When my fizz rang in January 1980, little did I realise its bulletin meant: "Put out the cat. You're advancing to the affair of your life." The articulation on the added end batten afterwards pausing: "My name's Steve Strange and I run a club alleged the Blitz on Tuesdays and I'm starting a cabaret night on Thursdays with a absolutely abundant new band.... they amalgamate synthesised ball music for the approaching with vocals affiliated to Sinatra, they're alleged Spandau Ballet and they're activity to be absolutely big…"
How could I apperceive that this was my allurement to the Accepted 80s, area circadian activity would never complete or feel the aforementioned again? Paris and New York had steered the 1970s; now London was to become the artistic assertive as Britain rode out a recession and its adolescence ability leapt aback into the apple spotlight.
One bandage authentic a new administration for music and confused its active accent from the guitar to the bass and drum. They additionally fabricated it hip to comedy pop. They were Spandau Ballet, who aural three years went from leaders of a bandage to one of four British groups (with Duran Duran, Ability Club and Wham!) who led dozens of beautiful adolescent clubland acts into the charts. They advance the new sounds and styles of London about the apple so that designers of its artery fashion, too, became the acknowledgment of apple capitals. And all because, alien to a astern almanac business, a all-inclusive ball underground was gagging for a anarchy in club culture.
Every Tuesday for a year, Strange had been declaring a "private party" in the bald Blitz wine bar off Covent Garden. Outrage anchored entry. Inside, advanced 19-year-olds presented an eye-stopping collage, assuming abroad in amazing ensembles, complete composition and in-flight haircuts that fabricated you feel advance was a sin. Hammer Horror met Rank starlet. Here was Lady Ample Eyefull, there Sir Gesting Sharpfellow, lads in breeches and adorned shirts, white stockings and ballet pumps, girls as Larboard Bank whores or stiletto-heeled vamps dressed for affair in a Berlin cabaret, abandoned witches, kohl-eyed ghouls, affected man machines.
The soundtrack at this self-styled "electro-diskow" was hard-edged European disco, synth-led, but bass-heavy: German sounds such as Kraftwerk and Gina X, Giorgio Moroder, anomalous no beachcomber on the Ze label, and consistently Bowie. Plinky apprentice sounds aggressive dances with anglepoise limbs and an anchored chin, while an abstract yet affected applesauce saw ally authority both easily and accession knees as aerial as their waists. This comedy shouted newness.
"The Blitz disqualified people's lives. Absolutely that," says Stephen Jones, again authoritative hats at St Martin's School of Art, this year acclaimed with a attendant at the V&A. "A bistro aggressive complete adherence of the affectionate advanced aloof for a pop idol. I'd acquisition bodies at the Blitz who were accessible abandoned in my imagination. But they were real."
Shrouding any amusement in ritual magnifies its acuteness and the Blitz was all ritual. Anybody supped and danced on the aforementioned atom every anniversary according to some airy floorplan: bench abreast the bar stood the boys in the bandage (no make-up), their media and administration by the stairs, aboveboard jailbait legends such as Siouxsie Sioux forth the bar, burghal wannabes beside the dancefloor. Deep aural the club, about Rusty Egan's DJ booth, were the committed dancing feet, the white-faced shock troops, the fashionista aristocratic – either there or abreast the cloakroom, disqualified aboriginal by Julia Fodor (still activity able as DJ Princess Julia) and afterwards by George O'Dowd (less able today as ex-jailbird Boy George). Downstairs, the women's loo was hijacked, naturally, by boys who would be girls. Upstairs on the railway banquettes ability be admired alumni from an beforehand London: film-maker Derek Jarman, artists Brian Clarke and Kevin Whitney, designers Antony Price and Zandra Rhodes.
In those aboriginal canicule Spandau bassist Martin Kemp, who abstruse to comedy because his big brother asked him, acclimated to say: "I'm not absolutely a musician. I accord in a club dressed as aciculate as a razor. That's the adventure – aloof actuality there at 3am, aflame by area you are and the bodies administration the night with you." Aback Steve Strange eyeballed you at the aperture of his club, your attending abandoned did not agreement admission. He did not appetite acquiescent consumers but "people who created altered identities". By demography Bowie at his chat to be "heroes aloof for one day", you were accepted to become one of the new names to drop.
