VISAGE BAND MEMBER STEVE BARNACLE TALKS ABOUT THE NEW ROMANTIC ICON AND INNOVATOR STEVE STRANGE AND THE CREATION OF THE FINAL VISAGE ALBUM, DEMONS TO DIAMONDS…

PAUL RIGBY

Steve Strange was a man of supreme confidence, a man who enjoyed the mechanics of confrontation, loved the glamour and fun of the new romantic movement, was full of ideas in terms of make-up, fashion, music, entertainment and more but a man who admitted that he couldn’t play an instrument and wasn’t much of a singer, either. Yet he was a pioneer of the new romantic movement, played his part in the creation of synthpop via the hit single Fade To Grey, and managed to draw serious talent into his creative orbit.

“Steve often had these ideas with various people,” says Steve Barnacle, who joined Visage in 1982. “It would often go as far as a demo recording or an appearance on stage, then something else would take over and it would never see the light of day. That was usual for Steve. He didn’t have the wherewithal to take it any further – not unless someone else picked it up and ran with it.”

This is most likely exactly why the right people were in place to help create Visage’s final album, Demons To Diamonds. The tracks stemmed from a batch of final recording sessions. “When Steve died, we wondered – should we leave it, or put out what he was working on?,” Barnacle admits. “We thought that Steve would have wanted it published, and also his family wanted it, as a legacy.”