“Everyone was having sex, but nobody was talking about it”
MY LIFE began in 1983 when I went to my first gig, aged 15. It was The Smiths at the Savoy, and afterwards nothing was ever the same again. That gig was my graduation from teeny pop — Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet, Adam Ant — to Eighties alternative: The Cure, Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Jesus & Mary Chain, Teardrop Explodes, Echo & the Bunnymen, Violent Femmes, Husker Du, and a thousand lesser knowns. The Smiths played Cork again in 1985, and New Order did Connolly Hall in 1986. I began buying the NME.
As an Eighties kid you had little choice but to embrace the look — frilly shirts, headbands, big hair, blue eyeliner, pink blusher, mini-crinis, terrible legwarmers, fluorescent ankle socks, pointy-toed shoes, plastic jewellery. Slow dancing to Chris de Burgh, and wondering if life would always be naff.
