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Philip Sallon

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Philip Sallon
Born (1951-11-13) 13 November 1951 (age 73)
London, England
Occupation(s)Socialite, fashion leader, clothing designer, style innovator, club promoter, event organiser.
Years active1970s
Parent(s)Ralph David Sallon
Anna Simon

Philip Sallon (born 1951[1]) is a British club promoter,[2] event organiser, socialite, style innovator,[3] impresario,[4] and clothing designer.[5] He was born in London, England.[1] He is particularly known for being a prominent member of the Punk sub-cultural and New Romantic pop cultural movements during the 1970s and 1980s.[6]

Early life and education

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Philip Sallon was born in London in 1951, the grandson of Polish Jewish[7] immigrant tailors who moved to the UK in 1904. His father, Ralph Sallon,[8] was a well-known caricaturist[9] who married his mother Anna Simon in 1945. They had one son (Philip) and three daughters.[10] He was educated at Harrow County School, later renamed Gayton school. In 1970 he enrolled on an arts foundation course at East Ham College. In 1975 he applied and was offered a place at Saint Martin's School of Art to study fashion but he was expelled after one year for poor attendance. He then left St Martin's to pursue a career in theatre and later club promotion.

Career

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In 1976 he applied for a job with the BBC's Costume Department and was taken on as an Assistant Costume Designer during this time he was a fixture at the famous punk club Louise's where he became friends with Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren and began associating with a clique of young punk fans dubbed the "Bromley Contingent".[11] after the BBC he then moved on to the Royal Opera House in 1982 where he was employed as a Costume Designer during this period he pursued his other interests and is particularly known as an event organiser, DJ and club promoter who has been a well known fixture on the London club scene since the 1970s through the early Punk movement[12] and the New Romantic movement of the 1980s during which time he also staged Vivienne Westwood's early catwalk shows[13] and into the 1990s and beyond.

Personal

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Sallon can be described as one of the original gay punks[14][15] he currently resides alone in St John's Wood, London.[16] In April 2011 he was the victim of a homophobic hate related crime when he was attacked in Piccadilly by two unknown male assailants.[17][18][19][20]

Blitz Kids

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The Blitz Kids were a group of young people who frequented a weekly Blitz club-night in Covent Garden, London in 1979–80, and are credited with starting the New Romantic sub-cultural movement.[21] Sallon was a core member of the group[22] that included the founders Rusty Egan, Steve Strange and also included Boy George, Marilyn and Alice Temple, Perri Lister, Princess Julia and Martin Degville (later to be the frontman of Tony James' Sigue Sigue Sputnik). The Blitz club was located between two notable art colleges (St Martin's School and Central School) and became an experimental melting pot for student fashion designers who influenced London fashion during the 1980s.[23] Known fashion students who attended the club included Stephen Jones, David Holah, Stevie Stewart, John Galliano, Darla Jane Gilroy.[24]

Club promotion

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Planets

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Sallon's first foray on his own into club promotion was in 1981 with the one-nighter called Planets[25] in Piccadilly[26] where he employed a young and then unknown DJ called George O'Dowd, who later became Boy George.[27] This club-night ran for six months.

The Mud Club

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In January 1983 Sallon began hosting the infamous Mud Club[28] on Fridays at 28 Leicester Square, (Sallon first Mud Club started off on Charing Cross?) launched with Malcolm McLaren.[29] Here The Face magazine named the Mud as one of London's four coolest weekend club-nights,[30] before it subsequently moved on to Fooberts and in 1984 to Busbys, next to the Astoria Charing Cross Road where it ran until 1991. Sallon was known for his outrageous costumes and cutting personality. He scrutinised everyone entering the club and if you didn't look right or have the right attitude you would not be let in and told in no uncertain terms why you could not come in. The club's patrons were known for their sense of dressed-up decadence; the club's music policy was trashy disco played by original resident DJs Mark Moore, Tasty Tim and Jay Strongman.[31]

Bagleys

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In 1992 Sallon moved the Mud Club to Bagley's Warehouse that was then known for holding the biggest capacity nights in London. Phillip Salon's Mud Club dominated Bagleys on Saturday nights known for flamboyant clientele, staging productions of a large scale, designed by Gary Messider, including such strange design elements such as washing lines full of clothes above the dance-floor, housewife characters vacuuming on podiums the club ran until 1996[32] when the event was replaced by Freedom.[33]

Selected stage productions

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Taboo the Musical

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Phillip Sallon is portrayed[34] in Taboo the Musical, (2002), in which his character is the narrator; the show is based partly on the New Romantic scene of the 1980s. At its core is the life and career of colourful pop star Boy George (who rose to global prominence in the early 1980s with his band Culture Club) and his contemporaries, including performance artist and club promoter Leigh Bowery, pop singer Marilyn, Blitz nightclub host Steve Strange (later of the electro-pop group Visage), and Philip Sallon, punk groupie and Mud Club promoter.[35]

Selected filmography

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  • Punk: Attitude (documentary by Don Letts, 2005), as himself.
  • Hampstead Heath: The Musical (2005), appears as himself.
  • Meet Pursuit Delange (2010), A short comedy film appears as Philip the Angel.
  • The Battle of Soho, A documentary film dealing with the impact of gentrification on London he appears as himself in a featured interview.[36]

