❚ WHETHER YOU LIKE ABBA’s SONGS or not, the scale of the West-End musical MAMMA MIA!’s success is staggering. Over 25 years it has been seen by 70 million people in 450 cities across the world, in 16 different languages. At the box office, the show has made £4.5 billion. Yes, billion !!!
So not to have seen this award-winning show is quite a feat, I am ashamed to admit. Yet on the 25th anniversary performance of MAMMA MIA! this weekend at London’s Novello Theatre I was blown away by the sheer energy and quality of this showbiz landmark, with its 34-strong cast of athletic dancers and powerful singers (especially Mazz Murray playing free-love mother Donna) plus an astonishing live orchestra. Here was the essence of full-on theatre.
What was rare for a stage musical was that the audience already knew almost every one of the show’s 22 numbers, written during the decade after ABBA won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 with Waterloo. Yet the lyrics repeatedly proved to be eye-openers during MAMMA MIA!, acting as dialogue to provide a dramatic family plot around a young girl’s marriage on a sunny Greek island.
Crucially many songs were injected with a comic twist, as with Take a Chance on Me and indeed Honey Honey which, the programme tells us, had Björn Ulvaeus – its co-author along with Benny Andersson – falling off his chair laughing and insisting “I didn’t write this as funny!” On an emotional level there were several truly tear-jerking moments as the family saga unfolded, prompted by songs such as Knowing Me, Knowing You and The Winner Takes it All.
Given that today the four members of ABBA are multi-millionaires, it’s ironic that I profiled them as the first entry in an A-to-Z Sunday Times partwork titled 1000 Makers of Music in 1997 by noting that as Swedish journeyman songsmiths in the Seventies their sing-along melodies epitomised Europe’s dreaded folkloric tradition – in contrast to Anglo-American guitar heroes who mouthed youthful dissent. Nevertheless during their breakthrough decade before disbanding ABBA scored eight consecutive No 1 albums in Britain and 25 Top 40 singles, so catchy that everybody could hum one. A decade further along, the quartet had acquired cult status as exponents of what we had grown to appreciate as “pure pop”.
In 2023 ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award which celebrates musicians who have achieved one billion UK streams in their career. Today they stand tall among the best-selling artists in music history. Last month, all four members of ABBA were appointed Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This is the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood have been bestowed.
Johnny Marr at 60: creating an innovative sound at Manchester’s new Aviva Studios
❚ WATCH OUT FOR two live performances of classics and fan favourites brought to life as A Night with the Johnny Marr Orchestra, a new, expanded sound as the one-time Smiths guitarist takes to the stage with a full classic orchestra on Dec 7 and 8. I shall be in Manchester (train strikes willing) to report back.
For two special performances this week at the Aviva Studios, the city’s brand-new exhibition and entertainment complex, Johnny is joined on stage by some of the best classical musicians from the North. Together, they’ll reinterpret his impressive solo catalogue currently selling as a limited double-CD titled Spirit Power which celebrates his songs, bangers, and electric shows from the past ten years, “having put myself under pressure to make singles”.
Celebrating Marr’s solo career: an impassioned photo-book and a UK tour next year
All of which trails a UK tour next spring and helps promote his chunky 288-page hardback book, Marr’s Guitars, packed with spectacular colour photos and his own passionate reflections on how his collection of more than 130 guitars has created his innovative sound. As Johnny says: “There is a human story behind these guitars. Historically, guitars do have this association with certain sounds and songs.”
The composer Hans Zimmer – with whom Johnny collaborated on the Bond soundtrack for No Time to Die – pens an impressively flattering foreword in the book, stressing that “Each artist gets their guitar to tell their personal story.” He is not talking about the sound you associate with metal guitars and a cheesy orchestra, “usually tasteless”, but in Marr’s case his own very particular and sensuous aesthetic. “The guitar lets us reveal ourselves more profoundly than words ever could,” Zimmer concludes.
Beatles live onstage in Stockton, Nov 22, 1963: George Harrison at the microphone on the night Kennedy was shot. Note the amplifier perched on a chair!
