Wasted Youth was a punk / post-punk band from London, England, active between 1979 and 1982, which blended early Goth and post-punk with dark acoustic strains of the sort associated with Nick Drake and Syd Barrett. The line-up of the band was Ken Scott (vocals and guitar), Rocco Barker (guitar), Nick Nicole (synth), Darren Murphy (bass) and Andy Scott (drums). Their records were released through Bridgehouse Records, a label set up by the bass player's father in the pub he owned in Canning Town.
Wasted Youth emerged from the remnants of mid 1970s heavy rock band "Warrior", fronted by Ken Scott. The band were largely influenced by Black Sabbath until the punk explosion at which point Scott split the group, due to its reluctance to embrace the new sound. There was brief collaboration with writer David W. Kirby (aka, Dwk The Dogbreaths) who recited verse over the top of extended rhythm sections during live sets.
Rocco Barker went on to form the band Flesh for Lulu and was in the Channel 4 show, A Place in Spain: Costa Chaos.
Classic Rock (magazine) reported that the band's bassist, Darren Murphy, died of cancer on the 15th February 2012.
Famous quotes containing the words wasted and/or youth:
“If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)