Steve Harnell, Editor Follow me on X (Twitter): @steve_harnell
A s someone who first started going to clubs towards the end of the 80s, the height of dancefloor fashion for me was a James T-shirt and a particularly swanky pair of Nike Air Jordans. So I have to take my Reni bucket hat off in appreciation to the Blitz club crowd who really pulled out all of the stops when it came to dressing to the nines for a big night out.
The Blitz’s DJ Rusty Egan quite rightly rejects the reductive idea that the club night he co-founded with Steve Strange invented the 80s wholesale, but it’s fair to say this most unprepossessing of venues – a World War II-themed wine bar for most of the week in Covent Garden, no less – lit the fuse of the New Romantic movement, which burned brightly for the next few years around the world.
And for our latest cover feature, as Blitz finally gets the definitive compilation that it so richly deserves, we take a trip inside its hallowed doors with a star-studded cast of club regulars, including Mr Egan himself, Boy George, Midge Ure, Gary Kemp and Philip Sallon. It makes for a fascinating read, both in terms of how many of the clubgoers still talk in hushed, reverent tones about those halcyon days and how the ruthlessness of Steve Strange’s door policy created something of a cultural pressure cooker, or as Boy George would have it: “Blitz was a drunken backcombed bitch fest.”
Elsewhere this issue it’s always a delight to welcome back Sananda Maitreya to these pages as he unveils his latest album. Once again, he’s lost absolutely none of his ambition – the final part of his Pegasus Project is an epic 41-track affair. Packag
