logo
ENFRع
#

Latest news with #1970s

Famed Photographer Says He Was 'Surprised' by David Bowie's Behavior Off the Stage (Exclusive)
Famed Photographer Says He Was 'Surprised' by David Bowie's Behavior Off the Stage (Exclusive)

Yahoo

time3 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

Famed Photographer Says He Was 'Surprised' by David Bowie's Behavior Off the Stage (Exclusive)

The photographer toured with Bowie in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Denis O'Regan had an unlikely road to his place as one of rock's most iconic photographers. In his new book David Bowie by Denis O'Regan, the famed photographer takes a heartfelt and meticulous look back at touring with the iconic singer over three decades — in the 1970s, at the end of his Isolar II World Tour; in the 1980s, on the Serious Moonlight and Glass Spider world tours; and in the 1990s, during the Tin Man and Outside tours. Speaking with PEOPLE about the collection of photos and stories that comprise the book, O'Regan opens up about what it was like getting to know Bowie. "When I got there, I thought David would be seen in these different guises, and no one had ever really seen him offstage that much. I thought, 'Well, he's going to keep us [at] arm's length. He won't let me do this. He'll be demanding about that,'" he recalls. "And of course, that wasn't the case." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. O'Regan was shocked by the "Rebel Rebel" singer's comfortability giving him "unfettered access to everything, everywhere and anywhere." "I just did what I did and captured it all, and we got along," he shares. "That really helped. I was fairly lazy, so that also helped because I wasn't constantly hassling him or anyone I worked with to take pictures." Getting to know Bowie was an experience in itself. O'Regan found himself "surprised" by "how pleasant he was and unprepossessing." "He was very normal and that's not what I expected from the person I'd seen on stage. He was still this English lad who hid a cigarette in his hand behind his back like he was a naughty schoolboy," he recalls. "He was also very funny. He loved to imitate people and he laughed continually. And that I didn't expect. So I didn't expect him to be so friendly and accommodating really is what it was, and so enthusiastic about what I was there to do." The photographer came to appreciate Bowie's character, on and off stage. "From David being around all the time, he had gone from this person who was an enigma for me and this hero, to there I was, with him all day, every day. Sometimes I did wonder how I'd managed it." O'Regan also got used to seeing other stars, from those who worked with Bowie to those who were simply fans of the musician and would come to his shows. On one occasion, the photographer was preparing to shoot a show at Wembley Stadium when he learned that Princess Diana was coming and eager to meet Bowie. "I thought, 'Well, Princess Diana, that's fun.' But there was no communication. I was out in the audience at Wembley Stadium, and I took my father and my brother out there to get them a good place, and we were gone for quite a while," he recalls. "Then I came back and David and his PA just said, 'Diana's on her way.' " O'Regan says Diana was with "a friend," who would later be revealed to be Army Major James Hewitt, though, at the time, no one had any suspicions the two were romantically involved. "On that day, she was just with a friend. And it was only when that was reported over the next couple of days that we really knew what was going on," he adds. "It didn't make any difference to our day, but that's what happened." When Diana arrived, O'Regan asked promoter Harvey Goldsmith if he could photograph her. Goldsmith then told him to "ask her yourself." The photographer remembered feeling like "protocol went out the window." "I thought, 'Okay, wasn't quite sure that's how it's done.' So I did and I said, 'Would you like a picture taken with David?'" he recalls. "And she said, 'Do you think you'd really want one taken with me?' And I went, 'I think he would actually,' so then we did it. But it was lovely, and she was lovely, and it was great to have done it." Another unforgettable celebrity sighting was when Michael Jackson spent time backstage with Bowie — narrowly missing Prince, who "scuttled off just before" his fellow pop star arrived. "With Michael Jackson, everyone was just milling around in the green room, and Michael didn't want any pictures taken," he recalls. "So I said, 'Well, it's either pictures with David or it isn't,' so he agreed, and that was the first time I met." "I think the thing that surprised me about Michael Jackson was he was quite tall, and that threw me," O'Regan shares. "He was coming across as this little boy. If you look at the piece, he's as tall or taller than David." It wasn't unusual to see the stars showing up to greet Bowie at any gig. Noting there were "always people milling about," O'Regan saw famous faces including Andy Warhol, Duran Duran, and Gary Oldman. "I'd wonder if they were fans or if they just wanted to meet him or get their picture taken with him," he admits. "Mick Jagger was an old friend, so I photographed them together more than once during those tours. And one picture of David and Mick, it's in the book, but I took it at a club after a Wembley Stadium show, and it's Mick and David sitting at the table. And when David passed away, Mick tweeted that picture as his tribute." Similarly, Madonna used a photo taken by O'Regan to commemorate Bowie's death in January 2016. "She just cropped herself and David out, but to the left, there was Sam Kinison, the comedian, and next to him was Billy Idol. I know David was a hero to Madonna because Sean Penn told David that Madonna based her entire career on David, and the change of look and things like that, so that must've been quite a moment for her," O'Regan says. The photographer found that, like himself, "loads of people, from all different walks of life" adored Bowie. David Bowie by Denis O'Regan is available wherever books are sold beginning on Tuesday, August 5. Read the original article on People

There's still one way that Britain can awaken from this nightmare
There's still one way that Britain can awaken from this nightmare

Telegraph

time4 days ago

  • Business
  • Telegraph

There's still one way that Britain can awaken from this nightmare

Sorry to keep banging on about how much worse things were in Britain in the 1970s. This must be like being lectured by your grandmother on how their generation survived the Blitz. But for those who lived through that pre-modern era when ordinary people were held hostage by titanic monopoly powers against which elected governments appeared to be helpless, it is difficult to see today's problems as the end of the world. It wasn't just the daily power outages which brought darkness and the shut down of all electrical equipment for hours at a time. There were as well the horrendous economic pressures which put today's difficulties into a sobering perspective. It may be true – as the young point out with some bitterness – that property was unbelievably cheap. At the end of the 1960s, it was possible to buy a suburban house in London for under £10,000. (TEN THOUSAND POUNDS.) The first great property boom soon quadrupled those prices but even in 1979 you could buy a four bedroomed semi-detached house in a good neighbourhood for around £50,000. But that home owning idyll is deceptive. What followed was a staggering, scarcely credible by today's standards, rise in inflation. At its height in 1975, the inflation rate was 26.9 per cent – which makes the obsessive concern over today's inflation increases look rather silly. What did that mean for all those people who had bought their homes at what we would now consider absurdly low prices? Their mortgages which had originally been linked realistically to their incomes – and all their household bills which were also being hit by the inflationary spiral – became terrifyingly unaffordable. This was a personal, familial crisis for countless households who suddenly discovered that they could not go on living as they had reasonably expected to do. The cost of their homes was suddenly way beyond the reach of their pay levels. The quality of life and the purchasing power of even well paid people, crashed with a suddenness that was deranging. It was now almost impossible for a mortgaged household to survive on one income so women had no choice but to go out to work. (Even though most mortgage lenders at the time would not take a wife's income into account which made practical planning problematic.) But it was not only the economics that was going badly wrong. The later 60s and the 70s produced some ugly social dynamics that are scarcely recalled now, perhaps because they are so shaming. There were menacing mobs of skinheads whose racism and anti-social delinquency were blatantly violent. My husband and I once stood over a pair of Asian boys on the tube to shield them from a pack of shaven headed thugs who were threatening to pull them off the train. Somehow London had gone from its world-conquering moment in the Swinging Sixties to this: rubbish piling up in the streets, endless transport strikes and a great many people deciding that it was time to leave the country forever. Those who lament today that 'nothing works' can scarcely imagine the havoc of unreliability that was everyday life in that chaotic decade. The antagonism toward the trade unions and the closed shop nationalised industries famously dominated the historic account of this awful period but what may be forgotten is the political despair that accompanied it. A succession of governments and party leaders had revealed themselves, to the disgust of the electorate, to be utterly useless. The 60s as we remember them had got under way with Harold Wilson who seemed to have achieved a fairly jolly accommodation with the most powerful trades unions. The 'beer and sandwiches at Number 10' technique of conciliation and kinship – which actually involved caving in to most union demands to avert strike action – seemed to offer some kind of sustainable mode of operation. Until it didn't. The unions would not be bought off indefinitely and their growing militancy was undermining major British industries like car manufacturing. The country then turned, more in desperation than hope, to the Conservatives under Edward Heath who promised legislation to curb the spread of disruptive union activism. When that proved an ineffectual disaster Harold Wilson was returned to power. He then retired from office (due sadly to the onset of dementia) and was followed by James Callaghan who had the misfortune to preside over the 1979 Winter of Discontent. The deterioration of confidence in the political leadership of the country, by this time, seemed irreversible. It was genuinely believed by a great many responsible people that national decline was not just inevitable but was already fully under way, and that this was attributable to the low standard of government performance: lack of conviction, failure of nerve and the poverty of ideas for dealing with the modern, post-imperial world. And what is more, this low standard was believed to be incurable. British politics was exhausted intellectually and morally. You know what happened next. The Callaghan government lost a vote of confidence in the House (dramatically by one vote). A general election followed which was won by Margaret Thatcher's new model Conservative party and – not overnight but over a period of several years – confidence was restored not just in the economic future but in the possibility of effective government. British politics was not dead after all: it had simply sunk into a defeatist depression. The Left which had been broken and demoralised first by its experience in government and then by the public renunciation of its trades union wing which had propelled the Thatcher Tories into power, now had to reinvent itself. First came the Social Democrats with their extreme Centrism, who were determined to 'break the mould' of party politics – which is to say, replace Labour and challenge the Tories' all out commitment to free markets. A lot of initial excitement was generated by this development, but it subsided into a footnote as the Thatcherite spirit of the 1980s swept it aside. Finally, Tony Blair's plagiarism of the Tory philosophy brought Labour back into the game. And so, confidence in recognisable party politics returned. What it took was nerve and fresh ideas. There must be a lesson there.

