Duran reignited for 2015: Roger Taylor drums, John Taylor bass, Nick Rhodes keyboards, Simon Le Bon vocals. (Photograph by Stephanie Pistel)
◼ FILM-MAKERS AND CREATIVE TYPES, Duran Duran are talking to you! Deadline for pitching your treatment to make a new lyric video is Sunday 28 June. When they threw out a free-for-all invitation in 2011, dozens of brilliant music videos resulted from people adapting classic Duran tracks. Now DD are trying something similar for their single Pressure Off, the first from a new album, in another video collaboration with Genero TV – click now to apply.
In September, after a gap of nearly five years, the former house band of the Brummie Rum Runner club’s New Romantic scene launch a new studio album – Paper Gods, their 14th. As part of a recording deal with Warner Bros Records, the album starts the next chapter in the Duran story, and features a host of A-list collaborators who include Nile Rodgers, Mark Ronson, Mr Hudson, Janelle Monáe, John Frusciante, Kiesza and Davide Ross.
“We found a whole new level of inspiration on this album,” says the band’s keyboardist and aesthetic overlord, Nick Rhodes. “We were talking the other day about artists that have been around for a long time – our contemporaries and some older ones, and there’s only a handful of the latter now, still out there playing shows. And we were saying, ‘What albums did they make this far down the line that we own?’ And that was a difficult one.”
DD seem convinced that this album will be one of the most visceral and daring of their career. A senior editor at Yahoo Music has already given Pressure Off a rave review, saying: “The sexy, slinky, all-around groovy party track is the legendary group’s best single in years. . . The remix-ready cut sounds fresh and modern, even as it traffics in D2’s tried-and-true signature sounds: super-Chic chickenscratch guitars, thick ’n’ gooey basslines, sassy soul-sister backup vocals, irresistibly effervescent chants.” Listen now at YouTube and you decide (no prizes for linking the cocktail of images with DD classic hits). Pre-order Duran Duran’s Paper Gods on iTunes and get an instant download of Pressure Off.
➢ Duran Duran 2015 tour dates at their own website – The four-man Duran line-up is set to headline at Bestival, in the UK, in September, and a trickle of European tour dates kicked off this week in Barcelona and The Hague, following up with the US and UK before climaxing in December.
◼ A 30 YEAR-OLD MYSTERY HAS BEEN SOLVED. At the climax to Spandau Ballet’s first national tour in 1982 fan mania broke out on a level comparable to the 1960s. When their single Instinction crashed into the UK charts with freshly injected energy from producer Trevor Horn, three extra tour dates were added in May. After the show in Liverpool, the creative birthplace of British pop music, a crowd of about 500 fans mobbed the stage door at the fabled Empire theatre. A shadow had only to fall across the band’s dressing room window for screams to erupt in the street.
Two girls then decided to shin the drainpipe and beat the window with their handbags until they were let in. I was in the crowd snapping their daring climb, but for years the girls’ identities remained unknown. Now, the first teenager helped through the window and into Martin Kemp’s arms has been in touch with Shapers of the 80s to admit ownership of that handbag after all these years. She is Janet Gargan who still lives in the area and, naturally, is planning to see the band at Liverpool’s Echo Arena next March on their 2015 tour.
She emailed saying: “I had no idea your pic ever existed or that anyone remembered the drainpipe incident. Until recently, it had remained a family story but just goes to show your past can haunt you at any time. This really has been a blast from the past. I was at school at the time and I climbed up there with my school friend Jeanette, although it’s been many years since I’ve seen her.
“I wanted to meet Tony Hadley and my friend was crazy about Martin Kemp. I do remember the boys being in complete shock about what we had done and signed all our merchandise. They gave us a drink (soft of course!) and sent us on our way – not down the drainpipe thankfully! I have thought in recent years how utterly gentlemanly they all were and very kind to us.”
The second climber Jeanette fell into the arms of sax-player Steve Norman. He retells the story on ITV’s recent bio-show True Gold: “We heard this tapping noise at the window and this girl had climbed the drainpipe to get a look at the band two floors up.” Tony Hadley adds: “It was like being the Beatles – mass hysteria.”
To cap it all, Jan has another revelation to make. “Spandau Ballet played in Liverpool again during the True tour of 1983 when the same friend and I left the concert early and headed to the Atlantic Tower hotel where we knew they were staying. Lots of fans turned up there but we befriended two elderly guests of the hotel who took us in under the guise of being ‘grand-daughters’. We were so worried about our cover being blown that we jumped into the lift of the hotel as fast as we could and as the doors closed we turned around to find the band in the lift! It was Tony Hadley who recognised us and said ‘You are the two girls who climbed the drainpipe last year!’ This was definitely a crazy experience but all true. It’d be great to know if the band remember that encounter too.”
