❚ THERE’S A BREATHLESS FOUR-PARAGRAPH teaser online at Rolling Stone magazine’s website in an attempt to sell the February 2 issue. It’s headlined How David Bowie Changed The World. Yet it promises nothing we haven’t read a million times before. Instead, try our own tribute on Bowie’s 65th birthday, linked further down this post.
“ He phoned Angela in London, asking for her help: witches intended for him to impregnate one during Walpurgis Night. He later said Satan was living in his indoor swimming pool. David needed an exorcism (“I really walked into other worlds,” he later said), and Angela got him one – though it was by way of a long-distance phone call. “David was never insane,” Angela wrote. “The really crazy stuff coincided precisely with his ingestion of enormous amounts of cocaine, alcohol and whatever other drugs.” In any event, the rite may have helped break Bowie’s fear of a fiend possessing him. “It was time to get out of this terrible lifestyle I’d put myself into, and get healthy,” he later said. “It was time to pull myself together ” … / Continued online at Rolling Stone
❏ Update Feb 8: Now this Bowie issue has reached the UK, Mikal Gilmore’s account of the Ziggy phenomenon proves a workmanlike retelling of the familiar, but is oh-so relentlessly downbeat. He even cites an alleged quotation from 1998: Bowie is supposed to have said that, “Without Iman, I’d have put my head in the oven by now”. It’s a cheap shot because the quote has never been attributed, so counts for nothing more than hearsay. Rolling Stone claims a circulation of 1.45m.
“ As a cultural lightning rod Bowie has bequeathed insights into the realm of the imagination. As a performer he has delivered a repertoire of life-skills through a cast of mythical personalities invented for himself as a popstar, from the self-destructive Ziggy Stardust and the amoral Thin White Duke, to his romanticised “Heroes” (his own quote marks added to emphasise self-awareness). Through their formative years, Bowie invited his acolytes to do A…. and B…. and C…. ” / Read on to discover what
What, me, pensioner? David Bowie and his wife the supermodel Iman attend the DKMS Annual Gala in New York City last April. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty)
❚ HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR BOWIE. And thanks for the boggling, inspirational, poptastic ride so far —140 million albums sold and the rules of rock rewritten. You will be the genie waiting at the end of time. Boy George has this to say in his foreword to Graham Smith’s new book on 80s clubland, named after David Bowie’s song We Can Be Heroes: “Of the New Romantic moment I have always said, It was all Bowie’s fault.” What he refers to is the Bowie bequest to the teen generations he entertains. As a cultural lightning rod he has bequeathed insights into the realm of the imagination. As a performer he has delivered a repertoire of life-skills through a cast of mythical personalities invented for himself as a popstar, from the self-destructive Ziggy Stardust and the amoral Thin White Duke, to his romanticised “Heroes” (his own quote marks added to emphasise self-awareness). Through their formative years, Bowie invited his acolytes:
✰ to explore identity, androgyny, the primacy of the visual.
✰ to adopt stances: individualism, alienation, decadence, transgression.
✰ to follow his principles for living amusing lives: disposable identities, portable events, looks not uniforms, tastelessness “on purpose”.
His signature tune, “Heroes”, still echoes today as a heart-stirring anthem because he was passionate and optimistic and musically this number is brimming with awe. He sang about intimacy and love triumphing over the horrors of the outside world. Finding joy in simple pleasures could make heroes of us all, “just for one day”. As a creed to live by, it has underpinned his own life. “I’m an instant star,” he said. “Just add water and stir.”
Were he still living in the UK, today’s birthday would designate him, in the idiom, “an old-age pensioner”, and the state would pay him slightly more than the five shillings a week handed over when the scheme began 100 years ago. He can’t be 65, you’re saying as you inspect the picture of him and his wife Iman [above] at a leukemia charity gala in New York last year. He looks too good for 65. “Waddayamean?” he’d be bound to snap, flinging back the old feminist line, “This is how 65 looks in the 21st century.”
True, if you start young, break the rules and push yourself to the max, as all geniuses do. While in short trousers, the little suburban Londoner David Jones was nothing if not prolific. At 11 he was playing a skiffle bass, buying and collecting the NME for future reference, learning the sax at 13 and soon moving up through a succession of bands: Konrads, Hookers, King Bees, Manish Boys, Lower Third, Buzz, and Riot Squad.
At school he fell under the spell of an art teacher, Owen Frampton, whose own son Peter went on to musical fame. Bowie has said: “I went to one of the first art-oriented high schools in England, where one could take an art course from the age of 12. Three-fourths of our class actually did go on to art school.”
