Fade to grey: was new romanticism in denial about its roots?

So yeah, man, I've been reading Past! Future! In Extreme!: Looking for Meaning in the “New Romantics,” 1978–82, the academic Matthew Worley's 2024 essay on this benighted music/fashion scene from long, long ago. Given that it's tucked away in the Journal of British Studies - not something I very regularly read - I can't recall now how I came across this slab of scholarly discourse on the Blitz Kids et al. Anyway, if the thought of reading about Steve Strange, Rusty Egan, Boy George, Spandau Ballet, Robert Elms and co, while pondering the notions of theorists like Raymond Williams or Fredric Jameson takes your fancy, then this article's definitely for you. Worley's big argument (if I understand it correctly) is that the new romantic movement shouldn't be seen as some simple "Thatcherite" pop scene, a wholesale rejection of punk's anger and oppositional politics as the country slid into rampant deregulation and privatisation. Instead, the new romantic movement contained all sorts of hangovers from earlier scenes (including punk), and it didn't, at least not in its earlier forms, go overboard in celebrating material success (Duran Duran on a yacht etc). Instead, Worley sees the new romantic instigators' interest in self-fashioning as key: Steve Strange flicking through history books and old magazines to get ideas for new outfits, Martin Kemp talking about borrowing the "best things from the past" to create interesting new styles. I don't know if many people have seriously argued that the new romantics were a Thatcherite phenomenon and somehow harbingers of "the 1980s", but in any case I think Worley's take is surely right. For one thing, Strange and Egan's pre-Blitz club - Billy's in Soho - began in 1978, well before Thatcher had darkened the door at No10. In his Take It Like A Man autobiography, Boy George says Strange & Egan were "quick to see the potential for making money and creating a safe space for us freaks to dance the night away". It's a commercial venture, for sure, but it's also - and probably primarily - about carving out a space to vamp it up while listening to Bowie and Roxy Music (plus stuff like Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder and the odder bits of disco). New romanticism "traded in both nostalgia and dystopia", says Worley, with teenage clubbers wearing pre-war military or aristocratic clothing (or clothes made to look like this), while listening to neo-futuristic music that was somehow "alienated" and cold. Or something like that. Worley talks quite a bit about how new/more widely available technologies - synthesisers, colour magazines, videos - were all feeding into this. Plus, with "style" and clubbing pre-eminent in new romanticism (not records and gigs), Worley points out that it was style and society magazines rather than the music press which initially picked up on new romanticism.

Feel the rain like an English summer: Steve Strange in the video for Fade To Grey

Anyway, fine, fine. Worley's essay is interesting and it's good to read a serious re-appraisal of an important cultural scene. Meanwhile, a couple of thoughts: 

*I wonder if Worley doesn't slightly underplay the punk overlaps in new romanticism. The arch new romantic propagandist Robert Elms might have claimed the scene was a "new movement", but as Boy George says, "Steve Strange was a punk like the rest of us". Wasn't new romanticism essentially a punk off-shoot, rather than a wholly new thing? (For that matter, was punk a wholly new thing ...?). Early punk had plenty of DIY dressing up and a love of bricolage styling, before, that is, it became over-codified - a leather jackets-and-DMs uniform. Certainly, to my eye Nicola Tyson's photos of some of the clientele at Billy's shows an array of punk-ish, post-Jordan styling. 

*Similarly, I wonder if there wasn't at least a little post-punk music being played at Billy's/Blitz. Worley says Egan's DJing at Billy's/Blitz moved from the "assuredly erudite glam-rock-turned-electronic-pulsebeat of Bowie and Roxy Music toward European electronica and early synth-based pop to herald an eclectic mix of music - e.g. Kraftwerk, Gina X, Telex, John Foxx’s Ultravox!, The Normal, Fad Gadget, The Human League, Japan, Simple Minds". Hmm, to me some of this is post-punk music, especially Reproduction/Travelogue-era Human League or early Simple Minds. Additionally, I wonder if Egan also played stuff like Magazine, PiL, Siouxsie & The Banshees, or even Gang Of Four and Joy Division? Given the huge impact of punk/post-punk was still having in '78-'79, it surely wouldn't be a surprise to learn that stuff like this was being thrown into the mix for the new romantics' dancefloor. 

*And an addition to the point above: Worley's 37-strong YouTube playlist that accompanies his essay is surely evidence of how weak most new romantic music actually was. In my view, the best tunes on the playlist are either pre-new romanticism (Bowie's Heroes, Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, the Human League's Being Boiled) or separate from it (Gina X's excellent No G.D.M., the Associates' Party Fears Two). 

*Worley gives the "proto-goth" Batcave a fleeting mention, but I wonder if there isn't more to be said about how the new romantics fed into early goth? Big hair, out-there clothing, heavy make-up, drum machines, dry ice and a certain campness. Isn't stuff by Danse Society or Alien Sex Fiend closer to the early new romantic scene than is ordinarily assumed? In other words, was it such a long way from the Blitz club to the Batcave?  

And that's about it. As a self-confessed post-punk muso myself, it's tempting to write off new romanticism as lightweight candyfloss stuff. Decadent style over flimsy substance. Music-wise I'd say this urge would be more or less justifed. Apart from a couple of nice Visage and Japan tunes (possibly, at a pinch, a couple of ABC ones as well), did new romanticism lead to any really good music being made? Er, nope. To my mind, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran were the worst, but Depeche Mode were (are) also a bore, as were Dare-era Human League, post-Dirk Adam Ant and numerous "new pop" outfits. But style matters, and though - for example - Culture Club's music was just reheated pop-reggae (at best), Boy George's look and demeanour were amazingly important. So was Phil Oakey's asymmetrical haircut and make-up. And Martin Fry's gold suit, and Adam Ant's dandy highwayman get-up. Or Marc Almond contorting around on Top Of The Pops miming to Tainted Love (I remember this well). Among others, Worley's essay quotes two of the best cultural commentators on this period: Jon Savage and Peter York. Savage later saw the new romantic period as "fantastically important" in terms of its gender fluidity, while at the time, York, no doubt sharpening his pencils in preparation for his Sloane Ranger book, reckoned he saw in the new romantics elements of "them", an unnamed group he'd identified in early punk: people who dressed “to look interesting", the "cognoscenti of trash", the "aficionados of sleaze" (OK Pete, got it). The invite to the first night at Billy's said "Bowie night. A Club for Heroes", and Strange & Egan's venture clearly aimed to tap into an existing well of emotional engagement with Bowie's music and persona. But could the punks and assorted freaks (Boy George's word) who starting going to Billy's and Blitz really disavow punk's energy, excitement and outrage so readily? (I dunno, maybe they could ...). Anyway, final thought: the Heroes/Kraftwerk nexus that formed a key part of the soundtrack to the early new romantic club nights was also the main musical motor for Chris Petit's excellent 1979 "Brit noir" film Radio On, a sort of existential road trip into post-punk alienation and ennui (film blogged about here). Same time, (very) different place. I guess it was a fork in the road: one way led to the (over-)bright lights of Spandau Ballet's Journeys To Glory, the other to the ever-increasing gloom of neo-goth post-punk: Joy Division, Bauhaus's In The Flat Field, the Cure's Seventeen Seconds and Faith. Fade to grey.