BY TED POLHEMUS - TATLER 1979
Consider a typical post-Punk night in the Electro-Diskow at Blitz, a wine bar in Vovent Gardn which revels in the low-tech decor of war-time austerity. On the dance floor a teen-age girl dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's is dancing with a boy in a jet-black plastic space suit with such baggy trousers that a couple of spacemen and a good-sized alien could live happily inside them. His hair is slicked back Valentino-style and hers is nealty permed. The muic is German electronic pop with J G Ballardish lyrics about live in a crashed car. Their danccing style is jifferbug step but it is executed with the efficiency of robots.
They are not smiling. No one is - especially not Mr Steve Strange who is furtively glancing out the door to decide who's got the style and can enter and who will be doormed to wait outside.
Watching Strange scan the crowd it's difficult to believe that, like St Peter, he was once a mere mortal.
Back in the primordial period Before Punk, Steve Strange was called something else and lived a frustrated life in South Vales. With the advert of punkdom Steve became less frustraed but Strange and moved to London where he, like countless others, found the elbow room for experimenting in style and music. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before the great punk ice age set in with rigid uniforms and fixed attitudes. Individual style was put down as "possing" and Steve and friends took the hint and left the fold.
They started hanging out in a soul club in Soho called Billy's. Eventually they asked the boss if they could run a "David Bowie Night" every Tuesday. It was a great success, and there in lay its demise. The management let in horders of unstylish types who had heard about it from the gossip columns and who thought it would be cheaper than going to the zoo. Hideous photographers came in busloads from the tabloids. It was horrible ! One week the whole crowd switcher to Blitz which offered Steve control of the door and the last that was heard of Billy's was that true-blue punks had moved in and preached anarchy by busting up the toilets.
At Blitz the "Bowie Night" label was dropped, but his influence continues to linger on. It was, of course, Bowie who had insisted on giving style equal billing with music - something which the punks, like the hippies before them, have now come to see a anthema. This tradition has been carried on in Steve Strange's own band Visage, on the genetic label, and the postures, dance ability and even what you choose to drink. This gives not only a post-punk, but actually an anti-Punk tone to the proceedings. It comes as quite a shock to discover that the vast majority of these kids sipping their cocktails and taking care not to muss their hairdos were once pogoing punks throwing beer at each other. This is the flipside.
Some of this crowd are New Mods, but to reduce this potpourri of extravagant styles to that of any other easy label is a mistake. Except for dressing in a stereotyped punk or hippy style anything goes - as long as it's extreme. Steve and his crowd are attempting to tap our image resources. They're digging into Top Hat and Barbarella, Thunderbirds and Stingray, Modesty Blaise and Dan Dare, not to mention of Fredericks' of Hollywood catalogues and re-vamped versions of classic outfits of Mods, Teddy-boys and even cowboys (no Indian yet ). They are a tribe without a name and even if I could thing of one, I'd hope to keep it to myself.
With or without a name, however, they are being noticed. Gossip columnists have pointed them out, Established fashion designers like Zandra Rhodes and the Howies are checking them out and music moguls wait to hear them out. But meanwhile Steve Strange peers out of the window looking upon those who would enter his post-punk kingdom of heaven and hell. Many knock, few enter. He maintains that even Mick Jagger had to queue up, pass inspection and pay his money. Like Steve Rubell of New York's Studio 54, Steve Strange knows that the secret of his impresario's craft is to judge a book by its cover.
TED POLEHEMUS - THE OTHER SOCIAL PAGE - TATLER MAGAZINE 1979
