STEVE STRANGE

Nightlife

Strange Days Indeed

Chris Sullivan recalls his friendship with the boy from Rhyl who went on to become one of the world’s most glamorous nightclub impresarios, before drugs took him elsewhere

Forty years ago Visage released Fade To Grey. Undeniably it was the soundtrack of a youth movement that both enthused and annoyed the world and comprised dressing up to the ninety nines, dancing to electronic dance music and believing that David Bowie was God. Most called its adherents New Romantic and others Blitz Kids, but, whatever the moniker, such excessive mufti had not been seen on the streets of the UK since the Regency Period, and all agree that the leader of the pack was one Steve Strange. “I just loved clothes since I was kid,” said Strange in an interview with me a few months before his death six years ago, “And used to watch

“He used to follow us everywhere,” grins original Pistols bass player Glen Matlock. “We’d be at the furthest ends of the country and we’d turn round and he’d be there, having taken buses or hitchhiked, whatever was needed to be in that front row. You had to admire him for that”

“All I did was find a place for them to go and be fabulous and have fun. We were all kids – I was only 20 – and we’d all been Bowie fans and lovers of Westwood but no Club would ever let us in, and when they did it would always end up in a punch-up, as you couldn’t wear a hat back then without being attacked”

the TV with my mum and think ‘Ooh, I’d like to dress like that when I’m grown up!’ And then we started the Blitz and everything fell into place and I could dress as anything I wanted to at any time.”

Steve Strange was born Steven John Harrington in Newbridge, Wales in 1959. The family had a 30-room guest house and a few working men’s cafes in the rather dodgy seaside town of Rhyl – once described as Beirut-on-sea and rough as old boots. According to Strange, “Even though we lived in the lap of luxury, my mum left my dad and we moved to Newbridge.”

Steve, his mum and his sister lived on the top of a formidable hill on the same tough council estate where the boxer Joe Calzaghe grew up. Here he took to dressing as a skinhead in Crombie and Ben Sherman. “From the age of 12 I had to be the trendiest kiddy on the estate,” he chuckled. In 1973 he became infatuated with David Bowie, dyed his hair orange and was kicked out of Greenfield Comprehensive. A year later he was bowling up to The Wigan Casino for the all nighters, funded by his after school job as an apprentice butcher at Tesco.

I first met Steve in 1975 in the Miners Institute in Blackwood, where on a Friday they had Northern Soul events. He might have been described as a Bowie-loving northern soul boy. I bumped into him six months later in a pub in Newport, where he sported 32-inch-wide baggy trousers, Fred Perry and an MA-1 jacket covered in northern soul badges. After the pub we went to the club Scamps, just up the hill. Finding a club full of Bowie and Roxy lookalikes for whom extravagant dressing up was de rigueur, Harrington, as he was then known, was in his oils. The following week he was wearing a see-through Fiorucci mac, bright pink peg trousers and winklepickers. By now he was part of our gang of soul boys and we travelled to Bristol and London, where we attended such landmark funk clubs as Crackers, The Global Village and The Lacy Lady in Ilford.

This was early 1976 and the whiff of punk was in the air, so travelling to London to catch concerts by The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Stranglers et al was a must. Of course, Steve was as keen as mustard. “I started putting my own outfits together, wearing bin bags and slashing my T-shirts. I wore heavy eye make-up and pierced my nose and had three chains running from my nose to my ear,” he recalled. “The Western Mail photographed us and ran it under the headline ‘Hey Punks, meet the chain gang’. The Pistols were like a drug for me and I was thoroughly addicted.”

“He used to follow us everywhere,” grins original Pistols bass player Glen Matlock. “We’d be at the furthest ends of the country and we’d turn round and Steve would be there, having taken buses or hitchhiked, whatever was needed to be in that front row. You had to admire him for that.”

A move to London followed in November 1976, and your man found himself kipping on Matlock’s sofa. “Even though I often didn’t eat for

days and lived on sofas, London was everything I’d ever dreamed of,” Steve said while swigging his pint of Stella. He then got a gopher job with Malcolm McLaren at Glitterbest, followed by a job in McLaren’s shop Seditionaries. Wearing the latest Viv Westwood kit, he was the envy of us all but, like me, was seeing the writing on the wall for punk.

In 1978 Strange joined new wavers The Photons, befriended drummer Rusty Egan and started working in groovy clothes store PX in Covent Garden. I didn’t see him for a while, then bumped into him on Oxford Circus one rainy night in September 1978, and he invited me to his new Bowie Night at Billy’s, a rather seedy gay club run by a 6-fooot-6 Jamaican pimp called Vince. At the time no one was banging down the club’s door asking to do a night there.

“We printed up flyers that said Fame, Fame, Fame, Jump aboard the Night Train, Fame, Fame, Fame, What’s your Name?,” explained Steve. “Soon we had queues around the block, so I stood on the door in my long leather German overcoat and jodhpurs, deciding who could come in, as it was for our crowd, all of whom were trying to be more outrageous than the rest.” A tiny club accessed via a staircase, Billy’s was full of mismatched tables and chairs, a tiny broken toilet with a door that didn’t shut, no toilet paper, no soap and the carpets did such a good job of sticking to your shoes that loafers were a no-no. But Billy’s was about the people and the music. And there was nowhere else like it on earth.

