You see a lot of nonsense these days about people being “legendary” or “a trailblazer” or worse, “iconic.” Exaggeration is plentiful in order to make a point, to show how important someone is to us or to prove their impact; it’s easier to exaggerate than to actually explain this. On very rare occasions however the exaggeration is true.
In a week which has seen us lose the frankly legendary Robbie Robertson from the music world, we have also lost what in comparison to some might seem tangential. But it isn’t & with a little help I intend to explain, not exaggerate.
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If you are perhaps slightly younger than a certain age, possessed of certain tastes & a certain state of mind, you might be forgiven for being unaware of the impact & importance of the work of Jamie Reid in your life… but you’d recognise it if you saw it. You’ll have grown up in a world that didn’t NOT know him. The reason for this is: he’s become almost genetically part of our culture. Almost fifty years after rising to infamy – to the extent of being attacked in the street - he has subverted so much beyond the subculture that he’s barely traceable.
A little background: from the off, Jamie was interested in ideas & socio-political reform. He became involved as a graphic designer for Suburban Press, a left-wing radical paper. He went on to meet Malcolm McLaren (who believed he himself masterminded the UK punk movement), who shared an interest in Situationism. This was the idea that the circumstances or situation a person finds themselves in affect their actions & behaviours rather than their own personality & traits (current thinking in the area suggests that both matter, but that the situation has a greater impact at the time). We can see how this might have made sense particularly in mid-70s inner-city Britain since people felt they had no hope for the future. We had lost touch with nature, there were no jobs, there was nothing but concrete surrounding us, for example in the words of Suburban Press itself, “In Croydon, they create a skyscraper tomb town, dedicated to the soulless pursuit of commerce and administration… they built an estate called New Addington… a dumping ground for the working class.”
Jamie became best known for his Sex Pistols record cover designs – his intelligent sense of humour neatly matched the band’s sarcasm & cleverness & immediately he had invented a recognisable visual language. The aforementioned beating he suffered came about whilst wearing a t-shirt bearing his God Save the Queen design & resulted in a broken leg for the artist. Some people in the UK love their servility. This clip is Jamie taking us through an exhibition of his political works, which gives us some sense of his unwavering revolutionary spirit & help us recognise that his influence & message are everywhere:
Jamie’s great purpose was to lampoon the establishment in all its forms as payback for the degradation of the working class & to effect meaningful change. He walked the walk. His Anarchism was something he adhered to his whole life & not just as an artist. He participated in dissenting interviews, protests & direct action wherever he saw injustices being committed. He highlighted the plight of Pussy Riot, took on Clause 28, the poll tax & even artist-chancer Damien Hurst - all causes taken up against the bullying of the underdog. As did Vivienne Westwood in later life, he advocated reconnecting with nature & environmentalism.
When discussing his most famous works, he said that Letraset was really expensive (& I know he was right – my Dad was required to use it for labelling & embellishing his architectural drawings), so it made complete sense to cut up newspaper lettering in order to produce text. Even this anti-consumerist act of disobedience, DIY & defiance created a sense of disorder, looking as it did like a traditional (if I can call it that) ransom note. The truth was that in the vastly non-inclusive 1970s, the future of many was being held to ransom by those in power & the look, the vibe of that lettering felt like the disenfranchised were turning it back against them.
You might think – much as people have thought about artists throughout the 20th century - well it’s such a simple idea & anyone could do that. & it is & if they had the discipline, they could. The point is that this idea encapsulates the punk ethic right there. Punk has lasted (it HAS – don’t believe the detractors) because it is essentially a philosophy: the notion that you can do things for yourself & help others in the process; that you can work at something & get good at it from your own efforts & determination; that in spite of whatever odds you experience being against you, you can use your imagination & your own creativity to make something new that you know is missing from the world; that you can step away from being a consumer & be a producer; that you should provoke THOUGHT; that you are not alone.
& that in turn might sound really obvious NOW but as with all ideas, someone had to think of it first.
Jamie Reid was a trailblazer, a legend & creator of icons.
“Radical ideas will always get appropriated. The establishment will rob everything they can, because they lack the ability to be creative. That’s why you always have to keep moving.”
Rise In Punk, Jamie MacGregor Reid
(16th January 1947 – 8th August 2023)
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