Slim sneakers are the shoe of the summer
Slim sneakers are the shoe of the summer

CNN

time6 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • CNN

Slim sneakers are the shoe of the summer

They were once worn by athletes to win Olympic track races in the 1970s. Now, slim, low-profile sneakers are more often seen on the style set than in the context of 5,000-meter sprints. Harry Styles has several pairs of the oft-sold out Dries Van Noten's panelled leather and suede sneakers ($495), while Hailey Bieber, Kaia Gerber and Addison Rae are regularly seen out and about in their vividly-colored Onitsuka Tiger styles (ranging from $155 to $215). Dua Lipa, a global brand ambassador for Puma, has the more wallet-friendly compact Speed Cat silhouette in red, black, pink and even a silver ballerina version ($100). In June, Prada put forward its own offering with the new Montecarlo sneaker ($1,100) — a re-edition of a design from Spring-Summer 2005. Bottega Veneta describes its Orbit Flash shoe ($990) as 'a low-top lace-up ballet sneaker' with 'supple suede with lightweight nylon', while Miu Miu boasts that its Plume ($950) style is 'sleek and extremely light' — though they do offer a version where this aerodynamic design is weighed down with shoelace charms and miniature keyrings. 'It's more simple, it's less flashy,' said David Fischer, founder and CEO of youth culture platform Highsnobiety, in a phone interview, observing the current footwear aesthetic. Global retail analytics company Edited's analyst and footwear expert Katharine Carter agreed, telling CNN that slimline running-inspired trainers have emerged as 2025's biggest sneaker trend. Even mass-market brands such as H&M and Zara are now getting in on the action: Carter noted an uptick of 367% more slim-soled styles flooding the shelves for the Spring-Summer 2025 season compared to 2024. By contrast, Edited estimates new designs of chunky and platform sneakers have decreased 37% year-on-year. The current preference for slim-fit, low-profile footwear marks a shift away from the chunky 'ugly' shoe trend that has dominated the runways — and individual closets — for almost a decade. The Balenciaga Triple S, created by the mononymic designer Demna during his tenure at the brand, disrupted the sneaker landscape in the mid-to-late 2010s. Its vertiginous, stacked sole was instantly recognizable, and a new era of chunky sneakers with mainstream appeal, such as Zara's Multi-Piece sneaker, the New Balance 09060 and the Adidas Yeezy 500 'Blush', soon followed. However, around 2023, their popularity began to wane (that year, the Triple S was booted off the top spot of GQ's annual Best Sneakers list and replaced by the re-issued Adidas Samba from 1972 — a football training shoe, with its earliest iteration dating back to 1949). 'I always like to say that fashion is like physics; for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction,' said Emma McClendon, assistant professor of fashion studies at St John's University in New York, in a phone call. Noting the pendulum swing of trends, she explained: 'Fashion is predicated on a desire for newness.' But there has been a collective shrinking of silhouettes and styles of clothes more generally, too. From the controversial return of skinny jeans to the uptick in hotpants and boob tubes, 'stuff is getting slimmer,' said McClendon. 'Fashion doesn't happen in a vacuum,' she added. 'It's possibly one of the most visceral ways that we bodily engage with culture.' Many have been quick to draw a connective throughline between the revival of trends like skinny jeans and bandage dress with the increasing accessibility of Ozempic and other GLP-1 injectables. 'We have to address the fact that what we're seeing is a return to the thin ideal in a really scary way,' said McClendon. 'In general, it's that you want to be smaller, you want to be demure, you want to be all of these things associated with being ladylike,' McClendon added. Could that shift be making its way to our footwear choices? In addition to the rise of slimline shoes, there has also been growing interest in 'Sneakerinas,' a hybrid shoe that combines a traditional sneaker with the more girlish ballet flat. Often, they are little more than wispy slips of satin or suede. Sometimes they have ribbons in lieu of laces — much like the version sold by Chinese footwear brand Vivaia, which has become a veritable off-duty model staple thanks to endorsements from Bella Hadid and Amelia Gray. EDITED reported a 112% increase in the number of sneakers described as 'ballerina' or 'Mary Jane' in the past year. Today, shoes are not only getting slimmer, some are barely there at all. The mesh Alaia ballet flats — fashion search engine Lyst's hottest product at the end of 2024 — are almost see-through, much to some fashionistas' delight and others' chagrin. Even Balenciaga is taking note: its most head-turning sneaker release since the Triple S is the Zero shoe. Available in beige and black, the barely-there footwear is molded from a footprint, with the wearer's feet secured only at the toe and heel. If we are in the era of the naked dress, maybe next is the naked shoe. 'I think in many ways, the shoe world is very much marching in one direction here,' said Fischer.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store