel. Rock & Folk was an excellent French music magazine, that started in 1966, hence its name, and that wanted to inform the French public from the new trends in modern pop music. Jean-Marie Leduc hopped to London and wrote several articles about the London Underground music scene and le pouvoir des fleurs. He discovered this incredible band that would soon be the French progressive student movement’s darling, le Pink Floyd.

Although the most common language at London at that time was the language of love it would’ve helped Jean-Marie Leduc a little bit if he had actually understood some English. Which he didn’t. Probably the acid didn’t help either. That didn’t stop him to write a Pink Floyd biography that was published in October 1973, and that could still be found, a decade later, in every bookstore and self-respecting newspaper and magazine shop in France. Selling figures nearly must have achieved the same height as a regular Pink Floyd album; Leduc’s Pink Floyd was an instant classic and a steady seller.

It was also full of blunders. At page 19 Leduc wrongly mistakes the Pink Flamingo club for the band and throughout the book he will name the lads le Flamant Rose. This (wrong) translation was taken over by all French rock magazines and it would take Rock & Folk until July 1994 to officially denounce the rumour that a Pink Floyd is a Phoenicopterus Roseus. Another botch is on page 49 where Leduc claims that...

...le 2 novembre (1967) (…) un nouveau simple du groupe “Apologises / Jugband blues” est commercialisé en Angleterre’.

(translation) on the 2nd of November (1967) (...) a new single of the band is released in England: “Apologises / Jugband blues” .

This one simple sentence has made French speaking Pink Floyd fans look for this non-existent track of the band for over a decade. At the end of the book the mistake is repeated at the discography, Jean-Marie Leduc keeps on maintaining that the Floyd’s third single was Jugband blues / Apologies (please note the different orthography and running order).

Update November 2011: it was later cleared out that once again it had been Leduc's extended knowledge of the English language that made him misunderstand 'Apples and Oranges' for 'Apologies' or 'Apologises'.

Jean-Marie Leduc’s biography was probably the very first biography on the band, as Charles Beterams wrote in the Echoes, a Dutch fan club magazine, and despite the mistakes it also contains a stunning revelation about the bands first recording, forgotten by most of the biographies that would come next. Leduc interviewed Nick Mason in 1973 and asked if Astronomy Domine was the Floyd’s first composition. Mason answered (translated from French back into English):

Not true. Our first composition was titled Lucy Lee in blue tight or something similar. We recorded it on acetate but it was never commercialised.

Once again Jean-Marie Leduc’s average knowledge of the English language made him note the song as Lucy Lee, and not as Lucy Leave, although Nick Mason’s pronunciation of the song title may not have been too comprehensible as well. It would take ages for another journalist to re-discover the truth about the band’s first recording.

Floydstuff

One bloke who does remember Lucy Leave is Mark Blake. In 2007 he wrote a Pink Floyd biography entitled Pigs Might Fly but because I am such a stingy money spender I wanted to wait until the paperback came sailplaning to me. The last couple of years it is raining Pink Floyd related books and accessories as if all kind of shady people want to have their free ride on the gravy train. It is of course a double feeling, here we are Pink Floyd fans wanting to know everything (and we mean everything) on the band but on the other hand we feel as if we are inside an orange squeezer (or to use Gerald Scarfe’s weird world of Floydian symbolism: a meat grinder). The last thing I’ve read on Pink Floyd merchandising is that Converse will bring out a range of shoes based on the cover art of three of their albums. Part of me is yelling yuck!, but another part is jumping up and down, not a pretty sight if you would catch me on my webcam.

About a decade ago, perhaps a bit longer, small record companies suddenly discovered the tribute album. I jumped on it as a hungry louce on a passing German shepherd dog. But when my heap of tribute records, all made to honestly commemorate the band and not to make a quick buck, started to become bigger than my genuine Pink Floyd collection I simply gave up. I think that Babies Go Pink Floyd was the last tribute album I bought, partially because the concept attracted me. If you also feel tempted to listen to it.
Don’t.
Not only the record is tripe and you wouldn’t want to confront any baby with it without giving him or her a lifelong phobia for Pink Floyd music but also it doesn’t actually motivates grown-ups either to start procreating, normally a quite amusing and satisfactory pastime.

Recently I found this add from Dwell records that goes something like this:

The biggest names in hard rock and avant-garde metal have come together to pay tribute to the madcap genius of Syd Barrett. Featuring some of heavy-metals most influential players, this is a hard-rocking trip through the music world’s most idiosyncratic minds.

Some of the bands present on the record are the following: Dreg, Giant Squid, Jarboe, Kylesa and my favourite Stinking Lizaveta. Except in some distant Norwegian fjordic regions where these bands are probably world famous amongst the local satanic black metal scene these bands don’t really merit the eptitheton ‘biggest name in hard rock’ to begin with. I would have written the add for this album a little bit less triumphant:

Several virtually unknown hard rock and avant-garde metal bands that are constantly struggling to have a record contract have come together to rip off the musical heritage of Syd Barrett. Featuring some of heavy-metals obscurest players, this is a fruitless hard-rocking trip trying to get a fan-base that exceeds the dozen.

Now that is what I call a more realistic description of the project. You can listen to the songs at MySpace and I have to confess they don’t all sound like rubbish to me.

But all the above was merely a long, way too long, way to say that I quit buying Pink Floyd tribute records a while ago as most were, are and will be… full of crap. I had the same compulsive buying disorder when it came to Pink Floyd related music magazines and books. Despite the fact that I can’t play guitar I have dozens of guitar magazines that promise you the tablature of the third guitar solo in Comfortably Numb and a brand new exclusive Pink Floyd interview that was in fact already published in another guitar magazine from three years before that I already had in my scrapbook.

I define myself more than the average Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett fan, but less than an anorak, fanorak suits me fine.. Anoraks have the tendency to start flame wars because someone has told that Syd Barrett was wearing green socks on the 7th of August 1967 while every aficionado knows he was wearing brown socks that day. (To avoid death threats: I’ve just made this whole sock-thing up, but the 7th of August 1967 was of course an important day in Floydian history, about the importance of green socks, just check David Gilmour’s inside sleeve of his About Face album and shiver.)

So I quit buying Pink Floyd books as well, more or less… the last I bought was The Rough Guide To Pink Floyd that can now be found at local lo-price bookshops for the third of the price I bought it for. That is a very nice Pink Floyd biography by the way, and if you are in search for one, well don’t hesitate and get it. It’s cheap and cheerful.

Pigs Might Fly  

But this post was originally intended as a review of Pigs Might Fly, a Pink Floyd biography by Mark Blake and all I did until now is take the piss out of:

a) the very first Pink Floyd biography by Jean-Marie Leduc;
b) the various tribute cds that do exist;
c) the growing pile of Pink Floyd biographies…

So I had given up buying Pink Floyd biographies but when I wrote on the Late Night forum that nobody had ever tried to locate Syd’s girlfriend we know as Iggy Mark Blake promptly replied that he certainly had. I more or less apologised and answered that I would read his biography.

So I did.

Who am I to post a review about a book that Record Collector choose as book of the year, that Q magazine described as a ‘detailed, orderly, first-rate read’, while Mojo praised its ‘heroic research’. It’s excellent, well written, full of anecdotes and it seems to please the casual and the more ardent fan of the band, although it still forgets to mention the colour of socks Syd Barrett was wearing on the 7th of August 1967. Anoraks will always find something to grumble about. I did. I found a mistake from microscopical importance about the Publius affair but only people daft enough to look for the Enigma mystery will probably realise that.

A while ago I started a side-project called the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. In it I am looking for the whereabouts of the girl who appeared on the cover of the Syd Barrett album The Madcap Laughs. It is rather amazing how many bits and pieces can be found after all these years, but apparently Iggy was quite a character in those flowery powery days. The time was ripe as other people suddenly started to reveal their Iggy memories, amongst them Anthony Stern who made a four-minute movie about her in the Sixties that was premiered this year.

I wrote some things about Iggy that I thought were revolutionary but apparently Mark Blake had unravelled these before in his biography, only he didn’t need as many space to write these things down than I did and if this review goes on like this it might be longer than the book itself.

On page 140 Mark Blake writes about how Iggy performed The Bend (Church article: Bend It!), on the next page he reveals the existence of the Anthony Stern movie (before it became an item on YouTube) and how she used to go dancing at The Orchid in Purley (Church article: Shaken not stirred). And all this a year before the Church was started and something of an Iggy hype was created. Hats off to Mark Blake.

Mark Blake is not only an accurate but also a beautiful writer (I’m not speaking about his physical appearance here), reading the bit about the Live 8 reunion gave me tears in my eyes although I normally only weep when I read sweet little things about dying puppies. That more or less sums it up really; Pigs Might Fly moved me and I thank Mark Blake a lot for that.

(In America the book has been published under the alternative title Comfortably Numb, this was the working title of the book but as the cover has a snapshot from Battersea Power Station, including flying pig balloon, this was changed for the European market.)

A final word about Jean-Marie Leduc

One of the funnier parts of the very first Pink Floyd biography are the translated song texts. The Floyd’s first album is called Le joueur de flûte aux grilles de l’aube, but my favourite still is a song that is called Bonbons et pain aux raisins. And what to think about the following, I let you guess what song this has been taken from:

De tortueux signes voltigent.
Lueur. Lueur. Lueur.
Fla. Pom. Pom.
Escaliers d’épouvante et lois de mort…

And a final word for collectors

If you are looking for a copy of the Pink Floyd book by Jean-Marie Leduc be sure to buy the Albin Michel / Rock & Folk versions (several editions from 1973 till 1983). In 1987 another book by Jean-Marie Leduc, also called Pink Floyd, and in the same mini format, was presented to the public by Le Club Des Stars / Seghers. Although based upon the previous versions this book has been completely rewritten and most of the errors have been edited out.

(More scans of the Jean-Marie Leduc biographies can be found on our Tumblr: Jean-Marie Leduc.)

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Fasten Your Anoraks 
(The lyrics above are Leduc's French translation of Astronomy Domine.)

Update 2019 07 30: This post is no longer valid and is kept for archival purposes only. It has been replaced by Si les cochons pourraient voler... 

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: as Unfinished Projects is a thing from the past this review has been added to the Holy Church blog: Si les cochons pourraient voler… 

(I don't want to go to) Chelsea

Speaking about Iggy, Anthony Stern's Iggy, Eskimo Girl 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 (first) presentation there was a Q&A round with Anthony. One member of the audience maintained that Iggy is currently living in Chelsea. The Church will try to investigate further into this matter.

Update 2016: this rumour was false, BTW.

To all followers of the cult of Iggy: a happy new year!

The Church received a nice mail from Anthony Stern last week:

I see that you have continued to update your website and that the cult of Iggy is snowballing. Although my Iggy photos were shown on City Wakes website nobody was interested in buying the framed prints.

If you are still looking for a belated Xmas present: Anthony’s Iggy pictures are on sale, signed, numbered and framed: £225 for the Triptychs, individual pictures for £175 (plus postage). For more info please contact Anthony Stern Glass. (The Church is not affiliated with or endorsed by this company.)

Another message came from Mark Blake, author of the Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly:

Good luck with the Iggy hunt. I spoke to Ant Stern and Jeff Dexter again last week. They're no nearer to finding her than they were before. I think it's funny that nobody even knew her real name.

For that matter we don’t even know if she was Eskimaux or not.

My good old encyclopaedia Brittanica divides the people that we commonly describe as Eskimo in two categories: Eurasian and Western Arctic people. The Western Arctic people are the Eskimo (including Inuit and Yupiit) and the Aleuts who originate from North America, Greenland and part of Siberia. Amongst the Eurasian arctic people are the Sami (or Lapps) from northern Fennoscandia and several other cultures dispersed over the Ural Mountains and Siberia.

According to the Narwhal Inuit Art Education Foundation there are no Inuit currently living in England (confirmed to the Church by mail). Is it more logical to believe that Iggy’s roots originate from Europe rather than America or Siberia? In that case Iggy, the Eskimo really had to be nicknamed Iggy, the Lapp by her contemporaries.

Translating these into politically correct terms The Church of Iggy the Inuit really had to be baptised the Holy Church of Iggy the Sami to begin with.

As Mark Blake stated above, we don’t know if Iggy was her real name. Iggy could be an alias or perhaps an anglisized version of a foreign name.

If she has Sami roots her name could be Ing, originally meaning progenitor, ancestor, leader – which of course she is for the Church – Ingegerd or one of the many variants such as Inge, Ingine, Yngva, Ingar, Iŋgir… The more popular Ingrid also has its roots in the Nordic countries and this could have easily been shortened to Iggy by her relatives or friends.

The problem is that not a lot of Sami people have the so-called Inuit look Iggy is famous for. There is however a part of Europe (although geographically it belongs to North America) that was originally populated by Inuit people and was later on colonised by Iceland, Norway and Denmark. The Church is of course referring to Greenland.

The Inuit are believed to have crossed from North America to northwest Greenland, the world's largest island, between 4000 B.C. and A.D. 1000. Greenland was colonized in 985–986 by Eric the Red. The Norse settlements declined in the 14th century, however, mainly as a result of a cooling in Greenland's climate, and in the 15th century they became extinct. In 1721, Greenland was recolonized by the Royal Greenland Trading Company of Denmark. (taken from Infoplease)

In November of last year 3 out of 4 Greenlandic voted yes on a referendum that could eventually lead to the complete independence of the country. About 88% of the Greenland population has Inuit(-mixed) roots. The following link shows a (slow-loading) picture of premier Hans Enoksen voting for Self-Governance in Greenland with 5 year old Pipaluk Petersen (added here to show the Inuit characteristics).

So Iggy’s ancestors could have come from Greenland.

