◼ SHAPERS OF THE 80S TELLS THE DEFINITIVE STORY of a subcultural revolution in British music and style 30 years ago. Its detonator was a youthful blast of impossible trendiness and its stars didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did. This site gathers together the eye-witness journalism and photography of one observer who knew a good time when he saw one and was published in the coolest titles of the day.
Now in its fifth year, this site has attracted a total of 722,500 views since its launch, according to year-ending WordPress stats. The figures also identify the 20 most widely read items out of more than 600 posted here. Most of these pieces were first published back in the day, but seven of the Top 20 items reflect the continuing interest expressed through the recent 80s revival. In many ways, London is again displaying all the symptoms of being the world’s most swinging city, as it was in the 60s and the 80s, when there were a galaxy of reasons to hit the town every single night of the week.
The difference seven months made: In May 1980 The Face launched with Jerry Dammers of the Specials on its cover. By November the new direction was Bowie plus a feature on The Cult With No Name, as the New Romantics were first known
Left, real Blitz Kids – right, the TV version… George’s boyfriend Wilf and fashion student Stephen Linard in 1979 (picture, Andy Rosen)… Daniel Wallace as a Linard lookalike and Douglas Booth as Boy George in Worried About the Boy, 2010 (BBC)
Seminal spread in i-D issue one: the straight-up style of photography is established with, at left, one then unknown New Romantic and, right, one punkette. Photographed on the King’s Road by Steve Johnston
Robbie Vincent at BBC Radio London in the mid-70s: from sparring phone-in host to soul master. (Photographed by Roger G Clark)
♫ Before you read on, click herefor the perfect soundtrack from Robbie’s Radio London shows three decades ago: Friends & Strangers, recorded by saxophonist Ronnie Laws for the album Mountain Dance on Blue Note, 1977
◼ TUNE IN ONLINE AT 10AM TODAY and “If it moves, funk it”. Wherever you are in the world, your internet connection will deliver one of Britain’s great musical tastemakers who 35 years ago had teenagers expressing their musical allegiances in fanatical yet playful rival groups known as soul tribes who adopted saucy names such as the Dartford Tunnel Moles, Medway Maggots, Sherwood Softshoe Shufflers, Welwyn Wobblers and scores more. More important, in an age of casual racism, this white radio and club deejay opened their ears and hearts to the rhythms of black music which they couldn’t hear anywhere else — certainly not in the pop charts and precious few places on the radio dial.
In Britain, your skin colour wasn’t necessarily reflected in your musical tastes but if you danced with your hips, your feet and your soul, black music definitely became the rallying point for frustrated dancers unable to find release in dancehalls of the Saturday-night meat market tradition. The soul tribes of Britain saw white and black kids gathering together in underground clubs discovered only through the grapevine, and often unlicensed for alcohol. Then came marathon all-day soul festivals — the first Purley all-dayer in 1978 springs to mind, with music amplified through the UK’s first serious sound system designed by soul disc jockey Froggy, and a mixing console to provide seamless cross-fades. On dancefloors across the land, the acrobatic tribes competed to improvise the wildest dance moves and to build the highest human pyramids. None of this could have been imagined in America, with its strict apartheid between black and white music, and limited chances even for Motown artists to cross over into mainstream charts and playlists.
1978: Chris Hill entertains dancers from across the south-east during the first all-day soul event at Tiffany’s in Purley, the London suburb
From 1976 the BBC Radio London deejay Robbie Vincent commanded a high-profile lunchtime show on Saturdays which featured imported albums and the novel vinyl format of 12-inch singles to introduce dance fans to a galaxy of consummate musicians pushing the frontiers of hard soul, up-front jazz and raw funk … Ronnie Laws, Eddie Henderson, Weather Report, The Crusaders, Lonnie Liston Smith, Johnny Guitar Watson, Bootsy Collins, George Benson, Wilton Felder, Maze, Roy Ayres, Al Jarreau, Hi Tension, The Fatback Band, Brass Construction, Funkadelic.
Vincent was one of three deejays who soon headed what became known as the Soul Mafia working in London and the south-east and bringing real pressure to bear on record companies to release quality US acts in the UK. His counterpart at the commercial Capital Radio station was black deejay Greg Edwards, Grenada-born and New York-raised. He won his own cult following with his Saturday evening Soul Spectrum and its romantic “Bathroom call”.
Essex’s Gold Mine in 1975: GI uniforms and swing (courtesy Brian Longman, CanveyIsland.org.uk)
At about the same time that Vincent had a residency at the spanking new Flick’s disco in Dartford, Kent (south of the Thames), Chris Hill was already a legend as resident deejay at the Gold Mine on Canvey Island (north of the Thames). If anywhere in the mid-70s, this was where novelty dressing up began, influenced by several MGM compilation musicals in the cinema (That’s Entertainment!, 1974) and blockbusters such as The Great Gatsby (1974) rekindling nostalgia for vintage Hollywood fashion. For a while, and encouraged by Hill, the Gold Mine had the monopoly on GI uniforms and scarlet-lipped jive-dolls during its Glenn Miller and swing revival.
