Issue Icons
The most stylish magazine on the planet is back with its First Annual ICONS issue, featuring: Gloria Allred, Asia Argento, Peter Asher, Tyra Banks, Sonny Barger, Suzanne Bartsch, Peter S. Beagle, Judy Blume, Buz Blurr, Mark Burnett, Luther Campbell, Exene Cervenka, Margaret Cho, Chuck D, Larry Clark, Chuck Close, Robbie Conal, R. Crumb, Alan Dershowitz, Elvira, Patricia Field, Larry Flynt, Walt “Clyde" Frazier, Glen E. Friedman, Jane Goodall, Brian Grazer, Guru, Laurie Henzel & Debbie Stoller, Hulk Hogan, House Industries, Judith Jamison, Bob Kahn, Hilly Kristal, Barbara Kruger, Don Lafontaine, Kurt Loder, Ian MacKaye, Cheech Marin, Alan Moore, Brendan Mullen, Michael Nesmith, Yoko Ono, Gary Panter, Deb Parker, Raymond Pettibon, Steven Pinker, Anka Radakovich, Karim Rashid, Jack Rudy, Saber, Bobby Seale, Nancy Sinatra, Slash, Seymour Stein, Michele Tea, Ed Templeton, Twiggy, Dita Von Teese, Z-Trip.
Z-Trip
By Anne Keehn
Photo By Aaron Farley
Z-Trip stands at the top of the stairs in his Los Angeles home and picks up his Star Wars light saber. A red light glows from the base to the tip, and a crackle emanates from the stick. “It makes noise when you swing it around,” he says, and brings the light saber down
Walt Frazier
By Caleb Neelon
Photo By courtesy of Puma
When we came up,” NBA Hall-of-Famer Walt “Clyde” Frazier remembers, “the Temptations and Four Tops, they were our idols, and they all dressed up, so we dressed like them. Today, it’s Jay-Z and all the rappers, and the players dress like them off the court. You’d never know that they have money now
Tyra Banks
By Clint Catalyst
Photo By DEYONKER/JBGPHOTO.COM
Tyra Banks won’t call herself an icon, but that’s okay. Millions of other people worldwide have already anointed her with the title—along with a list of comparable sobriquets, including: role model, goddess, superstar, and phenomenon.
Steven Pinker
By Caleb Neelon
Photo By Peter Tannenbaum
Face it: if you’re reading this magazine, being cool is a dominant facet of your life. Experimental psychologist, linguist, and author Steven Pinker understands. “When I was in my teens in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s I wanted to look cool, so I wore my hair long.
Suzanne Bartsch
By Roxy Cottontail
Photo By Danielle Levitt
For over 20 years, Suzanne Bartsch has been a fixture in New York’s underground fashion and nightlife scene. Achieving longevity in the fickle world of the metropolis’s trendsetters is almost impossible; to become a legend in this scene is almost unheard of. It takes hard work and delicate timing – Bartsch has both.
Robbie Conal
By Jeff Penalty and Simon Steinhardt
Photo By Dan Monick
Ronald Reagan made me do it.”
It’s unlikely that such a defense would hold up in a modern American court of law, but that’s how Robbie Conal, best known for gluing disturbing and hyperreal images of political and historical figures to fixtures of the urban landscape, explains his incitement to hit the streets
Seymour Stein
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Alain Levitt
You can be wrong most of the time in the music business and still be successful,” says Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, one of the few in the industry who seems to consistently get it right. Madonna, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, the Pretenders, and The Smiths are just a few of his legendary signings
Robert Crumb
By E.B. Keehn
Illustration By R. Crumb
A pen-and-ink libidinist. An underground newspaper pied piper to a ‘60s counterculture that never really understood the satire of his work. A nostalgist for early 20th-century jazz. A tireless public chronicler of his unsanitary obsessions and personal shortcomings. A promoter of his own peculiar brand of narcissistic ennui. A cringeinducing misogynist.
