Tag Archives: Julia Fodor

2019 ➤ This would have been Steve Strange’s 60th birthday

Posted on 28 May 2019 | Leave a comment

1978, when Steve Strange teamed up with Rusty Egan (Photo © Fin Costello/Redferns)

➢ Remember Steve through the tributes paid
after his death in 2015 by 30 original Blitz Kids
here at Shapers of the 80s

Evening Standard, On The Line, Steve Strange, Evening Standard

First published in the Evening Standard, Jan 24, 1980

➢ Our first report on Steve Strange, 1980. . . He was eager to announce a Thursday cabaret night at the Blitz, showcasing a new band with the weird name of “Spandau Ballet”

Steve Strange, New Romantics, Blitz Kids, nightclubbing, London

First published in the Evening Standard, Oct 16, 1980

➢ By the autumn of 1980 there was a whole new underground scene to report. . . In one week, a dozen prodigies were setting the town ablaze, none of them over 22

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➤ Day Three of Terry Smith’s unseen photos inside the Blitz Club – exclusive

Posted on 25 May 2018 | Leave a comment

The two Welsh soul-boys, one straight, one gay, who shaped the future of 80s clubland: Chris Sullivan went on to run Soho’s Wag club for 19 years… And Steve Strange, whose Blitz legacy landed him and deejay Rusty Egan the mighty Camden Palace in 1982

➢ DAY THREE:
CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR
GALLERY OF TEN FAB NEW IMAGES
OF THE BLITZ IN 1980

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◼ IN 1980 THE BLITZ CLUB ENTERED its second year: here was your invitation to the Swinging 80s, where daily life would never sound or feel the same again. Paris and New York had taken the cultural lead during the recessionary 70s; now London was to become the creative powerhouse as Britain rode out dark times and its youth culture leapt back into the world spotlight.

In February 1979, the axis of Steve Strange as Tuesday-night greeter and Rusty Egan as deejay had graduated from Billy’s in Soho to the Blitz in Covent Garden. This was a bar decorated with Second World War austerity that was thought to echo the down at heel 70s: bare floorboards, gingham tablecloths, hanging lights with dusty enamel shades, framed pictures of our wartime leader Churchill.

In the post-punk no-wave vacuum, the Blitz’s manager, Brendan Connolly, had been struggling to promote intimate cabaret, and the dressy crowd fostered at Billy’s were cabaret incarnate. Nevertheless it took a full year before the new spirit of optimism expressing itself through fashion caught the attention of the savvy media which in April 1980 included photographer Terry Smith shooting for TIME magazine.

Now in retirement, Terry has exhumed rolls of his film and chosen the best of his colour slides for Shapers of the 80s to publish exclusively. Earlier this week we unveiled 20 of his choice images inside the Blitz and today we showcase a further ten. More to follow on Tuesday.

➢ Previously at Shapers of the 80s:
Days 1 & 2 of Terry’s Blitz pix in colour

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➤ Princess Julia relives the day when 1980 went Boom!

Posted on 9 Nov 2015 | Leave a comment

The Daily Mirror, 3 March 1980

◼ IT WAS MARCH 1980 WHEN the term Blitz Kids was first used to describe the “weird” and “whacky” young people making waves with their in-flight haircuts at the Tuesday club-night in London’s Blitz wine bar. The cutting here from the Daily Mirror says it all: in those days the left-wing tabloid sold 3.6million copies daily and was still taken seriously for its news coverage, while the Sun was just overtaking those sales figures with a distinctly down-market approach. Newspapers were a mass medium back then.

Using the lively wide-eyed language of the red-tops, Mirror feature writer Christena Appleyard put her finger on exactly those elements of individualism and waywardness that would later the same year see the Blitz Kids renamed the New Romantics. What she completely omits to mention is that four days later the house band of the Blitz, Spandau Ballet, were playing only their fourth live gig in London, at the trendy Scala cinema. In fact, she doesn’t even mention the band alongside Visage and Yellow Magic Orchestra as part of the club’s “electro diskow” synthesised soundtrack.

Appleyard was a savvy writer hearing only one part of a genesis story, yet her headline put the Blitz Kids on the media map and Boom! – this was lift-off for the careers and reputations of about 50 cool clubbers
in the short term, and a whole new look and sound for UK pop culture generally.

Julia Fodor is part of the founding mythology of the Blitz Kids, and tonight in London she was giving an illustrated “audience” to a select crowd in Hoxton. At The Glory pub she was reliving her teen years as mannequin de vie for PX, the New Romantic clothes shop, and as Blitz Club cloakroom girl, who later became a cultural commentator and international club deejay who at her height was being helicoptered into Paris to play at the posey Queen nightclub on the Champs Elysées.

PX moves into Endell Street in Feb 1980: New Romantic satin gowns, Fauntleroy collars – and Julia. Photographed © by Martin Brading

And Julia’s rise was the norm for those key Blitz Kids with ambition and attitude in 1980. Before that March you could count the media mentions of Steve Strange’s club night: three in the Evening Standard; a page in Tatler; a feature in New Society, the sociology weekly; and a feature about “chiconomy” in the March issue of 19, the teen magazine.

