The Last Bohemians – Details, episodes & analysis

For the final episode of The Last Bohemians: LA, supported by Audio-Technica, we meet French fashion disruptor and true original, Michéle Lamy. She’s been married to the designer Rick Owens, her former pattern cutter, since 2006 and is often referred to as his 'muse'. But Michéle is a chameleonic creative in her own right, forever staging art happenings, musical collaborations and style projects around the world, as well as co-designing the furniture for the Rick Owens line.

She’s so in-demand that she’s tricky to track down: we did this interview partly in London, at Claridges in Mayfair, and partly at the Chateau Marmont in LA, the city Michéle lived in for 26 years until the early 2000s. In those days, she was better known as the owner and host of cult Hollywood nightspot Les Deux Cafe, where anyone who’s anyone would dine as Michéle performed smoky jazz numbers in her thick drawl.

Now Michéle is more nomadic, splitting her time between Los Angeles and Paris, and attracting beautiful freaks wherever she goes. A gothic style icon (she’s been called a vampire, ageless, the ultimate eccentric…), her signature look is ink-dipped fingers, a line of kohl on her forehead, a voluminous outfit and a cigarette always in her hand. Listen out for her many bangles too, which clank as she speaks!In this hypnotic episode, Michéle talks to us about the influence of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, her style awakening in the Moroccan desert, how she decides who to collaborate with, her unlikely kinship with Kim Kardashian, why she loves boxing, how she got gold teeth, following her instincts and the importance of “finding your tribe”.

That’s it for the LA series but listen out for some bonus episodes very soon. 

CREDITSFollow us: instagram.com/thelastbohemianspodPresenter and Exec Producer: Kate HutchinsonEditors: Holly Fisher and Mariana Sousa AguiarAdditional production: Sefa NykiPhotography: Matilda Hill-JenkinsWith thanks to Janet Fischgrund and everyone at OwenscorpAll music by Mara Carlyle with the exception of 'Laman' by Imdukal'N' El Hussain Safir and The Last Bohemians theme music by Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog Jones.

ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIANSJournalist and broadcaster Kate Hutchinson launched The Last Bohemians in 2019, pairing the audio with stunning portraits by photographer Laura Kelly. It featured 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. The series won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards.Season two featured folk legend Judy Collins; British fashion icon Zandra Rhodes, dealing with the aftermath of losing her lover while celebrating 50 years in fashion; anarcho-punk innovator and illustrator Gee Vaucher; and the controversial witch at the heart of the 1970s occult boom, Maxine Sanders. In 2021, The Last Bohemians launched a lockdown special with performance artist Marina Abramović; it returned in 2022 with the UK’s greatest living painter, Maggi Hambling, as well as Bowie’s former best friend Dana Gillespie and theatre actor Cleo Sylvestre, and launched an LA series, supported by Audio-Technica.

ABOUT AUDIO-TECHNICAIn 1962, with a vision of producing high-quality audio for everyone, Audio-Technica’s founder Hideo Matsushita created the first truly affordable phono cartridge, the AT-1 in Shinjuku, Japan. Since then, Audio-Technica has grown into a world-renowned company devoted to Audio Excellence at every level, expanding the product range to include headphones, microphones and turntables. Audio-Technica’s commitment to the user experience and their devotion to high quality design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution has placed them at the forefront of the industry for the last 60 years.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Penny Slinger was a mover and shaker in Swinging London's art scene – though you might not have heard of her. She went to Chelsea Art School at the height of the Pop Art boom and, inspired by Max Ernst, went on to mix up self-portrait, collage, film and sculpture to create surreal and feminist images that still provoke today. Among these were her “full frontal collages”, including ones where Penny appears inside a wedding cake, the slice between her legs removed. Her 1977 collage masterpiece, An Exorcism, meanwhile, evoked the darkness of the English psyche, stitching together ghoulish images of the countryside, genitals, nuns and manor houses. In the UK, Penny counted the photographer Lee Miller among her friends and, at one point, lived in a turret in Soho, where her boyfriend – the counterculture film-maker Peter Whitehead – kept falcons. How’s that for bohemian! Penny appeared in experimental films and wrote a number of books on themes of sex, mysticism, eroticism and inner goddesses, including groundbreaking books of her collages and poetry, such as 50% The Invisible Woman. But after a solo show in New York in 1982, she abandoned the art world, tired of its sexism and narrow-mindedness. She moved first to the Caribbean, then to Northern California and finally settled in LA. It isn’t until recently that Penny’s work has been rediscovered. In 2009, she was included in the Angels of Anarchy show of female surrealists in Manchester and she was the subject of a 2017 documentary by Richard Kovitch. In this episode of The Last Bohemians: LA, supported by Audio-Technica, Penny covers a range of topics, including her sexual and sensual liberation, finding her voice in a male-dominated art scene, starring in the only feature film directed by a woman in the 1970s, how she hopes to see a retrospective in her lifetime and how desire doesn’t diminish with age...

