Cathi Unsworth was a teenage goth. Think “Robert Smith’s tarantula hair” and “cider like turps”
Growing up in remote rural Norfolk, crime writer Cathi Unsworth had a Goth conversion, a condition from which, she happily admits, you never fully recover. And never want to. She discovered Dennis Wheatley’s ‘To The Devil A Daughter’, heard Siouxsie & the Banshees on the Peel Show and saw a picture of Robert Smith in a magazine which she stuck by her bedroom mirror to help her construct his spectacular dishevelment. She’s just published ‘Season Of The Witch: the Book of Goth’, a highly entertaining account of the dark side of rock starting out with the Brontes, Edgar Allan Poe and Aubrey Beardsley and heading, via Jim Morrison, Jacques Brel and Nico, to Joy Division, the Cure and the Sisters of Mercy. This is a very funny and self-mocking pod in which you’ll find the following …
… why Yorkshire is “Goth’s Own Country”.
… the secret ingredient in Mac McCulloch’s vertical hair.
… Nick Cave - “the Dark Lord of Goth Music” (©️ the Daily Mail) – at the Coronation.
… Lee Hazlewood’s advice to Nancy Sinatra when recording Goth staple These Boots Are Made For Walking.
… “changing into fishnet tights in the bogs at school”, rival pop gangs, mooching about in graveyards and a mate “who used to sit up trees reading Dennis Wheatley and summoning Satan”.
.. the joy of crimpers and backcombing.
… “spreading the virus” at the Batcave.
… the inventor of the term Goth and the key Gothmothers and Gothfathers.
… local folklore about hellhounds in Norfolk.
… her first gig, the York Rock Festival in 1984 featuring the Bunnymen, Sisters of Mercy, Spear of Destiny and the Redskins: “Gothtopia”!
… “Beer Girls and Beer Boys” and why it was best to avoid them.
… dark Satanic mills.
… and the greatest Goth record ever made.
Order ‘Season of the Witch: the Book of Goth’ here …
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Season-Witch-Book-Cathi-Unsworth/dp/1788706242
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