1979.
Months of industrial action throughout the winter have left the dead unburied and mountains of rubbish piling up in the streets.
After ten brutal homicides and the biggest police hunt in history, the Yorkshire Ripper is still at large and preparing to strike again.
Punk has reached its bleak climax with the fatal heroin overdose of Sid Vicious while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend.
Unlikely alliances of outsiders prepare to seize power, set the political agenda and write the soundtrack for the years to come. Their figureheads are two very different kinds of dominatrices...
As Margaret Thatcher enters 10 Downing Street, four bands born of punk - Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Cure, and Magazine - find a way to distil the dissonance and darkness of the shifting decade into a new form of music. Pushing at the taboos the Sex Pistols had unlocked and dancing with the fetishistic, all will become global stars of goth.
By the time Thatcher is cast out of office in 1990, the arrival of goth will have imprinted on the cultural landscape as much as the Iron Lady herself.
Now, forty years since its inception, author Cathi Unsworth provides the first comprehensive overview of the music, context and lasting legacy of goth. This is the story of how goth was shaped by the politics of the era - from the miners' strikes and privatisation to the Troubles and AIDS - as well as how its rock 'n' roll outlaw imagery and innovative, atmospheric music cross-pollinated throughout Britain and internationally, speaking to a generation of alienated youths.
A fascinating social history, Season of the Witch tells the tale of an enduring counter-culture, one that steadfastly refuses to give up the ghost.
1979.
Months of industrial action throughout the winter have left the dead unburied and mountains of rubbish piling up in the streets.
After ten brutal homicides and the biggest police hunt in history, the Yorkshire Ripper is still at large and preparing to strike again.
Punk has reached its bleak climax with the fatal heroin overdose of Sid Vicious while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend.
Unlikely alliances of outsiders prepare to seize power, set the political agenda and write the soundtrack for the years to come. Their figureheads are two very different kinds of dominatrices...
As Margaret Thatcher enters 10 Downing Street, four bands born of punk - Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, the Cure, and Magazine - find a way to distil the dissonance and darkness of the shifting decade into a new form of music. Pushing at the taboos the Sex Pistols had unlocked and dancing with the fetishistic, all will become global stars of goth.
By the time Thatcher is cast out of office in 1990, the arrival of goth will have imprinted on the cultural landscape as much as the Iron Lady herself.
Now, forty years since its inception, author Cathi Unsworth provides the first comprehensive overview of the music, context and lasting legacy of goth. This is the story of how goth was shaped by the politics of the era - from the miners' strikes and privatisation to the Troubles and AIDS - as well as how its rock 'n' roll outlaw imagery and innovative, atmospheric music cross-pollinated throughout Britain and internationally, speaking to a generation of alienated youths.
A fascinating social history, Season of the Witch tells the tale of an enduring counter-culture, one that steadfastly refuses to give up the ghost.
The first book to cover in-depth and from an insider's perspective the inception and rise of goth - one of the world's most enduringly popular musical subcultures.
Cathi Unsworth began her career on the legendary music weekly
Sounds at the age of nineteen, where she topped a poll to be named
the Sounds journalist readerswould most like to go for a drink
with. Her popularity was down to her identification with gothic
music.
Cathi's previous book, Defying Gravity, the life and times of punk
icon Jordan, was described by Julie Burchill as 'the only book
about punk you'll ever need' and was chosen as 'Book of the Year'
by Rough Trade, Uncut and the Daily Telegraph in 2019. She has also
written six pop-culture-laced noir novels and her short-form work
has appeared in The Guardian, the Financial Times, Bizarre, Melody
Maker, Mojo and Uncut. She has appeared on TV and radio, given
talks, organised walks and hosted events too numerous to mention.
'A FREAKING MASTERPIECE!'
*Lydia Lunch*
'Cathi Unsworth not only succeeds in conjuring her personal history
and dark tastes into a book of immense and lucid insight, but in
doing so has crafted a rich reflection on the signs and sigils of
the times, taking in - as well as using - associated cultural
ritual and alchemy, featuring a cast of the lost, the damned, the
beautiful and the bizarre; the possessed and dispossessed. All with
the best possible sense of glacial cool.'
*Richard Cabut (ne: Richard North)*
'Season of the Witch is to Goth what Jon Savage's England's
Dreaming was to Punk ... a magnificent, wild dissection of the
music, the madness, and social dysfunction of the era that spawned
it. Hail Unsworth.'
*Billy Chainsaw (former Siouxsie and The Banshees’ personal
assistant)*
'Drawing on both her novelistic skills as well as her years as a
music journalist, Unsworth's account of Goth and its origins is
rich and absorbing, establishing its political and historical
context (with Margaret Thatcher as the most infamous dominatrix of
all). She shows that the dark matter of Goth amounts to more than
mere Addams family cosplay but has deep cultural roots in
literature and cinema, as well as magnificent precursors such as
The Doors, Nico, Suicide, David Bowie, who helped breed giants such
as Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Cure, Joy Division and
Magazine.'
*David Stubbs*
'CREATURES, FIENDS, FRIENDS OF THE NIGHT AND OF THE NORTH, ACCEPT
NO ALTERNATIVES: THIS IS THE BOOK WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR OUR WHOLE
REAL, TRUE GOTH LIVES.'
*David Peace*
'Cathi brings darkness to light.'
*Jon Savage*
'An utterly compelling social history filled with passion, sex,
drugs and rock 'n' roll. This is the essential account of all
things Goth, the epic and intimate story of a great tribe that
emerged from Thatcher's Dark Ages.'
*JAKE ARNOTT*
'The First Lady of Noir seamlessly stitches politics,
psychogeography and secret history into the most mesmerising
musical tapestry of the Eighties, to create a Gothic masterpiece. I
was spellbound.'
*Ann Scanlon*
'Cathi Unsworth's Season of the Witch is a panoramic view of the
musical culture of the UK in the 1980s and its search for a voice
to capture - a voice sometimes captured by - a nation seized by
traumas of displacement, dispossession, depression, powerlessness,
and silencing. But for all the twists and turns of the music whose
tales make the body of the book, what both grounds it, and opens a
period of time now in the past as a gaping hole waiting as the
future, is the constant underpinning of the greater Goth forces at
work in the land, the true lords of mendacity, cruelty, and
domination: Rupert Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher. ". . . once again
able to feast on those who would destroy her," Unsworth writes -
and for all the adventures of bands from Siouxie and the Banshees
to Sisters of Mercy, that is the most Goth line in the book.'
*Greil Marcus*
'A beautifully written, meticulously researched account. 4/5.'
*Classic Pop*
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