Tony Hadley today: flanked by two of ITV’s Loose Women, Ruth Langsford and Janet Street-Porter who shot the first TV doc about Spandau Ballet in 1980
❚ MORE COLD WATER HAS BEEN POURED on any future reunion for Spandau Ballet. The leaders of the 80s New Romantics movement haven’t worked together since their Reformation reunion tour ended in 2010. Today on ITV’s Loose Women chat show, Janet Street-Porter asked 51-year-old singer Tony Hadley whether he would ever tour again with Spandau. He replied straight away: “Very doubtful.” His life is busy and full of hoovering these days, he says. Big Tone is now the father of five children — baby Genevieve Elizabeth was born in February.
➢ Hadley’s own plans include Rewind The 80s Festival returning for a fifth successive year Aug 18–19 at Henley-on-Thames with Kool & The Gang, OMD, Grandmaster Flash, Rick Astley, Soul II Soul, Five Star, Starship, Jimmy Somerville, Sinitta, Marc Almond, Midge Ure, Adam Ant and more, plus festival fun
+++ ◼ AS WITH ANY ARTICLE AT THE GRAUNIAD about New Romantic cheerleaders Spandau Ballet, the resulting comments published online are always riotously entertaining. This is the one band that really winds up Guardianistas to a pitch of fury. When the 80s band announced their reunion tour in 2009, Michael Hann declared how much he’s always loathed them in a Graudina music blog which then provoked 342 comments — 342! — most of them apoplectic. How many other bands can claim such a following?
As it happens the Spandau songwriter has recently published an 88-page coffee-table book, titled The Lyrics of Gary Kemp from Lyric Book Company
Today for no apparent reason, the Guranaid runs an item about how Gary Kemp and Steve Norman made Spandau’s 1983 No1 hit True, in which lyricist Kemp admits: “I’m still berated for the line Take your seaside arms, but it’s straight out of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.”
Readers of Shapersofthe80s already know that the song was inspired by Kemp’s unrequited pash for poppette Clare Grogan — he was 22, she was 18 — who fronted an 80s band of Scottish cuties called Altered Images. On the same page, Steve Norman deconstructs his self-taught sax solo which has a key change in reply to Grover Washington’s Just The Two of Us.
All of which strangely prompts tearful blubbing at the Graun, rather than the usual explosion of acerbic outrage. Specimen comments follow after this gratuitous excuse to run a video…
VIDEO OF DARLING CLARE IN HER HEYDAY,
NOT TO MENTION SWIVEL-HIPS TICH
❏ Nepthsolem moans: “It always sounds to me like See side arms, as though referring to the service revolver I imagine was issued to all New Romantics, but sadly never used on TOTP.”
❏ DeeSawdeley says: “I always thought it was seaside aunt, which (for those of us with a seaside aunt, anyway) makes much more sense. Bet he wishes he’d written that now!”
❏ Stolencar comments: “Note also he says she gave him a copy of Lolita not that she had read it.”
❏ To which Vastariner responds: “There’s a picture of her reading it on the front of the Best Of Altered Images compilation released in 1991. Some might call me obsessed for knowing that, or because I have a username taken from one of her lyrics… etc etc.”
❏ From another planet, Golgafrinchan sobs: “I had unrequited love for Clare Grogan, still do to be fair. If you’re reading this Clare, get in touch, there’s still time.”
❏ DameHedwig adds:“I’ve often told my son that if things had worked out for me, Ms Grogan would be his Mum.”
❏ And Mccaugh:“As for the sublime Miss Grogan, well, just how many times did we go and see Gregory’s Girl? Helped, of course, by the fact that it ran at the Dominion Cinema in Edinburgh for three years non-stop.”
❏ Finally Bloodydoorsofftells a despicable and blatant untruth about darling Clare, so you’ll just have to go to Grunadia Online to see it. And plenty more.
Worried About The Boy: Queens of London’s Blitz Club and pioneers of the 80s New Romantic style, Christopher (Daniel Wallace) and George (Douglas Booth) as fictionalised in the BBC drama
❚ FOR VIEWERS CATCHING UP TONIGHT on the repeat of Worried About The Boy, the BBC’s sanitised drama about Boy George’s teen romancings, read how Shapersofthe80s canvassed the reactions of original Blitz Kids live during its first transmission in 2010.