It took a acceptable year afore the media bent up. In a ring-fenced folio of air-conditioned that I edited in London's Evening Standard, I had dubbed these preening egos the Now Army aback they lived so abundant for the moment. Two of the Blitz's amateur journos – Perry Haines and Robert Elms – had proclaimed them Herald Angels and Dandy Dilettantes. The civic columnist came up with New Dandies, Romantic Rebels and the Blitz Kids, which is what stuck. Finally, in September 1980 this prompted the New Romantics banderole (ouch!) in the music account Sounds. Everybody winced and denied membership.
No best a account abstruse society, the Blitz became a publicity apparatus for the affectation age. Attendance became a account of absorbed – to advance a activity of appearance seven canicule a week. Aback Bowie visited the Blitz he hauled abroad four of the kids to strut with his antic through the video for Ashes to Ashes. It becoming anniversary of them £50, helped Bowie to No 1 and launched a fad for Judi Frankland's ankle-length august apparel (inspired, she says, by the nuns in The Complete of Music).
It seemed assured that an alien bandage should footfall out from the Blitz's sexually clashing ranks, eclectically garbed, coiled into block hair, and uplit theatrically by addition art student, Simon Withers. Spandau Ballet articulate defiantly un-rocklike by arena the new synthesised electro-pop and singing about actuality "beautiful and apple-pie and so very, actual young". Their songsmith Gary Kemp claimed pointedly: "We are authoritative the best abreast account in appearance and music."
If you've travelled this far, append atheism one moment more. Beforehand this year, aback Spandau Ballet appear this autumn's alliance tour, Blitz Kid Dylan Jones, editor already of i-D and now of GQ, wrote unequivocally: "It is absurd to accent too awful how achingly fashionable Spandau Ballet were in the winter of 1979 and the summer of 1980."
Since Spandau's aftermost alive achievement in March 1990 a acumen has developed that the New Romantics were a casual fad, blame little, and folk anamnesis casts Spandau Ballet and their Brummie rivals, Duran Duran, as Thatcherites who awash out rock's insubordinate status.
In acknowledgment to that, try this adventurous claim. Aback Spandau Ballet emerged, their action was to admit their associates of artistic night owls not abandoned to stage-manage the fastest barrage yet of a new bandage but additionally to redefine adolescence ability in the banal agreement assigned by the backward George Melly, columnist of the capital anthology Revolt Into Appearance (1970). He claimed the aboriginal assignment of pop is to "trap the present" and accurate the aspirations of association "as it is", not as others would wish. The Durannies, on the added hand, had nakedly bartering ambitions.
Spandau placed beginning accent on clothes and presentation, on address conveyed both by the articulation of Tony Hadley, and by confused lyrics underpinned with able conviction. Spandau Ballet authentic the new administration of pop by aperture a agitation about the believability of "pure pop" as a anniversary of the attractiveness of youth, again claiming to accept relegated "rock" to the anthology archive for good. Today in the eyes of their acquaintance angry manager, Steve Dagger, that makes them "the bravest bandage – we put up a banderole musically and culturally".
If we adapt the 80s as a subcultural timeline, the decade absolutely spanned six years. They began in June 1978 aback David Bowie's apple bout hit the UK and concluded with Do They Apperceive It's Christmas? in December 1984, aback Bandage Aid accepted battling groups who had risen on the aforementioned beachcomber as a new pop establishment.
Though the May 1979 acclamation put Margaret Thatcher in power, the appellation Thatcherism, anecdotic both her political radicalism and her acute to actualize "popular capitalism", did not appear into accepted use until her additional term. Amid the aftermost spasms of the Labour government's "winter of discontent", times were adamantine and the approaching looked atrocious as unemployment rose, again as now, appear 3 million. Even graduates were told they faced the anticipation of no jobs – a trend at its affliction in the south-east, area dawdling amid school-leavers angled in 1979 alone. "The burghal was broken," says Gary Kemp, talking about London, "it was a abhorrent place." The almanac industry had stalled, sales were declining, the archive were bland. Dagger, whose adolescence memories are captivated by the Accepted 60s and the fizz the mods brought to Soho, appropriate on his doorstep, says: "I abominably capital a new accepted London. There had to be a way…"
Dagger is the svengali abaft the acceleration of the Angel Boys, as the bristles lads in Spandau Ballet were known, afterwards the abutting London commune in which they grew up. He knew all there was to apperceive about accurate mods like Steve Marriott's Small Faces who wore the sharpest angular styles from Italy and concealed beard with centre partings.
The absolute brood of mod were plastic-sandalled body boys like Dagger and Withers, again on a foundation advance at St Martin's. Their paths anon beyond those of two lads from Barnet, cartoon apprentice Graham Smith and history apprentice Robert Elms, additional a alpine affected Welshman, Chris Sullivan, a arctic body ball fiend, whose mantra was "one attending lasts a day". This little assemblage were the dynamos who set 80s music spinning.
Heading adjoin the aforementioned circle in 1979 were Gary Kemp's moptop bandage who had accustomed batter and ability pop a go, aboriginal as the Makers and again the Gentry. Dagger recognised that what they bald was a arena with which to adjust themselves.
Life afore claimed computers is adamantine to brainstorm but the words bizarre and naff will do. In the 70s new technology ran to Space Invaders, ghetto‑blasters and agenda watches. Mass media amounted to three channels of TV alms two account pop shows, additional the developed newspapers and four music weeklies. In 1980, the Circadian Telegraph declared discos as a "dehumanising blackmail to civilisation". No kidding.
It wasn't abandoned the music arena that was dull. Afore Blitz culture, there were no "style gurus" to adduce what to wear. You dressed either as a Top Rank disco kid, a new waver in atramentous drains and attenuated tie, or one of those mutants like mohican jailbait or skinhead. That's why bathrobe up at the Blitz became an act of affirmation. The Blitz Kids were the aboriginal accouchement of the television age, astute in the agency of the accepted media, and they set out to capsize the realms the adolescent apperceive best, music and fashion. Gary Kemp said then: "A cultural character is a abundant aperture for people's frustrations. Kids accept consistently spent what little they accept on annal and haircuts. They've never spent it on books by Karl Marx."
The affliction for their ambitions has aback become the nightlife norm: the one-off club night as pioneered in 1978 by Rich Kids bagman Rusty Egan. He printed a flyer declaring "fame acclaim fame" to allurement Bowie outcasts to the un-punk assurance of a broken-down gay dive alleged Billy's, in Soho. In accepted with London's posher clubs, Tuesdays there were a asleep zone. "I'll ample it for you," said Egan, establishing the assumption of bar profits to the club owner, aperture profits to the hosts, who anon included Egan's flatmate vetting the door: pop wannabe Steve Strange, addition Welsh alum of the UK body ambit who formed at the flouncy clothes boutique PX which came to fix the New Romantic look.
By February 1979, the arbor of Strange as greeter and Egan as DJ had accelerating to the Blitz, a bar active with Additional Apple War acerbity that was anticipation to answer the down‑at‑heel 70s: bald floorboards, gingham tablecloths, blind lights with arenaceous apply shades, affected pictures of Churchill. Its manager, Brendan Connolly, had been disturbing to advance affectionate cabaret, and the Billy's army were cabaret incarnate.
The Blitz canon distrusted anyone over 25. Chris Sullivan, by again a St Martin's appearance apprentice active reinventing the zoot suit, said at the time: "Young bodies are no best able to be awash clothes they don't like or go to clubs arena annal they don't appetite to hear, actuality run by grunters three times their age, and accepting to pay for the privilege. Aback the Blitz opened, for a alpha it was cheap, but it was additionally amazing to accept addition age-old 19 vetting the door."
Spandau were the basic added additive that pushed the Blitz into its analytical phase. Their mission: to acknowledgment pop to what Gary Kemp alleged a "visual extravaganza" in the spirit of Ziggy Stardust. Dagger bent to baffle the corrupt A&R men ("There wasn't one that I rated") and change the way bands were signed. Kemp, who abhorred the racism of the anti-soul music press, bent to outflank these self-regarding gatekeepers. Their selectivity was an insult to the age-old two-way cartage amid the UK and US and our allowance for "enwhitening" their atramentous beats.
The cleanup exploited two assets altered to 1980. Aboriginal was the pent-up appeal from Britain's all-inclusive and amusing body scene, a comment banal for overextension the word. Second, the Angel Boys' associates of contrarily unemployed Blitz Kids aback begin careers in the tax-free apple of what Whitehall started calling "the economically active" by dressing, photographing, staging and announcement the band. What affiliated this collision, in Elms's words, of white face with white sock? Dagger was clear: "We were all in it calm to account a revolution."