CREDITS

Follow us: instagram.com/thelastbohemianspodPresenter: Kate HutchinsonProducer: Holly FisherPhotography: Lisa Jelliffe.With thanks to Zoe Flowers.Theme music: Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog Jones

ABOUT AUDIO-TECHNICA

In 1962, with a vision of producing high-quality audio for everyone, Audio-Technica’s founder Hideo Matsushita created the first truly affordable phono cartridge, the AT-1 in Shinjuku, Japan. Since then, Audio-Technica has grown into a world-renowned company devoted to Audio Excellence at every level, expanding the product range to include headphones, microphones and turntables. Audio-Technica’s commitment to the user experience and their devotion to high quality design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution has placed them at the forefront of the industry for the last 60 years.

ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIANS

Journalist and broadcaster Kate Hutchinson launched The Last Bohemians in 2019, pairing the audio with stunning portraits by photographer Laura Kelly. It featured 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. The series won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards.Season two featured folk legend Judy Collins; British fashion icon Zandra Rhodes, dealing with the aftermath of losing her lover while celebrating 50 years in fashion; anarcho-punk innovator and illustrator Gee Vaucher; and the controversial witch at the heart of the 1970s occult boom, Maxine Sanders. In 2021, The Last Bohemians launched a lockdown special with performance artist Marina Abramović; it returned in 2022 with the UK’s greatest living painter, Maggi Hambling, as well as Bowie’s former best friend Dana Gillespie and theatre actor Cleo Sylvestre, and launched an LA series, supported by Audio-Technica.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Dana Gillespie (1949-) is one of the few remaining women who was at the centre of the Sixties and Seventies in London and in New York, having been best mates with David Bowie and pretty much anyone who was anyone back then. Eric Clapton was very nearly her guitar teacher, Led Zep’s Jimmy Page played on her early folk records and she was in and out of the tabloids with Bob Dylan as a teenage girl. She has recorded with Elton John, had her portrait screen printed by Andy Warhol's Factory, and shared a stage with rock’n’roll greats Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and the Stones. She's lived a life as starry and storied as Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg – so why hasn't anyone heard of her?



In the 1970s, Dana went glam-pop with the track Andy Warhol, which Bowie had written for her, and released the 1974 album Weren’t Born A Man, where she appears in a corset and stockings on the cover. But then Bowie’s management company went bust and The Thin White Duke stopped returning her calls. Unable to get out of her contract for years, she turned to acting and starred in musicals, though the tabloids were always distracted by her buxom image. In the 1980s, she reinvented herself as a blues singer, founded the Mustique blues festival and has now released upwards of 70 albums, including 13 in Sanskrit.



Dana is perhaps just as famous for her long list of lovers, including Keith Moon, Michael Caine and Sean Connery. But Dylan clearly recognised that she is one of a kind and, in the 90s, invited her to open up for him on his UK tour. She has also become a rock star of the spiritual world, having performed in front of a million people at her guru Sai Baba’s birthday celebrations. Her style of blues is saucy and knowing, and you can still see her performing every month at a venue called the Temple of Music And Art in south London.