As a club deejay Vincent was the least theatrical in his presentation. Yet, as an ex-Evening Standard journalist and “devil’s advocate” phone-in veteran, his consummate broadcast interviews with American soul giants (James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone, Bobby Womack, Chaka Khan, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass, Herbie Hancock, Roy Ayers) not only educated a generation of teen clubbers but reinforced the credibility of the music at the very moment when a hitherto cathartic disco scene turned to dross. The destructive effect of the dire film Saturday Night Fever and its musically inane Bee Gee soundtrack cannot be overstated as its infection swept the globe in 1978.
Dressing up for the dancefloor: toga parties were popular on the soul circuit, here in 1979 at Papillon club, Brighton. (Photograph by Paul Clark)
One consequence for the UK was that the emergent soul scene dived back underground and partially reemerged only in 1980 with the New Romantics, disguised in a sharp new wardrobe. There were mutations within the family, but most danced to music with soul and many new young bands had funky beats and jazz pretensions. Mainstream jazz itself came back into favour with young clubbers in the early 80s when the black Brits Courtney Pine and Sade Adu were among the first to make good. All the emergent subcults lived to dance, and dressed up to do so as the 80s matured, while the whole flavour of UK music shifted away from rock guitar to the more upfront dance beats led by the bass guitar and bass drum.
This lineage does get overlooked these days: a substantial generation of 70s music lovers acquired taste, style and feet that knew how to move. This was precisely the audience-in-waiting who demanded and created vibrant world-beating pop and fashion as Swinging London was reinvented in the 80s. Only with the so-called Second Summer of Love in 1988 and the ecstasy-fuelled hurricane of aceed house that swept in from Ibiza did UK youth almost overnight abandon a long history of dancing with its feet. The trance-inducing techno beats of rave music proved so alien to the soul heritage that kids chose instead to wave their hands in the air as if to commune mystically with the lazer light.
Ever since, only their elders can remember how to cut a dash on a sprung-maple dancefloor. Those include the cool soulboys and girls of the early 80s who favoured the funky post-Blitz London clubs such as Le Beat Route, the Wag and Dirtbox. And they express fond gratitude to Vincent, Edwards and Hill as their musical mentors.
New technology: Chris Hill and Robbie Vincent in front of Froggy’s Matamp console
◼ REFLECTING THIS WEEK on the heady rise of the soul movement in Britain, Robbie Vincent identified some of the reasons: “The whole thing grew because as the years went by we had more and more access to a core group of really important American black artists. In the UK, Loose Ends and Soul II Soul are fine examples of bringing not just great home-grown R&B to our ears but style and fashion too.
“Popular black music writing royalty like Kenny Gamble, co-founder of the mighty Philadelphia International Records label, says his favourite cover version of one of his tracks is Now That We Found Love by Third World. It is real credit to UK dancefloors that the track was adopted almost as an anthem. But it needed that pool of musicians like The O’Jays and jazz crossover men like Donald Byrd and Grover Washington to influence and excite those new young kids on the block.”
Robbie Vincent himself deserves credit as an enthusiast with missionary zeal. From the 1978 launch of the then Labour-leaning tabloid, the Daily Star, he wrote an influential weekly column recognising the inventive camaraderie of Britain’s soul tribes, long before other media woke up to the phenomenon. For most of the 80s Vincent’s career saw him curating soul in regular strands at Radio 1, the BBC’s nationwide flagship, then at key music stations ever since. In 1995 he was voted Independent Radio personality of the year at the annual Variety Club awards. In 1997 he contributed profiles to The Sunday Times’s partwork the 1,000 Makers of Music. Of Berry Gordy’s Motown label during the 60s he wrote: “The Sound of Young America became a way of life, especially for Britain’s Mods: if it wasn’t Motown, it wasn’t hip.”
Philly’s Kenny Gamble interviewed by Robbie Vincent today and next Sunday
These days, following a spell of ill-health, Vincent is ensconced at JazzFM airing his jazz-funk credentials every Sunday from 10am in a three-hour masterclass. And Christmas Day’s coup is an extensive interview with Kenny Gamble, who founded the Philly label as one half of the independent producing and writing team Gamble and Huff with 170 gold and platinum records to their credit. On air Gamble talks of its stars such as The O’Jays [view vid], Billy Paul, Michael Jackson and Teddy Pendergrass. In the late 60s Atlantic offered G&H one massive act after another — Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, Archie Bell & the Drells. Gamble says: “We did the background singing on I Can’t Stop Dancing. There were no Drells. There was me, Huff and Karl Chambers. I’ve been a Drell, I’ve been a Stylistic, I’ve been a Blue Note and a few other things.”
