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Memories of a Free Festival, part one.

The Blitz Club was loads of fun.

God, it was fun. We had the best time.

It was just this sort of feeling of joy when you went in there,

that you were part of this sort of funny family.

It felt as though you were in a helter-skelter

with a bunch of paper dolls, who changed outfits at the drop of a hat.

You won't see it on our faces, but it was just a joy.

We were so free.

We didn't have mobile phones, nobody knew where you were.

Everything was fun. Throw in Marilyn.

Always upset. Throw in Boy George, Steve Strange.

Aw. It was like, um, a farce, you know?

You never knew who was going to come in on the wind next.

I know that it was a club in the 80s

that influenced a huge number of people,

even though it was only around for 18 months.

There was also a number that was waiting to tick over,

and we were very aware of that.

That number was 1980.

♪ It's Tuesday night ♪

♪ And I'm ready for some fun ♪

♪ Oh yeah, oh yeah ♪

And I think, you know, so much had happened in the 70s.

Who was going to take responsibility of the next decade?

And we thought, "We are. That's it.

We are going to make the next decade about us

and it's going to be different.

You know, it's going to be in colour."

And I think that was a really guiding thought

in our plans as we speeded on blues and drank lots of beer.

London in the mid to late-70s, bleak. Quite bleak.

It was still full of bomb sites.

Literally we called them debris, as if the World War II was still going on.

It was a really dreary place.

It was also very divided and very political.

I can still remember, you know, the winter of discontent.

Blackouts, the rubbish in the streets.

The constant strikes.

You know, we grew up at a time when National Front

was openly marching in the streets of Britain.

Left and Right were battling it out on the streets.

And I do mean battling it out.

The police say over 50 arrests were made,

as the march made its way through an area with a large immigrant population.

A lot of racism. It was homophobic. It was sexist.

And I suppose if you were a little bit of a freak,

or you knew you was a little bit of a freak,

you kind of had to keep your head down, or know how to run fast.

Britain was like an old pair of mountain socks

left out in the rain for like two weeks and hardened in an oven.

It was a foul.

Smelly, dirty, racist, right wing, awful place.

When I used to walk along Oxford Street

dressed up as the first incarnation of Marilyn

and in a cocktail dress,

and I was literally stopped Oxford Street

and people are like leaning out of cars screaming out.

I was a teenager in the 70s

and, you know, sort of piles of rubbish and burning cars.

It was exciting.

I can still remember the feeling of that there was going to be no future.

There was no positive future coming for Britain.

In 1972,

I'm sitting in my mum's council house in North London,

and I've got two older brothers who'd been Mods and Skinheads

and I'm very aware of this kind of lineage of youth culture.

My uncles had been Teddy boys in Ladbroke Grove.

I kind of knew that when you grew up something exciting was meant to happen,

that would involve clothes and music, but I wasn't sure what it was yet.

And I'm sitting there on a Thursday afternoon

and my mum's doing the ironing or whatever's happening.

And Thursday's an important day, because it's Top of the Pops.

Yes, it's number one. It's Top of the Pops!

And I'm used to watching kind of a bit of glam rock

and a bit of American soul music.

But no-one knew what was gonna happen next.

Because suddenly, out of the blue, this guy called David Bowie appears.

♪ Oh, no, no ♪

♪ Didn't know what time it was And the lights were low ♪

♪ I leaned back on my radio ♪

♪ Some cat was layin' down Some get-it-on rock 'n' roll ♪

♪ He said... ♪

And he's got this haircut,

and it's a kind of a feather cut, but it's slightly high on top

when it's dyed bright red,

and he's wearing this incredibly androgynous,

very tight outfit.

And I can't work out whether he's sexy, or he's strange, or he's both.

And he comes on and the world changes.

♪ There's a starman waiting in the sky ♪

♪ Who would like and come to meet us ♪

♪ But he thinks he'll bow our minds ♪

♪ And there's a star... ♪

That was my awakening.

I mean, I was only 12

but that was my sort of blossoming as a teenager.

And it had such a huge impact on me.

♪ Let the children use it ♪

It was seen by something like a quarter of the population,

which, at that time, would have been about 12 or 15 million people.

After seeing it, some went to buy his records.

Some wanted to read lots about him, some wanted to dress like him,

and I wanted his hair.

There's a moment Bowie points his finger down the barrel of the lens and said,

"I had to phone someone, so I picked on you."

♪ I had to phone someone So I picked on you ♪

And that was me.

I remember going home at night thinking, "This is it. This is the man."

This was the beginning of something new.

This was something that I could claim.

I didn't really know that much about Bowie.

My mum's going to hate me for saying this but she doesn't like Bowie.

Doesn't like Bowie's music. She likes him.

She thinks he's brilliant.

But, like, we weren't a Bowie family.

It was like Chuck Berry. It was like Stevie Wonder.

There was a lot more Black music in my house.

My first foray into Bowie was the "Let's Dance" record,

just because it's the poppiest, most known record.

And I guess I must have got into that when I was getting into all the 80s stuff.

It wasn't like I sat in front of my mirror and was like,

"Let me make my hair like that guy."

I was thinking about Flock of Seagulls.

♪ If I had a photograph of you ♪

♪ It's something to remind me ♪

I didn't really know that much about Bowie.

Like he was almost too classy.

♪ She's a queen such a queen ♪

♪ Such a laughter Is sucked in their brains ♪

♪ Now she's leading him on And she lay right down ♪

♪ Well it could have been me Yes it could have been me ♪

The first concert I ever saw was David Bowie at Wembley Arena in '76.

And so a lot of the proto-punks

and the people that would end up at the Blitz

were in that audience and you realised, "Oh my God, this is my tribe."

Because you saw a lot of the freaky people.

I remember seeing girls in black plastic, bin liner dresses then, in '76.

You know, even before the punk thing really started.

And there was a bit of a rumour and people were saying,

"Oh, there's going to be this Bowie club."

We kind of knew that these people were going to group together .

The world suddenly goes from the black and white

of post-war bomb-site London

into this incredible, multicolor,

strange, gender-fluid future.

And honestly, the world just becomes a different place after "Starman".

To start with, punk was all about the clothes

and all about... kind of, yeah, it was a sort of a finger to civilised,

you know, society.

But, you know, it was a fashion thing, absolutely.

No question about that.

We were just having fun and dressing up,

and meeting girls, and drinking and dancing.

You know, and then that carried on.

We wanted the set of clothes and then the punk rock.

That's why it wasn't about politics. It was a fashion.

I was 17 in the year of 1976.

It was the longest, hottest summer anyone has ever known.

And it's when my life took one of those turns

because of youth culture.

Because I go from being a soul boy, and I'm dancing to jazz funk

with all of my mates.

And then suddenly a boy called Steven Marshall,

who was also a soul boy like me, or at least he was,

until one Friday evening when I see him walking along

with his legs tied together and his nose pierced,

and he says to me, "There's this new band, Robert.

They're called the Sex Pistols. They're terrible. You're gonna love them."

♪ I am an antichrist ♪

♪ I am an anarchist ♪

♪ Don't know what I want But I know how to get it ♪

♪ I want to destroy the passer-by ♪

In August 1976, we went to this concert.

The Buzzcocks came on, and then The Clash, followed by the Pistols.

It was sarcastic. It was ironic.

I've quit my band the day after,

and Steve Norman and I went back into school in September

and formed what became Spandau Ballet.

The Sex Pistols third-ever gig or something

was at Wickham Students Union.

Unfortunately, I worked with the Students Union at that point,

and when they went off after three numbers,

everybody wanted their money back.

I came from The Wirral,

but I went to boarding school in Liverpool

and was there really until I came down to London.

I think that's really where I sort of found my identity.

