WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES
In 1980 a youth movement began reshaping Britain.
Its stars didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did. This writer was there and these words and pictures tell the tale.
◼︎ As a decade, the 1970s spelt doom. British youth culture had been discredited by punk. A monumental recession followed the Labour government’s “winter of discontent”, threatening the prospect of no jobs for years ahead.
Yet from this black hole burst an optimistic movement the press dubbed the New Romantics, based on a London club called the Blitz. Its deejay Rusty Egan promoted the deliberately un-rock sounds of synthesised electro-pop with a beat created for the dancefloor, while drumming in a studio seven-piece called Visage, fronted by the ultimate poser, Steve Strange. He and other fashionista Blitz Kids were picked by Bowie to represent their movement in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes (above). But the live band who broke all the industry rules were five dandies with a preposterous name: Spandau Ballet.
As the last of the Baby Boomers, the Blitz Kids were concerned with much more than music. In 1980 they shook off teenage doubt to express all those talents the later Generation X would have to live up to — leadership, adaptability, negotiating skills, focus. Children of the first era of mass TV, these can-doers excelled especially in visual awareness. They were the vanguard for a self-confident new class who were ready to enjoy the personal liberty and social mobility heralded by their parents in the 60s.
For Britain,the Swinging 80s were a tumultuous period of social change when the young wrested many levers of power away from the over-40s. London became a creative powerhouse and its pop music and street fashion the toast of world capitals. All because a vast dance underground had been gagging for a very sociable revolution.
★++++++★++++++★
“From now on, this will become the official history”
– Verdict of a former Blitz Kid
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❏Below: View Blitz Club host Steve Strange in all his poser glory in the promo video for Fade to Grey (1982), also starring the club’s cloakroom girl, Julia Fodor, aka Princess
➢CLICK HERE to run the anthemic 80s video ♫ ♫ from Spandau Ballet and feel the chant:
July 2, 1981: Shooting the video for Chant No 1 at Le Beat Route club in Soho, “down, down, pass the Talk of the Town”. Photograph © by Shapersofthe80s
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Posted inart,Chronology,Clubbing,Culture,Fashion,History,journalism,London,Media,New Romantics,photography,Pop music,Social trends,Swinging 80s,Tipping points,videos,Youth culture,zeitgeist
TaggedAshes to Ashes,Blitz Kids,David Bowie,Julia Fodor,Rusty Egan,Spandau Ballet,Steve Strange,Visage
2025 ➤ Here’s to those Faces who created a new breed of journalism for the 1980s
Kings among influencers: Nick Logan and Steve Dagger, at the NPG private view. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
❚ AN EXCEPTIONAL CHAMPAGNE PARTY last night launched a compelling exhibition celebrating The Face magazine’s role as Britain’s “style bible” (*see below) for just over 20 years. A thorough display of photos and glass-boxed showcases of the magazine itself confirmed what a revolution in fashion and design took place between 1980 and 2004. And London’s National Portrait Gallery invited several generations of survivors to revisit their contributions, chief among them Nick Logan, founding owner and editor of The Face, as sociable yet bashful as he’s ever been, along with his partner Mia.
His gift, apart from investing £3,500 of his savings, was to put cool design and quality writing to the fore, at a time when Britain’s four weekly rock newspapers were a very narrowly acquired taste. Logan’s brief also went way beyond music into all aspects of culture and anthropology. That’s the main reason that both he and his radical designer Neville Brody – *who in five years established an inspired new visual language in print – both reject the description “style bible”, just as none of the New Romantics has ever owned up to that name dumped on them by the media.
Click any pic to enlarge in a slideshow:
No less a king influencer was Steve Dagger whose band Spandau Ballet changed the dreary noise of 70s pop into a new kind of dance music for the 80s. Two more such kings who helped shape the Swinging 80s were the St Martin’s graduate milliner Stephen Jones whose hats graced the heads of the first Blitz Kids then went on adding bazzazz to designer collections across the globe… And Peter Ashworth whose super-lit photographs have captured musical and fashionable excess just as far across the globe ever since.
Other vintage faces included Lesley White (the first front-desk copytaster at The Face’s various offices), St Martin’s star fashionista Fiona Dealey, clubland deejay Jeremy Healey, film-maker and musician Jamie Morgan, pioneering music journalist Paul Simper, and Derek Ridgers the straight-up photographer whose pictures illustrated many of my own nightlife reports in The Face’s early years.
NPG talk about the Face exhibition: editor Nick Logan, art director Neville Brody and from 1987 the mag’s first fashion editor Kathryn Flett. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
Face exhibition video display: Who’s Who in clubland reportage by Yours Truly, featuring Chris Sullivan and Ollie O’Donnell. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
➢ The Face Magazine: Culture Shift exhibition
(20 February–18 May 2025 at the National Portrait Gallery) brings together the work of 80 photographers, featuring 200 photographs as a unique opportunity to see many of these images away from the magazine page.