As for the prevailing style of dress, it was all rather random. Some went toy soldier, while many of the girls certainly wouldn’t have looked out of place as backing singers with Roxy Music circa ’76, in pillbox hats, veils, gloves and pencil skirts. Some, such as Andy Polaris, went for a double-breasted Demob suit, while others, such as yours truly, gave their old Let It Rock pink peg trousers an airing, teamed with a Breton fisherman’s T-shirt.

“At Billy’s in 1978, there were only 150 people from the whole of London who had the sense to find the club and get what we were doing,” says Rusty Egan.“And I bet you could almost name them all.”

Billy’s lasted just a few months, after which the club became invaded by pimps and hookers who came to gawp at the weirdos. Rusty’s mob decided to leave, the owner Vince threatening to break Egan’s legs, so he scarpered to Germany in search of electro. Strange, being Welsh, paid no heed, continuing to work in PX. One afternoon Steve went for a drink in the Blitz on Great Queen Street, a wine bar decorated with Wartime Ovaltine signs holding about 250 people. Steve secured a regular Tuesday, beginning on a freezing cold February 13th. Rusty played Roxy Music and Kraftwerk with a smattering of glam and Steve’s door policy was tough. If you weren’t in the know, you were not in the club. Steve famously turned away Mick Jagger.

“The Blitz wouldn’t have been anything without the kids who attended,” a typically modest Steve said. “All I did was find a place for them to go and be fabulous and have fun. We were all kids – I was only 20 – and we’d all been Bowie fans and lovers of Westwood, but no Club would ever let us in, and when they did it would always end up in a punch-up, as you couldn’t wear a hat back then with out being attacked.” Strange was earning, and now wearing the top gear that no-one else could afford. He went from future space warrior – all padded shoulders and Lurex zigzags – to Robin Hood with a feather in his cap, and on to his camp made-up Monk look in a matter of weeks. In those days he set the bar by which all others were measured.

And then one night David Bowie turned up. People went bananas. I was so disappointed.

All these hep cats rubbernecking like 13-year-old teenyboppers. Bowie asked Steve to be in the video for his new single Ashes to Ashes. “I thought we were going to go somewhere exotic,” said Steve, “but we met at The Dorchester at 5am and ended up on a freezing windy beach in Kent.”

Consequently, the press went crazy for the whole shebang. The Evening Standard led with an editorial entitled ‘Dandies in Hand Me Downs’ describing us as a gang of ‘new romantics’, and the name unfortunately stuck. None of us were particularly romantic but the frilly shirt was about and the press like nothing better that a fancy chemise, so the name stuck. “I hated the name New Romantic,” asserted Strange. “That was just one look that lasted a few weeks. Unfortunately, a lot of people took it seriously all over the country and, before you knew it, men in berets, frilly shirts, pantaloons and ballet shoes were everywhere. I didn’t mind that much as it became a worldwide youth cult. We changed people’s lives and, as you once said, ‘opened a million closets’, so I’m proud of that.”

Steve claimed to be bisexual, which was utter nonsense. He was a predatory male who unashamedly chased handsome boys, whether they were straight or not, and usually had his way with men you’d have never have imagined would jump into bed with another man.

In 1980 Strange, Egan and I teamed up and opened Hell in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Half way through our tenure, some wag started selling LSD for 50p a pop. Suddenly the dynamic changed. “I went downstairs once and had to come back up,” sighs punter Mark McCarthy, “I thought everyone was melting.”

To add to the unreality, the likes of Kim Bowen and Michelle Clapton (Game of Thrones’ costume designer) had adopted a seriously ecclesiastical style of dress; a cross between the Ayatollah, Mother Theresa and Marc Bolan. Elsewhere, patrons were dressed as Teds, Westwood punks, cowboys and, well... you name it. Punters were having sex in the back alley, losing themselves in the toilets and George O’ Dowd – the cloakroom boy – was dressed as a nun with too much make-up.

The whole shooting match came to a crescendo after we were awarded a Saturday night, which became the biggest night in the UK. Due to the club’s 200 people capacity, an angry mob of 1000 people waited outside one Saturday trying to get in, one of whom stuck a large tree branch through the front window, while everyone inside was off their boxes, some letting fireworks off in the club.

The police closed us down.

Later that year Strange and Egan, as Visage, released Fade To Grey, a top-ten hit in nine countries. He was now an international pop star whose best friend was the magnificent Grace Jones. His first royalty cheque was for £250,000, he was modelling in ads for Yves St Laurent and doing personal appearances, but he was spending it as fast it came in.

“I wish my accountant had told me that this wouldn’t last forever, “ groaned Steve. “I was buying £10,000 fur coats, footing the bill for £1000 dinners for me and my friends and doing loads of coke. I was only 21 and was basically a kid from the Valleys who’d been given this money and had no training in what to do with it, so I just went bloody mad!”

