Le Beat Route recreated for one night only: One of our heroes, MC Sullivan, sharing the best sounds in London last night
2011 and it’s Thursday night Beat Route! The same underground club emanating a spookily familiar spirit of place
❚ WITHOUT DOUBT the party of the year filled the former Beat Route, Soho, last night as photographer Graham Smith and writer Chris Sullivan launched their photobook We Can Be Heroes, which is winging its way from printers to the lucky buyers who invested in the first edition. Smith and Sullivan became crucial to leading and documenting the explosion of Eighties club culture in London. Le Beat Route, founded in November 1980 by crimper Ollie O’Donnell and stylist Steve Mahoney with Fidel Castro fan Steve Lewis as its deejay, became the cool Friday-nighter that served the post-Blitz crowd for the next three years while the scene moved gradually overground.
More exclusive pix are coming on Shapersofthe80s.com once I can wade through the many brilliant soundbites offered by everybody out last night to celebrate the Swinging 80s…
Thursday night Beat Route! Hosts, authors and 80s deejays Graham Smith and Chris Sullivan
Thursday night Beat Route! Seminal club deejays of the 80s Steve Lewis and Jay Strongman
Thursday night Beat Route! Lesley Chilkes, Boy George, David Holah
[ Exclusive party pix courtesy of sandromartini.com ]
TNBR! Last night’s other chief hero hosting the party of the photobook of the 80s — snapper Graham Smith and his lovely wife Lorraine (Northern Soul veterans, both)
+++ ❚ FRIDAY NIGHT WAS AN EXCUSE for the wags to tell their tall tales of clubbing in the 80s. This was the first reunion in recent memory of the bright sparks the media once called Blitz Kids and New Romantics. We’re talking about the straighter faction tonight — the make-up brigade had their day at Boy George’s 50th birthday party in June. All of them, whatever their persuasion, were diehard nightowls, the spiritual offspring of the mighty innovator who shaped the 1970s pop scene almost singlehandedly, David Bowie. He taught them to adopt stances: individualism, transgression. He bequeathed them principles for living amusing lives: disposable identities, looks not uniforms. In turn, they then shaped the sounds and styles of the Swinging 80s set in motion by 1976 and the birth of punk, along with a passion for black dance music, on through the decadent glamour of the Blitz Club years, to the watershed of Band Aid in 1984.
On Friday, photographer Graham Smith took over Soho’s newest rendezvous, the Society Club, for a gallery show of his 80s photographs, which capture the panache and derring-do of style leaders such as PX, Stephen Jones, Kim Bowen Melissa Caplan, Stephen Linard, Fiona Dealey, John Maybury and such nascent popstars as Spandau Ballet, Visage, Animal Nightlife, Sade, Blue Rondo à la Turk and others.
Our two videos capture the essence of Smith’s collaborators, Robert Elms and Chris Sullivan, powering through their often unprintable anecdotes, edited on video down to bite-sized chunks and garnished with Graham’s images. The highspot was meant to be Sullivan as guest speaker, but when he was reportedly “still on his way”, in stepped writer and broadcaster Elms to recall the early one-night clubs he also helped to run. He sounded genuinely shocked by the precociousness of his peers — “We were kids!” — who persuaded West End nightclubs to hand over door control to them as teenagers. Eventually, Sullivan arrived in the guise of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and of course excelled at spinning his “ribald tale of excess” about the mayhem he helped cause in clubland, en route to running Soho’s Wag club for 19 years.
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The photos form a dossier creative endeavour, as we’ll soon see in We Can Be Heroes, a 320-page coffee-table book containing 500 mostly unseen images and 100 voxpop interviews by Graham Smith. Warts-and-all main text is penned by the mellifluous Welshman Sullivan, with other contributions from Robert Elms, Boy George, Steve Strange and Gary Kemp.
Smith & Sullivan’s invitation to a party
➢ Visit the publisher Unbound.co.uk to place your order for We Can Be Heroes and secure your name in the limited first edition. This month the authors aim to hit an advance sales target by this new “crowd-funding” technique in order to guarantee publication.
➢ Visit The Society Club, London W1F 0JF where Graham Smith’s photographs are on sale until Christmas. Subjects include Boy George, Sade, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie Sioux, the Sex Pistols and many more.
