We often think of the musical culture of the 1980s as having been invented in the late 1970s, when post-punk experimentation collided with the moment New Romanticism escaped from London’s clubland and synth-pop went on to conquer the world.
But you could just as easily begin the narrative on, say, 29 April 1967 at London’s Alexandra Palace. This was the night Pink Floyd headlined The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a benefit concert-cum-happening for counterculture newspaper International Times, at that point receiving unwanted police attention. Among those in attendance, marvelling at this “distillation of magical things, all together in one place”, was Dennis Leigh, a teenager raised in Chorley, Lancashire.