The Last Bohemians

The Last Bohemians returns with a brand new series in Tinseltown, supported by Audio-Technica. From forgotten feminist artists to Sunset Strip sexpots and from punk performers to subversive style disruptors (and one Bond Girl!), these are maverick and radical women whose stories each say something different about the City of Angels. Recorded in spring 2022, host Kate Hutchinson decamped to Hollywood with producer Holly Fisher and photographer Lisa Jelliffe to find inspiration from cult figures, forgotten stars and cultural firebrands alike. Episode one kicks off with LA legend Angelyne, the blonde bombshell who rose to fame in the 1980s when billboards of the then-unknown pin-up started mysteriously appearing around the city (and about whom Peacock released a major biopic this year). Get to know the real Angelyne, one of the city’s most recognisable cult figures, as Kate takes an eventful ride in her hot-pink Corvette and is schooled in the difference between mystery and mystique. She gets an introduction to image as business and hears how Angelyne laid the groundwork for the influencer generation of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and more. She even once ran against Arnie to be Governor of California. As the TV show aims to uncover Angelyne's true identity, we try to uncover what makes her tick. And what does she really want with LA?CREDITS Exec producer/host: Kate HutchinsonProducer: Holly FisherSound Design: Holly FisherPhotography: Lisa JelliffeTheme music: Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog JonesWith thanks to Scott.MUSICAngelyne - Kiss Me L.A.

Angelyne - Animal Attraction

Lotus - Black Tern

Lotus - Sleepy Beast

ELFL - Blissful Morph

FLYIN - Blue Red Sky

Oh The City - Divine Comedy

Sven Karlsson - Sin City

OTE - Gone For DaysABOUT 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.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 stole hearts with 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. It won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards. Series 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.instagram.com/thelastbohemianspod 

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Get in the mood for our upcoming LA series with this classic episode from series 1 featuring the OG Hollywood bohemian, Pamela Des Barres. The Last Bohemians: LA launches on 13 July 2022.

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The Last Bohemians has gone to LA for a brand new series, supported by Audio-Technica, starting in July and starring LA icon Angelyne, subversive fashion disruptor Michéle Lamy, punk-rock widow Linda Ramone, feminist surrealist Penny Slinger, punk performance artist Johanna Went, artists and sculptors Betye Saar, Alison Saar and Maddy Leeser, cult musician – and LA's first female barber – Lynn Castle and Bond girl Gloria Hendry.



Heartbroken and feeling adrift during the pandemic, host and creator Kate Hutchinson decamped to Hollywood in search of the wildest women in the City of Angels to help her get her mojo back. From Sunset Strip sexpots to Downtown artists, she meets a diverse range of incredible women – and one artistic dynasty! – who have lived life on the edge and who, even in their seventies, eighties or even nineties, still refuse to play by the rules.



Series four stars:



Angelyne, the blonde bombshell who rose to fame in the 1980s when billboards of the then-unknown pin-up started mysteriously appearing around the city and about whom Peacock released a major biopic last month.



Michéle Lamy: the subversive French fashion disruptor at the Chateau Marmont on style, inspiration, how she works with her husband Rick Owens and her one-time notorious LA nightspot, Les Deux Cafe.



Gloria Hendry: the former Bond girl, blaxploitation-era star and Playboy Bunny talks about being 007’s first black love interest, breaking taboos onscreen and paving the way for the Black Panther generation.



Linda Ramone: the punk-rock widow shows us around her home, the Linda and Johnny Ramone Ranch, with its themed Elvis and Disney rooms, and discusses love triangles, legacies and the demise of rock’n’roll.



Betye Saar, Alison Saar and Maddy Leeser: a joyous encounter with the 95-year-old African-American artist Betye Saar, her artist daughter Alison and grand-daughter Maddy, at home in Laurel Canyon.



Lynn Castle: the 83-year-old musician and first lady barber of Los Angeles on cutting Jim Morrison and Neil Young’s hair, being Phil Spector’s high school sweetheart, her relationship with Elvis, and Nancy Sinatra stealing her style.



Johanna Went: the most notorious performance artist on the 80s LA punk scene – and the Lady Gaga that never was – gets frank about the power of ageing.



Penny Slinger: the forgotten feminist surrealist and British bohemian – who escaped England for California – explores the divine feminine, exorcisms, making counterculture films in the 1960s and how her work came to define Women’s Lib.