As a man of taste he declares The Temptations [view vid] the best group ever and Motown the greatest record company ever. When G&H formed Philly Int in 1971, they set up MFSB as the in-house band, a pool of 30 musicians exactly as the Funk Brothers were for Berry Gordy. “Motown was the blueprint for what we did. The Motown sound was so powerful, everybody wanted it. But we wanted our own sound [view vid]”. Here in MFSB’s The Sound of Philadelphia we hear the driving bass, hi-hat rhythms and lush orchestration that defined what came to be called disco in the eternal battle between rock guitars and dancing feet. The JazzFM interview continues on New Year’s Day.
◼ AMONG VINCENT’S FANS TODAY is the young black British mixer-producer Fitzroy Facey, who describes himself as a religious listener to Robbie Vincent’s radio shows through the late 1970s and early 80s. It was 1979 when Robbie helped instigate the National Soul Weekenders at Caister holiday camp, which are still going strong (see video below). In a recent interview for his magazine The Soul Survivors (edited extract at JazzFM), Fitzroy acknowledged that Vincent has been as important as some of the artists he has interviewed because he touched so many people’s lives, to create the “one nation under a groove” [view vid].
Robbie: My phone-in show helped here as I suffered a lot of abuse and would not tolerate racism or bigots. I’m very proud to have stood up to those views and the great uniter is music, which is a universal language.
Fitzroy: I was one of those coming from an Afro-Caribbean background who remember the racist door policies in the 70s and early 80s.
Robbie: Tell me about it; don’t forget I grew up in an era where Tamla Motown didn’t put their artist photographs on the cover sleeves because they were black and they worried they might alienate a white audience. This is an often missed point and an utter disgrace… We should hang our heads in shame.
“The Robbie Vincent Edition” 1994: his Classic Jazz-Funk selection for Mastercuts ranges from Grover Washington, Roy Ayers and Gabor Szabo to Blue Feather and OPA
Fitzroy: There are huge testaments on the net to both you and Greg Edwards for opening doors to pirate stations and presenters of black music. The younger generation have no concept that back in the 70s access to black music was totalling less than 10 hours a week. Today it’s 24/7 and you couldn’t possibly imagine 30-plus years later that Kiss, Jazz, Choice FM would grow out of that.
Robbie: That’s what made the scene so exciting — it was pioneering. The people who danced and were enthusiastic about the music made me very proud to be part of it. Because people were so passionate… Remember, the young black musicians were inspired by their brothers in America. You didn’t have to become a boxer — you learned an instrument. It was so infectious, it was inevitable that the music back then would be integral to popular music today.
Nov 13, 1980: chart entry qualifies Spandau for their first Top of the Pops
◼ TODAY’S THE DAY THE HOTTEST NEW BAND OF 1980 released their debut single 30 years ago. Inside a year, Spandau Ballet had clicked with clubland’s coolest fan base, played only eight bookings, refused to make any demo tapes but instead spent that year winding up the media and the music industry with word-of-mouth rumours of a youth movement right behind them.
Kilt-wearing Steve Norman’s lace-ups
On October 10 Spandau signed an unprecedented deal with Chrysalis, on October 27 they released To Cut a Long Story Short driven by a monophonic synthesiser: Daa-didi dada dada di-di dada didi daaa! On November 15 the single entered the chart. Bingo – Top of the Pops.
In 1980, for every new band firing up their ambition in the wings, Spandau acted as a fuel injection system. For electro bands who had been nibbling at success — OMD, Simple Minds, Japan, Ultravox — here was the bandwagon. And they jumped on board.
Posted on12 Oct 2009|Comments Off on WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES
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
❏ 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
First published in the Evening Standard, 16 October 1980
THE CYNICS may have written off London as dead in 1980 but somewhere under the skin a dozen small worlds are struggling to prove our swinging capital is not yet finished. Each private world has its own star system and its own code of conduct. Some steer a scenic route through the maze of being young, broke and having energy to spare
Judi Frankland in one of the clerical cassocks from her degree show summer of 1980, pictured by Derek Ridgers. Style commentator Perry Haines, by Simon Brown
◼ LAST THURSDAY was as typical as any. At about the time 5,000 fans from Disco World were leaving The Crusaders concert at the Royal Albert Hall, 1980’s new London underground was coming to life. On the door of a Covent Garden club called Hell, Chris Sullivan, in monocle and Basque beret, and Judi Frankland, in the home-made clerical cassock that she’d worn in Bowie’s video for his chart topping Ashes to Ashes, were posing for an Italian magazine photographer. Inside, playing box-office and wearing his own modish Stephen Jones hat and all too visible makeup, sat the ubiquitous Steve Strange, 21, Hell being the twice-weekly off-shoot of his much reported Tuesdays at the nearby Blitz club. For him, he said, dressing up is a way of life. “I don’t do it to get attention.” . . . / Continued on our inside page
➢ 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