Looking back now, Jan describes those adventures as hilarious though fraught with sheer determination. “It wasn’t unusual for me to go to great lengths to meet people at that time. The same friend and I also met Depeche Mode when they played Liverpool in the 80s – yes, staying in the same hotel. They were supported by Matt Fretton and we sat in the hotel having a chat with the band when a lady came out of the function room and asked if we would all like to join their party for her daughter’s 18th! Of course it would have been rude not too!”
Today Jan the ardent pop fan makes her living as a social worker and, according to a friend, “spends all her time helping other people”. For professional reasons she did not want her photograph to be published and, even though I thought I’d found her on Facebook, this turns out to be somebody else of the same name.
Last night’s secret gig: Prince live at the Electric Ballroom in London backed by his new band 3rdEyeGirl. (Photograph PA)
❚ HERE’S THE GODLIKE ONE live onstage in the Electric Ballroom at about 1am this morning all in black with a furry sleeveless top plus wild afro hair. Prince was backed by his new band 3rdEyeGirl and his audience consisted of whoever ventured out in last night’s lashing storm.
His first London gig since he played 20 nights at the O2 arena seven years ago opened with a slow version of I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man and Prince told the smattering of fans: “You sound like ten thousand. We love each and every one of you.” His manager Kiran Sharma tweeted: “If you were there… you know :) See you tomorrow! Same place.”
Prince, now aged 55, said he hoped to play “iconic” London venues such as Ronnie Scott’s jazz club and the legendary 60s club the Bag o’ Nails, where Jimi Hendrix performed and recently reopened.
According to the passionate lifelong Prince fan Goldies Parade a series of “guerrilla gigs”, which mark the release of the PlectrumElectrum album, is expected to be held at the Electric Ballroom for the remainder of the week. Info is sparce but leaked out following the long-awaited “press conference” in the Leyton, east London, living room of Lianne La Havas, the British soul singer whose debut album became iTunes Album of the Year 2012. There Prince played two acoustic tracks, Pretzelbodylogic and FunkNRoll, bathed in purple light.
The London jaunt is, he said, “open-ended – we’re going to be here until people don’t want to hear us any more”. 3rdEyeGirl consists of Danish bassist Ida Nielsen, Canadian guitarist Donna Grantis and American drummer Hannah Ford.
Ticketing for further dates is to be handled by one outlet, but to avoid touts cashing in, tickets for this week – price £6 !!! “because it’s a new band” – will be available only on the door and only one per person.
This year of course marks the 30th anniversary of Prince’s astonishing debut album Purple Rain.
Beatles live onstage in Stockton, Nov 22, 1963: George Harrison at the microphone on the night Kennedy was shot
❚ WHERE? LIVE, ONSTAGE IN STOCKTON-ON-TEES.Count the simple Vox amps behind the band and note how one is perched on a chair! This picture was taken on Friday Nov 22 1963 at the 2,400-seat Globe theatre when the Beatles played the art-deco venue on their first nationwide tour. The band’s half-hour set during twice-nightly performances at 6.15 and 8.30 was supported by seven other acts with tickets priced from 6 shillings to 10s 6d, when a workman’s weekly wage might be £7.
During the first house in Stockton, England, the assassin’s bullets killed John Kennedy in Dallas, USA. At 43 he was the youngest man elected to the US Presidency and during the cold war era as the Soviet Union threatened world peace the hopes of the West rested on his shoulders. In Britain TV programmes were interrupted to break the dramatic news just after 7pm.
In those days we’d seen nothing as electrifying as the Beatles and while their audience at the 18th date on their first serious tour were discovering the power of The Scream, these fans remained respectfully seated throughout the show. Even so, personal accounts say the second house in Stockton was distinctly more subdued. Shocked by the news about JFK, Lynda Richardson, a fan travelling back to Redcar by coach, said: “No one spoke a word all the way home.”
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The Globe, Stockton, Nov 22, 1963: Beatles fans learning to scream. (Picture, Evening Gazette)
The Globe, Stockton, Nov 22, 1963: Beatles fans firmly seated. (Picture, Evening Gazette)
Pre-Beatles hysteria: massive queues along Stockton High Street when Tommy Steele played the Globe in 1957
The Globe, Stockton, today: awaiting its £8m restoration
Also on this day the Fab Four’s second album With The Beatles was released on Parlophone eight months after their chart-topping debut LP and it immediately broke sales records. Lennon’s raw vocals barked fresh life and sexual danger into the Motown covers Please Mr Postman, Money and You Really Got a Hold on Me. With its eight original compositions, this was the album that moved William Mann, classical music critic of The Times, to write that Lennon and McCartney were “the outstanding English composers of 1963”.
