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Blitz Kid style 1980: Outside the Carburton Street squat, Clare-with-the-Hair and Michele Clapton-with-the-awesome repose. Photographed © by Derek Ridgers
Defining the Swinging Eighties
“If we recast the 80s as a subcultural timeline, the decade actually spanned six years. They began in June 1978 when David Bowie’s world tour hit the UK – rallying dispossessed punks and kindred music-loving nomads who came to recognise they were not alone.
“These Eighties ended in Dec 1984 with what remained for 13 years the biggest-selling single in UK chart history, Do They Know It’s Christmas? This was an unprecedented act of charity through collaboration by 47 members of rival bands calling themselves Band Aid, who had risen on the same post-punk wave. They raised millions for the Ethiopian famine.
“Crucially, it confirmed a new British pop establishment of musical innovators. And coincidentally, it laid the foundations for Live Aid, the globally mounted fund-raising concert held in July 1985 and watched by 400 million viewers, across 60 countries.”
➢➢ Extracted from The Blitz Kids and
the birth of the New Romantics
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❚ ABOUT – Except where specifically attributed to others, all text on this website is the work of David Johnson, a journalist based in London, who learnt his trade under the gifted and demanding editor Charles Wintour (yes, indeed, father of Anna) on the world’s most stimulating metropolitan newspaper, the Evening Standard (founded 1827) which had previously been credited with helping shape the Swinging Sixties. In the Seventies the Standard published six editions a day, six days a week, and was circulated throughout greater London, to Britain’s major provincial cities and a dozen international capitals.
As a staffer at the Standard, Johnson edited a column on young London called On The Line, named after Eddy Grant’s 1979 hit Living On The Front Line. While freelancing for the edgy new magazines The Face and New Sounds New Styles, his forays into Britain’s gregarious world of youth culture yielded such unrepeatable reportage that it soon made sense to carry a camera and snap for the moment. The results established his monthly review of UK nightlife in those style magazines long before there were enough club-nights to warrant listings in events guides. Simultaneously our hack was also moonlighting and editing the twice-weekly music pages of a national newspaper which shall remain nameless, but was shrewd enough to dedicate one of those pages to dance.
Evidently, for about five years, he didn’t get much sleep but did produce the stuff you find online here today. All of which would, let’s hope, meet with Charles’s liberal-minded expectations. His catchphrase was: “Ferchrissakegetitright!” Do feel free to disagree with this largely untold slice of subcultural history. Johnson couldn’t be everywhere at once.
➢ Visitor numbers to Shapersofthe80s doubled during 2011 — best for Blitz Kid photos and eye-witness memories
➢ Most popular bits of Shapersofthe80s during 2010 — among the top stories in May 2010 was original Blitz Kids discussing How real did 1980 feel in the TV drama about Boy George?
All text on this site, except where otherwise attributed
© 1980–2012 Shapersofthe80s.
If you wish to quote from any text, please attribute it to the source, like this:
[Quoted from Shapersofthe80s.com]
“People of the 80s”: for i-D magazine’s fifth anniversary, 100 were photographed in 1985 © by Nick Knight. Top left, pop singer Marc Almond, deejay and journalist Jay Strongman, club entrepreneur Rusty Egan, singer and club entrepreneur, Steve Strange, fashion editor Caryn Franklin and club entrepreneur Nick Trulocke. Finally, some hack from the London Evening Standard
❚ If you wish to correct any misinformation on this site then please mail to
contact [a t] shapersofthe80s.com
❚ This not-for-profit website respects copyright, and where possible will always try to seek permission and give credit to a photographer’s work. If you see any images here to which you own the rights and wish them to be removed, you have only to ask.
❚ Whenever you recycle any picture for your own use, always credit the photographer. That way you help advertise their talent and maintain their reputation. The internet has made it almost impossible to collect the reproduction fees they are entitled to. In the past many have depended on those fees for their livelihood.
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION
