An anthropological study of Rave. by Kirsty Jo Phillips

Abstract

This dissertation will examine the late 1980’s youth subculture. It will focus on ‘Acid House’ in the 1988 and 1989 “Summer Of Love” and examine how a once underground culture was exposed and provoked a moral panic on a high scale in Britain. The primary aim within this study will be to examine what the media’s role was within the demise of ‘Acid House’. This dissertation will inspect tabloid coverage from the Daily Mail and The Sun in contrast to pro‘Acid House’ articles from BOY’S OWN and i-D magazine. This will be support an examination of the significance of clothing, music and individualism in 1988- 1989. Followed with arguments depicting subculture’s from such authors as Sarah Thornton and her book Club Cultures (1995), a highly innovative study of contemporary culture, executing the hierarchies that develop from youth subcultures. Raymond Williams’: Culture and Society (1958) also produces a counter argument to Adorno and Horkheimer: The Culture Industry Enlightenment and Mass Deception (1949) which will be used to further the exploration of ‘Acid House’ culture.

Contents

2.Abstract 3.Contents 4.List of illustrations 5.Glossary 7.Introduction: Acid House 1988 (A Summer of love) 11.Chapter One: Inside Acid House culture 24.Chapter Two: The Media’s representation of Acid House Culture 32. Chapter Three: An Ethnographical study of Acid House 44. Conclusion 46.Bibliography 48. Appendices: :

List of Illustrations

Front page:

(All images) Photographs: Chris Abbot - 1987 season at Amnesia Personal photographs) accessed 15/11/13

Figure 1:

The pyramid in the pool at Amnesia, Opening Night, June 1989 Photographer Dave Swindells [Online] http://www.daveswindells.com/print-spirit-of-ibiza-89 Accessed 04/11/13

Figure 2:

Amnesia, June 1989 – Photographer Dave Swindells [Online] http://www.daveswindells.com/print-spirit-of-ibiza-89#/i/11 Accessed 04/11/13

Figure 3:

‘A summer of rave’ Photo by Gavin Watson. [Online] http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/margaret-thatcher-war-on-raveacid-house-boys-own Accessed 08/11/13 Figure 4:

http://cerysmaticfactory.info/fac451_love_will_tear_us_apart.php Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 5:

Sunrise Energy members card Bought off Ebay Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 6:

Sunrise Poster. Bought off ebay. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 7:

Sunrise Poster. Bought off ebay. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 8:

Sunrise Poster. Bought off ebay. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 9: own

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/margaret-thatcher-war-on-rave-acid- house-boys-

Figure 10:

The Sun Anti Acid badge. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 11:

The Sun Spaced out issue. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 12:

I-D acid house column. Accessed 09/11/13

Figure 13:

i-D Acid House Cover no.57. Accessed 11/11/13

Figure 14:

i-D Magazine Club Review. Accessed 11/11/13

Figure 15:

Boys Own Magazine Logo. Accessed 11/11/13

Figure 16:

A collection of Boys Own Magazines 11/11/13

Glossary

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Acid House – The name given to the social movement and sub-cultural revolution of the late nineties, associated with the youth of Britain and rave scene. Acid House the sound being a sub genre of House music –the sound that originates from an electronic bass synthesiser, the Roland TB-303. There will be a selection of music genres in mentioned throughout the text:

House, Trance, Ambient, Garage, Jungle, Techno and Happy Hardcore.

EDM – Electronic Dance Music

Summer of Love – this term was given to the summer of 1976 were the people of America instigated a social and political shift recognised as the hippie revolution. The second ‘Summer of Love’ embraced the same cultural and social expression as the first ‘Summer Of Love’, it was the name dedicated to the period in 1988-1989 in Britain throughout the rise of acid house.

‘Niche’ Media – this media attracts smaller than the mass media audiences. Marketed to the specific individual or group of people.

Thatcherism – this term describes the conviction politics, social and economic policy, and political style of the British Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from in the late twentieth century.

Madchester - a term to describe The British music scene in Manchester that developed in the early 80’s to the 90’s.

‘E’ a slang term used for the amphetamine based drug MDMA.

‘Weekender Offender’ – an expression born from the acid house era, describing the life of the youth involved with the cultural movement of 90’s.

‘Smiley’ became symbolic logo of the Acid house subculture.

‘Underground’ – is the expression by which clubbers refer to things as subcultural – A theory proposed by Sarah Thornton (1995)

Introduction:

This dissertation aims to establish the role of the media in the subculture acid house. It will examine a conservative Britain and youth culture of the 1980’s in terms of fashion, selfexpression and rebellion. It will closely look at the reign of Margaret Thatcher and how the youth of Britain reacted to her policies. It will analyse the life of the subculture and the significance of its role within the youth of Britain. It will also examine the styles and expression from the notorious ‘Summer of Love’ of 1989. From the 17th August 1988 when The Sun, a tabloid newspaper, reported on drug taking at the London club Spectrum and the Daily Mail reported and exposed undercover footage from an illegal rave. From this a moral panic developed around the youth subculture ‘Acid House’. From nights held at a cluster of London clubs in autumn 1987, the practices of the subculture, centered upon the consumption of the drug ecstasy and dancing to House music, had by the summer of 1988 emerged on a national scale, the product of this was the notorious ‘Summer of Love’.

The Primary aim throughout this study will be to determine the media’s involvement in the rise and demise of the subculture of ‘Acid House’ while debating the role of individualism within ‘Acid House’. There will be a study of primary footage from ‘Acid House 1989 Illegal Rave Part 01 Sunrise Energy’ taken from the White Waltham Berkshire rave of 1988 also analysising secondary footage from the BBC documentary ‘A Summer of Rave’ (2006). This documentary demonstrating how the working class youth of Britain expressed their selves through fashion in Margaret Thatcher’s tenth year as a means of release. There will also be

research into the political state of Britain to gain an insight into the classes that where involved in the subculture. It will examine closely the ideologies behind the acid house movement and the value of influence the conservative policies of Margaret Thatcher had on it. The study will also feature an in depth examination of the Media’s role, analysing primary and secondary media’s view, articles and illustrations from magazines such as i:D and BoysOwn with counter evidence from Tabloid papers such as The Sun and The Mirror. Drawing on the main concept of the lifespan of a subculture and the media’s role within this thesis, Study will be supported by authors such as Dick Hebdige: Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) and David Muggleton’s book Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style (2000).

Figure 1. Chris Abbot - 1987 season at Amnesia (Personal photographs)

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Figure 2: The pyramid in the pool at Amnesia, Opening Night, June 1989, Photographer Dave Swindells [Online] http://www.daveswindells.com/print-spirit-of-ibiza-89

Chapter One: An Insight into ‘Acid House’ culture in Britain – ‘Acid House’ 1989 – ‘A Summer of Love’

This Chapter introduces the subculture ‘Acid House’ and briefly explains its history and its entrance to the UK scene. This chapter will also consider the political state of Britain and youth culture of the 1980’s and show how the ‘Acid House’ movement became a significant subculture.

The youth subculture I have selected for the attention of this study is that of rave culture ‘Acid House’ “subculture was recognised analytical and discursive trope in youth research” through the British, Birmingham based Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) that “the term subculture became most readily associated with the sociologic study of youth” (Bennett, 2000: p.17.)

“It is the contention of the CCCS theorists that music and style based youth culture groups, served as visual statements for pockets of working class resistance to structural changes taking place in post second world war British Society.” (Bennett, 2000: p.47)

The origins of the dance music scene in 1989 essentially stemmed from the ‘Acid House’ Movement and subsequent illegal raves that followed the second so-called ‘Summer of Love’ (1989). It combines distinctively local and transnational elements, this genre spread rapidly and combined dance music, raves and fashion that were not confined to a single nation. In the nineties youth culture was dominated by House, Trance, Ambient, Garage, Jungle, Techno

and Happy Hardcore, an ever widening spectrum of post rave scenes (Reynolds:1997, p.84) that combined the musical origins of the New York underground disco scene of the early 1970’s. These in turn were influenced by Detroit Techno and Chicago House and Garage scenes, which developed out of the Chicago gay clubs of late 1970’s. The repertoires of House music later transferred from the Ibiza clubs to the clubs to the UK starting at the end of the summer of 1987. The introduction of House music to Britain coincided with the arrival of the amphetamine based stimulated Ecstasy (Rietveld: 1993, p.42). The association of ‘E’ and house music resulted in the creation of the term ‘Acid House’ by the media (Russell:1993) as they combined they combined the music style with the drug of choice by ,the ravers.

The term ‘Acid House’ was one of the main sub genres of EDM. Electronic Dance music developed through the eighties through the club scene across America. The arrival of acid House in Britain initially came in 1987. The term ‘Acid House’ was characterised by the electronic sounds of the ‘303 synth’, a bass synthesizer, with dance tracks at 120 beats per minute.

The urban dance music scene is generally argued to date back to 1987 with the beginnings of ‘acid house’ and series of illegal raves that’s followed in its wake, the so-called second “summer of love.”

The term ‘Summer of Love’ originally was the given name for the summer of 1976, in San Francisco and across America thousands of people came together instigating a social and political shift, it was known as the hippie revolution. The Second ‘Summer of Love’ is referring to the summers of 1988 to 1989 in the UK, based on the same principles of the first ‘Summer of Love’ that voiced cultural and social expression. Both eras combining striking

similarities in terms of music individuality, fashion styles and drug use. The media saw a comparison with the psychedelic movement of 1976 (Bennett: 2000, p.75), shown in figure 4.

“The British state has a long history in regulating pleasures associated with parties. A fear seems to exist of the unregulated body that dances and is intoxicated… It is therefore not surprising that acid house parties, that heady mix of house’n’E dance events in 1988, were followed by various moral panic.” (Rietveld, 1988: p,253-4)

Figure 3. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/margaret-thatcher-war-on-rave-acid-house-boysown

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The ‘Acid House’ movement did not limit itself to the social class hierarchy. In the mid 80’s a conservative government who was led by Margaret Thatcher, or the ‘Iron Lady’, ruled Britain. In 1989 Thatcher was in her tenth year of power. The relationship between Acid House and Thatcherism will in particular be drawn out.

The term Thatcherism was coined from Margaret Thatcher’s hegemonic rule, as her politically dominant ideologies translated into a strictly governed capitalist society. As a result of this oppression Britain suffered a substantial class divide, with the Tory’s favouring the wealthy and ambitious. Indeed, the Conservative’s attitudes were echoed in the media as the press itself was under Conservative control, meaning that its reports were unquestionably influenced by Tory views.

The hysteria caused by The SUN distracted many of its readers from the Conservative’s crumbling control of the country and hid the political party’s internal problems. Therefore a definite bias occurs behind this seemingly factual report. . In an interview with Kelvin MacKenzie he calls his report on a ‘Acid House’ rave a “Great story for tabloids” (1989: Editor of the sun). Mackenzie’s use of the word story implies that his newspaper is prioritizes entertainment over fact. This makes the media’s involvement in the recording of the second ‘Summer of Love’ fallible as it represents the Conservative’s views on the ‘Acid House’ movement and offered them as fact to the general public. Margaret Thatcher tried to shape the country into a vision of what Britain should become, to define ‘what the nation is’ and ‘who the people are’. According to a child growing up with Thatcher’s ideals it became “more socially acceptable to be selfish, to say… I want money, I want a house, I want a car .to have all these things, its far more socially acceptable to be greedy” (3:48 BBC: Summer of Rave)

That was Thatcherism at its most ambitious, so by the summer of 89 an entire generation had grown up under Tory rule and ‘Thatcher’s children’ where encouraged to value individual prosperity above all else. This is in direct opposition to the feeling of unity discovered in the ‘Acid House’ movement.

At this point there was a pretty wide spread feeling of political empathy particularly amongst the younger generation. In a tory led Britain instinct was seen to be primal and “a survival of the fittest” policy, which elicited a pattern in which the wealthy became richer. “There was masses of money, and they all ran around in braces and stripy stripes, they where yuppies” and the underprivileged became poorer and faded into the obscurity of the council estates. The Sprit and heart of communities could have arguably been lost under a tory leadership and the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality bestowed upon Britain.

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation." (Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987)

How ecstasy culture combined with house music was a direct result of the reign of thatcher, and the reason it remained a driving phenomenon in British culture for over a decade. It carried on to the ‘ecstasy culture’s’ prevailing ethos of inclusivity and it opened a series of possibilities for people of different classes, genders, backgrounds and belief systems to define their own identity, referring to the text (Inside Subculture 2000). This looks at the recurring story behind people entering acid house culture searching for an alternative lifestyle to the ‘modern Essex business man’ (Altered state, 1997) that a conservative government had created.

Manchester was an influential city in the acid House scene opening Haçienda in 1982, Manchester’s Fac 51 Haçienda or, as most knew it, the Haçienda, shown in figure 4. This club was one of the UK’s most notorious and mythologised clubs. Forever associated with New Order, ‘Madchester’ and acid house, the club, housed on Whitworth St West, was closed in June 1997 following various issues. That has not stopped it retaining a presence as one of the worlds most talked about venues in The UK rave scene.

“At first you just had little pockets of people who knew about acid house. The very first people to get into it were those from London, Manchester and Sheffield who had been out working in Ibiza in the summers of 1986 and '87 and been exposed to it there.” (Terry Farley, DJ Mixmag 2006)

Figure 4: http://cerysmaticfactory.info/fac451_love_will_tear_us_apart.php

Another influential place was Ibiza. ‘Acid House’ tracks first emerged in January 1987 with Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley achieving the first House music Number one hit with the song ‘Jack your Body’. Ibiza was the main House contributor during early summer till late November. The first bar in Ibiza to inhabit house music, owned by Trevor Fung and Ian St Paul it was a small bar in San Antonio named ‘Project.’ The norm was taking ecstasy and going onto the larger scale clubs such as Amnesia and Café Del Mar till the break of dawn. In November of 1988 the first taste of the House scene arrived in Britain when Danny Rampling opened Club ‘Shroom’ in London, Paul Oakenfold the first ‘Future’ in ‘the backroom of the heaven’. ‘Shroom’ later adopted the smiley face logo, which in turn became the face of a sub culture.

“I supplied the sound system for the first two Shoom club nights. Danny Rampling asked me to come down because he knew I was already into the music. It was in a fitness centre on Southwark Street in south London, but what happened in there was like nothing that had gone before. This whole rare groove movement had lasted for years in London but it couldn't really go any further, whereas house music pointed the way forward”. (Carl Cox, DJ Mixmag 2006)

"House music was already being played in some gay clubs and there was a rare groove club in London called The Hug club where everyone took Ecstasy and sat on the floor. Danny didn't bring back house from Ibiza, he was just the first person to put it all together in a package. The whole acid house dance is Danny. Waving his record around while he's playing. Until then DJ's used to just put records on. House only worked when you went 'right, this is a house club.' You went there in your house clothes. You did the house dance because you couldn't do your old dance. You did a

totally different drug. So you had all these people taking a new drug together, doing a new dance, in their new clothes with their new mates." (Terry Farley, DJ Mixmag 2006)

Another well renowned illegal rave was the warehouse party held at Hedonsim. London was the 1988 ‘break out of acid’ when the ‘Acid House’ scene was taking over cities, with Nicky Holloway opening ‘The Trip’ at London Arstoria, which on a regular basis erupted into street parties. Some argue that there were only three main house events in the establishment of House music in Britain, ‘Sunrise’, ‘Genesis’ and ‘Energy’ shown in figure 5,6,7. On the 10th of December 1988 ‘Genesis’, which was run by Wayne Anthony and KP, held the first illegal rave in a warehouse in Aldegate, East London. They went on to hold parties in Clapton and Hackney with added visuals and props to enhance the partygoer’s experience. They also used old car tyres to build a UV lit bar and entrance to the rave (BBC, Summer of rave:2006). At the end of 1988 ‘Genesis’ collaborated with ‘Sunrise’ for a New Years Eve party. In Early 1998 the ‘Acid House’ scene moves away from the inner city warehouse to the countryside, going from strength to strength due to their increased following. The locations of these events being safeguarded, the location would be released an hour before the start and through the means of pirate radio stations and flyers. These tactics were used to keep the illegal raves having a level of secrecy in an interview with Terry Farley he states “it was not about exclusivity but separating two worlds the real and surreal” (Mixmag:2005)

Figure 5. Sunrise & Back to the future Memembership card

Figure 6,7,8: Sunrise Event Posters

Drugs heavily influenced the ‘Acid House’ movement. MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, recognized chemically as the drug 3,4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamin, was made illegal in Britain in 1977 under the misuse of ‘Drugs Act of 1971’, with reports of it being vended on the American Black Market (Redhead, 2000:9). In 1989 ‘weekend offenders’ were introduced to House music and the arrival of the amphetamine based stimulate known to the ravers as ‘E’ (Rietveld, 1993: p.42). Music has always had a strong link to drug use due to many of the effects enhancing the experience of the users and allowing them to stay awake for an extended amount of time. In the early 1920’s Jazz Music was associated with a bohemian lifestyle and drug use Crowley talks about cocaine use from this era ‘I Drew the little heap of powder through my nostrils with one long breath’ (Crowley 2000: p.25). In 1967 the hippie revolution was laced with the use of LSD and marijuana, the punk movement was associated with purple hearts and amphetamines (Madge: 2000, p.145). This is underlined the lyrics and beats that came with the genre. Indeed, Redhead discusses how “ecstasy and music go hand in glove.” In the next chapter I will discuss the theoretical and methodological theories behind the ‘Acid House’ phenomenon.

Chapter Two: The Media’s Representation of Acid House as a Subculture

This chapter will focus on sub culture. It will discuss theoretical views within the ‘Acid House’ subculture, closely focusing on raves and the underground. It will also study the symbolism of clothing and music of members of subcultures and how the dominant culture viewed these same symbols. There will be an analysis of the Media’s representation of ‘Acid House’. The key objective of this chapter is to consider the theories behind a subculture and how this links in with the Media’s representation of it in 1989.

A subculture is a group of people that distances themselves from the larger culture they are part of. Dick Hebdige argues that subculture is used as a rebellion to normalcy. He notes that ‘this process begins with a crime against the natural order” (Hebdige 1979: p.3). He stated that to the larger culture and community a subculture could itself be perceived as negative as they criticise the dominant societal standard. Indeed, he observes ‘the status and meaning of revolt, the idea of style as a form of refusal, the evaluation of crime into art’ (Hebdige 1987: p.2). This suggests that to define an individual subculture you must first look at the culture it developed from. This in turn places mainstream culture in a higher class, as any subculture will always appear as a derivative form. Individualism can be argued to be a defining feature of a subculture. In reference to Cohen’s dominant and subordinate value system, Hebdige argues that subcultures attract like-minded individuals that have lost an aspect of identity. He

notes that “in the gang, the core values of the straight world – sobriety, ambition, conformity, etc – were replaced by their opposites: hedonism, defiance to authority and the quests for ‘kicks’ (Cohen,1955). This is linked with the political state of Britain in the 1980’s as those who were not in the elite class of ‘Thatcher’s children’ felt isolated by the Thatcherised values of the eighties leading many to feel that ‘there is no such thing as society.’ (Women's Own magazine: October 31, 1987).

Dick Hebdige argues ‘that the meaning of subculture is, then, always in dispute, and style is the area in which the opposing definitions clash with dramatic force’ (Hebdige 1979: p.2) indicating that within subcultures objects act as ‘style’. A symbolic sign associated with the ‘Acid House’ community was the ‘smiley’ face logo. This is an example of the use of innocuous signs to represent a subculture, in comparison Hebdige’s criticism of clothes worn by punks. He argues that “These humble objects can be magically appropriated; ‘stolen’ by subordinate groups and made to carry secret meanings: meanings which express in code, a form of resistance to the order which guarantees their continued subordination” (Herbdige: 1979, p.18). The rave scene of 1989 came with its own uniform the style was ‘baggy’ clothes, florescent colours and dungarees, in fact “the baggier the better – the bigger the better – the more freedom the better” (BBC, 2006). This slowly carved the symbolic element of ‘Acid House’ and in terms of fashion and style. This identity became the opposite to the ‘modern day Essex man’ which suggests the need to oppose the norm, ‘defiance of authority and quests for ‘kicks’ (Cohen: 1955):

“A gaggle of brightly dressed extroverts in baggy sweatshirts, dungarees, ethnic accoutrements, strings of beads around their necks, hair grown long over the summer and caught up in a little ponytail with an elastic band. Compared to the drab uniform of London clubland at the end of the eighties-MA-1 flying jackets, Doctor Martens and Levis 501s-they looked and acted like freaks from another dimension.” (Collin:1998, p.55). shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/margaret-thatcher-war-on-rave-acid-house-boysown Most music scenes have their own exact collection of media relations. This is a brief synopsis of ‘Acid House’ betrayal through the tabloid media starting in 1988. In the earlier days of 1988/89 the national press embraced the ‘Acid House’ scene, supporting and promoting the symbolic ‘smiley’ face. Introducing the British public to ‘smiley culture’ newspaper headlines read “it’s groovy its cool –its our acid house T-shirt!” (The SUN: 1998, no.15) This effectively was marketing ‘Acid House’ to the masses and cashed in on the new craze. The sun described ‘Acid House’ as Britain’s latest dance craze in its ‘Acid House’ special, with the ‘smiley culture’ now known in association with ‘E’ culture. Although this positive press was short lived, two weeks after running the headline ‘it’s cool and groovy’ on October the 19th The SUN, ran the headline ‘Evils of Ecstasy” linking ‘Acid House’ with the rumours of a new horror drug claiming news of a ‘danger drug that is sweeping discos and ruining lives’. This meant the once positive ‘smiley culture’ was replaced with an anti-drugs frowning smiley as shown in figure 10, similar articles were run in The Post and Today. The growing hysteria coming from the subcultural tabloids led to the moral panic of the middle classes of 1989. Shortly after the ‘Evils of Ecstasy’ headline The Daily Mail newspaper reported a ‘Sunrise’

party as the ‘Evil night of Ecstasy’ (Daily Mail: 1988, 7th of Nov). On June the 24th The SUN ran the famous headline ‘SPACED OUT’, seen in figure 11, this was a two page spread with the sub heading ’11,000 youngsters go drug crazy at Britain’s biggest ever Acid party’ claiming that there were kids as young as twelve at ‘Britain’s biggest ever ecstasy bash’. They went onto to claim that the scene had gone as far as being a cult. A headline that read ‘Ban acid cult that killed our girl’ caused horror among the public. Following this media coverage ‘Smiley’ face logo merchandise had to be recalled from shops also resulting in House nightclubs such as ‘Trip’ to change their names so as not to be associated with the alleged atrocities caused by the movement.

While subcultural refusals have been traditionally effected through the statement of self-expression and the display of alternative identity, Acid House has relinquished this ground… the strategy of resistance to the scene of identity necessitates and escape from the (media) gaze, as, unlike previous subcultures which remain ‘hiding in the light’ (Hebdige: 1988, p.35), a whole subculture attempts to vanish. (Melechi 1993: p.38)

Figure 10: The Sun Anti acid Badge: The SUN

Figure 11: The SUN Spaced out issue

On July 14th 1989 the media coverage escalated as it dealt with the first ecstasy related death. The victim, a 16year old girl, had taken a pill at the Manchester club Hacienda and died shortly afterwards. The media then portrayed the drugs as a menace to society but further as a

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threat to the young people of Britain. However, the link between ‘Acid House’ and the harmful drug was so fundamentally solidified that the moral panic focused on ‘Acid House’ as a total movement including the music, fashion and lifestyle, rather than the ecstasy drug itself. To follow this analysis of the British Tabloid media in 1988/89, the next chapter will discuss articles and interviews of conflicting views on ‘The Summer of Love’ and aim to analysis this through Sarah Thornton’s theory of the ‘subcultural capital’.

Chapter Three: An Ethnographical Study of the Media’s role in ‘Acid House’

The ‘Acid House’ sub-culture is one that appears a larger phenomenon than most British youth cultures, the level of moral panic that it involved was the largest it had seen in decades due to its association with the amphetamine based stimulant know as ecstasy. This chapter will cover Thornton’s theory of the ‘subcultural capital’ and how this relates to the youth culture ‘Acid House’. There will be an analysis of conflicting text from tabloid and ‘niche’ media coverage; this chapter will highlight the distinctive connection between mixed media coverage and the subculture.

Sarah Thornton’s study of ‘Club Culture’ introduces the element of youth trying to avoid the mainstream. She notes “while youth celebrate the ‘underground’ academics venerate “subcultures”; where one group denounces the ‘commercial,’ the other criticizes “hegemony”; where one lament “selling out,” the other theorizes: “incorporation” (Thornton: 1995) suggesting the lifecycle of a subculture through the culture and different views of oppositions. ‘Acid House’ gained large-scale exposure through the constant Media coverage but Thornton argues that in hindsight the ‘Acid House’ movement had essentially instigated the upsurge of negative stigma themselves;

Their views of the media have other agendas to fill. They are a means by which youth imagine their own and other social groups, assert their distinctive character, and affirm

that they are not “attention spans” to be bought and sold by advertiser, nor faceless members of an undifferentiated mass” (Thornton: 1995)

Thornton suggests that subcultures target young people creating sensationalised or misleading negative views of their own culture – not seeing the greater negative effects these views could have had when filtered into mainstream culture. By the ‘Acid House’ movement defined itself as underground it became a subculture and subsequently became its own enemy-within the content that “undergrounds define themselves against the mass media” (1995:p.177).

i-D, an established magazine, with its ethos being ‘to excavate the youth cultural landscape to find and formulate subcultures’ (Thornton:1995) first published an ‘Acid House’ article in April 1988 in the ‘surreal issue’ with a three page spread on the House scene. The headline read ‘SULPHURIC ACID HOUSE’ with the subtitled ‘turn your house into a home or better still a psychedelic shack’(i-D surreal issue;1998) it introduces the reader to a brief history of Chicago House ‘today Chicago is more enthusiastic about the new psychedelic sound rather than a straight forward dance attack’(i-D surreal issue;1998). In an extract from the article, the article they describe Acid Tracks, ‘it captured the extreme spirit of House’s most ardent, adherents, hardcore dancers who experimented with LSD, disco psychedelia and designer chemistry like ecstasy’. It then references drug use in the scene, “acid is probably the most prevelant drug on the scene, but House is no druggier than any other dance scene’ (i-D surreal issue;1998) , in Thornton’s ideological theory suggests that the tabloid press was not the only voice heard in the debate regarding ‘Acid House’ there was also ‘niche ‘ media (Thornton: 1994.1995) examples of these are magazines and fanzines. In this case i-D magazine displays the quality of ‘niche’ media, Shown in figure 12,13 and 14. They specialised in catering for young clubbers of the ‘Acid House’ movement, they scrutinized the reports of the tabloid and

mainstream media therefore offering an alternative account. This was also portrayed in Boys Own Franize, Shown in figure 15 and 16. The ‘niche’ media was seen to sensationalized media reports Peter Nasmyth a journalist from the magazine ‘Face’ who wrote:

“It can make you feel very close and empathetic – you might feel like hugging your friends – but the affection it inspires is unlikely to send anyone into the frenzied raptures common in the Haight/Ashbury district in 1976. Ecstasy is a misleading name; the drug is so called more for the reasons of promotion than resolution” (Nasmyth: 1985, p.75)

Thornton’s theory of “Underground” could also suggest the ‘niche’ media itself was “underground” labelling the underground as;

More than fashionable or trendy, underground sounds and styles are “authentic,” and pitted against the mass produced and mass consumed. Undergrounds denote exclusive worlds whose main point is not elitism, but whose parameters often relate to particular crowds.” (Thornton: 1995)

This links closely with i-D magazines representation of youth culture as it explains that since the early nineties youth movements in association with drugs have inevitably resulted in media panic:

‘Every subculture breeds its own moral panic, every moral panic is stereotyped by its own devil drug. Think of all those headlines in the past that have screamed themselves

horse; mods on speed, freaks dropping LSD, punks sniffing glue, blacks smoking dope, even cocaine-crazed yuppies’ (i-D: June 1990)

Resuming a ‘niche’ opinion in the eyes of the media ‘Undergrounds are nebulous constructions’ (University of Birmingham, CCCS). Magazines like i-D played a great part in the formation of the ‘Acid House’ subculture ‘i-D produced acid house subculture as much as the participating dancers and drug takers’ (Thornton: 1995). Thus suggesting the mainstream culture could have perceived the ‘niche’ media as “Underground” itself. By the end of the 1980’s ‘about 30 magazines addressed youth, featured music and style editorial’ (1995) indicating that subcultural consumer magazines aim was to cater for social groups among youth:

‘They categorize social groups, arrange sounds, itemise attire and label everything. They baptize scenes and generate the self-consciousness required to maintain cultural distinctions’ (Thornton:1995).

But this could be argued that a magazine is corporate run with is key objective being ‘the magazine interest in subculture is their need to target and maintain readership’ (Thornton: 1995). Subcultural consumer magazines in late 1980’s could be seen as ‘niche’ in the eyes of Mainstream Britain conflicted with the youth subculture the magazine was catering for, making ‘niche’ media the ‘subculturalists’ their presence was an unmediated reflection of the social structure. ‘Niche’ media was not subsequence in the creation of ‘Acid House’ but in the role of helping shape music subcultures.

Figure 12: Column From i-D Magazines Acid Issue

Figure 13 i-D magazines Acid Isuue no.57

Figure 14: I-d Magazines club Review

Figure 15,16. Boys Own Franize

Tabloid media is a form of newspaper that delivers news in condensed reports. The stigma that comes with tabloidization is significant because in western society newspapers are the main source of information for the public concerning widespread current events. Authors such as Hallin (1992) identify the tabloid as a prime model of the social medium where one cannot attract a significant distinction between ‘information’ and ‘entertainment’. The ‘Acid House’ movement was by no means the first youth movement that had caused moral panic through tabloid media in Britain. Stanley Cohen (1972) argues that the media panic and hype created by the tabloids and national mass media caused the notorious clash and riots between the mods and rockers in the sixties, which was antagonising the situation.

The case study being analysed is from the tabloid newspaper The SUN, written by Robert Kellaway and Simon Hughes on the 26th of June 1989. They published ‘SPACED OUT!’ a front cover story accompanied by ‘11,000 youngsters go drug crazy at Britain’s biggest-ever acid party’. Inside, on page four and five read the headline ‘ESCTASY AIRPORT’, ‘The SUN cracks secret drug rave-up in hangar’ this headline introduced the British nation to the scandal of the M25 ‘drug parties’. This article derived at the rave ‘Sunrise’ at an aircraft hangar in Barkshire. Hidden among the 11,000 guests was a team of undercover reporters from The SUN, on Monday morning the party was front-page news. The undercover reporters stated ‘drug- crazed kids – some as young as 12 – boogied for eight hours yesterday at Britain’s biggest ever ecstasy bash’. Their reference to the youth of Britain as ‘drug-crazed’ and their claim that there were kids as young as twelve at a illegal rave alarmed the British public, this was the first time the general public got to hear and see this was going on, creating a state of moral panic. It goes on to explain the findings from the report ‘the floor littered with tiny

squares of foil – used to wrap ecstasy tablets.” This portrayal of the ‘Acid House’ movement is representative of the Tory party’s views as it demeaned the lower classes and destroyed feelings of unity gained by the ravers. Indeed, Thornton notes that, “in turning youth into news, the tabloids both frame subcultures as major events and also dissemble them. A tabloid’s front page, however distorted, is frequently a self-fulfilling prophecy; it can turn the most ephemeral fad into a lasting development.’ (Thornton: 1995, p.132) In the article made on the illegal rave the editor of The SUN calls the report a “story” presenting news itself as subjective when given through politically influenced newspapers. MacKenzie validates the truth of his report by referring to his mass readership. In response to contestations against his article Mackenzie claims that “if the sun said it was true in 1989 – then it was definitely true, we were selling 1.3 million copies per day and we were the bible of choice for young people” (Kelvin Mackenzie 1989:Editor of the sun.) MacKenzie disturbingly connects The SUN’s mass readership with the validation of the “story.” He claims that it has to be true because so many believed it to be so. His description of The SUN as a Bible also suggests that The SUN’s readers were supposed to blindly accept what was written as a matter of faith. MacKenzie does not back up his claim with solid evidence, rather, he uses a sales figure to prove The SUN’s success as a paper in a display of solidarity towards Thatcherism. This worryingly portrays the media as reporting falsities and places it into the entertainment genre rather than fact, so through the media’s coverage of the event the public were offered a version of reality flavoured with conservative views. Essentially, the conservative party’s favouritism for individualism in society opposed the construction of unity enabled by the ‘Acid House’ lifestyle. Therefore the movement’s reputation was soiled and the summer of love ended this is supported by Kristian Russell refering to the scene losing its original magic that the ‘Acid House’ once had and that it had lost its exclusivity through media and political views “The original scene had been discovered and undermined by outside interests and with

that scale of interference from the media hype – and the police crack down that followed – it was inevitable that acid house would peter out’ (1993, p130). Although Russell also looks deeper at the longevity of ‘Acid House’ ‘The tabloid hysteria against Acid House in late 1988 dispersed the Acid House style but not the spirit’ (1993,p.79) suggesting that ‘Acid House’ played a part in rave culture; that defined itself on a music genre but the ever maturing culture rather than a subculture - its principles that it based its self on – the pleasure of music and dance searching for a release from the ‘norm’.

Conclusion

One can now comprehend the media’s role within the subculture ‘Acid House’. The subculture was formed due to a new genre of music being brought to Britain in timing with a new drug ‘E’ at a time where ‘Thatcher’s children’ where searching for a new means of release from this came the ‘Acid House’ movement.

This study explored the connection between the media, political polices and the need for a new subculture to develop to include the excluded of Thatcher’s Britain. There was in-depth research through the use of video interviews, primary and secondary documentaries. There was also an exploration of theoretical critics and cultural critics. Findings included the subculture was developed through the need to rebel from the oppressive capitalist society. The ‘Acid House’ movement had numerous side effects - like in other subcultures clothing and style often utilised to suggest a sense straying from the norm, gaining the disapproval of the dominant culture, clothing acting as a uniform for those in the subculture creating a sense of togetherness and belonging. Also from this subculture a new lifestyle developed within the youth of Britain, a new sense of identity was born, the search for a meaning amongst the generations of post war youth was found through the means of music, a youth searching for an altered state that that commenced in the summer of 1989. The significance of the media role in subculture is a speculated one. The two main types of media used were tabloid and ‘niche’ in 1989. Tabloid exploiting the cultural values behind ‘Acid House’ and ‘niche’ media expressing a ‘underground’ view. The segregation of subcultures through these forms of media establishes a divide of resistance culture and the

‘dominant’ culture. In the case of ‘Acid House’ media’s role can be highly disputed, both ‘niche’ and tabloid media were crucial to the ways the youth of Britain received the ‘Acid House’ movement. The medias presence did not just cover the ‘Acid House’ movement but helped construct and develop the subculture itself. The negative and positive press on the ‘Acid House’ still helped form the opinion of the ‘mass society’, Acid House’ presence has left a lasting legacy on the Rave culture of today, with help from the tabloid and ‘niche’ media.