Well perhaps... at least one other Iggy enthusiast believes she is not Inuit at all, but (partly) Japanese, probably belonging to the Ainu people of Hokkaidō (who had their own language and were maybe the first settlers on America). Iggy could then be a nickname for Igumi.

And aside from that there might be a very slim chance that Iggy hides behind the Philippine Maria Ignacia as another author from a Floydian biography has whispered in the Church's confessional box.

Update: the above post is somewhat redundant as Iggy Rose's mother came from the Himalayas: Little old lady from London-by-the-Sea 
Update March 2018: Iggy's mother did not live in the Himalaya's, but at the Lushai Hills, a mountain range in Mizoram and Tripura, India.

Thanks to a Syd Barrett acquaintance the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit has got a first hand testimony about Iggy that, although the facts date from over 40 years ago, contains some very interesting new titbits and an anecdote contradicting most Syd biographies. But that is for later as the article is still in the make… but do visit this place from time to time or check its rss feed.

The producer and editor of the Iggy Eskimo Girl movie, Sadia Sadia let the Church know that a DVD release of the movie is not foreseen for the near future:

The film is quite new and we would hope that it would continue to do the rounds of film festivals before becoming more widely available.

It will also shortly be submitted to the British Council for inclusion in their UK film archives. At that point the film may become available through the British Council but we are still in very early stage discussions with them.

"Chimera Arts wish not to release this material for the time being and prefer not to see it appear in the public domain.", thus the official statement goes.

The Church understands this position but keeps on praying that one day the Iggy movie vaults will be opened and that this relic will be revealed to its true believers.

It is now time to disclose one of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit prophesies that recently came to the Reverend in a vision; alas it is no prognostication of the future, but one of the past…

About 15 years ago the founder of this Church, Reverend Felix Atagong, and his en-route companion drove for hours through pastures and fields to attend a mini-moving-picture-festival promising to show at least 3 different movies by Anthony Stern (and Peter Whitehead). One of them movies was going to be San Francisco, featuring an unreleased track of a band called Pink Floyd. Although he led a life of alcohol, drugs and women abuse the Reverend remembers it very well because his first thought had been: "What the fuck Pink Floyd has go to do with San Francisco?"

Anyway, they drove and drove and drove... Arrived at a hippie den where, at the bar, 3 very smelly people were staring into empty beer glasses. The Reverend and his missus had a beer, then another one, and one again, and when the time was there for the first movie to start he asked the bartender when the first movie was going to start. Thus he spoke: "Bartender, when the first movie is going to start?"

"The movie festival has been cancelled.", replied the bartender, "For lack of interest."

It appeared that Reverend Felix (and his LA-girl) were the only two people in Belgium who had showed up. The 3 smelly guys guys at the bar just happened to be the 3 smelly guys guys at the bar who happened to be always there. The reverend and his spouse had another beer and drove back home.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, this story is true. The Reverend still wonders if (parts of) the Iggy Eskimo Girl movie were scheduled at the festival, if…
...if only…
...if…
...and thus the seeds of the true Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit were sown...

An image gallery with stills of the movie can be found at the gallery.

Note: Anthony Stern's San Francisco movie can be found on Youtube. Part 1. Part 2.

It has been awfully quiet at the Iggy front. Call it spring fatigue, problems of the heart or plain laziness but the Reverend was a bit depressed. When The Holy Church started on eight eight eight  (the number of the beauty) this little blog shook and stirred like a dry martini ogling in front of Mr. James Bond.

While the quest was new and aloof and thrilling enthusiasm was flowing through the Reverend’s loins it actually felt that the mission was leading somewhere, and the Head of the Church felt like Robert Langdon manoeuvring towards that mythical pyramid in front of the Louvre, safe-keeper of the holy grail.

The Church did dig something out however, one post evoked an article at the Croydon Guardian and the Reverend managed to have chats with entre-autres Anthony Stern, Barrett-biographers Julian Palacios and Mark Blake, culminating in the publication of the memoirs of a first-hand witness who happened to know both Syd and Iggy and who may well have introduced the one to the other, although she refuses to take credit for that.

There are a lot of unverified rumours around Syd Barrett, the one more ludicrous than the other; a recent (French) biography even managed to produce some the Reverend was not aware of, like the fact that Roger Keith, at one point in his eccentric career, tried to be an airline pilot. Probably the biographer mixed him up with Bruce Dickinson or Nick Mason, who used to fly the Maiden’s and Floyd’s tour planes. Anybody who saw Syd Barrett on a bicycle in and around Cambridge will testify that a plane was not going to be his most favourite transportation vehicle.

There are several unverified facts about Iggy as well, some of which have never been published before and will not be published here until witnesses willing to approve (or disapprove) are found.

Over the past months the Church contacted (this is just a sample out of a long list):
a British amateur historian, who was going to publish the definitive history of The Orchid Ballroom at Purley and who told the Church: 'I have no knowledge of this girl whatsoever.';
a member of Dusty Springfield’s backup band (after it had been testified that Ig once went to an après-gig Dusty party);
a surviving organiser of the decadent party where Syd’s When Syd met Iggy... (Pt. 2) was raffled off;
a few photographers; and even…
a 1966 flatmate of someone who may (not) have been in contact with Iggy at all…

Most of the time no reply was received at all and if a reply did come it was a polite thank-you-but...-note, a bit like the hasty apologies one makes when interrupted on the street by a madman who asks if you can’t lend him a 7 inch knife for a minute or so.

The Reverend felt like Moses, who guided his people for 40 years in a desert any sane person on a camel can cross in two weeks time, hence the reason why Moses is probably the patron saint of all taxi drivers in the world, but suddenly he, the Reverend - not Moses, found salvation on Walpurgisnacht by a flickering flame.

What better way to celebrate the coming of the new dawn than to introduce two new Iggy stills by Anthony Stern, presented to us by Chimera Arts on a renewed Iggy Eskimo Girl webpage?

The future smiles upon us, dear brethren and sistren, and will be coloured Iggy…
Go in peace, my flock, and don’t do anything that Iggy wouldn’t have done...

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

Last week the Reverend revealed two new Iggy pictures appearing at the Chimera Arts website that distributes the Iggy Eskimo Girl movie in various parts of the world (alas, not those parts of the world the Reverend is familiar with).

Anthony Stern who, should you not know, shot the movie in question recently updated several pages on his site and for those that want to dive into Stern’s work there is an interesting essay about his work as well.

Iggy the Eskimo Girl (1966/2008)

Update 2016: Anthony Stern's main website has been updated and all relevant movie links have disappeared. He has a Film Archive website as well but at the time of writing (November 2016) not much can be found there.

The (now deleted) filmography page has got the following to say about the movie:

Iggy was a model and the girlfriend of Syd Barrett, and appeared on the cover of his album The Madcap Laughs (1970). She was terrific fun to be with and to photograph. I made a short film of her dancing in Russell Square, which portrays her as the ultimate flower child of the 1960s.

That particular page also has a (now deleted) filmstrip dedicated to Iggy showing some screenshots that have never been shown before.

Stern did not only film Iggy, he also made some pictures of her that were premiered after 40 years on The City Wakes Syd Barrett Festival (a glimpse of those can be found in the catalogue of The Other Room). A (then also unpublished) black and white picture of Iggy also accompanied the ‘Where did she go?’ article that appeared in a (free) London newspaper and that was published after some mild excruciating techniques administered by the Church.

An (updated) image gallery with stills of the movie Iggy, Eskimo Girl can be found at the gallery section of the Church

Iggy 'The Eskimo Girl' Triptychs

Stern’s pictures form the so-called Iggy Triptychs, 5 in total. His website has to say the following about these:

I re-discovered these photographs in my cellar in an old suitcase. All the optical effects were obtained in-camera. The colour images of Iggy were taken on a houseboat at Chelsea Reach. In the background you can see Lots Road Power Station. The distortions were achieved using a flexible mirror material called Malinex, as well as a magnifying fresnel screen. I have presented these images at the Ruskin Gallery as triptychs, because they remind me of Francis Bacon images in the same format. (Taken from iggyphotos - link no longer available)

Every triptych also has a page of its own and on these the following titbit can be found:

Iggy was terrific fun to be with and to photograph. I knew her before she was introduced to Syd by JenS, and I remember walking through Battersea Park in the early mornings together.

Here are the individual triptych pages: all pictures © Anthony Stern.

Page 1: http://www.anthonysternglass.com/iggytrip1.htm (link no longer active)
Page 2: http://www.anthonysternglass.com/iggytrip2.htm (link no longer active)
Page 3: http://www.anthonysternglass.com/iggytrip3.htm (link no longer active)
Page 4: http://www.anthonysternglass.com/iggytrip4.htm (link no longer active)
Page 5: http://www.anthonysternglass.com/iggytrip5.htm (link no longer active)

The photographs on Stern's website are were for sale, signed, framed and numbered, either as triptychs or single images.
(Note: prices in 2009 were £175 for single images and £225 for the triptychs, not including postage).

No Church without some triptychs from our blessed saint and these can be admired in a new image gallery

Ig's close encounters of the photographical kind were not limited to the Anthony Stern triptych series alone. She can be found as well on the cover of the Syd Barrett album The Madcap Laughs, still available in any qualitative cd-shop what means that it is a hell of a job to actually find it. But on top of her picture you get some decent music as well what is a rather nice bargain.

Storm Thorgerson from the arty farty collective Hipgnosis claims he shot the cover, although Mick Rock more or less hinted the same. Both photographers were present at the same place on the same day for the same purpose. Rock writes that he was asked by Syd Barrett to do the shoot and that Storm agreed to take him on in the team.

Syd asked me to take the pictures. We had talked about the shoot for a while, and the day before it happened I told Storm from Hipgnosis, so he came along because they were putting the package together.

Thorgerson probably was despatched by Harvest director and Barrett producer ad interim Malcolm Jones and has stated that another photographer was present as well but that he didn't know what the fuck he was doing there, although in a slightly more diplomatic way:

Friend and photographer Mick Rock, later famous for his Bowie photos amongst many others, also came on this photo session, but I can’t remember why. I think it was to help me, which seems ironic given his subsequent lensmanship and success in the rock business.

It surely was one of Rock’s pics that was put - uncredited - on the back sleeve of the Barrett (his second solo) album. For the third release, a repackaging of the two previous ones, aptly called Syd Barrett, some other shots from that day in April 1969 were used, but it is not certain if these came from Rock's second-hand Pentax 35mm camera, bought from that other Hipgnosis team member Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, or from Storm Thorgerson who also claims he used a 35mm for the job. (Although his favourite camera at that time was a Hasselblad 500 c, as used for the Floyd’s Ummagumma cover a couple of months later).

There will always be an enigma surrounding the cover shoot of The Madcap Laughs. The 1978 book Walk Away René (The Work of Hipgnosis) contains a detailed description of every picture in the book, except for… The Madcap Laughs. Unfortunately Storm’s negatives have been lost, so there will never be a Psychedelic Renegades from his hand.

Psychedelic Renegades, and then we finally get to the subject of this blog entry, is the photo book Mick Rock made in 2002. The first edition, by Genesis, had 320 copies autographed by R.K. Barrett that are worth a small fortune nowadays. In 2007 a regular edition was published by Plexus Books (European edition) and Gingko (for the USA).

There is a possibility that the Mick Rock photo shoot took more than one day. The pictures in his apartment were taken, together with Storm Thorgerson. The outside pictures date (perhaps) from the next day. Nobody can be really sure and Rock isn’t the most reliable witness to say the least. On page 18 he writes:

We shot The Madcap Laughs in the autumn of 1969 and I don’t think that Syd and Duggie Fields had been living in the flat that long.

The above is a contradiction as Syd moved in the apartment end 1968, furthermore the research of JenS, who was a friend of Syd and Ig, shows that the pictures were probably taken in April of 1969. Rock also states that:

Syd’s car was a conspicuously bright pink Pontiac Parisienne convertible.

However the few colour pictures of the car show it was (midnight) blue. But the Church will no longer go further in this matter, if you want you can read all about in some previous posts, for instance When Syd met Iggy... (Pt. 2).

About 20 pictures of the book show us a glimpse of Ig, who is described by Rock as follows…

Known only as Iggy, the half-Eskimo girl had momentarily made her way into Syd’s life, and flat, at the time when these photos were taken. Though not part of the original shoot plan, Iggy was an intriguing accomplice. With no job and little to call her own, Iggy epitomised the free natured spirit of the psychedelic underground.

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit is very proud to announce you 3 new Iggy galleries:
Street Life, black & white pictures of Iggy in front of the house and car.
Bare Flat, colour pictures of Iggy, walking around in the nude and posing on the background in Syd's apartment.
Rock Bottom, black & white nude study of Ig.

Most pictures have been cropped to emphasize the Eskimo girl, in reality this means that Syd Barrett has been cut out a lot. Those interested in the non-cropped versions can try their luck at Neptune Pink Floyd, other Pink Floyd related sites or - even better - purchase Mick Rock's excellent Psychedelic Renegades book. All pictures © Mick Rock.

Sources (other than internet links mentioned above):

Rock, Mick: Psychedelic Renegades, Plexus, London, 2007, p. 18, p. 20, p. 23, p. 46.
Thorgerson, Storm: Mind Over Matter, Sanctuary Publishing, London, 2003, p. 204.

Brethren Dan5482 visited the several Church locations (see underneath) that can be found on the World Wide Web and confessed the following to the Reverend:

Despite all that collective amnesia I think that Iggy can still be found. There are journalists, detectives... who have found more difficult "targets".

However, an intense and widespread interest for her is a necessary condition. Your Church is a source of hope in this sense. It lets many people know that once such a mysterious woman existed.

