Check out this piece that Goldie made to promote Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. Spraying paint, then bullets was the order of the day for this one. Goldies unique piece is now hanging outside the Truman Brewery in East London.

Check this video from the Vintage Festival at Goodwood. Goldie was there lending his support to the Forest Friendly campaign. B&Q had donated materials for a skateramp, built using 100% sustainable FSC certified wood. Goldie spent some time at the ramp &  donated the skateboard he painted in the video to the campaign.

Find out more about the Forest Friendly campaign here

Bid on the skateboard at ebay here

Goldie sprays a West Midlands Travel double decker bus for Bass M&B’s new cocktail drink, Pink Lady, West Midlands Travel Walsall spray booth, 1989. Image – Martin Jones

The Pink Lady bus was one of several commercial commissions and trade shows I obtained for Goldie between 1987 and 1989. Others included Swatch Watches skateboard ramps and British Telecom.

The commission was offered by top London advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty. I think they intended to play on the irony of commissioning the hero of graffiti artists throughout the UK with an opportunity to cover an entire bus with graffiti – legally.

As I recall it was done over a weekend, because the spray booth was used for normal maintenance during the week. At the time Goldie was living in London so the agency put him up in a nearby hotel. It was one of two murals to promote Bass M&B’s new cocktail drink Pink Lady: the other was a live mural on a hoarding in Soho Road Handsworth, which was photographed and printed up onto large sheets for poster sites up and down the route of Handsworth carnival.

I was told by the agency that the bus did run, but it proved to be a magnet for fans who travelled from all parts of the country just to ride on Goldie’s bus. Eventually drivers refused to take the bus out because of the massive attention it attracted and it was withdrawn from service.

The 40’ foot long Goldie mural sprayed live for BBC Children in Need, November 1988 – image – Martin Jones

This was an attempt to establish a new category of record, specifically for spraycan mural painting. The occasion we chose was the annual BBC Children in Need telethon, based at BBC TV studios at Pebble Mill in Birmingham in November 1988.

The challenge was to execute a 40’ x 8’ mural, live and non-stop over 12 hours. The BBC themselves made and primed the mural panels and erected them on an outside wall of the Pebble Mill building. We received donations of paint from the UK distributor of Buntlack,paints and from Nicholls paints in Walsall who used to mix Goldie’s special colours. Viewers were invited to ring in and pledge money for the successful completion of the epic undertaking.

Goldie began the mural live at 12 noon, on the BBC Pebble Mill talk show, interviewed by Playschool’s former presenter Floella Benjamin. Over the next 12 hours, virtually non-stop, he sprayed this magical forest landscape, which was inspired by the Cheech Wizard cartoons of New York artist Vaughn Bode.

Cheech Wizard is seen reading a book of stories in the far left of the piece, and his apprentice, the Lizard called Razzberry, is seen sitting at a desk on the far right.

The mural was completed in the final part of the telethon, at 12 midnight. The Radio 2 deejay Simon Bates was the host for the completion, walking the entire length of the mural and congratulating Goldie for his supreme effort. Goldie was then invited on stage, waving goodbye alongside other celebs who had raised money that night.

Goldie at Sun Street factory studio, Wolverhampton in 1987, with his ‘TAT’ mural. Image – Martin Jones

Goldie created a range of canvases experimenting with different styles for the ‘Rockin’ the City’ show in 1987. In recognition of his outstanding work he was made an honorary member of New York’s TAT crew and invited to return to New York to work with them again.

In 1988 he went back, carrying out several late night pieces in the yards and lay-ups on the New York subway, teaming up with his friend Vulcan once more. He extended his stay to visit Florida, where he met his father again after many years’ separation, and worked in the Miami Flea Market doing airbrush t-shirts. It was during this time that he met a trader who cast gold grills that fit over teeth, whom he asked to teach him the trade.

When he returned to the UK, he began a small business in Walsall making custom grills and gold rings for the Hip Hop community as well as carrying out mural commissions I obtained for him with a range of commercial clients such as Swatch Watches, British Telecom and Bass Mitchell and Butlers. He also appeared live on BBC Pebble Mill at One, defending his art form in a debate with local police and the Birmingham council cleansing department, and created a mural for a debate on graffiti art on ITV’s Central Weekend Friday night current affairs discussion show.

Goldie and the Transatlantic Federation: left to right, Nicer, Goldie, Brim, Bio, T Kid, Vulcan; Brighton sea front 1987.

In 1987 I brought over some of the best graffiti artists in New York to create an exhibition of canvases alongside Goldie and Bristol’s 3D (later of Massive Attack). The New York crew was TAT (Tuff Ass Team), two of whom (Bio and Nicer) are still painting today as part of TATS, a successful and prolific company carrying out public mural projects. T Kid and Vulcan are still painting too and all are considered to be among the pantheon of all time greats.

The picture was taken on Brighton sea front. I decided to arrange some R and R for the crew after their transatlantic flight, before taking them up to Wolverhampton where the exhibition was to be created.

I hired an old factory unit near Low Level station, between Heathtown and the city centre of Wolverhampton. Each artist had four 12’ x 8’ canvases to paint and four 4’ x 4’s, plus a 40’ replica of a New York subway car, which was a team project. Vulcan put all his three large canvases together to create an immense ‘Triptych’ burner featuring his name in elaborate multi-layered wildstyle letters.

We obtained a lot of coverage for the project, positive and negative in equal measure. Central TV filmed an excellent arts documentary that truly reflected the background to the movement and the motivation of the artists. However BBC Midlands Today chose to associate the show with bus tagging. An ignorant yet influential local councillor ordered that our grant – that had already been approved – be withdrawn.

