Richard Strange | |
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 Richard Strange photographed by Kelly Dearsley | |
| Born | January 1951 (age 74) |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, actor, musician, curator, teacher |
| Years active | 1975–present |
| Known for | Doctors of Madness |
| Website | link |
Richard "Kid" Strange (born in January 1951) is an English actor, writer, musician, and curator, who was the founder and front man of mid-1970s protopunk art rock band Doctors of Madness. [1]
Richard Strange's first band Doctors of Madness, formed in 1975, releasing three albums. The band was supported by the Sex Pistols, the Jam and Joy Division. He disbanded the band in 1978, after Dave Vanian of the Damned briefly joined him on vocals. [2] He subsequently recorded as a solo artist, releasing two albums The Live Rise of Richard Strange (Ze Records 1981) and The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange (Virgin Records 1981) before further releases with the Engine Room up to the early 1990s. [2]
Strange has collaborated on recordings by International Noise Orchestra, Anni Hogan and Jolie Holland. He has produced records by Way of the West ("Don't Say That's Just for White Boys"), Tom Robinson ("Martin's Gone") and the Nightingales album Pigs on Purpose.
Richard Strange toured Japan in 2005 and 2007 with multi-instrumentalist David Coulter and the Japanese band Sister Paul, playing a selection of Doctors of Madness songs. In 2007, he was part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown Festival, at the Royal Festival Hall, in an evening of songs from Walt Disney films; performed with the producer/arranger Hal Wilner in Brooklyn; and performed at the Barbican, alongside David Byrne, Tim Robbins, Steve Buscemi, Shane MacGowan and Suzanne Vega.
In 2009, Strange performed at the Glastonbury Festival, performing his 1981 concept album The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange live, in its entirety. He also played Port Eliot, Hay-on-Wye and Fenton Festivals.
In 2012, he contributed the song "Blood Brothers" to the Rudolf Buitendach movie Dark Hearts.
In 2013, Strange was invited by Gail Zappa to narrate the British Premiere of Frank Zappa's opera 200 Motels at The Royal Festival Hall London. Strange also sang the baritone role of Rance, and the performance, featuring the 90-piece BBC Concert Orchestra, plus 40 voice choir, 8 piece jazz band, and 5 piece rock band, was accorded a 20-minute standing ovation by the sold-out audience. Gail Zappa filmed the performance for later release, and it was also recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast in November 2013.
Two weeks later, Strange was part of Hal Willner's evening of the music of Nino Rota at London's Barbican Hall, singing a duet with himself in Italian, from Fellini's Casanova .
In 2014, Richard curated, wrote, directed and performed in a collaborative operatic project with the composer Gavin Bryars, based on the life and work of the writer William Burroughs, which premiered in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in October 2014. The film of the event, entitled Language is a Virus From Outer Space, won Best Art Film Prize at the Portobello Film Festival, London in 2016.
In 2017, the entire recorded works of the Doctors of Madness were re-released by Cherry Red Records as the 3-CD set Perfect Past. [3] The Guardian praised the release and called the band "The missing link between David Bowie and the Sex Pistols". [4]
In 2018, he performed his fantasy "The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange" in its entirety at a number of venues across the UK, including the festival All Points East with Nick Cave and Patti Smith.
In 2019, Strange returned to the studio to record the first new Doctors of Madness album in 41 years. The songs were written by Strange over a short period, and were recorded at Doghouse Studios, Oxfordshire, again with producer John Leckie. The eight-track album, entitled Dark Times, was released in September 2019. Featured guests included Joe Elliott of Def Leppard as backing vocalist on five songs, Sarah Jane Morris of the Communards singing on four, and contributions from Terry Edwards, Tinderstick, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Madness, Steve Boltz Bolton, Paul Young, The Who and Atomic Rooster as well as the young protest singer Lily Bud.
In September 2019, he toured the UK with a band in a show entitled "Richard Strange performs the songs of Lou Reed", featuring over 20 songs by the former Velvet Underground composer and front man.
In 2021, 1978, an album of his songs co-written with T V Smith of the punk band The Adverts, was released to coincide with International Record Store Day. A single by the duo, "Don't Panic England", was released in December 2021, mixed by Martyn Ware of The Human League.
Richard Strange founded the multidisciplinary Cabaret Futura club in Soho in 1980, [6] which he reopened after a 30-year hiatus in 2010. Guest artists have included Michael Nyman, Gary Kemp, Sarah Jane Morris, Stella Duffy and boyleANDshaw. Cabaret Futura was subsequently commissioned to curate a number of national and international performances, including 'New Moves-The International Festival of Live Art' in Glasgow (2011) and 'Festival of Art and Ideas' in Hay-on-Wye (2011).
In November 2011, Strange was invited by the Tate Gallery to curate an evening as a response to the exhibition "John Martin and The Apocalypse". Working with his partner Kelly Dearsley, he created Cabaret Apocalyptica, a live event with installations, performances, and films, staged in Room 9 (pre-Raphaelites and 19th century masters) of Tate Britain. For this event Strange was joined by artists Gavin Turk, Richard Wilson and Sean Dower, plus dancer/choreographer Rene Eyre, poet Kae Tempest and singer/cellist Bonfire Madigan.
Strange was also part of an immersive operatic collaboration with the composer Gavin Bryars called "Language Is A Virus From Outer Space", based on the life and works of the American writer William S Burroughs, which received its world premiere at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on 11 October 2014. The multi-media work, featuring Bryars's music, Strange's texts, and contributions from artists Gavin Turk and Haroon Mirza, writers Rupert Thomson and Jeremy Reed, choreographer Luca Silvestrini, actors Richard Durden and Lloyd Owen and musicians Sarah Jane Morris, Anni Hogan and Joe Elliot of the band Def Leppard.
Richard Strange has worked as an actor since 1984, appearing on stage, in films and on television. His film appearances include Batman by Tim Burton, Mona Lisa by Neil Jordan, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves , and Gangs of New York by Martin Scorsese. He can be seen in the Harmony Korine film Mister Lonely , playing the part of Abraham Lincoln, and in the film Inkheart , with Helen Mirren and Paul Bettany. He can also be seen in the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 under the directorship of David Yates. In summer 2011, he was cast in the British film Theatre of Dreams alongside Brian Cox. He has been in TV programmes Men Behaving Badly , Trial and Retribution , The Bill, Footballers Wives and Lovejoy.
Between 1989 and 1990 Strange toured the world with a production of Hamlet, directed by Yuri Lyubimov. He played a gravedigger, one of the players and the ghost.
Between 1995 and 1997 Strange played a butler in more than 50 episodes of the German primetime TV show "Gottschalks Haus-Party" and fought WWE's The Undertaker in one episode. [7]
Throughout 2004-07 Strange worked with Marianne Faithfull on the Tom Waits/William Burroughs/Robert Wilson collaboration The Black Rider , singing and acting in this stage musical in theatres in London, San Francisco, Sydney and Los Angeles.
His collaborations include work with Sam Taylor Wood for the banner XV Seconds (2000) that covered the facade of the London department store Selfridges for 6 months in 2000. More recently he has worked with the Anglo-Pakistani artist Haroon Mirza on several projects including A Sleek Dry Yell (London, Dundee, Walker Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and Hamburg) and Regaining a Degree of Control a.k.a. The Last Tape. (2010), (Hayward Gallery, London, Chisenhale Gallery, London, New Moves, Glasgow, Vivid Gallery, Birmingham and Brownstone Foundation, Paris.) and "Falling Rave" shown at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. He frequently works with the Live Art collective boyleANDshaw, performing with them at the Calvert Gallery, London in 2010, and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2011. He showed his solo performance piece "Welcome to my World" at the closing celebrations of the long established Mayor Gallery, in London's Cork Street. [ citation needed ]
In March 2011 Strange was invited by the New Moves International Festival of Live Art to curate a weekend of events and to premiere a new performance work, I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, which he devised with the photographer and academic Kelly Dearsley. The work was shown in Glasgow in March 2011 alongside other artists including Liliane Lijn, Richard Wilson and Haroon Mirza.
In December 2018 he worked again with Haroon Mirza on a specially commissioned work, Unknown Remembered for the Spitalfields Festival.
As a writer and journalist, Strange has contributed to The Guardian , The Sunday Telegraph , The Independent , Tatler , The Art Newspaper , Art Monthly , The European , Time Out , GQ , The London Standard and Travel and Culture, among other publications.
Richard's memoir Strange: Punks and Drunks and Flicks and Kicks, was published by Andre Deutsch in 2005.
In June 2011 he presented This Is Not Magritte, a programme on the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, on BBC Radio 4. In July, Strange chaired a Tate Gallery discussion on watercolours at the Camp Bestival Festival. In November, he was invited to be Creator in Residence at the Hong Kong Design Institute.
