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Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s Paperback – April 15, 2014
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Featuring members of Duran Duran, New Order, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Adam Ant, Echo and the Bunnymen, Devo, ABC, Spandau Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, and INXS, each interview begins with a discussion of their most popular song but leads to stories of their history and place in the scene, ultimately painting a vivid picture of this colorful, idiosyncratic time.
Mixtape suggestions, fashion sidebars, and quotes from famous contemporary admirers help fill out the fun.
“Here it is—the whole glossy, gory, glorious story of the 1980s new wave revolution, in one addictive chapter after another. These are the artists who lived it all out, whether it’s Duran Duran making the ‘Girls on Film’ video or Kim Wilde finally explaining the ‘East California’ enigma. Mad World captures the wild enthusiasm of the moment, evoking a time of perfect songs, innovative style, and lipstick cherry all over the lens.” —Rob Sheffield, contributing editor to Rolling Stone and author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAbrams Image
- Publication dateApril 15, 2014
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101419710974
- ISBN-13978-1419710971
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“Mad World is an exhaustive, revelatory history of one of the most important eras of modern pop music. Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein lived it, breathed it, and loved it — and make you want to relive it all over again. In a word: awesome.”―Shirley Halperin, Music Editor, The Hollywood Reporter
"Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein take us behind the hairspray and eyeliner to reveal the inside stories of the songs that defined an often-overlooked era — tales of inspiration, ambition, tension, and, of course, hairspray and eyeliner.”―Alan Light, former Editor-in-Chief, Spin and VIBEmagazines
“Here it is—the whole glossy, gory, glorious story of the 1980s new wave revolution, in one addictive chapter after another. These are the artists who lived it all out, whether it’s Duran Duran making the “Girls on Film” video or Kim Wilde finally explaining the “East California” enigma. Mad World captures the wild enthusiasm of the moment, evoking a time of perfect songs, innovative style, and lipstick cherry all over the lens.”―Rob Sheffield, contributing editor to Rolling Stone and author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran
“If you thrill to the sight of the MTV flag waving on the moon, if camera-click sounds make your heart skip a beat in anticipation of Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film,” and you know precisely what killed the radio star, then you’ll melt with Mad World! Interviews with artists (Adam Ant, Kim Wilde, Howard Jones, Morrissey!) provide inside scoop on the MTV Generation hits we love.”―Martha Quinn, co-author of VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave and DJ, SiriusXM
“Remember the feeling you had in your youth, when you’d meet a stranger who had your obscure favorite band’s pin on their jacket? Reading Mad World feels exactly like that, except your new friend is charming, much smarter than you, shockingly well connected, and ready to dish. My one problem with the book is my one problem with the New Wave era: that it had to end.” ―Dave Holmes, New York Magazine’s Vulture and former MTV VJ
“Mad World is an exhaustive, revelatory history of one of the most important eras of modern pop music. Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein lived it, breathed it, and loved it—and make you want to relive it all over again. In a word: awesome.”―Shirley Halperin, Music Editor, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter
“Co-authors Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein interviewed all of the bands and uncovered many tidbits that blew my mind. I called Lori to reminisce about the ’80s—and dang, I’d love to have 12 more conversations with her, because we didn't even touch upon INXS or Depeche Mode.”―USA Today’s Pop Candy Blog
“The book tells the tale of some of the decade’s most unforgettable songs . . . in fascinating detail, letting the architects of these memorable records shine a light on how the sound of a generation came to be.”―The Hollywood Reporter Online
“In the book Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s, journalists Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein interviewed some of the most memorable musicians of the genre to find out how it came to be.”―New York Post
“Many tomes about Rock and Roll exist, but Mad World is one of the first to give artists from the 1980s another day in the sun.”―The Huffington Post
“If you miss the days when the world was made of mesh and lace, you’ll want to check out Mad World . . . hugely entertaining.”―RollingStone.com
“While Mad World is a must-have for the formerly frosted bangs set, it serves as a useful primer for anyone curious about the oft-maligned new wave era.”―The Los Angeles Review of Books