Earlier in the year three Beatles singles had gone to No 2 and to No 1 twice in the UK chart and now another with advance sales of a million copies – I Want To Hold Your Hand – was racing up the chart to become the Christmas No 1.
This November, too, the Daily Mirror coined the word Beatlemania to describe the tour’s first gig, a phenomenon really triggered with the release of the single She Loves You in August. During the tour, The Beatles had also stopped the Royal Variety Performance – playing four numbers and watched by half the nation in a TV show of recorded highlights – when John Lennon famously quipped: “Will those in the cheaper seats clap your hands. The rest of you can just rattle your jewellery.” The group guest-starred on BBC TV’s flagship Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show, while their own Beatles’ Christmas Show was to run at London’s Astoria Finsbury Park for 30 performances (100,000 seats) featuring the Fab Four in comic “skits” with six pop acts in support including Cilla. By this stage the Fabs could go nowhere without a personal police escort. [See, How does a Beatle live? – at Shapersofthe80s]
The Globe, Stockton, 2009: a glorious interior in art deco style
Today the Globe in Stockton, a small market town in County Durham, is a disused shell which is Grade II-listed. Built in 1935, its facade is enlivened with fluted plaster and the interior retains riotously colourful art deco features typical of the period. As a “super-theatre” the Globe hosted opera, ballet and an annual pantomime, together with touring variety, musicals, and pop concerts by Tommy Steele, the Rolling Stones, Searchers, Seekers, Billy J Kramer, Herman’s Hermits, Animals and Swinging Blue Jeans. It closed as a theatre in 1975, eked out the role of bingo hall until 1996 and then closed its doors.
The Theatres Trust describes the Globe as “an excellent example of its kind” and it is one of 68 buildings on its At-risk register. In 2009, Stockton-based Jomast Developments Ltd announced plans to restore the Globe and recruited theatre expert David Wilmore to the task. He called the Globe “a real Sleeping Beauty”. Finally last month Jomast reported that the Heritage Lottery Fund has earmarked £4m towards an £8m project to transform the Globe into a live entertainment venue for music, comedy and other events, with a capacity of 2,500 and the potential to create 64 jobs. The new venue is likely to open in 2016.
THE DAY AMERICA’S CAMELOT FELL
❏ View The Beatles on CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace on November 22, 1963 (despite the erroneous date on the video), the day JFK was shot … In old-school TV style Alexander Kendrick reports grudgingly on Britain’s energetic threat to The American Way under the title, The Beatles, New Phenomena In Britain. Asked about the band’s future Paul McCartney says: “We could have quite a run.”
ANOTHER LEGEND IN THE MAKING
➢ At the Northern Echo in 1963 its young editor was Harold Evans, who went on to build the international reputation of The Sunday Times. On Nov 22, after putting the Echo to bed, he was being driven to Stockton for the annual press ball when news of JFK’s assassination came over the car radio. He immediately returned to his Darlington office and produced an entirely new paper. Evans decided The Beatles were worth a few downpage column inches squeezed into the Teesside edition only.
PHOTO UPDATES
➢ Ringo Starr’s lost Beatles photo album, Nov 2013 – “All anyone could talk about when we came to America was our hair. The boots were famous. The jackets were famous. The pop songs were famous, but they came in about third. The hair was first.”
No longer “a cheap date”: Robert Elms with Alison Moyet today
❚ ALISON MOYET HAS COMPLETED her eighth solo album, The Minutes, with Guy Sigsworth on production creating a whole new synthesised sound. It is released on May 6 on the Cooking Vinyl label. Today she talked to Robert Elms on his BBC London show about slipping into “electro-jazz” and being able to say No to merely doing more cover versions. “I wanted to play a bit.”
She surprises Robert by saying, yes she is a mainstream artist, but regards herself as an instrumentalist, that her first instrument is “a voice – I love chanson, like Brel or Michel Legrand. But as well as being a voice, I’m an artist where voice is not the main thing, it can be about the lyric or the melody. I don’t always want the voice to be the focus!”
Alison Moyet, the Basildon punk, high priestess of electronic pop and peerless soul singer, set out as Genevieve Alison Jane. An Essex girl born to a French father and English mother, she left school at 16, became famous at 21 as singer in Yazoo, and released her triple-platinum solo debut, Alf, at 23. She found fame hard to handle at such a young age, but hindsight has helped her appreciate those experiences. “For a while in the mid-80s, it was amusing to be a pop bitch, but that changed, and it stopped being enough. Now I am able to put my early work into context and find pleasure in the innocence of it.” Between 1984 and 1987, Moyet was Britain’s biggest female solo star.