It occurs to me that many people simply don’t want to know who or where Iggy is. Imagine finding a 70-year old woman and to find out that her words about that period are as simple and disappointing as "I don't like to remember that period. I was out of my mind..." That could be the end of a romantic dream.

Besides the fact that Iggy herself is an extremely intriguing figure, there is also the possibility of obtaining a new narrative and facts surrounding Syd Barrett's life in that fabled year of 1969.

Wise words from a wise man.

If JenS’ assumption that Ig was born at the end of World War II is true she is 64 or 65 years old at the moment (provided she is still amongst us). True believers know the following story for sure… in April, or early May of 1970, Ig closed the door behind her at Wetherby Mansions and was never seen back…
Update: obviously this was written before Ig, or Emily, was traced back by Mojo magazine.

Mick Rock has apparently stated that he heard from Duggie Fields, the painter who was Syd Barrett’s roommate, that Iggy ‘went off with some rich guy in Chelsea and lived a very straight life’ afterwards.

However Mark Blake squeezed a slightly different story out of him:

I have no idea who Iggy was or even what her real name was. She was never Syd’s girlfriend. They just got together from time to time. (…) I saw her not long after Syd left the flat and she was looking more like a Sloane Ranger. I heard she’d become involved with one of the voguish religious cults at the time.

Mark had some extra comments to give at the Late Night discussion forum:

Nobody knew her real first name, never mind her surname, or if they did, they weren't telling. 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'.

The Cinderella story may be a case of confabulation. One witness supposes that Ig married rich and over the years this story infiltrates the memories of other people who, decades later, believe this is really how it all happened. This is not done on purpose; our memory likes to fill in the gaps and if we need to borrow memories of other people we will subconsciously do that. Pink Floyd history contains several anecdotes like that and in the several biographies and articles Floydian insiders have told about situations that were originally witnessed by others.

Update 2016: After Syd, Iggy met a rich banker who was a witness of Jehovah, so the rumours were at least based upon some facts. The relationship didn't last though and Iggy didn't marry 'rich'.

In February of this year Mark Blake reported to the Church:

I spoke to Emo a couple of weeks back and asked about Iggy and he immediately said he remembered hearing she had gone back to the Far East/Asia. But, as I have learned since doing the book, everyone has conflicting memories about these things. (mail to the Reverend on 23/02/2009)

At The City Wakes festival in October and November of 1988 Anthony Stern’s Eskimo Girl movie was shown to the public and during the Q&A afterwards a member of the audience told the director that Iggy was living in Chelsea. Nobody knows who this person is but if (s)he attended the festival (s)he must have been a fan of Barrett or one of the members of the Cambridge or London Underground gang who took this opportunity to meet again after three decades. The Church would like to invite this person to come forward and to contact the Reverend.

On the 7th of October 2006 the SydBarrett.net forum got the following message from a certain YoungForEternity.

Does anyone know roughly how old Iggy would be? There's a woman who works at a supermarket in my local town who claims to be "the" Iggy and I don't know whether to believe her or not...I'd appreciate any pointers or recognisable features? Her name is definitely Iggy, and I've been studying images but it's difficult to tell... (Taken from whatever happened to iggy the eskimo?)

The forum in question is no longer active and the messenger only posted this single item. In 2006 Ig was (probably) 61 or 62 years old so theoretically she should no longer have been working, as the State Pension age for women born before 1950 is 60 (in the UK). But of course there are always exceptions. To qualify for a full basic State Pension she needed to have built up 39 years of National Insurance payments and perhaps that may not have been the case. The Church would also like the author of this post to come forward and to contact the Reverend.

Update 2016: YoungForEternity was probably closer to the truth than we all expected. Iggy has indeed been working at a local supermarket.

Next week, sistren and brethren, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit will celebrate its first birthday and a small and delicate special treat will be offered. Till then. And remember; don’t do anything that Ig wouldn’t have done…

Sources (other than internet links mentioned above):

Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London, 2007, p.141.

Many thanks go to young 3D artist Arthur Fratzen who lend me a copy of his WIP Iggy 64.

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit can be found at: http://atagong.com/iggy. Authorised subsidiaries can be found at:

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Youtube channel
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Facebook Fanpage

The Reverend's MySpace page
The Reverend's Facebook page and last but not least
The Reverend's Unfinished Projects blog.

As if the world has suddenly been hit by a temporal rift in spacetime the March 2010 issue of Mojo music magazine has inundated the stores bearing a big (slightly photoshopped) portrait of a mister Syd Barrett. The well-written and rather accurate cover article, by Pat Gilbert, ranges from page 70 to 81 and tells the story of The Madcap Laughs, Syd Barrett’s first solo album.

Two other articles are of particular interest to the Church as they describe the mythical presence of a ‘girl whose naked body graced the back cover of The Madcap Laughs’.

Who’s That Girl (page 76 insert) is written by Mark Blake, author of the Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly, and an occasional visitor (and contributor) of the Church. Out of courtesy (and for copyright reasons) the Church will not publish the article as long as the magazine is for sale in the shops.
Update: Direct link to the article: Mojo March 2010 (hosted at the Church as the article was removed from the official Barrett website in 2016).

People reading magazines with binoculars will find an odd reference to the Church as the Croydon Guardian article from the 17th September 2008 has been reproduced as well, however in such small print that one needs to xerox it in blow-up mode to distinguish individual letters. The article in full can be consulted at the Church (Where did she go?) but is also still present on the archives of the Croydon Guardian (Where did she go to our lovely?).

Mark Blake writes in Mojo:

In 2008, (Jeff) Dexter and (Anthony) Stern tried to trace the elusive Iggy, and were interviewed in the Croydon Guardian for leads to the whereabouts of the “carefree girl who captured the spirit of the ‘60s”.

Actually the motor behind this article were not Dexter and Stern but the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, after - truth has to be acknowledged – Mark Blake had revealed earlier that Iggy ‘was known as one of the regular teenage girls at the dancehalls around Purley and Caterham’ (see also: Shaken not stirred ).

Researching The Orchid dancehall in Purley, the Reverend found two articles that had appeared in the Croydon Guardian: In dance hall days (9th August 2006) and We remember the Orchid (29th August 2006).

The Church tried to contact Brian Roote in September 2008, an amateur historian writing a book about the Purley dancehall, but this resulted more than a year later in the simple comment: ‘I have no knowledge of this girl whatsoever'.

The Reverend had more chance with journalist Kerry McQueeney author of the two Orchid articles, but no longer working for the Croydon Guardian. He passed the story to Kirsty Whalley who was now editor of the Heritage pages of the newspaper. On the 3rd September of 2008 she replied:

We would like to feature this story in the newspaper next week and hopefully it will prompt a few people to call in.

In the same mail she also asked if the Church could give some leads and amongst the people to contact the Reverend mentioned the names of Mick Rock and Anthony Stern. Kirsty Whalley did an excellent job and did not only interview both men, but also Jeff Dexter who had been a DJ at The Orchid.

The next sermon at the Church will cover the second Iggy-related article from Mojo 196. In My Room, written by Paul Drummond, contains interviews with Duggie Fields, Mick Rock, Storm Thorgerson and Jenny Spires.

The Madcap Laughs Again (Mojo Tribute CD)

Mojo 196 comes with a Madcap Laughs cover CD as interpreted by (amongst others): R.E.M., Captain Sensible, Hawkwind, Jennifer Gentle, Marc Almond and Robyn Hitchcock. Reviews of this CD can be found at Late Night: The Madcap Laughs Again, including the one written by the Reverend.

The Mojo website contains a Syd Barrett top 20 jukebox and three YouTube links to Syd's legendary unreleased material. One of those fan-made videos (Lucy Leave) has been created by limpidgreen aka dollyrocker, a much appreciated Late Night forum member. Way to go, dollyrocker! (All links dead, we're afraid.)

Last week The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit published the incredible news that Iggy had been traced back. This was a world exclusive as no other news medium had reported this before.

The news that Iggy had been found was, unfortunately, also all there was to say. Although discreet investigations were done it was soon made clear that she wanted to stay anonymous and that she didn’t want to blow her cover. A short interview was out of the question, even for Mojo magazine and Mark Blake who triggered these latest events.

The Reverend is by all means not a souvenir collector who wanted to ring at her bell like all those true fans used to do at Syd Barrett’s door and her wish to be left in peace was immediately and unconditionally granted.

In September 2008 The Croydon Guardian published an article about Iggy after the Church had contacted the newspaper to get more information about The Orchid dancehall in Purley: Where did she go?  This article unearthed some unpublished pictures by Anthony Stern that were later shown at The City Wakes festival in Cambridge and was also mentioned in the March issue of Mojo.

Kirsty Whalley, the journalist who brought us the first Iggy article in The Croydon Guardian, has now managed to interview Iggy, an interview that can be found in today’s issue of this newspaper.

When Mick turned up to take the photos I helped paint the floor boards for the shoot, I was covered in paint, I still remember the smell of it.

The Church will not publish the entire interview in its columns - for at least a week - as it can be consulted at the following websites:
Croydon Guardian Tracks Down Elusive Rock Star Muse (The Croydon Guardian)
Croydon Guardian Tracks Down Elusive Rock Star Muse (This Local London)

In the next weeks however the Church will scrutinize the interview, and comments will be added where appropriate. For the moment all we wish to say is hip hip hurray to Kirsty Whalley!

Tranquillity is slowly descending upon the Holy Church of Inuit like smog upon Victorian London. Several brethren and sistren of the Church, and one-time visitors who entered through the front gate to study its baroque interior, have passed some valid information to the Reverend and these will be further investigated in the future. The Reverend also wants to apologise to the people that have been contacted (and interviewed) last year, especially those associated with The Cromwellian club. The articles about The Crom have been postponed due to the unexpected result the Mojo Syd Barrett article created, but they will - one day - hopefully appear.

To all our readers: please keep on going on giving the Church information, how futile it may be, but remember that the Reverend will not break its own rules that stay unchanged even now that Iggy (Evelyn) has been found. Especially now that Iggy (Evelyn) has been found.

The Reverend is not a souvenir collector who will ring at her bell like all those so-called (and in the Reverend's eyes: messed up) true fans used to do at Syd Barrett’s door. Evelyn's wish to be left in peace is and will be unconditionally granted. The same goes for other witnesses of the Barrett era, the Church will send them a nice note from time to time, as a reminder of its presence, but will not break their privacy. Some will call this bad journalism but the Church is not dependent from sold issues and follows a strict deontological code.

Croydon Guardian

On the thirteenth of February of this year The Croydon Guardian published a short, hastily noted down, interview with (a quite reluctant) Iggy, titled: Croydon Guardian tracks down elusive rock star muse. Here it is in full (with some comments from the Reverend):

Croydon Guardian tracks down elusive rock star muse
By Kirsty Whalley

An iconic model who stole Syd Barrett’s heart in the 1960s has been found after three decades of anonymity. Known only as Iggy, the enigmatic woman was immortalised posing naked for the Pink Floyd star’s solo album, Madcap Laughs. She disappeared in the late 1970s and has been living in West Sussex, oblivious to her iconic status. In September 2008, the Croydon Guardian appealed for information about the model and, more than a year later, we managed to track her down.

The story of how the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit convinced The Croydon Guardian to assign some place in its columns for the Iggy enigma can be found at Where did she go? and (I've got my) Mojo (working...).

She inspired artist Anthony Stern, who filmed her dancing in Battersea Park and also took striking photographs of her on a houseboat in Chelsea. They were released at the City Wakes festival – a tribute to Syd Barrett – in October 2008, in Cambridge.

The above has of course been extendedly covered by the Church as well: Anthony Stern.

Mr Stern said: “Iggy was my muse. I met her at a Hendrix gig at the Speakeasy. She entirely captures the spirit of the Sixties, living for the moment, carefree.”

Jimi Hendrix gigged quite a few times at The Speakeasy and was spotted there on other occasions as well, for instance on the 22nd of February when he attended a press conference for The Soft Machine.

Jimi Hendrix

The club has been described in the (excellent) London Live book from Tony Bacon as follows (most information about the club has been taken from that book).

When The Speakeasy was opened by Roy Flynn around the end of 1966 in Margaret Street, just north of Soho, the rock elite soon discovered a handy new watering hole, a prime early-hours jamming post, and an altogether useful hanging-out kind of place.

By May 1967 the club was part of the London spot-the-celebrity circle next to - amongst others - the Scotch (of St. James) and of course the Crom. On a good night you could having a drink next to The Bee Gees, Jeff Beck or The Who, although, keeping up his avant-garde experimental jazz appearance, Robert Wyatt from The Soft Machine couldn't care less: "Rock groups meeting in expensive clubs that are difficult to get into? What's all that crap?"

On the 19th of January 1967 Jimi Hendrix gave the first of 3 concerts at The Speak. On top of that he would also jam a few times with other people on stage, including Jose Feliciano and Georgie Fame. That night in January he tried to get into Marianne Faithfull's pants with the seductive remark: "What are you doing with this jerk, anyway?" The jerk in question was of course Mick Jagger who wanted to check out the new kid in town.

