Bowie, Boy George and the rise of the riotous Blitz club with Robert Elms

London’s Blitz club in 1980 had a huge impact on the way the decade looked and sounded, the launchpad for Boy George, Spandau Ballet, a new age of electro-pop and many writers, designers and photographers. The author and broadcaster Robert Elms was one of its cornerstones, “a place for people who’d outgrown the 20th Century”. We talk here about his book ‘Blitz: the Club That Created the ‘80s’ with all of this on the dancefloor …  

… the Blitz Club rules, “unspoken until Steve Strange spoke them”. And the door policy: “Look at yourself, darling. Would YOU let yourself in?”

… first nights “with a Space Cossack shirt and asymmetric wedge” and the origin of the term New Romantic

… the rise of the “home-made Macaronis” (dictionary definition: “over-dressed popinjays of dubious sexuality”)

… Bowie’s Starman, Roxy, soul, disco, Weimar, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Edith Piaf, Swinging London, Andy Warhol and other keys strands of Blitz DNA

… its anti-rock stance and impact on the mid-‘80s American charts

… the news-friendly night Mick Jagger was barred entry

… “I was spat at by an old lady at a bus stop for wearing eyeliner and a kilt”

… when Island offered Spandau a deal after just three numbers  

… the role of the Face, Smash Hits and the new full-colour media

… the author’s “dilettante” passage through skinhead, suedehead, soul boy and punk

… and the night Bowie appeared, “like Jesus walking into your local church and sitting in a pew”.

Order ‘Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s’ here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/blitz-the-club-that-created-the-eighties-robert-elms/e672041a84e0cde9?ean=9780571394180&next=t&next=t

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