Granny Takes a Trip: High Fashion and High Times at the Wildest Rock 'n' Roll Boutique

The story of the legendary 60s boutique, Granny Takes a Trip, and the lives and stories of the eccentric characters who visited the shop

Granny Takes A Trip was more than just a shop and a fashion brand; it was the original rock and roll clothes boutique, the template for all that followed. What started as an odd retail venture/art installation in a depressed part of London known as World's End became an international byword for glam decadence in Manhattan and Hollywood, combining flamboyant style and all manner of countercultural activity to attract everyone from Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg to Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, the Beatles, and Lou Reed.

Unfolding over a decade-and-a-half, this tumultuous story invokes a cast of often unique, sometimes entitled, unusually talented and troubled individuals on a collective mission to shake up austere, repressed, class-ridden Britain and white bread America. Some achieved this at great personal cost as darkness, addiction and tragedy stalked those behind the extraordinary shop facades.

Much mythologised but never told, this cautionary tale has now found its definitive chronicler in celebrated cultural historian Paul Gorman who has had access to first-hand accounts from all the principal figures, as well as notes for a memoir and a much-treasured scrapbook by Freddie Hornik, the tailoring entrepreneur who survived the death marches of central Europe after WW2 to acquire Granny Takes A Trip in the late 60s and transform into an unparalleled pop cultural force.

Listeners can find a selection of key photos and images from the history of Granny Takes a Trip in the accompanying PDF.