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Appendices Interview with Terry Farley – Interviewed by Frank Broughton & Bill Brewster in Bill's living room, 23.2.05

Let’s start with a bit of biographical detail.. I was born in 1958 in Latimer Road, London. I lived there till I was about 13, then I moved to Slough. Did you get moved because of the Westway? We got moved because they were supposed to be doing a westway spur. They were supposed to be building another one right down our road and they never did it but they pulled everyone’s houses down. We had an outside toilet and no bathroom. I was 12 and I was having a bath in a tin bath. Everyone had these big air raid shelters, made of concrete that had been put up in the war and everyone kept chickens in them. Thinking back now it’s quite funny, cos once I’d moved to Slough, we moved into an estate that now looks shit but at the time looked wonderful. We had gas fires, indoor bathroom and toilet, fuckin’ wonderful. How was it in Slough, how did you get into music? Well, I got into music living in London because we were the white area of north Kensington when you got to the bottom of the road you got into Ladbroke Grove and it was very West Indian. Our area was quite white, but you’d still get parties late at night playing reggae with these very old Jamaican guys hanging out. I got really into reggae when I was nine or ten. I think one of the reasons my dad hated it – “fuckin’ parties all night long!” – we used to love it ’cos it wound him up. All the kids in Slough were slum clearance people from London, and most of them were second generation. When I come to Slough, all the kids talked with a much more London accent than where I come from in London. It was very strange. They also had this massive Polish estate and also Welsh. They had loads of Welsh that had come to work in the Mars factory.

How often were you able to get in the city? Well, when we moved my mum and dad split so my dad remained in north Kensington, till he died a few years ago, and both my grandparents lived here. I used to come back to watch QPR with my uncles every Saturday and I used to come back and see me dad and buy records in places like Dub Vendor in Clapham Junction market and later on they opened a store just under the bridge, opposite where they are now, in Ladbroke Grove, almost like a tobacconists. People in Slough were obsessed with London. They were obsessed with getting back to London. Why? There was nothing in Slough at all, then they built six big council estates. Manor Park was Welsh, completely Welsh. When the funfair would come over and all the skinhead kids would fight. The kids from Brickwell, these cockney kids, running round like Dick Van Dyke, would fight the Welsh skinheads! It was fuckin’ crazy. Very tribal. Then split up into that were all the tribal things going on, like skinheads, suede heads, rude boys, still teddy boys running round London at that time. Later on, punk. They were a real breeding ground for that sort of thing ’cos they don’t have an identity. I think most of the people who moved there realised it was great having a bathroom and a bit of luxury, but you can’t get a bus anywhere and there’s no shops here… Physically they’ve been priced out of London because of the property prices, but spiritually they were still there. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been obsessed with this stuff myself… When did you start clubbing? I started going quite late. In Slough there was nothing. Everywhere you’d be there would be violence. Even the funfair. It was quite heavy for the time, that inter-estate violence. There was nowhere you could go. I remember our first holiday we went to Selsey Bill caravan site, about ten of us, and we met some girls from Bermondsey who were really ugly, but they brought records down with them. I remember this girl brought the Kool & The Gang album, Wild & Peaceful. They would take it to the club at night which would finish at half ten, and they would play Funky Stuff and they had this dance. They were

wearing drainpipe jeans and capped sleeve T-shirts and plastic sandals. And we were like, “Cor, you’d got a dance!” and then we went back home and they told us about these places in London… Suddenly a few little clubs sprung up in Slough and we were in the front of it all. Then we started coming into London, me and Gary Haisman. We first started going to Crackers, suddenly there was this whole gay thing in your face. There was a lot of people there pretending to be gay ’cos I think a lot of people on that scene had come out of Louise’s and Chaguarama’s and those gay clubs. I thought, wow this is brilliant, really exotic. My dad used to hate Gary Haisman. He used to say to my mum, ‘He’ll turn him, he’ll turn him!” Gary wasn’t gay at all, but he was quite effeminate as a kid. He didn’t have that – aggression and bolshy – that he had later. How did you hear about Crackers? Was that the main club you went to? It was the first club I went to where it was, ‘Wow, this is just amazing’. And talking to other people nowadays, people like Carl Cox, Norman Jay, Paul Trouble Anderson, there’s loads of people there the same age as me, like 16. I think before then there certainly was places, like Gullivers and there were soul clubs, but it was like Crackers was the first club for that generation. The first time a place felt like yours? I think so. We used to go on a Sunday first. It was on from 7 o’clock till 12, but the last train to Slough went at half eleven, so we’d have to leave at half ten. So we’d get there and there’d be no one in there and just as people started dancing we’d have to leave… it was something like 50 pence to get in and you got sausage and chips! The place stunk of sausage and chips. I think it was licensing laws. I was obsessed. I used to go up on my own and I didn’t know anyone in there. It was about 85% black. What year did you first go? I dunno. The sort of records they played when I first went were things like Lalo Schifrin’s Jaws. It was fuckin’ brilliant. I really loved the fact it was like the northern soul thing. It was carpeted, the club, and they had a proper dancefloor but you

couldn’t even stand on the dancefloor unless you could dance. White kids, even the ones who could dance, wouldn’t go on the dancefloor because you’d have some guy who was fuckin’ amazing come right up in your face and throw all these moves and you’d have to walk back… And the first white kid who could dance was Tommy McDonald, he put himself out there. Then Gary Haisman was very good after. Was the dancing as important as the music? I think that’s probably what’s got me, it was the dancing. It was funny ’cos you went there and all thee black guys in there – Trevor Shakes, Bevis Pink, Jabba from Ealing – the rumour was everyone went to the London Ballet School, but in fact they went to the Pineapple Dance classes in Covent Garden. Everyone started going there. You’d go along there. I was working at the gas board and Saturday you’d go along and there’d be these kids getting lessons from someone crap like Arlene Phillips. People’d be like ‘no no it’s jazz dancing!’ The dancing was everything. Was it a spectator thing? Well you danced, it was like you had to dance within yourself. If you danced a little bit too energetically, even if it was in a corner, you’d get spotted and someone would come and… You’d better be good! Yeah. But then what would happen was people would travel around. There was a club in Dunstable called the Devil’s Den which was part of the California Ballrooms. They used to have big bands playing there like James Brown, Fatback Bad. They’d get 6,000 people for some of these big soul concerts. They had a little club in there and you’d get these soul kids from London and suddenly you’d realised there were black kids from Reading and Luton. You realised there was a network of these little dancers who were really good. On a Monday people used to go to Scamps in Hemel Hempstead, on a Tuesday there was a Scamps in Sutton… there was a club every night on this circuit. Were they earning any money as dancers or anything? West End shows? I don’t know what they did, but Bevis Pink turned up on the video of Kelly Marie Feel Like I’m In Love.

They always show it on VHS. They’re on a ship and there are two black sailors. One of them is Bevis Pink. He was the absolute bollocks at Crackers. On of the top bods. Didn’t Clive Clark win the national disco dancing championships? Yeah, but that was the sanitised thing. You very much realised that black guys, who were winning the dancing at Crackers, were amazing dancers, but when that championships came up it was more about acrobatics and showmanship. Was it about battling? Very much battling, very much. It did, on many occasions, break out into violence when someone didn’t win. Really?! They danced to the Bee Gees You Should Be Dancing, that’s the record they played in the final. There was a guy from Ealing called Jabba who was a really big black man, probably older than everyone. He might have been 25; very muscley. It was very much that someone would dance and everyone would gather round and go ‘woo woo!’. It was the first time I heard people making noises in a club. It was very dark in there because it had a low, ceiling. And, especially when George Power took over, it got very intense. You’d hear like Zulu noises in there. It become very intense. These kids were teenage boys from very rough parts of London. The fashion which had come out of Acme Attractions, that sort of Sex Pistols look, had been fucked at Crackers because the best dancers were scruffy kids so suddenly that didn’t matter. Most of the kids who were really good were gawky skinny kids. There certainly weren’t no peace or love in there. If you went to the Royalty or any of those white clubs that Chris Hill was playing it was really friendly. Them clubs weren’t like that at all. They were very intense, you could get smacked in the mouth if you stepped on their foot. Women losing their handbags. Then they switched it to a Friday lunchtime and it got even younger. I think Paul Anderson first started DJing there. That became the main time for people to go. We used to bunk off college, but it got really young in there – 14 or 15 – you’d come out there, regularly, with 500 kids running down Oxford Street. There was a shop called Stanley Adams

