❏ Elegant French production of The Man Who… directed by Jethro Massey, with Faith Anne Gosselin, Sorrel & Massimiliano, Mocchia Di Coggiola
❚ TOMORROW DURAN DURAN RESUME their live British dates on the world tour which had been halted in May by Simon Le Bon’s vocal problems. The All You Need Is Now tour kicks off again in Brighton, and moves on to Europe in the New Year. After a painstaking year-long journey, the Brummie band has regained its status as magnificent international popsters and to celebrate, Shapersofthe80s has selected ten videos which demonstrate the energy Duran’s music has brought to the 20-tweens.
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❚ HERE’S A PICTURE MANY SAID would never be taken: all four members of 80s supergroup Culture Club reunited. And a live concert imminent. In 1983 the New Romantic band with its gender-bending singer and unique reggae-based rhythms were prominent among the 18 new-wave bands who mounted the Second British Invasion of the US charts. In 1984 the band won the Grammy Award as Best New Artist and along with Princess Diana, Boy George became an international fashion emblem for the new Swinging London.
This week Boy George’s official website announces that the four original members of Culture Club have reunited for the first time since 2002 for a one-off concert in Australia on Jan 1. Before an audience of 30,000 at Sydney’s Glebe Island, overlooking the harbour, the band will play after the New Year’s Eve midnight fireworks on a bill with The Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai and other Australian acts.
More surprising is that the photo shows Roy, Jon, George and Mikey in a London recording studio where George said “we’re in the middle of writing for a new album” with their original producer Steve Levine. This first pic of the reunited Culture Club is grabbed from Sydney’s Seven Television in an interview on Tuesday when George said they’d include a couple of new songs in the “hit-packed” Sydney show. When Jon was asked why a reunion has taken so long, an agonisingly long silence followed until he managed to answer “I don’t know!” This did raise the laugh we see above, then he added “I think we have a ten-year cycle. It takes that long to recover from the last time we worked with each other.” Not a flicker of a smile from anyone. The six-minute exchange contained so many sidelong glances between the four and generally awkward body language that you might wonder whether they would survive the flight to Australia together.
Culture Club’s initial five-year career was blown apart after clocking ten Top 40 hits in the US, which included Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. By 1986, however, George’s addiction to drugs was making tabloid headlines and his secret four-year romance with Jon was growing ever more explosive. A sanitised TV dramatisation titled Worried About The Boy provided an extremely one-sided version of events when aired last year. From 1998 a band reunion over four years yielded two chart hits and a platinum compilation album in the UK.
+++ ❚ SPONSORSHIP, EH? Why fork out your own money to make a pop video when you’re a penniless 80s retro band and you can persuade an international luxury brand to pay for it? In return for a few words of gratitude of course. So before we get to see the real thing, here is the 12th tease trailer, yes 12th, posted today, for Duran Duran’s next video. The first eleven can be viewed on DD’s YouTube channel.
This one is the “making of” version, and do not view it unless you’re braced for a hair-raising and shameless suck-up to their wonderful sponsor by all four members of the film-it-grab-it-and-run Rio gang. They are seen on location at London’s Savoy Hotel (B&B from £455 per night) shooting the archetypal DD lush-life single, Girl Panic! (Musically, the stand-out track on the album, more’s the pity.)
The Birmingham-born and high-school educated former nightclub disc jockey turned keyboardist Nick Rhodes whispers seductively from behind a cut-crystal glass curtain: “We teamed up with Swarovski who have provided some fantastic elements, crystals, for us in the video. You really do need to try to work with people who fit the aesthetic of what you’re trying to do, and with Swarovski, er, I think they, er, [he did pause, twice, let’s hope for ironic effect, though we cannot be sure] they represent quality, glamour and glitz and shiny things.” Yes, Nick did say shiny things. And yes again, dear reader, the key word there was aesthetic, with its very scholarly diphthong. As we discover, “Hey, this is only rock’n’roll” — the final words of the real video — is nearer the OTT mark.
Models ARE Duran Duran (No, not really, it’s just make-believe) ... Cindy Crawford, Helen Christensen, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and Yasmin Le Bon play Duran Duran for a photoshoot in the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK
Guitarist John Taylor adds his tuppenceworth of product plug for the Austrian gemstones-to-home-decor-to-optics-to-luminous-road-markings brand, yes, road markings, whose energy-intensive glass grinding processes take advantage of hydroelectricity in the local mountains: “That connection has brought a beauty to the look of the video that we wouldn’t have had without them.” And yes, everything from guitar straps to hand mikes were vajazzled with Austrian glitzy bits — 700 on the singer’s microphone alone, we are told.
Off-screen Rhodes spoke about the project from New York, where the band have just completed a six-week US tour: “Harpers UK had approached us about collaborating with the magazine on something really special when the new album came out. I’d had this crazy idea for a video for the song Girl Panic! that looked fantastic on paper — to recreate a day-in-the-life of the band, with five of the world’s greatest supermodels playing all of us. The magazine loved the idea of doing a cover shoot within the video itself.” (Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana play Harper’s guest fashion editors for the day, during a photoshoot scene which will form a 22-page cover story for the December issue. Yes, 22!)