❏ iPAD, TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You may see only a tiny selection of items from this wide-ranging website about the 1980s, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and site index either click on “Standard view” or visit Shapersofthe80s.com on a desktop computer. ➢ Click here to visit a different random item every time you click
Adam Ant: intensely serious. (Photograph newly posted at Facebook)
➢ Adam Ant, Dandy in the Underworld is a retrospective photographic exhibition at Proud Galleries in London, being launched with a charity performance by Adam and band on March 6, 2012. Hence a superbly considered interview with Decca Aitkenhead in today’s Guardian about surviving stardom, dealing with bipolar disorder and stuff…
“ Ant still gets annoyed when anyone muddles him up with the early 80s New Romantic scene: “Cos New Romantic was nothing to do with Adam and the Ants. The Ants was a punk band, or a post-punk band if anything, and so historically it’s inaccurate. New Romantic was basically, in my mind, clubbers with too much makeup on with stupid clothes. I never set foot in any of their clubs, so I find it quite distressing to be nobbled into New Romantic, cos it was just a load of guys who looked like they’d had a row with their girlfriends’ makeup. There was nothing tough about it, nothing dangerous about it, it was soft electro stuff and it just looked a bit wet. And I didn’t like being associated with it.”
A man of 58 who still cares this much should probably come across as faintly ridiculous, but the intense seriousness with which Ant deconstructs these arcane distinctions conveys an impression of almost heartbreaking vulnerability… ” / continued online
“ I never set foot in the f***ing Blitz [club]
– I WOULD HAVE BOMBED IT ” Adam Ant drawing his line in the sand with
the New Romantics
(Clink magazine, 23 March 2011)
Instinctive punks, 1977: Adam and Jordan at the premiere for Jubilee
“ Shapersofthe80s has always drawn a clear distinction between Adam Ant and the New Romantics. As does Marco Pirroni, the Ants guitarist and co-writer of many of their hits. “Adam is glam-punk,” he told me emphatically at the bar of the Wag when Ant’s first solo single Puss ’n Boots was storming the chart in Oct 1983. “Americans don’t understand he was never a New Romantic.”
As if proof were needed, just gawp at the way Adam goes hoppity-skippiting through the video to Antmusic. The rent-a-crowd extras must have been the least stylish Londoners within earshot of the Blitz club. Gawp again at how these kids can’t dance either!
Yes of course Kings of the Wild Frontier went on to become one of the great slapstick albums of its time. No dispute. And with characters like Prince Charming and Puss ’n Boots, Adam treated us to year-round pantomime. ”
Snapper and Stone: Derek Ridgers seen at last night’s Sunday Times party at the Saatchi Gallery beside his photo of Keith Richards, published by the Magazine in 1986. (Nokia mobile snap by yours truly)
◼ WHAT ARE THE ODDS on any photographer having an iconic photograph included in the exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Sunday Times Magazine, the UK’s first newspaper colour supplement? Launched in the dull days of 1962 when papers appeared only in black-and-white, as did TV, the mag proclaimed itself the paper’s Colour Section to point up its USP. Since then it must have published at least 250,000 pages, so the odds of being shown in the powerful new exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery are stacked against most of its contributing photographers. Only 60 were chosen for the show.
This elegantly mounted selection of 100 historic pix, plus various supporting mementoes, packs a surprising punch. The vitality of the huge images is an object lesson in what makes photographic magic.
Grit and glamour on ST Magazine covers: Don McCullin’s exhausted mother and weeping child in Bangladesh, 1972 … Marilyn Monroe on a 1973 cover, photographed in a famous series of naked pictures by Bert Stern, a month before her death in August 1962
Right from the off, the Mag established its benchmark: “photographer first”. In Feb 1962 the 24-year-old David Bailey’s launch issue cover shots at Chelsea Reach showed the model Jean Shrimpton wearing a Mary Quant outfit and announced the dawn of Swinging London. Inside pages featured pop artist Peter Blake five years before he designed the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album sleeve, and a short story titled The Living Daylights by 007 author Ian Fleming.
In the words of Michael Rand, the Mag’s art director for 30 years, its credo was “grit plus glamour — fashion juxtaposed with war photography and pop art”. This meant serious investment in photo-reportage from the world’s troublespots. He went on to champion the work of Eve Arnold, Snowdon, Terry O’Neill, Brian Duffy, Richard Avedon, Eugene Richards, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark. Rand says he felt a great responsibility to project the honesty of their pictures. Risking his life in the warzones of the late 20th century, Don McCullin survived sniper bullets to return with some of the century’s most haunting pictures, and to write movingly of the impact on his own soul from having witnessed at first hand the pain and the pity of shell-shocked soldiers and starving children in Biafra, Vietnam and Northern Ireland. In 1989, Stuart Franklin, onetime president of the Magnum agency, leant out of a hotel window to give the world the unforgettable image of a young man single-handedly halting a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square.