which is where Woodhouse is, and they sold Smith jeans stuff like that, they’d steam in there, ripping things out, steaming, bag snatching… bad behaviour. It was quite ghetto? Yeah, very bad behaviour. You say when George took over. Who was there first? Well, when I first went Mark Roman was there. Really cool, older guy. He looked Greek, he wore really nice clothes. We were really into that. We’d go up and say, “Where did you get your jumper from?” [laughs]. No we did! It sounds really crap now, but we did. Brown’s in South Moulton Street was a really trendy shop for older soul boys and everyone was wearing sandals and big baggy jumpers and Carpenter jeans. He played really good music, stuff like Bobby Womack Daylight was massive when I first started going there, Let’s Do The Latin Hustle Eddie Drennon, Bimbo Jet El Bimbo. There was lots of people who had maybe been Bowie boys with wedges and girls doing the Hustle. It was probably a real mixture, older gay guys, a lot of white kids, black kids in there were really trendy and good dancers, then suddenly when George Power come in, it seemed to get really black and BOOM - changed the music. A lot of jazz and jazz funk stuff. There were a lot of girls there? When I first went in there there was a lot of girls and you got the feeling that you could actually get off with some, but as soon as George Power came, it got very intense in there and a few of the black guys in there acted gay, I don’t know whether they were, but it did lose its diversity, it became very very much a sort of male young peacock strutting. Thinking about it now, I never see a girl dancing. So it was very show offy… Yeah, but never for the girls, though. Especially if you went there on a Sunday night or a Friday lunchtime, you’d never find any decent birds in there, would you? [laughs] Eat yer sausage and chips! Was it a unique place or were there others? I think it was unique. Me and Norman Jay talk about this a lot. At the time, 100 Club was on a Saturday afternoon with Greg Edwards. It was

pretty much a similar crowd and on a Sunday upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, but I just think, for me, when you went somewhere, you went to another club, like Hemel Hempstead, people’d come up to and go: “you go to Crackers, don’t yer?” Like Shoom was the acid house club, Crackers was the club. Did that open any doors outside of the club. Was there a bit of network going on? Only to go clubbing, I don’t think anything creative came out on of it. Maybe it was people’s first experience and first real good experience that made them do what they do now, but it wasn’t like Shoom where suddenly people were opening clothes shops. But that might just have been the age of people, they were very young. We were talking to Jazzie B about it and he said it was the first time he went to a club and there’s white people as well. Coming out of the reggae scene, it felt for younger black kids that it was their club… Well, it was the first place I went to where I was in the minority, as well. It probably did help that, but I’ve got to say, I loved it so much, that I put up with it really… the white kids in there were second class citizens really and it was only later when Tommy McDonald and Haisman and people like that got in the middle of the dancefloor that they were accepted. Suddenly people talked to you. It didn’t really matter to me, because I was just bowled over by the whole thing. Can you give us a role call of all the people who went on to do something interesting who went there? You know what, this is another thing… Spandau Ballet were there… maybe they were, it was on a long time and the crowd really did change. I remember going there about ’79 and being 19 and feeling really old. Carl Cox, Paul Anderson, Norman Jay, Gary Haisman, Cleveland Anderson, loads of people like that. I heard Trevor Nelson speak about it once, as well. It went on a long time. The only constant was George Power, he was a fucking brilliant DJ, especially for someone who looked out of place. Why? He was ten years older than everyone, at least. This Greek guy and terrible clothes.

And that was important, it was really important how you looked. Even the kids who didn’t have the right clothes, still did the right dance, so it compensated. But George had everything wrong about him. He used to use the mic which no one else did. He used to say stuff like ‘get up, get jazzy!’. But he was fantastic. A bit like Tim Westwood. You think, ‘Why do these kids accept him, he’s so wrong?’. Maybe it’s the same thing. I never heard anyone saying, ‘Let’s fuck him off’ an there was a lot of testosterone about. People had a real passion about him. Is it true he had a coterie of hard black lesbians hanging about him? Don’t know. I was very naïve about what was going on around then. I went to Wigan once, about ’76, I didn’t even realise that people took drugs there. I was very into all that stuff and I didn’t realise what was going on. I went with a Slough DJ called Alan Sullivan who was a soul DJ and also, apparently, the leader of the Shed! When I moved to Slough he had a gang called Sulli’s boot boys and they said he was the leader of the Shed. He used to DJ and he was a pretty good northern soul dancer. There were northern parties going on at the Top Rank in Reading. We started going there and he said they were running mini buses up to Wigan. Gary Haisman went, couple of black guys from Slough who were treated like absolute royalty. People buying them drinks and shaking their hands. I’d been up north a few times by then, with Chelsea, and it had been disastrous. You’d get the train bricked, you’d get murdered up there, so I couldn’t believe how friendly they were at Wigan. Nothing like it was in London. I think the people at Crackers thought they were the best, because they had the newest records and the best dancers and they were very arrogant about that. I was very much an outsider looking in, but when I went somewhere like Dunstable, I’d be Mr Crackers, you know what I mean? [laughter] And I’d be as gobby and arrogant as they were to me! So how did you get involved in the all-dayers and stuff? We used to go to this northern one in Reading and also one in Yate [nr. Bristol]. At Reading they had an upstairs room where they played funk and stuff like that, a lot of black kids, similar records to Crackers. 100

upstairs, and 1,000 people downstairs dancing to fairly commercial northern soul. Then they did an all-dayer and I think it was Chris Hill who played there. And he led all these people out of the small upstairs room down on to the main dancefloor in front of the DJ and demanded they played funk. It ended up with some funk being played and the northen soulies all standing like this [arms folded] and then they played a northern soul record and there’d be booing and shouting. When it came round to the next all-dayer, which I think were on bank holidays… Which year was this? About 1977 I’d imagine. Suddenly it just flipped. I remember walking in there and there was 300 northern soul fans and 1000 London-based soul boys. ‘Fuckin’ hell, where have all these people come from?”. Then everywhere, everyone was a soul boy. Where were the first all-weekenders you went to? I went to the first Caister. ‘81? I think so. I went to the next 11 or 12. I’ve got some funny pictures. When the Malcolm McLaren album was out, Duck Rock, in 1982, we was still going to Caister. I’ve got a picture of Weatherall with a Mohican, Johnny Rocker in full Malcolm McLaren hat, suit, the other people were Cymon Eckles, dressed in full Vivienne Westwood stuff. And the rest of the people were still in fuckin’ silk shorts! But, you know, we liked it. We were living at home, none of us had flats, we all had traditional jobs. I was working for the gas board. Rocker worked in a clothes shop in Windsor. It was somewhere to go where you could stay up all night. Were people doing drugs or getting pissed? Pissed. The first time I ever realised people were doing drugs was when I first met Rocker and I was on the production line at Ford’s in Langley. I was working on the night shift. There was a guy who used to come in with a portable record player, West Indian guy, he had a box of sevens he used to play. I used to buy reggae records off him. Then this guy says, “Oh I’ve seen you go to Scandals”. It was a soul club on a Friday. He said you should come down with me next Friday. They had a half shift at

Fords on a Friday, so you went in at 2 and came out at 7. About three in the afternoon he said, “you’re coming aren’t you?” “Yeah, got me clothes.” He said, “Have one of these.” I said “What is it?” “Blues. Everyone takes them at soul things!” “Do they?” [laughter] He gave me this tablet, I remember I was putting the tachographs in the cabs. You had a set amount to do and once you’d done them you could finish. I did them in about two hours! What went wrong with the all-dayers? It just become enormous. When I first went to Crackers, it probably held 500 or 600 and there was a club every night of the week you’d go to, but I’d say it was the same people in every club. We’re probably only two or three thousand people in the whole of the south east of England who were into it. Suddenly, when the all-dayers broke, it was all the kids from where you lived who went. Instead of me going to Crackers with four or five people, it was the whole of Slough. Slough suddenly opened a club and people like Steve Walsh came down. There was no fun, it was very serious, but it was great because it was your thing. Once the Chris Hill thing came in, they brought fun into it. They marched people down on to that dancefloor. Whether that was an act of defiance or ‘Wahey let’s all have a laugh…’ And once that element of fun came in, instead of Mark Roman going ‘Shake your booty’ you’ve got a guy going ‘Woooah-woooah!’ and it becomes shockingly embarrassing. So instead of the soul boys having the best clothes, these people were the worst dressed. Did your crowd sack it and look for something else? Yeah, I think so. I got into reggae in a big way again. I was into Lovers Rock. Went to 100 Club on a Thursday, Prince Far I, Dennis Brown used to play there. Got into the jazz scene, with Paul Murphy at the Horseshoe in Tottenham Court Road. A lot of the dancers who used to go to Crackers moved into that jazz dance scene where that intensity was still going on. Then a lot of my mates got into that indie dance. I personally didn’t like it.

