Launched August 1980: who’d have guessed that 72 covers and almost as many winkers later the magazine would have arrived at the end of its first decade?
❚ A MONTH AFTER i-D MAG’S LAUNCH in August 1980, cub-editor Perry Haines was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh from the St Martin’s fashion journalism course. Armed with such axioms as “Pitch and stitch dance hand in hand”, he was launching his club night at Gossip’s in Soho, calling it the i-D Sink or Swim night, admission £2.50. “We play 100mph dance music,” he said, meaning sounds like James White and the Blacks. “People are waiting for something to run with. They’re at the starting blocks.” Shapersofthe80s was there like a shot.
Launched as a quarterly in A4 fanzine format, economically printed in black-and-white and stapled, i-D was soon dubbed the UK “manual of style” for inventing the so-called straight-up more or less on the hoof: kids were photographed full-length, as and where they were found on the streets of Britain, then captioned down to the last thrift-shop nappy pin. Today editor-in-chief Terry Jones celebrates identity as the theme that has sustained his unique mag for three decades by turning the 30th birthday pre-fall issue of i-D over to the talented photographer Nick Knight, who was appointed an OBE in the most recent Queen’s birthday honours. It is one stunning run of superb black-and-white portraits of 200 people the mag believes are brainy, beautiful and downright gorgeous — from The xx, Phoebe Philo, Sir Paul Smith, Florence Welch to a rude Cerith Wyn Evans and a raunchy Vivienne Westwood, both enjoying their age disgracefully, plus three alternative cover stars epitomising this issue’s title of Then, Now and Next, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lady Gaga.
The key question is: How many of i-D’s 100 People of the 80s from Knight’s fifth anniversary shoot have made it into the 20-tens?! Uh-oh, only 12 found so far. Still counting.
❚ RUMOUR CONFIRMED & NOW UPDATED – Thank heavens they had nowt to do with the 80s, though what talent Take That possessed did define Britain’s archetypal squeaky-clean boyband of the 90s . . . Robbie Williams – the youngest of them at 36 – is of course the daddy financially, worth £80m at No 28 in The Sunday Times Rich List of Top 50 Musicians, 2010. Songwriter Gary Barlow, 39, languishes at No 48 on a mere £30m.
Thursday’sDaily Mirror was first to nail the potential rewards. It claimed that a new album, plus merchandise and 50-date tour next summer promoted by their pals at SJM will net £6m apiece for both Williams and Barlow as main songwriters, with £4.2m each to the three dormice, Mark Owen, 38, Jason Orange, 40, and Howard Donald, 42. So it’s trebles all round.
However, by Friday July 16, The Sun’s Bizarre editor Gordon Smart was upping the ante: “If you thought the boys were rich now, next Christmas is going to see them served up with a whole new level of wealth.”
The five men stand to make £15m each from an album deal, arena tour, royalties and other projects which have been lined up. Smart reported in detail: “A music industry expert explained how reformed Take That are set for a mega payday. The band will trouser £5m each from record sales, royalties, TV rights and endorsements – plus another £10m from their tour, which will reach out to a world record 3m people. He said: ‘One sold-out stadium will gross £2m for the band. Costs will swallow £1m per show, but after fifty dates the lads will be left with at least £50m.’ ”
Despite the smiles in pictures and news video this week, the group’s body language is stiff and unconvincing, especially in the sofa shots. Fans have been noting the cursory hugs and lack of eye contact. Orange looks conspicously sidelined. Upmarket papers have done little more than regurgitate the already well-worn publicity guff. Only the tabloids offer any inside info. Although a Sun headline on Thursday claimed Williams is “officially back for good”, there has been no such supporting claim in its extensive live online coverage. On July 16 Smart stated unequivocally: “There are no plans beyond this tour and album.”