+++
Giving their services free are the supermodels: Naomi Campbell IS lead singer Simon Le Bon, Cindy Crawford IS bassist John Taylor, blonde Eva Herzigova IS blond keyboardist Nick Rhodes, Helena Christensen IS drummer Roger Taylor, while Yasmin Le Bon does a droll turn as “the anonymous guitarist”. (Only joking about the free bit.) Directed by Jonas (Telephone) Åkerlund, Girl Panic! will have its world premiere at the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards 2011 at Claridge’s Hotel on Monday, and is released next day online at Vevo.
Wags at YouTube commented today: “It could be a Duran Duran commercial brought to us by Swarovski” … or “This Swarvoski commercial is brought to you by Duran Duran.”
❏ Wikipedia footnote: “Swarovski is also product-placed in the 2011 J-Lo promo video for the single On The Floor.” Eat your heart out, J-Lo.
❚ HERE’S AN IRRESISTIBLE PARTY INVITATION. As their fund-raising barometer hits 60% of target, the authors of We Can Be Heroes, a ribald account of Britain in the 80s, announce another soirée to raise public awareness. Their nightlife peers changed the face of the UK club scene which created dozens of new bands, artists and designers. Born with the mutant party-animal gene, Graham Smith & Chris Sullivan are taking over Robert Pereno’s new Society Club in Soho for two reasons: to show off Graham’s stylish clubland photos, which will be selling there until Christmas; but chiefly to win over buyers who are dithering over investing £30 in their huge coffee-table book that is garnished with tall stories from Sullivan as well as 100 other club-world collaborators.
Come along next Friday to meet them over a drink and to hear the garrulous Welshman Sullivan “in conversation with eminent journalist Michael Holden” — in other words, talking hind legs off donkeys. Orders for the book can be placed only online at Unbound Publishing (where Graham has an explanatory video) so they won’t be prising your wallet open on the spot. Inevitably, a further high point of the evening will be a free-entry after-party where Sullivan will be deejaying classic club tunes from 1976-84 half a mile away at The Aviary Bar.
As of today there are only 16 days left to buy your prestige limited first-edition of We Can Be Heroes (there won’t be a second edition unless they reach 100% on the first) and you get your name printed in it. You’ll be within the same hard covers as starry contributors such as Robert Elms, Boy George, Gary Kemp and Steve Strange. The clock is ticking because of the new “crowd-sourcing” technique to raise funds. This is being pioneered in books by Unbound, a new offshoot of Faber, whose authors include Python Terry Jones, cultural taste-maker Jonathan Meades, and creator of TV’s This Life series, Amy Jenkins.
One of the reasons fund-raising has been a slow burn for S&S is that, uniquely on the Unbound list, We Can Be Heroes is the only photo-book, requiring quality paper and classy printing. Sullivan says: “Ours needed six times as many pledges as the other text-only titles.”
Smith says: “Dig out your espadrilles and book yourself a baby sitter now!”
❚ MELBOURNE’S DEEPLY GEEKY Bedroom Philosopher, noted for his ode to absurdity, I’m So Post Modern, famously rode the No 86 tram last year in the video (above) for his cross-over hit single Northcote (So Hungover). Why? Melbourne boasts the world’s largest tramway system (249 km) and within that, Route 86 is not only the busiest but universally regarded as THE hippest in the universe. Because it connects RMIT University campus to Waterfront City, it carries All Human Life.
The Bedroom Philosopher has graduated from broadcasting with JJJ’s Morning Show to the crucial role blogging as one of Australia’s spokesmen for confused youth. His third studio album, Songs From The 86 Tram, recorded with his dynamic backing band The Awkwardstra, was nominated for an ARIA award. The album drew on the multi-award winning show of the same name (Directors Choice, Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009), which showcased the BP’s “astonishing range as an impersonator of suburban characters with depth and empathy, all backed with lively, genre-hopping soundtracks – think Chris Lilley meets Beck” (his own words).
Facebook earlier today
The video for its single Northcote is directed by Craig Melville (Chaser, John Safran) and featuring cameos by rock royalty Tim Rogers, Kram and Angie Hart. It has won more awards than we have time to count.
And yet the Lord Mayor still put Her Majesty QE2 on the wrong tram during her 16th state visit to Australia this week. The video below, specially commissioned by Shapersofthe80s, seeks to redress this diplomatic howler.
➢ 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 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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❏ Duran’s tongue-in-chic new video for Girl Panic! sees Naomi Campbell assuming the role of vocalist (above) in red Austin Powers suit, while the 80s supergroup re-establishes its signature sound for the 20-tweens. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund and photographed by Erik Sohlström [videograb © Jonas Åkerlund/Harper’s Bazaar UK]
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