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7th April 2002
Why I'm Joining The Revolution
THE success of Pop Idols Gareth and gay (I was shocked) Will, who are this century's Donny Osmond and David Cassidy, must mean a revolution must occur - and soon.
Punk was a reaction to the supergroups of the seventies and every 10 years or so there is a kind of musical dumping of the safe in favour of something more edgy. And if there is going to be a musical revolution - meaning bands or artists who have something to say, dress themselves and are not dictated to by some mogul who wears his trousers to his nipples - it will be a female revolution.
Take the Ping Pong Bitches, who I caught sending the crowd wild at the trendy 333 club, situated off the equally trendy Hoxton Square in north-east London. Imagine the Spice Girls mixed with X-Ray Spex and a modern dance groove and you have the sound made by the Bitches, who include a Chinese girl who is all vicious black eye make-up and king-fu kicks at the crowd. Then there's Louise Prey, the queen bitch and a girl who looks like a young Chrissie Hynde, but deliciously androgynous.
They were supported by a female duo called Imitation of Robots, who sang "The body of men, the blood of men" and were reminiscent of The Fatal Microbes, but more of a post-punk electro explosion of quirky lyrics and send-up robot moves. You see, women are turning to men and men are becoming sex objects.
The tables are turning. Check out the latest Dolce and Gabbana ad featuring a naked fella. Man are now being treated in the same way that women have for years, but let's hope they don't lose every grain of femininity. Siouxsie and the Banshees are about to reform and if there ever was a female who epitomised Girl Power, it's Siouxsie.
Then we have L33X, a mostly female posse who blend Bowie and punk attitude with a dance edge and some mismatched costumery, such as spotty ties with striped shirts. The crowd in the 333 club was mostly made up of skateboarder dudes and tattooed Japanese chicks who tugged coolly on cigarettes while the boys cheered and jumped around.
Live music venues are now the coolest places to be seen at and old-skool music is the new pashmina. Even Yoko Ono is getting in on the act by doing a live PA at the Crash disco for a crowd of muscly homos at some ungodly hour to promote a dance mix of one of her tunes, Soul Got Out Of The Box. I'm probably Yoko's biggest UK admirer and I'm impressed that she can stay up so late in pursuit of her art. Girls on top? You betcha life they are. If Poly Styrene reforms X-Ray Spex, my life will be complete.
FOR the past couple of years bootleg records, which are put together and released illegally, have been some of the best dance tunes ever made. Take a sample or the whole of an old tune and give it a trendy groove and you can shift bucketloads. The music industry has clearly cottoned on to this trend and is now impossible to get a record-making plant to manufacture bootlegs.
Instead, the record companies are slyly pretending to make their own bootleg records disguised in plain sleeves, and sending them out to DJs thinking we won't know. Talk about creating a musical Prohibition.
Sampling, which I support, is on of the things that has brought dance music greater diversity. More Protein, my label, has started releasing 12in records containing free samples to allow anyone to create a tune out of our back catalogue and with the premise that sales of fewer than 500 units go into the maker's pocket. After that, we get our cut.
Everything Starts With Acapella is our first release and we are also offering free vocal samples on my Trustthedj.com website.
Musical anarchy - it's the new black.
14th April 2002
Marianne, I'm Yours Faithfully
THERE I was, dining in some trendy West London eaterie and who should I bump into but Marianne Faithfull, squashed between supermodel Kate Moss and PR girl-about-town Fran Cutler.
As Marianne left the table, I grabbed her arm and she proceeded to insist that I had insulted her and Anita Pallenberg some years ago: "You called us the gruesome twosome."
It's a damnable lie. I am a huge fan of the great Ms Faithfull and, were I to have jibed in the first place, it would have been far wittier. At this stage of the game, I know my own lines better than anyone and "gruesome twosome" is not part of my repertoire.
As I recall our meeting, it was a book launch for Marianne's autobiography at the exclusive Atlantic Bar in central London and I asked her to sign it. She scribbled her moniker without even acknowledging me and strutted off, guzzling a glass of wine. This was about 10 years ago and in the days when she had the odd drink. Apparently, she is now teetotal.
