By 1979, things were looking pretty bleak in regards to the expectation of any great political change of the laws that still restricted the lives of lesbians and gay men in so many ways.
One key change in 1979, was that the UK gained its very first female prime minister. Initially, despite her credentials, some of us had hoped that Margaret Hilda Thatcher would be open to a more humane interpretation of laws relating to public morality. Fairly quickly though, we realised it was not to be.
Different people found their own solutions to these issues in their own ways or made their own compromises that they felt happy with. For myself and many of my close friends though, in the event, the music -or perhaps rather musicians- answered some of those questions for us. Bands started to produce music that was entirely relevant to our concerns, synth pop or songs crafted with strong guitar riffs created simple but strongly melodic verses, where it was easy to hear the political and social message that was being articulated & both react to & act upon it. This generally wasn’t music about love or lost love or even Tainted Love, popular though those themes were but the issues that mattered, that drew us together and finally, finally, gave us common identity with other activists, that we craved. These songs were less about our relationships with each other and more about the political issues we cared about, marched in support of, with others, out on the streets.
The other reason, was that many of us had a history of going to pubs and small venues (such as the Moonlight (originally called The Railway) in Hampstead and the Hope & Anchor in Islington, in my case) seeing bands perform live, where you often would be dancing or at least moving as much as was possible in the small venues. There was no room to dance manically: dancing was necessarily precise and tailored. This was the music we wanted to dance to and we brought these slimmed down, tailored, less flamboyant dances than disco, out onto the dancefloors.
Songs such as ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ by Heaven 17, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ & ‘Ghost Town’ by the Specials, ‘99 Luftballoons’ by Nina, ‘Belfast Child’ by Simple Minds, The B52’s, ‘Enola Gay’ by OMITD, ‘The Landscape is Changing’ by Depeche Mode and ‘Pride in the name of Love’ by the early version of U2. Of course, there were also some cross-over tracks, which brought the mainstream & alternative styles together. I suppose one of the most famous and well loved of these, which I’ve already mentioned when talking about Soho, is ‘West End Girls’ (see clips below) by the Pet Shop Boys, as it fuses images from many disparate cultures together in its seamless blend of synth pop and gives what purports to be an ‘outsiders’ insight into the zeitgeist of mid 1980’s London, even though in reality it was very much an insiders view, given Tennant’s position as in-house writer, for the classic teen pop magazine of the time ‘Smash Hits’.
The writer Laura Snapes summed it up recently, when she wrote that thirty-six years on, their debut single still ‘pulses with beguiling ambiguity – a heady rush of lust, naivety, disco and opaque references to Lenin’ and it is this that made it work equally well I suspect, for the alternative scene and mainstream audiences. Tennant writes songs as social commentary and this I think was important to its ‘alternative acceptance’. Like ‘Relax‘ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, alternative audiences understood it’s inner subtleties, recognised its social constructs and could enjoy it, knowing that they were also ‘in’ on many of the observations being made.
Reaching number one in the both the UK & the USA and voted as ‘the best pop song’ ever released, in the Guardian’s top 100 rundown in June 2020 by three of its music critics, seems almost too much praise, given the competition but nevertheless it was and remains a classic piece of perfect pop. In 1987, it won the Best Single award (for 1986) at the Brit Awards. In 2005, the song was awarded ‘Song of The Decade’ between the years 1985 and 1994 by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (high praise indeed, given the competition) and in 2015 the song was also voted in a public poll by ITV as the nation’s twelfth favourite song. Additionally and perhaps giving the song the most kudos,(in the same way that Bowie’s Heroes achieved at the time) it was performed live by the Pet Shop Boys at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. Like Bowie too, ‘The Pet Shops’ eventually became national treasures, whether they liked it or not, whilst -mostly- retaining their street credibility.
For a more authentic feel, you probably need to listen to the original version, released in April 1984 and mixed by Bobby Orlando; it is a somewhat less shaped, rougher mix but perhaps has a little more credibility as a result. The remix, re-released in October 1985 and produced by Stephen Hague is a more polished, streamlined version of the song. In the earlier version, Tennant’s vocals sound more questioning, Lowe’s more vulnerable, which captures the scene then a little better I think. ‘You can meet east end boys, west end girls‘, he raps. The remix, 18 months later, has them in the ascendant, seemingly knowing, more arch, wiser to the game play; the above line becomes ‘East end boys meet West End girls’, a subtle but important difference: a stepping back. The remix still sounds fresh and strong however, forty years later, a perfect pitch of pop with its influences and influencers all hanging out. Although we all knew at the time, The Pet Shops did not initially present themselves as a ‘gay band’.