Everything around me just seemed fake.

It certainly wasn't a dream.

I didn't think it was particularly a nightmare, either, but it wasn't the,

certainly it wasn't the reality I wanted to have.

Punk came along and they were showing something different.

I grew up in the countryside,

in like a small village just outside Oxford,

and I always remember being very aware that I didn't think I was very pretty.

So I always tried to make things that didn't make me look like anyone else.

So you know, I always,

I think that's why I really got into punk earlier on.

It was like a way that you could express yourself.

♪ Oh shut your mouth ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh! ♪

♪ The money you've got! ♪

And what punk was, was a firework display.

It lit up the sky.

It was brief, it was violent, it was explosive,

it was fantastic, it was exciting, thrilling, scary.

Didn't last very long, as fireworks displays don't.

But it showed us something, because punk had a message which is,

"You can do it."

You don't have to be an incredible musician,

you don't have to be a famous writer,

you don't have to be a well-known fashion designer.

You can do it. Three chords and you're a musician.

And that was the message

which sustained British youth culture from that point on.

By the middle of 1977, I'd kind of stopped going to punk gigs.

The bands weren't very good. The music wasn't very good.

So I personally felt very disappointed and let down,

because I used to go everywhere

looking for that exciting moment in pop culture

that I could take part in.

Where I grew up, when I was a child, it was the 60s and a very exciting time.

My family were from Soho.

The West End was like a playground.

My parents weren't in any way involved with pop culture,

but you couldn't miss it. It was going on all around.

And I just thought,

"Well at some point, I will be part of that."

And it was what I kind of aspired to.

And so as a teenager,

I used to go everywhere and to everything

to try and find that exciting, swinging London thing.

It was somewhere. It must be.

I didn't want to give up.

I suppose we were quite poor.

I was brought up in Islington with my brother, Martin,

and Mum and Dad living in a small rented floor

of a slightly larger house.

We shared one outside loo

with two other families, and no bathroom.

I remember my mum crying,

because she couldn't afford to buy me a new pair of shoes

when I'd outgrown the ones that I already had.

My parents bought me a guitar when I was 11 for Christmas,

and, which I hated.

Uh, but within a few months I'd written my own songs.

Never interested in playing anyone else's.

I became obsessed with the guitar

as a way of stopping myself feeling lonely, if you like,

'cause I don't think I was great with friends as a kid.

I was born in Paddington, actually.

I wasn't brought up in a black area.

I was one of the only raisins in the flour, basically.

Like living in an area surrounded by a lot of white people.

So I had a lot of drama, as far as that was concerned.

My parents got divorced

and I ended up going into children's homes.

So I spent a lot of time in Essex, Kent

and ending up basically in Essex and East London,

by the time all this kind of scene was actually just starting around,

Punk was about starting around that time.

Let me take you for a walk down the Kings Road in Chelsea, in 1976.

It's a Saturday,

and you've gone probably with a couple of mates from your estate.

You're all dressed up in your kind of teen finery.

And there's this incredible parade going on.

There's a load of boys who've come up from Wales.

One of them's this guy called Steve.

Another one's called Chris, Chris Sullivan,

and they're really pushing the boat out.

One of em's got a chain from his ear to his nose.

Another one of them's dyed his hair pillbox red.

It'd turned into this sort of football pitch,

because on Saturday afternoons

you had generic punks and you had teddy boys,

and it was a kind of a war zone.

I used to get the bus up to London with my friends,

and I still can't work out how my mum and dad allowed me to do this.

But anyway, I did.

I mean, there were teddy boys running around, chasing us around.

I remember we ended up in the Crypt in Paddington

and barricaded ourselves in

because they were trying to get us from outside.

It was sort of quite terrifying,

but there was just something so exciting about it.

And the focus of it was a shop,

the scariest shop I've ever known in the world.

It was called Sex.

And in there are the people who would become the Sex Pistols.

In there was Adam Ant.

In there hanging out was Boy George.

In there was this whole cast

of a kind of British pop soap opera that is about to unfold,

and it's all taking place every Saturday afternoon,

going up and down the Kings Road, until the teddy boys arrive and chase you.

And believe me, being chased by a teddy boy

when you're wearing bondage trousers with your legs tied together

is quite scary.

I remember around that time,

I was actually living in the Kings Road, above Antiquarius.

I shared a flat with Steve Strange and Rusty Egan.

So I met everyone, and Steve Strange

was just one of those people that I met along the way.

And, um, I believe I met him in the Kings Road, as you do,

on a Saturday.

"Hello John Moss. Hello Boy George, hello everybody."

Walking down the Kings Road.

And, um... he invited me to a gig.

And then, "Can I stay on your floor?"

Staying on my floor became five years of being my flatmate.

And never really paying the rent, you know.

I never can, unless you really, "They're going to evict us!"

Steve Strange, he had a difficult upbringing, don't you forget.

I mean, he was, His parents were quite well off, in a way.

They owned lots of cafes and stuff,

like greasy spoons, and his dad committed suicide,

and they were plunged back into Newbridge.

The council estate where he comes, it's a rough estate where he comes from.

And I think he had a few run-ins.

I think he was nicked at one point for stealing hair dye, if I believe.

Our crowd as well, he was gay, I was straight.

It didn't really matter.

We were applauded for being ourselves.

Nobody was conforming, ever.

I was very pretty.

Everyone used to say, "What's your daughter's name?"

That was it. I was always called a girl.

Everywhere I went, other kids called me a girl.

From about six or seven, I had kind of long hair.

You know, I was a bit like sort of David Cassidy.

You know that kind of flicked sort of hair.

I was drawn to bright things,

so if Mum wanted to buy me like a brown jumper,

I wanted the one that was orange, with a palm tree, you know.

I used to get into a lot of arguments.

And I was like pretty sensitive, outspoken.

I was you know, always called names, from as long as I can remember,

long before I really even knew what they meant.

You know, if there was a gay person on telly,

I'd get called that person the next day.

Larry Grayson, whatever it was.

Well, I'm cock-a-hoop.

I mean, I'm not a screamer,

but I knew I wasn't like other boys, from a very early age.

My upbringing in Glasgow was incredibly basic.

I was born in a tenement slum.

My father was a van driver and mother did a few odd jobs,

but mainly housewife.

Outside toilet, gas mantles in the hallways.

Uh, cavity bed, you know,

a hole in the wall that my parents slept in.

Very basic.

So my outlet, my fantasy, my escape, was radio.

I was useless at sport.

Most kids played football and kicked that around.

And I just fantasised about being able to make music.

At the age of 24, I packed my guitar, my amp,

some clothes into my 200 pound Vauxhall Wyvern

and headed south to join the Rich Kids.

♪ ...that I could for ♪

♪ Oh, but even so ♪

♪ The guys around me they astound me ♪

♪ They make things very clear ♪

♪ So why don't you stand in line ♪

♪ I have no fear ♪

♪ I'm talking about rich kids ♪

When I met the guys from the Rich Kids,

I mean, obviously I'd seen Glenn on television,

and I'd read interviews with Glenn because of the Pistols.

I'd never met Steve, who was 17 at the time.

Straight out of school, wild guitarist.

And Rusty, who was just a powerhouse.

Rusty spoke at a million miles an hour, he drummed at a million miles an hour.

He was a really good drummer.

Um, you know, he'd been brought up in jazz bands and all sorts of stuff.

He could play loads of different styles.

My earliest memory of music in my household,

my parents are musicians.

Irish.

My dad played sax and all wind instruments.

My mum played the organ, the accordion.

So my upbringing was Irish music.

I called it be-diddly-diddly-diddly-diddly.

Anyway, but my dad had jazz records,

and jazz drummers

really got me interested when I was about 13, 14.

