'The birth of the London club scene': Bowie Nights at Billy's Club – in pictures - The Guardian

Before the new romantics of the 1980s, there were the Blitz kids and before the Blitz kids, there were Bowie nights at Billy's nightclub in Soho, London. The year was 1978 and a grotty subterranean club, beneath a brothel, was about to be commandeered every Tuesday evening by an unruly mob of teenagers – suburban art-school students mainly – who had become disillusioned with punk.

Some of the regulars would go on to become famous – Boy George (then plain George O'Dowd), Marilyn, DJ Jeremy Healy, Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama – and collectively they would hash out a freaky, glamorous aesthetic that would dominate the next decade.

These pictures were taken by Nicola Tyson, an 18-year-old student at the Chelsea School of Art at the time, who has since gone on to find renown as a painter

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