Yes-fans will know the club for its owner Roy Flynn. When, on the 13th of December 1968, Sly And The Family Stone didn't show up for their gig an impromptu band was found to take their place. When Roy Flynn saw Yes's performance he was so thrilled that he became their manager for a while. The band eagerly agreed, not because he had some managerial skills but because the restaurant at The Speak had an excellent reputation:

Roy had never managed a band before and he kind of took us on and then the whole world of the Speakeasy opened up (laugh). It was a great club, I mean, it was a wonderful club, it used to close at 4 AM and we would not only rehearse there, we would play there some nights, and of course after a gig if we were playing within, let's say 150 miles from London, we would rush and go to the Speakeasy and eat there, and most of the meals were completely free. So for about a year I ate pretty good. Most of the evenings I ate there. Because that was the life style, we would be in the Speakeasy after 3 AM and the kitchen still would be opened and the food was not fantastic but thanks to Roy Flynn we would get free food and quite a lot of few drinks as well. (Peter Banks, who invented the band's name and left the group in 1970)

The extensive Jimi Hendrix gig database located at Rich Dickinson only mentions 3 genuine Jimi Hendrix performances in 1967: the aforementioned gig on the 19th of January 1967 and two more in March: 8th March 1967 and 21st March 1967. So Iggy (and Anthony Stern) must have attended one of these. For the completists amongst us the Church gives now the complete list of Hendrix sightings at the Speakeasy (1967):
67-01-19: Gig.
67-02-22: Press reception for the Soft Machine.
67-03-08: Gig.
67-03-16: Launching party for Track records (Jimi gives three interviews).
67-03-21: Gig.
67-04-17: Jam (on bass) with Georgie Fame (on organ) and Ben E. King (drums).
67-05-08: Brian Auger Trinity Concert.
67-06-04: Jose Feliciano concert and onstage jam.
67-12-06: Party for The Foundations.
67-12-22: Musicians from Christmas on Earth and Hendrix jam until the morning hours.
67-12-31: New Year's Eve Party where Jimi plays a thirty minute 'Auld Lang Syne'.

London Live

There is quite an intriguing picture on page 103 of the London Live book, showing co-managers Roy Flynn and Mike Carey, sitting at the Speakeasy bar, accompanied by two ladies. According to CowleyMod one of the women undoubtedly is Ig. Although most of the members of the Church do not think it is her the Church wants to give Cowleymod the benefit of the doubt and the visitors of the Church the chance to make up their own mind (click here to see the full picture).
Update (November 2010): it has been confirmed to the Church that the person on the picture is NOT Iggy / Evelyn.

Iggy said: “I cannot believe there is a film of me, that there are photos of me.”
 
Iggy spent a brief part of the 60s living in Croydon with DJ Jeff Dexter, who used to play at the Orchid Ballroom. She said: “The Orchid Ballroom was the place to be, the atmosphere was fantastic. I loved going there, I loved to dance. Jeff wanted to turn me and two other lovely girls into the English version of the Supremes, but that never happened.”
 
She does not like to talk much about Syd Barrett, but admits she lived with him in Chelsea in the late 1960s. She said: “Syd was so beautiful looking. We had a relationship, I lived with him for a while.”

Although the Reverend is aware of at least four witnesses who have confirmed in different biographies (and directly to the Church) that Iggy and Syd weren't an item this is now contradicted by Evelyn herself.

It was at that time she became known as Iggy the Eskimo. She said: “In part I made up the nickname. The rest was the photographer Mick Rock, who asked where I was from. I said ‘my mother is from the Himalayas’ and he said ‘we will call you Iggy the Eskimo’.”

Update March 2018: Iggy's mother, so was confirmed to us, didn't live near the Himalaya's, but at the Lushai Hills, a mountain range in Mizoram, Mizoram, situated at the North-East of India, sharing borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The Church will not deny that Mick Rock may have thrown around the 'Iggy the Eskimo' nickname to describe the mysterious girl on his pictures but the epithet dates from much earlier. It was first spotted in the NME magazine from the 25th of November 1966 (more than 2 years earlier) where Evelyn was described as 'Another Bender - model IGGY, who is half-Eskimo': Bend It! 

Mick Rock took the pictures for Madcap Laughs. Iggy said: “When Mick turned up to take the photos I helped paint the floor boards for the shoot, I was covered in paint, I still remember the smell of it. In the pictures my hair looks quite funny, I remember hiding my face behind it because I did not want my mum and dad to see it."

Again other witnesses tell other stories. They claim that Syd (with a little help from Iggy) painted the floor boards early in the year, certainly before April 1969. As Syd only started recording mid-April it is a bit weird that he painted the boards especially for the album cover, unless - of course - he (and with him Mick Rock) already had the cover in mind before the recording sessions started. A theory that is not implausible.

She broke up with Syd Barrett shortly after the photo shoot and moved to Brighton. She said: “I have just been living very quietly, I left London in the 70s and I got married in 1978. I met so many people in the 60s – the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart. I was a free spirit. I have left that life behind me now.”

The Church would gladly accept to publish her memoires though. But until that happens, my dear sistren and brethren, don't do anything that Iggy wouldn't have done…

A new gallery has been uploaded containing the complete Come with NME for a pic-visit to THE CROMWELLIAN article and pictures from New Musical Express 1037, 25 November 1966. Photographs by Napier Russel & Barry Peake. Words by Norrie Drummond. (Just another world exclusive from the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.)

---

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Bacon, Tony: London Live, Balafon Books, London, 1999, p. 101-104.

Those that have been living on planet Magrathea for the past couple of months may not have been aware that Thursday, 17th of March 2011 was a great day in the life for a Barrett-fan.

The long awaited book 'Barrett', apparently nobody attempts to use a combination of Madcap or Crazy Diamond any more, which is a good thing, was launched with a mega-party and exhibition at Idea Generation, London.

The Church will review the definitive visual companion to the life of Syd Barrett in the weeks to come so for the moment you have to content yourself with the message that it is a splendiferous (and heavy... and pricey) work of art... and love.

Attending the launch were Anthony Stern, Aubrey "Po" Powell, Captain Sensible, Dark Globe, David Gale, Duggie Fields, Graham Coxon, Ian Barrett, Irene Winsby, Jenny Spires, John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, Libby Gausden, Mark Blake, Miles, Philip James, Rosemary Breen, Vic Singh, Warren Dosanjh and many others... enough to make a Pink Floyd aficionado drool...

But for the Church (and not only for the Church) the star of the evening undoubtedly was a woman of international mystery... and here are some pictures of her:

Iggy

Libby Gausden and Iggy

John "Hoppy" Hopkins and Iggy

Iggy and Andy Rose

Ian Barrett, Iggy and Captain Sensible

Duggie Fields and Iggy

Brian Wernham and Iggy

Iggy having some fun with the paparazzi

Where is Iggy?
and who else can you recognise on this picture?

Some answers:
Antonio Jesús: "The tall guy in brown is Warren Dosanjh."
Mark Jones: "Duggie Fields."
Jenny Spires: "Nigel Gordon and Jimmie Mickelson, Will Shutes and Viv's nephew, Kieren and his partner..."
Libby Gausden Chisman: "Roe Barrett and her husband Paul Breen, Buster and his partner who used to come swimming with Dave Gilmour and me at Jesus Green swimming pool in Cambridge."

One of our brethren told the Reverend afterwards:

I saw Iggy at the launch yesterday. She did very well, considering it was her first public appearance. She had a legion of female admirers so she was happy, and people were thrilled to meet her.

It was a night of Happy Talk indeed.

The Church wishes to thank: Antonio Jesús, Mark Blake, Libby Gausden Chisman, Dark Globe, Paul Drummond, Jimmie James, Mark Jones, Jenny Spires, Brian Wernham and the beautiful people at Late Night and Facebook.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

You might or might not know that Iggy Rose was once Anthony Stern's muse, she posed before his camera and featured in one of his avant-garde movies, that – unforgivably – has only been shown about a dozen of times for the past 47 years. The situation didn't really sky-rocket when Chimera Arts took over the publishing rights, they were sitting harder on it than the CIA does on a torture report. Nothing new, as a matter of fact, as we already wrote this a couple of years ago (2009) in one of our magnificent articles. It is rumoured that the last festival Eskimo Girl was billed on was held in a staircase closet somewhere in the Philippines, but we might be slightly exaggerating.

But all this is soon to change. Anthony Stern started a brand new blog Anthony Stern Films that is promising us a book and a DVD.

Update 2016: in October 2016 the movie was premiered during the Cambridge Syd Barrett movie festival. A couple of weeks earlier a shortened version was shown at the BBC. No news from a book or DVD though. More information:
Lost Weekends 
Memory Marbles (2016): new Iggy pictures found! 

Update 13 February 2022: RIP Ant, 1944-2022.

Auntie Stern

Get all from that ant? (as the movie will be named, it appears) will be an 80 minutes portrait of London 1963-1970, in still pictures, film and video, by Anthony Stern who lived, loved and worked at the core of the pop culture genesis. Countless reels of 16mm film and thousands of photographic negatives from his archives have been viewed and digitalised. Sophia Satchell-Baeza had a look at an early cut:

Although at the moment unfinished, it’s an incredible, semi-autobiographical portrait of Cambridge / London / San Francisco in the 1960s, shot by the artist and film-maker who was there to see it all unfold. Some major highlights include lost (and recently found) archive footage of Syd Barrett performing with Pink Floyd, and unseen footage of Eric Clapton, but the film is full of beautiful moments. (Taken from: A subterranean afterworld of future dreams.)

There will be footage from Syd Barrett with Pink Floyd, the UFO club and their liquid light projections, footage of The Rolling Stones, the voice of John Lennon. But something that makes the Reverend infinitely happy is that the picture highlighting this release depicts none other than Iggy, dancing in a park. So there might be a pretty cool chance that her movie, or at least a part of it, will be on the DVD as well.

Magnetism

The project consists of a DVD and a book that will not only show the past. Anthony Stern had the idea to 'unite all Barrett heads'. He took a movie still of Syd playing at UFO and turned it into a magnet, the Sydge. You can get one or free, as long as there are copies left and provided you sent him back a picture of your fridge door (or wherever you have stuck the magnet):

The fridge door can be a platform and a message board for images of yourself, family, your favourite icons, pin-ups, newspaper cuttings, poems, memoranda, shopping lists, favourite witticisms, jokes, puns, tickets and the detritus of day-to-day life, and of course any form of homage to Syd Barrett. (Taken from: The Sydge magnet, well he was a very magnetic chap.)

Some of the results that have been sent in can already be seen here and here. One Birdie Hop member made it her vocation to distribute several of these magnets over the States, turning the Sydge into a symbol that will unite fans all over the globe.

And who knows, if enough people put some imagination and madcappery into the photos it may grow into a completely different project than it was intended for, so someone has whispered in our ears. Of course the Church has already send in its pictures and you can watch these at the Church's presence on Facebook.

Anthony's book will also have a chapter called: Syd & Iggy: A Psychedelic Love Story, yes there is our girl again!, and for this purpose he is looking for Syd and Iggy lookalikes who can send in their pictures... Those who want to face fame and glory can have a look at Audition.

To immortalise this demand the blog adds something that can be considered as being the purest, clearest and biggest movie still we have seen from the Iggy, the Eskimo Girl movie ever. Here she is, holding that weird device that inconspicuously looks like a smartphone, but only... the picture dates from 1968. Was Iggy really a time traveller? Click to see the picture in full resolution: Iggy.

Anthony Qui?

In June 2008 Anthony Stern gave an introduction to several of his movies at the Cinemathèque Française in Paris. A video was shot of the event by Lionel Soukaz. We took the liberty of removing the French translations and to upload it again. Antony does mention Syd Barrett and Iggy Rose, but not to spoil the fun we don't tell you where exactly.

And for those who don't know what Iggy, the Eskimo Girl is all about. Here is the only known 'free-floating' version on the web, an audience recording taken from that same lecture in Paris.

We just can't wait for that DVD to appear, but for the moment we (and you) have to be content with our image gallery that has some (old) stills of the movie. It will be (silently) updated when new pictures will appear on the Anthony Stern Film blog, so be sure to check it out once and a while.

For our other articles about Stern's magic, please check: Anthony Stern. Now if only that Storm Thorgerson movie would see the light of day.

Many thanks to: Lisa Newman, Anthony Stern.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥ Birdie Hop ♥

In April the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit reported about the Sydge that was part of Anthony Stern's new project that can more or less be followed on his Anthony Stern Films blog. Something will, hopefully sooner than later, be compiled on a DVD that will contain an overview of Stern's career. In September there was a screening of his movies at BFI that was immediately sold out and was described it as follows:

In the most swinging of decades Anthony Stern was friends with ‘Pink Floyd,’ worked closely with cult director Peter Whitehead and also shot a series of his own vibrant, playful 16mm titles. Infused with the spirit of the psychedelic lightshow and the French New Wave, they paint a joyous, celebratory picture of the 1960s counter culture as it came into full dizzy bloom. In Iggy the Eskimo Girl (1966. 4min), red double-deckers whizz by while Syd Barrett’s then-girlfriend cavorts joyously in the bright London sun; and in Nothing To Do With Me (1968. 35min) Stern’s mentor Peter Whitehead – arguably at the peak of his own creative powers – opens his mind and riffs on the themes of alienation and his relationship with the camera. Also included in the programme is the mind-bending, truly psychedelic San Francisco (1968. 15min), which features an unreleased version of the Floyd’s ‘Interstellar Overdrive,’ alongside never-before-seen footage of the USA in 1968.

The DVD is not out yet, but there is something else you can get from Ant. Those who didn't get a Sydge (Syd Barrett fridge magnet) in the past (see: Magnets & Miracles), can now buy a limited set from him, containing two magnets: one with Syd Barrett and the other one with Iggy, taken from one of the triptychs Ant made from her in 1967. We'll let Stern speak for himself:

The Sydge & The Iggnet have landed!
Get your Sydge Magnet and Iggy Iggnet here!
£15 for both (excl. postage)
Please email anthony@anthonysternglass.com

An early bird told us these limited collectibles will have a numbered card of authenticity, signed by Anthony Stern and perhaps... someone else. So get yours now, as your life will otherwise be empty! You can take it horse riding or swimming... You can give it to the ones you care for. Don't leave your house without a Sydge or Iggnet.

