June 1984

CULTURE CLUB

CONTENTS

BILLY IDOL

INvasion

Dear Father, I am getting desperate. I know you're very disappointed in me, and I can hardly blame you. Was it actually 20 years ago you were telling me my plans for a career in rock music were futile? A long time ago. And remember how I didn't believe you?

OUR DINNER WITH ANDROGYNES

J. KORDOSH

They're hitting America fast and hard, this latest generation of British musicians. Bizarre names blur across the charts. Songs with inaudible guitars come to be called rock hits. Photos appear in magazines, enticing but weird, suggesting a conspiracy of frozen cynicism afoot.

BIG COUNTRY

DURAN X DURAN

RICK JOHNSON

Everybody's talkin' 'bout Duran Duran these days. LITTLE GIRLS UNDERSTAND! screams Rolling Slone. DURANMANIA: IS IT LIVE OR IS IT MEMORY?, demands the LA. Times. DURAN DURAN LINKED TO OLYMPICS! reveals Billboard. HUNGRY LIKE THE WHAT? asks CREEM.

THE THIRD BRITISH INVASION 1977-79

RICHARD RIEGEL

For many, the "third" British Invasion may have been the first one they were even aware of.

BOY GEORGE

DURAN DURAN

THEY ARE THE CLASH

You'd have to be crazy to want to be Joe Strummer. Rock the corporate casbah a little and you're a hero to the disenchanted middle class youth and hoary rock critics who are willing to accept anything—be it rhetoric, doomsaying or just plain dogma—in the name of good old rock 'n' roll.

ATTACK OF THE RAGING POOFTERS

JOHN MENDELSSOHN

No sooner had such diverse Americans as the Mamas & Papas, the minions of Motown, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, the Byrds and Beach Boys and Four Seasons, Sgt. Barry Sadler, Simon & Garfunkel, and a succession of young suburban Stones and Yardbirds-aping groups with Brian Jones hairdos recaptured the American airwaves by the dawn of the Summer of Love than a second wave of British hitmakers was upon us.

THE WHO IN AMERICA

TOBY GOLDSTEIN

The Who were never about being "nice boys."

THE FIRST BRITISH INVASION 1964-1966

TOBY GOLDSTEIN

Every so often at unexpected moments, memories float to the surface, like long ago dream fragments.

THE BEATLES BOOK OF LISTS

JOHN MENDELSSOHN

American albums for which Capitol Records ought to be commended heartily for assembling and/or programming with a sharp ear for stylistic continuity and consistency of mood, not that there aren’t anomalies on each: 1. The Beatles' 2nd Album (maximum R 'n' B!)

OUTvasion

Dear Father, Of all the nasty luck! By now you—and all England—are quite familiar with Boy George, of course.

DURAN DURAN

BRITISH INVASION