Fireworks in Firework: British TV viewers see only a pixelated version
❚ YESTERDAY KATY PERRY’S SINGLE FIREWORK finally fell out of the UK singles chart after 58 weeks, having left the US Billboard Hot 100 last July after 39 weeks, and selling 4.7m copies in the US. To date, the video has been viewed 253m times on YouTube, and picked up MTV’s video of the year award.
Despite depicting fireworks shooting from Perry’s chest, this daft yet lavish and cinematic promo video shot in Hungary was censored for British television because it captured the fleeting kiss shown above between two young men. Yet many another video has failed to raise such outrage. A year ago when Firework had reached No 4 in the UK chart, Shapersofthe80s went in search of 20 gay kisses in pop that did make it past the censor.
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+++ ❚ HERE’S A FAB GLIMPSE OF DAVID BOWIE in a London street, caught on cine film when he was aged 18. It is newly posted at YouTube by 57-year-old Joe Salama from south-east London. Shapersofthe80s asked Joe about his Bowie connection and he replied: “I suppose I have always been a fan of David Bowie’s music certainly since Hunky Dory when as a youngster I drove a minicab for a while with my Hanimex tape player rigged up to some headphones in my Renault 16. I remember delivering some parts to IBM in Birmingham at night and that album kept me going all the way there and back, thrilled to bits with the sound.
“Regarding the 1960s cine clip, it really was a complete surprise to me and needless to say my late father, who had no idea at the time. This exceptional footage was taken by him on a trip up to the West End of London, totally unaware that David Bowie was the young dude who smiles graciously at the camera. Even when I showed him what he had filmed he was none the wiser and couldn’t remember why he focused on this particular chap. He was trying to film my mum whose face crosses fleetingly behind the great man if you look carefully at the shot. Roughly dated to 1968.”
❏ YouTuber momasu comments: “This is spring 1965, and Davie Jones (as he was still called then) is heading into his favourite cafe on Denmark Street, La Gioconda, possibly after recording demos with his new band The Lower Third at Central Sound Studio next door.”
Pre-Bowie Davie Jones, aged 18: filmed possibly in Tin Pan Alley, London, by Joe Salama’s father
❏ Judging by the numerous photos in Kevin Cann’s meticulous book Any Day Now, two details pin the date of Joe’s film clip down to the early part of 1965: the giant button-down tab-collar shirt Bowie is wearing, and his hair hanging well over his collar, now parted as he moves on from the “helmet” style seen in the 1964 video below. Under the stage name of Davie Jones he had been singing since the previous July with the six-piece R&B band, The Manish Boys, whose hair-length had caused controversy. They record the single I Pity The Fool — produced by Shel Talmy and with a guitar solo by Jimmy Page — which leads to a TV appearance on BBC2’s Gadzooks in March 1965.
17-YEAR-OLD BOWIE ON THE TONIGHT SHOW IN 1964
+++ ❏ Nov 12, 1964: Kevin Cann’s book reminds us that when Bowie, then known as Davie Jones, appeared on the BBC’s Tonight show (above) campaigning for “The Society for the prevention of cruelty to long-haired men”, it was a publicity-seeking ploy. Nowhere in the interview does he admit that the hairy men around him in the studio are mostly The Manish Boys, on a rare night off from touring southern England. The previous night they’d played the legendary home of British R&B, the Eel Pie Island club in Twickenham, and the next they were at the Witch Doctor in St Leonards-on-Sea (though without Davie). Incidentally, this is not his TV debut as some claim — that was on Juke Box Jury the previous June.
“ Neither the David Bowie Organization, nor its co-publishers EMI Music and Chrysalis, has issued a license for this performance at the O2. There are no negotiations pending for a long-running musical featuring the music of Mr Bowie ”
❏ Nov 29 update: Julian Stockton at The Outside Organisation confirmed today: “That statement put out by me at the weekend still stands, there has been no change.” When I suggested that his phrase “long-running” doesn’t actually rule out a one-off show, and asked “Are negotiations pending for a one-off musical?” he replied: “To the best of my knowledge no there are not.”