Many thanks to: Anthony Stern. (The Church is not affiliated with or endorsed by this company.)
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Magical Iggy

A couple of weeks ago Iggy and the Reverend browsed through a stash of mid-seventies photos and selected nearly 60. They have been (and will still be for quite a while) simultaneously published at Iggy's Facebook page and at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Tumblr site under the Magical Iggy flag.

How, you didn't know that existed? Here it is again, you ignorant people:
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Tumblr blog, its Magical Iggy section and the Archive.

Magnetic Iggy

Have you seen our latest post about the Syd & Iggy magnet: The perfect Xmas gift: put Iggy on your fridge! To get one, please email anthony@anthonysternglass.com. We assure you that, for once, the money will be well spent.

Birthday Iggy -14th of December 2014

In less than an hour it will be Iggy's birthday. The Reverend fought blizzards, storms and packs of hungry wolves to go to Louvain's postal station to find out, then, that he had forgotten Iggy's birthday card at home.

Should you not know it by now, it is Iggy's birthday! So this is the time and place to shout:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IGGY ROSE!

Partytime Iggy

LET'S PARTY!!! Please enjoy this mix of tracks that have been made the past few years to celebrate our goddess. Swedish band Men On The Border were so kind to let us use one of their songs from their latest album Jumpstart. Thanks guys, you rock!

Men On The Border
Let's Party (yeah yeah)
Jumpstart © 2013

Reverends & Eskimos

In 2013 Rich hall made a concept album that has this fine pearl... (click on the image below for the hi-res Flash version)

For those who haven't got a Flash-enabled webbrowser, let's try it another way. Here is a, somewhat downgraded, version on Youtube, but don't let that spoil the fun.

Rich Hall
The Reverend
Birdie Hop © 2013.

Iggy's Electronic Birthday Card

Iggy's Electronic Birthday Card (2011) contains a few seconds from a super-secret mid-Seventies home movie (and we added a nice tune as well). Flash link (warning: 5 MB!): Happy Birthday Iggy Rose! or YouTube:

Crystal Blue Postcards

An electronic book of poems and art, dedicated to Syd and his muses, by Denis Combet, with a little help from his friends Constance Cartmill and Allison Star. Digital artwork by Jean Vouillon and some tinkering from Felix Atagong (more about Denis Combet and his Iggy poem(s): Catwoman).

Guitars and Dust Dancing by Rescue Rangers

In 2011, Pascal Mascheroni, from the stoner power trio Rescue Rangers donated the haunting (& slightly psychedelic) power ballad Guitars and Dust Dancing from the album with the same name (buy your copy at iTunes: Guitars and Dust Dancing). In the meanwhile enjoy this Youtube clip with the smashing artwork from Jean Vouillon.

WHY DON'T YOU WISH IGGY A HAPPY BIRTHDAY?

Instead of reading and watching all this you should be heading at Facebook where you can leave your messages, poems, songs and images at: The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit and of course on Iggy's personal page as well.

Let's make this a birthday to remember, brethren and sistren and don't do anything that Iggy wouldn't do!

The Church wishes to thank Constance Cartmill, Denis Combet, Phil Etheridge, Amy Funstar, Rich Hall, Pascal Mascheroni, MAY, Goeran Nystroem, Allison Star, Anthony Stern, Jean Vouillon, Brett Wilson and all the others that we seem to have forgotten...
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Update 2016 04 03: After the movie was 'found' on Facebook, it took less than 24 hours before it was deleted from Dailymotion. We hope that the original uploader will not get into trouble. We are currently trying to get a reaction from Anthony Stern and Chimera Arts. (More info: afterword.)

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, that wacky blog with an even wackier Reverend vehemently tries to catalogue all things Iggy Rose, and although several pictures and movies have been unearthed since then, one important and most reverential piece was still missing in our collection.

Shot in 1968 by Anthony Stern, 'iggy the eskimo girl' (all in lowercase) showed Iggy Rose dancing barefoot through London, annoying the square folk who had to go to work, creating kerfuffle wherever she put her lovely feet and using something that resembles a smartphone, 30 years before these were invented. The movie with its Pink Floyd soundtrack, restored in 2008 by Sadia Sadia from Chimera Arts, was shown at the legendary The City Wakes in Cambridge and would now and then resurface on avant-garde film festivals all over the world.

The movie never made it to the 'big' public though and several demands of the Church to obtain a copy were politely refused. A one minute 27 seconds audience recording, taken at a Paris movie festival, was the longest version we had (Iggy, Eskimo Girl), next to a teaser from City Wakes (Syd Barrett - Iggy).

Cut to 2014 when Anthony Stern launched a new website 'Anthony Stern Films' with the promise to publish a DVD 'Get All From That Ant' containing his complete filmography (see: Magnets & Miracles). However the project came to a standstill and some spin-offs, like an Iggy The Eskimo magnet never came off the ground either (see: The perfect Xmas gift: put Iggy on your fridge!).

Since then it was awfully quiet around the movie maker / glass artist and frankly, the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit had given up hope to ever see the 'iggy the eskimo girl' movie in full.

Until today.

This morning we were informed by an enthusiastic Iggy that a full version of the movie can be found on Dailymotion, where it had already been uploaded at the end of the previous year by someone who is internationally recognised as a Pink Floyd buff. Quality isn't too bad, although it isn't really spectacular either. This is due to the fact that it is an audience recording as well, taken from a 2010 film festival in Lille. Some cropping and editing had to be done and the audio was re-sampled. But as far as we can judge, this is the most complete version and the closest to the original.

In the same breath Iggy also mentioned that she, with a couple of friends, had some more tricks up her sleeve, but alas as the Reverend of the Iggy's Church we had to take a vow of silence. But watch this space if you want to be kept informed.

So for now, sistren and brethren, here is 'iggy the eskimo girl'. Enjoy and don't do anything Iggy wouldn't do.

If you dig deeper into the reason you get the message: The above video has been deleted after a copyright claim.

Afterword

After the movie was 'found' and published on the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, it took less than 24 hours before it was deleted. Uploaded at the end of past year it led a calm life at Dailymotion until it was found by a Birdie Hop group member, if our information is correct. From there it quietly expanded to other groups and on other people's timelines, including the one of Iggy Rose. Reactions were generally ecstatic, except for one.

It didn't take long for Stephen W. Tayler to claim that this was a copyright infringement. He is a mixer, music producer, composer and sound designer who has worked on hundreds of projects, including Kate Bush, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and Howard Jones. As a partner in Chimera Arts he helped restoring eight Anthony Stern movies in 2008, including 'iggy the eskimo girl'.

Neither Anthony Stern, Sadia Sadia, nor Anthony W. Tayler wanted to give comments. (Back to top of the article.)

Iggy the Eskimo Girl at Anthony Stern Glass.
Iggy the Eskimo Girl at Chimera Arts.

Many thanks to: Marc-Olivier Becks, Rich Hall.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Get All From That Ant

About two years after the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit came with the news of an Anthony Stern anthology, showing an overview of his work, including unseen Pink Floyd footage and our own Iggy the Eskimo, it might finally get a release to the general public. Well, sort of. (See: Magnets & Miracles)

Get All From That Ant will be shown at a Syd Barrett (mini) festival that will be held in October in Cambridge when also a Syd Barrett memorial artwork will be unveiled. Men On The Border will interpret the mad cat’s wacko music with the Sandviken symphony orchestra, some mystery guests and a groovy lightshow from Peter Wynne Wilson.

Have You Got It Yet

Although not confirmed (yet) the Barrett movie festival may also feature Storm Thorgerson’s legendary Have You Got It Yet. This movie is being finalised by Roddy Bogawa, whom you might know from the excellent documentary Taken By Storm, that any Hipgnosis fan needs to have in his / her collection. We had a chat earlier this year with the movie maker and here is what he had to say.

I can answer some of the rumours! Yes, we are hoping the film will be released this year - it is in the editing stage - and yes, Lindsay [Corner] and Gayla [Pinion] are interviewed in it as well as Jenny Spires and Libby Gausden... I think it is ok to make that public...

Also Roger, David and Nick appear in new interviews which I think are quite different than most of the ones they've done before because Storm was present and he grew up with Syd, David and Roger.

So...it's exciting and once the film gets closer to completion, we'll talk it up more!
(Source: Facebook Chat, 2016 06 03)

Surely a release to be yearning for, even when Iggy wasn't interviewed, due to unforeseen circumstances.

Sydge and Iggnet

It is not certain if Stern’s anthology will get the DVD release as promised a couple of years ago. Our efforts to ask Anthony stayed unanswered. Artists, huh…

In 2014 some extremely lucky people received a Syd magnet, aka Sydge, for a Stern project that had to culminate in a book. Unfortunately all the relevant pages on the Anthony Stern Films blog have been removed, so we fear it has been shelved.

In December 2014 an Iggy the Eskimo magnet was announced (see: Iggy on your fridge!), but although the Holy Church ordered about a dozen that project was indefinitely postponed as well. Until now…

Syd Barrett and Iggy Photo Art Collectable Fridge Magnets.

2 Magnets in total.

Taken from original photos by Anthony Stern are these fantastic, practical and groovy fridge magnets featuring both Syd Barrret playing live and Iggy during a creative photoshoot with Anthony.

Both images can also be found in the new and upcoming GATA? Get ALL That Ant? .....biographical film of Anthony Stern's youth when he was friends with the infamous couple at the start of the Pink Floyd band creation.

An original piece of Uk Rock History documentation and a great gift idea for the Syd Barrett and Iggy fans.

The Syd and Iggy magnets are now for sale at Anthony Stern’s Etsy page. Get them while you still can…
(The Church is not affiliated with or endorsed by Mr. Stern's company.)

Many thanks to: Roddy Bogawa, Anthony Stern.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Tumblr pages:

Anthony Stern:
Iggnet
Sydge

Roddy Bogawa:
Taken By Storm

Felix Atagong:
Sydge (Atagong Mansion)

When, a couple of years ago, a Brian Jones Facebook group wanted to know if any members had ever met him, Iggy Rose chimed in, in her usual diplomatic style, stating that she still remembered some of the musician’s anatomical details. As Facebook groups tend to harbour the bottom layer of human intelligence she wasn’t believed. Perhaps for the better.

After six decades, Iggy still believes in the interconnected goodness of people and things, something that was already present in her as a toddler when she wanted to stroke the cat in the garden and her parents realised, just in time, that it actually was a tiger. Obviously that was before they relocated to the UK as there are not so many loose tigers running around in Brighton. Predators in good old England were mostly of the human kind and playing rock ’n' roll.

Lost weekends 1967 - 1968

How exactly Iggy met The Rolling Stones has been shrouded in a cloak of mystery. Probably she met them through psychedelic nobleman Stash (Stash Klossowski de Rola) who was in their inner circle. It suffices to say that one day she met them and that they and some of their girlfriends liked to have her around.

She was present, Zelig-like as Mark Blake later wrote in his Iggy article The Strange Tale Of Iggy The Eskimo, during the Sympathy For The Devil recording sessions, early June 1968, although there isn't a trace of her in the Jean-Luc Godard movie with the same name. Talking about a missed opportunity...

That Iggy had an eerie timing of turning completely invisible had already been proven a year and a half before when she was invited to Keith's 15th century country house, Redlands, in West Withering. In the early evening of 12 February 1967 police officers raided the place and arrested Keith, Mick and the mysterious Miss X, who was only wearing a fur rug, but she was not Iggy.

Other guests present in the house that day were:
Nicky Kramer, a dandy dope head, who was unfortunately repeatedly beaten up by some of Mick’s rougher associates because they suspected him to be the informant who gave the Stones away;
art dealer Robert ‘groovy Bob’ Fraser and his manservant Mohammed Jajaj;
Christopher Gibbs, a friend of Mick;
photographer Michael Cooper, and last but not least:
David Schneiderman, Sniderman aka David Jove, the ‘acid king’ whose portable drug cabinet with LSD and dope was never confiscated and who may have been the real snitch, working for British intelligence and/or The News Of The World newspaper.

Not present any more were George Harrison and Patti Boyd. They left the mansion before the bust. Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg had an argument in London so they never arrived, much to the disappointment of the police who raided Jones' house later.

And Iggy the Eskimo was nowhere to be seen because… she got lost on her way to the doomed place.

I had a lucky escape cause I lost my way after all the directions Keef gave me.
(Birdie Hop, 02 June 2015.)

Photographic Evidence

Michael Cooper has made some 70000 pictures of the Rolling Stones, yet, the first one with Iggy still has to surface. We know they are there, somewhere…

Literary hundreds of pictures have been lost. Me and Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon… I had quite a few snapshots with Keef, Brian and Anita…

A great loss happened when Iggy’s suitcase, that contained all her possessions, was tossed overboard, in the North Sea, after a row with an abusive friend musician. One picture that has survived however shows her, Zelig-like indeed, standing next to John Lennon on Carmen Jiménez’s birthday party, January 1967 at The Cromwellian.

Georgie Fame had a gorgeous girlfriend, Carmen, and she took me under her wings when he was touring. Just around the corner of The Cromwellian Brian Jones has an incredible pad and we all had a scrumptious paella there, cooked by her. After Brian I rolled into Keef who had a palatial place at the Chelsea embankment.

Performance

In July 1968 Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and their entourage could be found in a London house that was easier to find for Iggy. It was the set for a Donald Cammell movie that would get cult status: Performance. This film was one of the rare occasions where there was no real difference between what happened before and behind the camera, between fiction and reality... Iggy told us:

They used real magic mushrooms... I was at the house [Powis Square, Notting Hill, FA] when they where getting ready to shoot the bedroom scene, the lady in charge was getting shrooms for the cast and offered me some as well.