So I got into music through my dad's jazz.

Rusty talked louder than he could play.

And he was great,

and he instantly kind of latched onto me, like a long-lost brother.

You know, he was tall and gangly and skinny, and he was,

"Yeah, all right, mate. We're gonna, yeah." You know.

He was just this powerhouse of a character.

He was absolutely enthused

and one of the kind of driving forces of the Rich Kids.

He was non-stop. He was the Duracell bunny,

but you couldn't turn them off.

Steve got himself a little job in a shop called PX

in the, at that time, derelict area of Covent Garden.

Then Steve said to me,

"Oh, do you fancy working in PX a couple of days a week, you know?"

And I thought, "Yeah, sure." 'Cause I wasn't really doing anything.

And we sat in there, done up to the nines.

1978, I'm now a student at the LSE. And I'm political,

and I'm still wearing kind of a leather biker's jacket

adorned with "rock against racism" badges and all of that sort of stuff.

And I heard that this new shop had opened in Covent Garden.

And you have to understand,

Covent Garden tube station in the late '70s closed at the weekends

'cause Covent Garden was so dead.

But someone said, "No, there's this new shop open called PX."

And I went in there

and they were selling the oddest array of clothing

that I'd seen since Malcolm McLaren at Sex.

Steve Strange and I, um, we had a very enlightening time.

Um, we were always discussing style, our next look.

We were always sort of planning and plotting things.

Steve had an air of ambition about him.

And he was very excited about you know,

what was going on and he wanted to make things happen.

And I bought a top.

And this one was what Steve described as a space Cossack top.

I don't know what space Cossacks actually do for a living,

but they clearly have big padded shoulders,

and they have a diagonal kind of diamante sash across the front.

Very tight and fitting.

And I put this top on and Steve went, "You look fabulous, darling."

At the time, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan

decided to do a one night a week type club,

um, for all the people that were coming into the shop,

the new people we were meeting,

but also other people that were gravitating

towards different kind of music being played in clubs,

and it was something that was our scene.

So me and Steve went round St. Martin's Art College going,

"We're having a party in the mews."

And we gave them the address.

And then we went to Smile, the hairdresser.

Then we went to Fiorucci, and then we Winter to Acme Attractions

and down the Kings Road to all...

and basically, about 200 people showed up at my house.

Party went on till about 4:00 in the morning.

Couple of girls lying in my bed. I like this! You know?

Um...

The Rich Kids were on the edge of splitting up.

Might have to go and sign on.

So I said, "Steve, you know that party we had?"

"Yeah." "Why don't we get all them people into one of these clubs,

and I'll play the bloody music! They want Bowie."

♪ She's so swishy in her satin and tat ♪

♪ In her frock, coat And bipperty-bopperty hat... ♪

They want the Banshees.

They want Roxy Music.

They want Kraftwerk.

And he went, "Well, let's go and find the club."

So we went round all the clubs, and a lot of them

looked at a 19, 20-year-old Steve Strange

and a 21-year-old Rusty and said, "Piss off."

So one bloke, really, the guy is a scumbag out of Meat Street.

He's got the Fedora hat, he's got the collar,

he's got the two henchmen, right?

And he's like, "What do you wanna do?"

"We'll bring 200 kids in here. They're all broke. They're all broke.

You've gotta have happy hour all night, on a Tuesday,

in November, in 1979, in a depression."

"You can bring 200 kids in here?"

We went, "Well yeah, but we're going to charge 'em 50p to get in,

and we get the 50p."

And he goes, "Sounds like a deal."

And I'm just about to leave the shop and Steve went,

"Oh and by the way, Rusty and I are doing a club

at this place called Billy's in Soho. It's a Bowie night. You've gotta come."

And I went away thinking, "Do you know what? "I might go to that."

I think I was really nervous that first night I went to Billy's

and I was quite intimidated by Steve Strange.

You know, I think he was the first openly gay boy I'd ever met.

And I think we got in 'cause he fancied my brother, probably, Martin.

Billy's was a very small, quite tatty, sort of gay soul club.

But as soon as I walked into that room,

I knew instantly that this is the next thing that's gonna happen.

We started going to Billy's as soon as it opened.

Rusty was playing that music and even though we loved disco,

this was the first time you'd really hear David Bowie or Roxy Music

or any of those sort of bands.

♪ Make me a deal ♪

♪ And make it straight ♪

♪ All signed and sealed... ♪

I looked at my DJ set as a message to the people

who were wearing the clothes, listening to the music.

I felt that there was an artistic message in music,

and musicians, and our heroes.

♪ And now I wanna be your dog ♪

♪ Five years ♪

♪ What a surprise... ♪

Every song had a message about a person

that was Andy Warhol, that was David Bowie,

that was to do with what we listened to.

It was beneath a brothel in Soho.

The brothel was called the Golden Girl Club

and believe me, the girls weren't golden.

And Steve was standing there on the door,

and Steve had on, I can remember exactly what he was wearing.

He was wearing a pillbox cap and a very high fitting kind of jacket,

short little jacket like that.

Looked like somewhere between a bellboy and a spaceman.

And he said, "Oh, I'm so glad you came over. Come in.

"You'll know some people."

There was one mirror ball,

and as I walked in there were probably 20 people there, maybe.

It was the first night of this club.

And instantly, I knew this was it.

That I'd found my scene.

I remember going down the stairs and hearing a kind of music

that I hadn't heard in a club before.

It wasn't rock, it wasn't disco.

It was a slow, pulsating, Germanic sound.

And then seeing same-sex couples dancing together

in a kind of slow-motion jive,

and I think there was this idea that it was some sort of

reproduction of Weimar Germany, you know.

That it was very decadent.

And I thought, "This is a bit scary.

My parents would really disapprove of this."

But it was the most exciting place I'd ever walked into.

Everyone was doing everyone else. It was like a Petri dish.

It was horrific.

Except me. I didn't do any of those people.

I didn't want to catch anything.

Everybody was playing games with their sexuality,

with their clothing, with their identity.

The Sex Pistols had sung, "No Future"

and at that time, that felt like a promise.

"We don't want any more of this."

But suddenly there was a future,

and it was going to be very different

and it was likely to happen in a place like that.

My first night at the Billy's club,

I remember Steve Dagger saying, "This is it".

This is what we've been waiting for. This is our thing."

I said, "Listen, this is the next wave of culture.

There is no band. This is really early.

You must be the band. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

of becoming part of something that will mean something to people.

It's a wave to be caught."

And I think the very next day, I went out and bought a synthesiser.

The bottom line is,

that club got really popular really quick,

and we got taken into the office of the bigger boss.

"We're going to double the price of the drinks."

I said, "I'm out of here."

And Steve said, "So am I. let's find another club."

So I was sitting in this all-night cafe and the two bears walked in

and sat either side of me, you know, like out of a movie.

And they lent over, and they said, "The man wants to see you."

And I went, "You mean now?"

And they went, "Nah, buy us a burger and we'll tell you about it."

So I bought these blokes a burger,

which was a lot of money for me and they went,

"Well he's really upset,

but I reckon if you disappear for a few weeks,

it'll all blow over."

So Steve went off looking for the club,

The Blitz,

and I was in Dusseldorf.

So now here I am, in Dusseldorf, in the Konigsallee,

in the club where "she's a model and she's looking good"

and I'm there for one reason only.

"Does anyone know Kraftwerk?"

"Yeah, it's a power station and it's up the road."

"No, it's a band."

"They're over there."

Ralph and Florian are in the club.

Grabbed the girl.

"We gotta go talk to Ralph and Florian."

And I sort of sidle over and say,

"Hey, guys, I'm Rusty Egan. I'm from London."

And, um, they were like, "Yeah?"