For me and, I know, many others, the vulnerability of the period, where there was never any real doubt or discussion about sexuality, is still best encapsulated by Bronski Beat’s debut, Smalltown Boy, (full clip below) about leaving home, framed around Jimmy Somerville’s rather beautiful ascendant vocals in its chorus; it still surprises me how often this song is used today in fiction based series on Netflix et al, in fact. Along with ‘Why’ (I have always thought this video is very strange and does not do justice to the exceptionally strong, poignant song! ) about queerbashing, and despite their early mainstream crossover success, for me personally these will always remain the sublime ‘alternative classics’ of the period.
For very many reasons I always loved the Bronski’s music, especially the vocal sound produced by Jimmy Somerville, the lead singer of the group; their songs striking a very particular chord. I’d first met Jimmy some years before he was successful, in 1980, whilst living in a housing co-op short life house in Fordwych Rd in Kilburn, in NW London, which I’d moved to with my boyfriend Gaz. Short life housing co-ops were a godsend to many unemployed youngsters in the inner city areas of London then, as for a cheap rent (about £5 a week) council stock awaiting repair was given to housing user groups to look after, until the council was able to repair them to a standard such that they could be put back into the main housing pool. After a lick of paint and minor repairs, with cheap second furniture added, they were, for us, ideal places to live and love in, communally.
There were usually at least four or five of us living there. Bob from Wales, Alison, the lovely Jeff (a more striking Adam Ant look a like, who could have modelled for Vogue Homme had he set his mind to it) and sometimes his german girlfriend Heike. After a year or so with Gary, our relationship become rather open and then pretty amicably moved into a long lasting friendship. It did mean however, that I moved from a big double bedroom, into a tiny box room, that no one else felt was big enough to exist in. It just about fitted a single bed.
The great thing about living in such houses, as well as shared meals, were the parties. Oh, those parties! We hosted parties frequently and well, if I say so myself, with an eclectic, diverse mix of young people culled from our various experiences in north London’s clubs, pubs, music venues, arthouses and probably, knowing Bob, toilets. I think Jimmy was someone Gary knew from back on the Ealing scene, via a guy called Laurence and with whom Jimmy was seeing. I thought the fresh faced ginger boy Jimmy, was kind of cute with his broad Glaswegian accent. At the end of the night, after an unholy row together, both of them pretty well inebriated (partly about Jimmy not wanting to leave I think but now, who knows) Laurence left by taxi leaving Jimmy looking for a place to kip. Cue my small bed. However, the effects of alcohol kicked into both of us almost immediately I think; sleep was the only realistic option.
Dawn and the morning and I was feeling far more frisky. However, just as the wooing started, Gary poked his head round the door, ridiculously bright and breezy (he was never that bright and breezy normally). Morning guys, cup of tea, how are things Jimmy? They then proceeded to have a long conversation about life, whilst I idly twiddled my thumbs, glared at Gary and eventually gave up on anything very much more. Gary went on to keep up the friendship with them both, whilst I moved on to pastures new, as we all did in those times, to find a larger room, one that would fit a double bed, with a damn good lock on the door. Ah, good times!
A few years later, in 1982, I ran into Jimmy again, whilst helping make a documentary about lesbian and gay youth, ‘Framed Youth (aka ‘Revenge of the Teenage Perverts’) ’ in Brixton. He had started a band (perhaps euphemistically now called a boyband in their wikipedia entry) with Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek, though clearly it was Steve’s baby. I had no idea Jimmy had developed such a distinctive vocal style but was agreeably surprised, as were others, when I heard their take for the Framed Youth video, a self penned piece called ‘Crying’.
They went on to release an album, ‘Age of Consent’ in 1984 and Smalltown Boy was the first single released from the album, about Jimmy’s experiences of living and growing up in his Glaswegian hometown. I always remember the first time I heard the released cut of ‘Smalltown Boy’ on a National Express coach tuned to BBC Radio One in Harwich, Essex, coming back from a trip to Amsterdam with my boyfriend Mark. We had gone to Amsterdam by boat (you always did then) to experience dutch liberal culture, held hands walking down Prinsengracht and openly bought and smoked joints in the cafes there and yet, coming back to England, hearing that song on Radio One, surrounded by people I didn’t know, suddenly gave me huge hope that perhaps things were changing, even in ‘milksnatcher Thatcher’s’ England.
A version of ´Why´by Bronski Beat (with apologies to all).. but what a powerful song..
The early eighties were to be a period that brought us into this new world, creating formulative ways of being, of seeing, living with and loving each other. They combined new identities, ways of dressing and an understanding of the need for more equality both in terms of gender and to reshape our sexual & social identities. Into this mix, came a further recognition of the need to respond to an increasingly consumer led & conservative society, as the Thatcher government swept back into power again in 1984, the status quo back firmly in hands of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’, as the transformative strength of the Trade Unions diminished. They were to be a time of radical experimentalisation for many, when we were still young enough to both believe in our ideas and ideals and -more to the point- still able and willing to transform ourselves and those around us, to accommodate them.
