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From The Desk Of The Lilac Time’s Stephen Duffy: David Hockney, Art School, Kitaj, Proktor, Freud & Bacon

Stephen Duffy was the first singer in a little band called Duran Duran. He left them in 1979 and began a series of other musical projects before settling into the Lilac Time almost three decades ago with brother Nick. The band’s latest album is No Sad Songs. Stephen Duffy will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

2Hockney

Duffy: I put Hockney first on account of his book David Hockney By David Hockney. Compiled from interviews by Nikos Stangos, its appearance in ’76 (I think I got it for Christmas) was a Beatles moment for me. As a pre-school child, when I saw George Harrison and the other fabs get out of a Bentley either to get their MBEs or at the premier of A Hard Days Night, it is likely that this was the first time a truly working-class kid had been filmed getting out of such a car. We were so cowed by class, so intimidated and tyrannised by class, that the impact of the Beatles, Hockney, Bailey, et alia, working-class people doing anything other than being patronised, was a monumental relief, a revolution, unfortunately a forgotten revolution. I got the Hunter Davies Beatles biography out of the library on the Washwood Heath Road. I loved it all but especially the chapters discussing how they made music. Similarly when I read Hockney By Hockney, the story of a boy who from nothing made so much, whilst also being so unambiguously gay, simply inspired me. It catapulted me to art school, where I gave up art immediately to make Duran Duran with John Taylor, the first bloke I spoke to.

Video after the jump.