"I've come looking for you. I can't believe you're in the club."

And they're like, "You came to find us?"

I said, "Yeah. Your music in London is amazing."

"Everyone's dancing to it, like showroom dummies, right?

They're all dancing like robots."

And they're going, "No!" and I'm going, "Yeah!"

I said, "I love it."

And they went,

"Well, we never thought we'd make dance music.

"We don't make dance music." I said, "What about the Model?"

And they said, "Well that's because we like to watch the daughters

of the industrialists dance."

If you went to Covent Garden in '78, '79,

the market had already gone.

There weren't any streetlights,

and if, during the winter of discontent there was rubbish everywhere, it was grey.

It literally was grey.

And London was a pretty ugly place.

So going to The Blitz was like,

it was like going into a sort of decadent club

in the 30s might have been, in Berlin.

Well The Blitz was, it was a curious one

because basically it was done up to look like

it was celebrating probably the most arduous time in Britain ever.

You know, when Britain was being bombed.

But it was completely at odds with the type of people who went there,

because it was all these people

in these futuristic kind of outfits at the time.

It was all like Bovril signs and sort of, you know,

tin hats and cuttings from the Blitz and a very morbid thing to celebrate,

you know, all these bombed-out buildings.

We thought it was quite amusing.

And I think Steve Strange actually really liked the idea.

So it was sort of like a bistro with like chairs and tables

with red and white gingham tablecloths and candles melting down,

and sort of like wartime posters going on.

Sort of quite camp.

Everybody really dressed up.

Everybody looking fabulous.

It's what the club's about. It's about fashion, it's about looks.

Um, I mean, the men dress outrageous, the women dress outrageous.

As I say, the men dress Edwardian, Dickensian,

or whatever their look is.

They've gotta have a look to get through the door,

the same with the women.

It was extremely competitive.

I don't think there were cliques of people,

but there were certain groups of people.

Like there was the Welsh contingent, Chris and Steve,

and then there was the Bromley block, so Siouxsie was there maybe,

and then there was the Art School lot.

And the one thing about being a St. Martins fashion student,

we were really ghastly and pretentious.

And we never smiled.

If you look at those photographs of us, it looks like we had really bad teeth.

We sort of kept to ourselves because we felt terribly superior.

Oh, god.

The door policy at The Blitz,

I mean, it started at Billy's, but then at The Blitz,

Steve would sit there in all his peacock finery

and looking extraordinary, and people would queue outside.

But we never queued, do you know what I mean?

I knew I was going to swan in, do you know what I mean?

There was no fear of that.

The kids that take the effort to dress up,

I mean, they don't take half an hour to get dressed up,

they take more or less three or four hours to get dressed up,

and they like to feel, when they're inside that door,

they can feel safe.

And if they're not safe, it's not their club.

This is why people say it was elitist.

It wasn't elitist. It was protective.

People forget, you know. They think, "Oh, it was elite."

No, it wasn't. What Steve tried to do and what I tried to do later

was protect those who wanted to be themselves,

who wanted to dress up, which is ever our right.

You don't get loads of football hooligans

waiting outside fancy-dress parties, do you, you know?

But it wasn't a fancy dress party because we were like that all the time.

I'd started to design clothes,

and there was one other girl at the college,

London College of Fashion called Clare Thom,

and she was in the year above me,

and it was really funny because she looked extraordinary.

One night, Clare Thom said,

"Do you want to come to this club? I think you'll really like it,"

which was The Blitz.

I remember exactly what I wore.

I remember wearing, because I was really stressing, going,

"It's going to be really cool, 'cause she's really cool.

I don't know how I'm gonna fit in with this."

And she said, "It's a really strict door policy"

and I went, "But maybe I won't get in."

And I just remember going up there with her and being quite nervous,

and she knew Steve Strange.

So she had already sort of met all these people.

And she took me in, and I remember going in.

I was like, "Ohh!

"This is where I want to be. This is suddenly..."

And it sounds so silly but suddenly there were all these people

who look like the people that I will want as friends.

You know, first of all, let's just talk

about how sometimes difficult it was to get in,

especially if you were a rival,

and I was a rival of Steve's at that point.

We weren't really always on the best terms,

so there would be periods where I'd be his best friend,

then he'd kind of get rid of me and replace me with someone else.

So I was always at war with Steve.

There was this kind of terrible fear that I'd get there,

and I wouldn't get in.

And I think there were one or two times

when he tried not to let me in,

but unfortunately I knew so many people

that just got on his fucking case that he just had to let me in.

I couldn't walk into a shop and buy expensive clothes.

But I did look good, and I had my hair cut good.

The fashion thing was thrift stores.

So I would go out and wear 1940s suits and ties

and cravats and blazers and yeah,

so I was a bit more film noir.

Back up.

He was going to beat me up once in a tube station.

That was hilarious, where he was dressed as sort of like...

He was wearing this sort of Captain Biggles look.

You know, it was kind of cool. He used to have some great looks, Rusty,

and he was, Rusty was quite hot when he was younger as well.

And he was kind of gorgeous.

He had the slicked hair and everything.

And we kept calling him Captain Biggles,

and we were just torturing him and torturing him.

And in the end, he went for me on the Tube.

He denies it to this day.

He's like, "I never did that, mate." Oh, yeah. But we did push him.

Me and Marilyn just literally kept pecking away

like a couple of nasty crows.

I mean, Marilyn, who is absolutely gorgeous, threw us all.

And if you asked Marilyn

what his real name was, he'd say Norma Jean.

And Marilyn was really young then.

I think he was like, 16, 17, even when we were living in the squat.

So for him to be dressing up fulltime as Marilyn then,

well you just didn't see people like that walking in the streets.

I mean, gender, you know, the gender bender

or whatever they called it, but gender fluid,

you just didn't see people like that, and especially people that young.

The genesis of it,

because I was really bullied in school.

I mean, like the whole school.

I used to be frightened to go out into the playground and stuff.

So I had to kind of like, it was build up this internal like...

And I grew my hair really long on one side,

so I was hiding behind the hair,

and walking along the corridors of the school.

And I used to wear drainpipes.

This is when everyone wore flares.

And I put all safety pins down my...

And the more they did it, it made me go, "You're calling me a name?

"Look at you."

I used to go in to do art classes,

and the teacher would say, like still life,

like a vase and an apple.

I'd draw Marilyn Monroe.

And they'd say,

"Draw the Tower Bridge" and I'd draw Marilyn Monroe.

Whatever they asked me, I would always draw Marilyn Monroe.

So I was coming out of art class one day

and then I heard, "Oh Marilyn, it's Marilyn!"

And I'm thinking, "Oh, god, here we go."

And I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna keep that name

and any, you know, in the future, you'll be reading that name

and you'll still be in this school, probably cleaning it."

And I love Marilyn Monroe.

I am Marilyn. I'm still Marilyn.

Very quickly you realised that to be a Blitz kid,

to be part of that crowd, had to be a fulltime profession.

So it kind of was like you knew this was a fork in your life.

"Am I committed to this?

Am I prepared to take the stick that you're gonna get

back on the council estate where you live?

Am I prepared to take the ribbing from my brothers?

Am I prepared to worry my mother sick?

Am I prepared to almost say, 'This is my future'

'cause I'm committed to this."

And I was. I loved it, instantly.

The first time in a long time,

young people are managing, I think very successfully,

to combine enjoying themselves with being creative and intelligent.

I mean, the people may dress what you'd call 'up'

but for me, it's a statement of their own creativity.

It's a statement of their own art.

From that moment on,

knew that this was going to shape whatever I did,

'cause I saw that this was kind of a way out,

or the way in, or a way somewhere.

But it did become a full-time job

and you got to a point then, when people started living together.

