WHERE WOULD THE NEW ROMANTIC MOVEMENT HAVE BEEN WITHOUT VISAGE… OR VICE VERSA? THE BAND’S SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM WAS THE RESULT OF AN ALMOST SUPERGROUP-LIKE MEETING OF TALENTED INDIVIDUALS. AIMING TO FORGE A NEW BRAND OF ELECTRO-DISCO VIA CHILLY, BOMBASTIC SYNTHS AND GLAM ROCK GUITARS, THEY DREW UPON EVERYTHING FROM EUROPEAN FILM NOIR TO SPAGHETTI WESTERNS AND COSSACK CHOIRS…

ANDY JONES

We now look back at Visage, the band, as some kind of 80s supergroup, because so many of the musicians involved in it later went off to enjoy huge success in other projects. Guitarist Midge Ure and keyboardist Billy Currie, of course, later joined forces to rejuvenate Ultravox; Rusty Egan and Steve Strange notoriously invented clubland, and bassist Barry Adamson went on to become a successful musician, writer and filmmaker.

However, at the time, Visage was really the coming together of a loose collective of musicians, all dabbling in at least one other project, seemingly waiting for one of them to be successful. And when they came together, that success certainly happened in the form of Visage: the founding stars of the New Romantic movement would produce an album from that scene, for that scene and to announce that scene to the whole world.

In 1978, one of the three founding members of Visage, Midge Ure, was between successful bands. He’d enjoyed big hits with Slik and ‘Oh Vienna’ was to come later, but back then he was playing and locking horns with Glen Matlock in The Rich Kids – an act Matlock had set up after being thrown out of The Sex Pistols. Rusty Egan was in the band as well, and siding with Midge over wanting to take the band in a more electronic direction. Steve Strange, meanwhile, had done his best to become a face in the London punk scene while fast becoming the face of a new scene, but was singing with a short-lived band called The Photons. It was this band’s final showcase gig that led Ure and Egan to invite Strange along to record in some studio sessions at Manchester Square Studios, using some studio time owed to them by The Rich Kids’ record company.

You’ve got the brains, I’ve got the looks: Steve Strange and Rusty Egan

THE PLAYERS

RUSTY EGAN

Very much the drive behind the band, Rusty directed and drummed but also came up with ideas for tracks and the flow of the album as being like one of his DJ sets. Or maybe he just wanted a complete album to put on while he was pretending to DJ so he could get on with doing something else instead.

STEVE STRANGE

Vocalist, visual artiste, ideas man, social and party animal, Steve Strange’s role might not have always been as songwriter, but we’d side with him when he said his look was as important. Without the snake makeup, the posing and the prancing, Visage would surely have been a very different – and not as successful – animal.

MIDGE URE

Guitarist, producer and video director, Midge added some much-needed common sense, musicianship, experience (he’d already been in what you’d now call a boy band) and song crafting. Visage also gave us Ultravox Mk2 as Egan suggested to Billy Currie that Ure might make a good vocalist. The rest, as they say, is the best No. 2 hit ever.

THE REST

Over the years there have been around 30 people playing in Visage, but the main players on their debut album were really the Magazine trio of Dave Formula, John McGeoch and Barry Adamson, plus keyboardist Billy Currie. Interestingly, Currie played with Gary Numan, as did two other musicians who also appeared on Visage: drummer Cedric Sharpley and synth player Chris Payne, who also earned a tasty writing credit on Fade To Grey.