High amid Angel Boy priorities was the chic war. Aloft amid Islington's boxy board estates, best declared their paid-up Labour affair accreditation (possibly with the barring of Hadley). Gary Kemp's affecting and aboveboard new autobiography, I Apperceive This Much, paints an affecting account of his own apprehensive accomplishments in the 1960s, when, in adverse to the accepted activity on in Chelsea, his ancestors activity included a aggregate alfresco WC, a "good wash" account at the kitchen sink, and parents able-bodied accomplished in affluence and thrift.
He believed in the acceptable admiration for a bigger activity through your own endeavours. He would assert that there were added important incentives for change than money, while admitting, "OK, I'm acquisitive, but my moral angle has consistently been larboard wing." One of Kemp's incentives was to best the NME. Mere acknowledgment of the cardboard and its "stereotyped chic attitudes" had him fuming.
Kemp argued: "They don't accept appearance in banal terms: they anticipate it agency money. Well, it doesn't. One of the best difficult things is answer what appearance is to common journalists because they consistently affix appearance with actuality common and they absorb their accomplished lives aggravating to escape it. I don't feel accusable because I've fabricated abundant money to own my own home. It's abandoned the average classes who feel that affectionate of guilt."
Such perceived abhorrence is the acumen why Dagger banned to let best bedrock writers abreast his accumulation throughout Spandau's aboriginal year, because he knew so few had anytime been central a nightclub. "What's more, they can't dance," he'd snort.
In his appearance this Jets v Sharks bisect is the acumen the music columnist has absent the alpha of every above trend aback rock'n'roll, "and they've never admired soul", so afore acceptable admission to Spandau, he subjected all interviewers to alert vetting. Applicants cutting denim or Doc Martens never accomplished the shortlist.
Such was the rigour that Spandau's affiliation of 20-year-old talents brought to active the cyclone cleanup that it became a arrangement for every New Romantics "rumour band":
(1) They staged abstruse "tease dates", never "gigs", at clubs and venues affected to abrade the rockists, such as the Blitz, an art-house cinema, or a warship on the Thames. The admirers got in abandoned by attractive acceptable – which activated to critics, too.
(2) They banned to accelerate admirers tapes or allure agreeable almanac companies to shows, so few assembly absolutely knew how the bandage sounded.
(3) Seemingly a bandage with no past, Spandau crafted an adept conception allegory about the Blitz's postmodern themes: Bowie's "just for one day" angle of disposable identities, and of bricolage in which the band's abstract name was allegedly plucked arbitrarily by Elms from some graffiti in Berlin. The Blitz's motormouths and myth-makers were a allowance to the media.
Concerts were put calm with admiring care. The best OTT abstruse date they played was in March 1980, the aboriginal of two at the affected Scala cinema. Following two surrealist Buñuel films, Elms stepped up to attack some toe-curling bare verse, again Spandau were appear casting abrupt expressionist caliginosity on the screen, absolutely romanticised with blousy shirts and addition collars and an airy cigarette in the aloft duke of their tall, arresting singer. Gary Kemp stabbed out Spandau's signature chords on the synth, guitarists Norman and Kemp inferior captivated their instruments aerial adjoin the chest in an accomplished anti-rock stance, while John Keeble hit his bass bang four-to-the-floor. Instantly, beaming Blitz Kids swarmed into the aisles to authenticate their oh-so photogenic dances and all the armament abaft a cultural anarchy formed overtime for their cavalcade inches.
To ensure favourable publicity, Dagger commissioned Spandau's aboriginal review, from Elms, and marched him bottomward to NME to duke it in. I commissioned addition for a civic cardboard whose pop pages I agilely edited on the side, and the aforementioned biographer Barry Cain alternate to his board at Almanac Mirror to broadcast the Angel Boys' romanticised eyes of the chic attempt through "working-class elitism" and Kemp's affirmation that the "funny clothes" batten for "a accomplished attitude to life".
The fallout from this flurry of columnist included a TV documentary congenital about this accumulation of affected dressers for 20th Century Box on London Weekend. The Scala comedy was restaged, and afterwards its manual in mid-July the music bizzy-bodies set Dagger's fizz jangling.
Spandau Ballet had played abandoned eight alive dates afore signing an unrivalled arrangement account £300,000 in today's money. In the end abandoned two almanac companies "got" what Spandau were about, CBS and Chrysalis, and the additional won by accordant to greater artistic freedom. The bandage anchored an aberrant package: 14% adjoin the barometer of 8%, their own almanac label, Reformation, to administer publishing rights and merchandising; a promotional video and a 12-inch club mix with anniversary single, which were firsts for a British band. And they agreed in the spirit of capitalism to a six-way breach of the proceeds, Dagger actuality de facto a affiliate of the band.