❏ Despite the official denials expressed above, the website for Heroes the Musical is still announcing a performance on Sunday March 11, 2012… and its Facebook page says tickets go on sale 9am January 5. Meanwhile an email from Shapersofthe80s seeking clarification from the producers remains unanswered.
“ PLANS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED this weekend for the first full-scale musical based on the songs of the totemic British performer David Bowie. A futuristic fantasy called Heroes: The Musical will tell the story of Major Tom, as well as the starman and a “young dude” called David and will have its world premiere in March at the IndigO2, the nightclub venue with a flexible capacity of 2,400 inside London’s former Millennium Dome.
Bowie, who is one of Britain’s most successful songwriters, rarely gives permission for his songs to be used and has never allowed them to be used in this way before. Deep Singh, a former screenwriter who wrote the musical, believes that Bowie gave consent because he emphasised that his story was set in the future and aimed to show the timeless relevance of Bowie’s lyrics.
The villains of Singh’s story are the patrolling Diamond Dogs and the “ruthless Smart Simon” who has created, and now controls, a dystopian empire set in an indeterminate future… ”/ continued online
The Band Aid band, Nov 25, 1984: most of the pop stars who performed, plus artist Peter Blake who created the record sleeve for Do They Know It’s Christmas?
◼︎ SPANDAU BASSIST MARTIN KEMP REMINDS US via Twitter that on this day in 1984, he and about 40 other mainly British superstars went into the studio under the group name of Band Aid to record the fund-raising single, Do They Know It’s Christmas? This collabarative gesture in the name of charity held the record for 13 years as the UK’s biggest selling chart single of all time. It raised millions for the Ethiopian famine and led directly to Live Aid, the globally televised rock concerts in 1985. Kemp said today: “It still gives me a tingle when I hear it” and then proudly posted a picture of the three platinum discs he and every other participant received a year later after it had clocked more than 3 million sales in the UK.
Martin Kemp’s three platinum discs presented by the BPI for sales of Do They Know It’s Christmas?
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+++ ❚ ON NOV 28 SPANDAU BALLET’S 1983 chart hit Gold is re-released as an iTunes download newly remixed by superstar trance deejay Paul Oakenfold. But there’s a twist involving 20 fans who stepped up to the mike to record the chorus of the song that has echoed throughout sporting arenas the world over.
In 1981, Cadbury launched its Wispa chocolate bar with bubbles as a competitor to Rowntree’s Aero. Now that Cadbury is the Official Treat Provider of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the bar is relaunched as Wispa Gold with caramel, retailing at 56 pence. The London 2012 Games offer a billion-pound retail opportunity that is unlike anything Britain has experienced before and a quarter of these sales are likely to be made in the final months of this year. When 25m Brits watched the recent Royal Wedding, total revenue hit £50m, so retailers are keen to capitalise on London 2012.
Cadbury is investing £8m in an advertising and sponsorship campaign plus another £1.5m on marketing, all aiming to support Team GB ahead of the 2012 Olympics with the slogan Keep Them Pumped.
Fan, commuter bike, shoelaces: all gilded ready for the video of the remixed Gold
Six of pop’s greatest power training anthems have been re-recorded as campaign soundtracks to encourage athletes preparing for the July Games. New music videos have been shot for The Final Countdown, Simply the Best, Danger Zone while an epic video for We Will Rock You [below] has enlisted more than 200 inhabitants of Merthyr Tydfil to cheer on their Olympic hockey player Sarah Thomas.
Spandau’s sleek and glitteringly golden video for the Oakenfold remix features Team GB athlete and BMX champion Shanaze Reade, plus the 120 fans selected in online auditions who then came into the studio to give full voice to the chorus. Below, we see one of them definitely getting into the Olympic spirit. “The song will be equally at home in the charts as it will in the clubs,” reckons the optimistic sax player Steve Norman. Oakenfold has one word for it: “floor-filler”.
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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 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
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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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