I originally came upon Sweet Dreams – The Story of the New Romantics by Dylan Jones via an interview with Andrew Ford on The Music Show. However, it feels like one of those books that continually pops up in my feed, whether it be by Tony Martin in a conversation with Damian Cowell in episode 10 of Only the Shit You Love, the Podcast or in the Depeche Mode J-Files.
Sweet Dreams covers the period between 1975 to 1985. The book explores the music that influenced the New Romantics (Kraftwerk, Neu!, Giorgio Moroder, David Bowie, Roxy Music) and those caught up in the movement (Gary Numan, Ultravox, Visage, Orchestral Movement in the Dark, Spandet Ballet, ABC, Human League, Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants, Culture Club, Eurythmics, Wham, Sade, Depeche Mode, New Order.) Some bands were at the heart of the change, while others positioned themselves in opposition to it, however they were all a part of it in some way shape or form.
Although music is the through-line through out the book, it is more than just a documentation of the music of that time. The book explores various influences, such as the clubs (The Blitz and Hacienda Club), fashion (Antony Price and Vivian Westwood), culture (MTV and gay rights), the place of education (St. Martin’s College), and politics (Thatcherism and Falkland War).
As a text, Sweet Dreams is a behemoth, traversing ten years, including over 100 different voices, and spanning over 600 pages. As an exploration of the time, it dives in further than say the BBC documentary Synth Britannia. At the same time I was also left feeling that there was probably still so much that was cut out or possibly left silent due to access to sources or the artists. For example, although Jones touches on artists like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, I imagine he could have gone into some of these beginnings in more detail. In addition to this, I feel that this is also one of those books that you could choose a particular thread and explore further, based on Jones’ own bibliography at the end. Although, sadly or gladly, Malcolm McLaren’s autobiography is not one of them, clearly for a reason it would seem.
What I found intriguing was how so much changed in such a short time.
Carey Labovitch: When you are living through a period, you don’t think of it as a period.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
The book begins with the rise of punk and ends with drugs and stadium pop on the back of LiveAid. A particular part of this change was the revolutionary roll of technology. Gone was the punk ethic of learning ‘three chords’, this was instead replaced by electronics:
Phil Oakey: We laughed at the other bands learning three chords – we used one finger.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
This is something Damian Cowell discussed in the Only The Shit You Love: The Podcast, with regard to his purchase of the Roland TR-606, but Jones’ book really fleshes this out.
It begins with bands like the Human League deciding between buying a second-hand car or a miniKORG 700, Gary Numan rewriting a whole album after finding a Polymoog in the studio, or the Eurythmics getting a loan to buy equipment, including a Movement Systems Drum Computer, Roland Sh-101 and an Oberheim OB-X, and seemingly ends with unions passing a motion to ban the use of electronic devices.
When Barry Manilow toured the UK in January 1982, he used synths to simulate the orchestral sounds of a big band, after which the union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices ‘capable of recreating the sounds of conventional musical instruments’. They were particularly concerned about the possible effect on West End theatrical productions, imagining orchestra pits full of ‘technicians’ instead of musicians.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
(On a side note, Massive Attack actually sold a car to replace the sampled strings on ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ with a proper orchestra.)
It is easy to write off some of these early sounds as dated or simplistic, especially as synthesisers and production techniques have ebbed and evolved over time. But this does not capture the significance of the change. (I cannot help be reminded of the quote, “There is more technology in an iPhone 5 than the first Apollo spacecraft that went to the moon.”)
Personally, I have an Arturia MiniFreak, Roland MC-101 and Roland JX-08. I imagine I could probably reproduce much of what was done in the early eighties and more and not really think much of it. However, this was all new and cutting edge.
John Foxx: I figured new instruments had always radically altered music in the past – for instance, the electric guitar. Here was the next major shift – the synthesizer.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
With this in mind, the book argues that the music produced between late 70’s and early 80’s was as influential to music, if not more so, as the changes that occurred in the mid-60’s.
Simon Napier-Bell: This period was as important as the original British invasion. If you really want to look back at pop culture, the first British invasion was during the first decade of the twentieth century, when every single musical on Broadway was British and Brits invaded Broadway. The second invasion was the one we call the first British invasion, which was the sixties. But the eighties one was equally relevant, and possibly more important, because the one in the sixties basically involved a lot of groups who sounded like the Beatles. There was much more variety in the eighties. The sixties were great because that was when we all discovered we could have sex every night, but the eighties were more creative.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
What amazes me now, thinking about bands that try and reproduce the ‘sound of the eighties’, is how different and diverse all the bands in the early eighties actually were, often from album to album.
Jim Kerr: The amazing thing about people in the eighties was their ambition. Not so much ambition for riches and fame – that was too far down the road – but ambition to do something glorious. And whether that was our band or spiky music like the Cure and Magazine or early Spandau Ballet and Duran. I mean, early Spandau wasn’t Tony Hadley’s chocolate box; from day one they were going to take over the world! And they did. And all of them were quite maverick. To me, it wasn’t so much any movement; it was more like there weren’t two or three bands like the Cure, there was the Cure. There weren’t two or three bands like the Human League, like the Birthday Party, like the Smiths, there was one. A lot of real individualism and wonderful imagination, to such a level that it was almost overwhelming. It was an incredibly political decade – the Berlin Wall coming down, Mandela being freed, the miners’ strikes, the poll tax, Tiananmen Square. It certainly wasn’t all shoulder pads, Rambo and Filofaxes.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
As Andrew Ridgeley argues, this liberation was made possible by punk.
Andrew Ridgeley: What punk did was liberate how people thought about creativity in the musical sense.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
Or as Toyah Willcox suggests, the eighties was an alien escaping from punk.
Toyah Willcox: I always think of the eighties as the alien tearing itself out of the body of punk.
Source: Sweet Dreams by Dylan Jones
With this sense of liberation and diversity, I was left wondering about the cross-overs, the bleeding between bands, the sharing of members, the different possibilities with the same technology. I also wonder what ‘shit‘ (to borrow from Brian Eno) was created that fertilised the success of others. Those bands that broke up in Wagga Wagga and did not have the luck or opportunity to get a loan to purchase synthesisers, like the Eurythmics. Sweet Dreams helped highlight that there is a world beyond ‘the hits’ or the satire of Wedding Singer and Zoolander, a world beyond the myth.