To prove my point, I then sang word for word the lyrics to one of her most obscure songs, which she told me was originally written for Tina Turner: It's called Why D'ya Do It? And contains the most obscene lyric I have ever heard. You really couldn't imagine Ms Turner even listening to it, let alone singing it. It was on my answerphone for years.
I failed to convince Marianne that I hadn't dissed her but she did leave saying she loved me. What can you do? She was looking great and disappeared into the night with her posse of models while I kept singing Shaggy's It Wasn't Me.
I always tell the truth - it's one of the great failings of the Gemini - but it was fab to meet her properly anyway.
THE permiere of the movie Bend It Like Beckham just wasn't the same without the country's pseudo-royals present, what with David strapped up after his accident.
The film is total escapism and hilarious. It tells the story of a young Indian girl obsessed with David Beckham and football, battling the traditions of her family to pursue her dream of playing professional football for girls' team.
I recommend it highly because it deals with some important issues facing anglicised Indians whose parents have one foot on British soil and the other on the sub-continent.
It's all done in a comical manner and never takes the issues that seriously but, like Spain's Pedro Almodovar, the film's director, Gurinder Chada, is not scared to send up her culture.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays the football coach and I remember meeting him before he appeared in Velvet Goldmine. It was at my chum Philip's flat and he said rather cheekily: "It's great meeting people like you - it's good research for my next role."
He is very good in the film, much better than he was as a fake Bowie. He is what you would call a real pretty boy and has lips you could lounge on while being fed grapes.
But back to the film. Both mothers, the traditional Indian constantly praying and the middle-class Briton, a Margot of the Good Life type, are hysterically funny.
Bend It Like Beckham (yes, the jokes are endless: who wouldn't want to bend him? Ooh, missus!) was a blast, despite the evening. I don't enjoy big premieres and booed back at the photographers who booed me because I didn't stop to pose. After my little row with the paparazzi recently, I wasn't in the mood.
The doorman at the Leicester Square Odeon was extremely rude, demanding to see my invite in the most pathetic manner. Yeah, I usually turn up at film premieres in full drag in the off-chance that I might get in. I stopped gate-crashing at 17.
21st April 2002
Victoria, Albert, Grace And Favour
HOW insane can a week be? Picking up Grace Jones at the Philip Treacy Tribute held at the V&A Museum after her spiked heel got caught in the hem of her dress had to be pretty far out. Bless her, she carried on singing, in fine voice, my favourite French song, La Vie En Rose - note-perfect, too. And she managed to keep one of Mr Treacy's twisted toppers on her head as she did so.
My close chum Philip Sallon, who was wearing an outfit made from shredded cardboard, he told her: "You scare me." She howled loudly: "I scare you?" It was a beautiful moment. Earlier, Philip Sallon came across Jade Jagger, who rather foolishly introduced herself as "Mick Jagger's daughter". His response was perfect: "How pathetic that you can't be your own person." I met the mother in the Eighties at Andy Warhol's studio and she was equally full of herself. You know what they say: a pear rarely falls far from its tree.
It was a fabulous night and Philip Treacy's hats were breathtaking. Lord only knows how he does it but they seem to defy gravity. Over the years I have become Philip's unofficial muse and I was very pleased to take to the stage to honour his genius. They were also making a TV show of the event and Carolyn Franklin of The Clothes Show was in fierce form, demanding that I go outside in the freezing cold and shoot my links with the hordes of paparazzi. After my recent wind tragedy that ended in fisticuffs, I was having none of it. She said rather firmly that we needed to make it look like we were at the V&A. I said: "Well, we're standing in a sea of marble and statues - we could hardly be anywhere else."
After that, the night was awash with champagne and Grace Jones appeared and swallowed the room with her booming voice and tireless energy. A bunch of us retired to the Groucho Club where Dan Macmillan kept pulling off my hat, a surreal hand-painted number which my good friend Trademark had knocked up especially for the night. There will no point pulling it off in the next two weeks because I take over the role of Leigh Bowery in my musical, Taboo, at the end of the month and will look like Duncan Goodhew. In fact, I've finally realised why actors are mostly insane - because once you start learning your lines you become consumed by the person you are portraying. I keep answering my phone in character. "Go away, Big Sue. Can't you see I'm busy?"