“A really informative and insightful read.”―People.com
“It’s a book that pays due to an overlooked generation.”―Adam Ant
“I want to plug a book that I have nothing to do with but that I’m reading and loving and recommending to friends. It’s called Mad World. If you’re a big fan of 80s new wave music, they take all of those songs, and each chapter is a behind-the-scenes about the song, like “Come On Eileen,” “Take on Me,” [“True” by] Spandau Ballet. I am fascinated by this book.”―Gary Dell’Abate, aka Baba Booey, executive producer of the Howard Stern Show, on the post-Stern Wrap Up show
“As a good overview of new wave, this title should appeal to a wide audience of pop music lovers.”―Library Journal
“There aren't many books where you find The Smiths sharing cover space with Adam Ant, or Echo & The Bunnymen considered peers of Duran Duran. But that’s Mad World for you—“An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s,” in which all manner of unlikely bedfellows are assigned equal space and glory in a very American perspective on that early 1980s period of big hair, big mouths, and, in far too many cases, very bad trousers. (Or pants, if you’re a Yank.) In gathering up copious first-person interviews—including, to their enormous credit, a certain Morrissey—the American-born Majewski and Scots-raised Bernstein have assembled a thorough, and thoroughly entertaining, oral history of a vital period in popular music.”―Tony Fletcher
“The new wave era is often dismissed for its one-hit wonders and silly haircuts, but Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein’s book examines the period with a great deal of love and reverence.”―Buzzfeed
About the Author
Jonathan Bernstein is a Los Angeles–based writer. He is the author of, among other titles, Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies and has contributed to publications such as the Guardian, Spin, Rolling Stone, and The Face.
Product details
- Publisher : Abrams Image; Illustrated edition (April 15, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1419710974
- ISBN-13 : 978-1419710971
- Item Weight : 1.3 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #129,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Pop Artist Biographies
- #91 in Popular Music (Books)
- #314 in Rock Music (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
You may know me as co-host of Feedback, the morning show on Sirius XM's all-talk-music Volume channel, or as a guest host on the classic alternative channel, First Wave. I'm also the co-author of Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s (Abrams; April 2014), written with my friend and one-time Spin colleague Jonathan Bernstein. A true labor of love, Mad World is a fun, full-color salute to the music of Duran Duran, The Smiths, New Order, Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, Human League, OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, Adam and the Ants, and many more! In all-new interviews, the artists discuss their breakthrough hits, along with the culture of the times, the highlights of their careers, the downfalls, the fights, the money, the madness and, of course, the hair! Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes penned the foreword, and fellow new-wave obsessive Moby, the afterword.
Jonathan and I met during the grunge years, when he was a senior writer and I was an intern at Spin magazine. I went on to edit magazines -- think: Teen People, Us Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and YM -- and write features for the likes of RollingStone.com, Yahoo! Music, The Guardian, Women's Health, and Yahoo! Shine. I'm also a pop culture expert, having been featured in CNN's original series The Eighties and The Nineties, Good Morning America, Today, MTV, VH-1 and much more.
I live in Weehawken, NJ -- which is also my hometown, and where I once ran a Too Much Information: the Definitive Duranzine out of my parents' apartment. My husband, John, and cats, Baxter and Little Boy, love the eighties almost as much as I do. (Actually, my husband may even love them more!)
Hi,
I am Jonathan Bernstein. Not the crisis management expert. Not the guy who writes about helicopters. Or the one who knows about sector trading. Or any of the other ones that come up when you--or,more likely, I--look for Jonathan Bernstein. Not that I'm insulted when any of their names pop up. It gives me a second of feeling like an intelligent accomplished person of experience and ability. And then I look at my own list of published works and that feeling swiftly evaporates.
I am of little help in a crisis. Unless it's a crisis involving obscure 80s teen movies.I wrote a book about that called Pretty In Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies. So my credentials are pretty good in that arena. Or if it's a problem to do with teenage superheroes who shoot fire from their fingers when they're upset. I've written two novels about that very subject. One called Hottie, the other, it's sequel Burning Ambition.