First group pic of key Blitz Kids, April 1980: George O’Dowd, Vivienne Lynn, Chris Sullivan, Kim Bowen, Pinkietessa and Steve Strange immmortalised by Derek Ridgers for The Sunday Times Magazine
All the more reason to be extra-impressed at last night’s party launching the exhibition to meet my old ally on London’s clubbing scene in the 80s, Derek Ridgers. You know his pictures of everyone within a mile of Steve Strange, king of the posers, because they’re all over this website, and as half a dozen key Blitz Kids well remember, he snapped their first published group shot at the Blitz for the ST Magazine in April 1980. Last night Derek had been chatting on and off for at least half an hour while we sidestepped the namedroppy media luvvies and posey models to mingle with the veterans Mike Rand and Beatle biographer Hunter Davies, ST picture editor Ray Wells and snapper Uli Weber (standing in front of his demonic pic of Boy George sprouting a pair of satanic horns, while his pic of Kylie Minogue in the bath is on the poster for this show).
Eventually Derek, who is modest to a fault, asked if I was carrying a camera and I had to say no, thinking it a bit uncool at a swanky champagne bash for 700 media A-listers (which was obviously his view too since his own holster was empty). We did then discover that we were both toting the same unsmart workhorse Nokia 6300 mobile with 2Mp cams onboard. OK, they’ll do, so would I mind taking a pic of him beside his own exhibit at the end of the gallery? Excuse me, Derek? Nice old mild-mannered Derek with his long hair tied in a tail, and knapsack over his shoulder? Renowned for his book full of skinhead and punk portraits, not to mention the dodgy habitués of sexclubs like Skin Two, of David Claridge vintage? Derek’s IN this show? Yes he is. Even with the odds stacked at 250,000 to one against, it’s true. “I was amazed when they sent me an email asking if they could show this photograph,” he said. “So I said, yes, I didn’t mind.” How cool is that?
What we see is a charismatic mugshot of wrecked old Scary Stone, Keith Richards, snapped back in late 1985 when the face of the “10th greatest guitarist of all time” was engraved with a tiny fraction of the million lines it boasts now. He was settling into his marriage to the model Patti Hansen, and Derek persuaded the rock star to pose for him after a chance encounter at the Savoy hotel in London. He says: “There was no KR entourage whatsoever. He couldn’t possibly have been any more helpful. I guess that’s what makes him the guy he is.”
Full marks for initiative, Derek. In 2012 The Sunday Times remains the UK’s best-selling quality newspaper. In the season of Oscars and artsy prizegivings, to be included among the 60 top photographers in the life of its mighty Magazine is pretty well the best gong a lensman can win.
Grit and glamour at the Saatchi Gallery: Tim Hetherington’s photographs observe American soldiers asleep in 2009 in Afghanistan. He said they are about “the intimacy of war. We’re not talking about friendship. We’re talking about brotherhood.” He was killed in Libya in 2011 … Minutes before a tense Amy Winehouse went onstage at a Mandela tribute concert in 2008, Terry O’Neill persuaded the singer to pose for a pic dedicated to the great man. O’Neill said: “She steeled herself for it.” All published in the ST Magazine. Gallery views by Shapersofthe80s
Beijing 1989: Stuart Franklin photographed pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square which made a cover shot for the ST Mag. Two days after the massacre of hundreds of civilians, he caught “Tank Man” defying Chinese T-59 tanks armed only with his shopping bags
Glamour and grit: Faye Dunaway in Beverly Hills at 6am the day after winning her 1977 Oscar for Network, photographed by her future husband Terry O’Neill… Right, in 1976 Don McCullin catches six Christian Phalangist militia playing music over a girl’s corpse after they went into East Beirut to “clean up the rats”. One had a Kalashnikov and another a lute stolen from the home of the people they’d just killed. McCullin says: “It haunts me to this day.”
Grit or glamour, the eyes have it: Nigel Parry nails the steely ambition of Tony Blair in 1994, weeks before becoming the Labour Party leader and going on to win three general elections … Uli Weber nails the demons of pop singer Boy George on tour in 1993, after emerging from one of his early descents into drug-fuelled despair
➢ Update: The Sunday Times Magazine 50th Anniversary Exhibition runs at the Saatchi Gallery, London, was scheduled to run until Feb 19, excluding Feb 11–14, now extended to March 18. Entry is free. The Magazine published a dedicated anniversary issue Sunday, Feb 5.
➢ 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
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