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331.
WHITE STUFF #1-8 (London: February 1977 - October 1978), all published.
4to. Each issue printed on different colour paper, rectos only (except final two issues, rectos and versos). 10pp.-16pp., stapled at top corner (except #8, side-stapled). Illustrated.
A complete set of Sandy Robertson’s fanzine, inspired by Mark Perry's Sniffin’ Glue and named after the lyric from “Ain’t It Strange” by Patti Smith, around whom most of the news and content is focused and whose image appears on the front cover of every issue (in an interview with Lisa Robinson for the January 1976 issue of Hit Parader, Smith talks about her earliest musical influences and uses the phrase in a different sense: “Little Richard got my mind at six and never stopped, it was just one thing after another… I never really liked the white stuff, it embarrassed me.”).
In his oral history of Rough Trade (whose Notting Hill shop was the main outlet for fanzines and a gathering point for their creators), Neil Taylor observed that White Stuff “looked beyond the accepted parameters of the genre”, and its content, as Robertson told Taylor, included “the kind of things that I thought would be of interest to her [Patti Smith]. That was the reasoning.” (“Document and Eyewitness: An Intimate History of Rough Trade”. London: Orion Books, 2010, p.59).
As well as Rough Trade, it was sold at Compendium in Camden Town, BOY and Town Records on the King’s Road, and other retailers in London; in Scotland through Ripped & Torn (whose editor, Tony Drayton, put Robertson on to a sympathetic printer in Cambridge after the early issues had been xeroxed at Prontaprint); and in the US by Greg Shaw at Bomp and the Punk Shop in Hollywood. Robertson subsequently went on to become features editor at Sounds and interviewed, among others, Kim Fowley, the Runaways and Throbbing Gristle, all of whom feature in White Stuff.
i) White Stuff #1 - A Rock N Roll Magazine For The Modern World. February 1977. Xerox on blue paper. 12pp. Front cover prints Michel Esteban’s photograph of Patti Smith sitting up against an anarchist graffiti-laden wall in Paris in 1976, and an extract from a text on rock music by Jeff Nuttall. Contents include a piece on Lou Reed and brief reviews of singles by the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. This debut issue was made after Robertson (together with Alex Fergusson, later of ATV and Psychic TV) arrived in London from Renfrew (Robertson had first seen Patti Smith perform live at the Roundhouse, later telling Neil Taylor that he “threw on to the stage a book of my poems, which I’d self-published, and also a copy of Colin Wilson’s The Outsider”).
ii) White Stuff #2 - A Rock N Roll Magazine For Teen Aesthetes. March 1977. Xerox on pink paper. 10pp. Includes an article on Kim Fowley and the Runaways; reviews of records by Patti Smith, Snatch and the Clash; poems by Hans Arp and Antonin Artaud; and notes on Harry Crosby (author of “Black Sun”), whose opium pipe Patti Smith is shown holding in the notes enclosed with “Radio Ethiopia”, and who, Robertson notes, David Bowie as “The Thin White Duke” resembled.
iii) White Stuff #3 - A Rock N Roll Magazine For Young Existentialists. April/May 1977. Xerox on pale green paper. 11pp. Prints Patti Smith’s interview from Andy Warhol’s Interview (October 1973), and “You Can’t Say ‘Fuck’ in Radio Free America” by Patti Smith, reprinted from The Yipster Times; reviews of records by Brian Eno, the Hollywood Stars, and the Runaways; and a piece on Patti Smith bootlegs. By this point Sandy Robertson had started writing for Sounds, and freelancing for New Order, James Marshall’s Fort Lauderdale fanzine dedicated to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Resurrection!”.
iv) White Stuff #4 - A Rock N Roll Magazine For The New Romanticism. July 1977. Xerox on orange paper. 11pp. Front cover Kodalith of Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe from the “Horses” session. Prints an article by Jon Savage on Wilhelm Reich (“Birdland” on Horses is based on Reich’s life), and several full-page, high-contrast photos of Patti Smith. Dawn Wirth, an “L.A. supergirl” from North Hollywood, joined as “USA correspondent/photographer” from this issue on (Wirth also helped out with fan clubs for the Weirdos and the Mumps and worked at Bomp at the weekends). White Stuff now distributed in the UK by Rough Trade.
v) White Stuff #5 - A Rock N Roll Magazine For International Heroes. September/October 1977. Xerox on pale yellow paper. 13pp. Contents include Frank Letchford on Austin Osman Spare; holograph notes and artwork on Holiday Inn stationery by Patti Smith, reproduced in facsimile; notes on the poetry of Patti Smith by Pete Smith; “Patti, The Stones & Rimbaud” by Colin Murray; and a half-page ad. for Throbbing Gristle’s “Second Annual Report”.
vi) White Stuff #6. December 1977. Xerox on white paper. 12pp. Front cover photo of Patti Smith holding a paperback copy of Francis Carco’s “Depravity” by Suzan Carson. Includes Frank Letchford on Henry Miller; Patti Smith’s “Rimbaud” broadside, reproduced in facsimile; and a facsimile reproduction of a receipt signed by Smith from The Portobello Hotel Bar & Restaurant in London (October 19, 1977).
vii) White Stuff #7. February 1978. Printed in blue ink on pink paper. 11pp. Reproduces in facsimile a flyer for the PSG at CBGB; Sandy Robertson on Helen Reddy; Colin Murray on Blue Öyster Cult (a favourite of the editor’s); “Dada & Surrealism” by Paddy Murdock + poems by Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard.
viii) White Stuff #8. October 1978. Printed in black on white paper. 16pp. Front cover photo of Patti Smith by Suzan Carson, taken in LA in November 1974. Contents include “The Jane Suck/Patti Smith Interview” (4pp.); reprints of Patti Smith’s review of “Planet Waves” by Bob Dylan and “1969 Live” by the Velvet Underground; Jerry Dreva (artist and co-founder of Les Petites Bon-Bons); “Poem #2” by Richard Hell and Patti Smith (with added text reproduced in holograph facsimile); and Amanda Lear by Sandy Robertson (4pp.).
Staples slightly rusted, with attendant rust marks on some issues, otherwise Near Fine. All issues are scarce, especially the early ones, and full sets are almost impossibly rare.
