Who was Jamie Reid? Why do we need another Punk Rock movement more than ever before? Read my blog to find out.

Back in the early 1990’s, when the world was much more do-it-yourself, I used to put on my raggedy vintage clothes, safety pins and my docs and jump on the ferry to Vancouver to meet up with my post punk friends on Granville Street in Vancouver. We would wander in and out of the small clubs and music venues to watch the garage bands trying to make it big before all the property developers could flip the whole area into condos. After seeing the Evaporators or the Cramps or some other no names we’d grab a slice of pizza and crash at dawn.

     A fun part of the experience was seeing all the gig posters slap glued on every wall, window and light post. They were all done in the old 1970’s punk style with mixed typography, featuring crazy band names and overexposed photographs on Martian green, acid yellow and piglet pink office copy paper. Usually the flyers were done secretly by a band member with a part time office job and access to a photocopier or a friend of a friend who worked at a t-shirt silk screening shop with a key and alarm code who could sneak in and out of the shop after hours.

     But before Vancouver started hopping and covering the town with flyers, there was a guy in London, England who started this whole scene and his name was Jamie Reid. Jamie Reid was an anarchist graphic designer known for his distinctive cut and paste ransom note poster style. He was also the album cover artist for the Sex Pistols. His irreverent, chaotic, subversive style created the whole aesthetic for the punk rock scene. Jamie was known for using decollage and channelling the Avant garde Dada movement. Décollage is an art style that is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by ripping and tearing away or otherwise removing pieces of an original image.

   Jamie was born to socialist, politically active parents in South London in 1947 and studied art at Croydon Art School in 1964. Jamie had developed critical thinking skills from his parents and became an activist in school. He was deeply left wing, held anarchist beliefs and felt a need to champion the individual freedoms against tyranny. He was also a spiritual Druid and environmentalist. Later, Jamie founded a radical political newspaper called The Suburban Press in 1970. The Suburban Press took on Conservatism with vigour and often published left wing views from groups like the Black Panther movement, featured articles about the abolishment of the Monarchy and chastised Margaret Thatcher’s impending austerity program. He caught the attention of the Sex Pistols Manager, Malcolm McLaren, who was a friend from art school and who asked him to design some flyers for his new band, the Sex Pistols and then later some album covers for them.

     Jamie’s artwork featuring the face of the queen with swastikas for eyes and the cut and safety pins across her mouth was very inspiring for the band members as they created their famous anthem after seeing the artwork while using the slogan ironically as well. It also inspired Vivienne Westwood, a London fashion designer, to make use of the safety pin as a punk rock symbol in her work. But the image did not make it past the record industry producers. Reid redesigned the image with God Save the Queen pasted across her ripped out eyes and the band name covering her ripped mouth. The image stayed but the BBC quickly banned the album. Even so, the single raced to the number two spot on the billboards with the help of pirate radio stations cementing the Sex Pistols, Jamie Reid’s artwork, Vivienne Westwood's fashion designs and the whole punk aesthetic into music history.

     Jamie continued his activism and worked for other left wing newspapers and continued to publish art in the decollage style after his work with the Sex Pistols. When the members of the band Pussy Riot were arrested in Russia, he raced their defence by designing a dramatic poster depicting Putin in black balaclava and lipstick, with text in his familiar cut-up style. He also recently created an image of Donald Trump wearing bright red lipstick on his kissing lips, powder blue eyeshadow and wearing a state trooper hat. He titled this work “Peace Is Tough”.

     Jamie Reid moved to Liverpool later in life where he recently passed away in 2023 at the age of 76. His work lives in the collections of major institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. R.I.P Jamie Reid you sure have inspired me today, that’s for sure. Since Zuckerberg has made moves to block people from good music on their free version of the Reels app, maybe I will just make my own music! Are we back to doing it ourselves? F@3k the establishment man!