Goldie mural, in the foyer of Hawthorne House, Chervil Rise, Heathtown, 1986.

Goldie had a flat in Hawthorne House, a high rise block in Heathtown, Wolverhampton, where he went to live after leaving care at the age of 18.

It became the centre of operations for a vast campaign by Goldie and his night time crew ‘The Wild Criminals’ to cover the estate in over 70 graffiti pieces, in stairwells, underground car parks, on garage doors, walkways and walls. Whilst technically illegal, the murals received a lot of support from Heathtown residents who identified with the social messages they conveyed about crime, poverty, alienation and the broken society.

The council eventually recognised his talent by commissioning him to carry out a large commission on the approach walkway to Long Ley school, which was featured in Henry Chalfant’s book alongside his gallery mural ‘Future World Machines’.

Writers travelled to Heathtown from all over the country to see Goldie’s murals to the extent that they became an informal tourist attraction. Later he formed a ‘United Graffiti Federation’ for his fans, complete with membership cards.

Birdie and Goldie run past their ground breaking ‘Future World Machines’ mural which was produced live as a showcase work for the public, at ‘Night Writers’, the Supreme Graffiti Team’s first gallery show, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, August 1986. Photo: Martin Jones.

Goldie’s Future World Machines was undoubtedly the finest mural to come from the Supreme Graffiti Team’s first ever art gallery show. The show marked a significant departure because the work was sprayed onto boards and canvases for the first time rather than walls.

It was the result of months of experimentation in sketch books and on walls throughout Heathtown in Wolverhampton, where Goldie lived at the time. The half- man/ half-robot figure, glass bubble, vents and pipes were developed in close collaboration with Chris Harvey, who was the group’s illustrator/cartoonist. They drew much inspiration from the film Blade Runner, analysing the film on video, frame by frame.

The colours were specially developed by Goldie. We built a fruitful relationship with the manager of Nicholls, a car paint business in Walsall, who allowed Goldie into their workshops to supervise the custom mixing of colours to his own precise specifications. It enabled Goldie to produce just the right shades of red, pink and blue for the lettering, and the dull brown and grey for the panels. Another unique feature is how the panels change colour under the dome. Indeed the panelling became something of a trademark feature and was also used in ‘Global Destruction’, his entry for the Bridlington World Graffiti Competition in 1987.

Future World Machines was selected by Henry Chalfant to be one of those representing the UK, for his 1987 book ‘Spraycan Art’ about the best graffiti art around the world.

Goldie with B Boys members Gary ‘Birdie’ Burns and Hanifa McQueen Hudson, Park Village, Wolverhampton, July 1986. Mural by Birdie. Image – Martin Jones

On our final day in the Big Apple in June 1986 we hit a clothes store that specialised in rare/one-off Hip Hop designs and brought back some amazing gear including a red Reebok Trooper tracksuit, goose-downer jackets, Kangol hats and Cazal sunglasses. The picture shows Goldie with fellow graf artist/dancer Birdie and B-girl Hanifa modelling the latest fashions.

Hats were an important in style terms and from 85 onwards Kangol hats were the most sought-after item. Ironically these were not available in the UK – they were made by a long-established firm of gentlemen’s hat-makers in the Lake District of the UK and exported to the US where they were adopted by groups like Run DMC. To get one you had to know someone in New York who would send you one (or go there yourself on a shopping expedition, as we did). The other must-have items at this time were belt buckles with your street name on them.

The B Boys had several sets of tracksuits for public performances in the years 84-86. I was lucky enough to know an importer/ wholesaler who was happy to let us have complete sets of tracksuits free, so B Boys could promote them. We began with ‘Australian’ for B Boys’ televised battle with Coventry’s Future Shock. For their performance on the Electro Rock film, we were given red and blue Kappa tracksuits.

When the film was released, I approached Puma directly, who agreed to fit out the crew with complete sets of tracksuits and trainers for a promotional tour and TV appearances. B Boys must have thought all their Christmases had come at once as they were invited to roam the Puma factory and choose what they wanted.

In June 1986 I took Goldie and Birdie (the Supreme Graffiti Team) to New York to meet some of the founders of the Hip Hop movement. Our itinerary was arranged by Henry Chalfant, who was highly influential in fostering early Hip Hop culture in New York. (He set up some of the Rock Steady Crew’s first public performances and later went on to achieve worldwide recognition for graffiti art through his books ‘Subway Art’ and ‘Spraycan Art’.)

At Henry’s suggestion, we stayed at the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street, a famous place where rock stars stayed when visiting New York – and where Andy Warhol made his film ‘Chelsea Girls’. The weather was incredibly hot and most of all humid – you only had to step outside the air-conditioned hotel and you became soaked with sweat. I remember us drinking full litre bottles of Coke to remain hydrated – and eating lots of giant pizzas.

The visit could not have been more eventful, literally from day one. Henry arranged for Goldie and Birdie to dance in a commercial for Ford Cars in Grand Army Plaza. Later in the visit they met all-time graffiti great Seen at his airbrush T-shirt studio, Ken Swift of the Rock Steady Crew, ‘Wild Style’ film star and graf artist Lee Quinones, and were taken on a tour of the city’s graf sites by T-Kid of The Nasty Boys crew.

They also filmed the second part of Dick Fontaine’s Channel Four documentary (called Bombin’), showing Goldie and Birdie on the Staten Island ferry and meeting up with Brim and Bio of TAT crew and Hip Hop godfather Afrika Bambaataa at the Bronx River Projects housing estate.

The visit was highly significant in Goldie’s development. It expanded his horizons beyond the UK and brought him into contact with a range of highly influential contacts who have continued to inspire him in his subsequent career.