Article about Visage

VISAGE

Fade To Grey, they said,
and duly did.

Poster boys for the New Romantic movement until Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran came along, rook their ball and ran with it, Steve Strange's Visage had more of a career than many observers imagine.

While their December 1980 single Fade To Grey was and remains a landmark single for the scene and for the whole synthpop movement in general, the band - whose line-up included at various points Midge Ure, Ultravox keyboard player Billy Currie and no fewer than three Magazine alumni (bass player Barry Adamson, guitarist John McGeoch, and keyboardist Dave Formula), knocked out five more Top 40 singles before the end of 1982.

Fade... was reissued in remixed format in 1993 and made No. 34, hut in retrospect Visage's importance is attached more to the Billy's club scene and the birth of the movement than to any meaningful commercial longevity. Perhaps this is no more than appropriate: after all, pop celebrates its own ephemeral nature. Steve Strange, who wrote a popular autobiography a couple of years ago, would approve.

Source: Record Collector June 2004