They moved into squats together.

We lived in really terrible flats, with no central heating,

do you know what I mean, or squats.

And I went out every night,

because it was, one, fun to go out

and two, you'd be warm, do you know what I mean?

It was like... I don't think people...

I think we've all chosen to forget how grim it was.

I think Warren Street has been glamorised,

but you know, it was a squat, with a lot of teenagers living in it.

Imagine.

But looking fabulous all the time with no money is being creative.

So you... I grabbed some...

My grandmother had these beautiful black Rogaine swing coats,

and you'd wear em back to front.

We would turn something into something else.

Well, I make all my own clothes, so...

- Do you? What about you? - Yeah.

- She makes em. - I make all his as well.

The dressing up of it,

everyone wanted to see what everyone was going to do that week.

It was just... And you always made the effort.

You didn't ever go, "Oh, I can't be bothered today."

You just dressed,

and you were excited about showing them what you'd just done

and what you were going to wear.

And you'd be seeing what other people were wearing.

We'd be really bitchy.

There was a lot of, at Warren Street, the motto was

"What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine also."

I mean, when I look back at some of the photographs,

I think, "Oh, my god. People really did go to town."

And I think it was because you had certain people,

George was one of them, Marilyn will be another,

Kim Bowen would be another.

Michele Clapton.

They were stunning. It was a lifestyle.

They'd been dressing that way for quite a few years.

It wasn't like, "Oh, let's just dress up because, you know, the media's here,

or the paparazzi."

They always dressed exquisitely.

They're a mixture of students, fashion designers, musicians

and those with routine jobs that they escape at night

by dressing up in extravagant costumes.

Nobody should knock fantasy,

I mean, a lot of the people

that come to these clubs were working from 9:00 to 5:00.

But they were fed up with doing the 9:00 to 5:00 job,

and it's not a political message.

But what they were doing by coming out at 9:00 or 11:00 at night,

and dressing like a Hollywood film star,

which people shouldn't be knocked for,

'cause they're getting away from it and they're having a good time.

It's called Blitz

and it's becoming the officer workers' equivalent

of the exclusive Studio 54 club in New York.

You have to remember it's like when something starts

getting publicity and stuff,

you start getting the people from the suburbs that come in,

and they put on their mum's clothing

or like Grandma's eyeliner and they come out and are like,

"Ooh, aren't I weird? Ooh!"

I thought they were a bunch of posers, do you know what I mean?

Some of them, like the people that I knew were like great.

All the people in Warren Street and we lived it.

I mean, like me and a few certain other individuals,

I used to get totally done up

to walk to the end of the street to buy milk, you know what I mean?

Authentic. You know what I mean?

Like I didn't put it on, on a Thursday night

to go to Blitz so Steve would let me in, do you know what I mean?

We lived it. It wasn't an assumed...

It wasn't fancy dress.

It felt like people there were in fancy dress.

George was the coat check girl, right?

And I'm not gonna, you know, tell too many tales about George,

but you didn't leave too much in your pockets.

George was funny.

I mean, I think that's why we...

I think that's why I liked him so much,

because he had a really wicked sense of humour.

He was bold.

He was unapologetic. He didn't care.

Like I said, George walked around like he owned everything.

George was always, he's a really fast talker,

really smart, very funny, very quick-witted.

I remember once we did...

He and I were doing, um,

we modelled the St. Martins Fashion Show for Steven Linard.

And afterwards,

George and I stole all the dressing up clothes

out of the dressing up box.

We ran back to his squat and we were going through them,

and he'd got a pile and I'd got a pile and I went,

"Oh, that matches the skirt I've got here."

He went, "It'll cost you."

He was trying to charge me money for something that we had just stolen.

That was quite funny.

George was always getting caught nicking, so I was always bailing her out.

She was a kleptomaniac,

so I had to keep an eye out for folks that'd come around and kick the door in.

These are people, other people in the squats, like friends.

Like they wanted to come...

You know, like villagers with pitchforks.

They would come round like periodically

to come get all their stuff back that George nicked.

Well, there was a lot of stealing. I was a big thief.

So I used to steal money from everyone,

and when I worked in the Blitz, I got fired,

because I went through people's handbags and pockets

and helped myself.

Topped up my wages,

because they weren't very, it wasn't very much.

So yeah, I was, yeah and then finally I got my job back at another club

and then I got fired again.

So this particular night, I don't know why they let me back in,

but they did, 'cause I was happening,

I got back in this club

and because someone else had taken my coat room job,

I nicked the money.

I got under the counter and I nicked it, and I ran back to my squat.

And I'd folded it up in a bag and I put it into the toilet cistern.

And then Steve Strange and all these people, Rusty,

all of them turned up at my squat and they were like,

"We know you stole the money"

and I was like, "As if I would ever do that."

I totally fronted it.

I was like, "You can't accuse me of doing that."

I totally fronted it. I lied.

And then I kind of, I think I owned up about it eventually.

But, yeah, I was terrible.

I was like Oliver Twist.

I was always stealing things. You had to steal.

All these kids who had absolutely nothing.

No money, no jobs.

You know, it was a three-day working week, it was Thatcher's Britain,

it was rough, it was a tough time,

um, were raiding their Granny's wardrobes and going to this little club,

playing Roxy Music,

and you know, a little bit of Germanic, you know,

electronics that Rusty was slipping in.

Bits of Bowie, bits of Kraftwerk.

This mishmash of stuff that they could all get up and dance to.

I bought all the records, and the thing about these records were,

I mean I could literally put one on now and I'd go,

"Well, that's called motoric drumming."

I had this idea to have this...

It's this sort of pulsating

four-to-the-floor electronica

that I adore and actually,

it's so classic and is translated in so many ways.

It could be a really commercial pop hit.

Or it could be something very sort of undergroundy, basic, even.

But it still has that ability to create some sort of energy.

Get you dancing.

Oh, the music was so pivotal.

The music was kind of more important than anything,

as far as I was concerned.

It was the place you went to to hear new things.

So like, you know, if you were in a club and you heard a record

that you'd never heard before,

and you were like, "This is amazing. What's this?"

And you'd have to sidle up to Rusty

and hope that he was in a good enough mood to let you know,

because everyone was protective of where they got things.

And Rusty played everything

from punk stuff to you know, things from Cabaret.

You know, and that influenced what I did.

I became a DJ around the same time,

and I used to play a lot of the things that Rusty played,

and I'd be more bonkers sometimes and play things like

"The Lonely Goatherd" from "The Sound of Music"

to try to get rid of people.

But they'd always stay.

I'm not trying to insult anybody,

but the fact is, I hated the music.

Sorry, Rust. I don't want to insult Rusty, and then talk about music.

Oh, my god. I've lost it.

But I don't mean it like that.

Like he loved it and he's passionate about all of that

and it's, you know, it's got its audience.

I'm just not one of that...

It's not my flavour, you know.

I like soul and gospel and the Blitz wasn't that.

It was like all that electronic crap.

Like German electronic.

♪ She's a model and she's looking... ♪

Like, "Go away. I don't know you."

Really?

Like is it that bad?

You know, it's like I thought they were tragic.

No one in this club wanted to watch a band,

because they were too interested in watching themselves.

And this was more like disco.

So this is ordinary kids

wanting to just be the most important people in the room.

But we knew there was always a band,

the most important band

that represented any given moment in youth culture,

pop culture history.

And we cynically, if you like, said

"This is our chance to do this."

We just came up with this idea

of asking people to come and listen to the music,

um, on a Saturday morning.

And not really in a performance situation, just in a rehearsal room.

So he invites us all to this terrible rehearsal studio,

and we all turn up, amazingly.

Everyone gets out of bed.

Steve is there, Chris Sullivan's there, I'm there,

Graham Smith's there with his camera.

It was high risk, because this was our kind of final throw of the dice.

If they didn't accept us,

we didn't have any other wave to join or go back onto.

We'd developed this whole new material that was Blitz orientated, if you like.

They step up on stage and they go "Do-do-do-do-do-do.'

"Fuck, this sounds rather good."

♪ Out is the winter pale ♪

♪ Gold rising June in the blue of my eye ♪

And then Tony Hadley, who'd been kind of standing

in a black leather coat at the Blitz at the back,

opens his foghorn mouth and outcomes this stuff,

and I think, "Blimey, he can sing!"

♪ ...soon realise ♪

♪ I've still sleep in my eyes ♪

♪ I've still sleep in my eyes ♪

♪ Glow like a lover ♪

We gradually realised, "This was a good show."

Yeah, you know, we were going to be embraced by these people

that we were looking up to at that time.

So you know, we knew that in this crowd of people

there was someone who would take our picture,

there was someone who would film us,

there was someone who would create the stage show,

there was someone who would be our PR.

And that person was Robert Elms.

And of course the first thing he said to us was,

"Your name's terrible. You've gotta get rid of your name."

We go in the pub afterwards

and we tell them they gotta change their name.

"The Gentry is an awful name.

You should call yourselves Spandau Ballet."

I had no idea what Spandau was.

It sounded Germanic.

This had an art feel to it, which I liked.

Um, he didn't tell me where he'd found it, of course.

I later found out he'd seen it scrawled on a wall in a club in Germany.

So they become Spandau Ballet.

You had Studio 54 in New York,

that had happened, you know, before

and I think that what Rusty and Steve were trying to do

was create something similar in London

for people that they felt were likeminded.

♪ Oh we could be heroes ♪

♪ Just for one day ♪

♪ Ohh... ♪

You know, we were all Bowie kids.

That was the thing we all had in common.

We all were Bowie fans.

♪ Standing... ♪

The night Bowie came to the Blitz, everybody lost their cool.

Like the coolest people were the uncoolest people.

I was the only one that was able to keep my nerve.

George flew!

Literally, I mean, the man had wings

to get to the front door, right, to see Bowie.

Because Bowie was the basis of all of this.

We'd seen Bowie, age 13, on Top of the Pops.

We'd been there when Bowie had played live.

The original Billy's night was a Bowie night, and now Bowie arrives.

And that was like being anointed.

So did Steve Strange let Bowie in?

Not half.

They walked arm in arm

through the middle of The Blitz, up to the bar.

Everyone went bananas, basically.

Everyone, all of a sudden, all the cool people were like,

"Oh, my god."

And they were kind of trying to, trying to rush up the stairs

where he was being ushered very quickly.

Steve Strange bought the only drink he ever bought

in his entire life for David Bowie, as far as I could remember.

Because Bowie wasn't just royalty, he was deity.

Yeah.

I had made an outfit which I particularly wanted to show off,

and I managed to get a friend of mine to come to The Blitz,

who also had her outfit on that she'd made.

And while we were there...

there was a kind of great furore at the door,

because The Blitz was quite a small club.

And when I looked over, I could see David Bowie,

who was you know, our icon.

And then I could see that David Bowie was looking at me,

and I was thinking, "Why is David Bowie looking at me?"

Then Bowie says that he's going to do this video for this song,

and he wants people from the club to be in it.

My god.

And then I could see him coming towards me,

which made me even more nervous.

And he was with Steve Strange.

And he said, "I'd really like you to be in my next video."

I just thought, "This can't be real."

I was so pissed off I wasn't there the night that David Bowie came,

because I mean, they chose people,

"God, if I'd been there, they'd have chosen me."

And I've actually got the painting,

a friend of mine did a painting of that video on my kitchen wall.

It's like, "I should have been there that night."

I was so cross.

I think that so many of us were really put out.

The most annoyed person was Boy George,

who came out from behind the little desk

where he was collecting all of the tips for the coats,

and gave everybody you know,

an extreme dressing down and saying, "I can't believe it's you, not me."

A lot of people now say they were there when they weren't.

Just letting you know that.

♪ They got a message from the Action Man ♪

♪ I'm happy hope you're happy too... ♪

Apparently what David Bowie said

was that he wanted a clown on a beach with a bonfire.

He said, "I want you to pat the ground,"

and I sort of said, "Ooh, like this?"

And he said, "Perfect, like that."

So I think Steve had a lot more trouble.

I mean, bear in mind we were on a beach...

probably ankle-deep in something quite wet and soft.

So trying to walk elegantly and pat the ground

was quite a difficult thing.

So I think Steve had more trouble with it than I did.

But we had to do a lot of takes,

and the worst bit was the bit with the bulldozer behind us.

We did that a lot of times to get that right.

♪ We know Major Tom's a junkie ♪

♪ Strung out in heaven's high ♪

♪ Hitting an all-time low... ♪

The following week at The Blitz,

everyone was trying to find out what had happened,

where we'd been, what we'd been doing,

what we were wearing, what David Bowie was wearing.

And we'd been asked to be quite tight-lipped.

And of course, we were giving nothing away.

I think the reaction to us was a mixture of people being really glad

that someone from our community had been chosen, and some envy.

♪ My mother said to get things done ♪

♪ You'd better not mess with Major Tom ♪

♪ My mother said to get things done ♪

♪ You'd better not mess with Major Tom ♪

The pop music scene and the fashion scene have been influenced by a new youth cult,

the New Romantics or The Blitz kids.

I think one of the important things

to understand about the whole Billy's Blitz scene,

because this was not driven by older moneyed people.

It was young, skint students.

People who worked in clothes shops.

I don't think there was anybody over the age of 22, 23.

Most of us teenagers.

I've probably travelled out with my mate Chris Sullivan,

who's living at my mum's council house with me.

He's a student at St Martins, studying art.

And one week, Chris might be dressed as Frank Sinatra.

The next week he might be dressed as a Gaucho.

The week after, one week, he dressed as Mahatma Gandhi.

And I remember Chris saying to me,

"You must never, ever wear the same outfit twice."

That was really important to Chris, that each week you dressed differently,

and you dressed special.

I used to dress as a Gaucho, you know, because I loved the film

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

That was the other thing, We were all very influence by movies,

because you used to go to the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street,

which was free to get in if you were a student.

So we'd go and see films like Alfie,

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and it was funny,

we'd all go see it and next week you'd see everybody

dressed like the film we'd just been to see.

We wore our influences on our sleeve.

There was always like competition for the way you looked.

You know, sometimes Steve would turn up at my squat,

you know, uninvited, literally just to show me

what he was wearing.

I remember this one time, I hadn't spoken to him for months,

and then he turns up at my squat.

And he had these black contact lenses in.

They were the whole of his eyes, it was just amazing.

I was so jealous, I was so jealous.

And he only came to piss me off.

He came in a cab, got out of the cab and was like,

"Do you want to go for a drink?"

And I was like, "You son-of-a-bitch, look at you."

He was done, like amazing, with a cane and these black eyes.

You know, and then you know, you'd have to kind of plan

the next thing you were going to do to piss him off.

You know, it was absolute constant competition.

When you class something as a movement, it becomes a fashion.

And although people are into fashion,

with clothes and music,

people can't term it as a fashion because people are always moving on.

It never becomes stale, as when I was involved say in Punk,

Punk become like a uniform,

and it become very stale and very boring.

Whereas where we are, the whole idea is complete change,

all the time, moving on with the music, with the clothes, with the styles.

It was like walking on the gangplank.

And you were judged.

And this was by your friends.

And you know, if you weren't looking up to the mark,

you could tell it through their faces.

So, my god, it kept you on your toes.

No one was competition for me, darling.

Like let's have it, you know, let's have it straight.

Who the fuck's going to compete with me? They're all ugly.

And then one week, Mick Jagger arrives,

and of course, Mick Jagger's Mick Jagger.

This is probably the most famous rock star in the world.

And he arrives, and word went out, "Jagger's outside, Mick Jagger's outside."

And Steve was magnificent.

Mick Jagger, you know, obviously walks to the head of the queue

and there's a queue of people drooling, both because Mick Jagger's there

and 'cause they think they might get in, and they didn't.

And nor did he.

It was the greatest move Steve ever made.

Mick Jagger walks up.

Steve Strange who's what, 20, 21,

kind of boy from Wales, dressed in a dress.

Looks at Mick Jagger and goes, "Nah, you're not well-dressed enough."

Literally.

Mick Jagger, you don't turn away Mick Jagger.

I remember thinking, "Like, Steve, like, really?

"You can't turn away Mick Jagger from The Blitz."

But it was so great publicity.

He was great at that.

He was really good at sort of just, like, doing stuff that was,

it was quite punk rock doing that.

Somebody said to me, "Oh, Mick Jagger's just got turned away,"

and I just said, "Yeah, quite right and all."

As I said to somebody afterwards,

when Mick Jagger's standing in your club, you know you're on the way out.

Spandau Ballet then do their first gig at the Blitz

and I introduced them on stage, reciting ridiculous poetry.

Listen to the portrait Of the dance of perfection,

The Spandau Ballet.

And I was standing watching at the mixing desk,

and a guy came up to me.

And he said...

"Who is this band?"

And I said, "It's Spandau Ballet."

And he said that...

he said, "Great, so what record label do they record for?"

And I said, "They don't have a record label."

And he said, 'Who is their manager?" And I said, "I am."

And he said, "Well, I'm Chris Blackwell.

"I own Island Records, and I'd like to sign them."

So it was, it was immediate.

We had immediately had a record deal on the table,

because we were playing at an event.

We weren't standing in line, begging.

And we were behaving like stars, because nobody else had played The Blitz.

And then Steve says to me, "Right, you've got to review us now."

They've only played one gig.

He says, he says, "You've got to review us now.

"Take it to the NME."

Which was the most important music journal at the time.

"And they'll print it, and as I said,

we'll become famous and you'll become a writer."

So he walks me around to his mum's council flat in Holborn.

We go around there and handwritten, on school lined note paper,

I write a Spandau Ballet review.

And we then walk, 'cause we haven't got the money to get the bus,

we walk from there to Carnaby Street,

which is where the offices of the NME were,

and I walk in and I say, "Who's the live editor, please?"

And he said, "Oh, he's over there."

And I'm still thinking, "They're going to throw me out any minute here

'cause I'm clearly a fraud."

So I say to him, I do this whole spiel. I say, "Your paper is rubbish.

You don't know what's going on,

there's this whole scene happening at the Blitz

that you don't know anything about

and there's this band called Spandau Ballet

and they're going to be the next big thing, and here's a review."

And I slam this bit of paper down on his desk.

And he reads it, and he says,

"If you can get the pictures, we'll run it next week."

And they did.

And within what, six months, Spandau are on Top of the Pops

and I'm working for The Face.

There are five young guys from Islington

who are causing a real buzz in the music industry.

And we've got them on Top of the Pops tonight.

Their names collectively are Spandau Ballet.

♪ The soldier is turning ♪

♪ See him through white night ♪

♪ Running from strangers ♪

♪ See you in the valley ♪

♪ War upon war ♪

♪ Heat upon heat ♪

♪ To cut a long story short I lost my mind... ♪

And suddenly, we're representing the Blitz club on Top of the Pops.

We wanted to be credible and artistic,

but at the same time, commercial.

It's a very difficult balance to make.

♪ To cut a long story short I lost my mind ♪

But we had the support of a lot of those kids at the Blitz

that were working for us at this point, now,

designing our record sleeves, taking our photographs,

um, helping with the clothes we were wearing.

Everything that you needed was there in the club.

You know, Graham was a great graphic designer, so he could...

If they needed a poster could just walk along the bar and talk to him.

If they needed, you know, everything.

You could do all of your kind of creative business in the Blitz

on a Tuesday night.

Someone would say, "I'm going to start a band."

That might be Gary Kemp.

And then Graham Smith would say, "I'll take the photos."

And someone else would say, "I'll make you a shirt."

And that might be John Galliano.

And I'd say, "Well, I'll write the sleeve notes

and introduce you on stage," and I become me.

And that's how it happened.

We were kind of climbing on each other's padded shoulders.

So you never went up to somebody and said, "Hi, what do you do?"

"I work at Tesco." Nobody said that.

"I'm at St Martins Art College, I'm doing a degree.

I'm working on a fashion show, I'm working in a magazine.

We're working on starting a magazine. We're starting something."

Everyone was like...

Every time you want to talk to somebody about something,

you were there for half an hour.

That was my night out a week, you know, going there,

'cause mostly 99 percent of the rest of my time,

we'd have been in the studio,

recording the music that was going to get played in the Blitz

and Blitz-type clubs.

The sound would have been the sonic element

of those electronics battering through big disco speakers.

And of course, merge that with the imagery that was starting to happen at the time.

You know, it was the birth of the pop video.

It was the birth of, you know, the three-minute music clip.

♪ The feeling is gone only you and I ♪

♪ It means nothing to me ♪

♪ This means nothing to me ♪

♪ Oh... ♪

This austere sound, these austere images,

this film noir-esque stuff.

Not being able to place what time this was set in.

You know, was it the future, was it the past?

Was it Vienna?

You know, it was just this mishmash of stuff that came out.

But The Blitz was a great vehicle to latch onto,

because there was something new and fresh and vibrant about it.

I don't know if there was any deep political kind of undercurrent,

except the sort of resistance of the norm...

which I think in a way is political.

You know, sometimes being yourself

is the most political act you can ever commit.

It's like saying, "No, this is what I am.

Unapologetically, I'm queer and I'm not depressed about it."

You know, I think we were the first people of our generation

to actually not wish we were straight.

It didn't matter what sexuality somebody had,

it didn't matter what colour they were, it didn't matter where they came from.

In there, we were all dressed up, we were all equal,

and I really believed we were all equal.

It wasn't a gay club, it wasn't a straight club,

whereas your sexuality didn't matter.

That's what it was.

Your race, colour, creed, sexuality didn't matter.

We were all drawn together by one thing, which was music,

and we wanted to dress up and enjoy ourselves and that's...

and we were all outcasts, and that was it.

I mean, I felt equally as outcast being a straight bloke from Wales

dressed like Bertie Wooster

as did Steve Strange being a gay bloke from Wales

dressed like Robin Hood.

We just wanted to be ourselves.

You know, you gotta remember where we came from.

It was, everything you do is a reaction

to the sort of cultural experience that you grow up with, you know,

to the masks that you're forced to wear.

You know, when you're a kid,

you know, especially if you're a kid like me or Steve or anyone,

where you know from very early on that you're different, right?

You know everyone else knows it before you do.

They're like, "You're not like us, you're weird.

You don't like football, what's wrong with ya?"

And you know, you're developing in this weird vacuum, you know.

And nobody wants to talk about what it is you are.

And then suddenly, you know, you walk into the Blitz

and you go, "Oh, my god, you know, who knew there were so many others."

In just a tick or two it's the news

and then right after that, live in the studio,

it's Spandau Ballet.

♪ Standing in the dark ♪

♪ Oh I was waiting for man to come... ♪

When we did our first video, we were keen to really get across

a lot of what the Blitz looked like.

And so you know, Chris Sullivan and Christos are in there, you know.

We had these two girls doing that slow jive.

And obviously the way we looked,

and there was a slight sense of the Gothic

about that setting in the London dungeons.

So I think we, you know, we spent a lot of time

trying to get that image across and selling it to the wider public.

What happens is The Blitz ends up invading Smash Hits.

That was then The Blitz became utterly commercial.

During the course of 1980,

the band momentum grew and clothes that they were wearing

were very rapidly copied by Top Shop.

It, you know, never mind anything else,

it was the fashion industry locked into it, big time.

And so what been an underground scene,

it was becoming increasingly less underground.

Had the band not existed it still would have happened.

But I think the fact that there was a pop group

that was moving very quickly made it happen quicker.

The clothes were everywhere at that point.

You know, Lady Diana is now wearing a pie crust flouncy blouse...

and knickerbockers.

You know, I mean, what I saw being worn in Billy's in 1978

by weird, outrageous kids

who were just pulling stuff out of dressing up boxes,

was now being worn by the Royal Family.

But I think, you know, there's a sense of success in that.

There's a sense of disappointment and failure at the same time,

because it's no longer special.

There's no longer a mystique.

But that was part of what we were trying to achieve.

It felt like as The Blitz went on

and more people started coming it diluted the whole essence of it.

You know, people coming along and looking the same.

You felt like people were copying you.

You felt like you were in any other club, frankly.

The whole intimacy and that lovely period,

where you were just with your friends

and there was just this huge creativity in the room...

it had dissipated.

Well, The Blitz club came to an end...

but Visage had taken off.

Steve was a star.

♪ One man on a lonely platform ♪

♪ One case sitting by his side... ♪

So I've got a number one record all over Europe now,

called "Fade To Grey"...

♪ We fade to grey... ♪

...which is 112 bpm,

extended 12 inch mix,

with my beautiful Luxembourgish girlfriend talking in French,

and it's number one in France.

And Steve and I found a club on Baker Street,

and we called it "Club For Heroes".

Steve and Rusty moved on to Club For Heroes,

which was a bigger club, so they had more people in it.

And then they went to the Camden Palace.

And now he's standing with this huge sound system

and there's thousands of people here.

I thought, "This is incredible."

The musical ideas and the stylistic ideas and the ethos

has kind of become part of the mainstream.

How would you design the secret then

of a successful nightclub host?

You're looking at me.

Don't forget, people remember the ones who went on to fame.

For every one that you see become a household name,

there's one, a lot of people went out on a lot of limbs, you know...

and a lot of people didn't come back.

The key drug at the Blitz was sulphate, blues, amphetamines.

I mean, that's, that was really the fuel

that kept people completely talking all night about themselves.

I think the smack certainly came in a bit later.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of heroin addiction

later on in the 80s.

Sometimes you get a bunch of people

who push themselves to the limits creatively and otherwise,

I mean, sometimes they snap, or they fall prey

to whatever this substance or that substance.

It's all part of, you know, experimentation, is it not?

You can't just draw a line and go,

"Oh, I don't do that 'cause that might be dangerous,"

you just go for everything or nothing.

Drugs did come into it in quite a big way,

and something that I obviously didn't get involved in.

But I remember going to a party with Graham Smith,

and we only later found out

everyone else was taking heroin and we weren't.

But we still have no idea why they didn't offer it,

and we're very grateful they didn't.

But his friends and my friends were taking it,

but we didn't take it.

And there's some people that I think could have gone so far and didn't.

You know, they just missed their way at some stage.

But actually were probably more talented than all of us put together.

I think you can squint and look at that period and think,

"Oh, it's frilly shirts, it's tinny electro music,

it's shrill, it's shallow, it's designer.

It doesn't last, it doesn't have bottom,

it doesn't have empathy, it doesn't have emotion,"

none of which is true.

It resulted in so many different tentacles in culture.

Peter Doig, for instance, Gareth Gwynn Evans,

two of our most important contemporary artists.

Michele Clapton, a great costume designer.

And it was a fantastically vibrant period for pop music.

Many of them came from The Blitz.

♪ Relax ♪

♪ When he reads the note he finds... ♪

♪ I'm calling Donnie ♪

- ♪ When I'm calling Donnie ♪ - ♪ I'm calling Donnie ♪

♪ When I'm calling Donnie ♪

♪ I'm calling Donnie... ♪

I can't think of any other club where so many artists,

and people who went onto mega, mega-stardom.

I mean, Sade was going to the Blitz

and you know, she went on to mega stardom.

♪ Your love is king ♪

♪ Crown you in my heart ♪

♪ Your love is king... ♪

That cross-pollination of you know, straight and gay...

♪ I don't need your love Don't want your love... ♪

...because I think the gay thing is really important

as far as creativity is concerned,

because it was that cross-pollination of both things.

We were influencing each other.

♪ Do you really want to hurt me? ♪

♪ Do you really want to make me cry? ♪

We knew that we didn't fit in.

We knew that we were different.

We knew that we wanted different things. We didn't want nine to five jobs.

Stephen Jones, you know, making hats for the Queen.

We knew that nobody was going to do anything for us,

that anything that we had would be something that we created.

Literally that group of people, on a Tuesday night,

no one over the age of 21 at that point,

go on to shape the next decade.

I feel so much gratitude to Steve Strange and Rusty Egan

for creating that night at Billy's, doing that Bowie night

and allowing the space for very disparate, exotic people

to become themselves and to feel empowered by that.

You know, Rusty is the straightest guy you'll ever meet

and Steve Strange was the gayest man I ever met,

and they allowed these ordinary kids to be themselves in that space

and to feel important and powerful and brave.

I think that the way the '80s gets looked back on

is completely inaccurate.

It does get looked back on as this period of like,

my mum spoke about it like, "Oh, it's just basically a forgotten era.

Just forget it, it was just disgusting. Oh, horrible hair, horrible clothes,

yuppies, Thatcher, ugh, blegh.'

You know, but actually, incredible.

It was incredible.

When you look at what happened culturally in that ten years,

it's undeniable.

Stuff that happened for gay people

was the stuff that happened culturally

that fed into the AIDS movement, all sorts of things.

Yeah, it wasn't just people going out and partying

and taking drugs and having sex with each other.

It was a lot more than that.

It was a much more emotional scene than that,

and I connected to that very quickly.

We changed many things.

We changed attitudes towards sexuality enormously.

You know, we were working class kids

who now thought it was absolutely normal

to have a kind of a transgender person on your arm.

That hadn't happened before that.

That whole thing about kind of gender fluidity,

being able to be who you want to be, we did that.

We made sure that, that became fashionable.

We were the forerunners of a man's right to be pretty.

You know, look at guys now.

Go on Instagram. Everyone's in their underpants.

Like just basically like loving themselves

in a way that was not permittable when I was a teenager.

Youth movements, fashion, music, appearance

have always gone together.

But this is the weird thing.

In Britain they go together.

They don't necessarily anywhere else in the world.

Have you seen French Punks?

How Italians dance?

I think in the '80s, there was a point where the stars aligned.

And of course that can always happen again.

I think for very different reasons,

we are now also at a moment of change,

where we have the opportunity to completely reshape

and change the future.

So those moments will always happen,

and it's about understanding that and almost preparing for them,

always being vigilant for those moments.

I can hear a lot of music where I can see the direct connection.

So whether young people today sitting with synthesisers are saying,

"That's directly because I heard 'Fade To Grey' on the radio,"

or "I heard 'Cut A Long Story Short',"

or whatever is irrelevant.

It's the fact that it's inspiring them to do something else.

We're all a product of our heroes.

♪ Tuesday night ♪

♪ And I'm ready for some fun ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Uh-huh ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Uh-huh ♪