Iggy was also proposed a part in the movie for a bedroom scene, but she politely declined. It didn't stop her though to be friendly with Anita Pallenberg and with Donald Cammell's 'beautiful dusky' lady, Myriam Gibril...

(A great article on the movie can be found at: Donald Cammell’s Performance at Powis Square.)

Lost Weekend 2016

On the weekend from the 23rd to the 25th September 2016 BBC4 handed over its schedule to Keith Richards (and Julien Temple) in what was called Keith Richards' Lost Weekend. Apparently all programs were hand-picked by Keith, ranging from a Hitchcock movie, cartoons and comedy, documentaries, interviews and obviously some music.

On Sunday morning, starting at 1:25 AM, some Syd Barrett fans did not only see the object of their adoration on the screen, but Iggy the Eskimo as well, dancing in a park.

The 45 minutes documentary was called Lost and Found: The Memory Marbles of Anthony Stern and is unfortunately the only piece of the Richards weekend that can't be found on the BBC4's iPlayer. We have already established before that Anthony Stern has seriously lost his marbles when it comes to copyrights: Iggy The Eskimo Girl (full movie).

Probably the documentary was a condensed version of Stern's autobiographical movie Get All That, Ant that will be premiered at the Cambridge Syd Barrett movie festival on October the 21st 2016, and that has The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and, of course, Iggy Rose amongst its contributors.

You can read a tad more about the movie, that will hopefully be released on DVD, on Stern's new website that looks remarkably like a vintage eighties web-creation: Anthony Stern Film Archive.

Miss Rose

Obviously we had Iggy on the phone about this documentary that she saw through half-open eyes as she was falling asleep by then. But she did catch herself in the white dress though...

The fact that Keith Richards, Keith Richards!, hand-picked Anthony Stern's movie about me is thrilling after all these years.

Must be that he still remembers you, Iggy. Those 'not fit for publication' scenes happening on the backseat of his Rolls Royce must have left an unforgettable impression on his scruffy brain, even after 48 years...

This article is an updated version of Iggy & the Stones (October 2012). Many thanks to: Lisa Newman, Anthony Stern, Yeeshkul.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

In our previous post (Lost Weekends) we told how Keith Richards (with some help from Julian Temple) took over the BBC4 broadcasting schedule on the weekend from the 23rd to the 25th September 2016.

One of the documentaries shown was called Lost and Found: The Memory Marbles of Anthony Stern. Unfortunately it was the only original piece that couldn't be re-watched on the BBC4 iPlayer, probably due to copyright restrictions.

The Birdie Hop group, that has a soft spot for Iggy Rose, looked for people who had a copy, but could only find some pictures and snippets, taken with mobile phones, from TV screens. Quality wasn't excellent, but it was all we had.

Then professional Syd Barrett movie collector Hallucalation chimed in. This man has already unearthed 'lost' Pink Floyd reels earlier and again he did the impossible and traced back a digital copy of the Anthony Stern BBC4 documentary. (A 2012 self-Interview with this remarkable man, taken from Solo En Las Nubes, can be found at Wondering and Dreaming (a self-interview with Ewgeni Reingold).)

Even if your heart isn't necessary with Pink Floyd, nor with Iggy the Eskimo, it is an excellent documentary, not only of the swinging sixties, but of life in that decade in general. If the documentary was a shortened version of Take All That From Ant, that has its premiere today in Cambridge, by the way, then that movie is going to be a killer.

Several entirely new pictures of Iggy have been unearthed, several 'better' screenshots of the Iggy, the Eskimo movie have been grabbed and these can be seen on our Tumblr Memory Marbles page. For your amusement we have of course also added some Pink Floyd at UFO shots.

Enjoy.

This article is an update from Lost Weekends. Many thanks to: Hallucalation, Antonio Jesús, Lisa Newman, Anthony Stern, Yeeshkul.

The Iggy the Eskimo Memory Marbles photo series on Tumblr.
Yeeshkul: Film and Photography by Anthony Stern.

♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

We wish you a very happy 2017, sistren and brethren of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Last year was a pretty active one, on the Iggy, Syd and Pink Floyd front, although that didn't always show on the site you are currently reading.

Luckily there is a Tumblr micro-blog that we daily update, with coloured photographs!, a Facebook timeline and a Twitter account.

A short and sweet 2016 Tumblr overview

The Church wishes to thank: Mick Brown, Mary Cosco, Rich Hall, Lisa Newman, Göran Nyström, Anthony Stern, Perse pigs, County cunts and Cambridge spies.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Don't mind the title of this article as that is a load of bollocky clickbait, but today...

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit celebrates its 10th birthday!

Would you believe that the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit actually started as a joke? And that this happened 10 years ago? On the 8th of August, 2008?

A New Religion

It all started with a fun thread, titled: Possibility of new religion, on the Late Night Syd Barrett Discussion Room. On the 4th of December 2007 Stanislav, an international Syd Barrett prankster whose Dadaist Photoshop creations even fooled the official Syd Barrett website (and who still manages to confuse Barrett fans today!), uttered the possibility of a Syd Barrett based religion. Dani proposed to name it Barrett's Temple, Felix asked who would be the holy virgin and Kim Kastekniv suggested it could be none other than Iggy.

The thread meandered on, not always in good taste, until Felix Atagong, yes - him again, came up with the Congregation Of Saint Iggy, adding a picture of Iggy the Eskimo, blessed by heavenly rays. (That Felix-made picture however, already had been posted on the 29th of August 2007 on a 'Syd and women'-thread and may be much older, perhaps even dating from Astral Piper days.)

It was more a joke than anything else, an early attempt that lead to nothing. A couple of months later, on the 21st of March 2008 DollyRocker (not to be confused with Dolly Rocker) recognised Iggy the Eskimo in a 1967 Rank Organisation Look At Life documentary called IN Gear (Late Night forum link: Iggy Shopping in Shops?). It lead to another Atagong comment (with the same picture):

That's it. I'm starting the Church of Iggy! Nice find btw...

But as procrastinating is a pricey synonym for Atagong nothing happened, again... but somewhere in a dark corner of Felix's mind a minuscule seed was growing into a tiny plant.

The City Wakes

Meanwhile some people in Cambridge wanted to celebrate Syd Barrett in a festival that was called The City Wakes. It was announced in July 2008, asking Barrett fans to step in and join their knowledge, and a semi-official subforum was opened at Late Night, that was pretty huge in those days and would even grow more popular thanks to the festival. (The City Wakes forum is still on the web, and as such, the only 'official' trace it ever happened. Much kudos to Eternal Isolation for keeping it alive!)

The City Wakes is a series of arts events that together make up the first ever official tribute to Syd Barrett.

The festival was authorised by the Barrett family and organised by Escape Artists who tried to swindle the family out of Syd's heritage as much as possible. Potty mouths also rumoured that the two top dog Syd Barrett photographers, obviously we won't cite their names for privacy reasons, filled their pockets with their 'charitable' contributions.

But of course, nobody was aware of this by then and fans were more than happy to be able to attend the festival, that would be held in October – November 2008. The festival promised a Barrett art exhibition 'The Other Room', concert performances, guided tours, music workshops, a 1960s-style happening, a Storm Thorgerson exhibition, lectures and 'talks' with members of the Cambridge mafia and Pink Floyd biographers, etc..., etc...

The motives for the start of The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit on the 8th of August 2008 have been lost in the mist of time and as such the Reverend needs to reconstruct his train of thought, but it is certain that the announcement of The City Wakes festival was an important trigger.

Another Syd blog

Since the dawn of the internet several Syd Barrett related fan-sites existed, but many simply disappeared or merely prolonged their existence in a vegetative state. (A bit like the official Syd Barrett website now, we might add. Announced with much pride, pomp and circumstance in January 2016 and doing absolutely nothing ever since, not even correcting the mistakes that crept in at launch.)

So a new Syd Barrett blog wouldn't be that bad, Felix Atagong thought.

But why Iggy?

There had always been a recurring interest for Iggy the Eskimo at Late Night and, before that, on the Astral Piper forum. For those who are too young to remember, Astral Piper was a Syd Barrett fan made website and forum, run by an enthusiast webmaster who was apparently less enthusiast when it came to money matters. The forum closed down in 2007 when the internal quibbling between 'astralpiper1' and some unfortunate members became too distracting to go on. The website, however, was salvaged from destruction and a copy lives further on at the Atagong domain: ASTRAL PIPER Redux 2013.

On those fora, Sydiots discussed Iggy's 'history' and her disappearance since ages and some new (although very scarce) information had been unearthed with the IN Gear movie. As such there was already some kind of a small fan-base present.

The only problem, so thought Felix Atagong during a sleepless night, was that the scarce Iggy evidence was shattered all over the internet. “Wouldn't it be nice to assemble all information at one place for aeons to come?”

This question became even more pertinent when Anthony Stern hit the scene.

Stern and Stubborn

LSD-pioneer Anthony Stern had been a part of the Cambridge set in the mid-sixties, with beat poets, aspiring musicians and artists meeting at the local coffee-bar El Patio. Ant and his pal Syd had a mutual art exhibition, in the summer of 1964, above the Lion and Lamb pub in Milton. Just like Peter Whitehead and Storm Thorgerson he was an aspiring photographer and would-be movie maker. Around 1967 he and Syd discussed co-writing and -producing a movie 'The Rose Tinted Monocle' but the project unfortunately never materialised. (A Barrett-less version was later torpedoed by Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke.)

However, Anthony Stern did make a few Floyd-related movies and one of those, using the Floyd's hit-single 'See Emily Play', was the legendary 'Iggy Eskimo Girl', a relic that had been hidden for four decades. That movie and a set of unseen Iggy 'triptych' pictures would be a part of The Other Room exhibition. On the 25th of July 2008 a teaser was published on YouTube and it is even more of a miracle that this is still online a decade later: Syd Barrett - Iggy.

From Eskimo to Inuit

Surely there was enough material now (and more would certainly surface in the near future) for an Iggy the Eskimo blog. It must have been at that point that Felix Atagong's mind went into overdrive and less than two weeks later the first post at The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit was published. That first post, titled: Iggy, was literally copied from a (now untraceable) Acid Mandala forum post at The Syd Barrett Archives, and turned out well, all things considered.

But why Iggy the Inuit?

Not out of political correctness, a newspeak term that has as much impact on the Reverend than a fart in a wind tunnel, but as an ironic nod, perhaps inspired by Metal Mickey's comment on Late Night nearly a year before:

Not to get all PC on you folks but, 'eskimo' is apparently not a very nice term and not commonly used anymore...the correct tribal/nation name is Inuit or Innu...so there! (Metal Mickey Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 7:01 am.)

It was clear from the beginning that The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit would not take Syd Barrett, nor Pink Floyd idolatry too seriously. Fun fact: the decision to call it a Church was directly inspired by a humoristic Star Trek page that listened (and still listens to) the name: The First Church of Shatnerology.

It was now time to boldly go where no Eskimo (or Inuit) had gone before.

(End of part One. Part two: Bang A Gong (10 Years of Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit))

The Church wishes to thank all of those who started rolling the ball 10 years ago. Unfortunately, many of them have already left the scene. : Alien Brain, Astral Piper, Sean Beaver, Bell That Rings, Mark Blake, Charley, Dani, Dark Globe, Bea Day, Dolly Rocker, DollyRocker, Ebronte, Eternal Isolation, Gnome, Juliian Indica (aka Julian Palacios), Kim Kastekniv, Little Minute Gong, Madcap Syd, Metal Mickey, Music Bailey, Mystic Shining, Psych 62, Silks (नियत), Stanislav, Stars Can Frighten, Syd Barrett's Mandolin, Anthony Stern, The Syd Barrett Sound... (Sorry to those we have forgotten to mention.)

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Links:
The City Wakes forum @ Late Night.
Syd Barrett festival "The City Wakes", Cambridge Oct-November 2008 @ Brain Damage.
City Wakes - Official Tribute to Syd Barrett Info @ Neptune Pink Floyd.

This is Part Two of our 10-years anniversary post. To read the first part, head over here: 10 Mind-blowing facts you didn't know about the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit celebrates its 10th birthday!

Ten years ago the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit started with a (big) bang, not coincidentally surfing on the waves that were created by the Cambridge City Wakes festival, later continuing on its own momentum. On the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year a first article was posted.

A couple of days later it's birth was also announced on the Late Night forum, the then leading Syd Barrett community:

OK, the old habitants of this forum must have seen it coming and the forthcoming Iggy the Eskimo movie triggered it a bit.

The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit

The first post is just a try-out (to check parameters etc...).
The second Bend It! is what I would like to achieve, a picture of Iggy and a lot of information about the who's, where's and abouts...

Let me know what you think of it...
BTW, all information is welcome... (and errorzzz)...
(I hope that the subdomain fully works: https://atagong.com/iggy)

Here is how the first header looked like, created in Xara 3D. (The 'vintage' old-school look was done deliberately.)

In the first year of its existence the Church published 37 articles (for those who love statistics that is 17% of all Church articles in its first decade). Those from August 2008 presented and analysed some of the Iggy material that was already available:

Iggy's presence at the 1966 'Bend' dance contest (Bend It!);
her cameo in the recently discovered IN Gear documentary (IN Gear) and (obviously)
her picture on The Madcap Laughs sleeve (Stormy Pictures).

The Orchid

After a hint from Mark Blake, author of the Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly, that Iggy used to go dancing around Purley and Caterham, the Church contacted (local) newspaper The Croydon Guardian, that had written a few articles about the dancehall The Orchid. Journalist Kirsty Walley took the bait, she interviewed Anthony Stern and Jeff Dexter and officially started Iggymania with her article: So, where did she go to, our lovely? (en passant making free publicity for The City Wakes and The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit).

