An infinite number of titles and adjectives have been penned to describe the legendary Goldie over the years. Some people are (for good reason) enamoured with his immaculate and consummate contributions to the world of D&B; others choose to speculate on his brush with Hollywood &/or reality TV; others are still catching their breath from his graceful conducting debut on BBC's Maestro; others solely focus on his genius as a visual artist...recently, when Goldie posted some old school photos from the 80s on his Facebook, we were given an inspiring reminder of the latter. Intrigued, we decided to find out more about the stories behind his earliest work - long before the days where Goldie was a household name taking up inches in gossip columns, and a decade before he was sitting on top of the world as one of its most groundbreaking musicians.
We stopped in with Martin Jones (Goldie’s manager and agent from 1984-89), to find out the inside scoop behind the images.
Martin is currently leading a national project to archive photos and video of early UK Hip Hop from the 1980s. If you have any material you think would be of interest, please contact him.
November 1984: Goldie’s graffiti career begins on national TV.
I first met Goldie in around September 1984, just after he’d joined the Wolverhampton B Boys breakdance crew. He was also a graffiti artist and showed me some of his designs - I was impressed and agreed to try and get him some commissions. In this shot he’s seen painting the backdrop to a breakdance battle between the Wolverhampton B Boys and Coventry’s Future Shock (hence the cartoon figures of both crews). The battle was filmed at Central TV’s rooftop car park for ITV’s 'Saturday Starship' children’s show, hosted by Tommy Boyd and Bonnie Langford. On the left is ‘Lewinski’ (Cliff Malcolm), a member of his crew, the Supreme Graffiti Team.
August 1985: Goldie’s Chinatown commission in Birmingham’s Bull Ring.
This was Goldie’s second public commission. It took place in Birmingham’s Manzoni Gardens immediately after the ‘Clash of the Titans’ four way graffiti battle between New York’s Brim and Bio, London’s Chrome Angelz , Goldie and Bristol’s 3D (later of Massive Attack), filmed by Channel Four for the Hip Hop documentary ‘Bombin.' It was commissioned by West Midlands County Council to cover hoardings around the new development area in central Birmingham containing Chinese-owned businesses. Disaster was only narrowly avoided when, as a result of some too hasty research, Goldie proudly presented his design to stunned Hong Kong Chinese dignitaries, revealing the Japanese flag flying triumphantly over Hong Kong harbour.
The Supreme Graffiti Team consisted of Goldie (right) , Cliff ‘Lewinski’ Malcolm (middle) and Gary ‘Birdie’ Burns (left).
March 1985: Goldie and the B Boys breakdance crew meet Afrika Bambaataa at the GLC’s Rap Attack Festival, Shaw Theatre, London.
I saw Bronx graffiti artist Brim on TV-AM and drove the B Boys down to the Shaw Theatre to meet him. He and Afrika Bambaataa were doing Easter hip hop workshops there with London kids. The B Boys really impressed Dick Fontaine, who was making a documentary about Brim and the spread of hip hop culture from New York to the inner cities of the UK. Dick brought his camera crew up to Wolverhampton where he filmed Brim with Goldie on his hometown estate – Heathtown.
On a fashion note, Goldie is wearing an Australian brand tracksuit – I got B Boys a few sponsors back then. There was Australian (for their ITV Saturday Starship national TV appearance), Kappa (for their Electro Rock film appearance), and finally Puma for their Electro Rock promotional tour.
The Boys pictured are, left to right, Keith ‘Kiddo’ Anderson, Gary ‘Birdie’ Burns, Hanifa McQueen Hudson, and Goldie.
1986: Goldie with Birdie at the Stairway to Fame in Heathtown, Wolverhampton.
The Stairway to Fame was an unofficial gallery devoted to spraycan art in Heathtown, Wolverhampton, where Goldie lived. It evolved over the period 1984-87, consisting of walls in the stairwells between the floors of flats on the Heathtown estate. Graffiti writers’ top ambition at that time was to gain fame and respect for themselves and their crew among fellow writers on the scene. Goldie’s crew ‘The Wild Criminals’ more than succeeded in that ambition: writers travelled from all over the UK to see their work and Heathtown became an unofficial tourist destination. Dick Fontaine filmed scenes from his UK Hip Hop documentary ‘Bombin’ there and in 1989 the BBC also visited to make a documentary on Street Art.
‘Stars of the Future’ accurately foretold Goldie’s future fame. I remember his self-confidence very clearly - including telling staff at the local community centre: “You wait...one day I’ll be famous!”
June 1986: Goldie at the Writers’ Bench, 149th St. Grand Concourse, the Bronx, New York City.
In June 1986, Goldie, Birdie and I travelled to New York City to meet the founders of the Hip Hop movement. Goldie had met photographer and Hip Hop chronicler Henry Chalfant the previous year in Heathtown and Henry made the arrangements for our visit. We stayed at the famous Chelsea Hotel where Warhol made his film 'Chelsea Girls.' On the first day, Henry called to ask if Goldie and Birdie would like to earn 100 dollars each dancing in a commercial for Ford in Grand Army Plaza. That’s the kind of crazy, amazing visit it was - and further meetings occurred that were beyond the wildest dreams of any aspiring UK Hip Hopper at the time.
