➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣

WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES

Posted on 12 Oct 2009 | Comments Off

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

➢ THE DROPDOWN MENUS ALONG THE PAGE TOP lead you to main topics. Choose “View full site” on your mobile.
➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates which also link to the background pages in the menu.

❏ 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:

nightlife, st moritz, club for heroes,le kilt, wag club, beat route,hacienda, cha-cha, holy city zoo, rum runner, camden palace, scala cinema, studio 21,crocs, le palace, white trash, fac51, Dirt Box, mud club, batcave, barbarella's, croc's, electro-pop, synth-pop, Chant No 1, kid creole, blue rondo, animal nightlife, visage, duran, depeche mode, ultravox, human league, gentry, ABC,soft cell, bolan,vince clarke, haysi, wham!, mclaren, heaven 17, yazoo, foxx, omd, bauhaus, phil oakey, jay strongman, Martyn Ware, martin fry ,altered images, 20th-century box, vivienne westwood, PX, axiom, body-map , foundry, sue clowes,demob, seditionaries, acme attractions, i-D, the face, new sounds new styles, Korniloff, andrew logan, kahn & bell, biddie & eve, toyah,

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

❏ iPAD & TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You are viewing only a very small selection of content, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and topical updates please request “PC version” and Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines which link to many blue themed pages of background articles.

Comments Off on WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES

Posted in art, Chronology, Clubbing, Culture, Fashion, History, journalism, London, Media, New Romantics, photography, Pop music, Social trends, Swinging 80s, Tipping points, videos, Youth culture, zeitgeist

Tagged Ashes to Ashes, Blitz Kids, David Bowie, Julia Fodor, Rusty Egan, Spandau Ballet, Steve Strange, Visage

2024 ➤ Ahaaaah! 25-year-old stage musical Mamma Mia! confirms ABBA’s genius

Posted on 8 Apr 2024 | Leave a comment

❚ WHETHER YOU LIKE ABBA’s SONGS or not, the scale of the West-End musical MAMMA MIA!’s success is staggering. Over 25 years it has been seen by 70 million people in 450 cities across the world, in 16 different languages. At the box office, the show has made £4.5 billion. Yes, billion !!!

So not to have seen this award-winning show is quite a feat, I am ashamed to admit. Yet on the 25th anniversary performance of MAMMA MIA! this weekend at London’s Novello Theatre I was blown away by the sheer energy and quality of this showbiz landmark, with its 34-strong cast of athletic dancers and powerful singers (especially Mazz Murray playing free-love mother Donna) plus an astonishing live orchestra. Here was the essence of full-on theatre.

What was rare for a stage musical was that the audience already knew almost every one of the show’s 22 numbers, written during the decade after ABBA won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 with Waterloo. Yet the lyrics repeatedly proved to be eye-openers during MAMMA MIA!, acting as dialogue to provide a dramatic family plot around a young girl’s marriage on a sunny Greek island.

Mamma Mia!, ABBA, 25th anniversary, Novello Theatre, London, Mazz Murray,

MAMMA MIA! at 25: A ton of tinsel pours down onto the audience during the many encores ending the London show. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s.com)

Mamma Mia!, ABBA, 25th anniversary, Novello Theatre, London, Judy Craymer, Catherine Johnson, Mazz Murray,

MAMMA MIA! at 25: During the encores to the London show’s creator Judy Craymer introduces Catherine Johnson who wrote the book for the musical. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s.com)

Crucially many songs were injected with a comic twist, as with Take a Chance on Me and indeed Honey Honey which, the programme tells us, had Björn Ulvaeus – its co-author along with Benny Andersson – falling off his chair laughing and insisting “I didn’t write this as funny!” On an emotional level there were several truly tear-jerking moments as the family saga unfolded, prompted by songs such as Knowing Me, Knowing You and The Winner Takes it All.

Given that today the four members of ABBA are multi-millionaires, it’s ironic that I profiled them as the first entry in an A-to-Z Sunday Times partwork titled
1000 Makers of Music in 1997 by noting that as Swedish journeyman songsmiths in the Seventies their sing-along melodies epitomised Europe’s dreaded folkloric tradition – in contrast to Anglo-American guitar heroes who mouthed youthful dissent. Nevertheless during their breakthrough decade before disbanding ABBA scored eight consecutive No 1 albums in Britain and 25 Top 40 singles, so catchy that everybody could hum one. A decade further along, the quartet had acquired cult status as exponents of what we had grown to appreciate as “pure pop”.

