A History of Goth

"Mommy, where do goths come from?" "Well honey....um...there's a bat that flies down at midnight on halloween and...uh no, um...there's this time in everyone's life when they want to listen to Robert Smith and...no...no..not right. uh, see honey, it's like this. When a man is feeling a certain way and he puts on a skirt and black lipstick.....oh dear. Can't you ask me an easier question, like about sex?"

Goth is like that one black sock in the laundry. You're not quite sure how it got there, and you think perhaps that APOP stole the mate to it. Or not. Anyhow, maybe you'd like some insight on where the subculture came from. In a recent interview with Mick Mercer, I asked him some questions about the old school scene as it relates to Britain (it being the seat of the movement). As someone who was actually around at the time, he gave me some good and intersting insights into the topic of goth history.

What was Goth actually an offshoot of, punks or new romantics? I've heard Goth comes from both from one source or another, although I tend to believe more that it stems from punk, especially music wise.

Punk, pure and simple. New Romantic happened after the change from Punk to Post-Punk to Goth had happened, and across the country bands were developing their styles. I’m sure some bands forming after New Romantic took a few visual ideas from them, and then dismissed them later, as being too flouncey. Musically the only thing which may have come from that side of things was a bit of keyboard work, and simplicity in how to present songs, a la Soft Cell, but Human League had already done similar things quote some time before. New Romantic music was notable for one thing - no emotional or intellectual depth. It was pure hedonistic fun, and also fairly frivolous, so lots of dimwits got into easily, whereas they’d be scared off by Goth.

What were goths originally called? Deathrockers?

Not in the UK. We never really heard any of that. It was Post-Punk if anything (not Positive Punk, that didn’t actually exist). Goth was people - crowd and bands - who wanted a bit more depth to the type of excitement Punk had provided.

What were some of the bands that are considered proto-goth and what were the bands that were actually considered to be the first real goth bands?

The first band was Gloria Mundi, in 1977, along with Ultravox when John Foxx was singing. Gloria Mundi came out of, and returned to, the alternative cabaret circuit, and that is close to some Goth principles of intense drama. There weren’t many bands pre-Punk who you could see without sleeping soundly, but to offset turgid prog rock, we had a few decent funk bands, r’n’b band, and some odd things lumped together under the umbrella of ‘art school’. They weren’t very successful, with the most well known being Deaf School who got a couple of albums out, and Sadista Sisters, but Gloria Mundi came from that and possessed an ugly, thin sound, with old style keyboards and the two singers acted out emotional vignettes in the songs. Plus they had a barbaric guitar sound live. The records are very tinny and peculiar but in 1977 because they had the angst and pace, they fitted in perfectly with Punk but were clearly something else, just as John Foxx was when he glided around in the neon glow of the early Ultravox songs, and later Adam & The Ants also brought an extra dimension to the basic Punk.

Gloria Mundi wouldn’t have called themselves a Goth band, nor would anybody else, but the audience who went for them went for Ultravox, and later you’d see the same people at early Ants gigs, and so on. As one band became too popular, you’d also see people going to another band, which happened a lot back then. People wanted the initial surge of excitement and discovery.

When Punk happened, there wasn’t a great mushrooming of bands originally, and they were spread throughout the UK, but then labels began to start, often with a regional bias, which was natural. When people started forming bands, being influenced by punk but wanting to do something more expressive, but retaining the urgency, it was natural they’d go to the smaller labels, and with Rough Trade operating a great distribution service, and with shops everywhere selling indie records, bands couldn’t go wrong. It was a boom time, and the bands flourished.

Many of them had darker twists to them. Even a Punk band like The Dark fitted in with Goth in a way, and were pretty close to what Deathrockers were meant to be, which always struck me as a dark form of Punk. Goth was a much moodier approach.

The best known example, and the most important in the history of UK Goth is UK Decay a band who started out as a ramshackle Punk band, got heavily influenced by the humour, simplicity and imagination of the Ants and began turning their sound into a darkly urgent beast. They also played everywhere and became popular, and somehow felt responsible, helping as many bands as they could.

The scene grew for three simple reasons. Punk has created and interested a huge audience who found the more one-dimensional approach boring and wanted more than major labels were providing with safer New Wave bands, the indie labels came in and made it possible for newer, more individualistic bands to reach that audience, and of course bands were forming everywhere who wanted more style and depth.