SABER
By Caleb Neelon
Photo By Chris Haston
Graffiti doesn’t have a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, but if it did, SABER would surely be found ruling the “Biggest” category. By the age of 21, SABER was already a living legend of Los Angeles graffiti when, in 1997, he executed the largest graffiti painting ever created
Bobby Seale
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Adam Wallacavage
Of all the revolutionary groups to emerge from the 1960s’ counterculture, one of the most compelling—and certainly the most badass—was the Black Panthers. With their shotguns, berets, raised fists, and angry anti-police rhetoric, this group of armed African Americans captured the imagination of both black and white disaffected youth, sparking a new racial consciousness
Brendan Mullen
By Jeff Penalty
Photo By Adam Wallacavage
It’s easy for any punk rock fan to rattle off a list of musicians who have left an indelible mark on the genre, or for any hip-hop fan to explain the valuable contributions made by the oldest of the old-school artists.
Debbie Stoller & Laurie Henzel
By Molly Simms
Photo By Michael Lavine
For decades, young feminists were offered two distinct perspectives in the magazine aisle: In one camp stood the pink fluff of women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle, which tackled such hard-hitting issues as inner-thigh exercises; on the other side, there were Sahara-dry tomes like Ms. and Mother Jones
Buz Blurr
By Darin Rowland
Photo By Martha Cooper
Icons, in essence, are symbols: people who singlehandedly represent a culture or idea larger than themselves. “Monikers” are not so different—icons all the same, but symbols that represent people, primarily those living and working on and along American railroads.
Bob Kahn
By Ian Sattler
Photo By R. Teri Memolo
Imagine a life with no Internet. The thought wouldn’t have been such a big deal even 10 years ago, but today most of us couldn’t find a doctor or even the listings for a movie without the ‘Net.
Hilly Kristal
By Caleb Neelon
Photo By Peter Sutherland
Before punk rock even had a name, Hilly Kristal gave it a home. In 1973, Kristal opened a club on the Skid Row of America, New York City’s Bowery, and named it CBGB & OMFUG, one acronym for the types of the music he hoped to attract—country, bluegrass, and blues
Gloria Allred
By Anne Keehn
Photo By Piper Ferguson
When Gloria Allred opened her law firm with her partners Michael Maroko and Nathan Goldberg, the offices were housed in a low-rent area of Hollywood. Thirty years later, the firm has won millions of dollars on behalf of its clients—many of them represented pro bono—and is considered one of the foremost civil rights firms
Don LaFontaine
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Aaron Farley
You may not know his name, and you probably don’t recognize his face, but you’ve undoubtedly heard the voice of Don LaFontaine. His is the deep, ominous baritone behind countless movie trailer clichés, from “in a world beyond time” to “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
Deb Parker
By Claw Money
Photo By Kevin Thomasson
What can be said of Deb Parker that hasn’t already been scrawled on the walls of some of the Lower East Side’s most illustrious dives? This is a woman who’s almost nonhuman. A force to be reckoned with on every level, she’s tough, smart, ambitious, and oh-so-charming.
Dita Von Teese
By Gardner Linn
Photo By Albert Sanchez
If everyone is naked, it’s the costumes that rule the stage.” When Dita Von Teese tosses out that nugget of wisdom in the middle of her book, Burlesque: The Art of the Teese, she’s speaking literally about costumes: the pasties and crystals and feathers and corsets of the burlesque performer.
Anka Radakovich
By Maggie Serota
Photo By Malia James
Thanks to Sex and the City and the good people at HBO, the popular imagination is ingrained with the image of a sex columnist as an overly manicured woman with a surplus of leisure time and an impossibly huge apartment in an Upper East Side brownstone
Michael Nesmith
By Simon Steinhardt
What is a good idea?” The question is both a practical and rhetorical one for Michael Nesmith, who has spent decades coming up with various correct answers while keeping in mind a precise, highly personal definition of the term. “Essentially, a good idea is one that eliminates pain and suffering,” he reasons.
