• Forty Years of Phantom of the Paradise

    We open on a blood red, pixilated screen, so tightly rotoscoped that Ken Morse must have had to have a lie down afterwards. As the camera twists away we hear the urgent and distinctly imitable voice of Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling telling the tale of Swan (“he has no other name”), sonic savant and pop pioneer, the man who “brought the blues to Britain and Liverpool to America.” As the camera uncorks, a right handed thread, to a chorus of whining synthesizers, we find that Swan is looking to inaugurate his own Xanadu: “The Paradise – the ultimate rock palace”.…