SWEET DREAMS: THE STORY OF THE NEW ROMANTICS | BOOK REVIEW
Dylan Jones (Faber)
At close to 700 pages, Sweet Dreams… is set to do for the New Romantics and Futurists what Jon Savage’s definitive England’s Dreaming did for punk. Author Dylan Jones, who previously edited style magazines i-D and The Face, seems to have an address book the size of a phone directory: this book features comments from over 150 people.
Sweet Dreams kicks off in 1975 with the wedge haircuts and plastic sandals of the soul boys, via punk, to Steve Strange’s Blitz club, and culminates with Live Aid in 1985. Written in an oral style, comments come from Adam Ant, Siouxsie Sioux, Boy George, Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, Spandau Ballet, Gary Numan, OMD, The Human League, Visage, Ultravox, Marc Almond, Jim Kerr, Gary Kemp, Duran Duran, Giorgio Moroder, Princess Julia, Sade and a cast of many other musicians, journalists and style gurus.
One character whose presence looms large within Sweet Dreams is David Bowie. Adam & The Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni commented, “We were the kids who watched Starman on Top Of The Pops and who went on to become pop stars.”Bowie’s music and fashion style was a huge influence on the art school crowd and musicians of the time, as were the Blitz Kids on Bowie. This was a time when Mick Jagger was denied access to Blitz – run by Visage singer Strange with Rusty Egan – while the night Bowie visited the club was like the Second Coming, with only a selected few called to sit at his table. One of those, the Caerphilly-born Strange, was subsequently offered a part in Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video.
Sweet Dreams is a must-read for anyone who wants to dig deep into the fashion, music, flamboyancy and hedonism of a scene that looked forwards rather than backwards.
Price: £20. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT