Steve Strange – Punk To New Romantic
Steve Harrington is Steve Strange is Steve Brady is Steve Strange. The names chart the journey of a young man from Wales from Punk Rock to New Romantic fame but like many journeys it’s the twists and turns that are fascinating in the way events and people come together to create different possibilities; and the UK punk scene of the late seventies was a rich time for both.
How he got to his final destination is a lesson in survival, tenacity and inevitably the pitfalls of fame that has never changed whatever the time period. It is, though very well documented and commented on by many people, littered with errors and often subject to a revision of the past by the man himself when he was alive as per his autobiography, so this Punk77 feature attempts to give an objective if not different view to what’s usually portrayed.
It was, like for so many, seeing the the Sex Pistols and in particular their 1976 gig at Stowaways Newport and punk rock with its explosion of individuality, music and clothes that was for him and a band of his contemporaries (the South Wales gang) a way to assert individuality and a way out of the valleys. One of the first ‘Punks’ he was straight away in the media.
That said at that time being in band wasn’t his aim but moving to the where the punk action was was!. He was in the words of Billy Idol “a tireless networker” (Dancing With Myself) and frequently hitchhiked large distances to see bands like the Sex Pistols or Generation X. It would be this networking that would open up the possibilities for him later.
He befriended Glen Matlock and later Billy Idol of Generation X (setting up a gig and doing fliers for the latter) and JJ Burnel of The Stranglers as they passed through town making connections. With JJ Burnel he made more than a connection and later in his biography revealed a one night stand with the bassist. Years later Burnel unfazed by the revelation came back with the perfect reply when asked about it!
I shagged the arse of him literally and it was great from what I remember. I didn’t make a habit of it. But it was there so I took it. He told me he was from Wales so I thought that’s fine and I put my wellies on and away you go…I can’t remember much about it. I thought it was pleasant at the time. Don’t knock it till you have tried it is what I have always said!’ John Robb Interview Louder Than War 2016
That networking first enabled him to make the leap and move to London with no money or place to stay to make his fame and fortune but to be in the centre of Punk rock.
Burnel put him up for a while in his flat on his sofa (its the flat and incident mentioned in their song Five Minutes) that famously also included Wilko Johnson, Lemmy and Billy Idol. And where he got his name ‘Strange’ by a surprised postman.
Billy Idol: When I wanted to stay in London I squatted in West Hampstead with Steve Strange, along with Jean-Jacques Burnel of The Stranglers and Wilko Johnson…Steve had no money, either, and was hanging out on the punk club scene as well, with a bleached-blond look just like me… Steve was a tireless networker… Since there was only one bed in Steve’s room we slept together, which gave the others in the flat the idea that we were lovers…I was friends with Steve and that was that. Billy Idol – Dancing With Myself
As part of the scene he’s at the Roxy Club which is at the epicentre of the emerging punk scene. Run by Andrew Czezowski and partner Susan Carrington, Barry Jones and Ralph. It’s a club in a seedy basement in the old Chagaramas/Roxy night club and is a place where punk is emerging to its own bands and look and powered by the Punky Reggae of Don Letts. Steve is employed by Andy and Susan to look after coats but is let go after he’s caught stealing. Andy and Susan will play a major unsung part in Steve’s later success.
Stealing becomes a way of staying solvent along with anything else to keep body and soul together and enable enough cash to see bands visit clubs and buy drinks.
Andy Czezowski: Steve had a great eye for stealing peoples looks and ideas and actually stealing as well. He was a great thief. He used to hang around us and he said I’m going shopping now to Moss Bros for a walk which was round the corner from James street so Susan went with him. In the shop he said ‘hold this’ and she said ‘I’m not buying anything’ and Susan suddenly twigged he was shoplifting stuff and getting her to carry it out! When we put him up for the night he stole some socks and some soap from the bathroom that had a picture of the jubilee queen on it. But that was him all over. Punk77 2020
Strange has a number of irons in the fire to get cash and keep networking and was always on the look out for better work and a better place to stay. While most were charmed others saw him differently such as Boy George, then also a face on the punk scene, who would have his ups and downs with Steve.
Boy George: Steve was so superior: one day he was your best friend, the next he’d stare right through you…I knew him from the early days…at the Roxy and the Vortex…hanging around Billy Idol and the punk elite, decked head to toe in Sex clothes, borrowed from the stock room…What I hated most about Steve was his inconsistency. He would use you and drop you when he felt like it. Often his charm was disarming. He could be genuinely nice, and that was even more scary. Take It Like A Man
Part of hanging out with that ‘punk elite’ being on the infamous Sex Pistols Jubilee River Boat jaunt in June 1977. Look at the picture above of expectant fans queuing for the boat and behind the tallest guy (Richard Strange from The Doctors Of Madness) is Steve Strange. In front is a very young Chris Mooney who would become the bass player in Adam and The Ants and live with Eve Goddard while she was still married to Adam and she’ll feature in a mo too!
