“Back then it was different,” say those who are nostalgic for the days of racist sitcoms, Mr Humphries being free-passing for LGBT representation, and women’s arses being fair game for pinching at work.

In that context, “back then” ended sometime around 1985 with the last episode of Are You Being Served? But now, as Russell Brand claims everything was consensual during his days of promiscuity, “back then” has fast-forwarded to the noughties.

This was the era of lads’ mags and ladettes. When the glorification of shagging and boozing and not caring about your cocaine’s supply chain provided the sordid soil in which Brand’s career grew.

This was the era of lads’ mags and ladettes… the glorification of shagging and boozing and not caring about your cocaine’s supply chain

At the time, I was in my ludicrously misspent twenties, ending that debauched decade by working on the Australian edition of FHM and writing a weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald, before moving to Dubai. Apart from not seeing a flake of coke anywhere, Dubai was not quite the men-and-merlot detox people who had never set foot in the Middle East said it would be.

Photo: Eva Rinaldi

Marina Hyde recently reflected in The Guardian about how she could have done better “back then.” Particularly regarding comments she made about Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs. Baillie’s name has been forgotten by many, but she was at the centre of the 2008 Sachsgate scandal.

Hyde looked back on what she wrote at that time with mortification and regret. She described Brand and Jonathan Ross as scumbags for calling Sachs, just so Brand could boast about having sex with Baillie, egged on by Ross. But she also mocked those who complained to Ofcom, and wrote that Baillie should stop banging on about it.  And – and this bit was conspicuous by its absence from the mea culpa – sneeringly criticised a piece Baillie wrote for The Sun, and used ‘Satanic Slut’ (a reference to Baillie’s Voluptua the Satanic Slut burlesque character) as a demeaning insult.

I was completely unaware that the prank caused Baillie to spiral into addiction

Living in Dubai at the time, Sachsgate didn’t get saturation coverage on the heavily censored local media. But we didn’t exist in a total bubble. I had a laugh about it with my flatmate at the time. I was completely unaware that the prank caused Baillie to spiral into addiction. She didn’t speak to her grandfather for eight years. That is time she can never get back.

Read interview with Jon Stewart of Sleeper: why we’re better now than we were in the 90s

This got me thinking about my time at FHM. It was an era of stereotypically working and playing hard. Of spending most of my time with my colleagues either in the office, at parties, or in the pub.

Georgia Lewis at work in Dubai

How complicit was I, a mere sub editor, in contributing to the culture that allowed – or still allows – alleged sexual predators to hide in plain sight?

I was part of a magazine best known for photographs of women wearing not very much. It can be easily argued that such content is inherently sexist, pandering to the male gaze. Even though the women were always aged 18 or over and consented to the shoots.

When it came to headlines, captions, and content, pretty much anything was fair game for a joke. Apart from rape or paedophilia. I can’t say for certain that racist or homophobic content never made it through the net, but I’d need to dig through the back issues that are probably lurking at my parents’ house 10,000 miles away to check.

As well as sub-editing layouts, I compiled the sex pages. Assorted adult toy tests, one staff writer plunged his bits into a tub of some sort of sex custard to fill a paragraph. Naked Barbie and Ken dolls photographed demonstrating human pretzel sex positions. That actually attracted the ire of Mattel, as FHM was published by the same company that had the contract for Barbie magazine. But po-faced legal letters were water off a duck’s back.

FHM was inundated with women keen to appear in the magazine… was I exploiting women..?

I thought hard about the monthly shoot and sex discussions I oversaw. Back then it was different! FHM was inundated with women keen to appear in the magazine. I never struggled to find models willing to pose in swimwear or lingerie for a shoot before I took them to the pub on expenses to chat about a sex topic. Was I exploiting women eager to boost their careers by getting them to talk about everything from foreplay to whether older or younger men were better in bed. While getting them a bit drunk after posing in next to nothing?

There was always a lot of laughter at the pub, everyone had plenty to say and when the magazine came out. I received delighted emails from the participants. One model is still a friend, although she did confide in me years later about how a young, cocky intern she met via FHM behaved inappropriately, grinding his pelvis against her in an unwanted advance. I wish she’d told me at the time, and I hope I would have done something about it.

