08/31/2020
In this colorful and sprawling oral history, Jones (David Bowie: The Oral History), editor-in-chief of British GQ, stitches together quotes from over 100 interviewees on the aesthetic revolution that birthed New Wave. In the petri dish of London’s Blitz club circa 1979, baroquely attired street kids “rivalling the unlit street lamps for attention in the moonlight” (a teenage Boy George among them) turned frustration at England’s “economic and cultural drought” into an explosive nexus of new styles, bands, and magazines in which they could admire themselves. Worshipping at the altar of David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, Jones notes, the image-obsessed New Romantics fused punk’s sartorial and sonic edginess with soulful melodies, atmospheric synths courtesy of Kraftwerk, and a dash of the avant-garde into a glossy pop style perfectly suited for the consumerist 1980s. Jones’s sharp wit fits between quotes that vary from insightful to catty. (One writer quips that Duran Duran “had no mystique because they came from Birmingham and always looked a bit desperate.”) Jones at times loses the narrative, as it loosely leaps from Blitz offshoots like Culture Club and Spandau Ballet to outfits like Depeche Mode and New Order. This is a fitfully enlightening but correctly maximalist take on a time when artistic excess and overkill was the norm. Agent: Jonny Geller, Curtis Brown. (Oct.)
Praise for David Bowie: A Life by Dylan Jones:
"Jones’ Bowie opus serves as the ultimate oral history of the artist’s life and musical journey.”
—Billboard
“Beguiling… the fabulosity of Bowie’s life and times lends itself extraordinarily well to the oral history form."
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path.”
—Parade
"Superb ... Suits the shape-shifting, beguiling, enigmatic complexities of its subject perfectly. It's hard to imagine anything that will do Bowie better justice."—William Boyd, Guardian
"Revelatory and surprising — perfect for the Ziggy completist." —New York Magazine
Praise for Wichita Lineman by Dylan Jones:
"The author's account satisfies, without a wasted word or the usual clichés of pop-culture writing and with plenty of quotations from the principals involved in making the song an enduring hit. An affectionate homage to an indisputably great song, one that readers will listen to with new ears."—Kirkus Reviews
08/01/2020
While American audiences may not know the term New Romantics, they won't be unfamiliar with the British megastars who typified the late 1970s and early 1980s music movement: Boy George and Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, the Eurythmics, Duran Duran, Wham!, Tears for Fears, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Sade, and more. Jones (editor in chief, GQ; David Bowie: A Life) explores the New Romantics scene in the participants' own words. Interwoven oral narratives, drawn mostly from interviews conducted for the book in 2018 and 2019, are supplemented with quotations from earlier materials, bringing in contributions from those who have died or weren't available for new interviews. Jones sets the stage with evocative descriptions of the Blitz nightclub and mid-1970s London before diving into hundreds of pages of interviews. He charts the development of the New Romantics—the club kids obsessed with David Bowie and Bryan Ferry's Roxy Music went on to embrace punk rock, avant-garde fashion, the art world, music videos, technology, music journalism, and Live Aid. Interviewees conclude with reflections on the scene's dissolution. VERDICT Strongly recommended for fans of the era's music and those interested in pop culture history.—Monica Howell, Northwestern Health Sciences Univ. Lib., Bloomington, MN
2020-06-18
An oral history of England’s New Romantic pop movement, full of synths, style, and substance (no, really).
Conventional 1970 and ’80s rock history draws a direct line from punk to new wave to mainstream alternative acts, dismissing the likes of ABC, Spandau Ballet, Human League, and Culture Club as sideshows. But the more than 150 voices assembled by longtime pop journalist and GQ editor-in-chief Jones offer a more sophisticated—and, frankly, less homophobic—take. The scenesters who convened on London clubs like the Blitz saw punk as a spent force by the late ’70s and were more enchanted by electronic acts like Kraftwerk and the enduring glamour of David Bowie and Roxy Music. (For this crowd, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” not a Sex Pistols or Clash single, was the key inspiration.) No question, fashion mattered plenty: Blitz impresario and Visage frontman Steve Strange proudly turned Mick Jagger away from his club because he was “dressed in a baseball cap and trainers.” But the music was vital, too, and Jones captures a moment when acts like Gary Numan, Yazoo, and Soft Cell were delivering pioneering synth-pop graced with some of Bowie’s stardust. The rise of MTV gave those bands a global platform but also spawned an army of lesser wannabes (even a young Ricky Gervais got into the act) and opened the movement to accusations of being only as good as their haircuts. The assembled commentators come armed with dishy anecdotes, though casual readers would be satisfied with a book half as long. By the time 1985 rolled around, heroin and fickle tastes had undone many of the musicians, which somewhat undercuts the author’s case for the musicians’ enduring influence. (Oddly, two of the era’s enduring acts, the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode, get relatively short shrift.) But for a while there, everybody looked and sounded great.
A factoid-rich if bloated tribute to an overly maligned moment in pop history.