Having done work for Generation X (pictured right at Rafters Manchester June 1977 with a handful of 48 Thrills fanzines) helping out before and after they signed to Chrysalis but he then helps run the Rich Kids Fan club which features ex Pistol Glen Matlock and Midge Ure. The band also features Rusty Egan whom he’d met before several times and who was also a face on the scene.
Steve Strange: I heard him before I saw him, on the King’s Road in London. He bellowed over to me, “What band are you in?” I replied, “I’m not in a band, I do artwork for bands like the Sex Pistols.” He was a Jack the Lad; I was more reserved. We started hanging out, and I looked after the fan club for his band, the Rich Kids.The Independent
The alleged artwork was an often unpaid job working for McLaren in Glitterbest. Additional money came from a Saturday job at Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries which was also access to clothes to borrow/steal and claiming dole.
Steve Strange: A few items made their way out of the shop unnoticed, yes,” he laughs. Nathan Bevan 2015
Andy and Sue of The Roxy
In August/September 1977, post the closure of the Roxy club which they ran and the aborted Rage/Vortex opening, Andy Czezowski and partner Susan rent an old warehouse in James Street Covent Garden. The warehouse is to keep their hand in music with the space being let out to PR companies and record labels and eventually PX the shop. They are also getting back into band mgmt with the Photons – a new style of band in contrast to punk both in sound and look and there’s also rehearsal space there in the basement. To kick things off they hold a big party where the Slits play.
Andrew: Steve Strange was on the door doing what he did best, ripping us off by selling tickets to tourists! The Roxy Duography – Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington
It must have been frustrating for Strange to see so many bands forming over the last 6 months and be not part of it except on the sidelines.
Steve Strange: …I started to become more ambitious. I was disillusioned by punk and felt it would be nice to be in a band or even kick-start something myself. Blitzed! The Autobiography of Steve Strange
Steve Strange – On Early Punks 1976/77
That changes in June. Ever the opportunist, Soo Catwoman comes up with the idea of a fake band – the Moors Murderers – and according to Soo Steve runs with the idea and is given some lyrics called Free Hindley by someone else. The fake band is to get money from the many magazine and TV crews from home and abroad that wanted to film the London Punk Rock Shock Phenomena.
Soo Catwoman. With regard to Steve Strange…The Moors Murderers thing was a big joke to be honest. I was joking about getting a band together called the Moors Murderers and doing sleazy love songs, I had no idea he would actually go out and do it and it was fitting that he got slated for it…. also remember meeting someone (not sure who it was), who told me he had showed Strange a poem he wrote and then found out Strange had used it as lyrics for a Moors Murderers song and claimed to have written it himself, which didn’t surprise me.” Punk77 Interview 2007
However the scam develops legs and will occupy Strange for the next 8 months. He ropes in an American misfit also working at Sex and who is desperate for a band – Chrissie Hynde – (later of the Pretenders) and the band start to take shape. Around September/October 1977 Strange & band are filmed by an Italian film crew for part of a 1 hour documentary on Punk called Il ragazzo dai capelli gialli’ (The Boy With Yellow Hair) that would be broadcast in Italy alone in January 1978.
Their first move is strange -j ust like the guy they bump into and choose as some kind of host, i.e. Steve Strange himself. Dressed in a sort of Wehrmacht/Nazi attire, Steve is evidently taken as the Archetypal Punk by Angelo & his men, who follow him first while he collects his dole money, then at rehearsals with his band The Moors Murderers. Here we see a short bit of Soo Catwoman, Chrissie Hynde and Strange wearing hoods while rehearsing. Glezös Alberganti Punk77 email April 2020
By December 1977 they are actively practicing and Steve has moved on from the Nazi garb and is looking every bit the punk frontman in his Seditionaries bondage wear but now calling himself Steve Brady (after the killers). Mentions in the rock press gossip pages says they are coming and they have Jane Suck, Sounds journalist, rehearsing with them.
