1985: Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth, photographed during filming by Chalkie Davies who says today that he “only shot this one single frame”
◼ FOR THE NEXT 12 DAYS in central London a free exhibition titled David Bowie: Fame, Fashion, Photography is showing previously unseen archive photographs of the pop icon who died in January. The event is organised by a supporter of Cancer Research UK and curated by the V&A, with the aim of raising money through a silent online auction of 27 lots, of which seven are actual-size contact sheets. All images are signed by their photographers – Chalkie Davies, Tony McGee and Denis O’Regan – who shared working relationships with our hero.
Three pictures in the room command serious attention: Davies’ stunning portrait of Bowie in the film Labyrinth has caught a unique sensual intensity, enhanced by the stylised goblin makeup. At 21 inches square, it is well worth the starting price of £2,500 set by the photographer. Another contribution by Davies groups within one frame nine strong images from Ziggy Stardust’s farewell concert in 1973 showing both Bowie and Mick Ronson live on-stage. Given that each shot measures roughly 10×14 inches, great value at a starting price of £3,000.
One of the largest photographs in the room is by Denis O’Regan: a potent live concert picture of the short-haired Bowie during his 1978 UK tour showcasing Low and “Heroes”. At six-foot square and mounted on aluminium, this black-and-white image is a snip at its £750 starting price.
Bidding in the auction continues online until the exhibition closes at 6:30pm on 19 June. While the lots have been framed and printed to museum quality, the auctioneer’s website proved confusing until it was pointed out that it failed both to identify the photographer alongside many photos and to specify what size of print a buyer would receive for opening bids that range between £350 and £3,000!
A limited-edition, numbered catalogue is on sale at the gallery which is in Heddon Street where Bowie was immortalised in 1972 on the album cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. The exhibition space, donated by Regent Street and The Crown Estate, is described by Kevin Cann, author of the definitive guide to Bowie’s early life, Any Day Now, as “one of the natural gravitational points for many fans to pay their respect” after David’s passing.
Bowie, Fame, Fashion, Photography at The Hub: at left, Denis O’Regan’s wall of images with his 1978 performance picture at centre. On the far wall is Chalkie Davies’s montage of nine Ziggy Stardust stage images from 1973
➢ The exhibition Bowie, Fame, Fashion, Photography runs 7–19 June at The Hub, 10 Heddon Street, W1B 4BX and is free, but a timed-admission ticket is required by registering online at Eventbrite. What a palaver! 7 June update: Just after midday on the show’s first day there were 17 visitors in the gallery. Ten minutes later there were only five.
Dave Swindells at Doomed, in front of one of his photos of Taboo in 1985: “It was such an adventure, a crazy night in terms of what happened there, partly because there would be a whole suitcase load of ecstasy” (Photo by Shapersofthe80s)
◼ WE FIRST MET, I VAGUELY RECALL, at the Leadmill in that damp autumn of ’82 when Dave Swindells was still a student at Sheffield Uni. I was the hotshot “Man from The Face” doing a whistle-stop tour of Sheffield clubs for my monthly Nightlife column in Britain’s coolest subcultural magazine, so I was quite used to people standing in front of my camera trying to get into shot. Swindells on the other hand turned his back on me while he lined up his Kodak Box Brownie in a pathetic attempt to capture some new-wave synth band on the barely lit stage. I smiled smugly to myself at his teen gaucheness and leaned in paternally to whisper the advice I’d gleaned from another snapper of the night, Richard Young, himself emerging as the celebrity paparazzo we know and love today: “Give give it f/8 and push the film in the developer.”
The grateful Swindells gushed his thanks and asked: “Please, sir, how do I get into photography for a living?” – “Stick to what you know,” I replied sagely. “Why not photograph what your friends get up to at night?” Ha! I knew full well dark clubs were a nightmare to capture on the slow film of those years before digital, when the trickiest part was having to use flash at close quarters, which reduces faces to a white blotch.
Flyer for the Swindells talk on Tuesday: explain this lot, Dave!
Within two years the little bastard had stabbed me in the back and was toting a very upmarket Pentax as Nightlife Editor of Time Out magazine – a job he then hung onto for the next 23 years!!! His photographs have been featured in i-D, The Face, The Observer etc, while swanning round the world on travel freebies. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
Next Tuesday 3 May he’ll be telling us all how on earth he got away with it for so long. He’s giving a talk at some achingly on-fleek gallery in Dalston called Doomed, where there’ll be a display of photos and a limited edition Photocopy Club zine to take away. Dave’s title is “Keeping It Real” and he promises “a fascinating insight into the trends, attitudes, and nuances of London’s clubbers. Evocatively shooting the emergence of the rave scene in the late 1980s, Dave follows the journey from the wild attitude of rave to the night-time antics of modern day”.
Frankly, I can’t think of anybody better qualified to tell the tale of the past three decades of hedonism pursued to the hilt as only the Brits know how. Dave’s the one who’s got the proof in pictures, and how.
➢ Above: For his first TV performance in January 1980 Prince sports zebra-print underwear, black leggings, stack-heeled boots, and long hair giving us the first two tracks from Prince the album, I Wanna Be Your Lover and Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad. On NBC’s The Midnight Special host Wolfman Jack says: “There’s nothing our next guest can’t do. He arranged, produced, composed, and performed his last album entirely by himself.”