Mamma Mia!, ABBA, 25th anniversary, Novello Theatre, London, Björn Ulvaeus, Mazz Murray,

MAMMA MIA! at 25: After the encores to the London show one of its lyricists, the modest Björn Ulvaeus, gives thanks for its success and accepts a bow from one of the cast. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s.com)

In 2023 ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award which celebrates musicians who have achieved one billion UK streams in their career. Today they stand tall among the best-selling artists in music history. Last month, all four members of ABBA were appointed Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This is the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood have been bestowed.

➢ Info about MAMMA MIA! at London’s Novello Theatre

FRONT PAGE

2024 ➤ London’s Evening Standard publishes my obituary of Linard the wild child of UK fashion

Posted on 12 Mar 2024 | Leave a comment

Stephen Linard, Blitz Kids, fashion, New Romantics, Swinging80s,

Photo by Kate Garner

❚ A LAVISHLY DESIGNED OBITUARY of Stephen Linard written by me appears in today’s Evening Standard online and stands as a well-deserved memoir for one of my best friends…
➢ The life of Stephen Linard – A flamboyant Canvey Island boy who went on to shape the Blitz Kids silhouette in the 1980s

FRONT PAGE

2024 ➤ Farewell to Linard, the craziest man I’ve known

Posted on 10 Mar 2024 | 2 comments

Stephen Linard, Blitz Kids, fashion, New Romantics, Canvey Island,

Stephen Linard in 2018: A last pint at his local pub before moving away from Canvey Island. (Photo @ Shapersofthe80s)

INCREDIBLE!!!! Update – Shapersofthe80s has received 8,100 hits during the three days since Stephen’s death. Thank you to his fans

❚ HARD TO ACCEPT THAT STEPHEN LINARD has now died from the extensive throat cancer that had caused him so much pain recently. He was one of the craziest of eccentrics who frequently made me laugh out loud. We met at a party at Steve Strange’s flat in 1980 when he was among the sharpest half-dozen Blitz Kids who changed their looks daily and put the Blitz Club on the map. We hit it off immediately and I soon latched onto the star trio of Stephen, Kim Bowen and Lee Sheldrick who went everywhere together.

I photographed his degree show and over the years helped him through various projects in that era when St Martin’s School of Art failed to equip its graduates with any guidance for running their own businesses. Luckily, pop stars from Pet Shop Boys to U2 and even Bowie readily adopted his strong styles and in 1983 the American fashion press included him among the eight most influential London designers [see link below], noted for his strong eye for colour.

From 1983 to ’86 Stephen lived in Tokyo designing for Jun Co, the fashion giant, on a salary which, he liked to boast, exceeded the prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s. From 1989 until recently Stephen was a key player on the design team at Drake’s, the respected men’s haberdasher off Savile Row (pictured below). The main photo (above) marked a last pint at his local pub on Canvey Island where he lived in his late mother’s house until 2020 before joining the Old Romantic Folks who go on retiring to St Leonard’s-on-Sea.

Only six months ago, as if in anticipation of the worst, Stephen staged a striking exhibition of his early illustrations, titled Total Fashion Victim after the club-night he had hosted at Soho’s coolest hang-out, the Wag. I was lucky enough to write the outline catalogue with him.

drakes-london, Stephen Linard, British tailoring, haberdashery,fashion

Former Blitz Kid and St Martin’s fashion graduate Stephen Linard in 2011: a designer with Drake’s, the gentlemen’s haberdasher, seen here at a staff preview for the opening of its first shop just off Savile Row. (Photograph © Shapersofthe80s)

MORE ON STEPHEN INSIDE

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: 2023, Total Fashion Victim – Linard’s exhibition of his early work

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
The Blitz Kids WATN? No 28, Stephen Linard

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
1980, Linard’s Alternative student show gives
Goths their archaic name

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
1982, Six British designers take London fashion
to the French

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: Overseas influencers
declare eight hot fashion Brits for 1984