There is this whole question of goth being a "lifestyle" these days, not just a music or fashion based movement. Is that something that has just kind-of evolved on its own for some people, or did that sentiment exist back in the beginning?

It evolved. At the time the most common Goth link you ever noticed was in fanzines. It seemed to be same imagery. It was in my fanzine and some half a dozen others, but we all knew each other and shared common interests - and then you saw other zines starting too. They weren’t coping us, it was just clear that they were inspired by the bands, and the sounds happened to make this imagery more relevant. Instead of going the trad Punk route with stenciled imagery we were ripping things out of old horror mags and comics. A lot of death imagery and spooky stuff was our forte. The people involved were mainly wearing leathers, jeans and t-shirts, with quite a few mohicans filling out to a huge shock of hair. Then maybe a bit of excess makeup and fishnets appeared, but it was a very basic style. There was no ‘lifetsyle’ - eerything was based round gigs rather than clubs - with no overlapping scene (i.e. Vampire), it was just the wilder elements of the punk audience. Punk crowds tended to be normal kids and students. Goth crowds tended to be lunatics.

What was the typical social class, age, (general social makeup) of the people who were got involved in goth?

Working class dominated to begin with because it was all about people who spent all their time and money going to gigs, and pretty quickly, following their favourite bands round the country, sleeping rough as a result. Things changed later and the scene grew.

Can you pinpoint a year when it really started?

By 1979, because you had the Ants headlining big venues across the country, and so many different types of bands which had come out of Punk doing really well, from The Cure and Stiff Little Fingers on an indie label, to The Undertones, Pretenders, Gang of 4. It was an insanely productive period. That action by non-Goth bands meant variety was everywhere, and it showed bands you could do anything and succeed. Early Goth bands were forming. Bauhaus were out and about, without a decent image, you had bands who were close to the sound, who fell away, like Psychedelic Furs and Wasted Youth, and even some of the newer Punk bands who were drawing close to the anarchist Crass scene, like Rubella Ballet started off as weirdly expressive. You had UK Decay going everywhere but also The Pack, led by Kirk Brandon, which would turn into Theatre Of Hate. The early gigs by Toyah were totally Goth with the sound, imagery and lighting. Bands from overseas would come in, be they Kleenex Or Dr Mix & The Remix, and it all added different elements, usually sleek and dark, often charismatic and exciting. Joy Diviison were buzzing about, as were The Cravats. It all had a certain dark mood and shared intensity.

Then in 1980 it all coalesced into something and you noticed even more that the same people were turning up all lots if gigs, including for Killing Joke, Ski Patrol, UK Decay, the re-invigorated Bauhaus, Animals & Men, even some of the early Factory stuff fitted in by being odd mood music with a twist.

You also has regular weekend gigs at the Lyceum in London where bills, either by design or accident would have ideas being presented which differed from the norm. In 1979 one night might be Human League headlining, supported by Teardrop Explodes, The Beat and Flowers, or Nina Hagen supported by The Pack and Mo-dettes, even The Cure headlining with Ruts and Purple Hearts supporting. In 1980 you got Joy Division headlining, with Killing Joke, Certain Ratio and Section 25 supporting. Or Psychedelic Furs, supported by Certain Ration, Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and Manicured Noise. Cabaret Voltaire would headline ULU, supported by Fad Gadget, Clock DVA and Truth Squad. In the wake of all that bands like Sex Gang (Panic Button) and Danse Society, March Violets et al had all formed and were growing, and by 1981 it was everywhere.

Can you describe the characteristic sound of goth music that distinguishes it from punk and other types of music?

It moves around more. Even when really intense, which it was back then, being quite violent and explosive, it was also threw you with changes of pace. Bands would have creepier intros, or deadly slow songs, then intense, fractious bursts of mayhem. The vocals always had to be strong as the singer was always a character. The sound would be warm, and modern, without being overly repetitive. Punk was in your face, all out aggression. Goth could usually be even more explosive but it was a very seductive sound.

Goth and Industrial get lumped together a lot these days. When did this overlap start, and why do these two genres get grouped the way they do?