Steve with the Moors Murderers in London Battersea December 1977 – Photo courtesy of Sheila rock
Punk fashion and music is intensely provocative and shocking to get a reaction. Westwood’s and BOY designs feature upside down crosses and swastikas, Cambridge rapist t shirts and Gary Gilmore fake blood t shirts. Songs about Anarchy, the Queen and Gary Gilmore’s charts are in the charts and punks are seen physically disfiguring themselves with safety pins and graffiti-ing/destroying clothes. That said, in the outrage stakes the name ‘Moors Murderers’ and a song ‘Free Hindley’ is guaranteed to make the press interested as it is still raw in the publics consciousness. Brady/Strange from working in Glitterbest, and no doubt hearing McLaren reinvent history by claiming the Bill Grundy incident and subsequent massive publicity for the Sex Pistol was a masterstroke of his making, knows what this could do for a band.
Too controversial to get their own gigs, or rather circumventing the need for live gigs, they appear with The Slits at Ari Up’s school in December 1977 and at the Roxy Club in January 1978 unannounced.
The former Brady/Strange tries to milk via the New of The World with a made up story involving the NSPCC. The band appear all masked in hoods with the appropriate headlines. The thrust of the band is that Myra Hindley has been a victim of injustice and should be up for parole.
Now while Brady/Strange may have learned from/copied McLaren, he doesn’t understand the mechanics are different. The Grundy incident wasn’t manufactured but something that went out of control that happened to come good in one way but also sow the seeds of the end of the Pistols in another. He’s got the publicity – all negative – but nothing tangible to sell and no control.
He tries to get Sex Pistols/Punk soundman Dave Goodman interested (he did the sound at the Slits gig) who suggests some ideas but passes on any involvement Meanwhile they are featured in Sounds in January 1978, again in hoods, and play for Danny Secunda of Track at the James Street rehearsal space but he too passes on them as do Jet Records who are purportedly interested. Meanwhile Brady meets Lord Longford, who was an active supporter of Hindley getting parole (one of Goodman’s ideas), to pursue that angle which fizzles out along with any altruism on Brady’s part.
Not one to give up he manages to get Stewart Copeland of The Police to produce a demo in March 1978 (and probably the rarest Punk song in the world!) before the band itself fizzles out under the backlash and being yesterday’s news.
From March to July sees Steve Brady return to being Steve Strange and become more disenchanted with Punk and how it was turning out as it became more stereotyped and with a harder look and sound.
As luck would have it though, it’s the Moors Murderers song and his singing that brings him to the attention of David Littler, the new guitarist in The Photons (original band pictured right) who’ve lost their singer and who are managed by who else but Andrew Czezowski and he’s drafted in to replace the sacked vocalist.
The Photons – David Littler, Steve Davies, Vince Ely & John Harlow
The Photons are put together by Andy and are dressed in various primary colour suits. Andy Czezowski who must have had reservations but they needed a replacement singer and Strange looked the part so he was in. The pink suit in the picture right, handed back in by the outgoing singer, is given to Steve Strange. The band rehearse at James Street in the rehearsal room under PX but manage one just showcase gig and a demo. However, with Strange and the new bassist, the band come together and write songs quite quickly.
David Littler: Yes the sound did change, the new bassist was very good and Vince and I had been playing together for a while so had got better. Steve was confident (unlike Frank) and we rehearsed songs lyrically written by myself (Cold Fire) and Vince (Shot) as well as Steve’s so had quite a few songs. Punk77 Interview 2020
Those demos From August/September 1978 produce 3 songs Tar, Mind Of A Toy and a very rough Eve Of Destruction which Andy had suggested covering. The latter has just synth bass and electronic drums and a heavy Steve New guitar part over which Steve sings. The demos also bring out about the sacking of David Littler and the band again fizzle out. Strange was using the band according to Andy:
Andy Czezowski: I managed to get some time at Surrey Sound studios where the Police recorded. We did three tracks which were good quality. He was using us to learn how to sing and perform and experience in a professional studio. Punk77 Interview 2005
Strange himself though was unhappy and went against the band ethic dress wise.
Andy Czezowski. He left because he wasn’t pulling his weight. We were going one direction; the sharp suited look, power pop guitar thing and he wanting to go into the pirate look; he was very much a Vivienne clone so any money he could steal or borrow he would spend it on her latest look which was the pirate look so he was dressing like that instead of the Photons being a tight unit. Punk77 Interview 2005
Having been involved in the Rich Kids and knowing Rusty Egan, Midge Ure comes backstage at the showcase gig and suggests hooking up to use some dead studio time. Ure is getting into electronic music. They make some EMI demos in late 1978 (not long after the last) that go nowhere. The demo songs are All The Kings Horses, 2525 and a reworked Eve Of Destruction.
By now Strange had left Seditionaries having been caught out.
Steve Strange: .. one night she turned up at a gig and caught me wearing a particular tartan bondage suit from the shop and sacked me.” Nathan Bevan 2015
However Steve walked straight into another job, again fashion based, but this time at London PX owned by Helen Robinson and Stephanie Raynor based at…. Andrew Czezowski’s James Street warehouse offices.