Jack Rudy
By Mike Giant
Photo By Mike Giant
Back in the 1970s, when Jack Rudy was fresh out of the Marines and apprenticing at the legendary East L.A. tattoo shop Goodtime Charlie’s Tattooland, some of his clients described a tattooing method they saw in prison: a single, sharpened guitar string connected to a homemade machine, which was perfect for rendering stylized portraits
Peter S. Beagle
By Daniel Lichterman
Photo By Dan Monick
Peter S. Beagle seems to recoil at the notion of being considered the iconic American fantasist. The idea that he has become an established fixture in the American cultural memory makes the author feel like a living anachronism. “I was just about getting used to the 20th century when they rang the 21st
Chuck D
By Caleb Neelon
Illustration By Shepard Fairey and Ernesto Yerena
Public Enemy scared the living shit out of America in the late 1980s, thanks in large part to its leader, Chuck D. The asides of court jester Flavor Flav only made Chuck’s barked orders and admonitions more fearsome.
Jane Goodall
By Anne Keehn
At the age of one, Jane Goodall befriended an earthworm, and tried to take it to bed. It was only when her mother told her that worms needed dirt to live that she let it go.
Larry Flynt
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Jeremy and Claire Weiss
Larry Flynt has seen so many cunts, he can tell what one will look like just by examining the area above a girl’s mouth. In fact, Flynt, founder of Hustler magazine and America’s most infamous smut peddler, believes the vagina to be the most beautiful part of any woman
Peter Asher
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Aaron Farley
In his 43-year music career, Peter Asher has been a musician, producer, manager, and A&R guy. And it shows: he has the all-knowing, slightly jaded aura bound to emanate from anyone that’s seen as much rock ‘n’ roll as he has. He lived with Paul McCartney just as Beatlemania was taking off.
Larry Clark
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Dan Monick
When director Larry Clark was a teenager, people in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, still liked to pretend everything was peachy behind their white picket fences. Even though the kids were mindlessly fucking and getting messed up on drugs, it wasn’t something that was discussed—until Clark got his camera out.
Michelle Tea
By Shawna Kenney
Photo By Adam Wallacavage
Styling By Clint Catalyst
Writing is a lonely endeavor. Cerebral, solitary, and gutwrenching at best, the very nature of the art ensures that, much as we may love to read them, few writers ever achieve actual rock-star status. But few writers deliver the goods like Michelle Tea.
Patricia Field
By Minya Quirk
Photo By Aaron Cobbett
There’s no more New York story than that of Patricia Field. A native NYC girl from a family of independent businesspeople, Pat, as she is called by friends, fashion insiders, and those with any level of admiration for the glamorous life of the downtown persuasion, never had childhood dreams of working in the fashion business
Kurt Loder
By Tony Rettman
Photo By Adam Amengual
To the mere commoner, Kurt Loder is a smoky blip on the ‘90s cultural radar, the clever older gent on MTV News reporting about the New Kids on the Block and their stonewashed sweaters with a raised eyebrow and almost visible scorn. Not many know of Loder’s prior work in the pages of Rolling Stone
Judith Jamison
By Anne Keehn
Photo By Andrew Eccles
Judith Jamison was always exceptionally tall, and walked with a regal carriage “ever since I was a child.” She grew to be a statuesque 5’10”, with a 36-inch inseam. In 1964, at the age of 21, she was invited by famed choreographer Agnes de Mille to perform De Mille’s The Four Marys
Alan Moore
By Ian Sattler
Photo By Jose Villarrubia
Comic books have been fighting for respect across the landscape of American popular culture for decades. Many people see comics as kids’ stuff or the ramblings of nerds—regardless of the fact that Superman and Spider-Man are recognized around the globe as icons, or that few other forms of entertainment so seamlessly fuse art and literature
Asia Argento
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Mick Rock
From birth, it was practically guaranteed that Asia Argento would grow up to be someone interesting. She was born into an Italian horror movie dynasty, for a start. Her father, Dario Argento, has made some of the blackest and bloodiest movies of the genre – slasher flicks like Suspiria, Profondo Rosso, and Tenebre.