References

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  1. ^ a b Rees, Jasper (13 December 1998). "How We Met: Boy George And Philip Sallon". The Independent. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  2. ^ "Legendary club promoter and kook, Philip Salon, still alive and wearing very old vivienne westwood – The WOW Report". The WOW Report. Wow Magazine, 29 September 2009. 29 September 2009. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  3. ^ Childs, Peter; Storry, Michael (2012). Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture. Routledge. p. 182. ISBN 978-1134755554.
  4. ^ Windsor, John (25 June 1994). "Style: Marx comes to the aid of the party: Philip Sallon, impresario". The Independent. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  5. ^ Mepham, David. "Clothing Designer PHILIP SALLON . attends the Football Italia TV Launch Party. London, England – 09.11.05 | Hollywood.com". Hollywood. Hollywood.com. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  6. ^ Rimmer, Dave (15 September 2003). New Romantics: The Look. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-1-78323-027-3.
  7. ^ Dysch, Marcus (11 April 2011). "Police looking for Mud Club founder abusers". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  8. ^ Simons, Jake Wallis (2 May 2011). "Homophobic attacks: 'There's so much hatred out there'". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  9. ^ Bryant, Mark (14 December 1999). "Obituray: Ralph Sallon". The Independent. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  10. ^ "Obituray: Ralph Sallon". The Independent. 14 December 1999. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  11. ^ "A piece by Philip Sallon". Burn Punk London. Burn Punk London, 23 September 2016. 23 September 2016. Archived from the original on 17 March 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  12. ^ Marko, Paul (2007). The Roxy London Wc2: A Punk History. The Roxy Club London:Punk. p. 17. ISBN 9780955658303.
  13. ^ Windsor, John (25 June 1994). "Style: Marx comes to the aid of the party: Philip Sallon, impresario". The Independent. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  14. ^ Walsh, Collette (23 January 2014). "Homotopia Festival 2013 – This Way Out by Boy George and TradeMark". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  15. ^ Guy, Peter (28 October 2013). "What's on in Liverpool this week, October 28 – November 1: Hopskotch street kitchen quiz, Homotopia with Boy George, Halloween at FACT and the Kazimier". liverpoolecho. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  16. ^ Rees, Caroline (28 September 2008). "Time and place Boy George". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 29 May 2015. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  17. ^ Parsons, Rob (5 April 2011). "Boy George appeals to catch attackers of 'oldest and closest friend'". Evening Standard. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  18. ^ Geen, Jessica (5 April 2011). "Gay socialite Philip Sallon attacked in central London". PinkNews. The Pink News. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  19. ^ "Did London's £15m security cameras really fail to record attack on Boy George's best friend?". Shapersofthe80s. 7 April 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  20. ^ Topping, Alexandra (8 April 2011). "Boy George warns of 'changing attitudes' after friend attacked". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  21. ^ Johnson, David (4 October 2009). "Spandau Ballet, the Blitz kids and the birth of the New Romantics". The Observer.
  22. ^ "Steve Strange Collective, Blitz Club". stevestrange.org. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  23. ^ "BLITZ KIDS | ➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣". Shapersofthe80s.com. 20 September 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  24. ^ Loader, Kurt (10 November 1983). "London Calling". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  25. ^ Rimmer, Dave (21 July 2011). Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop. Faber & Faber. p. Chapter 1. ISBN 9780571280278.
  26. ^ Hughes, Kathryn (22 June 2013). "How London dressed up for the 1980s". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  27. ^ Simons, Jake Wallis (2 May 2011). "Homophobic attacks: 'There's so much hatred out there'". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  28. ^ Smith, &Sullivan (2011). We Can Be Heroes: London Clubland 1976-1984, page 313. London: Unbound. ISBN 978-1-908717-04-7.
  29. ^ Russell-Powell, Fiona (July 1984). "Philip Sallon Interview". The Face. pp. 28–29.
  30. ^ Johnson, David (July 1983). "Who's who in the New London Weekend". The Face. No. 39. p. 64. Retrieved 18 June 2020 – via Shapersofthe80s.
  31. ^ Johnson, David (December 1983). "Strongman Tactics". The Face. No. 44. p. 34. Retrieved 18 June 2020 – via Shapersofthe80s.
  32. ^ Swindells, Dave (2 January 2008). "With the Closure of King's Cross Clubs The Cross, Canvas, and The Key Time Out London Looks Back at a Clubbing Era". Time Out London. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  33. ^ Kihl, Tim (Deputy Editor DJ Magazine) (1 March 2013). "Top 5 London Nightclubs of the 90s". Kentishtowner. Retrieved 16 March 2017. {{cite news}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  34. ^ Bordman, Gerald Martin; Norton, Richard (2010). American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Oxford University Press. p. 846. ISBN 9780199729708.
  35. ^ "BBC News ARTS New theatre for London's West End". BBC. November 2001. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  36. ^ Korol, Aro. "Battle of Soho". Indiegogo. 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2017.

Sources

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  • Everett, William A. and Laird, Paul R. (2009), The A to Z of the Broadway Musical, Scarecrow Press, ISBN 9780810870444
  • Hischak, Thomas S. (2008), The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television, Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 9780195335330
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