Bang!: A History of Britain in the 1980s (113 page)

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Authors: Graham Stewart

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Special Relationship. Thatcher, Reagan and Lucky in the White House’s Rose Garden, April 1985.

The popular impression that Thatcher was the President’s poodle belied their heated private arguments, not least over abolishing nuclear weapons, but
provided rich comic material for the puppet satirists of ITV’s
Spitting Image
.

With synthesizers replacing electric guitars and shirts and velvet supplanting denim, pop drifted from rebellion to ostentation. 1981 found Andy McCluskey and
Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

Singing about Joan of Arc while resembling the lead characters of that year’s hit television serial.
Brideshead Revisited

The New Romantic look would not have appeared out of place at a 1920s party thrown by the ‘Bright Young Things’.

Nutty Boys and Salford Lads. With twenty consecutive top twenty hits in the charts between 1979 and 1985, Madness could reasonably claim to be
the
band of that period.

Though it was The Smiths who ultimately found themselves compared to The Beatles.

Wembley, 13 July 1985: the most spectacular charity appeal in history is watched by 74,000 in the stadium and more than 1.4 billion on television.

Bob Geldof whispers in Prince Charles’s ear while Princess Diana focusses on the music. Behind her, rock royalty’s David Bowie confers with Brian
May and Roger Taylor of Queen.

The efforts in June 1984 by striking miners to blockade a British Steel coking plant resulted in a pitched battle with the police at Orgreave.

Where, the previous month, the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, had been arrested ... but not silenced.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s songs about sex and nuclear war turned mid-eighties anxieties into chart success.

Their ‘Frankie Say Relax!’ T-shirts popularized a fashion for slogan clothing, worn by mainstream acts like Wham! ...

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