The Sullivan brand: Arguments raged in the 80s with his Wag co-host Ollie O’Donnell over who had designed/drawn/ordered the first zoot suit
❚ AS PROBABLY THE MOST INFLUENTIALshaper of the subcultural 80s, it’s hard to disassociate Chris Sullivan from his 19 years hosting the seminal Wag as the coolest black-music club in Soho. Today he’s a mighty standing stone on the shingle beach of club deejays, and much in demand on the society circuit. This week, however, he took stock: “A pal said to me, ‘I didn’t know you played music that was made past 1990’, so I, rather taken aback, did this mix that, although somewhat Latin and very me, is still very ‘modern’. Point is, I play mostly new stuff but hide it behind the patina of antiquity so no one ever notices.”
To surprise his pal, he’s posted this 73-minute hip-shaking and arm-waving mix at Soundcloud. You’ll find more there when you click through, plus the kind of mind-boggling CV of his life as, variously, a deejay, author, nightclub host, pop star in Blue Rondo à la Turk, painter, style commentator, entrepreneur and fashion designer today cutting a dash in a goatee. Find even more at Shapersofthe80s through the links below.
Maestro’s in Glasgow, 1981: suited and zooted onstage are Blue Rondo vocalists Chris Sullivan and Christos Tolera
◼ “HERE’S A NEW BLUE RONDO REMIX — at last we’ve got it right. Recorded in 1981 … remixed in 2012.” So says the Latin-funk combo’s founder and frontman Chris Sullivan on Facebook today, after posting on Soundcloud a pacy instrumental mix of the London clubland band’s first hit, Me & Mr Sanchez, which stayed four weeks in the UK chart in 1981. Wait for the virtuosi to open up in the second half.
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In the topmost pic we see vocalist Sullivan onstage demonstrating his northern soul choreography alongside sidekick Christos Tolera. This pic was taken during Blue Rondo’s promotional tour for their debut single at Glasgow’s trendiest nightspot Maestro’s on 6 Nov 1981, the day of its release. As a former fashion student at St Martin’s School of Art, Sullivan almost single-handedly introduced the zoot suit to Soho’s nightclub scene, and designed styles for both himself as leader of the band and for Tolera and Beat Route host Ollie O’Donnell, among many others.
Under its full name of Blue Rondo à la Turk, the stylish seven-piece was among the first of the Blitzworld’s new image bands to change the musical gear of 1981, in their case towards a tongue-in-cheek collage of carnival rhythms inspired by the Brubeck era of jazz. If you visit Soundcloud you’ll also find a fresh 2012 remix of the single, complete with vocals. “Mark Reilly did the lion’s share,” says Sullivan, referring to Rondo’s guitarist, who still flies the flag for his band Matt Bianco, which he formed in 1983 with the late Kito Poncioni and Daniel White, both Rondo members. The new remixes have been brought about only now because “it has taken us a few years to get the masters back,” Sullivan says. “More to follow as well.”
“Mixed live on machines but not by machines. I left a couple of (tiny) mistakes on. I like the flaws. A flaw is what makes something beautiful truly interesting” x 62m
Derek Ridgers in Soho last night: his portrait of Morrissey a bridge between two eras. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
❚ SOME PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE as extrovert as their famous sitters, but Derek Ridgers has captured the essence of British street style and achieved a uniquely influential status by tip-toeing through the margins of life, feather-footed as the questing vole. Anyone who has followed the Punk and New Romantic scenes recognises the Ridgers types — “transient beings moving across an urban landscape, experimenters, flamboyant souls who cared more than anything about how they looked and whose greatest fear was of being ordinary”, as writer Val Williams noted in the Ridgers photobook of 2004, When We Were Young: Club and Street Portraits. His straight-up photographic style pinned those clubbing butterflies like curios into the display case labelled Swinging 80s. They trigger the involuntary remembrance of the texture of an era as readily as cake did for Marcel Proust: each image has the potential to become the “vase filled with perfumes, sounds, places and climates”.
Throughout April and May we may relish the Ridgers back catalogue in a new exhibition titled Unseen at Soho’s Society Club. The selection documents celebrities and street stylists from 35 years of commissions by music mags and national press. Here is an engaging mix of concert shots and powerfully intimate portraits in which eye-contact is key: Nick Cave, David Lynch, J G Ballard, Boy George, Tom Waits, The Cramps, Mick Jagger, plus the image of Keith Richards which is currently touring in the Sunday Times Magazine 50th anniversary show.
Another exceptionally striking portrait has the singer Morrissey eyeballing the Ridgers lens with an intense gaze that definitely says misunderstood but could just as easily be saying cussed. It was shot in London in 1985, year of The Smiths’ second album, Meat Is Murder, when Moz began raising the temperature with political views about the Thatcher government and the monarchy.
Soho last night: Ridgers, Richards and a new snapper called Tracy Jenkins. Photographed by Shapersothe80s
Ridgers said: “He’s a bit of a strain to photograph in the sense that there is so little of his personality coming back at you. Or at least there wasn’t in those days. Maybe he was very shy but he seemed taciturn in the extreme. The two times we met, he gave the impression of not wanting to say boo to a goose. He honestly hardly said a word to me. Nothing at all like the extremely opinionated personality that comes across in interviews these days.”
The two characteristic Morrisseys of then and now — the one taciturn, the other curmudgeonly — bestride three decades which completely reinvented British notions of youth culture, music, sexuality and success, yet at last night’s preview it was salutory to be pulled up by a 26-year-old illustrator among the guests who had to ask: Who was Morrissey?
All the more reason to buy ourselves a cool black-and-white print as a Proustian trigger, either directly from the Ridgers Archive or from an earlier catalogue viewable at the Society Club. Titled Previously Unpublished, this takes us from an iconic 1982 lineup of the ever-evolving band The Fall, through Culture Club, John Galliano, Roddy Frame, Tim Roth, into the 90s of the Charlatans, Ray Winstone, Lee Scratch Perry and a pensive Kylie Minogue to a raunchy Boo Delicious and more in the new century.
Ridgers has published three books of photographs, has exhibited frequently, and was a judge in How We Are Now, an online photography project launched by Tate Britain in 2007.
Posing for the press: Sue Tilley, whom Lucian Freud painted in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping 1995 (left), seen at the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition this week at the NPG. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)
❚ YESTERDAY SHE WAS QUIETLY CHUFFED on her Facebook page. This morning she’s a hot topic in the national papers. And for the next four months Sue Tilley is all over the National Portrait Gallery in a retrospective exhibition of the British painter Lucian Freud, who died last year. The 80s nightclub doorgirl known as Big Sue is famously the subject of Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, the most valuable painting ever to be sold by a living artist. Freud’s nude portrait of Sue — since promoted from benefits supervisor to manager of a Jobcentre Plus in central London — acquired its unique status after it went under the hammer for $33.6m (£17.2m) to Roman Abramovich, the ninth richest person in Russia, at Christie’s New York in May 2008.
She said at the time: “My life’s changed overnight. I’m beside myself, but then lovely things are always happening to me. Still, I’m not surprised — in a way, I always thought this might happen. I love that painting.” There are four paintings of Sue in the new exhibition. She said: “I like two of them, I don’t mind one of them and I hate one of them.”
London clubland knew Sue from vetting the door at Taboo, Leigh Bowery’s now-fabled one-nighter, on Leicester Square from 1985 to 87, as well as the Abba night off Hanover Square. After Bowery — a performance artist and “an icon of outrage” — had become a model for the painter Freud, he introduced them and Sue also posed for a series of portraits in the mid-90s. After Bowery died of Aids in 1994, she was invited to write his obituary for The Guardian, which directly inspired his biography, Life and Times of an Icon, which was published by Hodder in 1997.
SUDDENLY ON FACEBOOK
The first most of us knew of this new round of fame was an uncharacteristic namedrop on Facebook about 9pm on Weds… Sue Tilley I just met Kate Middleton and she was completely lovely. Michael D Herbage She just texted the Queen with excitement at meeting you! Claire Lawrie Was she signing on? David J Deaves She didn’t pose naked for Lucian, did she? Alison Atkinson Maybe you could ask her to hook you up with her brother-in-law! Amanda Foxley Wow — just saw u on tv here in Australia, fantastic! Tami Longhurst Hi Sue, Just saw you on the evening news at the National Portrait — they said that Kate met Sue Tilley Lucian’s “most famous sitter”. Fantastic.
Crying out for speech bubbles: Sue Tilley meets Kate aka Duchess of Cambridge, with NPG director Sandy Nairne. (Photo by Jorge Herrera/WireImage)
Finally Sue couldn’t resist posting the photo of herself talking to the Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate Middleton, wife of Wills, our future king.
Facebook Thurs 4pm… Sue Tilley Right… now I’m really showing off. [Posts the above pic, wow!] Charlie Condou Kate’s saying, “Didn’t we meet once in the loos at Kinky Gerlinky?” Sue Tilley Charlie, you’ve hit the nail on the head… Then she said, “Do you wanna come up Trannyshack afterwards?” I asked her where she got all the jokes she puts on Twitter! Dean Bright I saw you on News at 10. Emma Peake Thrilled to see your Christmas necklace making its royal debut — a vicarious delight! Sam McKnight She’s eyeing your do. Mark my words the “Big Sue” will be the new Pob! Gary Irwin Is that Sven Goran Eriksson? David Power Sue, are you inviting her to Taboo?
Laters… Sue Tilley After all yesterday’s excitement I’ve now got to spend today finishing packing… It is a bit weird that tonight will be my last night in this flat I have lived in for 30 years… a lot of ghosts are going to be rattling about… Just paid maybe my last visit to Camden Town as a resident… Saw Rob the handsome contestant from the last British Bake Off, then a fabulous tranny and then a gorgeous lorry driver shouted “I saw you on the telly yesterday” … I’m going to miss the funny old place.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was bought by Roman Abramovitch, the Russian tycoon and Chelsea FC owner, for a record £17.2 million. Freud died last summer, aged 88, and Miss Tilley described him as “a marvel, really, a complete one-off”. She said: “Do you know, there wasn’t one bad moment sitting for Lucian, excepting the painting when I was lying on the floor — that wasn’t overly comfortable. But it was such an interesting experience. He’s a person you’ll never meet again. Really, he did what he wanted and that was that. I think that’s a trait to be admired. I wish more of us were crazy enough to do that. ”
➢ Duchess of Cambridge carries out first public engagement
without Wills “ The 30-year-old duchess is taking advantage of the prince’s controversial six-week deployment to the Falkland Islands in order to make her mark as a working member of the Royal Family. [Kate] studied history of art at St Andrew’s University, where she met Prince William, coming away with an eminently respectable 2:1. ” (The paper noted she was wearing Jimmy Choo “Cosmic” heels.)
➢ Lucian Freud Portraits runs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Feb 9–May 27 — 130 paintings and works on paper loaned from collections throughout the world, from the 1940s right through to his last, unfinished work. Born in Berlin, he was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, and moved to London to escape Nazi oppression in 1933, though Sigmund did not flee until 1938. Lucian was known for his intense portraits, especially of nudes, and Time magazine critic Robert Hughes proclaimed him “the greatest living realist painter”.
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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