London Calling: What’s Next as the New Romantics Fade Away?
Something was definitely happening. We turned on the radio, and white-boy black rhythms boomed from the speakers. We went for our MTV, and there were dozens of dandies parading across the screen. We danced at the clubs and noticed it was getting hard to tell the boys from the girls, the girls from the boys, and no one seemed to mind. A trend, perhaps. A new British Invasion. Indeed, the American charts now list more records by U.K. acts than at the height of Beatlemania, nearly twenty years ago. Some of these performers — like U2, Big Country, Eurythmics, the Alarm, Aztec Camera — probably would have made it here in any era. But they’re not what we’re talking about now. The British Invasion refers to all those other guys. The ones who call themselves Boy George, Limahl and — get this — Simon Le Bon. The ones who put as much effort into their looks as their sound. We wanted to know why they’re so insistent on making us pay attention to them. And why we have been. Now we know, so read on.
BOY GEORGE IS TELLING THE TALE ABOUT the time he got felt up by a drunk right here amid the swank-strewn rattan expanses of Langan’s, the popular Mayfair brasserie. This guy — some randy old sport with the better part of une bouteille or two under his belt — tottered up to George’s table and, attracted by the fashionable chatter, took a seat, squeezing in next to George. The Boy, of course, was dolled out in one of those capacious Bulgarian-bag-lady dress numbers he’s since made so predictably ubiquitous around London, and from the side, this wine-swacked character could see only a ribbon-festooned riot of long black braids, one wildly penciled brow, a powdered cheek, pursed crimson lips — a hotcha vision. George was babbling happily with his pals when he felt this guy’s hand groping his knee. Then he felt it on his thigh. Then again, higher. Then—
“Oh, my God!” the drunk cried, rearing back in befuddled horror. “You’re a bloke!” His alarm abated a bit, however, as he focused more closely on George’s face, which was now regarding him with some amusement. Drinking in the full Boy effect — those eyes, those lips — the old tippler was transfixed. Lurching to his feet with renewed admiration, he said with a parting wheeze, “Yer still fuckin’ beautiful,” and reeled off down the room.
With a toss of his dreadlocked head, George lets out a laugh that would knock Martha Raye back in her rocker. Imagine! Probably put the poor geezer on the wagon. “But I don’t find myself particularly physically attractive, “he says, tucking into a generous dish of strawberry sorbet. “That’s why I wear baggy clothes. I know what makes me successful: I’m funny. I’m not a very serious person. When we make videos, I want people to laugh at them. I want them to be able to feel affection for this image, you know? ‘Cause that whole New Romantic thing was very unaffectionate — that’s what I found.”
Ah, the New Romantics. Kings for a day, for a brief media season, of the London pop scene. Exactly two years ago, four figureheads of that phenomenon sat here in this very bistro describing the new mood of do-it-yourself and damn-the-depression elegance that was then transforming the local nightlife and making fashion waves as far away as Düsseldorf, Paris, Milan and New York. Rusty Egan and Steve Strange, arbiters of the new social order at the Blitz, the one-night-a-week club they had until last year run in Covent Garden, were full-fledged, column-gobbling celebrities. Midge Ure and Billy Currie, of Ultravox, the seminal New Romantic band, cranked out the cool, new Eurodisco sounds that oiled the scene. All four were members of the ad hoc dance-floor band Visage — a group that never played a live gig. All were veterans of the punk upheaval and had been galvanized by the conceptual revolution wrought in 1976 by the Sex Pistols. And all of them, as it’s turned out, were astute businessmen; not so much New Romantics, in the end, as new entrepreneurs. In Margaret Thatcher’s brave new Britain, the distinction is anything but derogatory.
The New Romantics had a glittering season, but it’s long gone. Today, Steve Strange is referred to in the English music press as a fat socialite, Midge and Billy have bailed out of Visage, and Ultravox is regularly lambasted for having outlived its usefulness. But do any of them care? The last Ultravox album, Quartet, was the biggest seller the band’s ever had in America, where big sales count. Nowadays, Billy Currie parks a chocolate-colored Mercedes 280-SL convertible outside his elegant Westminster townhouse, and Midge Ure indulges a pricey passion for the artnouveau furniture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in his even more spacious digs in suburban Chiswick. As for Steve and Rusty, they’ve turned the Blitz-night concept into a collection of different “clubs” under one roof at the hugely successful Camden Palace, a cavernous hall in the tatty Camden Town district. There they now cater to the cultural whims of a whole new influx of hip young kids, leading London yet another step down the path toward Total Nightlife. Blitz dead? Its heavy-breathing synthesizer sonorities may have been superseded by a lighter, less portentous style of simple dance funk, and you won’t catch many people prancing out in pirate gear these days, but on Fridays and Saturdays, when the new breed of peacocks packs into the Palace for the weekly “Sweat Attack” and “Dance Your Ass Off” nights, the Blitz legacy can be seen to be very much alive. And its creators are still cashing in.
All of which brings us back to Boy George — as George O’Dowd is known to his undoubtedly overburdened accountant and most of the rest of the record-buying world. George was one of the original Blitz kids; used to check wraps at the club in fact. Now he’s the king or queen or whatever of the new London scene — or at least, as we shall see, of the most commercially profitable part of it.