Strange and Egan moved their club to The Camden Palace on the site of a former music hall. Regulars included Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston, Arnie, Sly Stallone, Christophe Reeve, Freddie Mercury, Phil Lynott and about every happening young band, actor and model in Europe. He then moved into the Seymour Walk home of the utterly glorious Francesca Von Thyssen, daughter of model Fiona Campbell and the world fifth richest man, Heini Von Thyssen.

“Me and Chessie (Francesca) were like the Posh and Becks of that time and we partied as if there was no tomorrow,” smiles Strange. “I never carried money and behaved like royalty in my chauffer-driven car and bodyguard. Parties at Seymour Place were like going back to the greatest Hollywood parties you could ever envisage.

After two years, Steve was the subject of a citizen’s arrest in The Camden Palace by a moronic

“Strange and Egan moved their club to The Camden Palace on the site of a former music hall. Regulars included Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston, Arnie, Sly Stallone, Christophe Reeve, Freddie Mercury, Phil Lynott and about every happening young band, actor and model in Europe”

Performance Driven Natural Skincare

squaddie who thought he’d clean up London’s crazy drug fiends on his own. Steve went to court; it was all over the papers and gave the company who owned the venue the opportunity to ditch Steve and Rusty.

Strange, like many of his contemporaries, savaged the marching powder and, to come down, started chasing the dragon. “I thought it was like every other drug,” groaned Strange, “but it’s not. It grabbed me and I became an addict. All I thought about was heroin and I let everything else go to shit. All my friends tried to get me off it but I couldn’t stop. I went to Ibiza to live but as soon as I came back I was back in it. I was even convicted of stealing a chequebook to get money to support my habit. I was and still am so ashamed of what I did, and what this did to my family, but I just couldn’t stop.”

Strange was fined £500 for theft and deception, after forging a signature on a stolen cheque in a bank to get cash to buy heroin. Unfortunately the monkey was on his back and heroin would dog him for the rest of his life.

In 2000 Strange hit an all time low when he was given a suspended jail sentence after being caught stealing a £10.99 Teletubbies doll in Bridgend, South Wales. Police then discovered that Strange, then 40, had been stealing all afternoon, his booty consisting of cosmetics and clothes from High Street stores. His solicitor Mel Butler said: “He has found it difficult to cope with falling from grace after being a man of considerable wealth in the Eighties.”

In 2013 Steve announced another new version of his band Visage and released an album, but the comeback hardly made any waves. He was now living with his mother in Wales. In 2015, prior to his band’s tour, he went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to get himself together. While there his grandmother passed away. Strange lost the plot, freaked out at the airport and had to be restrained by police and sedated. Later that day he died in the local hospital of a heart attack. A heart-shaped gravestone, which the Steve Strange Collective paid for, was unveiled in December 2015.

I still miss his 3 am calls that went on for hours, his requests to borrow a few quid and still miss his very presence. For me he was the symbol of a mad barking decade when everything was possible and nothing was off limits. “For me there was no one moment that summed up the eighties,” recalled Strange. “The whole decade was extraordinary. We felt we could try anything and often we’d succeed, and if not you’d have fun trying. Everyone was putting on club nights, making music, designing clothes and painting. And don’t forget Thatcher was in power, there was mass unemployment and not many opportunities, so the country was totally in the doldrums and we had nothing to lose.” n RIP Steve Harrington 1959-2015

“I still miss his 3 am calls that went on for hours, his requests to borrow a few quid, and still miss his very presence. For me he was the symbol of a mad barking decade when everything was possible and nothing was off limits”

Biography

George Osbaldeston: The Tireless Squire

Looking for a role model for how to live life with relentless exuberance, Olivier Woodes-Farquharson explores the non-stop life of George ‘Squire’ Osbaldeston: squeaky-voiced aristocrat, world-class cricketer, horseman extraordinaire, reluctant politician, perennial knave and occasional womaniser

s we emerge bleary-eyed from The Un-

Apleasantness and seek opportunities to hedonistically make up for the year that never was, we look for inspiration from those who have come before us who would have known how to trip the light fantastic.

Known throughout Victorian Britain as ‘Squire’ Osbaldeston, George Osbaldeston packed an astonishing amount into his 80 years. He only grew to 5 feet 6 inches, but was 11 stone of packed, lean muscle with, it was said, ‘legs appearing somewhat disproportioned to his body’. Although not overtly foul looking, one unflattering portrait of the time reveals a face not unlike a well-slapped haddock, and his voice was described as incongruously high-pitched to the point of falsetto. But he never stopped moving.

The Squire boasted an eclectic skillset that included playing world-class cricket, being an

“Osbaldeston did what every self-centred, easily distracted, patronising and privileged trouble-maker still does to this day: he became an MP. A nod and a wink enabled him to be elected as Whig MP for East Retford, Lincolnshire, from 1812 to 1818, although he rarely attended the House and would likely have been hard pressed to distinguish a Whig from a Tory”