Members of subcultures can suffer for their allegiance, few more so than goths. The 2007 murder of Sophie Lancaster, targeted by teenagers because of her clothes and hairstyle, was an appalling example. Thankfully, the response is more often one of simple bemusement – perhaps an understandable reaction to adults dressed in trailing black gowns, top hats and complicated whorls of dark eye makeup. (The critic Sylvia Patterson, once a goth, describes them as “plume-haired fiends, inky apparitions in bullet belts, buckles and black lipstick”.)
At its core, goth is an alternative lifestyle that finds beauty in the dark and melancholy aspects of life, using music, literature and cinema as guideposts. It can be a mere fashion preference, but for the fully committed, it’s a design for life. Lol Tolhurst, a longtime adherent, believes it is “a way to understand the world” – and as relevant a form of cultural rebellion now as it was in the 1980s. Goth: A History eloquently presents his case, up to his concluding assertion that goth’s “beautiful, bleak wave of art” is an ideal form of resistance against “the terrible slide our world is taking toward oppressive authoritarianism”. At the very least, he argues, “something good” will come of it, though he doesn’t say what.
As a source, Tolhurst is hard to beat. In 1978, he and his Crawley schoolmates, Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey, formed one of goth’s foundational bands, the Cure, which put him at the heart of the emerging culture. As a result, Goth can plausibly claim to be the near-definitive word on the subject. It has competition from recent behemoths by the journalists John Robb and Cathi Unsworth – The Art of Darkness and Season of the Witch respectively – but Tolhurst’s slimmer volume gives us both the history and an insider’s view.
This unique perspective provides many of the book’s most engaging passages. In one, he claims authorship of several lyrics including In Your House – apparently written about Tolhurst’s guilt at continuing to see a girlfriend he was planning to leave because the Cure were taking up more and more of his time. Elsewhere, he recalls his sense of foreboding when he met Ian Curtis of Joy Division in a shared Marquee Club dressing room the year before he took his own life. “In the corner, the gaunt figure of Ian Curtis sat a little hunched over … quiet and motionless amongst all the activity.”
Memories like these sit alongside musicianly descriptions of the making of their enormously influential album trilogy, Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982). One striking anecdote concerns his mother’s terminal illness during the recording of Faith, which prompted him to write All Cats Are Grey, his attempt to “feel” her pain. “Which, in retrospect, was very goth of me,” he muses.
Tolhurst traces the genre from its 18th-century literary roots through its flourishing as a music subculture from the late 1970s on. “Gothic is a mode that responds to crisis,” says the Irish author Dr Tracy Fahey, to whom Tolhurst turns at intervals for an academic interpretation. She’s one of numerous voices and texts quoted in the book; Tolhurst builds an impression of a world where the gothic touch is everywhere, hiding in plain sight. When he went into rehab to treat his alcoholism in 1989, even the clinic was like something out of Gormenghast, complete with turrets and battlements.
Goth: A History serves two functions. It’s a shout-out to the faithful, whom Tolhurst addresses with touching self-effacement. But it’s also an explainer for outsiders. The latter may giggle at none-more-goth chapter titles such as The Poetry of Pain, while finding much to be intrigued by. There are interviews with major practitioners, including Julianne Regan of All About Eve and The Mission’s Wayne Hussey, and even a section on goth elders, who’ve lived the life for 40 years. Rather too exuberantly for a goth, he ends with the exhortation “Long may it live!”, and it’s hard not to agree.
• Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst is published by Quercus (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