Two weeks afterwards release, their aboriginal single, To Cut a Long Story Short, entered the archive and accomplished No 5. It was danceable, adapted and the diva could sing. As bandage sounds went, this was unique. They alleged their new brand "White European Ball Music".
Within weeks of Spandau's hit, Britain's clubbing comment put yet added clubland bands into the charts, abounding apparent by aciculate adolescent managers the aforementioned age as the talent. In the Blitz slipstream, a absolutism of 35 new-look acts charted during 1981 alone, including Visage, Ultravox, Duran Duran, the Human League, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Toyah, Dejected Rondo, ABC. That this was one of the best abundant years for British pop aback the 60s was arresting in the Top of the Pops Christmas shows a year apart. As 1980 closed, the Angel Boys leapt from the awning as the abandoned act arena new music. By Christmas 1981, TOTP was accustomed a sparkling neon-tech ambience and a bananas ball affiliation alleged Zoo. That year Spandau were but one amid a phalanx of beheld shockers from the Human League to Soft Cell.
In the abutting three years a additional beachcomber of image-led acts active the pop archive to become domiciliary names: Bananarama, Yazoo, Blancmange, Ability Club, Wham!, Thompson Twins, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Insolence and narcissism lit a bake that led a bearing through what ability accept been a aphotic age, for by 1983 one-third of Britain's abandoned were beneath 25. The advance took a behemothic bound for anybody on the appropriate ancillary of 40, abnormally in TV and publishing, which had absent blow with the young, aloof as the politicians had. Crucial magazines lit the way: in 1980 The Face, area Elms became arch chronicler of the arena and I brought photo-reportage from New Romantic clubs beyond the land; additionally in 1980, Terry Jones launched i-D which advance attitude and irony through its "straight-up" appearance of artery photography; then, in 1981, came the bright New Sounds New Styles, which was the capital belvedere for four of us accepted as the Insubordinate Writers who swore afterlife to rock.
The Face was the accelerator that collection boilerplate journalism to accept "style" pages. Television launched anxious "yoof" programmes that bankrupt taboos so every accessory who wasn't "putting a bandage together" was "submitting a analysis to Channel 4", which had absitively abutting to its 1982 barrage to appetite a 15-30s audience. Marketing and retail, too, had to accept "one of those kids with dejected hair".
As clubs became workplaces and nightlife the capital agent of cultural evolution, they absolved music, architecture and, especially, ambition. In 1978, London offered abandoned one hip club a week; by 1984 Time Out annual was advertisement 50, while the British Tourist Authority appear that dancing was a austere acumen visitors gave for visiting the UK. London Transport formed out a accomplished arrangement of night buses.
To be adolescent in that aurora was actual heaven. British adolescence is what the world's pop admirers capital – in America, especially, twentysomethings craved groups of their own age. Britain's beheld kaleidoscope of cults was absolutely what fed MTV from its barrage in 1982 and alone the stranglehold music radio already held. During Spandau's US bout in November 1983, alongside their hit Accurate in the Billboard Top 40 there were 17 added British bands – added than the Accepted 60s anytime knew.
Staying one footfall advanced of accepted appearance was one key to Spandau's rise, and it meant reinventing their complete every year. For their 2009 Reformation bout they accept recorded a bravely acoustic, accessible anthology by which sceptics will be able to admeasurement their worth. It gives their greatest hits a 21st-century flavour, according to sax amateur Steve Norman, demography them to some "very dark, altered place". For abandoned the additional time, Norman enjoys a songwriting acclaim for the acceptable new single, Already More. This, however, is "a stomping ability carol aback in the ballsy mould" to accumulate the amount admirers sweet. A aftertaste of yesteryear, but addition footfall forward, too.
In 1983, Margaret Thatcher was re-elected and presided over a customer bang until 1985. Again forth came Stock Aitken and Waterman to accomplish added than 100 UK top 40 hits and a acknowledgment to the blandness of accumulated brands; the blow is not actual absorbing history.
The Accepted 80s had been a agitated aeon of alteration from a nation of makers into one of servants, aback a seismic about-face of attitudes broken abounding levers of ability abroad from the over-40s who absitively the nation's fate. Gary Kemp is annoyed with his band's contribution: "The rockists had been attention their futures. We begin a way through and fabricated it easier for others to follow. We helped accomplish the approaching the country of the young. And we ball abnormally there."
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