Everybody knows how this liberal education shaped his outsider stance, how he redefined glam-rock, and how his incarnation as Ziggy Stardust made him an international star and one of the most iconoclastic forces in 70s music. How much more fun though to celebrate a grand milestone by looking back to the earliest expressions of that genius and to wonder aloud how else might the talents of the young David Jones have developed? Today, we find whole chapters of his formative experiments on video online, from mime artist and music-hall hoofer, to actor and fin-de-siècle soothsayer. In all the springboard moments pictured in the slideshow above, Bowie is no older than 24. At any moment the fickle finger of fate could as easily have pointed in any number of directions…
In 1969 Bowie’s manager Kenneth Pitt proposed to showcase his talents by producing a half-hour film called Love You Till Tuesday. The compilation showcased tracks from his 1967 debut album, plus a spanking new song, Space Oddity, which introduced Major Tom and became his first hit. Cleverly anticipating the first Nasa Moonwalk in 1969, the filming for this number pastiches Stanley Kubrick’s cine-epic premiered the previous year. It effectively proposed what today we call the promo video which, as Kevin Cann reveals in his exhaustive 2010 Bowie biographyAny Day Now, remained substantially unseen by the public until its release as a clip in 1984. The whole half-hour showreel went online for the first time only yesterday…
THEN HE MET WILLIAM BURROUGHS
1973: Bowie is interviewed for Rolling Stone with novelist Wiliam Burroughs and photographed by Terry O’Neill
THEN HE MET LIZ TAYLOR
1975: Bowie meets Hollywood legend Liz Taylor. Photographed by Terry O’Neill
THEN HE WROTE A SONG WITH JOHN LENNON
1975: At the Grammys, Bowie upstages Yoko Ono and John Lennon — one day he gets jamming with David in a studio and turns a lick into the song Fame
◼ PRODUCT PLACEMENT DOESN’T COME better than this! On Christmas Day we saw the first of three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, the award-winning cult comedy series which ran from 1992 to 2003. It depicted the fashion-addicted lives of PR Edina, played by 80s Comic Stripper Jennifer Saunders, and her best friend, Patsy, the chain-smoking sex-mad magazine editor played by 70s Avengers star, Joanna Lumley. Today, New Year’s Day, we saw a second episode and look whose brand name was being lavishly displayed as Eddie swanned around in those distinctive head-to-foot knits from the Swinging 80s — the hottest label of its day, BodyMap.
Coincidence or design? Only last July David Holah put a load of classic BodyMap outfits into the Cavalcade of the 80s catwalk show at the Vintage Festival organised by Wayne Hemingway at London’s Festival Hall — and they didn’t seem to have aged one jot. One month later, the BBC began filming the Christmas specials. It pays, as they say, to advertise.
Cavalcade of the 80s at London’s Vintage Festival in July: a striking presence on the runway is the very same BodyMap ensemble worn later in Ab Fab on New Year’s Day. Picture courtesy David Holah
BodyMap was the game-changing fashion label launched in 1982 when ex-Blitz Kids David Holah and Stevie Stewart graduated from the trendy fashion course at Middlesex Polytechnic to have their collection instantly bought by Browns, the prescient South Molton Street shop. The pair immediately injected excitement into the fashion scene with daring designs as bizarre as their controversial catwalk shows, given titles such as Querelle Meets Olive Oil, and The Cat in the Hat Takes a Rumble with the Techno Fish. In 1983 they won the Martini award for the most innovative designers of the year and rocketed to international success as the British fashion scene became international news.
Knits, prints and stretch fabrics were restructured in men’s and women’s collections to map every part of the body, itself revealed by holes in unexpected places. Film-maker John Maybury supervised their outrageous videos (here the 1986 Half World collection). Michael Clark’s dance company can also take credit for promoting BodyMap’s overtly sexual appeal. By 1989 Holah & Stewart had opened their own retail outlet but the early 90s credit squeeze forced the company out of the competitive fashion business.
Since then David Holah has continued to design as a freelance and diversify as a printmaker. Stevie Stewart works with leading names in fashion, music, film and advertising as a fashion, costume, set and production designer. Popstar clients who have commissioned her costumes for world tours include Kylie, Britney, Girls Aloud, Westlife, Alexandra Burke, Cheryl Cole and Leona Lewis.
Last week Jennifer Saunders, who writes the Ab Fab TV scripts, revealed that the forthcoming big-screen movie will be set on the French Riviera where Eddie and Patsy go to a party aboard on an oligarch’s yacht. She told New York magazine: “I’m aiming to shoot this in a beautiful part of the Riviera. I fancy the south of France in the spring.”
Stevie Stewart and David Holah: a TV interview during London Fashion Week at the height of BodyMap’s success in 1984. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
Planets club in Piccadilly, 1981: George O’Dowd before he became Boy, his sidekick and future singer Marilyn, and fashion goddess Kim Bowen. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
❚ 2011 WAS A BUMPER YEAR for Shapersofthe80s. Visits to this website have doubled year on year, to a total of 174,658 page views during 2011. Also during the past six months, views increased by 40% over the previous six months — driven substantially by our exclusive pictures of Steve Norman’s wedding, and by exploring the heritage which informs We Can Be Heroes, Graham Smith’s definitive new photobook about 80s clubbing.
