To Cut a Long Story Short

The Dawn of the Second British Invasion

In the fall of 1980, I was still new in Los Angeles. I was still smitten with the palm trees and proximity to Hollywood. I could not imagine living anywhere else. I was 100% into a honeymoon phase after having spent almost four years living in a place I wanted to leave almost daily. Arizona had one or two qualities, I suppose, but in my mind and experience the detriments far outweighed them and I spent much of my existence there between August of 1976 and June of 1980 trying to figure out a way to get to Los Angeles.

Arizona represented flying the New York coop after finishing high school. It represented my first attempt at getting a college degree in a period of my life that did not scream ‘student’(my second attempt to get that degree would not come until 2020/2021 when I returned online during the pandemic and got my Psychology BA). Arizona stood for freedom and school at that time did not provide it for me. It was good to get away from what I saw as authority (what normal 18-year-old would not want that?) I spent a year and a half attempting to get an education in 1976 & 1977, each semester proving less successful than the one prior. Before I knew it I was done and instead, I began working in several different restaurants and bars that offered drinks after shifts and played right into my penchant for living at night and partying until daylight. This would be a pattern that lasted throughout the entire decade of the 1980s.

My first place of employment in Tempe, Arizona was a restaurant called Lunt Avenue Marble Club. Like pretty much any establishment I worked for between starting there in 1977 and the last establishment I left in West Hollywood in 1990, the focus for me was the vibrant bar and bar life. Lunt Avenue Marble Club was a college restaurant with a decent menu (I remember loving the fried Zucchini). But my draw was the bar that sported drinks such as the “I Got Potted,” in a large glass pot, the “Bomb” in a table candle-shaped glass (with about 5 different types of rums), and the “Mai Tai One On”. It wasn’t long after Lunt Avenue that I went into Phoenix and landed a waiter job with TGI Fridays. Fridays was a bustling bistro somewhat square in shape with food tables all around the perimeters and a four-sided, raised-level bar in the center of the building. This job would last some 5 years and afford me a transfer to its Marina del Rey store in 1980 (along with some stints at stores in San Diego & San Bruno, CA, and Portland, OR).

In my last drug & alcohol-induced year in Arizona, I worked at TGI Fridays for the whole time, but I remember almost always having a second job to supplement my habits in an almost ridiculous amount of Phoenix’s late 1970s era bar/restaurants TGI Fridays wannabees. All these years later I would not be able to tell you how many of these places I spent too much time working for, but I know I was hired at: Butch O’Leary’s, Beside the Pointe, Houlihan’s, Oscar Taylors, Dooley’s, The Ore House, Bobby McGee’s, and Lone Star. For all I know there could have been more. I drank at each one of their bars. Without them, I am not sure I would have been able to survive the feeling of being stuck in the worst place in the world for me. Arizona was just not a fit.

Fortunately, no drug or drink stopped me from embarking on what was essentially my second geographic in my young life. I had a good gut feeling about Los Angeles. Since I was a young boy I was determined to live there. The move in late June of 1980 was my destiny. There has never been any doubt it was meant to be, and I remain here going on 44 years later. My good friend David and I packed up a U-Haul and a truck that belonged to a then roommate called Paul and we fled that night on the 10 freeway into our futures. I had driven my car to the new apartment David and I had secured only a couple of weeks earlier and rented a car to return to Phoenix to use the U-Haul. We had other things delivered soon after.

In the first few months of Los Angeles living David and I established our party group and schedules. Working in the Marina store was an amazing change from Phoenix. In the tradition of my taking the second job, I had also started working in the Woodland Hills store for the first month or two as well. That did not last. Before I knew it we were as much a part of the Marina crew as anyone else and the parties that we enjoyed in so many Phoenix establishments were now almost always up in the bar (or on the patio) of the Marina TGI Fridays.

With the move to sunny California came the shift in music availability through the different record stores and the new stations I was able to be introduced to. One, that I have mentioned in my Musical Triggers many times, was the almighty KROQ-Rock of the 80s. A newly born moniker and a station that offered the alternative fare that I had been seeking out in any way possible. Here I was in what seemed like an alternative/new wave central with the throes of a new British invasion at my disposal. Bands like Devo, The Pretenders, The B-52’s, The Cars, The Police, The Talking Heads, The Clash, Oingo Boingo, The Vapors, The Dead Kennedys, X, Gary Numan, Elvis Costello, The Motels, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Split Enz, and Squeeze were regular sounds. More would be coming from Missing Persons, Adam and the Ants, The Go-Go’s, Romeo Void, Pete Shelley, Sparks, Lene Lovich, U2, OMD, Duran Duran, Bow Wow Wow, The Waitresses, The Specials, The Cure, Soft Cell, Iggy Pop, Heaven 17, Wall of Voodoo, Killing Joke, Dave Edmunds, Gang of Four, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Billy Idol, and the Boomtown Rats.

As Fall was completed and Winter began in 1980 a new British band emerging as a house band from the underground post-punk ‘Blitz Kids’ club scene in London released their first single called “To Cut a Long Story Short”. This band, originally calling themselves '“The Gentry,” changed their name to “Spandau Ballet” in 1978 at the suggestion of a friend who had seen it scratched on a wall in Berlin (Rudolf Hess, all alone, dancing the Spandau Ballet). Spandau Ballet was a reference to the movement of the bodies of war criminals hanged at Spandau Prison. The song is a fast-driving, electronic, very English homage to youth and the late 1970s British Blitz crowd. It was originally introduced at the Blitz at Christmastime of 1979 and eventually released in late 1980 making it to #5 in the UK and getting airplay in alternative stations in the U.S. such as KROQ in Los Angeles.

Spandau Ballet went on to record for the rest of the 1980s producing hit singles such as “True,” “Gold,” “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On,” and “Communication,” amongst others. Most people would recognize “True,” which remains their identifiable hit when any nostalgic show or video refers to the band. Granted, anything that can bring me a musical trigger of my first year in Los Angeles and the 1980s is going to remain a happy one.

Soldier  is turning

See him through white light

Running from strangers

See you in the valley

War upon war

Heat upon heat

To cut a long story short

I lost my mind