Photographs taken at Covent Garden’s Blitz Club, 1980. The legendary club night held at the Great Queen Street venue every Tuesday was co-hosted by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan.
A comment by Rusty on our Instagram feature:
Rusty Egan “Steve Strange was my flatmate. We started the club on Tuesdays. He did the door I did the music. 5 days and nights we were out promoting and I was searching for music. It was searching for people and music that we knew were out there…and they came and so did the music”.
Blitz Kids
The club was a haunt for aspiring fashion designers and students from nearby St Martin’s school of art and Central School – who would often test out their designs in the club. Many went on to become respected names in their field – as well as regulars including Boy George, Marilyn and future members of Spandau Ballet. These colourful characters and creatives were amongst the main faces in the club, known as ‘The Blitz Kids’ – who pioneered the New Romantic movement of the early 1980s.
Door Policy
The selective door policy meant that if your face didn’t fit then you wouldn’t get into the club. Often seen as elitist, this wasn’t really the case, it was often to protect the regulars from unwanted abuse.
Rusty “We started the night at Blitz because of homophobic thugs and violence against anyone different. The door policy was only to ensure the right people were in.”
Andrew Holligan
Andrew “I met Steve Strange, Boy George, Marilyn and others in 1980. I was working for (assisting) a fashion/advertising photographer in London who was doing a story on the New Romantics. He was taking hard-edged studio portraits of them and he managed to sell the story to the German magazine Stern, but they wanted some club shots too, so I was sent to Blitz Club (okayed by Steve Strange because I wasn’t a New Romantic).
Gallery
All photos © Andrew Holligan.
