Rich Kids signed to EMI, the label that had quickly washed its hands of the Sex Pistols after the Bill Grundy furore in December 1976, and appeared poised to spearhead the “new” new wave as Egan put it at the time. Sporting a red beret, wearing frilly blouses and playing blistering guitar fills, New proved a great foil to both Matlock and Ure, even if gobbing audiences didn’t always know what to make of the band whose repertoire included the Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” and the Small Faces’ “Here Comes the Nice” as well as “Put You in the Picture” from Ure’s days with PVC2, the short-lived, punked-up Slik. Matlock certainly remembered New’s prowess when he began assembling Rich Kids, and the pair co-wrote much of the new group’s catchiest material, in particular the B-side “Empty Words”, “Ghosts of Princes in Towers” and the album opener, “Strange One”. In the mid-’70s he fell in with the emerging London punk scene and, “for about 15 minutes and a few rehearsals”, in order to placate drummer Paul Cook, was in the Sex Pistols alongside guitarist Steve Jones. But “this flash 15-year-old guitarist who wouldn’t get his hair cut”, as Matlock described him to the New Musical Express, also loved avant-garde composers like Edgar Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Frank Zappa, the jazz of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, the glam-rock of Bowie and T Rex, as well as West Coast American bands such as The Doors and Love. Musically gifted and precocious, he started playing with the London Jazz Orchestra in 1974. In January this year he reunited with Rich Kids at the Islington Academy in London for a benefit concert which proved to be an emotional occasion and his farewell appearance.īorn in London in 1960, he attended Quintin Kynaston School in St John’s Wood. “I guess it’s rock music gone mad,” he said of the impossible-to-pigeonhole music featured on their Bestiality and Stars and Wronguns albums.
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The pair met when they both worked on the Titanic – Official Movie Tour exhibition at Wembley Arena in 1998. Denial on both levels.”Īfter undergoing drug counselling he came to accept who he really was and re-emerged as Stella Nova, the transvestite composer, musician and producer half of Beastellabeast, a duo he formed with the lyricist, vocalist and artist Beatrice Brown. There were two battles going on: my battle with drugs, and my own shame battle of being a transvestite. You know to me that was always more faggy than anything. In the bands I was in, it was always rock’n’roll, leather trousers, geezers. “I’ve been a tranny from day one,” he said. New wore pink when Rich Kids appeared on Top of the Pops and always had a penchant for women’s clothing. However, an addiction to heroin hampered his subsequent endeavours. Their youngest member, the promising lead guitarist Steve New, who has died of cancer, had a brief stint with John Lydon’s PiL, and recorded with both Billy Idol’s Generation X and Iggy Pop in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Ure also excelled as a solo artist and as the front man of Ultravox in the New Romantic era. They broke up the following year and never fulfilled the potential of a sterling line-up, though the vocalist and second guitarist Midge Ure, formerly of the Scottish teenybop group Slik, and drummer Rusty Egan, went on to great success with Visage. However, neither the atmospheric anti-war song “Marching Men”, nor the sublime “Ghosts of Princes in Towers”, the title track of their album produced by the former David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, charted – and when it was eventually released in October 1978, the album itself stalled at No 51.
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Their eponymous debut single made the Top 25 in early 1978 and they played a series of memorable live dates around the UK, seeming well on their way. RIP with love xxx) CHECK OUT GIG REVIEW HERE : Rich Kids Islington Academyįormed by the bassist and songwriter Glen Matlock after he was edged out of the Sex Pistols in February 1977, the new wave band Rich Kids played a potent brand of power pop reminiscent of the Sixties British groups The Who and the Small Faces, and predated the US skinny-tie contingent of The Knack and The Cars. WE raise a glass, and remember a person well loved by many, and this Obituary does a good job in describing his life. (We hadn’t done a write up yet as we were away when Steve New sadly passed away – Enjoyed seeing Beastellabeast perform Punk earlier this year & The Rich Kids show at Islington Academy, which sold out very quickly, was one of the gigging highlights of the years.
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