Truth be told, Dana has lived such a life that we could have made an entire series about her. If you want more no-holds-barred tell-alls, check out her 2020 memoir, Weren’t Born A Man. In this episode, she talks about coming from money, her infamous basement hangout in South Kensington, her love of the blues, how she met Bowie, her freewheeling attitude to sex, love and forgiveness, her spiritual awakening, making music into her 70s and how she hopes she won't be forgotten in the pantheon of great British artists.



This episode was produced by Sarah Nichol, presented by Kate Hutchinson and sound designed by Colour It In. Portrait by Laura Kelly.



Music in this episode:

Dana Gillespie - Track 06
Dems - Unreleased
Blue Dog Sessions - Funk & Flash
Mr Smith - Badass
Dana Gillespie - Track 07
Kevin McLeod - Hustle
Bruce Millar - Sitar & Tabla Duo
Jim Barrett - Star Fragment



Ident music: Emmy The Great.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Maggi Hambling (1945-) is a British painter and sculptor whose visceral work spans portraits of her bohemian friends past – from Soho dandy Sebastian Horsley to Henrietta Moraes, once the 1950s queen of London bohemia and muse to Francis Bacon, then Maggi’s own – and divisive public works that include her giant scallop on a beach in Suffolk on the English coast, near where she grew up, her Oscar Wilde bench in London and most recently, her 2020 bust of early women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, who she depicted naked.





For the first of three special episodes for Women’s History Month 2022 – and ahead of the opening of her first ever show in New York – we find Maggi and her pug dog, Peggy, through the fog of cigarette smoke at her south London studio. As she puffs, she reminisces about her crucial life training at the East Anglian Art School, her younger years falling in and out of Soho drinking establishments, and her love affair with the 1950s queen of bohemia, Henrietta Moraes, who was Francis Bacon’s muse and later her own. 





Maggi gives us a whistlestop tour through her approach to creativity and process, the controversy that some of her public artworks have caused, becoming a national treasure, how she deals with bad reviews, being a gay icon and calling herself queer in tribute to her late filmmaker friend Derek Jarman, her affinity with Oscar Wilde and why the work, above all else, comes first. An audience with Maggi is never a dull moment.





Maggi Hambling: Real Time is at the Marlborough in NYC, 10 March-30 April 2022. marlboroughnewyork.com.





This episode was produced by Hannah Fisher and presented and exec-produced by Kate Hutchinson. Additional reporting by Georgie Rogers. Sound design by Colour It In. Photography by Laura Kelly.





​Music in this episode with thanks to freemusicarchive.org:

Humbug by Crowander

Carpe Diem by Dee Yan Key

Lava Spout by Blue Wave Theory

Be My Guest - Crowander





Intro music by Emmy The Great.






This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Maxine Sanders is one of the country’s most iconic and possibly most controversial witches. In the 1960s and 70s, she and her late husband Alex Sanders were at the centre of Britain’s witchcraft boom. At the height of their fame, they were featured weekly in tabloid newspapers and starred in numerous documentaries and films where they would recreate their dramatic rituals…



It was the era when Flower Power and the sexual revolution were in full swing. The Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951 making it no longer illegal to practise witchcraft, and Maxine and Alex were sexing its image up. Their coven was rapidly growing in size, as more and more people were drawn to the occult, and eventually they moved from Alderley Edge, near Manchester, to Notting Hill in London, where musicians like Jimmy Paige and Marc Bolan flocked to their wild parties. But it was also where a strange set of circumstances saw them linked to Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders in California...





Presenter Kate Hutchinson came across Maxine in a book that she'd bought on her birthday in 2019, from Donlon Books in east London – in it was a striking image of a stunning woman with long blond hair, holding a dagger, in the middle of a circle, and she knew she had to find out more. 

We finally tracked Maxine down to her home in North West London, where we sat in her living room, filled with amazing antique books and ancient magic regalia. 



What she told us may raise an eyebrow or two, as Maxine recounts her early years in the craft, meeting her husband – the King of the Witches, Alex Sanders, how she dealt with being the subject of a tabloid frenzy week on week, the meaning of being a witch today, what it feels like to do a spell, her experiences of astral projection, sex magic and death, and overcoming persecution.