Steph Raynor: When Steve walked into Stephane’s PX shop he started trying everything on and immediately took over the shop floor , so there was nothing to do but hire him. Blitz Kids
He manages the shop with Princess Julia and begins to get a name for himself as a face wearing outrageous clothes and someone to be imitated. He (and others) also miss clubs like the Roxy that was somewhere for discerning people to go to and so begins the legend of Billy’s and Blitz and the New Romantics.
We Can Be Heroes – Chris Sullivan: Steve Strange used to take me to all these odd clubs, like Billy’s, that were empty in the week,’ recalls DJ/producer Rusty Egan, ‘So I suggested to Steve that we do a night and invite all the Bromley contingent and all the punks that don’t go out on the weekend for fear of getting beaten up, and all the others we knew, and get them all together on one night.’
Strange and Egan had seen one nighters like the Monday night Vortex Club in Crackers work a treat so, seeing a huge gap in the market, approached Vince. He was all ears
‘We now had the venue,’ reflects Egan. ‘And, as I had a great record collection I decided to DJ and play Lou Reed and Bowie and what I considered to be great music. We called it Bowie night and I asked David Claridge, the puppeteer who had his hand up Roland Rat [he’s also the man behind S&M organisation Skin 2] to DJ, because we wanted to play stuff you couldn’t hear anywhere else.Over 21 Magazine – May 1980: David Claridge is a 26 year old actor who puts on nights … and he was there, with his pile of records, at the start of Billy’s and Blitz, a little piqued (perhaps) because Steve Strange got all the publicity.
Steve Strange: One day Rusty and I were chatting about how things had gone a bit stagnant. We were talking about London clubs and comparing them to those in other cities…..We were young and had balls to do anything, so we looked for a venue where we could set up our own club. We were very shrewd. We went to Billy’s.. and saw that it was empty…Two weeks later we went back to the owner and said we could pack the club. He could have the drinks profit and we would take the money on the door…We had kept our promise of filling his club up, but after three months we realised it was time to move on because we needed bigger premises…The nightclub revolution had begun. Blitzed! The Autobiography of Steve Strange
Boy George: The success of the Blitz led him to believe he had created the New Romantic scene. There really was no scene. At capacity the Blitz held 300; it wasn’t a national phenomenon like punk. Take It Like A Man
The sharp eyed of you will notice of course this is post Billy’s when it became Gossips. Photo Derek Ridgers
If anything they continued the tradition of all successful clubs which was creating a safe place for select discerning clientele and making publicity/money from it.
Andy Czezowski: Steve came back to me; you know you bust up with people but doesn’t mean you don’t speak to them again. And said ‘oh Andy when you going to open up another club’. I said ‘when we find the right place.’ and then I said why don’t YOU DO a club in the DIY punk spirit. Now we had been looking for clubs and one was Billy’s (became Gossips) in Dean street and we met the guy a 25 stone black man called Vince and a stripper hanging around him and we thought here we go again and said no not for us!
Some time later Steve and Rusty came to me and asked about clubs and I took them round to this bloke and they wanted to do a Bowie night. Steve said what do we do now? I said you go to print flyers so I set everything up and trained them and they called the night Billy’s with David Claridge (Roland Rat) who was from Wales as well as Steve who loved David Bowie. Vaguely knew Steve, they hung out together.. he became the DJ.. it was his idea.. they went off and did it and after a few weeks had an argument with club owner as predicted.Punk77 Interview 2020
You’ve got to hand it to Andy because when it went sour, as he said it would, he stepped back in to help.
Andy Czezowski: They stopped the nights and asked me if I knew of anywhere else and I suggested the Blitz bar named after its post-war theme of propellers and camouflage. The bar managers used to come into the Roxy so we knew each other a bit. The managers were Jeremy King and Chris Corby who became top restaurant owners. I dragged Steve and Rusty round and said they wanted to do a club night so you guys sort it out. So they then did a deal and they launched the club night called the Blitz. Punk77 Interview 2020
Visage outside Blitz – sorry Andy you can’t come in! – Photo credit?
However one strange (sic) thing happened though on opening night which for anyone else would have left a sour taste but Andy laughs recalling it.
