This is the home page for Raven, a zine I started making in 1982 and published in 2025. In the early 1980s I was a teenager with a film camera that I took everywhere. I photographed the clubs I went to in London, the people I met and the places I went to. My life changed after that time, and it did for the people in the zine too.
The Playlist is on Spotify here: Raven Playlist
The St. Moritz Club is still in Wardour Street, Soho. Helen, Carol, Bobby and the rest of the group I haven't seen for a long time, apart from Wiskey who is still a good friend.
Virgin Prunes were an Irish post-punk band formed out of the same Lypton Village group of Dublin teenagers that also created U2.'...If I Die, I Die' appears in many lists of the top post-punk albums of all time.
Gavin Friday left Virgin Prunes in 1986 and continued recording, painting, writing and performing both as a solo artist and in collaboration with Maurice Seezer, Sinead O'Connor, Dave Ball, Bono and many others on music, film and TV projects. In 2024 he released the Top 40 album 'Ecce Homo', produced by Dave Ball. The album includes the song 'Caberotica' which references the period in 1982 when he was in London.
John Balance formed Coil in 1982 with Peter Christopherson, having been part of Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle respectively. Over the next 22 years he produced an extraordinary range of music, art and performance heavily influenced by the occult. John Balance died tragically young in 2004. His life and work were recently commemorated at an exhibition at GalleryX in Dublin, which featured one of the images in Raven.
Dik Evans was the co-founder and guitarist in Virgin Prunes and a co-founder and early member of U2. After leaving Virgin Prunes in 1984 he continued as a solo artist and co-founded the band The Kid Sisters.
I've known Wiskey since we were teenagers in North London. He introduced me to clubbing and to my wife Sue, who he met when they were both studying at the London College of Fashion. He was photographed a lot in the early eighties and features in various books about the period. Wiskey is still working as an artist, storyteller and writer and we are still good friends.
Simon Withers became an architect, and now teaches at the University of Greenwich in London. He grew up with members of Spandau Ballet in North London and became their stage/lighting designer.
I am donating all proceeds from the sale of Raven zine to The Survivors Trust, the largest umbrella agency for specialist rape and sexual abuse support services in the UK. If you would like a copy of Raven in return for any donation you can make, DM me on Instagram @hollinssimon or use the Contact form at the top of this page.
