Beyond The Candelabra

Happy 2025 everybody!

Recently, I came across this funny (and perhaps apocryphal) newspaper article from the Staffordshire Evening Sentinel which details Liberace’s visit to a punk clothing shop in London on May 21st, 1983.¹

While the article doesn’t specify which punk clothing shop Liberace may have visited, my friend and punk history blogger The Hotter Spot has theorized that it may have been BOY London in Chelsea, formerly known as Acme Attractions. Acme Attractions originally marketed itself as a punk clothing shop in the early 1970s, but by the 1980s, the shop would widen its style and merchandise selection to better account for the growing overlap between London’s punk and reggae subcultures.²

Unlike other performers who first found fame in the 1950s, Liberace was quick to applaud and embrace many new styles of music and fashion as they evolved around (and often because of) him – serving as a direct source of inspiration for rock n’ roll pioneer Little Richard, avant-garde performance artist John Sex, pop superstar Michael Jackson, and fellow Las Vegas legend Elvis Presley. Many hair metal, glam rock, rap, and hip hop artists can also trace the origins of their style back to Liberace whose fearless commitment to bold costumes and on-stage theatrics helped shape the mold for all who followed.

Interviewed about his enduring cultural impact in 1984, Liberace appeared delighted to still be winning over new fans well into his 60s, grinning to reporter Carl Apone of The Pittsburgh Press that “[everybody] from punk rock musicians to society women with children” were in attendance at his series of sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall.³ “It was fun seeing the different kinds of people [in the lobby],” he continued. “The punk rock people said it was the thing to do. In their underground papers they compared me to Michael Jackson and Boy George and said I had opened the doors for these entertainers to be themselves. So kids wanted to go see what this guy was all about. I am outrageous and they like the furs and the pomp.”⁴

While we’ll probably never know whether Liberace actually visited BOY London or not, you can read more about punk history and culture over on my friend’s Substack and Instagram!

1. “Hair Stood on End,” Evening Sentinel , May 21, 1983. ↩︎
2. Don Letts, “‘Dem Crazy Baldheads Are My Mates,’” The Guardian, October 24, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/oct/24/artsfeatures4. ↩︎
3. Carl Apone, “Liberace: Even Punk Rockers Listen to Him Now,” The Pittsburgh Press, May 20, 1984. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