ABOUT THE LAST BOHEMIANS

The Last Bohemians is the vivid, hallucinatory podcast-portrait series started in 2019 by journalist Kate Hutchinson and now in its fourth series. It won silver for Best New Podcast at the 2020 British Podcast Awards and was a finalist at the 2021 Audio Production Awards, stealing hearts with 86-year-old Molly Parkin’s stories of self-pleasuring, LSD countess Amanda Feilding’s trepanning tales and Pamela Des Barres’ reflections on supergroupiedom. If you like what you hear, feel free to support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/thelastbohemians



LINKS

www.thelastbohemians.co.uk

IG: @thelastbohemianspod; @katehutchinsonpow

Twitter: @thelastbohospod; @katehutchinson



The Last Bohemians LA team: 

Kate Hutchinson (exec producer/host)

Holly Fisher (senior producer)

Lisa Jeliffe (photographer)

Matilda Jenkins (photographer, Michele Lamy), 

Sue Merlino (producer)

Georgie Rogers (editor)

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Cleo Sylvestre (1945-) is a woman of many firsts: she is the first Black woman to play a leading role at the National Theatre in London, one of the first Black actors to have a recurring role in a primetime British soap and one of the first Black Brits to release a single in 1964 – with none other than her friends, The Rolling Stones. The Guardian called her “the Black actor who should have been one of Britain’s biggest stars”. So why isn’t she a household name?





Sylvestre was born in Euston, London, and attended Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts before launching into a life on stage and screen: she made her West End debut in 1964 alongside British acting legend Alec Guinness and went on to star in some of the definitive shows of the Sixties, those that put working class actors on TV for the first time, including visionary director Ken Loach’s Up The Junction, Cathy Come Home and Poor Cow, as well as Doctor Who, Coronation Street and Crossroads. 



Like Dana Gillespie, who is also featured this season, Cleo hung out at the Marquee Club in Soho, which is where she met the Rolling Stones, who invited her to record the 1964 single, To Know Him Is To Love Him, while rock’and’roll royalty like Jimmy Page and the Hollies would often come for one of her mother’s home cooked meals. 





It wasn’t easy being one of the few Black women breaking through in the entertainment industry, as she explains, discussing race, resilience, rejection and wanting to pave the way for working class actors, as well as how she’s returned to singing after 50 years with her blues alter ego, Honey B Mama. It’s interesting to compare Cleo’s and Dana’s stories – they moved through the Swinging Sixties differently but have both ended up performing the blues later in life. And they didn’t meet each other till later in life, either!





If you liked this, listen to our PP Arnold episode, another singer who Mick Jagger was quite taken with early on… And you can catch Honey B Mama and her band playing at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London, where Cleo served as co-director for 20 years.



This episode was produced by Antonia Odunlami,

and presented and exec-produced by Kate Hutchinson,

with sound design by Hana Walker-Brown.
​
Music in this episode via FreeMusicArchive:
Gary War - Bounce Four
Joel Holmes - African Skies
Shaolin Dub - Overthrow
Jahzzar - Boulevard St Germain

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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.

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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.






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For International Women’s Day 2021, The Last Bohemians returns with a special lockdown episode, supported by KLORIS, starring Marina Abramović: the groundbreaking Serbian artist and self-described "godmother of performance art" who has spent the past 50 years confronting the mental and physical limits of the body and using it as a powerful canvas.



Her early work in the 1970s is famed for its extremity, with pieces where she would cut the communist star into her stomach or invite an audience to use weapons on her if they pleased. It was a radical thread she continued when she teamed up with Ulay, her one-time creative collaborator and former lover, who passed away just before the pandemic struck in 2020. Their final piece together in 1988, where they each walked from one end of The Great Wall of China and met in the middle, is one of the most elaborate break-ups of all time.



Since then, Abramović, 74, has become known for intertwining performance art with spirituality, shamanism and pop culture: she trained Lady Gaga in her ‘Marina Abramović Method’, starred in a Jay-Z video and turned her attentions to durational works. These feats of endurance include her infamous piece The Artist is Present, at the MoMa in New York in 2010, where she spent some 700 hours sitting silently across a table from spectators – over 1,500 people came to sit opposite her. Many of them were moved to tears, though critics have accused her over the years of being an exhibitionist and a narcissist.



In this interview, conducted via Zoom from her home in upstate New York at the start of 2021, Abramović talks about creative fearlessness, the importance of failure and taking risks, why she never had children, why we should be hugging trees and what she has in common with the opera singer Maria Callas, on whom she has based her own mixed-media performance (and which will return to the stage later this year following its pre-pandemic premiere last April). A retrospective of her life's work, meanwhile – her first major exhibition in the UK – will now be showing in 2023.



Presenter: Kate Hutchinson

Producer: Holly Fisher

Ident: Emmy The Great

Logo: Rebecca Strickson

www.thelastbohemians.co.uk

Instagram: @thelastbohemianspod



With thanks to KLORIS (www.kloriscbd.com), the Marina Abramović Institute, Lisson Gallery, Irma Crusat, Laura Martin at Real Life PR, Ali Gardiner and Toni and Andy Shaw.





Music used in this episode:
Daniel Birch - Indigo Moon
Daniel Birch - Indigo Shore
Chad Crouch - Algorithms
Lobo Loco - Deepest Breath
Salakapakka Sound System - Kapina Tiibetissa
Siddhartha Corsus - Victory of Buddha
Sputnic - Spiritual Dreams
Tortue Super Sonic - Klezmer Uno

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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




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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...

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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.

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