The Blitz nightclub in Covent Garden was only open for 18 months and only on Tuesday nights – but it become the crucible for a cultural revolution and launched the careers of some of the biggest stars of the 80s
It was the place where the Eighties truly began, and the launchpad for the careers of some of the decade’s biggest stars.
The Blitz nightclub in London’s Covent Garden was only open for 18 months, from 1979 to 1981, and only on Tuesday nights. But the scruffy bar became the crucible for a cultural revolution, defining the sound and style of a new generation.
Future members of Spandau Ballet hung out there. Boy George originally worked in the cloakroom and, while the outrageously dressed were welcome, Mick Jagger famously once got turned away for wearing jeans.
Inside, the tiny war-themed venue pulsed with art-rock and synth pop, while the dancefloor dazzled with flamboyant fashion – garish colours, theatrical make-up and wild hair.
In fact The Blitz, co-owned by Steve Strange and DJ Rusty Egan, is considered the birthplace of the New Romantics – the androgynous, eccentric look inspired from military uniforms, pirate chic and glam rock excess.
Later this month, its legacy will be celebrated in a new exhibition, Blitz: The Club That Shaped the 80s, at the Design Museum in Kensington.
Perhaps the club’s unique atmosphere rubbed off most on Boy George, back then squatting at a friend’s house and working two jobs – the other at a fashion store called Boy.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, he remembers how Steve Strange, who manned the door, limited entry to only those who were dressed “like a walking piece of art” – and it didn’t matter how famous you were.
He says: “It was like walking the plank every week. Everybody went there thinking, ‘What if I don’t get in?’ You always had to go there thinking ‘They will never turn me away’, but that was always an option depending on what mood Steve was in.
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“When he turned Mick Jagger away I thought it was horrific. I was like ‘How can you turn Mick Jagger away from a nightclub?’ It was wrong on every level.
“But that even Mick might get turned away for wearing jeans was what made the club even more exciting. If you got into The Blitz you were the height of fashion.”
It meant that the Blitz Kids – as the style-setters who frequented the club were called – were constantly trying to up their game.
He remembers: “We used to try and find our own look. There used to be fights on nights out between people if you even hinted at someone else’s look. I remember once there was an incident when someone crimped their hair in the same way that my friend Jeremy Healy had his.
“He waited with scissors outside the club, such was the insult like ‘You can’t have my hair!’
“It was so exciting. Of course we all acted like we didn’t give a s***, but everybody thought it was about them. It was a small club, but there was a lot of ego in that space. You know, a lot of people who thought they were the most important thing in the world.”
By the end of the 1970s, Britain was depressing and divided, with power shortages and widespread strikes, culminating in the Winter of Discontent, while music had lost the swing of the 60s.
The Blitz Club created a glamorous and colourful escape from reality. Steve Strange was just 19, a Welsh lad who had moved to London from The Valleys and quickly made a name for himself as a nightclub promotor, running David Bowie themed nights in the basement below a Soho brothel.
Quickly outgrowing the space, the venue moved to a shabby former wine bar in Covent Garden, adorned with World War II memorabilia and framed pictures of Winston Churchill, located between two of London’s most important art colleges – the Central School and St Martin’s.
The club soon became the epicentre of an exciting new cultural movement of both fashion and music, which would define the Eighties.
It was where Spandau Ballet was formed and first played live, where DJ Rusty Egan’s band Visage were formed, and where other bands like Duran Duran and Depeche Mode regularly performed.
Other regulars at the club who would go on to become stars of the Eighties included Sade, Marilyn and Bananarama.
Boy George would sometimes leave his cloakroom job to sing with the group Bow Wow Wow at the Blitz, before starting his own band – Culture Club – a year after the club closed its doors.
New Romantics powerhouse band Culture Club had number one hits with Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.
Boy George attributes his success to the club, and especially David Bowie, the master of reinvention, the megastar who inspired many of the Blitz Kids.
A regular at the club when, in 1980, Bowie needed people to appear in his Ashes to Ashes video, he went to The Blitz to recruit some of the most outlandishly dressed.
Boy George remembers the night. He says: “Steve Strange came up to me in the checkroom and he goes, ‘DB wants to see you’. But I couldn’t get up the stairs, it was just insane and I couldn’t get up there. So I ended up not being in that video, which at the time I was quite bitter about. But then I also told myself it was a bad idea like, ‘I should never have been in it’
“I think Bowie has got a lot to do with who I am today.”
He says he also found a safe environment at the club where everyone was experimenting with their sexuality.
“When we went to the Blitz boys would kiss boys, girls would kiss girls, there was a kind of freedom that wasn’t so explained as it is now. People weren’t so uptight about it,” he recalls.
“A lot of my heroes were straight men who were playing around with sexual boundaries like Marc Bolan, Bowie, Steve Harley. There were so many people who were straight guys but knew how to tap into that sort of queer, zeitgeist underground thing.
“And they were the people who brought me the message of, you can be whoever you want to be.”
Gary Kemp: ‘Everyone thought it was out turn’
One of the biggest bands of the Eighties, Spandau Ballet conquered the world with hits like True and Gold.
But before they were famous, Gary and Martin Kemp, Steve Norman, John Keeble and Tony Hadley tapped into the vibe and cutting-edge synth pop sound at The Blitz Club.
The club’s house band, they played their first gig there in 1979, with Siouxsie Sioux, Billy Idol and Midge Ure in the audience.
Gary Kemp remembers how important the iconic club was to the emerging new sound and style. He says: “I remember going on one Tuesday night and there’d be news, film crews from Japan outside and stuff like that. There was a sense that we were responsible for whatever was going to come next.
“I do think there was a moment in the Blitz where everyone thought, we’re being looked at and maybe it’s our turn to be the next musicians, the next designers, the new movement. Because there was always a sense of like, there was this, psychedelia turned into glam, glam turned into punk, there was an evolution.”
Remembering their first gig, he says: “I don’t think anyone in the room wanted to watch a band, to be honest. I think that was a great risk that we took.
“They were all about being the stars on the dance floor themselves, or lounging at the bar, or just hanging out in the loos. Everyone was the star. They didn’t want the lights to go down on them and turn and have to look at someone on a stage.
“But we took that risk and we did it twice, actually. There was definitely a sense of everyone else wanting to be successful. That’s what happened.”
He believe The Blitz changed the face of pop music. A lot of stuff came out of it. Punk, post-punk and this moment on a Tuesday night created a lot that was successful in the 80s. A lot of people came out of that space and went on to become successful in design and dance and writing and television and obviously music.”
– New Romantics by Iain McKell is available to order, £35 plus shipping, at www.iainmckell.com.
– ‘Blitz: The Club That Shaped The 80s’ runs at the Design Museum, Kensington, from September 20, 2025 – March 29, 2026.