‘Blitzed’ is the new Sky Arts documentary about the colourful London club night attended by aspirational young people driven to escape, express and create.

It was the start of the Thatcher era and before it was infiltrated by leg warmers, deely boppers, fluffy dice, yuppies and soddin’ Pat Sharp, the clientele of The Blitz were planting the seeds that were to shape the eighth decade of the 20th Century.

With the late Steve Strange acting as its Pied Piper, these personalities who emerged from a movement that got labelled The Blitz Kids, The Cult With No Name and The New Romantics were to have a big impact on popular culture. They included  costume designers Fiona Dealey and Michele Clapton, journalists Robert Elms and Dylan Jones as well as royal hat maker Stephen Jones. They tell their stories of that flamboyant period alongside the usual suspects of Rusty Egan, Boy George, Steve Dagger, Princess Julia, Gary Kemp, Marilyn, Andy Polaris, Chris Sullivan and Midge Ure.

While those not fully immersed in the history of The Blitz Club will delight in the 90 minutes of ‘Blitzed’, aficionados of New Romantic history will be disappointed to see many of the same old faces repeating variations on anecdotes told many times before. Meanwhile others will despair that music is not the main topic of discussion, although it would be fair to say that TV specials looking at key hit songs by VISAGE, ULTRAVOX, SPANDAU BALLET and CULTURE CLUB have been a plenty on Channel 5 lately…

However, some new faces do appear and Darla Jane Gilroy’s recollections of being chosen to be an extra in David Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video after he graced The Blitz are delightful. The inclusion of Elly Jackson of LA ROUX though is questionable; obviously chosen as an example of a modern day Blitz Kid because of her “Flock of Tilda Swintons” hairdo and having a No1 with the synth-driven ‘Bulletproof’ in 2009, she comes across as blissfully unaware of the long term influence of The Blitz but then she did aspire to be a folk singer as a teenager!

Another frustrating aspect of ‘Blitzed’ that could have been better researched is when David Bowie is mentioned in his position as the Godfather of The Blitz; a fair proportion of the archive footage accompanying this section is from after the club closed including his spiky-haired ‘Glass Spider’ period in 1987 and in one clip, the ‘Earthling’ period of 1997!

Reliably entertaining in ‘Blitzed’, resident DJ Rusty Egan makes some memorable and amusing observations of the time. Acting as co-consultant and providing new music for the documentary, the recently released soundtrack album additionally features period pieces by his former protégés SHOCK and RONNY as well as inspired by tracks from artists such as WE ARE BRANDO and TINY MAGNETIC PETS who he would be playing at The Blitz Club if it was still around and hadn’t closed in Spring 1981. The interconnected collection concludes with a live version of David Bowie’s ‘Where Are We Now?’ by Boy George.

Edited down from an amusing conversation that went on for nearly 4 hours, Rusty Egan chatted about the making of the ‘Blitzed’ documentary and its accompanying soundtrack.

It looks like the ‘Blitzed’ documentary has gone down well with the general public?

Yeah, it’s been very well received by the GENERAL public. But within the community of actual Blitz Kids, I put together a list of 50 or so of the most important people that went to The Blitz like John Galliano who would have been 18-19 year old students and part of the hub… I shared it online and called it “The 50 Blitz Kids Who Were Too Cool To Be In A Documentary About The Blitz”! *roars of laughter*

The quip went down well with them because they were being labelled too cool, it’s got a funny juxtaposition; of course, a lot of them couldn’t be squeezed into 90 minutes anyway!

So I acknowledged them by doing a video for a track called ‘Catwalk’ which is part of the ‘Blitzed’ soundtrack… I told them I wouldn’t be in the documentary unless I did the music! It was my chance to right some wrongs, the sound I was trying to get on the accompanying OST album, whether I wrote it, produced it or got someone else to do it, was not a retro album or another compilation with ‘Ashes To Ashes’ or ‘The Model’ which it easily could have been, it’s a different thing!

‘Catwalk’ appears to have the same chord progression as ‘The Model’ by KRAFTWERK?

NO! It’s the same chord progression as ‘Turn To Dust’ which Boy George sent me which I stripped down and added my sequence. So it was that music which accompanied the video footage of KRAFTWERK. But with that chord progression of ‘The Model’, you could sing 50 or so reggae or dance tunes over that…

…yeah! ‘Ride On Time’ by BLACK BOX is one!!