THEY SAID IT
Orange on Williams’s departure “When Robbie left I didn’t feel that much. For whatever reason, Robbie and I didn’t get on that well in the band” Owen on Williams’s departure “I didn’t really think about it that much. I just know that I had two weeks to learn how to rap” Williams on Barlow’s songwriting “I remember genuinely thinking he’s a genuinely crap songwriter” Barlow on the success of Williams’s 1997 single Angels “I’ve never laid in bed wishing I was Robbie Williams, but I guess I lay in bed wishing I had his career”
Williams this week described the reunion as like “coming home” from a solo career that has lurched between brilliance and despair. He was speaking at a studio in West London where the new Take That were finishing the as yet unnamed CD, their first full album since the release of Nobody Else in 1995.
First, Barlow and Williams will release a jointly written duet, appropriately called Shame. The video for this song has a Brokeback Mountain theme, according to The Sun. The pair have been inseparable recently, and it pokes fun at the close and cathartic relationship they are said to have rekindled.
All five singers have written songs for the album, due out in November and produced by Stuart Price who is admired for his work with Madonna and Kylie. It is the first time the group has worked together since Williams walked out amid acrimony 15 years ago and went on to launch a successful solo career. The remaining members disbanded a year later but reformed in 2005. Williams went into rehab three years ago battling with addiction. Owen has also admitted to struggling with alcoholism in the past.
Manchester manager Nigel Martin Smith brought the lads together when most were in their late teens. He hoped to emulate the success of US boyband New Kids On The Block, but only when he added 16-year-old body-popping Robbie Williams from Stoke-on-Trent did the magic kick in.
During their five-year boyband career, Take That produced one of the decade’s bestselling albums in Everything Changes. Between them, Take That and Williams have sold more than 80m albums, played to more than 14.5m people live, won 19 Brit Awards and had 13 No1 albums, 17 No1 singles, eight MTV awards and five Ivor Novello awards.
Take That first sang live as a group 20 years ago on the cringemaking television show The Hit Man and Her which stands today as an authentic slice of provincial social history. Fronted by the now legendary record producer Pete Waterman (him) and TV presenter Michaela Strachan (her), the show was recorded on Saturdays at “a disco somewhere in the North of England” and broadcast early on Sunday mornings in the local Granada region, then again three hours later to the South-East where more liberal licensing laws meant clubbers got home that much later.
Over four years the show became compulsive viewing for its uninhibited antics by crowd members participating in dance-offs and other embarrassing party games. Resident dancers included a black exhibitionist called Clive who habitually wore little more than a blond wig – another was Jason Orange himself, a member of the Manchester-based crew, Street Machine.
➢➢ Take That’s second appearance on the Hit Man and Her in 1990 was this hideously uncoordinated effort at The Discothèque Royale in Manchester, performing Waiting Around which sounds as if it were written for the dreary Rick Astley, yet became the B-side for their first single, Do What U Like. Predictably, their first three singles went nowhere . . .
➢➢ VIEW ♫ ♫ Get Outta My Way! – Ropey iPhone video of Kylie’s next single live at Heaven this morning, but a visual feast, jam-packed with energy:
❚ AN EYE-POPPINGLY CREATIVE LASER SHOW capturing every colour of the rainbow was hurled towards a bouncing audience of Londoners in the early hours of this morning at Heaven. A euphoric Kylie Minogue was making a surprise 40-minute PA in the sweltering heat of high summer. This week she launched her 11th studio album in the UK, the dance-driven Aphrodite which marks her return to joyous pure-pop, and moves her on from the tragic events of adult life she calls her “dark period”.
According to host Jeremy Joseph, Aphrodite had gone straight to No 1 in the album chart – her fifth No 1 album – and he produced a multi-candled cake by way of congratulations. He also reminded us all that this was Kylie’s tenth appearance at London’s G-A-Y venue since its predecessor Bang! became the mainstream gay mega-clubnight that virtually launched Kylie’s British pop career in 1988. Since then the Australian-born singer has become the most successful female artist in the UK charts and the second richest British popstar from the 1980s.