​It's quite a magical ride, so strap in tight.






​This episode was produced by Hannah Fisher.



1. Malani Bulathsinhala - Wasan Karannata Bae

2. Roh Hamilton and Tiffany Seal - Enchanted Forest

3. Bishi - All Across The Universe (BISHI's 'The Telescope Eye,' EP, produced on by BISHI & Richard Norris. Out on Gryphon Records on all streaming platforms now)

4. Lobo Loco - Lake of Avalon




This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Rewind to the 1980s and London nightlife was an explosion of creativity – the new romantics were in, dramatic fashion looks were everywhere and at the back of the club, having a gossip, there’d be Sue Tilley, also affectionately known as Big Sue. 





She was the best friend of the outrageous performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery, who became known for his shocking stage shows and about whom she wrote a biography. Sue worked at the Job Centre during the day and the door at his infamously wild club night Taboo, which was later immortalised by Boy George in the musical of the same name, by night. This was a place, in the mid-80s, where genders and sexualities were blurred and the more flamboyant your costume, the better. 





It’s also where Leigh and Sue met the painter Lucian Freud – both ended up sitting for him but Sue’s nude portrait, 1995’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, is perhaps among his most famous works, which, when it sold for $33.6 million, was the most expensive painting by a living artist ever to be sold at auction.





Sue left London to retire by the seaside on England’s south coast and it’s where she can often be found hosting quizzes and DJing in one of the local pubs, or working on her own pieces – she is now an artist in her own right and often paints the colourful characters she remembers from her clubbing days.



This episode was produced by Gabriela Jones.



Music: Ad Infinitum - Oh The City; Photosynthesis - Lagua Vesa; Waking Dreams (Nada Copyright Free Music); Santosha - Can Sandano; A Message From Your Space Cat - Felix Johansson Carne; Cotton Candy - Copse; Backplate - Joseph McDade; Waking And Dreaming - Brendon Moelleer

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Zandra Rhodes OBE has spent 50 years at the forefront of British fashion, having dressed everyone from Freddie Mercury to Princess Diana in her signature printed chiffons. Her work was adopted by the Studio 54 crowd in the 1970s, her gold lamé dresses modelled by the likes of Donna Summer and Pat Cleveland. Then she lacerated her chiffons with safety pins and was dubbed the Princess of Punk, a name that matched her trademark fuchsia bobbed hair. To this day she remains independent, having never sold out her brand to a big fashion house. At 79, she is as DIY as ever.



The Last Bohemians caught Zandra at an interesting – and stressful – time as she was celebrating her career's five-decade run at the same time as getting to grips with the death of her long-term partner. Themes of life, loss, grief and relevancy weave throughout this episode, as do ruminations on creativity, routine and restlessness and stories about Studio 54, her eccentric friendship circle, her take on the royal family and more. Her work ethic is infamous – but has the death of a loved one shifted her priorities?



We meet the style icon in her multi-hued apartment on two separate occasions to find out how she manages to do it all...

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

P.P. Arnold isn’t called a soul survivor for nothing. She recently made a comeback with her first album in 50 years, following a long, hard fight, at the age of 73, to get her music career back on track. 





In America, she had been an Ikette with Ike & Tina Turner and then moved to London at the height of the Swinging Sixties, where she hung out with Jimi Hendrix, had a sexual awakening among the rockstars of London, and was signed by Mick Jagger to his label, Immediate. She released the hit single First Cut Is The Deepest and two brilliant soul albums. But her third, 1971’s The Turning Tide, which was co-produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton, was blocked from being released. 





After that, P.P.'s career floundered. She sang with Peter Gabriel, Billy Ocean and The KLF – who burned the money to pay her in their £1million stunt – and appeared in the musical Starlight Express, but musical dead ends danced with tragedy, when she lost her daughter in a car accident. Her solo career never quite got back on track – until she encountered the British mod band Ocean Colour Scene. Steve Cradock from the band helped her finish The Turning Tide and produced her first new album in 50 years, The New Adventures of... P.P. Arnold.