Wise words from the man who subverted graphic design. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
1980, Power brokers of the fourth estate
➢ Also at Shapersofthe80s: 1980, How three wizards
met at the same crossroad in time
Posted inClubbing,exhibitions,Fashion,graphics,influencers,journalism,London,New Romantics,photography,Pop music,Social trends,Swinging 80s,Youth culture
TaggedDerek Ridgers,Face magazine,Fiona Dealey,Jamie Morgan,Jeremy Healey,Kathryn Flett,Lesley White,National Portrait Gallery,Neville Brody,Nick Logan,Paul Simper,Peter Ashworth,Stephen Jones,Steve Dagger
2015 ➤ Steve Strange’s anniversary: deciphering the pen portraits of the man of masks
Steve Strange in 1981: here in Robin Hood guise (BBC)
FIRST PUBLISHED 13 FEBRUARY 2015
◼ ONE OF STEVE STRANGE’S TALENTS was persuading the press to believe in his latest wheeze, however fantastic. He had a way of convincing himself that a story was already written and a mission achieved before he had pressed the accelerator and set off. This irritated as many journalists as it amused and many were consequently very sceptical of his next big announcement – like saying he’d booked a big American star to do her first live promotional performance in Britain at his crowning glory, the Camden Palace, capacity 1,410. But in fact he had and she did, and in June 1983 the unknown Madonna was launched in the UK singing to backing tapes for half an hour.
The myths surrounding Steve were always the stuff of self-promotion. Dressing up was part of the same story-telling ritual. Today, he would say, I am Robin Hood, tomorrow Ruritanian Space Cadet, the next day Marionette with the mind of a toy. A compulsive man of masks presents a tricky subject for the scribblers obliged to capture that life once it is spent, so we must tiptoe through the obituaries like a minefield, and beware of tripping over Steve’s much-spun versions of history that were pure fantasy. Even national newspapers seemed to fall for many of the dreams he spouted, as well as the exceedingly vague memories committed to his 2002 book, Blitzed. As the mainstream obituary writers lead you through those New Romantic years, see if you can spot the porkies. . .
➢ The Times obituary:
“ As the head boy of the “new romantics”, Steve Strange was the flamboyant scene-maker of a colourful subculture that dominated early 1980s British pop music as a showily garish counter-reaction to the stylistic austerity of punk. If punks were the roundheads in pop’s civil war, the “new romantics” were the cavaliers, ushering in a restoration of glitz and glamour, with a delectably decadent flourish…” /Continued online
➢ Adam Sweeting, Guardian:
“ In 1978, Strange and Rusty Egan (then drummer with the Rich Kids) began holding David Bowie nights on Tuesdays at Billy’s club in Soho, a squalid bunker situated beneath a brothel. “We played Bowie, Roxy Music and electro,” said Strange. “It was where our friends could be themselves.” Billy’s could hold only 250 people [not quite!] but swiftly developed an outsize reputation, numbering among its garishly clad clientele such stars-to-be as George O’Dowd (the future Boy George), Siobhan Fahey, later of Bananarama, and Marilyn. . .” /Continued online
Billy’s club 1978: Strange as Ruritanian Space Cadet alongside PX designer Helen Robinson. (Photograph by © Nicola Tyson)
➢ Daily Telegraph obituary:
“ Strange fronted sleek operations, such as Club For Heroes in Baker Street and the Camden Palace in north London, where Madonna performed her first British live concert. But Visage split amid acrimony over the division of royalty payments, and his nightspots fell out of vogue in the mid-1980s with the rise of rap, hip-hop and dance music. By this time Strange had a reputation for high-handedness. Years later, Boy George lampooned Strange as the preposterous club host character “Nobby Normal” in his biographical musical Taboo. Strange was not amused. “I don’t think I have that strong a Welsh accent,” he complained. . . ” /Continued online
➢ The Scotsman obituary:
“ Although his career as a pop star afforded him only one real hit as frontman of the band Visage, 1980’s austere synthesiser anthem Fade to Grey, Steve Strange’s distinctive image and party-loving persona saw him help invent London’s New Romantic scene. . . Visage’s time in the sun flared all too briefly; with Strange being courted to repeat the clubbing success of places like the Blitz in various US cities, he dived wholeheartedly into the life of the international rock star, with all the pitfalls that entailed. Put off by Strange’s drug use, spending sprees and debauched behaviour, Midge Ure left to concentrate on Ultravox and Visage’s 1984 third album Beat Boy was a critical and commercial failure. The band split the following year, the same year that Strange first took heroin. . .” /Continued online
➢ Pierre Perrone in The Independent:
“ A flamboyant figure with a self-destructive streak . . . By the late 90s he was back in Wales and, by his own admission, acting “very bizarrely”. He spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital, was arrested for shoplifting and given a suspended sentence. “I don’t know whether it was cry for help,” he told The Independent in 2000, blaming an over-reliance on Prozac, though he seemed comfortable with his avowed bisexuality. . .” /Continued online
2024 ➤ Andy Polaris reminds us of Quincy Jones’s legacy as a titan of 20th-century showbiz
1984: Quincy Jones with Michael Jackson at the 1984 Grammy Awards, where they won eight
❚ The cross-cultural pioneer Quincy Jones died this week
aged 91 in Los Angeles. In tribute, we republish Andy Polaris’s appreciation of his genius when he brought a huge
orchestra to London’s O2 arena on 25 Jun 2019…
Excerpt from the review at the Polaris music blog: Quincy Jones Jr is a titan of 20th-century entertainment whose creative talent has spanned decades as composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, arranger, producer and publisher. He has received the most Grammy nominations, a staggering 80, and won 28, plus seven Oscar nominations, and a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award in 1996 amongst other industry accolades. He has worked with superstars from Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie to Michael Jackson. In 2018 a Netflix film Quincy won the Critics Choice Documentary award.