It gave the Holy Church a certain authority it didn't want in the first place, but it can't be denied that the search for Iggy was taken pretty seriously by some people (not in the least the Reverend who also started to believe in it).

The Other Room

In that very first trimester we obviously reported about The City Wakes festival, especially when it was Iggy-related. The Trashcan Sinatras commemorated Syd and Iggy in their song Oranges And Apples and several articles commented on The Other Room exhibition where Anthony Stern's Iggy triptychs were exposed for the very first time: Anthony Stern Photoshoot.

As far as we know, The Other Room catalogue is still the only official printed publication where some of Anthony Stern's Iggy pictures have been published.

Storm and Rock in the Woods, featuring a mysterious brunette

When the City Wakes festival ended the Reverend thought that the rest of the season would be more at leisure, and that we would have to fill our blog with book reviews and the odd obituary (poor Rick died in September). But Iggymania had taken its momentum. The snowball started to roll...

We were informed that Iggy could be found on another Floydian document, a Syd Barrett Home Movies compilation that had been shown once (and only once) before a 1990 Pink Floyd charity concert at Knebworth. The Church (with - again - a lot of help from Late Night members) could identify most people in the so-called Lost In The Woods movie with the exception of 'a mysterious brunette' who was seen walking with Syd and Iggy (Love in the Woods (Pt. 1) & (Pt. 2)).

A decade later she still has not been identified.

JenS

Thanks to Julian Palacios, author of two Syd Barrett biographies and the administrator of a (now deleted) Syd Barrett highbrow 'research' forum, the Church was contacted, in January 2009, by the person who introduced Iggy to Syd Barrett four decades before.

This resulted in a few articles that brought forward some new and interesting findings, promoting the theory that The Madcap Laughs record sleeve picture had been taken in the spring of 1969 and not in autumn, as other witnesses used to declare in Pink Floyd and Barrett biographies. (See: When Syd met Iggy - Pt. 1 - Pt. 2 - Pt. 3 - Pt. 4.)

It gave the Church the reputation of being contrarious, but now, ten years later, this theory seems to be generally accepted. That you read it at the Church first, is thanks to JenS, our witness who wanted to remain anonymous, despite the fact that every level 2 Syd anorak knows who (s)he is.

Pink Pontiac

It would not be the only time the Church had to confront witnesses, who were high on the Floydian pecking order, with a 'false memory syndrome'.

One of the weirder ones is Mick Rock's theory that Syd Barrett had a pink convertible parked before his door, while the few coloured photographs actually show it was 'midnight' blue. A pink car would also turn light-grey on the various Madcap Laughs BW pictures, but they invariably show a very dark-grey, almost black, coach.

Also Duggie Fields, who must have passed the car parked in front of his apartment for months, remembers it as pink and has even painted the car in that colour, for the artwork that accompanied the Their Mortal Remains exhibition (2017).

Of course the Pontiac Parisienne, with license plate VYP74, was later turned into pink for its role in the movie Entertaining Mr. Sloane. This movie, however, was shot after Syd Barrett seemingly gave it away to a bystander, although some witnesses still pretend the contrary after all these years. Others pretend it was a 'chameleon' car that originally was pink, then painted blue, then painted pink again. You can't win them all.

Update 20181223: Iain Owen Moor (Emo), friend of the Floyd and the London underground remembers the car, when it was still owned by Mickey Finn.

Thought it was black. I went in it a few times in 68 (?) with Sue Worth, Mickey's then girlfriend. The car seems to have had a life of its own like The Yellow Rolls-Royce.

Words of Hope

In May of the Church's first season, however, the Reverend already fell into a dip, because of... a lack of Iggy. Luckily there was Dan5482 who gave the Church a thumb's up, adding:

Despite all that collective amnesia I think that Iggy can still be found. There are journalists, detectives... who have found more difficult "targets".

However, an intense and widespread interest for her is a necessary condition. Your Church is a source of hope in this sense. It lets many people know that once such a mysterious woman existed.

His words unknowingly predicted the future, but that is a story we will keep for August next year, if at least the orange buffoon hasn't pushed the Armageddon button by then.

The Church wishes to thank all of those who started rolling the ball 10 years ago. Unfortunately, many of them have left the scene. : Alien Brain, Astral Piper, Sean Beaver, Bell That Rings, Mark Blake, Charley, Dan5482, Dani, Dark Globe, Bea Day, Dolly Rocker, Ebronte, Eternal Isolation, Gnome, Juliian Indica, Kim Kastekniv, Little Minute Gong, Madcap Syd, Metal Mickey, Iain Owen Moor, Music Bailey, Mystic Shining, Psych 62, Silks (नियत), Stanislav, Jenny Spires, Stars Can Frighten, Syd Barrett's Mandolin, Anthony Stern, The Syd Barrett Sound... (Sorry to those we have forgotten to mention.)

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Lucky girl

A remarkable story could be found on the 16th of August 2018 in The Anglo-Celt, a weekly local newspaper published in Swellan (Cavan, Ireland). Written by Seamus Enright and bearing the title 'Antique shop dealer’s brush with luck' it tells how a local antique dealer bought a €50 (approx. £45 or $58) painting that turned out to be a Syd Barrett original from 1964, missing since 1994.

Maggie Matthews from the aptly named 'Junk' store in Virginia (Cavan, Ireland) went to one of Dublin's weekly 'bric-a-brac' auctions and was attracted by a painting of a young girl.

It was her eyes that drew me in. She was sitting on a table, filthy and covered in dust, as if you weren’t supposed to see her really.

Maggie bought the painting and put it in her shop, with a €100 price tag. When a customer told her he found the portrait disturbing, she decided to have a closer look at it. At the bottom right side it was signed by a Roger Barrett, dated: 12-2-64, at the backside the painter had left his name and address:

R.K. Barrett
183 HILLS ROAD
CAMBRIDGE

She decided to Google the name and almost fell from her chair when she found out there were over 9 million results. Clearly this wasn't an ordinary bloke.

New car, caviar

It didn't take too long for Maggie Matthews to realise she was sitting on something unique... and potentially valuable.

It’s the kind of thing you read about in newspapers or online. As an person interested in antiques and art, it’s the sort of thing you secretly dream of happening, but never dare believe it will.

Painted two days before Valentine, Maggie Matthews believed at first it was a painting of Barrett's girlfriend Libby Gausden, but that doesn't seem to be the case. At the Birdie Hop Facebook group, where the find was obviously discussed, Libby reacted that she has 'no idea' who could be the young woman. Another member of the sixties beatnik Cambridge mob and a painter as well, Mick Brown, has about the same to say: “I wouldn't know...”

Update November 2018: in a post to Birdie Hop at the end of November 2018 Libby Gausden changed her mind a bit and said that the girl on the picture could have been Frances Treweek, an art student and friend of Syd.

But another Cambridge mobster, Elizabeth Refna Warner - who took the famous picture from Syd at the Cambridge Art School - thinks the woman in the portrait could be 'Diana', probably another art student.

As usual the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit has its own idea. The woman on the painting could simply be a model from the academy. What we have is not a picture of his beloved girlfriend, but a school assignment. In late 1961 Barrett followed evening classes in life drawing at the School of Art. He would enter that school the next year, until 1964. In September 1964 he left for London to go to Camberwell Art College, but instead of taking a brush in his hand, he picked a guitar. We all know how that ended.

Lambs thrown to the Lions

But before making the great leap forward towards the capital city, he and his pal Anthony Stern had an exhibition entitled 'Two Young Painters' at the Lion and Lamb pub in Milton. It was held between 29 May and 25 June and as usual different people tell different stories, some say Barrett may have sold at least one painting, others claim nothing came out of it. What we can be sure of is that the exhibition was reviewed by journalist Anthony Day in Cambridge News, titled Milton Art Display.

Barrett's work shows some of the advantages of an art school training. His prints, monotypes and drawings are slight but necessary student exercises but in two still-lives and two convincing portraits, he is already showing himself a sensitive handler of oil paint who wisely limits his palette to gain richness and density. (Holy Church Tumblr link to the article: Milton Art Display.)

Portrait of a Girl could well have been one of the more 'convincing' paintings at the show. We don't know what happened with the painting after the exhibition, but luckily a (pretty bad) black and white picture of it exists. It was published in a 1994 Record Collector when it was announced the portrait was auctioned for £880. Unfortunately it immediately disappeared for a second time, until last week.

In their Barrett art catalogue, Russel Beecher and Will Shutes write:

His Portrait of a Girl, sold in auction in 1994 but not seen since its reproduction in Record Collector, November 1994, p. 121, reveals to an extent – despite the poor image available – the sensitive handling of oils to which [Anthony] Day refers.

Maggie Matthews has some nice things to say as well:

Even at that young age you can see his talent as an artist developing. He really caught her without over-working it too much, and I actually love that she’s not trying to look good for the artist. I love too that he hasn’t tried to flatter her. I find it very honest.

Sydiots and other folk

A photo of The Anglo-Celt front page was put on the Syd Barrett Fan Page (Facebook) by Paul McCann, minutes later it landed on Birdie Hop and was immediately discussed by Sydiots and Barrett brides alike.

Mark Jones, photo archivist at the official Syd Barrett website, had the following to say:

So someone bought it for £880 20 years ago, knowing it was by Syd, and then must have 'lost' sight of it and it turns up for sale for £50?

Clay Jordan replied:

I was thinking perhaps the person who bought it passed away and the people who dealt with the belongings didn't know what it was.

Mark Jones:

Unless it was stolen?

Others thought it could be a fake, made to fool collectors. People have been faking $10,000 Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett records before (see: Scream Thy False Scream), but it seems a bit ridiculous to duplicate this relatively unknown portrait and then sell it for €50. Gid Giddoni compared both pictures and concluded:

It might be very well the exact same artwork portrayed in the 1964 photo. (…) If you look at the nose, you'll see the exact same shape. Same for the mouth / chin. I would give it 95% possibility to be the same artwork.

Maggie Matthews contacted Will Shutes who said it is nearly doubtless it is the original, although further investigation might be necessary. The Barrett family was contacted and although Rosemary Breen does not recognise the painting she has said that the handwriting on the back looks like Roger's indeed.

Birdie Hop and Late Night members certainly will have their say as well about the signature and handwriting on the canvas, looking more authentic than the fake Barrett poem that was once auctioned for £2,160 (see: Bonhams Sells Fake Barrett Poem). At least one collector has already shown interest in acquiring the painting, so let's just hope it doesn't disappear again, for a third time. Maggie Matthews:

Amazingly, this is one of those unique crossover finds that’s of interest to both to art lovers and music aficionados. It’s exciting!

Update 2018 12 11 : On the eleventh of December 2018 the painting was auctioned at Bonhams and sold for £6,500 (€7,204 / $8,157) nett or £8,125 (€9,004 / $10,198) including premium. Owner unknown at the time of writing. Apparently the man handling the sale is the same man who sold it in 1994 whilst working in Sothebys.

Our Tumblr image gallery will publish even more pictures, the next couple of days, including a scan of the Anglo-Celt article: Portrait of a Girl.

All Maggie Matthews quotes and pictures in this post have been taken from The Anglo-Celt online article: Antique shop dealer’s brush with luck.
Newspaper frontpage picture taken and send to the Church by Maggie Matthews.
The 1964 Anthony Stern & Roger Barrett exhibition where this portrait may have been displayed: Lion and Lamb, 1964.

Many thanks to: Birdie Hop, Seamus Enright, Libby Gausden, Gid Giddoni, Alex Peter Hoffmann, Penny Hyrons, Mark Jones, Clay Jordan, Maggie Matthews, Paul McCann, Göran Nyström, Mark Schofield, Elizabeth Refna Warner.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Beecher, Russell & Shutes, Will: Barrett, Essential Works Ltd, London, 2011, p. 174-175.
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 32.

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land, dear sistren and brethren, followers of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. But before we shall dwell on that we want to wish you a Happy New Year. So here it is. Happy New Year!

The Later Year$

The ending of past year saw the release of The Later Years, a pretty expensive luxury set of the Diet Floyd. Basically it is David Gilmour’s scientific method to find out where you fans really stand.

The set contains about three times the same product, in different formats, and – although its selling price has descended with about 40% to 50% - it is still fucking expensive for what it’s really worth. If you want you can read our article about it here: The Later Years: Hot Air & Co.

Caught in a cauldron of hate

But that is just economics. What preoccupies us more is that in 2020 the Waters – Gilmour feud has still not been settled. While in the past it was Roger Waters who has been designated as the baddy, it is apparently now David Gilmour’s turn to be the cantankerous one.

In a recent interview, Waters claims that he offered a peace plan to Gilmour, that was promptly rejected. Polly Samson, from her side, twittered that it was not her hubby who rejected the peace plan, but the other guy.

Sigh.

Two bald men fighting over a comb. A golden comb, embellished with crazy diamonds, obviously. Decades ago Nick Mason had the following to say about the ongoing Floyd-war: ”If our children behaved this way, we would have been very cross.” Seems that the 'children' still haven't learned anything.

Caring about Carin

The Later Years box-set has not only divided fans. There has also been some grumbling from Jon Carin, one of the Floyd’s session musicians, who co-wrote Learning To Fly. It first started with Carin complaining on Facebook that the Floyd didn’t wish him a happy birthday. We know the Church has been accused before from inventing stories, but this stuff is so unbelievable you really can’t make it up.

According to Jon Carin he played the bulk of the piano and keyboards on The Division Bell (and quite a few on The Endless River) and not Rick Wright as is generally believed. Why he has waited a quarter of a century to complain about this is something of a mystery, unless you mention that magical word that will turn the meekest lamb into a dog of war: copyrights.

