In the ever-evolving tapestry of fashion and youth subcultures, the New Romantics of the 1980s emerged as a vibrant and revolutionary movement. Known for their flamboyant style, gender-bending fashion, and a passion for all things theatrical and Bowie-related, the New Romantics left an indelible mark on pop culture via groups like Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Spandau Ballet. And there was also Visage, the post punk synthpop supergroup comprised of members, then present or former, of Magazine (Barry Adamson, Dave Formula), Siouxsie and the Banshees (John McGeoch), Ultravox (Midge Ure, Billy Currie) along with Steve Strange and Rusty Egan, who arguably started the whole scene by giving it a place to flourish, first at a West End dive bar called Billy’s and later at the Blitz nightclub.

Embedding herself among these after dark denizens, photographer Sheila Rock captured this extraordinary scene like no other.  Rock’s remarkable images of the New Romantics preserves a moment in time when fashion, music, and rebellion converged to create a cultural phenomenon. She’s put together a new book of these portraits titled New Romantics - From Billy’s to the People’s Palace published by MOONBOY Books.

I asked Sheila Rock a few questions via email.

How did the New Romantic scene first start to get off the ground?

Sheila Rock: The name ‘New Romantics’ didn’t come into use until much later – but the scene was really born with the Bowie nights at Billy’s in the autumn of 1978.  Steve Strange and Rusty Egan chose this very run-down bar on the edge of Soho as the location for their nights dedicated to the music of David Bowie and of course it attracted a highly creative crowd – many of them had been part of the punk scene, including Steve himself, so they were predisposed to dressing up and having a good time and cared little about what others thought! 
 

Rusty Egan, left, Steve Strange, 2nd from right, at Billy’s 1978
 
When did it reach critical mass and which media outlets first noticed?

The Face and iD magazines were probably the first to report the movement in relation to what people were wearing - and Spandau Ballet were regulars at the Blitz so reports of their low-key/secret gigs around London started to appear in the music press along with photos of their exotically dressed followers. It was the usual kind of osmosis, where a small cult becomes mainstream by attracting attention – almost a form of self-destruction.

Spandau Ballet released ‘To Cut a Long Story Short’ in October 1980 and it became a hit as did Visage’s single ‘Fade to Grey’ when it was released a month later; of course Steve’s unique look attracted a lot of attention – he was interviewed on primetime television in the UK and the song was played around the world and Steve’s photo appeared in countless music and fashion magazines which I suppose heralded a change in the way the regulars at the Blitz felt about the night they had built around themselves – everyone now wanted to go and the queue became unmanageable; famously, Steve turned Mick Jagger away as he was not sufficiently well-dressed to gain entry.

By 1981, when Steve and Rusty held the Valentine’s Day Ball at People’s Palace, bands like Ultravox, Japan and Depeche Mode had reached a broader public and brought the dressing-up culture to the fore.
 

Depeche Mode, 1981
 
The people who went to Billy’s and The Blitz, what sort of day jobs did they have or were they mostly on the dole?

Many were students – fashion and design particularly; Stephen Jones, the milliner, was a regular at the Blitz.  It was a young crowd, so understandably some were unemployed or had yet to find their role – many regulars went on to become stars; Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Visage, Ultravox, Sade, Wham!, Bananarama – the DJ Jeremy Healy was a regular, as well as some lesser-known but super-stylish bands like Blue Rondo a La Turk and Animal Nightlife
 

A young George O’Dowd, right, at Billy’s, 1978
 
How friendly was this scene? Were the participants more interested in looking good and posing or having a good time?

I think most people just wanted to have a good time whilst looking great – I’m sure there was rivalry, there always is where style is concerned – but the overall feel was one of a close-knit group of like-minded people enjoying themselves in a city which was, at that time,  a grey metropolis scarred by strikes and unemployment – a far cry from the London we know now. 
 

Arriving at People’s Palace by Tube, 1981
 
How dangerous was it for the New Romantic types to walk around London, or take the Tube, dressed like that? 

