PROFILE | Marden Hill
Mark Daniels, Marden Hill.
Rod Stewart, a guest, met Ronnie Wood there for the first time and is said to have written ‘Maggie May’ in his room. Other musicians such as Donovan and Jimi Hendrix were also visitors, while Mick Jagger had been to a party there, remarkably as one of Richard Lipsey’s students while he was teaching at the London School of Economics. Acclaimed poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were also residents for a time – the latter was very much intertwined with it all, as his then lover was Richard Lipsey’s first wife, the tragic Assia Wevill. Daniels says that partly due to a lack of business acumen, and what Lipsey describes as “the antagonism that came about as a result of the various couplings and uncouplings”, Danad Design as an entity only lasted until 1962. It wasn’t the cue for the end of Marden Hill House as a place to facilitate creativity, nor did it mean the end of Barry Daniels’ connection with what was to remain his family home for many years, even as the myriad rooms welcomed new people who came and went, adding to the wealth of artistic output in the process. It continued to provide launching pads for new ideas,
including, in 1976, the emergence of highly influential proto-punk band Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers. Borne from the New York scene and the embers of the New York Dolls, their move to England – and with Marden Hill as a base – saw them break ground, build a UK audience, and get on board with old Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren and the fledgling Sex Pistols. A decade later and it was the brothers’ turn to use the house as their musical inspiration. “I was playing saxophone in a band called the Klaxon 5, who had caught the interest of the Blanco y Negro label,” recalls Lipsey, whereas Daniels was “working with the earliest notion of vocal samples, basically film clips,” he says, “and a lot of what I was working on was film-score pastiche. No beats behind it.” Their mutual interest in soundtracks resulted in a Sixty Minute Man project for Él Records. As Daniels continued to develop his music, he adopted the name Marden Hill and in the early 1990s was an early signing for James Lavelle’s innovative Mo’ Wax label, before switching to On Delancey Street to work with the “other member of the group, Ashley Beedle”.
Indeed, the celebrated DJ’s first mix was for Daniels, and it was Beedle that remarked, while they worked in the studio at Marden Hill, “This is weird. It’s hip-hop but it’s really trippy; it’s trip-hop.” Chalk up another one to the house. Marden Hill House today is primarily a series of smart apartments, yet Daniels and Lipsey feel – though it may have changed dramatically in terms of body – it hasn’t lost its soul. “I’m not saying it’s doing it now, but who’s to say it won’t be paving the way for the next thing?” asks Lipsey. Daniels tells the story of a new resident, contemporary artist and Banksy stablemate Charlie ‘Pure Evil’ UzzellEdwards (whose father John was an acclaimed painter), “who told me when he first came, even without knowing the history, he thought there was an energy, that the place had something about it.” 2000AD: The Comic Art of Subversion is at Danad Gallery, Pegs Lane, Hertford until 17 March danaddesign.com The album Mark Daniels Anthology is out now anthologyrecordings.co.uk 59