Where did you first hear house music? The first time I thought this is a thing rather than a record, I played at a warehouse party. We used to go to a shop called Demob which was run by Steve Marney and some northern soul people. They had a warehouse in Roseberry Avenue. Being a record collector, I was getting loads of gigs playing backrooms. Playing reggae? Not really. I used to play sort of leftfield stuff, early rap things like that. I’d be playing soul clubs in the back room playing records that people didn’t dance to. We used to go in Demob and he asked me if I wanted to play. Big thing for me. Maurice and Noel Watson were playing and I was doing the warm-up. I was playing maybe the sort of stuff that early Jay Strongman would have been playing. They came on and played two hours of records I’d never heard. They were all new New York labels like Sleeping Bag, that real sort of tribally sound. I asked them where they’d got them from and they were like, ‘oh we got them from New York’. That was my first house moment listening to those two play. What was the response like? It was good. It was a warehouse with a lot of crazy people in it. It was quite fashion-y. Londoners’ negative response to house music wasn’t the fact that they didn’t like it, it was due to the rare groove scene. It was so enormous and so good. It wasn’t they didn’t like it, they just didn’t need it. It was probably the best it had been since Crackers. Suddenly the dancing was important again. Even though the clothes were seventies-related, they were good. It got back to credible again. People going to warehouses. Anthems. There was always another record to find. Did the warehouses suddenly spring up or were they always happening? It was part of the rare groove thing. Without the rare groove scene London wouldn’t have exploded in the way it did when house came along, because you already had everything there, you had the sound systems, you had the people in the clubs. They just switched the music and, instead of there being a thousand people, suddenly there was 10,000. It was already there. So it wasn’t house then, exactly, it was stuff like Serious Intention. Yes, it was. But I

remember them specifically playing the dubs of those records, which was quite radical then. And I think they were mixing as well, not well particularly, but in a way that linked the records. The first time I heard house as something different and, ‘This is what we’re gonna play’ was at the Raid. I used to warm up there and Pete Tong and Oaky were the main DJs. It was just around the time when Tongy was just trying to get that thing together with London and he’d play a half an hour of it and people didn’t know how to react to it. Did he clear the floor? Well, people just never danced. Go go was big at the time. I remember him having two copies of something which he’d cut up and he was pretty good at it. Then things like Love Can’t Turn Around would be played and people’d just didn’t know how to dance to it. It didn’t go with how people were dancing, with the little jazz moves. You could play a Def Jam record next to a go go record and a James Brown record; but then you played a house record and it was like ‘what am I supposed to do to this?’ it didn’t fit in with anything else. It only worked when it was only house. It didn’t work as part of the tapestry of what was being played

We used to go to Rockley Sands where the music was fantastic, you’d get a good crowd there. You could hear jazz records from the 60s next to Public Enemy. First time I ever see Danny Rampling was there. He’d been trying to get a gig with Nicky Holloway, who was a mate of his, but he wouldn’t let him play. Johnny Walker was playing George Kranz’s Din Daa Daa and Rampling jumped on the stage and started doing this Shoom dance. People was going, “He’s took one of them E things! You know them Es? They’ve got them in Ibiza.” This was in November of 1987 so they must’ve just come back. They asked him to get off. Holloway was getting the hump. And someone said, “Look at Chris Butler!” and Chris Butler was in the speaker [laughter]. And it was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And they were going, “If you take one of these E’s it lasts all night and tomorrow”. And Sunday afternoon they were all there

dancing, Johnny Walker, Chris Butler, Danny and a couple of little girls. They were going “Yeah, we took one last night and we’re still on it. It’s fuckin’ great”. We were like, “Wow, yeah. Brilliant”. We all had to have some. It was the first time I’d ever taken an E and known what to do. Did you go to the early Shooms? I went in January I think. I missed the first month. My main problem or my main asset is when I get into something I go in with two feet and I’m really enthusiastic. The Boys Own magazine was going which was totally rare groove. I had the big trousers and the hat. We had pictures of Rockley Sands, pictures of guys in rare groove stuff. Then suddenly – BOOM – there it was. And I was like, ‘right we’re changing. This is amazing!’ And one of these little girls, who was one of Chris Butler’s lot, did actually say to me, “You’ve missed it. It’s full of wankers now.” The third week? About the fourth week. The first three were full of the twenty people who’d gone to Amnesia. Suddenly, the people who were in the know started to come in and you could tell even then they were being really defensive about it; they didn’t even really want you in there. We were like the first wave and then suddenly, two months later, we were being really defensive about everyone else. Saying to Jenni, don’t give any more memberships out. It was like that. Why were they like that? They were quite on it with the press, though. That was later. First of all it was this wonderful little secret and the people who were there were very much part of that Rockley Sands clique of people. Suddenly people were coming in from outside. Jenni hired a PR company, Victory PR, who were doing the big parties in London. I remember talking to Robert Elms in there and holding Gary Crowley’s hand to Joyce Sims’ Come Into My Life at the end! All sorts of people in there: Bananarama, Martin Fry, Paul Rutherford, Michael Clark. You could definitely tell there was different levels of people who didn’t really get on with each other because everyone thought they were the true Shoomers.

But it was also an end of something and a start of something else, because the Elmses and Bananaramas belonged to the previous generation of elite clubbers. Well, they tried it. I remember Robert Elms in the mid ’80s walking round at the Wag Club in a fantastic Gaultier suit and he looked fantastic. And suddenly he’s coming up to me in Shoom, in shorts, looking a knob. [laughter] Graham Ball was running around in there in Mambo shorts, as well, it’s like steady on! What were you wearing? To be honest with you, I was into that distressed casual look. The first people who forged that Ibiza thing were kids from this estate called Roundshaw. They were living in Ibiza. That band Natural Life, they were part of it. One of their dad’s was a bass player. They went on to do Naked Lunch and Monkey Drum. They were all basically in old Chevignon jackets, Lee dungarees and Converse. That’s where that look comes from. Even without the DJs bringing back tablets, there was an undercurrent of working class kids who’d been out there working? We did a party at the Raid club underneath this hotel in Marble Arch. Massive venue. Me and Weatherall did the door. We were on the door dressed up and a group of kids come up and one of them was from football, he was Millwall, and they were all Shoomed up, but this was before… and we were like, “No, you can’t come in like that”. I went to Shoom from Discotheque that Ben and Andy do at Busby’s. Haisman came and took us there and suddenly I realised all the people in Shoom were the people who I didn’t let in six weeks earlier. A week later I’ve got dungarees on and looking a right pudding! [laughter] That’s the way it was. What about Spectrum? When Spectrum first started I was playing reggae in the VIP room. I was playing Studio One. The first week there was 100 in there and they give everyone a free E. Oaky played. He played the top 20 Alfredo records. There was people running round with flowers on the dancefloor. It was fuckin’ brilliant. Second week, it was brilliant, but only 100

people in there. Third week they were saying they were gonna shut it. I think the fourth or fifth week they were like I can’t pay you your £20 wages. Then the last week it was gonna shut, we turned up and there were 400 in the queue. ‘Wow, what the fuck’s going on here?’ Within a month it was however many it holds, 3,000. Don’t really know where it come from. What was the difference between Spectrum and say Shoom? Class, I’d say. Once Shoom was in full swing, it was split between working class, middle class and upper class people, whereas Future was south London and it was quite moody in there. By the time Shoom had kicked off the people at Future were looking down at them. There was a lot of sort of fringe characters who wouldn’t have gone in at Shoom, because they wouldn’t have gone to the rigmarole of getting the clothes and dancing round to Danny. They were too cool for that. So there were a few plazzy gangsters in there and a few real ones as well. Spectrum, though, was just full of potty kids. Probably the same as the Hacienda and Cream. It was pretty racially mixed for the time, as well, because Shoom wasn’t. Future wasn’t either. How did Boys Own start? You were plugged into the End in Liverpool weren’t you? Well, I used to write silly letters to them! And they’d print them, stuff about football fashion. We was living in Slough and the kids in Windsor, it was nicer over Windsor, a few posh birds over there so we used to go over there. We met Cymon Eckles and Andy Weatherall and I said I’d like to do a fanzine like the End but about London. Weatherall was up for creating this monster and he was very clever. My schooling and Steve Mayes’ schooling was pretty non-existent, and Andrew, of the first half a dozen magazines, he did nearly everything. When did it start? 85-86. I never thought about writing. Or spelling! It was a weird time in London. We used to go to football and that whole casual thing was pretty big at football. To get into the clubs at night we would have to change the way we looked completely.

You’d have to look like something out of the Face rather than something off the terraces? Yeah. Or even something out of London. Ollie who run the door at the Beat Route was Welsh. Chris Sullivan was Welsh. Chris Marney from Demob was Welsh! We all got the hump that we’d go along to these things and they’d let four of us in but not all of us. We couldn’t go straight from football, we had to go home and get changed. It did piss us off. I didn’t mind the clothes they were wearing in these places, it didn’t bother me, but it was kind of like the inconvenience of being told what to do in your city, by people who were… Welsh. It seemed like the whole club scene was run by a St. Martin’s School clique and even the London people like Robert Elms and Graham Ball, they’d all gone to the London School of Economics. I knew as much as they did, I knew loads about records, but I could only come in if I got changed. We hated that scenario. What did house change? It meant we didn’t have to change clothes! [laughter] I remember talking to Jonathan Richardson [who ran POP Promotions], I really liked him and I had something tenuously to do with Pop at some stage. I think I might have owned it for a week. I remember talking to him and meeting his friends and he said “Yeah, we all met at Cambridge University. Where did you go to school?” “Er, I went to Broomfield in Slough.” “What’s that?” “It’s a comprehensive." Suddenly I realised I didn’t know anyone like them. Even when you went to the Wag, you didn’t meet people like that because everyone kept to themselves. House was the first time them barriers broke down. I thought that was a good thing. Suddenly you were talking to people outside of your class and it didn’t matter that they were from up north or what clothes they had on.

