Glory of the 80s

What inspired the first (UK) single, Glory of the 80s?
“Mainly the honesty of the decadence of that decade. There’s the line ‘and then, just when it all seemed clear you go and disappear’. I knew a lot of great people in the eighties but at the time I didn’t always understand them. Now, there’s such a void in the art world, people with vision have physically passed on. It’s also a stab at political correctness - you can’t say this, you can’t say that; now everybody has to be called a Spanish American, an African American and I mean, [getting worked up] Oh bloody, fucking hell!!! I understand the abuses that have happened and I absolutely think recompense should be paid, but you don’t do it just on a surface level. Everybody thinks that the debt has been paid to the ‘quote unquote’ Indians who had their land taken away from them because we call them Native Americans. It’s hard when everything is so eggshell, eggshell, eggshell. I do miss the eighties. It was great, knowing that friends were on one hand dialing a charity and on the other hand doing a line of blow—but not lying about it, being honest. None of us are this light and dark fantasy. What’s dark to you may be light to me and vice versa.” [Attitude (UK) - November 1999]

“The harpsichord is very much in Glory of the 80s. She’s part of the bed; I cut it live, with the piano. You might not notice it, but she’s there. I love that, because Glory of the 80s could be the 1780s [laughs].” [All Music zine (www) - October 1999]

Glory of the Eighties is a great evocation of a particular place and time.
“The decadence of the ‘80s in L.A. brings out a smile. I wasn’t into the L.A. [hard] rock scene even though I had big hair and I had thigh-high plastic boots. I think I was more into the gothic witch thing. Pirates. It was that whole dressing-up moment, Adam Ant with tits, but not really - his were much cuter than mine or my friends’. We used to wake up and go to Retail Slut and pick up a few pieces for the week. There was a balance of thigh-high plastic boots and going to see your shaman. I liked that. It was all happening at the same time. Everything was so much on the outside, pleasing things on the outside, but there was a lot of camaraderie that I really adored. A lot of us were friends, going to see different bands. It wasn’t competitive in the way it became in the nineties.

“In the ‘90s... well, you’re doing your yoga thing, you’re eating the right foods, your friends at PETA aren’t giving you too much shit - and I like my friends at PETA. [In the ‘80s] people were calling in to the Live Aid charity and doing blow at the same time. And I found that very honest. There was a shadow aspect that people weren’t hiding as much.” [VH1.com - 1999]