Read Online Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield - Free Book Online

crossing over to the pop charts in that incredibly pivotal year of 1982, the year of Thriller and 1999 and “Super Freak” and “I Love Rock N’ Roll” and “I’m So Excited” and “Sexual Healing.” Kiss-108, the disco station, was playing Yaz and the Human League; WCBN, the rock station, was playing Grandmaster Flash and Michael Jackson. The Human League fit right in to a world where the most exciting and adventurous music on the planet seemed to be exactly what was exploding on Top 40 radio. Yet they didn’t lose their New Romantic cred by crossing over—quite the contrary. Their success validated the whole New Romantic credo.
    The New Romantic anthem I studied most intently was “Love Action,” where Phil sings, “This is Phil talking! I want to tell you what I’ve found out to be true!” I have to admit, I have loved the Human League passionately for years, and I have never totally figured out what Phil Oakey has found out to be true. But I’ve never stopped delving into the mystery.
     
    I would have loved to have gone to the clubs that Phil was singing about, but I was in Milton, Massachusetts, and the only fan here was me. (Were there other Human League fans in town? How would I know? We weren’t an outgoing bunch.)
    I mean, it’s one thing to decide you’re Phil Oakey if you are Phil Oakey and you have that slide of hair down the side and the eyeliner. But it’s pretty silly deciding you’re a New Romantic when you’re stranded in the suburbs mowing lawns, playing video games, translating Virgil and just in general being a miserable little teenage fuck. At a thrift store in Saugus, I paid six dollars for a jacket that I hoped looked like the one Phil Oakey wears in the “Love Action” video, but when I got it home, it looked suspiciously like a shoulder-pad maitre d’ jacket left in the Dumpster behind Mr. Tux. I’m sure the collar was real velvet, though. (Pretty sure. Velvet’s fuzzy, right?)
    Wearing this jacket to play Asteroids at the South Shore Plaza did not make me feel like a glamorous man of the world. It made me feel somewhat of a tool. But then, Phil had warned me that suffering was part of this path. And I knew ridicule is nothing to be scared of.
    My sisters took me shopping and I came home with pants with pleats, which ended badly. (I blame a certain Scritti Politti video. What can I say? I was more into fashion theory than practice.) Although I worshipped Bowie, Roxy and the dashing New Romantics they left behind in their wake like so many droplets of champagne-flavored sweat, and studied their sartorial elegance, I was doomed to dress more like the harmonica player for the J. Geils Band. But I had the devotion, which was much more important than a genuine wedge haircut.
    If I had wanted a wedge haircut, I have no idea how I’d have gotten one. Like everyone else in town, I went to the only barber around, Singin’ Jack in East Milton Square. Jack gave everyone the same haircut, while singing along with the radio’s Continuous Lite Favorites. He was particularly into Jim Croce, and you were lucky to show up for your haircut on a Croce day, because you would get to hear him sing “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” as he snipped. (Kenny Rogers days were unlucky, and if Jack was singing “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” it was best to sneak out before you ended up with a whiffle.) Since Jack was erratic at best, it would be foolhardy to ask him to try anything sideways, or to bring in a Dare tape for inspiration.
    It didn’t matter. New wave wasn’t really about the right look; it was a state of mind. Still, shame about those pleats.
    Something about this style of pop lent itself to devotion from shut-ins, losers, social twitchers like me. The electro bleeps were whispers from the wider world outside, beckoning us out, like the lights flickering from the stereo. I would watch the red vertical flickers of the EQ and imagine they were skyscrapers of a