[…continued from last post]

Steve Strange was largely marginalized during the 90s. While the Bassheads remix of
Fade To Grey” entered the UK Top 40, he was in a perilous state as he had become addicted to heroin while modeling for Jean-Paul Gautier in the 80s. Clean periods in the 90s were fragile. He was close with the music couple of Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence and at the same time that Hutchence died in 1997, Strange’s flat burned down and that send him over the edge. He suffered a breakdown and relapsed back into heroin usage.

This was while he was out of the public eye. The only manifestation of Visage was a European Polydor compilation that picked tracks from all three albums. It was the first time that any tracks from the “Beat Boy” album made it to the silver disc. As well as the German language track “Der Amboss,” thought the version on this CD was obviously sourced from the “Fade To Grey Dance Mix” masters as the intro had the hints of the segue from “tar” still audible.

Then as the Y2K panic was a full throttle, Steve got very much in the public eye once more with his arrest for shoplifting, famously, a Teletubby doll for his nephew. His prior shoplifting offenses hadn’t become public yet, but this one did. The press had a field day with the singer’s fall from grace. His lawyer cited the potential for self-harm as a factor in his sentencing and ultimately his three month sentence was suspended.

At that point Strange went to live with his mother and sister in Wales, which was the best thing for him. With the heat of public glare upon him, he did the thing any exhibitionist would do: he put out an autobiography: “Steve Strange Blitzed!” Though I was a big Visage fan I’ve not bothered with the book as I suspect it’s all about the social whirlwind that centered on Steve with little ink on the actual records themselves.

Around the same time in the 2002-2003 period he became active int he Retro 80s tour scene representing Visage live for the first time ever. But that wasn’t enough for his ambitions. He tried to get a Visage II with young players from the Electroclash scene [Seize, Goteki] forming the nucleus of a new Visage band. In 2007 the single fruit of this effort was released as a charity download; “Diary Of A Madman.”

Strange bounced like a pinball from bumper to bumper in search of something that stuck. He sang lead on a track for the duo Punx Soundcheck called “In The Dark” on the “When Machines Ruled The World” album of 2006. Concurrent with this musical activity were the bread an butter of Strange’s career at the time. Participation in the unseemly world of British “reality” programming on television. Strange was on shows like “Celebrity Scissorhands” and “Pop Goes The Band” where he traded on his dark celebrity status to try to get a foothold he really needed.

A better fit was Steve’s cameo as himself on an episode of the “time travel police procedural” [“?] “Ashes To Ashes” where the protagonists went to the Blitz Club and Visage were performing live [as they never did]. Steve had angular makeup right out of the “Fade To Grey” video while Sandrine Gouriou from the Visage MK II played keys.

Even the bad publicity helped stoke interest in the Visage catalog, and the first dozen years of the new millennium saw a trilogy of Visage compilations join the first two already noted. Shortly after his arrest, there was a European compilation called “The Damned Don’t Cry.” It was notable mostly for a first pressing that contained the rare B-side ‘Second Steps” in place of the common instrumental “The Steps.” In 2010 Universal/Polydor released a new disc called “The Face: The Very Best of Visage” which was graced with a pair of new post-modern remixes of “Fade Yo Grey” to bait the faithful. With the third new compilation appearing in 2013.

Next: …The Third Act