Glen E. Friedman
By Daze
Photo By DAZE
Throughout his 30-year career, Glen E. Friedman has trained his lens on such greats as Minor Threat, Black Flag, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, L.L. Cool J, Tony Alva, and Stacy Peralta, to name a few. He has always been at the ready, capturing history as both a documentarian and a participant
Exene Cervenka
By Steffie Nelson
Photo By Jenny Lens
I’m sorry I made you do this; it’s gonna be horrible,” says Exene Cervenka, sitting in a booth at Denny’s in Santa Monica with a cup of coffee and a slice of peanut-butter pie. It’s just after 3 pm, and the punk-rock legend by night, schoolteacher and librarian by day, is apologizing in advance
Karim Rashid
By Caroline Ryder
Photo By Aaron Cobbett
Unlike fashion or architecture, the realm of product design doesn’t tend to breed many personalities. Even though we touch 600 objects a day or more, the people behind massproduced objects—the phones, the bottles, the lamps—remain generally anonymous. Do you know the name of the person who designed the Coke bottle, for example? The Swatch?
Barbara Kruger
By Anne Keehn
Photo By Barbara Kruger
Language has long been the weapon of choice for feminists. Elizabeth Cady Stanton kicked off the first feminist revolution in 1848 with her “Declaration of Sentiments” at Seneca Falls. The women’s liberation movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s was sparked by Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.
Alan Dershowitz
By Caleb Neelon
Photo By Peter Tannenbaum
I do a lot of things in revenge,” says lawyer, professor, and public intellectual Alan Dershowitz. “I’m a vengeful person. I want to get even with my high school teachers and all the people who thought badly of me.”
NANCY SINATRA
By Caroline Ryder
Illustration By Shepard Fairey
Nancy Sinatra’s vinyl go-go boots, like Mary Quant’s miniskirts and John Lennon’s glasses, have come to symbolize a moment in time: a moment in the 1960s when girls finally realized they didn’t need to spend all day pining over their loser boyfriends – they could just give them the finger instead.
HOUSE INDUSTRIES
By Julie Gerstein
Illustration By House Industries
It’s nearly impossible-and rather pointless-to list the hundreds and thousands of companies and products emblazoned with House Industries’ typeface designs. Over the past 13 years, the Delawarebased design company, headed up by Andy Cruz and Rich Roat, has landed typefaces on everything from cereal boxes and magazine covers to airport tarmacs
CHEECH MARIN
By Wendy Worth
Photos By Aaron Farley
What would the hippie generation be without Cheech and Chong? In the midst of fighting against an unjust war, rocking out to psychedelic music, and loving just about everybody in sight, hippies needed some time to laugh-and get stoned. Really, really stoned.
SONNY BARGER
By Simon Steinhardt
Photos By Dan Monick
Ralph “Sonny” Barger lives by one rule: treat others the way you want them to treat you. Show him respect and he’ll graciously shake your hand; steal his bike and he’ll crush your hand in a vise. It ain’t complicated-just another example of traveling light on the road of life for the man
JUDY BLUME
By Caleb Neelon
Photos By Travis Roozze
Whenever author Judy Blume visits a group of kids, she says, “someone-and it’s always been a boy-will ask me, ‘So how much do you make?’” With an astonishing 75 million-plus books in print, it does beg the question, though you might have to be a nine-year-old boy to have the gumption to ask it.
YOKO ONO
By Caroline Ryder
Photos By Michael Lavine
Among Yoko Ono’s many talents, she has an uncanny knack for being misunderstood. She enervated audiences as a singer with the Plastic Ono Band, her high-pitched wails cracking wine glasses everywhere. Her art was ridiculed.