❚ 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!”
1980: Clare Thom, Philip Sallon and George O’Dowd on a coach trip to Margate. Photograph by Graham Smith/grsmith@mac.com.jpg from his book We Can Be Heroes
WE CAN BE HEROES
must be funded by November 12 17 [update]
❚ NOBODY IS BETTER QUALIFIED to chronicle the whirlwind six years between punk and the death of the New Romantics than Graham Smith through his eye-witness photography, and the writer Chris Sullivan, one of the core movers-and-shapers of his generation. UK music and style evolved out of all recognition in a mighty resurgence of youth subcultures that directly triggered a rejuvenation of mainstream media for the rest of the decade. Shapersofthe80s was on hand as an observer. But these two wags were in the thick of the action — major players in a spontaneous youthful collaboration to regenerate the UK’s ailing music and style scenes as 1980 dawned. With contributions by a galaxy of stars, who include Gary Kemp and Boy George, this will become the definitive story of one of the great explosions of creativity in British youth culture.
The authors aim to get their large-format 320-page coffee-table photobook We Can Be Heroes to you in time for Christmas. Their “crowd-funding” venture requires them to raise the cash first by asking YOU to buy your copy in advance, before 6pm GMT on November 12 17. Your reward is to see your name printed as a Supporter in the limited first edition. The clock is ticking.
View Graham’s video today at Unbound Publishing, a new company under the patronage of Faber, the most prestigious publisher in Britain. Here you can purchase your book and enjoy other perks such as an invitation to the launch party. Join the clubbers at Facebook who are submitting their own photos and tales of merriment.
READ WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID
ABOUT WE CAN BE HEROES
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➢ Unbound aims for 40 books in year one … Supported by Faber, the platform was created by QI writers John Mitchinson and John Pollard, and Crap Towns author Dan Kieran — The Bookseller
➢ Funded by the people — Channel 4 News video on “crowdfunding”, the process that decides when and how Graham’s book gets published
Iain Webb at St Martin’s School of Art in 1977 — photographed by fellow student Stephen Jones who went on to become an international hat-maker
❚ FOR TODAY’S HUFFINGTON POST, Iain R Webb, former Blitz Kid and later Times of London fashion editor, writes of the imminent photo-book about the tumultuous fashion and music scene that emerged from London’s Blitz Club in 1980. We Can Be Heroes by Graham Smith is a fascinating documentation of the demimonde nightclub scene from punk through New Romantic and out the other side… Webb writes:
“ It is certainly fitting that Smith has chosen the Bowie lyric as the title of his book because Bowie is to thank for inspiring the transformational theatrics employed by the Blitz Club regulars. In the early 1970s Bowie brought glamour and drama to rock music at a time when it was difficult to tell if the denim clad hairy on stage had nodded off during the drum solo. He was a shrewd style thief, an ardent advocate of collage couture. One of the only musicians to survive the vicious tongue-lashing of punk, it was Bowie who helped fuel the electro soundtrack of the 80s’ subterranean underworld. His Berlin trilogy of albums — Low, Heroes and Lodger — explored the neue world of Kraftwerk and machine Muzak. Although let’s not forget to credit Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer who had been knocking out the electronic beats in the gay clubs of many a twelve-inch single ” / continued online
A sample spread from We Can Be Heroes by Graham Smith: his photos here show Blitz Kid style-leaders Kim Bowen, “Boy” George O’Dowd and Stephen Linard
THREE WEEKS LEFT TO RAISE THE CASH
❏ Will you help ensure publication of We Can Be Heroes by buying your personal copy today? Graham Smith’s book is the definitive history of early 80s nightclub music and style, which were the last manifestation of Britain’s collaborative youth culture. Alongside Graham’s superb photographs is racy text by Chris Sullivan, fabled host of Soho’s long-running Wag club, plus much other celebrity commentary.
Unbound is a new “crowd-funding” company run by three young dynamos well versed in publishing who are ensuring high-quality printing in Germany of this 320-page hardback using 180gsm paper, all in time for Christmas, priced £30. Visit Graham’s page at Unbound to discover why your immediate contribution towards the cost of the limited first edition is so important that the book will carry your name as an early supporter.
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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
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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 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
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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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