I don’t think it was dangerous as a rule – punk had already given the general public some exposure to counter-cultural style, but physical violence was not a common issue - although I’m sure there were incidents; there was certainly name-calling and taunting, but most young people shrugged this off.  People rarely travelled to clubs on their own, going in groups was much more fun and of course there was safety in numbers! (photo)
 

Jane Khan, Patti Bell and friend at People’s Palace
 
Who had the most elaborate outfits?

The Birmingham-based designers Jane Khan and Patti Bell created some wonderfully outlandish outfits – and Martin Degville, who became the frontman of Sigue Sigue Sputnik was incredibly imaginative.

What was the mix like in the Blitz? Girls vs. boys, gay vs. straight, black vs. white?

The whole ethos of Billy’s and the Blitz was based on style and attitude – if you had both then you were welcome.  The balance between girls and boys was probably about equal – but what you have to remember is that those clubs were not set up attract gay or straight, black or white – dressing up, Bowie and a good time were the prerequisites!  You can see from the photos how tiny the Blitz was, everyone squeezed in together. 

Aside from the people who went on to be notable or famous, were there any other characters who especially stood out?

In a scene where ‘dress to excess’ was the byword, it’s hard to pick out specific individuals – but the young girl I chose to be on the cover of the book expressed an innocence and creative flare I thought looked beautiful.
 

Scarlett Cannon, right
 
Another striking and imaginative figure was Scarlett Cannon – she always looked amazing – her style has become something of a legend, with her dramatically cropped and sculpted hair and stark makeup. 

Stephen Linard was a stylist by trade and his clothing combinations were always exotically full-on.
 

Stephen Linard at People’s Palace 1981
 
Tell me about the new book.

The New Romantics book is a social document of a particular time where music and fashion were celebrated. 

Whilst I dress in simple black, I am forever attracted to theatrical and flamboyant self-expression.  Clothes make a statement. The New Romantics scene caught my attention, and I was compelled to photograph club life and the individuals that made it happen. Young people were having fun and exploring their creativity. 

Nightclubs were the catwalks and an inspiration for new ideas. Electronic pop music punctuated the scene and bands like Visage and Depeche Mode were the heroes. This book captures the zeitgeist of this all too brief movement; a moment when lipstick and colour ruled. 

New Romantics - From Billy’s to the People’s Palace is published by MOONBOY Books as a strictly limited edition of 800 copies on 1st November.  Advance orders are now being taken at www.moonboy.space
 

Spandau Ballet
 
The Blitz club in Covent Garden was ground zero for the movement that came to be known as the New Romantics, an identity that perhaps represented the most forceful rejection of the premises of punk music, which was then on everyone’s lips. Where the punks preached scruffy confrontation and anarchy, the New Romantics veered in an escapist direction, stressing the rarefied forms of yesteryear (most often the 1930s) and an abiding (even a political) belief in actual beauty with a capital B. 

The Blitz Kids looked to Roxy Music and David Bowie for inspiration, adopting a sartorial flair that included flaming mascara, outrageous accessories, zoot suits. The Blitz club spawned the New Romantic acts Visage and Spandau Ballet, among others, but nature of the scene was insular—the whole point of the weekly meetups was to parade oneself for all the others who had gathered for the occasion. Gigs didn’t have to be promoted because word of mouth would fill any chosen room.
 

Chris Sullivan
 
In May 1980 Strange, Egan, and Chris Sullivan of the band Blue Rondo à la Turk opened Hell, which had a darker feel than Blitz. At Hell, as Dave Rimmer writes in New Romantics: The Look, “many of the Blitz crowd pursued an ecclesiastical theme: dark robes, white faces, a look that prefigured Goth.” At Hell you would hear acts like the Pop Group, Defunkt, the Cramps, and A Certain Ratio, but its “anthem” was “Contort Yourself” by James White and the Blacks. Hell only lasted a few months, and by early 1981 the hot spot had become a joint started by Chris Sullivan and Graham Ball called Le Kilt, which was where BBC sent Robin Denselow to do his report.

Tellingly, the report begins with the strains of Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” as Sullivan carefully dons his tailored duds. A few minutes later, Steve Strange bellows the words “Nobody should knock fantasy!” in fervent defense of the New Romantic ideology in an overt embrace of escapism—and why not?

Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet are on hand, Gary in particular speaking with palpable edge about the demands the New Romantic movement places on the participants (for they must dress up as much as any performer).

Continues after the jump…

DJ and singer Princess Julia with George O’Dowd aka Boy George.
 
Billy’s was a nightclub in Soho, London, where every Tuesday for most of 1978 two young men—Steve Strange and Rusty Egan—ran a club night playing tracks by David Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk. The club was in a basement underneath a brothel. From this small cramped space a new generation of artists, writers, performers and DJs first met up and planned the future together. Punk was dead. It was uncool. It had gone mainstream. The teenagers who came to Billy’s wanted to create their own music, their own style and make their own mark on the world.

Among this small posse of teenagers were future stars like Boy George, Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama), Marilyn, Martin Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), DJ Princess Julia, Jeremy Healy (Hasyi Fantayzee), Andy Polaris (Animal Nightlife) and an eighteen-year-old Nicola Tyson who would go onto become one of the world’s leading figurative painters.

It’s rare that someone is savvy enough to ever take photographs of a nascent cultural revolution. But Nicola took her camera along to Billy’s and she documented the teenagers who frequented the club that launched the New Romantics and a whole new world of pop talent.
 

A blonde-haired Siobhan Fahey with at friend at Billy’s long before she joined Bananarama and later Shakespeare’s Sister.
 

Club host Steve Strange (in cap) with an unknown friend.
 
See more photos of Nicola’s photos, after the jump…

The Blitz Club where the Eighties were invented.
 
Punk was boring. Punk was dead. Punk stopped being interesting when it became chart music. In its place came New Wave—which was really just more of the same played with jangly guitars by bands with a taste for Sixties music. The next really big thing was the utter antithesis of punk. Elitist, pretentious, preening, vain, camp yet utterly inventive.

It was called “the cult with no name”—because nobody knew what to call it. It didn’t fit any easy categorization. There were soul boys, punks, rockabillies, with a taste for dance music and electronica all in the mix. It was the press who eventually pitched up with the tag New Romantics which stuck.

I was never quite sure what was supposed to be romantic about the New Romantics. They weren’t starving in garrets or brokenhearted, writing poetry, indulging in absinthe or committing suicide by the dozen. They were all dolled-up to the nines, flaunting it out on the streets—demanding to be seen.

It had all started with Rusty Egan and Steve Strange running a club night playing Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk at a venue called Billy’s in 1978.

Egan was a drummer and DJ. He was in a band with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock called Rich Kids which featured Midge Ure on vocals.
       
Strange had been inspired to move to London and form a punk band after he saw the Sex Pistols in concert. He moved out of Wales and formed The Moors Murderers. The band included punk icon Soo Catwoman, guitarist Chrissie Hynde and Clash drummer Topper Headon. Together they recorded one notorious single “Free Hindley.”

The same year, Egan, Strange and Ure formed Visage—which was to become a catalyst for the New Romantics in 1980 with their hit single “Fade to Grey.”
 

Visage: Steve Strange, Midge Ure and Rusty Egan in 1978.
 
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s be kind and rewind.

1978: Egan and Strange move their club night to a wine bar-cum-restaurant-cum-dance-club called the Blitz. Egan was the DJ. Strange was on the door. Strange has a strict door policy. No one gets in unless they dressed like superstars.

More after the jump…

 
The Legend of Leigh Bowery is a brilliant documentary about a brilliant man.

Directed by Charles Atlas, the film covers Bowery’s life and times from his suburban beginnings in Sunshine, Australia, to his fame on London’s club scene in the 1980s and his success as one of the most influential and daring fashion designers in the past thirty years.

The Legend of Leigh Bowery has incredible archive footage and excellent contributions from Michael Clark, Sue Tilley, Michael Bracewell, Richard Torry, Donald Urquhart, Damien Hirst, Boy George and Leigh’s wife, Nicola Bowery.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Watch the rest of ‘The Legend of Leigh Bowery’, after the jump…
 

 
Julien Temple directed Mantrap, an under-rated and often considered “lost” featurette starring 1980’s New Romantic group ABC. Like a lot of Temple’s work it’s full of quirky originality and style, which compensates for the lack of script. Mantrap can be best summed-up by its Wikipedia entry:

Martin Fry is asked to join [a] band as they embark on tour heading east through Europe. But at the height of their popularity the band tries to secretly replace Fry with a Russian spy in order to sneak him back behind the iron curtain. It is then up to Martin to battle his doppelganger and make the world safe for New Romantic Synth Pop.