We met legendary writer Lee Quinones (who featured in the film ‘Wild Style’), Keith Haring, and stars of Henry’s inspirational documentary Style Wars such as Kase (who lost his arm doing graf on trains) and Seen. We also met Prince Ken Swift of the Rock Steady Crew and travelled to Bronx River Projects to meet Hip Hop founder Afrika Bambaata, whose record ‘Planet Rock’ was the anthem of the early hip hop age.
I took this shot on a tour of the city’s graf sites, led by writer T Kid and Henry Chalfant. It was the location of the famous Writer’s Bench, where the city’s graf artists met in the early 80s to compare black books, settle disputes, plan new graffiti pieces – and view their work go by on passing trains.
July 1986 - Future World Machines by the Supreme Graffiti Team
On returning to Wolverhampton after his trip to New York in June that year, Goldie and the Supreme Graffiti Team set about creating a body of work for their first gallery show.
Chris Harvey was the team’s illustrator and Goldie worked closely with him to develop imagery for a centrepiece to the exhibition, held at Wolverhampton’s main art gallery. Inspired by imagery in the film Blade Runner, Chris and Goldie devised the half-man, half-machine figure sitting in a capsule, en route to the future.
The dripping vents, distressed riveted panels and pipes were all developed on other murals in Heathtown, finally culminating in this masterpiece that was later featured in Henry Chalfant’s book ‘Spraycan Art’. The colours for the piece were specially mixed at car factory Nicholls in Walsall, under Goldie’s personal supervision. One of the most striking features is the effect of warp speed created by the colours on the ‘World’ lettering.
Others will interpret it differently, but I see the mural as a lament on the state of the human race, blindly abandoning its humanity in the headlong dash for progress. To me, it’s probably his finest work.
July 1987 – Goldie with TATS crew in Brighton.
The Transatlantic Federation crew, left to right: Nicer, T Kid, Vulcan, Brim, Bio, Goldie.
In an effort to raise the profile of graffiti art in the UK, I brought over New York’s finest crew – TATS (Brim, Bio and Nicer) - together with T Kid and Vulcan for an exhibition at Birmingham Central Library with the UK’s 3D (later of Massive Attack) and Goldie. I took the crew to Brighton for a spot of R&R after their flight and here they’re seen relaxing outside their hotel on the seafront. Next stop was Wolverhampton where I hired a factory unit to prepare their canvases for the exhibition.
The TAF (Transatlantic Federation, as they called the united crew) spent the next fortnight creating a sensational show. The centrepiece was a 40' replica of a New York subway car which they sprayed with Nicer’s amazing characters (a punk rocker and a dude with a gun) and ‘Rockin’ the City’, the show’s title. The show coincided with a major crackdown on illegal tagging on West Midlands’ buses and the show had its arts grants withdrawn on the whim of a local councillor. But bringing some of the best exponents of the culture together for a unique presentation of the art form is something I’ll never regret.
September 1988 – Goldie and Dez: ‘Small Mind in a Big City.’
During his most prolific period as a graffiti artist 1984-89, Goldie had several protégées. One of the most talented was Dez (Mark Lester), with whom he created many murals around Walsall. Together they helped to found the first legal street art gallery in the country, sponsored by Walsall Council’s youth arts project, at The Pit, an underground five a side area in Walsall. Dez and Goldie painted this mural -‘Small Mind in a Big City’ - live together in Walsall’s main street as part of Walsall Art Gallery’s Crucial Creators exhibition in September 1988.
August 1989 – Goldie’s Pink Lady bus commission.
During the period 1988-89, I obtained several commercial commissions for Goldie through London PR and advertising agencies, including Swatch skateboards, British Telecom and this one for Bass M&B, who were launching a new cocktail drink called Pink Lady.
Goldie did a live mural on an advertising hoarding on Handsworth’s Soho Road for Handsworth carnival and they also arranged for him to paint this bus at West Midlands Passenger Transport’s Walsall spray booth. It turned out to be rather too successful. After only a short time on the road, kids were travelling to Walsall from all over the Midlands just to ride on Goldie’s bus: company drivers refused to take it out of the depot and it was eventually withdrawn from service.
Goldie and Vulcan’s 'Change the World' concert hoarding.
After the ground breaking ‘Rockin’ the City’ exhibition in 1987, New York artist Vulcan stayed on in the UK. Together with Goldie, they went round the country signing copies of Spraycan Art, the latest book by Subway Art author Henry Chalfant. I also got them a commission at a gigantic concert called ‘Change the World’, arranged by the same charity that organised Live Aid.
The concert was held at Loftus Road, Queen’s Park Rangers’ ground in London and featured many of the top pop acts of the day, including Tears for Fears and ABC. Goldie and Vulcan spayed this massive hoarding together over 8 hours while the bands played live in the stadium.
