“Well, ain’t that poster love?”
For those of you not already familiar with it, BEAT is an independently published quarterly music magazine and they have just published their 5th Anniversary Issue, Special Poster Edition featuring David Bowie.
Those of you of a certain age will remember Bowie’s ISOLAR tour programmes of 1976 and 1978, printed on newspaper stock. This double-size edition is akin to those in terms of size and paper stock.
The 40-page, colour and black and white, A2 publication (huge) folds out into an impressive A1 (massive) and the bowie content amounts to 9 x A2 portraits, 9 x A2 artwork pages and 2 delicious A1 posters.
Our montage really doesn’t do the mag justice in terms of understanding the scale of this issue of BEAT.
As explained by Editor-in-Chief, Hanna Hanra, the magazine was ready to roll on the day DB passed. Some last minute text changes were quickly made before BEAT was rushed off to the printers once more.
Here’s an excerpt from Hanna’s editorial…
When I sat down to write this, his 25th album, (25th!) had just been released. Life was good. David Bowie was 69. I didn’t get very
far with writing anything because we were on deadline with the issue, this special issue celebrating both our fifth anniversary and
the release of David Bowie’s new album. DB had seen a copy of BEAT, he liked it, and had wanted to let us run some pictures.
All the yesses in the world sparked through my blood when his publicist rang me, tears streamed down my cheeks. We’ll make it really
special! We’ll run some new pictures and some archive ones! We’ll make it twice the size!
His death feels like the earth has stopped mid spin, an enormous shuddering surprise, my feet tripping over themselves below me.
But of course, that’s just like him – full of surprises.
Helping BEAT celebrate for this issue, is a David Bowie gallery curated by artist Sue Webster, featuring:
Tracey Emin
Tim Noble
Scott King
Kingsley Ifill
Toby Mott
Jeremy Deller
There’s also a 10 favourite things about David Bowie list by Kate Moss, not to mention two different covers for this edition of BEAT, by Sue Webster (see the two different covers bottom right in our montage).
BEAT is free at your local vintage/record/magazine store, but for obvious reasons it will be snapped up quickly and both versions can be purchased here online.
#DavidBowie #BowieBEAT #BowiePress