BRIAN GRAZER
By Caroline Ryder
Photos By Jeremy and Claire Wiess
No matter how big-time they are, producers are never as famous as directors…unless they’re Brian Grazer, that is. Typically, producers are the businesspeople, the deal makers behind the scenes, lurking in the shadows.
MARGARET CHO
By Margaret Cho
I have never, not even once, thought of myself as an icon, although I will admit some people have used the I-word to describe me. Still, it seems to be an awfully important thing to be-an ICON. I don’t know if I actually qualify.
LUTHER CAMPBELL
By Moe Tkacik
Photos By Aaron Cobbett
If sex was the equivalent of genocidal fascism- and apparently in the late ‘80s it sort of was-the saga of Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell would be like a real-life version of The Producers: man produces preposterously offensive musical performance and ends up with a smash hit when the audience can’t tell the difference
HULK HOGAN
By Caroline Ryder
Illustration By Shepard Fairey
Even if you think of professional wrestling as performance art for rednecks, it’s hard not to have a soft spot for Hulk Hogan. He’s the charismatic giant with the platinum-blond hair, the red and yellow bandana, and, at one point, the largest arms in the world (the so-called “24-inch Pythons”).
CHUCK CLOSE
By Alex Lukas
Photos By Adam Amengual
If you know what a Chuck Close painting looks like, you know what Chuck Close looks like. His dramatically over sized portraits, a large number depicting the artist himself, have been a staple in major museums since the 1970s.
ED TEMPLETON
By Scott Indrisek
Photos By Adam Wallacavage
Southern California native Ed Templeton is a study in contradictions. He’s a non-smoking, teetotaling, vegan “hippie who hates hippies,” and a former pro skateboarding prodigy who went on to launch a fine-art career. He’s one half of that ultimate modern anomaly-the happily married couple-and is currently an editor for ANP, a free-of-charge, free-of-advertising art magazine.
MARK BURNETT
By Anne Keehn
Photos By Mark Burnett Productions
Mark Burnett has made millions by capitalizing on people’s need for social approval. Says Burnett, the producer and creator of reality TV mega-hits Survivor, The Apprentice, The Contender, and Rock Star, “You try to tap into emotion. Social exclusion is a massive fear for people.”
Twiggy
By Wendy Worth
W: You originally were going to be a fashion designer, weren’t you?
T: That’s what the irony is. All those years ago when I was still at school, I was insane, like most teenage girls are, about fashion. Barbara Hulanicki was one of my idols. And I still think she’s one of the greatest designers ever. [...]
ELVIRA
By Caroline Ryder
Photos By Dan Monick
With her towering raven beehive, blood-red lips, and sprayed-on gown slit to the thigh, wisecracking horror- film hostess Elvira is as synonymous with Halloween as the Jack O’Lantern. In fact, the Elvira costume and wig, launched in 1985, is thought to be the best-selling female Halloween costume in history. “Elvira is to Halloween what Santa [...]
SLASH
By Caroline Ryder
Photos By Jeremy and Claire Weiss
Maybe it’s his top hat. Maybe it’s his ‘fro. maybe it’s the near-death drug experiences. Or maybe it’s his guitar, played cacophonous and dirty, his solos providing a mighty riposte to the howls of Guns N’ Roses mate Axl Rose on Appetite for Destruction, the band’s debut album and the masterpiece of 1980s Sunset Strip
RAYMOND PETTIBON
By Jeff Penalty
Photos By Bryan Sheffield
When Raymond Pettibon says, “Joan Jett has a bigger dick than Hulk Hogan,” he means it as an insult to Hogan and a compliment to Jett, not the other way around. His proclamation comes after I tell him that Hogan and Jett may potentially share the pages of SWINDLE’s Icons Issue with him.
GURU
By Aaron Kaufman
Photos By Abby Drucker
As one half of Gang Starr, Guru repeatedly changed the direction of hip-hop, creating an island in the midst of the mainstream that celebrated the form by continually destroying it. For over 10 years, Guru and DJ Premier changed the recipe of hip-hop by insisting that it could do more and be more. The duo [...]