My new book, Bridget Wilder: Spy-In-Training--the first in a trilogy, so there's a good chance she'll be done with her training before long-- coms out this September. It's about an unnoticed, underestimated 13 year-old girl who finds out that her biological father is a legendary spy of international renown and fearsome reputation. She also finds out that her existence is as much of a shock to him as his is to her. He wants to get to know his daughter and decides the best way to do that is to get her involved with the family business, i.e: spying. He kits her out with all manner of cool gadgets and weapons that make her super-fast and agile, that give her the ability to decry when people are lying, and that allow her to shoot laser beams from a tune of lip balm. Bridget displays a real aptitude for spying. Which is good news because she's about be plunged into a world where no one is what they seem and nothing anyone says or does can be trusted.
Currently, I'm co-author, along with my friend Lori Majewski, of the book Mad World: An Oral History Of The New Wave Artists And Songs That Defined The 1980s. That's a laborious subtitle. But it's not a laborious book. It features interviews with a whole platoon of the biggest stars of the last great period of pop music: the 1980s.
Mad World features chapters on Adam & The Ants, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode New Order, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, OMD, ABC, Bow Wow Wow, Thomas Dolby, INXS, Simple Minds, Dexys Midnight Runners, Thompson Twins, Berlin, Modern English, Howard Jones, Heaven 17 and a lot more.
I started writing about music at the end of the eighties for magazines like The Face and Blitz. I went on to work at Spin and have contributed to publications like Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Telegraph and Interview.
I also had a hand in writing screenplays for such modern classics as Jackie Chan's The Spy Next Door, Just My Luck starring Lindsay Lohan, Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector and Max Keeble's Big Move.
I was born in Glasgow, Scotland, moved to New York and currently reside in Los Angeles.
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* British
* synthesizers
You won't find anything here about Talking Heads, Blondie, B-52's, Police, the Cars, etc. It's more of the kind of music you'll hear on Sirius satellite radio's "First Wave" channel. (Though to be honest, it's really Second Wave, the synth bands that came after guitar punks led the way.)
Credit the authors for managing to get first-hand interviews with most of the key people involved with the songs they are highlighting. Although many of the chapters are about songs that were hits in the U.K. but not America, therefore music I've never heard before, it was interesting to read the back stories of how songs were created, what bands went through to make it, and how things either fell apart or stayed together in the years that followed.
Finally, thanks to the publisher for selling the Kindle edition at a reasonable price. I'm tired of seeing Kindle books priced almost as high as hardbacks, which makes no sense given that there's no printing cost and no expense for shipping to bookstores. It's just greed.
MAD WORLD is more than a mixtape for a generation—it’s the story of a period of musical innovation, told by the musicians themselves and put into perspective by two of many whose lives were set to its soundtrack. Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein perfectly blend credibility, humor, style, and nostalgia as they present over thirty songs that changed the pop musical landscape in the early-mid 1980s. Each song is accompanied by first-person reflections from the artists who made them, including their origins, triumphs and tragedies, and present-day contexts. Better yet, Majewski and Bernstein provide the reader with recommended playlists to accompany each song (like pairing the best wines with each course of a meal), which will have readers scrambling to their iTunes or dusting off their vinyl records.
By the end of each chapter of MAD WORLD, the songs stuck in my head, and in a good way. One mention of WLIR (from Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, no less!) sent me back to my bedroom on Long Island, where I had kept my stereo programmed to the radio station mostly responsible for introducing me to many of these bands (MTV and my friends did the rest). As the sister of professional musicians, I appreciate the elite production, the breakthrough synthesizer technology, and the musical influences that proceeded them, ranging from the Beatles to Bowie to Chic to the Sex Pistols. They still serve as the soundtrack to my life, and especially to my writing.
The visual presentation of MAD WORLD is just as appealing as its textual content. Complete with classic photos and bold colors representative of the times, readers will feel like they are flipping through a scrapbook, and they will happily reminisce as they read.