Onstage from 1.35 this morning she performed six numbers in a clingy-and-swishy shredded gold Cinderella dress plus golden knuckle-duster, then three encores in a bewitching mirrored black top with thigh-high Puss-in-boots, climaxing with her erotic new single All The Lovers elegantly framed by five of her beefcake dancers and as many more females. Heaven had, perhaps foolishly, handed out whistles to everybody in the audience, so whether you could hear Kylie’s vocals above the non-stop barrage became slightly theoretical – a fact she accepted by just letting the audience get on with the verses as well as choruses to almost every number.
When asked in a recent interview with Popjustice if Aphrodite would make a good farewell album, 42-year-old Kylie responded: “I think so. It’s joyful. It’s like the jus of all the best bits of my musical career.” We also discover exactly what “a Kylie moment” is.
Kylie’s own tweeted pix: backstage at G-A-Y with her female dancers, and with the monster teddy presented by Jeremy Joseph to mark her becoming an auntie for the third time
➢➢ VIEW ♫ ♫ Delectable rendering of All The Lovers – Kylie Minogue on the Jonathan Ross show, June 25, 2010 (spot Dawn Joseph and David Tench in support) – Oops, this has been removed from YouTube. Instead here’s her UK TV performance one month later with Alan Carr:
◆ July 4 — Blitz Kid Dencil Williams does Donna Summer at the Embassy Ball
ON THIS DAY IN 1980…
◆ June30-July 12 — Spandau Ballet play the Papagayo club in St Tropez: one booking but 12 gigs by playing nightly except Sundays. ◆ July – Jane Kahn & Patti Bell open their shop in Great Gear Market, London ◆ July 3 — Gaz Mayall starts his Rockin’ Blues on Thursday nights at Gossip’s club, Soho – London’s longest running club-night is still going strong at the St Moritz in Wardour Street ◆ July 13 — Spandau Ballet’s Scala concert airs on London Weekend Television
ON THIS DAY IN 1981…
◆ July 2 — Video for Spandau’s Chant No1 is shot at Le Beat Route ◆ July 3 — New York Times carries first report of a mystery cancer killing gay men, much later identified as HIV/Aids ◆ July 5-6 — Police attacked in riots at Toxteth, Liverpool ◆ July 9 — Depeche Mode play Regency Suite, Chadwell Heath
ON THIS DAY IN 1983…
◆ July — Mud Club moves to Fouberts, off Carnaby Street ◆ July 7 — Jimmy the Hoover debut on Top of the Pops … Sade plays the Wag club
ON THIS DAY IN 1984…
◆ July 3 — Spandau Ballet’s album Parade goes straight in at No 2 in the charts
❚ TONIGHT AT A SWANK EVENING BASH Spandau Ballet bow out from the Reformation Tour which reunited the five former schoolmates from the Angel, Islington, for one year, one album, one single, one tour, one DVD and umpteen vintage remixes. They headline the second of this year’s Newmarket Nights at the summer racecourse near the Suffolk market town renowned as the birthplace of thoroughbred horse racing.
Tomorrow the mobile knives climb back in the drawer and who knows whether they will ever be sharpened again as a team? Tony Hadley in particular hits the road on July 3 with his own band alongside ABC and Rick Astley. It’s the first of a series of Heart Radio picnic concerts, starting at Borde Hill Garden in Sussex.
Reasons reasons were there from the start, so each member of Spandau returns to his own art. Shapersofthe80s, too, was there from the start, corralling the 22 Blitz Kids who put the show on the road in 1980 for a now-nostalgic team photo at the Waldorf Hotel. Robert Elms even smuggled a copy of my Evening Standard column into the picture in his right hand, sentimentalists as we were at the outset of the big adventure. Blue sing la lune, sing lagoon.
Instead of a traditional retirement clock, here’s a bespoke souvenir of their heyday for the Angel Boys, courtesy of the E4 TV series Skins. It’s a slideshow of Spandau’s biggest No 1 hit True, rendered very poignantly with ukulele backing . . .
➢ 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
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ 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
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
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
LANDMARK FAREWELLS. . . HIT THE INDEX TAB UP TOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 