Then Boom! The Blitz Kids headline triggered a small rash of media outbreaks as two perceptive photographers visited the club to take pictures – Homer Sykes and Derek Ridgers – while student journalist Perry Haines featured his Blitz pals in the Evening Standard fashion pages. What put Spandau Ballet on the map, however, were reports in the Standard, the Daily Star and Record Mirror of their electrifying concert, complete with ornamental Blitz Kids dancing in the aisles to a whole new style of music-making – theatrical, romantic, fashion-conscious and danceable – that resulted in a second Scala concert being scheduled for May.

Reading about the Blitz phenomenon had intrigued a young researcher on Janet Street-Porter’s yoof documentary slot, 20th Century Box, at London Weekend Television which then commissioned the May replay for their cameras. In the meantime one alert talent scout at Chrysalis Records also wanted to hear the band’s music. The next few months saw the Blitz Kids start to gobble up column inches and enliven the odd TV strand, while the two coolest magazines of the decade, The Face and i-D, were launched specifically to report this burgeoning youth culture based on street style.

Spandau landed the first contract for a New Romantic band in October, while Visage released its first album in November after signing to Polydor, and the Romantic band-wagon was under way. By Christmas 1981 the sound of the UK pop charts had been transformed completely from rock guitars to bass and drum.

❏ Tonight and for two more Mondays, An Audience with Princess Julia celebrates London’s glorious counter-culture with extracts from her own memoirs supported by visuals by her friend, deejay and face about the club scene Jeffrey Hinton. Tonight Professor Iain Webb also participates, with bespoke accessoriser Judy Blame on Nov 16 and milliner Stephen Jones OBE on Nov 23 – all at The Glory, London E2 8AS.
➢ Tickets available only in advance via Ticketweb

JULIA RAMBLING DOWN MEMORY LANE TONIGHT

Blitz Kids, Ryan Lo, fashion, Princess Julia

Julia talks: adorned in a kind of Baby Jane pink ruffled nightie by Ryan Lo, from his SS16 collection, with cap of roses (inset, being snapped by Louie Banks)

Click any pic below to launch slideshow

Princess Julia opens her talk: a 3D printed crown signifies her role as a leader of London’s nightlife aristocracy, while she sports red and back dip-dyed denim over-jacket with bell sleeves, black net gown and tie-front knickerbockers, all by Ed Marler from his SS16 collection

Ex-Blitz Kid, now professor of fashion, Iain Webb injected an intellectual moment by interviewing Julia at the bar

Julia shifts to a romantic Baby Jane pink ruffled nightie by Ryan Lo for the second half of her talk

Ex-Blitz Kid Jeffrey Hinton plays deejay and prompter

FRONT PAGE

WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES

Posted on 12 Oct 2009 | Comments Off

In 1980 a youth movement began reshaping Britain.
Its stars didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did. This writer was there and these words and pictures tell the tale.

◼︎ As a decade, the 1970s spelt doom. British youth culture had been discredited by punk. A monumental recession followed the Labour government’s “winter of discontent”, threatening the prospect of no jobs for years ahead.

Yet from this black hole burst an optimistic movement the press dubbed the New Romantics, based on a London club called the Blitz. Its deejay Rusty Egan promoted the deliberately un-rock sounds of synthesised electro-pop with a beat created for the dancefloor, while drumming in a studio seven-piece called Visage, fronted by the ultimate poser, Steve Strange. He and other fashionista Blitz Kids were picked by Bowie to represent their movement in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes (above). But the live band who broke all the industry rules were five dandies with a preposterous name: Spandau Ballet.

As the last of the Baby Boomers, the Blitz Kids were concerned with much more than music. In 1980 they shook off teenage doubt to express all those talents the later Generation X would have to live up to — leadership, adaptability, negotiating skills, focus. Children of the first era of mass TV, these can-doers excelled especially in visual awareness. They were the vanguard for a self-confident new class who were ready to enjoy the personal liberty and social mobility heralded by their parents in the 60s.

For Britain, the Swinging 80s were a tumultuous period of social change when the young wrested many levers of power away from the over-40s. London became a creative powerhouse and its pop music and street fashion the toast of world capitals. All because a vast dance underground had been gagging for a very sociable revolution.