Temple is a true maverick, who has more than a touch of genius about him. His films always deliver great visual imagination as disguise for a weak script (Absolute Beginners), but when Temple has a good script, like Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Pandaemonium, or is working with straight non-fiction narrative Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, the superb documentary on Dr Feelfgood, Oil City Confidential, or The Filth and the Fury, his talents soar.

Though slight, Mantrap is well worth watching for 101 reasons, from its classic soundtrack by ABC, its style, its visuals, its concert footage, Martin Fry’s good looks, its silliness, its joie de vivre….etc.

Seminal New Romantics ABC and punk filmmaker Julien Temple pay homage to 50s espionage flicks in this hour long folly from 1983. Martin Fry has the look of a Hitchcock protagonist, but by his own admission, his acting was a little “mahogany”. Temple captures the isolation and paranoia of the former Communist Bloc, but forgets to tell a story in the process.

Nonetheless, this curiosity from the naive dawn of pop-video has enough to keep fans and casual viewers entertained. The 6th form script about some Cold War double dealing will occasionally make you wince, but is padded out with some wonderful footage of ABC’s (sadly never repeated) World Tour.

B-Movie regulars and wannabes try their best amidst the ensuing nonsense - but it’s pretty much in vain, so don’t expect John le Carré! But do delight in a soundtrack taken from arguably the greatest debut album of all time - “The Lexicon of Love”.

 
See the rest of ‘Mantrap’, after the jump…
 

 
Out of the ashes of Punk came the New Romantics, rising like a painted phoenix over London’s club scene. From clubs like Billy’s and Blitz, where Steve Strange and Rusty Egan played Bowie, the Velvets and T.Rex, and Boy George was the coat-check guy, came the New Romantics. Clubbers known as the Blitz Kids, who were made-up and beautiful, and knew imagination was more important than money when it came to having fun. 

The Blitz Kids were Steve Strange (Visage), Rusty Egan (The Rich Kids), Boy George (Culture Club), Tony Hadley, Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, John Keeble, Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet), Tony James, James Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama), Marilyn, Princess Julia, Isabella Blow, Stephen Jones and Michael Clarke, and together they were the generation of New Romantics.

Last year, in the Guardian, Priya Elan talked to some of the “movers and shakers behind the scene that spawned the New Romantics.”

STEVE STRANGE, BLITZ CLUB HOST, VISAGE FRONTMAN: By 1977 I’d gotten very bored by punk. It’d become very violent. The skinheads and the National Front had moved in.

RUSTY EGAN, BLITZ DJ, VISAGE MEMBER: The punk venues got invaded by football hooligans wearing Le Coq Sportif clothes. They’d call us “poofs” because we weren’t dressed in a normal way. Hence why we formed the club. It was for those ex-punks who liked Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy.

SS: It was about being creative, we wanted to start something that didn’t have anything to do with punk.

RE: It was a horrible time of recession. Covent Garden was isolated and badly lit. But then you’d walk into the club and it was like “Ta-da!” Everyone was drinking and taking poppers. The atmosphere was like Studio 54.

SIOBHAN FAHEY, BLITZ CLUBBER AND BANANARAMA MEMBER: We’d spend the whole week preparing our outfits for the club. We’d go and buy fabrics, customise our leather jackets, make cummerbunds, find old military things and throw them together in a mix of glam, military and strangeness. It was all DIY because we didn’t really have any money to properly eat. We lived off coffee and cigarettes, really.

RE: The song that became the anthem of the club was Heroes by Bowie. “Just for one day” you could dress up and be more than what Britain had to offer you.

 
Previously on DM

‘The Chemical Generation’: Boy George’s documentary on British Rave Culture

 
Part 2 of Boy George’s Top 10 plus more memories from the Blitz Kids, after the jump…