Like punk never happened

There are a few things which provide the context for me not liking this book. Firstly, I was 19 years old when "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" came out, consuming a lot of the subject matter of this book. I was an opinionated and dedicated music fan forming my own views. Secondly, I have recently finished reading a far superior book about this period "Rip it Up and Start Again" by Simon Reynolds. Thirdly, "Like Punk Never Happened" has a reputation as an insightful account of the pop music of the early 80s. The title reinforces that expectation, but the text doesn't deliver. Too much of it is padded with mindless fan service, waffle of the type that filled the pages of the glossy magazines like Smash Hits, which the author was intimately involved with at the time.

My assessment of the music of this period is more in keeping with Reynolds' account. Punk ploughed the field, the tired old crop of 70s rock was uprooted and buried, and then 1000 flowers bloomed. It was Paul Weller who coined the phrase that gives this book its title. In certain respects it's accurate... the "new pop" of Culture Club, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet was crass, commercial, shallow, like the exploitative pre-punk bubblegum music of the late 60s and early 70s. But by the late 70s and early 80s, it felt like this fun, colourful new music was one of the 1000 flowers which grew as a result of punk. Reynolds tells a much more satisfying story of this fabulously diverse and wildly inventive period, and has greater insights into its contradictions.

Dave Rimmer tells a little bit of that story too, including the direct connections Culture Club had to Malcolm McLaren and groups like The Clash, and there are a few pages of excellent analysis of the cultural and political context this music sprang up in. But soon after that you get pages of tedious personal anecdotes of what the author saw in the hotel rooms, bars and clubs where he was, ahem, 'privileged' to hang out with Boy George and his gang. There's plenty about the business side of things, the cynical industrial mechanics of making pop records and getting them into the charts, but there's not much insight into the music. They actually made some great records: "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" is a lovely slice of melodic pop reggae, "That's the Way" was a soulful duet with Helen Terry which made the cynics take note, "Church of the Poison Mind" was a perfectly pitched tribute to Motown.

I suppose it's fair enough, in the case of Culture Club things of artistic weight were actually overwhelmed by the tabloid circus and the Thatcherite mode of 80s pop. But the way I remember it, we absolutely prioritised artisitic innovation and the political aspect of pop, espoused by the likes of Weller and Billy Bragg. At the same time we had the punk contempt for our hippy uncles who would sneer at pop, and so hell yes, we loved all those glossy outrageous sweet sonic treats being created by Culture Club, Wham, and the rest. We'd read NME AND Smash Hits, and here in Australia the local music tabloid RAM, but we did it because we wanted to, not because we were being herded into a particular uniformed subculture by the corporate Svengalis of the entertainment industry. We didn't have to have dinner only, or dessert only. We liked ALL kinds of music, and it was possible to do so precisely because punk happened.