MAD WORLD is also a terrific conversation piece. Readers may not agree with Majewski’s and Bernstein’s song selections. They may argue over which artists were more (or less) influential. But that’s all part of the book’s appeal—there’s something for everyone: music lovers, musicians, pop culture historians, and, undoubtedly, Generation X. And what better way to pass down our favorite songs for the new generation, who, undoubtedly, will incorporate these songs into their lives—and their world—as their predecessors did.
I love this book. It’s the kind of book I’ll pore over again and again, and get something new out of it each time. It's also the next best thing to being fourteen and listening to WLIR again. (Plus, no teenage angst or acne!) Seriously, though. You'll love it.
~Elisa Lorello
Author of Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan (a memoir) and the best-selling novels Faking It and Ordinary World
Top reviews from other countries
"What, another book on 80's music??? " some might say.....not so fast!
What we have here is Mad World and where other books on the topic have almost got it right (and others have totally missed the mark) Mad World succeeds on pretty much all levels. My criticism about other books on 80's music is the tendency for the author to interject personal opinion, I realize 80's music is a very personal thing, so I understand why some authors fall in to the trap of adding personal opinions and recollections. My opinion is that those memories and opinions are the authors and not mine so I feel detached from a lot of books on the topic. What Mad World does most importantly is LET THE ARTISTS TALK!
Any personal opinion in Mad World is kept separate as to not break the continuity of the story. So it works on both levels that way, want to read an incredible interesting story from Gary Numan and don't want to be sidetracked, then it works that way. Interested in what the author might have to add, it works there too. I appreciate that any personal reflection doesn't get in the way of the stories being told.
Having said that, there is a tendency for books on the 80's to pander to the most common denominator and that's featuring the most popular recognizable bands. I also can't blame them for that, the idea is to sell books, but this genre of music needed someone to come along and go beyond the obvious without being too obscure. Well it works on that level too. What you get is bands that have mass appeal (Duran Duran, A-ha etc) but what's most exciting is the authors really have made an attempt to stretch and dig deep a little. Kajagoogoo, Animotion, Modern English, Berlin, Ultravox, OMD are among the many who finally get a chance to shine on the big stage (and rightfully so!)
The authors really have a passion for this music, or so it appears. Some books come off as an obligatory nod to the decade or a quick cash grab, the passion put in to this book just drips off the pages. These people know their stuff and it shows.
So you have seamless story telling, bands other than the obvious and passion on the part of the authors....but what else? Well you get stories that dig a bit deeper even for the most ardent 80's fan. There are well told stories but it's like some of the interview subjects decided that they were really going to open up and go in to great detail. This makes for an incredible read. I am not sure if it's the interview subjects that went in to more details or it's the great work on behalf of the editors and author to not whittle down the stories to it's bare minimum. I really found this element fascinating. I have a hunch it might be both great editing (or lack of editing) and great work by the authors to know when a good story needs to play itself out.
Another interesting aspect is the sections at the end of every artist feature called "That was then, this is now" which I think might appeal most to someone not so schooled on the bands and their whereabouts of late. I even found that section very informative and it's just another element that makes Mad World such a good read.
Is Mad World perfect? Well no, of course not. By the very nature of putting out an oral history of New Wave, you are just inviting people to argue about "what is New Wave" and "Does that band belong in a book of New Wave?" and I found myself asking that too. In the end, it's a healthy argument, I mean it's 80's music, not politics! Having said that, I could have done without some bands and I question why some were left out. I suspect a sequel is forthcoming but I questioned the inclusion of The Smiths, The Waitresses and Band Aid to name a few. Where is Visage? Where is Talk Talk? That's my personal opinion of course and like I said you can't fit everything in to one book, hence why a sequel is needed.
Mad World is the first chapter of a story that HAD to be told correctly, and it has. It's not a comprehensive history mind you, but it doesn't need to be. If there is a second chapter released....what I think you will have are complete bookends to the only decade (musically) that matters to me....and I'm guessing to you too if you are reading this.