The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth

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It’s a thought-provoking question that the author leaves open-ended. But like Schrödinger’s experimental cat, it is clear that Goth is currently both dead and very much alive. Tolhurst’s engaging historical memoir is the third of three books this year to examine Goth music and culture, following on from John Robb’s Art of Darkness: The History of Goth and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth (published in May). This is not helped by pretty much all of the leading lights of the Goth scene denying they were ever Goth at all. One reason for this is that the term had a negative connotation from the beginning, with some bands not wanting to be put in the same category as others they felt little connection with. The term was later dumbed down even further with the likes of Fields of the Nephilim being derided as ‘Goff’. Finally, after a decade of work, countless interviews and immersing himself into the culture, John Robb's definitive book is a journey far into The Art Of Darkness.

The art of darkness: The history of goth by John Robb The art of darkness: The history of goth by John Robb

I didn’t see myself as a Goth fan as a teenager – to the extent that I would deny that The Cure were Goth – mainly because how could a band I really liked be lumped in with the likes of Fields of the Nephilim or Balaam and the Angel? To give credit to my younger self, The Cure don’t really see themselves as Goth either and nor do 90% of the bands Robb writes about – even Siouxsie and the Banshees, for heaven’s sake. But seriously, one of the book’s strengths is its loose definition of Goth as a broad church. From what I've heard (and I don't know how accurate this is, but it makes sense), The Art of Darkness was intended to be an in-depth history of the British post-punk scene in the late 1970s and early 80s, with an overview of its roots in earlier work. In that regard, this book is fantastic. From what I hear, however, the publisher decided that such a book wouldn't sell. Author John Robb was tasked with (or chose to) expand the book into a history of modern Goth in general. In that regard, this book fails. John Robb is an inexhaustible fact-finding music sleuth, a sturdy writer and a trustworthy guide.’ Henry Rollins In Art of Darkness, Robb writes: “The world is full of newer bands touched by the dark velvet hand of goth”, and Fontaines DC are a perfect example. Grian Chatten has spoken about the influence The Cure’s 2001 Greatest Hits had on him as a child, Conor Curley has described the Gun Club’s Mother of Earth as his favourite guitar riff of all time and the ghosts of Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazlewood (another of Unsworth’s Gothfathers) hover over the shimmering fairytales on Chatten’s beautiful solo album, Chaos For the Fly.

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Joy Division may not be everyone’s idea of a Goth band, but it can’t reasonably be denied that their take on Post Punk was hugely influential. As Robb puts it “ There would be few bands in the future Goth scene that did not take something from the Joy Division sound – whether it was those melancholic melodic bass lines, that baritone vocal style or the death disco motorik rhythms of the drums.” READ MORE: The Cure photographer Paul Cox: “Robert Smith is a normal bloke – but he has a presence”

The Art of Darkness by John Robb | Waterstones

The modern nightmare had truly begun just one month earlier when Margaret Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street, though interestingly, as Unsworth notes, Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis voted Conservative and insisted that his wife Deborah did too so that she wouldn’t “cancel his vote”. Thatcher’s reign from May 4th, 1979 until November 22nd, 1990 gave Unsworth both her timeline and the Season of the Witch of her title. It’s a period that includes the Troubles, the Hunger Strikes, the 1981 riots, the Falkland War, the Miners’ Strike, the Battle of Orgreave and the Wapping dispute, and allows her to seamlessly stitch politics, psychogeography and secret history into a mesmerising musical tapestry that fans out like a kaleidoscope of concentric circles. A real labour of love (a decade in the making) Robb’s book takes as its jumping-off point the architecture, literature and philosophy that was deemed “Gothic”. There is an academic approach here, but never is it inaccessible. There is also, as Robb asserts, a socio-economic aspect to the goth scene, emerging as it did at the tail end of punk. Goth can be regarded as the more glamorous cousin to punk, but to dismiss it as decadent or frivolous is to miss the point. Of course, a crushed velvet, vintage aesthetic is one element, but goths always had something to say. Witness Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke, and his apocalyptic visions, many of which proved prescient. Or Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith writing about mental health issues, racism and alienation, when such issues still remained taboo in the 70s and 80s.

This is a lovely book about the darker side of Post-Punk that I would recommend to anyone, even though the promised ‘deep dive’ into Goth turns out to be an elaborate paddle, so let’s concentrate on the good bits first, and why you should buy it, as this is impressive. As the drummer and keyboard player in The Cure, Tolhurst was at the epicentre of this post-punk scene and shares moving anecdotes about his interactions with the key players. Robb draws on his own archive to lace his epic history with quotes from the most enigmatic and articulate musicians of the time, including Cave, Jaz Coleman, Andrew Eldritch, Blixa Bargeld and Gavin Friday. Unsworth, a music journalist who has gone on to write six pop culture-laced noir novels and an acclaimed biography of the punk icon Jordan, uses her poetic eye for detail and a specific timeline to tell her own spellbinding tale.