Well there you go!! I could probably do a mash-up of ‘The Model’ with ‘Ride On Time’! The DJ Robin Skouteris did one mixing ‘Fade To Grey’ with ‘Magic Fly’ and HURTS ‘Wonderful Life’ and even dropped PET SHOP BOYS in! He could stick the song ‘New Romantics’ by Taylor Swift with Dolly Parton and Mark Ronson in a never ending mix, unbelievable what he can do with the technology of today!

It would be fair to say people who had been more aware of The Blitz and its history have said many of the same people who were in the BBC’s ‘A Fine Romance’ 2001 documentary were in ‘Blitzed’?

When the producers said they wanted my help and said they wanted the phone numbers of Midge Ure, Boy George etc, I thought “oh, same old sh*t!” – so there was a bit of bartering, I said I’d to it if I did the music and I got paid!

Chris Payne did a piano and violin version of ‘Fade To Grey’. I thought I should put bass and drums onto that and extend it, cos you know I love an extended, and then for people like you, there’s a three and a half minute version there! *laughs*

Now, there was Chris Payne, Rusty Egan and Oscar Egan, there was no Midge Ure or Billy Currie, just us three making a version of ‘Fade To Grey’ at 105 BPM. I think it’s a good beautiful piece of music with wonderful arpeggios from Chris, low voice by me and my ex, the French speaking Belgian girl Brigitte. I am still in contact with her so I asked her to reprise it, we did as good as we could without Midge or Billy in our remake of ‘Fade To Grey’.

It’s all in my home studio, not in Abbey Road! Everybody says they’ve liked what we’ve done, that’s it! It’s not like I’ve added a rapper! I didn’t add a dance beat, I just made it clearer and louder with a middle break. It’s not like I had Abbey Road, the mixing desk of Conny Plank, Alan Parsons producing, Michael Rother on guitar and made a pile of sh*t! If I did that, you’d be right to have a go! It’s a labour of love!

Some more seasoned enthusiasts did not really find out anything new from watching ‘Blitzed’, it could have benefitted from the perspective of say, actress Eve Ferret who actually performed at The Blitz and Jacqueline Bucknell who brought David Bowie down that night…

I gave the producers a list of everyone, you know me, I’m very inclusive… Marilyn actually didn’t want to do it, I had to phone him up and told him “it’s better to be in it than not in it”… I do agree with you, but you’re discussing something I had no control over.

Overall, were you happy with how ‘Blitzed’ turned out?

NO, I LOOK FAT!

Yeah, a white shell suit is not a good look on you even if it’s Ralph Lauren!! *laughs*

They told me everyone wears black, please wear white!!!! But yes, I’m pleased with the documentary because when was the last time fashion was intertwined with music? You don’t look at THE KILLERS and go “what are they wearing?”, they’re just a band from Las Vegas! You don’t look at NEW ORDER and go “what is Barney wearing?”, they’re not a fashionable band.

SPANDAU BALLET were very ambitious and eventually successful, but you helped them out?

Steve Strange fancied Martin Kemp so wanted to put SPANDAU BALLET on at The Blitz. But he asked me to take a look and advise them what to do, so I did! Gary Kemp could sit there in his mansion and talk about how he knew if he jumped on that stage, he could take the scene… but he didn’t know Richard James Burgess, he didn’t know how to make a dance record, he didn’t know what a synthesizer was, he was just a young kid.

That SPANDAU BALLET comeback song ‘Once More’ in 2009, it was so bloomin’ middle of the road, it needed its own government safety film!! *laughs*

Ouch! They wanted to be pop stars, as did DURAN DURAN and DEPECHE MODE, they wanted to make pop music.

‘Blitzed’ is not a music documentary but were you surprised ‘Vienna’ only got mentioned for 15 seconds and ‘Fade To Grey’ for about 30?

I actually didn’t want them to play ‘Vienna’, I didn’t want them to play ‘Ashes To Ashes’, cos I didn’t want them playing the same songs… having that clip of Bowie doing ‘Heroes’ on ‘Top Of The Pops’ probably cost them £20,000! The labels have a chart of what songs are worth and they run it like a business, and because they go on the premise that they generally can only sell a song once, the price can be very high!

So what’s your favourite moment on ‘Blitzed’ that isn’t you?

I loved Boy George in it… y’know he could have died several times over the decades, but I saw a happy Boy George who had a whiter smile than me, happy to tell people he was a thief because he had no money and lived in a squat… thing is, Steve Strange was also a thief but lied about it! They had nothing and wanted to be wearing the latest clothes! They wanted to go clubbing every night and that cost a fortune!