60
YEARS
ON
❚ WHERE? LIVE, ONSTAGE IN STOCKTON-ON-TEES.Count the simple Vox amps behind the band and note how one is perched on a chair! This picture was taken on Friday Nov 22 1963 at the 2,400-seat Globe theatre when the Beatles played the art-deco venue on their first nationwide tour. The band’s half-hour set during twice-nightly performances at 6.15 and 8.30 was supported by seven other acts with tickets priced from 6 shillings to 10s 6d, when a workman’s weekly wage might be £7….
❚ THE OFFICIAL DAVID BOWIE WEBSITE has polled his fans to elect their five favourite videos by the musical genius whose career transformed pop music over 50 years. No surprise perhaps that Ashes to Ashes came out top, capturing a crucial turning point in Bowie’s own progress in 1980 and becoming his second No 1 UK single and an international hit. It was an arty track from his 14th studio album, Scary Monsters, with a funky bassline, refined lyrics reaching back to his debut single Space Oddity and its astronaut Major Tom, while its dreamy solarised visual effects also reflected Bowie’s own experiences with drugs. Several critics declare Ashes to be among Bowie’s best songs musically and for inventiveness, and the video itself stands at number 44 in Rolling Stone’s 100 best.
For both its sleeve and video, Bowie commissioned a Pierrot pantomime costume. Significantly, the video starred four overdressed figureheads (including Steve Strange) from London’s nightlife scene, which was exploding into a gloriously colourful new subculture as a reaction to the bleakness of punk. Let’s not forget that Ashes was the most expensive music video made to date, costing £35,000 (about £140,000 in today’s money) and MTV had yet to be launched. [Read the full background story behind recruiting and filming the Blitz Kids for Ashes here at Shapersofthe80s.]
The team at DBHQ doff their hats to video director David Mallet for achieving nine entries in their video top 20, more than a third.
BEST VIDEOS HIS FANS VOTED FOR
#01 – Ashes to Ashes 1980 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#02 – Life on Mars? 1973 – Mick Rock
#03 – Boys Keep Swinging 1979 – David Mallet
#04 – Jump They Say 1993 – Mark Romanek
#05 – I’m Afraid of Americans 1997 – Dom and Nic
#06 – ★ Blackstar – 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#07 – DJ 1979 – David Mallet
#08 – The Hearts Filthy Lesson 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#09 – Lazarus 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#10 – The Stars (are out Tonight) 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#11 – The Next Day 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#12 – Let’s Dance 1983 – David Mallet
#13 – Look Back in Anger 1979 – David Mallet
#14 – Strangers when We Meet 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#15 – China Girl 1983 – David Mallet
#16 – Loving the Alien 1985 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#17 – Little Wonder 1997 – Floria Sigismondi
#18 – Blue Jean / Jazzin’ for Blue Jean 1984 – Julien Temple
#19 – Fashion 1980 – David Mallet
#20 – Wild is the Wind 1981– David Mallet
#21 – Thursday’s Child 1999 – Walter Stern
#22 – Where are We Now? 2013 – Tony Oursler
#23 – Absolute Beginners 1986 – Julien Temple
#24 – Space Oddity 1972 – Mick Rock
#25 – The Jean Genie 1972 – Mick Rock
#26 – Be my Wife 1977 – Stanley Dorfman
AMONG THE COMMENTS AT FACEBOOK:
Adam Paramore: Great list, interesting that there’s nothing from Ziggy Stardust (IIRC, some concert clips were used as music videos), no Labyrinth tracks, no Modern Love, and no Dancing in the Street with Bowie & Jagger. Anthony LeBaron: One notably absent video from the list I would add is No Plan. Released a year after his passing, it captures the enormous loss and despair I still felt at losing him. Rudy Fuentez: Ashes to Ashes is probably his best video, but to me his best song is too hard to decide. Cat People (Putting out the Fire), Always Crashing in the Same Car, Young Americans, Absolute Beginners, This is not America… too many songs. Might as well ask what do you think is the brightest star in the heavens. Andrew Seear: I agree. Always Crashing in the Same Car I think is an astonishing piece, even by Bowie’s standards. I’ve never heard despair expressed so elegantly. Stacey Rich: Coolest thing was cycling to Pett Level [where Ashes was filmed] – totally unchanged on the day, a little overcast, the beach empty. Grew up in America & never realised it was an actual place but had shown my partner the video and he recognised the beach immediately. Actually teared up. Stephen Oldfield: The lyrics and music on this track [Ashes] are stunning. The closing synthesiser must be the greatest on any song ever.