House music definitely broke down all kinds of barriers like that. Shoom was very sexually mixed, gays, straights, all sorts of gay palaver going on which some of the kids in there, who were football hooligans, would never have seen. Michael Clark and a Scottish guy called Sandy, who worked for Vivienne Westwood, they had like a little real urchin kids from south London who would follow them round like flies. It was almost like they were mesmerised by these Beautiful Creatures. But Danny was all important to that.

Why? The dance. The whole acid house dance is Danny Rampling. Waving his record while he’s playing. Until then DJs used to just put records on. They didn’t do anything. During the rare groove thing you wouldn’t acknowledge the crowd. They wouldn’t even smile at the crowd. The crowd wouldn’t smile at the DJ. There was no connection. Suddenly Danny’s standing there and he’s waving his record around, shouting and people shouting at him and hugging. That was his dance. Then it became the Shoom dance then the Shoom dance became the Spectrum dance, then the whole of the fuckin’ country! I’m sure he stole it from Ibiza. I’m sure of it. For me that whole movement came pre-packaged. You had the dance, which was so different from everything else. You had the drug. You had a series of records that were totally overlooked by everyone, and they’d already been hits in this club in Amnesia, to find them and buy them. Rough Trade? Where’s that? I’d never been in Rough Trade records. I went in there, “Have you got this Woodentops record?” First time I met Rocky I was in there trying to buy Nitzer Ebb and the Woodentops! It wasn’t a soul boy shop, why would I have gone in there? It’s like you were saying about house, that it was a fresh start. House only worked when you went right: This is a house club. And you went there in your house clothes. You did the house dance, ’cos you couldn’t do your old dance. You did a totally different drug. So you had all these people taking a new drug together, doing a new dance, in their new clothes with their

new mates. I remember really good mates, me, Plug, there was about ten of us going to Shoom and suddenly all of our really good mates wanted to come and we didn’t want them coming. We didn’t want these blokes, who we’d hung around with for ten years, we didn’t want them coming. This was our thing. Why is that? Every one was like that. This is our thing. This is us. Were you afraid they wouldn’t get it? We didn’t want no one else to get it. It was so amazing you didn’t want anyone else to get it. But that goes totally against the whole idea of amazing experiences, doesn’t it? Yeah, I know but the problem was you went around telling people how good it was, but then you didn’t want them coming! [laughter] Was it obvious that it was gonna be massive when you were stood in Shoom? No, because you were so in it, so in that fuckin’ stew, you never thought about it. I remember me and Sue went on holiday to Portugal in the spring of ’88 and I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to miss Shoom because when I came back I thought it might be different. I know! I know it sounds shit. I remember having the headphones on listening to City Lights thinking, ‘I wish I was at Shoom, I can’t believe I’m here, what am I doing here?’ No one could say that in a year’s time this would still be going on. It was so intense. You thought the police would stop it or something. There must have been a point where you realised it wasn’t going to end? Not really. It always seemed to be – once ’89 was over – that the clubs were never quite as good a Shoom or the early Boys Own parties. It felt like you were treading water. Looking back, though, at these clubs, we wasn’t and these club were brilliant. The one regret I’ve got about that time is that I wasn’t more open. I wish I’d gone to Sunrise. So you didn’t go? No, in fact, people said, you’re not allowed to go. I remember a party at Wembley, I think it was the first ever Biology and there were Shoomers outside and they were

saying don’t go in. Like a picket? Yeah! I think they’d gone down there, found Danny wasn’t playing and then stopped people from going in. Boys Own was terribly like that. Once people had become part of that inner clique, it got really cliquey in London. I never went to Confusion, I never to Mr C’s club, I never went to High On Hope! We just didn’t. It’s a shame because we missed out on a lot. Did house music provide opportunities for people like you? Did you feel you could do things suddenly? Maybe that’s ecstasy. I don’t think house on its own would have done that. Maybe if it had only been house it would have been another movement like go go or like rare groove. There were people who opened clothes stores in rare groove times and started to run labels. You had little shoots of creativity. Well, punk as well. I don’t know. I didn’t know any punks. Before the Sex Pistols made that record, the clothes that punks were wearing were the same clothes that the people wore at Crackers: Acme Attractions, Don Letts’ shop, Malcolm McLaren, peg trousers, 50s shoes. We didn’t have that aspiration then, to do things, because we didn’t know any one who did it. Maybe when everyone met at places like Shoom, you thought I could do that. Maybe they were opening a clothes shop, or selling drugs or starting a label or even making a record, which seemed incredible. No DJs had been making records, not really, till house came along. Where do you think it all went wrong? I don’t think it’s gone wrong. There are thousands of people out every Saturday dancing to house music. Or Ibiza. There are, but it’s gotten a lot smaller. It’s got smaller, probably because, I think that Bright Bill that was funded by the breweries to get people in their pubs. The breweries suddenly started doing alcopops and cleared the tables and chairs out and put music on. What that meant was instead of there being a club in Hereford playing house, it went back to 30 people in Hereford travelling somewhere else. I think that killed it, the pub chains. And now

they’re the ones that are paying for it with a nation of binge-drinking teenagers, when you could have had a nation of E-takers, but not causing any problems. Having a great time. Now they’re stuck with every casualty in every major city with glassings, stabbings and policemen being sorted. No one got sorted at Sunrise and it’s the same kids. Without doubt there was a definite ‘boardroom’ decision taken by people. It’s not a conspiracy theory, but they said, ‘we’ve gotta get them out of these fields and back into our pubs, how we gonna do this?’ There’s never been a musical movement that has been so invested in by outside forces as house music. But also there’s never been a music that people have been so passionate about. I don’t think there’s ever been a movement where you suddenly get into something and take drugs for the first time, you’ve suddenly got thousands of mates. But if you’re 16 now you’re never gonna have that experience. No, but if you were 16 in ’94 you didn’t have o go to Shoom to have that. If you go out to the End on a Saturday, the majority are 23-30, and they probably had their first experiences when they were 16. There are no rare groove websites. There are no go go websites. There’s no one obsessed about mixes that Chuck Brown did. There are no websites with mixes that Norman Jay did in 82. But I can find Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, it’s only house that has that obsession. What sort of old records got played back then? I used to play a lot of my old soul records. Anything with the word ecstasy in. [laughter] Jackie Wilson’s Sweetest Feeling. I used to play that every week at Spectrum. People would go, “That record! Fuckin’ hell, I never realised this was about E!” [laughter] Loads of records that were obviously about love, suddenly people were hearing all sorts of drugs connotations. Especially the word ecstasy. The Barry White was enormous. I used to play things like When I Think Of You by Janet Jackson, that was another really big record for me at Spectrum. People used to say, “That’s a real E record, that is!” How did you start the Boys Own parties? We did a few small ones before acid house. But early on in ’88 we said we wanted to do a party and we asked Danny to play. We found a

guy who owned a big house in Gulidford. He had a really small barn about twice the size of this room [my living room] and a big garden. Danny couldn’t do it ’cos he didn’t want to shut Shoom down so we got Steve Proctor to play. We run 200 people down. The bloke who owned the place was sitting there at about 6 in the morning with Boy George and he played guitar, this bloke, obviously wanted to be a musician. Boy George was singing Karma Chameleon or something like that and this bloke says, ‘this is the greatest moment of my life!’. It got to about 8.30 in the morning and everyone was really going for it. There was not one complaint. The police turned up. I’ve got pictures of this, it’s appalling: there’s Smiley shorts, bandanas. It’s really bad. They said, what’s happening here then? “Oh, we’re from London, we’re on these coaches here and we’re having a party.” They went, “Right, there’s beer cans in the street, can you pick them up.” So we walked over there, off our nuts, picked up the beer cans. They said, “What time are you finishing?” We said, “Er…. Eleven?” “Alright then. See you lads!” A year later they’re using truncheons! Weren’t there people walking home and talking to cows? The Barry Mooncult cow thing? That was at the East Grinstead party, that was the one party for me where it was like this is it. There’ll never ever be anything like this. We were very lucky because we had this great field right on a lake, massive marquee, sold tickets in London, we ran a few coaches and we had about 500 people of the Shoom/Future crowd. Unknown to us there was a huge rave, something like Sunrise, in the next village. The police had spent the whole night trying to shut this thing down and left us completely alone. And we had all the bails of hay and on this lake there were these geese. I can’t remember anyone dancing. It was weird just people sitting there gurning. And these geese came down, a flock of them, through the mist – schhhhhh –

and all of a sudden all these people started clapping, as if, you know, you’d done this, [laughter] as though they were acid house geese and we’d trained them. And then there was a big hill and someone said, “Look at that cow”. There were about four cows on this hill. “That cow’s dancing.” It was about quarter of a mile away. And the whole four hundred people stopped and were looking. This cow was going [mimics wiggling of right leg] and people were going “Aw, fucking hell!” And it was slowly coming down the hill. Suddenly it got really close and you could see it was jacking! And there was people not looking at it, freaked out. And then suddenly you could tell it was a pantomine cow. It was Barry Mooncult and someone else. But they hadn’t walked into the party and gone “Weee!”. They’d been up on the hill for about half an hour freaking people out.