Whereas although I went to borstal like in the film ‘Scum’ and I learned to survive with billiard balls in a sock to protect myself, I was always nice and said “come and stay round my house” and they would rob me sadly! Looking back at those people from 40 years ago, they are many who never made it, I could list a load of people. Y’know, it’s lovely to be an old man with my bus pass and to get my jab, having people I knew when I was 20 like Eve Ferret contacting me on a daily basis.

A lot of people don’t like me, they like Steve Strange and feel I shouldn’t be taking any of the glory on ‘Blitzed’. Even a friend of mine who I got DEPECHE MODE tickets for on the last tour wrote “it’s not all about you Rusty”… but I didn’t make the documentary, I’m just a bloke in it! I’VE GOT NO CONTROL OVER NOTHING!

Your new song ‘When We Were Young’ features prominently in ‘Blitzed’, it’s quite obviously influenced by Gina X’s ‘No GDM’ but I just wanted to say that its co-writer Zeus B Held has heard it and says he’s not going to sue you! *laughs*

Well, if he did, he wouldn’t be suing me, he’d be suing Paul Statham of B-MOVIE who came up with the music! He sent me the bassline and synthline, I put in a straight four LinnDrum beat and made it bigger. But ‘No GDM’ was a song I heard in Düsseldorf and brought in to play at The Blitz and it inspired so many people in the UK like FASHION and DEAD OR ALIVE because it was produced by Zeus B Held, ‘Nice Mover’ was another one from the album that I played.

So yes, I agree 100% that there’s a link! But the end result with the lyrics about “Tonight’s the night, we danced to Iggy, Ferry and Bolan, hey, we found love when we were young” became perfect for ‘Blitzed’.

‘When We Were Young’ manages to be retro-referencing but modern, and that’s quite a tricky thing to achieve…

You know that’s what I was trying to do, cos you kept moaning “Rusty, can you stop trying to be modern?!?” *laughs*

It’s my sound but we are in 2021 and I don’t want to be on at Rewind or Let’s Rock between Limahl and Kim Wilde! I’ll be hopefully doing Rusty Egan Presents VISAGE 1980-2021 at W-Festival in Belgium this August, performing the first two albums with Zaine Griff, Chris Payne and Dave Brookes before OMD headline on the Saturday night.

It’s is so difficult to write anything completely original! If I spoke to Ralf Hütter, he would say that to do KRAFTWERK, he had to put his blinkers on, turn everything off, turn off American Forces radio, turn off the TV with its schlager music, go into the lab at Kling Klang, be German and go into himself as to who he is!

So what was unique about the era captured in ‘Blitzed’ and why could it not really happen today?

As you know, I still go to night clubs and I went to one called The Box in Soho which I’ve been to about 20 times. It’s been going for about 7 or 8 years and is described as the “Studio 54 of today” and “The Blitz Club of today”. There are creative people in their 20s there who love Lee Bowery and Boy George, the sort of people who support LGBTQ+, would watch the Channel 4 drama series ‘It’s A Sin’ and love the music of the 80s or similar. They are creative types who can’t make a living from what they do, but might be influencers…

I met with the owners of ‘The Box’, the club started in New York and it was attended by the richest people in the city, the dot com millionaires, the “in with the in-crowd” types! They were putting on people miming to Lady Gaga songs and freak shows of people putting knitting needles through their nipples as entertainment. So it was loads of rich people throwing away money that flew in their letter box while they were asleep on their friends or so-called models on Instagram, all while the DJ is playing Kanye West!

But it sounds like a nightmare! That doesn’t interest me! So I suggested them putting on original artists and musicians, but they said they didn’t want to do it as they were making loads of money with people coming in six nights a week! Everything was about money!

The thing is, The Blitz was real, we were all broke, we were all thieves or on the dole, we were no-ones! The Box looks like The Blitz, but it’s not!

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Rusty Egan

‘Blitzed’ is available on demand via Sky

The ‘Blitzed’ soundtrack album is released by Future Music and available now via digital outlets

Rusty Egan, Zaine Griff, Chris Payne and Dave Brooks perform the music of VISAGE 1980 x 2021 at W-Festival in Belgium on Saturday 28th August 2021 – tickets are available from https://w-festival.com/en/

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Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
22nd March 2021