The lost art of conversation

To promote The Later Years David Gilmour has published a 4-part podcast where he carefully reinterprets the past. Unfortunately what has been written about Pink Floyd before - by journalists and biographers - can still be read today, so almost nobody takes the propaganda from Gilmour seriously, unless you weren’t born yet when he turned a solo album into a Floyd one.

And where is Nick Mason, I hear you say? While he used to be the thriving force behind Floydian publicity in the past he is now totally absent.

Weird.

It’s almost as if there is a saucerful of secrets. Or a true enigma, this time.

The best of Tumblr 2019

But let’s finally start with our traditional annual overview of our sister blog on Tumblr that is daily updated with pictures you all have seen before. Have fun!

The Church wishes to thank: Steve Bassett (Madcapsyd), Steve Bennett, Jumaris CS, Joanna Curwood, Maya Deren, Esfera04, Jenni Fiire, Freqazoidiac, Rafael Gasent, Nino Gatti, Rich Hall, Harlequin, Dave Harris, Jabanette, Dion Johnson, Keleven, Simon Matthews, Joanne Milne (Charley), Rocco Moliterno, Peudent, Poliphemo, RonToon, TopPopper, Waelz, Wolfpack, Franka Wright and the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums, Yeeshkul and Birdie Hop.

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Cambridge

Anthony Stern grew up in Cambridge, along with boyhood friends David Gilmour and Roger Barrett. He moved to London in the mid-sixties and worked as a photographer for the Immediate record label. As a film-maker, he worked with Peter Whitehead on several documentaries that captured the rebellious energy of a tumultuous decade, such as the documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967).

LSD-pioneer Stern had been a part of the Cambridge set in the mid-sixties, with beat poets, aspiring musicians and artists meeting at the local coffee-bar El Patio. Ant and his pal Syd had a mutual art exhibition, in the summer of 1964, above the Lion and Lamb pub in Milton. Just like Peter Whitehead, Storm Thorgerson and Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon he was an aspiring photographer and would-be movie maker. Around 1967 he and Syd discussed co-writing and -producing a movie 'The Rose Tinted Monocle' but the project never materialised.

Was there something in the water? (…) How come it happened that in Cambridge, nearly everybody you met was already a sort of proto-eccentric by the age of fourteen? If you weren’t doing some mad beat poetry, or jazz or playing the trumpet or something by the age of fifteen you’d better get a move on, ’cos everyone else is doing something wacky.” (Irregular Head)

In the autumn of 1967 things weren’t going smoothly for the Floyd. One day Anthony Stern ran into Peter Jenner in the Drum City music shop in London. He was offered a place in the band as second guitarist but he turned down the offer: “Oh, no, I’m a film director.”

Anthony Stern made a few Floyd-related movies. One of those, using the Floyd's hit-single 'See Emily Play', was the legendary 'Iggy Eskimo Girl' (1968), a relic that has mostly been hidden for five decades. The movie is, to quote Stern, a short little film poem about a girl who was on the scene in London.

Iggy was my muse. I met her at a Hendrix gig at the Speakeasy. She was a lovely inspiration and free spirit. I never knew her real name. We used to hang out together, occasionally dropping acid, staying up all night, going for walks at dawn in Battersea Park.

Stern took many pictures of Iggy and some were shown as ‘triptychs’ at The Other Room, one of the exhibitions during the Cambridge City Wakes festival in 2008.

I re-discovered these photographs in my cellar in an old suitcase. All the optical effects were obtained in-camera. The colour images of Iggy were taken on a houseboat at Chelsea Reach. In the background you can see Lots Road Power Station. The distortions were achieved using a flexible mirror material called Malinex, as well as a magnifying Fresnel screen.

Iggy was terrific fun to be with and to photograph. I knew her before she was introduced to Syd by Jennifer Spires, and I remember walking through Battersea Park in the early mornings together.

San Francisco

Even more famous than the Iggy movie is Stern’s San Francisco, (1968) where he ‘attempted to duplicate the Pink Floyd’s light show’ through cinematography. The soundtrack of that short is an early version of 'Interstellar Overdrive', dating from the 31st of October 1966. Stern used his camera as a ‘musical instrument’. San Francisco was seen by him as a ‘jazz music performance’ using still images as notes.

London

Syd Barrett used to crash in at Stern’s apartment, during and after his Pink Floyd period, but not all was well.

You’d see his mood declining as the evening wore on. (…) Then he’d disappear into the lavatory and come back and his mood had changed. (Pigs Might Fly)

According to Stern it was not cocaine Syd Barrett was taking, but heroin.

Dark Side Of The Rose Monocle

When 'Dark Side Of The Moon' came out Stern was duly impressed, just like millions of other fans. He proposed to make a movie based upon the 'The Rose Tinted Monocle' script that he had worked on with Syd Barrett. He borrowed a projector from David Gilmour and showed a rough version to all members of the band.

They knew that Syd had been involved with the roots of the film, and on a purely aesthetic and creative level they all gave it the thumbs up. They all said, “Of course you can use Dark Side of the Moon for this.” (…) Roger, despite his immense ego, was incredibly friendly, warm and enthusiastic about the idea of me using this music in such an abstract, non-commercial way. (Pigs Might Fly)

The band’s approval was buried by the band’s manager, Steve O’Rourke, and the movie was never made. Pink Floyd now belonged to the high-fidelity first-class travelling set and no longer to the avant-garde underground.

Dancing with Glass

Making avant-garde movies doesn’t bring bread on the table. Around 1978 Anthony Stern found a new way to express his talent in glass blowing. Film-making and glass-blowing culminated in a short movie Anthony made: 'Dancing With Glass' (2013). Direct link: Dancing With Glass.

Chimera Arts

With the turn of the century there was some renewed interest in Stern’s film making. He joined forces with Chimera Arts, the production company from installation artist Sadia Sadia and music producer, composer and sound designer Stephen W Tayler. They salvaged some material from Stern’s archives. 'The Noon Gun', shot by Stern in Afghanistan in 1971, was released by Chimera in 2004.

Other rediscovered films had a premiere at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, June 2008. Amongst them: 'The End Of The Party', from 1969 and 'Iggy Eskimo Girl', from 1968. Stern was present and gave some valuable information that has been hiding for years in one of the dark corners of the Internet. Direct Link: Anthony Stern.

The City Wakes festival in Cambridge (2008) created something of a Pink Floyd induced buzz, promoting Anthony’s pictures in The Other Room exhibition. Anthony Stern was also the subject of a 2008 documentary, shot by Sadia Sadia: 'Lit From Within'.

Get all that, Ant?

Stern was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and started revisiting his collection of photographs, 16mm film reels and Nagra sound tapes. A website was created in 2014, Anthony Stern Film Archive, that promised to release a book and a DVD containing Stern’s work: 'Get all from that Ant?' (later re-baptised to 'Get All That, Ant')

Although the 62 minutes documentary was shown on a Syd Barrett festival in October 2016 it never was released to the general public. Most of the relevant pages on the Anthony Stern Film Archive website have disappeared as well.

Memory Marbles

A condensed, 45 minutes, version was shown at BBC4 during Keith Richard’s Lost Weekend. 'Lost and Found: the Memory Marbles of Anthony Stern' made it on national television on Monday 26th of September 2016 at 01:25 in the morning. This documentary had some previously unpublished stills and snippets of Iggy and Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett.

Chimera Copyright Issues

No Church article without some controversy, some people say.

'Memory Marbles' – the condensed version of 'Get All That, Ant?' – was the only program from Keith Richard’s Lost Weekend that didn’t make it on the BBC iPlayer and couldn’t be seen ‘on demand’. Copyright issues, so it seems.

The 'Iggy Eskimo Girl' movie was never generally released and when a ‘bootleg’ version was found by none other than Iggy herself (in 2016) it took less than 24 hours for Chimera Arts to delete it from Dailymotion. (See: Iggy The Eskimo Girl (full movie).)

Over the years Chimera has been as protective over Stern’s movies as Pink Floyd over the Syd Barrett tap dancing video. They prefer to show his work on avant-garde film festivals rather than release it to the masses. (Anthony Stern did send an Eskimo Girl DVD to Iggy Rose though.)

As such it is quite ironical that the Anthony Stern retrospective at La Cinémathèque Française was organised after they found one of his movies… on YouTube.

Vanishing Point

Sadia Sadia’s YouTube channel contained a biographical movie about ‘her friend, the glass artist Anthony Stern’. 'Lit From Within' (2008) is a cute documentary that has a mid-sixties cameo from none other than Libby Gausden. A few days after Stern’s decease, the movie mysteriously disappeared from the channel. It's probably an avant-garde way of honouring a friend who just passed away.

Old Friends

Another mystery is why Ant’s two Pink Floyd related movies never made it on The Early Years set. The 'Interstellar Overdrive' demo of the 1st of October 1966, recorded at Thompson Private Recording Studios, Hemel Hempstead can’t be found in the box, an unforgivable oversight. It was later released on one-sided vinyl for Record Store Day.

It is rumoured that Pink Floyd used a low quality tape to press the record. It is also believed that the original reel of the track belonged to Anthony Stern, who used it for the San Francisco movie. Just like with the BBC sessions the Pink Floyd archivists used low quality copies instead of trying to obtain the originals.

RIP Anthony Stern (1944 - 2022)

Stern died somewhere in the first or second week of February 2022. With Anthony we lose another cogwheel from the Pink Floyd time machine. He used to play with light, first as a gifted avant-garde movie maker, later as a glass sculpturer. Let’s hope ‘Get All That, Ant’ will get a release soon and that it will not stay in copyright hell like Storm Thorgerson’s ‘Have You Got It Yet’.

We are the Fishes

An Anthony Stern movie from 2014. Direct link: We are the Fishes.

Many thanks to: Iain 'Emo' Moore, Lisa Newman, Göran Nyström.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Links & Things:
Anthony Stern: Anthony Stern Glass.
Anthony Stern: BFI (incomplete).
Anthony Stern: Film Archive.
Anthony Stern: Film Archive (Wixsite).
Anthony Stern: IMDB (incomplete).
Anthony Stern: YouTube.

Chimera Arts: FILMS and INSTALLATIONS MENU - (hidden) movie page, containing descriptions of several Stern (related) movies.
Chimera Arts: Iggy.
Chimera Arts: The End of the Party.
Chimera Arts: Lit from Within (documentary).
Chimera Arts: San Francisco Redux (art installation).
Chimera Arts: The Noon Gun.

Sadia Sadia: YouTube (contains no Anthony Stern material).

THCoItI: Anthony Stern related pages.
THCoItI: Eskimo Girl (screenshots).
THCoItI: Iggy Triptychs.
THCoItI: The Other Room (Anthony Stern exhibition).

Tumblr: Anthony Stern.
Tumblr: Chimera Arts.
Tumblr: Iggnet (Iggy magnet).
Tumblr: Iggy Triptychs.
Tumblr: Lion and Lamb.
Tumblr: Lost Weekend.
Tumblr: Memory Marbles.
Tumblr: Sydge (Syd Barrett magnet).
Tumblr: The Other Room.

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013.
Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010.
Palacios, Julian: Darker Globe: Uncut and Unedited, private publication, 2021.
Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p. 7-8.

Near The End

A pretty good musician once sang:

Thinking that we're getting older and wiser.
When we're just getting old.

There is no better way to describe Pink Floyd in 2022 than with David Gilmour and Roger Waters fighting their minor squabbles that may have cost them a half-billion dollars.

To quote that same song:

And there's a stranger where once was a friend.

A New Machine

While Roger Waters was still licking Putin’s balls after the Russian invasion in Ukraine, David Gilmour (and his amenable corporal Nick Mason) recorded the charity single Hey, Hey, Rise Up!, reluctantly reincarnating Pink Floyd once more.

Pink Floyd 2022

Pink Floyd, anno 2022, looked a bit different than in 1972 or 1982. Three faces were well known to the fans: David Gilmour, Nick Mason and bass player ad interim (since 1987) Guy Pratt. Musician, producer, and composer Nitin Sawhney joined them on keyboards.

The vocalist on this record, as you probably know, is Andriy Khlyvnyuk from the Ukrainian band Boombox. The choir intro was taken from a recording from the Veryovka Ukrainian Folk Choir. The song itself is based on a 1914 Ukrainian anthem, "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow". (Read more at: Hey, Hey, Rise Up)

In December 2022 it was confirmed that the record raised £500,000 for charity: Pink Floyd thank supporters of Ukraine benefit song as it raises £500,000.

Happy New Year 2023

On this first day of the new year, we give you the traditional overview of what happened on our sister website on Tumblr: iggyinuit.tumblr.com.

The Church wishes to thank all our friends, collaborators and some old enemies whom we can’t live without: Abigail Thorne, Alexander 'LX' Peter Hoffmann, Anthony Stern, Antonio Jesús Reyes, Aphexj, Axefeld, Big Pasi, Birdie Hop, Blackstrat01, Bonhams, Buran1988, DenjiDen, Eleonora Siatoni, Elizabeth Joyce, Eternal Isolation, Ffrenchmullen, Geoffers, Glenn Povey, Goldenband, Göran Nyström, Guy Pratt, Hipgnosis Covers, Iain 'Emo' Moore, Jaman57, Jerry Is Bored, Jon Carin, Julian Palacios, Kit Rae, Lee Wood, Lennyif, Liam Creedon, Lisa Newman, Little Queenies, Matt (Brain Damage), Metal Pilgrim, MOB, Moomoomoomoo, Mr Limbo, Nipote, Peter Jenner, Philippe Spadaccini, PinkSydFloyd, Rich Hall, Rino Di Lernia, Steve Hoffmann Music Forum, Steve M, Vincenzo Gambino, Warren Dosanjh, Yeeshkul!, and all the beautiful people we have forgotten.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Song quoted at the beginning of this post: Near The End.