As a teenage prodigy Quincy Jones had been tutored by Ray Charles and mentored by Count Basie, by 19 was touring Europe with Lionel Hampton for three years, at 24 studied at the feet of the godlike Nadia Boulanger in the American School at Fontainebleau, and soon after became a troubleshooting vice-president for Philips Records of Holland.
This week [in 2019] sees the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death and despite the controversy and those clamouring on social media to cancel his music, the audience at this O2 concert showed that, whatever your feelings, it’s nigh on impossible to crush the joyous memories and mood of his repertoire. In addition, we were treated to the formidable playlist of our youth unfolding before our ears thanks to the savvy musicianship of the band and huge orchestra, which even included a harp, all conducted and hosted by Jules Buckley… /Review continued at Apolarisview
2025 ➤ 50 years on: Celebrating the world’s first pose band
Nice Style posing at the Gallery, 1974: High up on a Baroque Palazzo. McLean himself is at top left. Photo by Craigie Horsfield
❚ SCOTTISH SCULPTOR BRUCE MCLEAN set out to satirise modern art in October 1974 with Nice Style, “the world’s first Pose Band”, pictured here. Read more about this startling occasion on our inside page along with the riveting review written by the Evening Standard’s art critic Richard Cork…
“ In the autumn of ’74 art critic Richard Cork took me to the Gallery in Covent Garden to witness one of the most exciting live performances I can recall, staged in a largish space full of ropes and pulleys, ladders and flapping doors, by four animated artists calling themselves Nice Style, “the world’s first Pose Band”, led by Bruce McLean. Stopping, posing and re-starting in 3-D for a full hour, three days a week, they were electric, fascinating and hilarious. We were being invited to laugh in an art gallery!”
➢ Click to read more about Nice Style satirising modern art,
elsewhere at Shapersofthe80s
2024 ➤ Original outlaws celebrate their blasts from the past
Outlaws: superb gallery of the exhibition – Photos at Facebook © Franceska
❚ HERE’S A REVIEW OF THE NEW OUTLAWS SHOW, written by Franceska Luther King at Facebook yesterday…
<< Fabulous night at the private view of Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London at the Fashion and Textile Museum on Thursday evening. Curated by the amazing Martin Green and James Lawler and NJ Stevenson with amazing mannequins by David Cabaret. It was a very special night, a gathering of all the fashion crowd from the mid 80s, celebrating club culture and true creativity. Such good times!!!
So great to be included with a piece of my collection for Joseph back in the day, silk sari shirts. Post Demob designs and after my backing with Tanya Sarne and Jane Whiteside, I ventured on with my own collections sold to Jones, Whistles , Brown’s etc then my own little retail outlet in Kensington Market. So great to see all the familiar faces and see beautiful blasts from the past.
40 years later! And so sad that we have already lost so many… Great to see Joan Burey, Corinne Drewery, Greg Davis, John Richmond, Sue Tilley, Eve Ferret, Mark Moore, DarlaJane Gilroy, Simon Reeves, Daniel Conway, Derek Ridgers, David Johnson, Andrew Logan, Hamish Bowles, Sophie Parkin, Dean Bright, Tolan Hüseyin-Halleck, Paul Gorman, Robert Leach, Vivienne Austin, Richard Kaby.
Amazing clothes by Richard Torry, Rachel Auburn, BodyMap, Pam Hogg, Elmaz Huseyin, Sue Came, English Eccentrics, John Galliano, Katharine Hamnett, Kahn & Bell, Whittiker Malem, Dean Bright, Judy Blame, John Moore, Christopher Nemeth, Mark & Syrie, Leigh Bowery, John Crancher, Franceska King and many more! >>
➢ Click through to Facebook to see all 18 images
in Franceska’s Outlaws post
Outlaws: true creativity and amazing mannequins – Photo © Franceska
➢ Visit Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London
at the Fashion and Textile Museum
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