THE PROFESSIONAL TRIBUTES

➢ Stephen Linard, London designer, image maker and Blitz Kid, dead at 64 – Detailed analysis of his talents at Women’s Wear Daily, March 2024

➢ Goodbye, Stephen Linard: It was a privilege to know you – by novelist Maggie Alderson

➢ Linard’s entry at the Encyclopedia of Fashion – by Alan
J. Flux; updated by Daryl F. Mallett

➢ Blitz Kid Stephen Linard’s 1980 Neon-Gothic collection anticipated “Heavenly Bodies” by 38 years – from Vogue, 2018

FRONT PAGE

2 Comments

Posted in biography, death, London, New Romantics, Swinging 80s, Tributes

Tagged Alan Flux, Blitz Kids, Drake’s, fashion, Maggie Alderson, Stephen Linard, Total Fashion Victim, Vogue, WWD

2024 ➤ Pilger’s fearlessness is what journalism still needs today

Posted on 1 Jan 2024 | Leave a comment

❚ ONE OF THE GREATEST post-war crusading journalists has died after a lifetime of championing frank journalism and regularly criticising the mainstream media. In 2002, John Pilger said that “many journalists now are no more than channellers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth”.

Though aged only 28 when named in the British Press Awards as Journalist of the Year 1967, Pilger became the backbone of the Daily Mirror’s revolutionary investigative Mirrorscope sections – four-pagers twice a week – when the tabloid respected for its humanity was selling 5million copies a day (long before The Sun posed any kind of threat), the world’s highest English-language circulation.

Pilger was already a mentor for me in 1969 when the paper created its glossy mid-week Mirror Magazine and I joined in my first Fleet Street job, surrounded by the giants of the day.

Pilger spent 23 years with the Mirror, through what proved a golden age for British journalism. It was not to last. In a landmark New Statesman column in December 1991 he reflected on how popular journalism had been hijacked by both “the monster” Robert Maxwell, who lucked into buying the Mirror after a management cock-up and reduced its sales to an all-time low, and by Rupert Murdoch whose Sun had overtaken its rival’s sales by creating an agenda of sexism, racism and voyeurism. Pilger savaged the journalists in both camps for their cynicism.

His later career included more than 60 hard-hitting ITV documentaries which won Bafta and Emmy awards. The activist Noam Chomsky said of him: “John Pilger’s work has been a beacon of light in often dark times.” Playwright Harold Pinter described him as “fearless”. Pilger’s is a voice we still need to hear.

❏ John Pilger, 9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023

➢ The Guardian’s robust obituary of the fervent critic of US and British foreign policy – “Why do many journalists beat the drums of war regardless of the lies of governments?” Pilger asked in 2010”

➢ The Times: Critical obituary of the “left-wing anti-American journalist” … “denounced as a dupe of the eastern bloc”

➢ Pilger’s own informative website

➢ Heroes Paperback – 1 Feb 2001 – John Pilger’s autobiography

FRONT PAGE

1992 ➤ Who’s the keenest fan of Marcel Proust?

Posted on 4 Dec 2023 | 1 comment

David Hockney, A S Byatt, Lewis Wolpert, Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time,

Hockney, Wolpert and Byatt: leading the pack?

❚ HOW MANY OF US CAN CLAIM to have read the whole of Marcel Proust’s literary masterwork, originally titled for its English edition Remembrance of Things Past, in seven volumes, containing 1.2million words? Not many of us. What about reading it twice? As a journalist I interviewed painter David Hockney on his 46th birthday when he revealed that he had enthusiastically read the epic twice, drawing parallels between the act of looking around Proust’s world by reading his lengthy descriptions and the time it takes for our eyes to dart around a cubist painting. They are both about duration. And the great device Proust donated to literature was his episode of the madeleine, when a simple cake triggers a moment of involuntary memory.

In 1992, when a new English edition titled In Search of Lost Time was published, novelist A S Byatt admitted, without being boastful, that she too had read Proust twice. This happened at a party thrown by the highly sociable biologist Lewis Wolpert who raised the topic as a Proustian two-timer himself, though a viral buzz through this party could find no others. More impressive still, when our paths crossed a couple of years later, Antonia remarked: “Make that three readings now. But this time in French.”