And what an adventure it’s been. P.P's story is incredible and her laugh is infectious, as she remembers her first interracial relationships, hanging out with friends like Brian Jones and what she really thinks about Rod Stewart. We went back to the place where it all started, the Bag O’ Nails in Soho, now a sleek members club, to talk about being an "authentic" soul singer in 1960s London, her journey from then to now and how she’s made it – with a few famous flings along the way.





This episode contains discussions about domestic violence, which some may find triggering, and so listener discretion is advised.





P.P. Arnold's episode was produced by Cassandra Denton and presented by Kate Hutchinson, with portraits by Laura Kelly.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

"Often women artists do all their best work when they're older

You feel stronger, you feel like you've got nothing to lose"



Experimental film-maker Vivienne Dick moved from Ireland to New York in the late-70s and was at the heart of a scene called no-wave, an avant-garde music and art movement where people like director Jim Jarmusch, artist Basquiat, photographer Nan Goldin and musicians Sonic Youth and Debbie Harry mingled together.





Inspired by this DIY community downtown, she picked up a Super 8 camera and started shooting the women around her, in films like Guerillere Talks and She Had The Gun All Ready. Lydia Lunch, one of the most charismatic of Vivienne’s subjects, described No Wave as a “collective caterwaul that defied categorisation and despised convention."





Presenter Kate Hutchinson first heard Vivienne’s name in the song Hot Topic by dance-punks Le Tigre, which reels off a list of artists, writers, activists and feminist firebrands, putting her alongside the likes of Yoko Ono and Sleater-Kinney. 



Vivienne is still an experimental film-maker to this day and has never sold out her vision. The Last Bohemians visited her at her Dublin home, as she was putting the finishing touches to her latest film New York, Our Time, which has since won the Film Critics Circle Award for Best Documentary. It transports Vivienne back to the city she left in 1982 and sees her reconnecting with some of her old friends. 



Our story starts, however, in Donegal, Ireland, where a young Vivienne couldn’t wait to leave...






This episode was produced by Ali Gardiner.





Music in this episode (sourced via Bandcamp, freemusicarchive.org and archive.org):

Tryad – The Rising

Blue Dot Sessions – Campfire Rounds

Fields Ohio – Anti-Saloon League

Gallery Six – Moel

Plastic Sunday – No Tomorrow

Chocolate Billy - Assedic No Wave

Lee Rosevere – Ennui

Revolution Void – Someone Else’s Memories

Phlox.s – Obey The Sun

Gallery Six – Hydroscope

Chris Zabriskie – Virtues Inherited, Vices Passed On

Chris Zabriskie – Heliograph

Chris Zabriskie – Candlepower

Chris Zabriskie – Oxygen Garden






This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe

Gee Vaucher isn’t perhaps as well known as some of her punk peers, but she should be: she’s one of the artists who defined punk’s visuals of protest in the 1970s, especially with her arresting photo-montage covers for Crass, the cult band and art collective she was part of, who put anarchy into practice.





She had a stint in Manhattan as a political illustrator for The New York Times and she’s also designed album sleeves for bands like The Charlatans and experimental hip-hop group Tackhead. Her piece for the latter, Oh America, in which the Statue of Liberty covers her face with her hands, went viral and was published on the front cover of newspapers when Trump was elected as President of the United States. 





Gee's art continues to be confrontational, whether she’s painting or, as she shows us, making an absolutely enormous book filled with millions of hand-drawn stick figures – one for every single person that died in World War I. 





She is radical in every sense of the word. In this episode, Gee invites us to Dial House, on the edge of Epping Forest in Essex – a tumbling old cottage with a difference: it’s run by Gee and her collaborator Penny Rimbaud as an anarchic “centre for radical creativity” where anyone can turn up at any time for a cup of tea and a chat. So that’s just what we did, to hear Gee talk about her working relationship with Penny, why punk was a disappointment and the 'perverseness' of her art.






This episode was produced by Mae-Li Evans.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelastbohemians.substack.com/subscribe