AT THE annual Stonewall charity fundraiser held at The Dorchester hotel, a rather sombre-looking chap approached me and said: "I hope you realise what an effect you have had on these people in this room." Looking around I couldn't see how - all the men were dressed like stockbrokers and one could have been at a Freemasons' Ball. There was nothing flamboyant or gay about the event. Comedienne Jenny Eclair was hosting the raffle and provided the only bit of camp. Graham Norton offered up a chance to be his date at the Beckhams' pre-World Cup bash as part of the auction, and it was snapped up for a mere £8, 000. Then it was off to the opening of the latest club, which is in the bowels of the trendy China White nightclub.
Someone approached me and gave me the number of Sixties crooner Scott Walker, saying he wanted me to call him. I opted for a text and received a message saying: "I'm Scott Walker's ex and I love your voice". I don't mean to he rude but I felt rather deflated. You see, my hero, Mr David Bowie, loves Scott Walker and I was looking forward to meeting the reclusive legend himself.
28th April 2002
Fun playing word games with Madge
Some papers get it right, including the Express. Madonna didn't threaten to sue us for playing, rather deliciously, with the lyrics to her hit Vogue in my musical, Taboo. Her publishers, probably on her behalf, gave us permission to use them verbatim - but it kind of defeats the object, as there's a line about me having a "Criminal record, Karma Chameleon" in the show. Both the Human League and Spandau Ballet's publishers were fine but it does take a degree of irony.
I don't know whether Rupert Everett, who has showed up, went back telling all, but hours of endless fun was had this week, rewriting new lyrics. Shame really, but it all happened on the same day as I went to see a young kid with cancer, Keith Shiner, and it just seemed so petty, with Keith's lovely parents sitting loyally at his bedside, full of love and panic. Let's just say, it's a reality check. It puts all the silly wars you have with this one and that one into perspective.
Anyway, I've told Keith and his mum and dad that I want him better for my opening night in Taboo, which is May 7, and he appears to be a fighter and I'm a secret prayer.
So yes, going into Taboo is a bit like going back to school. The first day being the worst but it's starting to be fun, unlike school. It's just the dance routines, having two left feet. I blame the likes of Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson for making dance routines part of the pop game. After Thursday's show, I did a question and answer session for whatson.com and possibly the most enthusiastic crowd we had so far. I had to sit backstage for the show to see Matt Lucas (Shooting Stars' George Dawes or Marjorie for the ill-informed), who sadly departs this wekeend, and watch the complicated make up and costume changes.
On Monday, I go for the full shave, head, brows and chest because sadly, I have a Greek forest lurking under all the layers. There was a rather nice article in another paper announcing my stage debut but the journalist - who, I'm told, looked like my ex, Michael - said, rather oddly, that having me play Leigh Bowery is like having Limahl playing Marilyn. In the words of Leigh, ex-squeeze me!
THIS week I attended the Fifi Cancer Trust Perfume awards where I was requested to give the best packaging award for male perfume. Strange really, since I only ever wear perfume! I was in the presence of the great Joan Collins and new hubby and couldn't help saying how gorgeous she looked and she responded by saying she liked my hat. It was a great night and very un-stuffy, for a night of smells. Sadly, I got home to discover that Christopher Price from Liquid News had left the planet, and then Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes from TLC was killed in a car crash.
I don't think I can take anymore depressing news. I loved Left Eye, who once burned down her boyfriend's house. It wasn't deliberate, she just piled his clothes into the bath in his mansion after a row but the bath was plastic and so cheap - her words - the whole house burnt to ashes. Along with Missy Elliot, Left Eye was one of the coolest rappers and style givers in R&B and her death is worth a bucket - no, a bath - of tears. It's no wonder I can't write happy songs, but what's to smile about?
I've just secured a release in July, on Virgin Records, of an acoustic album called U Can Never B 2 Straight. It's all about honesty and, of course, sexuality and let's face it, there's such a lack of it in pop right now. One of my fave questions at the Taboo Q&A was, Gareth or Will? My response was: David Beckham.
Is that honest enough for you? I just need to get round to writing a song.
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