★++++++★++++++★

“From now on, this will become the official history”
– Verdict of a former Blitz Kid

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❏ Below: View Blitz Club host Steve Strange in all his poser glory in the promo video for Fade to Grey (1982), also starring the club’s cloakroom girl, Julia Fodor, aka Princess

➢ CLICK HERE to run the anthemic 80s video ♫ ♫ from Spandau Ballet and feel the chant:

nightlife, st moritz, club for heroes,le kilt, wag club, beat route,hacienda, cha-cha, holy city zoo, rum runner, camden palace, scala cinema, studio 21,crocs, le palace, white trash, fac51, Dirt Box, mud club, batcave, barbarella's, croc's, electro-pop, synth-pop, Chant No 1, kid creole, blue rondo, animal nightlife, visage, duran, depeche mode, ultravox, human league, gentry, ABC,soft cell, bolan,vince clarke, haysi, wham!, mclaren, heaven 17, yazoo, foxx, omd, bauhaus, phil oakey, jay strongman, Martyn Ware, martin fry ,altered images, 20th-century box, vivienne westwood, PX, axiom, body-map , foundry, sue clowes,demob, seditionaries, acme attractions, i-D, the face, new sounds new styles, Korniloff, andrew logan, kahn & bell, biddie & eve, toyah,

July 2, 1981: Shooting the video for Chant No 1 at Le Beat Route club in Soho, “down, down, pass the Talk of the Town”. Photograph © by Shapersofthe80s

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Comments Off on WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES

Posted in art, Chronology, Clubbing, Culture, Fashion, History, journalism, London, Media, New Romantics, photography, Pop music, Social trends, Swinging 80s, Tipping points, videos, Youth culture, zeitgeist

Tagged Ashes to Ashes, Blitz Kids, David Bowie, Julia Fodor, Rusty Egan, Spandau Ballet, Steve Strange, Visage

1980 ➤ Strange days, strange nights, strange people

Posted on 29 Sep 2009 | 2 comments

It is January 1980 – out of the blue comes Steve Strange’s call
to join the late-night party that would run for years.
It turned into the Swinging Eighties. . .

Blitz, Christine Binnie, Jennifer, Iain R Webb, Julia Fodor

Performance art at the Blitz Club’s Easter Pageant 1980: Julia Fodor leads Jennifer Binnie and sister Christine (“Miss Binnie” the artist), both clad in sackcloth, in their first performance piece at the club. The girls sing Death Where is Thy Sting?/ Oh grave where is thy victory?/, an anthem they had learned as choir girls, and are passing out Cadbury’s Cream Eggs in an act of communion. (The sack dress had won Steve Strange’s January competition at Witchity’s to predict what people would be wearing in the 80s, long before Miss B created the notorious Neo-Naturists and threw away her clothes.) The allusion to crucifixion, left, seems to nod toward St Sebastian though it does not explain how the victim, fashionista Iain R Webb, would eventually secure the fashion editorship of The Times some years after this tableau was created. Blond-quiffed, white-faced Stephen Linard (extreme right, rear) is evidently pushing the Regency fop look this season. (Photograph courtesy of http://www.homersykes.com and published in the Sunday People 15 June)

First published in the Evening Standard, 24 Jan 1980:

❚ OF ALL THE BRIGHT YOUNG TIDDLERS in one small, though turbulent London pool, Steve Strange is the Big Fish. His is the pool the new Tatler magazine calls the 80s Set whose exploits it reports after its pages on solid old pedigree Society, under the section headed The Other Society. Only under-21s qualify for the 80s Set and by day you can be anything (broker’s runner, Tesco till-girl) but by night you must put on your Look.

King of the posers: London club host Steve Strange in Willy Brown workwear with Vivienne Lynn. (Photograph by © Derek Ridgers)

Steve was born with his (at 20, he resembles Marc Bolan’s baby brother), so he emerged as a natural arbiter of who has the Look and who hasn’t. And for a couple of years he has been positioned on the doors of the Right Places vetting entrants and ensuring exclusivity for the 80s Set.

At Billy’s in Dean Street he fronted a David Bowie lookalike night. Then the Blitz wine bar in Covent Garden gave him Tuesdays, which he still calls an Electro-Diskow where everyone has to dress to high-tech standards and create new dances to electronic music.

Witchity in Kensington kept imploring him to stage a party a month for them but that place, he says, “looked like a coal-cellar”, so he demanded, as Big Fish should, that they smarten up and improve their sound system. Triumphantly, next Thursday, Steve hosts an 80s prize ball there (admission £2, plus your Look).

Tonight, however, he begins a wild new night at the Blitz. Thursdays from now on will be cabaret night on a strictly Liza Minnelli level (a Bowles Club, perhaps?). Everyone must dress in Berlin/Pigalle/Vegas style and the band, Spandau Ballet, will attempt to combine vocals akin to Sinatra with “dance music for the future”. Believe it or not, Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey, says Steve, are very big with under-21s.

“We’ve already booked a fire-eater and what I want are more acts like strippers and jugglers,” he says, urging aspiring acts to contact him at the Blitz.

Understandably, our Big Fish’s ambition has really been fired and in his next breath he’s saying: “Two nights a week at the Blitz aren’t enough. London is just waiting for a good Saturday place – I mean, where do kids spend their Saturday nights? The Scala Cinema. I’m ready to start somewhere like New York’s Mudd Club. I’m only looking for the right backer…”