PLUS TWO VERY SPECIAL PERFORMANCES ON VIDEO
In December 1979 Saturday Night Live aired the most immaculate performance of TMWSTW by Bowie, Klaus Nomi, Joey Arias, Stacey Hayden on guitar and Jimmy Destri on keyboards, which some say was the night “he transformed live television”. This nine-minute clip also includes brilliant versions of TVC 15 with Bowie in skirt and heels, plus a hilarious performance of Boys Keep Swinging where he sports a life-sized nude puppet costume. Click on the picture to view, though don’t be surprised if you cannot reach the video. For rights reasons, this unrivalled video keeps being removed from the web by its broadcaster, so we stay on our toes scouting for alternative postings!
❏ I TOTALLY AGREE with the first three videos topping this DB poll, and draw special attention to Mick Rock’s remarkable promo for Life on Mars. Another that haunts my imagination is 2014’s Where are We Now? Moving on, I’d urge those who haven’t seen two other very special performances by Bowie to seek them out. One is an exquisite interpretation of his enigmatic song The Man who Sold the World which some claim “transformed live television” [pictured above]. Admittedly this is not a promotional video and yet it was uniquely choreographed and costumed for live performance on American TV’s Saturday Night Live in 1979 before its audience of millions. Idiosyncratic backing singers Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias provide immaculate support, while carrying Bowie forward as a kind of giant pierrot, clad in an oversized black plastic dinner jacket over a tapered tubular body – all inspired by artist Sonia Delaunay’s designs for a subversive Dadaist play from 1923. When written in 1970, the lyrics and the singer were evidently sharing an identity crisis and since his death Rolling Stone has regarded this number as “essential”.
❏ HERE’S A SECOND profoundly affecting video that’s often ignored yet it reveals the extraordinary range of Bowie’s singing voice. Possibly the purest experimental jazz number of his career, the nerve-tingling Sue (or in a Season of Crime) was created in 2014 during a session with 17 jazz soloists including saxophonist Donny McCaslin, all improvising under Maria Schneider’s guidance and running beyond seven minutes. The role of jazz in Bowie’s musical temperament seldom gets discussed, though his producer Tony Visconti says the jazz influence had always been there in the music but beneath the surface. The haunting four-minute video was directed in monochrome by Tom Hingston to promote Bowie’s “best-of” collection, Nothing Has Changed.
All taking place as Bowie was being diagnosed (discreetly) with liver cancer, Sue evokes a discomfiting tale of infidelity inspired by the poet Robert Browning, in which the narrator murders his wife and the last verse begins with the phrase “Sue, I never dreamed”, the title of the first song he recorded in 1963. Such a weepie. (An edgier, punchier, superior re-recording of Sue followed on Bowie’s final album Blackstar, released two days before his death.)
David Band’s collaged sleeve for Spandau Ballet’s single Gold
40
YEARS
ON
❚ ENJOY THIS SENSATIONAL ARTWORK! I’ve never before seen this sleeve design for Spandau Ballet’s single GOLD launched today 40 years ago and it shows artist David Band at his best! This image was revealed today by Andrew Dineley of The Cloth, a cool studio of fashionista artists during the mid-Eighties within which Band was a leading light and a regular designer of Spandau artwork who thus helped rebrand the group’s image in the post-Blitz era.
It was revealed today on the anniversary of the single’s release in a post at Facebook where Dineley says: “Band created a collage using paper, pencils, pastels and paint. The artwork was conceived to be folded three times to reveal just 1/6 of the piece on the front-side of the sleeve. The complete collage was shown in full on the back of the standard single cover and in full on the limited edition poster bag.”
So not a lot of people will have known that! Or have ever seen this superb creation before.
➢ 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 articles.
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 2024
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch 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 800 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