SWEET DREAMS

An oral history of England’s New Romantic pop movement, full of synths, style, and substance (no, really).

Conventional 1970 and ’80s rock history draws a direct line from punk to new wave to mainstream alternative acts, dismissing the likes of ABC, Spandau Ballet, Human League, and Culture Club as sideshows. But the more than 150 voices assembled by longtime pop journalist and GQ editor-in-chief Jones offer a more sophisticated—and, frankly, less homophobic—take. The scenesters who convened on London clubs like the Blitz saw punk as a spent force by the late ’70s and were more enchanted by electronic acts like Kraftwerk and the enduring glamour of David Bowie and Roxy Music. (For this crowd, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” not a Sex Pistols or Clash single, was the key inspiration.) No question, fashion mattered plenty: Blitz impresario and Visage frontman Steve Strange proudly turned Mick Jagger away from his club because he was “dressed in a baseball cap and trainers.” But the music was vital, too, and Jones captures a moment when acts like Gary Numan, Yazoo, and Soft Cell were delivering pioneering synth-pop graced with some of Bowie’s stardust. The rise of MTV gave those bands a global platform but also spawned an army of lesser wannabes (even a young Ricky Gervais got into the act) and opened the movement to accusations of being only as good as their haircuts. The assembled commentators come armed with dishy anecdotes, though casual readers would be satisfied with a book half as long. By the time 1985 rolled around, heroin and fickle tastes had undone many of the musicians, which somewhat undercuts the author’s case for the musicians’ enduring influence. (Oddly, two of the era’s enduring acts, the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode, get relatively short shrift.) But for a while there, everybody looked and sounded great.

A factoid-rich if bloated tribute to an overly maligned moment in pop history.