BOOKS REVIEW
A Nasty Piece Of Work—The Art And Crait Oi Spitting image by Roger Law (Booth-Clibbom).
Towards the end oi this enlightening and entertaining account oi his Iiie as the world’s most notorious caricaturist oi the great and not-so-good, Roger Law reveals that the multitude oi other projects his company takes on, ‘are more popular with the workers than the actual show.‘ Hardly surprislng, ior, although Law won’t admit it, the
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Spitting Image TV series regularly betrays a large divide in terms oi talent between the designers and model-makers and the assorted hacks who compile the scripts. The puppets lookterrilic, but their material invariably disappoints.
Which is a shame, since it slightly mars our appreciation of the degree to which the no-holds-barred masterpieces that Law and his long-term partner Peter Fluck have created in the last couple ol decades have less-than-subtly altered our impressions oi politicians, royalty and showbiz celebrities. Starting out on the colour supplement circuit in the 60s, Law’s ieel ior the visceral and oliensive have been soltened only by occasional Iily-livered editorial interventions. This lavishly illustrated chronological account shows the common ground (bad taste) in models depicting three American assassins in 1968, and Fergie in 1992.
Strangely enough, the models have a far more striking appearance on the page than they achieve on the small screen. Perhaps it’s the absence oi the jerky movements and an irritating impressionist’s voice, but the overall impression is that Luck and Flaw, as they style themselves, are one oi those rare phenomena in the 90s, giited artists whose work has been cheapened by transierence to a popular medium. (Tom Lappin)
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realise that Young (being a bit of an aimless drifter himself) was actually quite devoted to the cantankerous diva — though how kindly he‘s remembered by the participants is another matter. It‘s not a biography but an on-the-road tale covering the last five years of Nico‘s life, with a few names changed along the way. A smacked-out John Cooper Clarke makes some grotesquely buffoonish cameos.
Laura Joplin tells Love, Janis (Bloomsbury, £15.99) from a sister’s viewpoint: distant, because Laura lived a world away from the Haight Ashbury scene of which Janis was queen; intimate because of the personal insights and J anis’s letters home, often embellished with drawings. It’s anything but a hack cuttings-and-paste job.
Clinton Heylin’s The Penguin Book 0i Hock'n’Roll Writing (Penguin, £17.99) ultimately fails to live up to its grand title, but Heylin does save some face by tracking down items like Thurston Moore’s road diaries and Steve Albini’s frank account of producing bands from the obscure American corezine Forced Exposure.
For photos, we have to turn to Moz again. His close friend Linder Sterlings‘ Morrissey Shot (Seeker & Warburg. £12.99) shows the absurdly photogenic one soaking up whatever adoration happens to be around. One shot of a man managing to kiss Morrissey's hand while being dragged away by bouncers is particularly memorable. (Alastair Mabbott)
Alastair Mabbott digs around tor the
Morrissey Shot
Don’t let Morrissey‘s unbecoming sabre-rattling scare you away from his studious biographer Johnny Rogan’s Morrissey And Marr: The Severed Alliance (Omnibus, £14.99). It’s the Smiths biography that delves deepest into their background and tells you all you could reasonably want to know, as readably as possible — including Mozzer’s audition for Slaughter And The Dogs, the mention ofwhich is said to have kick-started his vitriolic hate
As for James Young‘s Nico (Bloomsbury, £12.99), what seemed at first as though it was going to be a sordid tell-all by a slumming Oxbridge graduate with his nose in the air is actually a lot better than that. Reservations slip away as we
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"The List4- 17 December 1992