Punk bible Slash lives again
The renegade late-’70s magazine is honored with a new book and an exhibit.
It all began as an art project.
It was the mid-1970s, and Los Angeles was cheap and stuffed with artists. Melanie Nissen was an amateur photographer managing a bookstore in Palos Verdes. Steve Samiof was working for a group of small newspapers on Crenshaw Boulevard. The couple, who had exchanged paintings, collages and artsy Polaroids, wanted to collaborate on something bigger.
“Everyone was creative,” recalls Samiof over a round of icy drinks on a blistering afternoon in Hollywood. “It was really easy to just pretend your life was art. Everything you would do would be art.”
Adds Nissen with a wry smile, “It was sex and art. What could be better?” Samiof chuckles. “Her photography,” he says, “motivated me to want to do whatever that project that ended up being.”
That project ended up being Slash, the late-’70s music magazine known for its bombastic antidisco editorials, its unflinching photography and its boozesoaked interviews with a who’s who of early punk
Exhibition:
Where: 4859 Fountain Ave., Hollywood
When: Through Aug. 19, noon-5 p.m. Monday to Friday
Book:
Edited by J.C. Gabel and Brian Roettinger; designed by Roettinger. Hat & Beard: 500-plus pp., $60, hatandbeard.com