1 — Spandau Ballet — Total page views include Tony Hadley’s international tour with John Keeble, Steve Norman’s wedding, Martin Kemp’s cinematic triumphs and Gary Kemp as cultural pundit, as each of the band members has been pursuing his own interests since their farewell performance in July 2010.
2 — Boy George whose rise and fall seems Greek in its tragedic possibilities.
3 — Duran Duran who have patiently rebuilt their credibility over the past year. (Of their total page views here, almost half came in one day, yesterday*)
4 — Paradise Point — Britain’s brightest new pop musicians who mysteriously vanished from the stage almost as soon as they had published one of the most seductive videos of the year [see below].
5 — Sade whose long-awaited world tour slaked her fans’ thirst and gave her a No 1 album on both sides of the Atlantic.
6 — George Michael — another 80s survivor whose vulnerability almost renders him indestructible.
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Steady attractions at Shapersofthe80s are the post about John Rutter’s royal wedding anthem, and historically important interviews with the painter David Hockney (1983) and with Beatle John Lennon (1966).
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* It is an astonishing statistical exception that yesterday proved our busiest day of the year thanks entirely to Duran Duran sharing on Facebook the link to our choice of the 10 most creative tribute videos celebrating their comeback. So, despite our having followed Duran’s world tour since their newest album was launched in 2010, almost as many fans visited in a single day as during the entire year to date. ❏ iPAD, TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You may see only a tiny selection of items from this wide-ranging website about the 1980s, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and site index either click on “Standard view” or visit Shapersofthe80s.com on a desktop computer. ➢ Click here to visit a different random item every time you click
❏ DIY claims to be one of the most visited underground music sites in the UK. Its TV watcher David Bedwell reckons TV in 2011 was arguably stronger than it ever has been, and picks his ten best shows, from Smallville to Being Human [pictured]. Of series three he writes: “Proud to be able to put a UK show at the top of my chart this year — there was no better central cast than Lenora Crichlow, Russell Tovey and Aidan Turner. They all have the ability to make you laugh or cry, sometimes even both.”
ANDREW LOGAN’S ALT BEAUTY PAGEANT
❏ The British Guide to Showing Off was a new movie by Jes Benstock celebrating the 12 incarnations over 40 years of Andrew Logan [pictured] and his Alternative Miss World contest — “Mashed potato for daywear. For evening wear she was a giant chip.”
CHRIS SULLIVAN’S TEN BEST FILMS
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❏ No 4 in ZeitgeistMeister Sullivan’s choice at Red Bull is Almodovar’s stylish thriller The Skin I Live In.
A FEAST OF ART BOOKS
Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern, photographed by Dan Chung for the Guardian
❏ The Guardian critic Peter Conrad weighs up the year’s art books discussing the point of galleries and installations such as The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern [pictured]. He finds David Hockney enthusing like a teenager about the iPhone and iPad, and genius springing from the man who gave us the shower scene in Psycho.
I-D: A YEAR IN PICTURES
❏ Magazine publisher Terry Jones brought us “32 covers that capture fashion’s diversity” from a year of designer collaborations, and parties such as the i-D and Alberto Guardiani Milanese fashion week rave “which will go down in history”.
PRINCESS JULIA’S TIP-TOP TUMBLRS TO FOLLOW
❏ In her wider wrap-up of the year, the international club deejay and Blitz era icon, Princess Julia, elicits even more fave Tumblrs from the five bloggers she chooses, who include the epitome of all that is beautiful and girly, lingerie-designer and artist, Hannah Metz [above].
DONNY SLACK’S 12 PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS
❏ The socialite musician, actor and spirit of the night Donny Slack records these highlights of his year at Facebook … Patti Smith’s Mapplethorpe book, Keith Richards’ book, PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, Adam Ant at O2, Last Tuesday Society Halloween Party , The Chap magazine , Metronomy album, Patrick Wolf’s Lupercalia , John Waters at the Festival Hall, Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare album and I’ll Bite Your Face Off single, A Child Of The Jago collections, and Earl of Bedlam launching.
❏ Forbes magazine lists the top earners of 2011 beginning with the Brazilian Gisele Bündchen ($45m, pictured), Heidi Klum ($20m) and Kate Moss ($13.5m)… There is no list of the highest-earning male models because they earn a lot less than female models. According to Forbes: “A top male model may take home anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 annually, but most make a less glamorous living from catalog work.”
➢ 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
➢ Here’s the best Rolling Stone can find to say about Bowie: 
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 