There’s this sudden Nineties nostalgia that we’re being drenched in. Everyone’s playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Youth not to mention Oasis, Blur and Pulp once again. The totemic value given to the Sixties and Seventies, of course, doesn’t need yet another retro-party to spread the groove history around. But what about the Eighties? Where are its defence lawyers?
Once you flush the likes of Van Halen, Scorpions, Foreigner, Hall & Oates, Whitesnake and Journey down the toilet, you are left with a rich stream of 80s rock that’s waiting to be recovered, rediscovered and celebrated. Okay, so Wham! too was from the Eighties. But then according to that logic, the Nineties was about Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice and Richard Marx. So when talking about the Eighties why don’t we also remember that Blondie and Police were hitting their highpoints in the Eighties, and U2, Dire Straits, The Cure, Men At Work and Guns’n’Roses were all coming out with their stuff then. All this while Joy Division, The Clash and The Smiths were injecting raw intelligence into rock ‘n’roll.
Like all decades, the Eighties too had there one hit wonders. I hunted down Safety Dance by Men Without Hats some ten years after I listened to them on a stretch in my newly-acquired Walkman. Also from the hoary Eighties was that million-selling gem by Human League, Don’t You Want Me (1981) that coincided with my first amorous stirrings. Then there was the Buggles’ classic Radio Killed The Video Star – covered in the Nineties by the Presidents of the USA – which actually points to the real revolution of the Eighties: the music video revolution.
But just in case you people in the 21st century think that this was a decade only full of one hit wonders (and in which a song by the St Winifred’s School Choir’s No One Quite Like Grandma reached No. 1 on the UK charts), think again.
Here, eat on my list of five favourite Eighties albums and wonder:
• Joshua Tree (U2): This 1987 classic brought these Irish lads on to the big stage. Numbers like With or Without You, Bullet in the Blue Sky and Tripped Through Your Wire are still played with heady anticipation.
• The Queen Is Dead (The Smiths): In 1986, this album blew the happy Monday smiles off Thatcherite Britain. Numbers that stick it right in: There’s a Light That Never Goes Out, Big Mouth Strikes Again and I Know It’s Over
• Appetite For Destruction (Guns & Roses):Sweet Child O’ Mine, Paradise City and Welcome To The Jungle dragged the air-guitar out of hairspray and brought the Eighties closer to the Nineties
• Brothers In Arms (Dire Straits): In 1985, laidback slickness through the guitars and sounds of Mark Knofler announced a sophistication that had a hangdog charm. Numbers that made you sit up: Money For Nothing, So Far Away and Ride Across The River
• London Calling (Clash):I know, I know… this is a 1979 double album. But it’s all about distilled Eighties anger. Starting from the title track and Train In Vain to Guns of Brixton and Spanish Bombs, this is Seventies punk slipping through to my generation.