Way back when. Ministry had been very interesting, but NIN copied and simplified that to crossover into Rock territory and get the big audience, and sales. In the 80’s you had the original Industrial scene which involved Einsturzende, Test Dept, SPK and that was close to both Goth and Independent stuff generally, but with plenty of metal-bashing and extreme visual ideas, with autopsy films being shown behind the performers. They took from Kraftwerk and ‘Krautrock’ from the early to mid-70’s and heaved it back out again as an even uglier mess. In the States it was different. More rock-based. We never really had an industrial scene here. You can’t follow bands like that, and they’re not very personable. It’s all about the sound. Rock became a flatulent bore in this country and was saved by Thrash and Speed punk hybrids which all moved over and became Thrash, Speed and then Death Metal. The audience got younger and more demanding and a lot of Industrial bands made sense to them. That’s generally very late 80’s, and developed really well from that point on. Swans were a typical band who should have capitalized on it but were somehow ignored for being pretty dull. The areas overlap vaguely but it differs continent by continent. A lot of people were bored by the big Goth bands, and wanted something else.

When I got involved in the scene, it was 1996, and many people considered goth to be "dead" at the time. Was there a lull of sorts in the subculture about then as far as you can tell?

Not here, the lull had been earlier. The original Goth bands were wild, excitable and different. The imagery of the audience started becoming standardized with the Goths using other bands, all of them Punks, as their example. So you had people embracing The Cure, Banshees and Damned, copying visual ideas and transplanting them into Goth. With a big audience, the major labels moved in and pushed the bands who had a sound they themselves understood, being Rock, so The Cult,. Mission, Sisters and All About Eve became an easy commodity to shift, even though they’d all started as quite sparky, individual outfits. That soon tired itself out, because indie labels also fell foul of a major distribution cock-up in the UK, when a network called The Umbrella completely collapsed, losing the labels a fortune, and suddenly the smaller bands could no longer reach the bigger audience, with the exception of Fields Of The Nephilim who were on Beggars and therefore worked hard, and got somewhere.

The lull hit in when musical expectations were at their lowest and people who might have been interested were put off by the slaggings Goth got in the papers, which always derided Goth, and by the fact the new bands were almost slavishly copying the biggest bands. To anyone who wanted to get genuinely inspired by the music, and with very little in the way of mail order outlets to buy imports from, the scene here was very depressed, and slightly pointless. It lacked any form of direction.

It was the Internet which allowed Goth to prosper without the bigotry from the normal media affecting it. It allowed ideas to circulate, and things started to stabilize. Jo Hampshire had Whitby going, Nemesis mail order happened, clubs had always managed to survive, and new promoters started to promote gigs and bring bands in from outside the UK, and in that respect Michael Johnson was king. Things were getting better again.

Today, there's a plethora of exclusive goth shops that people can shop at to attain their "look". I'm sure that there wasn't such a thing back then (correct me if I'm wrong). How did people acquire their look?

They did it themselves, and it wasn’t difficult because Ants fans usually had a distinctive look, and people copied that, it was usually slightly flamboyant, with cheap copies of Vivienne Westwood clothes crossed with Punk ideas.

Using London as an example, in 1979 round the corner from The Intrepid Fox you had Fans which was a good shop before Boy took over, and round the corner from the Devonshire in Camden you had Naked which was a brilliant shop, starting with exclusive Ants designs and developing from there. Every town had their own places and designers started shifting specialist stuff in local markets. Camden and Kendington markets was good for that from 1976 onwards.

Is there anything pertinent that i should know about goth history that i haven't asked?

Probably. If you think how Goth bands in the UK and elsewhere (except Germany, I would imagine) approach how they operate it is so different to when it started, where bands would do everything and anything to get noticed. We need a few years of bands getting known again just like those days to have a positive knock-on effect. It will probably happen, and the sooner the better. Then it will go quiet again.

Goth is the one form of music which can mean something to you because you see yourself, through all your own interest, in it, which is why it makes immediate, intrinsic sense. It is music you could be following for the rest of your life, which again makes it different to anything else.

Thanks again to Mick for answering my questions and giving me an inside look on the beginning of the modern Goth subculture. If you like, read about my background and how I fit into the whole mess - just clickHERE

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