Andy Czezowski: On the opening night typical Steve Strange.. he wouldn’t let us in on the opening night! He was into the over the top new Romantic sound and look and we turned up but still dressed a little bit punky and he wouldn’t let us in as it wasn’t the look he wanted. But I kind of agreed with him because to run a club you want people of the same kind. Susan: ‘No he hated us!’ Andy: ‘Yes. But without us there would have been no Blitz.’ Punk77 Interview 2020
Parallel to this Ure and Strange continued their collaboration and then bring in members of Ultravox and Magazine and Rusty Egan to form the band Visage. Steve Strange brings a couple of songs to the party from those Photons demos. The demo is interesting because the three tracks on it are Mind Of A Toy, Tar and a third rough track which is a raw cover version of In The Year 2525 which according to Andy Czezowski he suggested to Strange to do. Not sure where Madame Carla went.
David Littler: I think it may be just Steve New on Eve of Destruction multi-tracking the parts on a 4 track ( there’s only that synth bass and guitar with a bit of syn drum). It’s just an educated guess…and I don’t know for sure.
It’s interesting because the cover version is reworked a short while later with Midge Ure, Rusty Egan and Strange using Rich Kids left over studio time and used for demos to attempt to secure a recording deal that kicks off Visage, but the electronica cover version here IS the nascent Visage sound and predates the later demos.
Tar is completely reworked and becomes the first single and features on their debut album but it is the second single Fade To Grey that becomes a defining moment for the New Romantic sound and which is a massive hit around the world bringing massive success. However in one major respect its success rankles Strange.
But there was one thing that did piss me off in a big way. We always wrote as a five piece band, with the lucrative publishing royalties being split between us equally. Someone might come up with a lyrical idea and someone might finish it off, so the fairest way as to share things.. being left off the writing credits was like a knife stabbed through the heart. Blitzed! The Autobiography of Steve Strange
Interestingly the second single is Mind Of A Toy which, though is reworked electronically, is very similar chorus wise to the original Photons demo and which Steve’s autobiography fails to mention the origin of of the song. There are no credits to Photons members only Steve and Visage so a bit of what goes around comes around there.
David Littler (Spitfire Boys & Photons) Steve went on to record Tar and Mind of a Toy with Visage. I fell out with Steve for a while after this because I co-wrote all with him and did not receive any cash or credit. It’s true that the lyrics were essentially his and the arrangements different but in copyright, those songs belonged to Steve and myself and I should have been paid accordingly. Punk77 2003
However because the original songs hadn’t been published David had no rights.
David Littler…..Andy C said he had spoken to Rusty Egan who said he wrote the songs… because the original songs had not been published I didn’t have any rights (legally), had they been, I would have 50 percent credit with Steve Strange. Steve wrote the lyrics and I wrote and arranged the music. When Visage recorded the tracks they didn’t even know they existed as Photons demos so just assumed they were original songs. Punk77 2020
And there we leave the Steve Strange Story. As you can read in his autobiography and interviews, The Moors Murderers and Photons get brief mentions and airbrushed to present Steve as an innovator and a man ahead of his time. His autobiography in 2002 saw him and Orion books threatened to be sued by Dave Goodman when he tried to blame him as the person behind the Moors Murderers.
In 2002, Orion Books published a biography on Steve Strange, ghost written by Bruce Dessau. In it was an untrue story claiming that Dave Goodman was the prime instigator behind the controversial ‘Free Hindley’ single by Steve’s band ‘The Moors Murderers’. Dave threatened to sue Orion for libel and they withdrew the story and published an apology in the music press.
The offending passage was suitably reworked and beiged not even mentioning the Moors Murderers name. He does at least mention The Photons but again in passing and again rewriting history by saying he was ahead of the game. Andrew and Susan also get a fleeting mention which is kind of him.
How he fared from this point onwards is well documented elsewhere, but the fame was a double-edged sword bringing with it drink and drugs, which he overindulged with to the point of addiction, a nervous breakdown and being arrested for shoplifting. Though he managed to get his life back on track somewhat, he died much too young in 2015 aged 55 of a heart attack. Without a doubt a character that divided opinions but nevertheless a talented if flawed one who knew how to use circumstances to his advantage often forgetting the people who helped get him to what he became.
After the Photons split Strange reminisces in Blitzed! about his future:
Steve Strange. I thought I might go on to have a solo career; I didn’t know how things would work out. I didn’t plan to start a nightlife revolution. Blitzed! The Autobiography of Steve Strange
I appreciate the above article may sound as if its critical but I don’t mean it to be. I find Strange’s route to fame fascinating and most importantly life affirming. Whether you’re young or old if you’re dissatisfied make the move, survive by any means, pursue your dream, network and use any avenue that opens up because you never know where it may lead you. Just be careful what you wish for though!
A lot of thanks goes to the Blitz Kids website which is a fantastic archive of this particular time in Music history and which I’ve used a lot and credited with links.
TalkPunk
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