Richard Strange also hosts a series of monthly live chat shows called A Mighty Big If at the House of St Barnabas, Soho, in which he interviews guests from the world of art, music, literature and film. Past guests have included Marc Almond, Mike Figgis, Gary Kemp, Peter Capaldi, Nile Rodgers, Michael Nyman, Gavin Turk, Simon Day, Cornelia Parker, Richard Wilson, Robert Wilson, Alison Jackson, Robert Elms, and James Rhodes.
Strange is a guest lecturer teaching "Creativity in Context" at Tileyard in London, and is an occasional lecturer at the London College of Fashion, Buckinghamshire New University, Hong Kong Design Institute and University of Southern California. He was recently named a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and in 2012 was Creator in Residence at the Hong Kong Design Institute.
During the Covid-19 lockdown in March–August 2020, Strange worked from his studio, creating an audio version of his memoir Strange: Punks and Drunks and Flicks and Kicks, which he made available for free in daily posts on his website, and he commenced a weekly online radio show, "Dark Times Radio", featuring music he has written, performed, produced or been inspired by.
His first play, When You Awake You Will Remember Nothing, written with the Portuguese artist Antonio Olaio, premiered in Lisbon, Portugal in October 2021, with further shows in Porto, Coimbra and London in January and February 2022.
Roxy Music are an English rock band formed in 1970 by lead vocalist and principal songwriter Bryan Ferry and bassist Graham Simpson. By the time the band recorded their first album in 1972, Ferry and Simpson were joined by saxophonist and oboist Andy Mackay, guitarist Phil Manzanera, drummer Paul Thompson and synthesizer player Brian Eno. Other members during the band's history include keyboardist and violinist Eddie Jobson and bassist John Gustafson. The band split in 1976, reformed in 1978 and split again in 1983. In 2001, Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson reunited for a concert tour and have toured together intermittently ever since, most recently in 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their first album. Ferry has also frequently enlisted band members as backing musicians during his solo career.
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Destroy All Monsters was an influential Detroit rock band existing from 1973 to 1985, with sporadic performances since. Their music touched on elements of punk rock, psychedelic rock, heavy metal and noise rock with a heavy dose of performance art. Their music was described by Lester Bangs as "anti-rock". They earned a measure of notoriety due to members of The Stooges and MC5 joining the band, and Sonic Youth singer/guitarist Thurston Moore compiling a three compact disc set of the group's music in 1994.
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a 1971 composition by Gavin Bryars based on a loop of an unknown homeless man singing a brief improvised stanza. Rich harmonies, comprising string and brass, are gradually overlaid over the stanza. The piece was first recorded for use in a documentary which chronicles street life in and around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo, in London. When later listening to the recordings, Bryars noticed the clip was in tune with his piano and that it conveniently looped into 13 bars. For the first LP recording, he was limited to a duration of 25 minutes; later he completed a 60-minute version of the piece for cassette tape; and with the advent of the CD, a 74-minute version. It was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize.
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Bryce David Dessner is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, and a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger.
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Aaron Brooking Dessner is an American musician. He is best known as a founding member of the rock band the National, with whom he has recorded nine studio albums; a co-founder of the indie rock duo Big Red Machine, teaming with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon; and a collaborator on Taylor Swift's critically acclaimed studio albums Folklore and Evermore, both of which contended for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2021 and 2022, respectively, with the former winning the accolade; as well as The Tortured Poets Department (2024).
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Some Velvet Morning are a British indie / alternative rock band consisting of Desmond Lambert, Rob Flanagan (drums) and Gavin Lambert. Formed in 2000, they have released four albums: Silence Will Kill You, Allies, Musical Chairs and Rough Seas. Across these four album releases, they have continued to build a series of film and TV placements for their music with brands including Renault, Volkswagen, Haig Club, Pull & Bear and The Grand Tour.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a work by British minimalist composer Gavin Bryars. Inspired by the story that the band on the RMS Titanic continued to perform as the ship sank in 1912, it imagines how the music performed by the band would reverberate through the water some time after they ceased performing. Composed between 1969 and 1972, the work is now considered one of the classics of British classical experimental music.
Irma is a 1969 experimental opera by artist Tom Phillips, Fred Orton and Gavin Bryars.
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Gavin Martin was a Northern Irish music journalist.
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