1991: GETT OFF FOR MTV
Prince’s 1991 MTV Video Awards performance of Gett Off with The New Power Generation might be the sexiest thing ever aired on TV. Click on pic to run video in new window
2014: BREAKFAST CAN WAIT (OFFICIAL, almost as sexy)
“ Stories about the Purple One’s generosity are starting to emerge in the days following his death, with his close friend Van Jones lifting the curtain on his humanitarian endeavours in an interview with CNN (which you can watch above).
July 2014: Prince at the #YesWeCode Launch, at Essence Music Festival
As a practising Jehovah’s Witness, Jones says, Prince was “not allowed to speak publicly about any of his good acts” but Jones felt that now was the time people knew more about his charitable giving over the years.
Chief among the projects he helped fund is #YesWeCode, an initiative led by Jones aiming to teach 100,000 low-income, urban youths learn how to code to help them get jobs in the tech world. Jones says 15 major technology companies now work with “kids in the hood” to help them break into Silicon Valley through the project.
According to the L.A. Times, Jones said the inspiration for the idea came following the Trayvon Martin verdict, with Prince saying to Jones: “Every time people see a young black man wearing a hoodie, they think, he’s a thug. But if they see a young white guy wearing a hoodie they think, oh that might be Mark Zuckerberg. That might be a dot-com billionaire” . . . / Continued online
1980: How Prince unveiled himself in Detroit months before his UK debut. His Dirty Mind album stirs controversy, while Uptown makes it to No 5 on the US R&B chart. (Photograph by Leni Sinclair)
Nile Rodgers: “RIP our dearly beloved Prince. Tears and love on our tour bus. I’ll never forget my brother. We’ve had good times.”
Quincy Jones: “RIP to prince… a true artist in every sense of the word. Gone way too soon.”
Mick Jagger: “Prince was a revolutionary artist, a great musician, composer, a wonderful lyricist, a startling guitar player… but most importantly, authentic in every way. Prince’s talent was limitless. He was one of the most unique and exciting artists of the last 30 years.”
Lenny Kravitz: “My musical brother… My friend… The one who showed me the possibilities within myself, changed everything, and kept his integrity until the end, is gone. I am heartbroken.”
Frank Ocean: “He was a straight black man who played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee-high heeled boots, epic. He made me feel more comfortable with how I identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity.”
Barack Obama, who was flying from Saudi Arabia to London on Air Force One when the news broke, said he was mourning along with millions of fans. “Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all.”
Shaun Keaveny, BBC Radio 6 Music, deejay: “He’s a virtual Beethoven for the popular song.”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAPERS OF THE 80S
“ I met Prince in 1981 on his first UK trip when he was booked to play the Lyceum and faced a half-empty venue. In the Embassy club six days before, I spotted him standing quietly at the end of the bar on his own, while nobody else seemed to know who he was – and the occasion was after all Steve Strange’s 22nd birthday party, heaving with Blitz Kids. Prince was painfully shy yet intensely sexy and very receptive when I approached, clearly flattered that somebody in the place had put a name to the face (familiar from his Dirty Mind antics over the previous year). We chatted for a while, enthused about James Brown, obviously, but amazingly he also said he had laughed a lot at the new spoof version of Is That All There Is? by Cristina on the Ze label. Despite which, I can’t claim to have got a single quote from the quiet man of pop that was worth publishing! ” – Yrs Truly
Prince Rogers Nelson: uncovered on the cover of his 1988 Lovesexy album
Chuck D of Public Enemy: “He is walking music. He IS music.”
Alan Leeds, Paisley Park label president, speaking in 2011: “He has outpaced Madonna, he has outpaced Janet Jackson. There really isn’t another phenomenon on the planet like Prince these days.”
Prince: the latest passport picture, February 2016
➢ Prince’s lost Rolling Stone interview: “I don’t think about gone” – Ruminating on sex, music and death in a previously unpublished Q&A from 2014. . . “I can take you out there and hit this guitar for you, and then what you’ll hear is sex. You will hear something where you’d run out of adjectives like you do when you meet the finest woman.”
“I have a couple Revolution albums in the vault and two Time albums, one Vanity 6 album – and tons of stuff recorded in different periods.”
“I don’t think about gone. I just think about in the future when I don’t want to speak in real time.”
2 JUNE UPDATE: “Prince died of accidental overdose” expert says
➢ Accidental overdose – CNN: “Toxicology tests for Prince concluded that the entertainer died from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl, according to a report on his death by the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office. Fentanyl, prescribed by doctors for cancer treatment, can be made illicitly and is blamed for a spike in overdose deaths in the United States. It is 25 to 50 times more potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. . .” / Contd at CNN
➢ Music legend Prince was killed by an overdose of the powerful painkiller fentanyl – NBC News: “Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine that is used for severe pain such as advanced cancer, according the Centers for Disease Control. Although it can be obtained by prescription, many overdoses are linked to illegally made versions of the drug, officials say. . . ” / Contd at NBC News
➢ 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
Bidding in the auction continues online until the exhibition closes at 6:30pm on 19 June. While the lots have been framed and printed to museum quality, the auctioneer’s website proved confusing until it was pointed out that it failed both to identify the photographer alongside many photos and to specify what size of print a buyer would receive for opening bids that range between £350 and £3,000!
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 