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
An “invaluable website” — historian Dominic Sandbrook, 2012
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU AT TOP to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH, see the sidebar below
❏ 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
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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NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TEENS
✱ Prima occasione di vedere Ross Wild on-stage in Europa! – First chance to see Ross Wild in Europe! Spandau Ballet introduce their new singer in three Italian shows 23–25 Oct in Milan, Rome and Padova. . . also two in the Netherlands, 27 Oct Utrecht, 28 Oct Tilburg. . . In London a one-off concert is booking now for Apollo Hammersmith on 29 Oct, via Spandau Ballet tickets
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✱ For Dazed’s summer issue, its cover brings together “the characters making Britain truly great in 2018” over the heading Youth Is Revolting. So what’s the white-haired little old lady doing down front in the blue shirt that’s too big for her?
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✱ Duraniversary! Careless Memories of Duran Duran, the debut album by the English new wave/synthpop band was released worldwide on EMI Records on 15 June 1981
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✱ Johnny Marr gets magical with his new album. Recorded with his band in Manchester at his Crazy Face studios, Call The Comet introduces 12 tracks and is out now. The third solo record from the ex-Smiths guitarist follows 2013’s critically acclaimed The Messenger and 2014’s Playland, both of which made the UK top 10. Marr says: “Call The Comet is set in the not-too-distant future and is mostly concerned with the idea of an alternative society. It’s my own magic realism.” Update: 11 new live shows added
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✱ On sale now, ex-Spandau singer Tony Hadley’s Talking To The Moon UK tour, seven venues 8–17 October 2018 including The London Palladium. . . View Tone’s first YouTube music video – for his new single Tonight Belongs To Us, from new album Talking To The Moon, named album of the week 17 June on BBC Radio2 … Hadley’s events list gives his live dates through 6 July Chilfest at Tring, Herts, for An Evening with Hadley and his Orchestra, to 80s/90s Forever in Southend on 26 August, and many more to Stepback! 80s Christmas Concert 22 Dec in Coventry
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✱ 35 Years of No Parlez – Paul Young’s 16-date autumn tour from 29 Sept, Hastings to London Palladium 24 Oct
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✱ Jeff Young on Jazz FM recently made the new 18-track Siren his album of the week. Superbly crafted by Londoner Robb Scott, with strong supporting lineup, for the Expansion label. Soul Brother Records says: “A collection of classy soul/jazz grooves on that has jazz at its heart but with some superb soulful brushstrokes applied.” Purchase directly from the artist’s store
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✱ The 2018 Love Supreme Jazz Festival features George Clinton, Parliament and Funkadelic, not to mention 30 other acts. Nr Lewes, Sussex, 29 June–1 July
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✱ The Cure’s Robert Smith has hand-picked 30 all-time favourite artists for the refurbished South Bank Centre’s 25th Meltdown Festival, 15-24 June 2018. Acts include Death Cab For Cutie, Maybeshewill, Suzanne Vega, Frightened Rabbit, Sigur Ros singer Jónsi, The Joy Formidable and more
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✱ Heaven 17 promise a spectacular celebration tour of The Luxury Gap for 10 dates 9 Nov–8 Dec from Northampton, via London 30 Nov to Sheffield. They say their 1983 album is “a sly, post-modern, critique of modern society and has never been so necessary”
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✱ Steve Norman and his live band visit The Acapela Studios Cardiff 27 July, with new material… Also hometown gig live at The Old Market in Hove 8 Sept
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✱ Spandau’s Martin Kemp is performing his deejay set, spinning classics from the 80s, at all three Rewind Festivals: Perth 20–22 July; Cheshire 3–5 Aug; Henley-on-Thames 17–19 Aug
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✱ One Nation Under the Groove – Wag club legend Chris Sullivan now resident on Fridays at Mau Mau, 265 Portobello Road “which looks like a New York rhythm ’n’ blues soul bar.” Playing rare funk and disco from the likes of Mantus, Father Time,The Kinsman Band plus Parliament, Bohannon and Larry Young – sample him at Mixcloud. . . Sullivan’s book Rebel Rebel, “a riotous history of people and things that broke the mould”, is due from Unbound in September
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✱ Haircut’s singer Nick Heyward is touring the UK through June for 13 dates until Tring Chilfest in July, then on to Japan
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational new 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
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