Mike Scott is pop’s only literate lyricist who would dare take on the stately iconography of William Butler Yeats. Forget about the living proof provided by his band the Waterboys as they tackle the Irishman’s prickly poems through a series of 14 daringly diverse arrangements on the new An Appointment With Mr. Yeats (Proper American). You’d know that if you’ve listened to Scott’s richly robust catalog of Waterboys albums made since 1983, or even read his recently released book, Adventures Of A Waterboy. Though imbued with an intellectual curiosity beyond that of the most wizened scholar, Scott has long found himself inspired by Yeats’ vivid world-weary lyrical textures and smartly grammatical manner. On the other hand, he’s a big Twitter fan. Go figure. Scott will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.
For me, the golden age of the modern era is 1964-70. I’m talking music, movies, cultural changes, fashion, creativity, idealism, design, space exploration, individuality. We have more technology now, more choices, more mental, political and sociological freedom, but nothing since has matched the sheer forward-hurtling wonder of those seven magical years, and much delicious idiosyncracy has been lost. Recently a friend sent me a link to a website containing the contents of every Vogue magazine from 1965 to 1975, most of my favourite period, and I spent hours reading through this database, tracking how the tone of those years evolved from sharp mod to colourful hippie to full-on counter culture, a progression readable even in the rarified pages of Vogue.
But there was an unexpected upshot. I fell in a kind of love, a detached, time-shifted virtual love, with a model who kept appearing in the pages. She wasn’t one of the still-renowned household-name models of the time—classic Jean Shrimpton, waifesque Twiggy, child-like Marisa Berenson, bold Verushka—but an English model who cultural history has forgotten. Her name was Moyra Swan, spelt in a funny way that my eye kept reading, at first, as “Morya,” and she had a pixie-like, self-possessed, dark beauty; long and, yes, swan-like neck, deep soulful eyes, natural smile, slender graceful frame, exquisitely elegant body language.
Her first solo shoots appeared in 1966 issues of Vogue, showing her wearing modish clothes, her hair in a funky bob. By 1968, her hair was long and she was scoring front covers. And her heyday, during which she appeared in two or three photo shoots in almost every issue, was 1969-71. Some of my favourite shots show her silhouetted dramaticlly against a colour-burned sky on a tropical beach; lying sylph-like in long grass clad in a hippie gown; close-up with those soulful eyes and a single curl tumbling delicately over her forehead. Moyra didn’t signify or trigger changes in the times like Jean Shrimpton or Twiggy, she simply reflected them. She was a follower not a trailblazer, and because of this, and perhaps because she neither scene-maker nor dramatic personality, she never gets mentioned in retrospectives or histories. Yet to my eye, she was the most beautiful model of all.
More photos after the jup.