I’m sure that not everything we wrote has aged well. It feels weird to have been part of the latest “back then it was different.”

The one incident that sticks in my mind is a harassment complaint from an entrant in FHM’s Girlfriend of the Year modelling competition. In the analogue early noughties, hopeful young women would often send photos by post, so the retouch artists had to laboriously scan loads of pics for the mag. One entrant received multiple phone calls from a retoucher, who saw her number on the back of her photo. I am pleased to report the retoucher (what a damn job title…) was fired. And nobody felt sorry for him, or blamed the entrant for being a scantily clad temptress.

I’m sure that not everything we wrote has aged well. It feels weird to have been part of the latest “back then when things were different.” Although some of the worst things I wrote in that era were in the Sydney Morning Herald.

I remember a clumsily worded column about bowel cancer versus breast cancer. And a ridiculously unsisterly rant about married female colleagues complaining that their husbands wanted sex all the time, while my own personal life was a car crash. I am relieved these columns seem to have vanished with the Herald’s website’s multiple redesigns.

But this week’s events gave me pause for thought. My tiny part in “back then” was miles away from Russell Brand, working on a magazine that was more interested in Shane Warne than the creepy, thesaurus-swallowing booky wooky author. But it was part of lad culture in a faraway country that will probably always glorify toxic masculinity to some degree. I won’t lose any sleep over it now, but I agree with Marina Hyde that we can all do better, and get things right this time.

Georgia Lewis

In a career that has spanned Australia, the Middle East and the UK, Georgia has written about all sorts of things, including sex, cars, food, oil and gas, insurance, fashion, travel, workplace safety, health, religious affairs, glass and glazing… When she’s not writing words for fun and profit, she can usually be found with a glass of something French and red in her hand.

The post Back then it was ‘different’, right? How many of us were part of it? appeared first on Silver Magazine.

One might reasonably accept that punk changed attitudes and was the most important youth cult since the sixties. But rave has been equally subversive, causing seismic shifts in cultural and political attitudes and behaviours.

But there’s a big difference between punk and rave. With punk, even though its adherents’ attitudes were cut from the same anarchic cloth, you didn’t have gatherings of tens of thousands of people on any Saturday all over the UK, dancing to the same music, all on the same buzz, and all with good intention. Where punk was about anarchy, shock and anger; rave was about love, appeasement and acceptance.

Everyone was loved up, and caught up in the moment. We all felt a part of something new and exciting that was ours

“I was 13 when punk happened,” states pioneering house DJ Andy Weatherall. “So I watched that train go by, but when I got on this [acid house] bus I was deliriously happy, out of my head on E. I felt like I was at the centre of a magnificent cyclone.”

Read Summer of Love Part I

“Punk and New Romanticism were very empowering for us,” explains pioneering promoter Nicky Trax. “They too had this DiY ethos which house music picked up and ran with. House music was a very open and friendly scene – no VIPs, no attitude – and it was all about like-minded people taking a chance, putting on something new that might or might not work. Everyone was loved up, and caught up in the moment. We all felt a part of something new and exciting that was ours.”

But this fledgling scene, just like punk, was all-encompassing, certainly organic; and was growing exponentially all over the UK.

Johnny Walker and Danny Rampling at Shoom 1988. Photo: Dave Swindells

By January 1988 Shoom was so busy Jenni Rampling had to stand on the door and vet attendees. “You’d see Pete Wylie, Paul Rutherford, Keith Allen, Boy George, and Michael Clarke dancing, off their tits in the smoke, bumping into the bleeding mirrors next to a bunch of Millwall fans from Rotherhithe,” laughs Johnny Rocca, ace face on the music scene.

“Sometimes we didn’t get into Shoom,” attests Charlie Fitzgerald (nee Colston-Hayter), whose brother Tony was the man behind the now-legendary Sunrise parties. “I think this is when Tony started thinking he could do his own events.”

‘Afters’ only lasted a few months as it was free to get in and we didn’t sell any drinks as mostly everyone was off their trolley on E

Other people had similar ideas – me included. In December 1987 I opened a club called Afters in Clink Street (near to London Bridge) that started at 4AM and finished at noon. The music was a couple of 90 minute acid house cassette tapes mixed by a bloke called Ron Hardy of Chicago’s Music Box, played on a boom box. Afters only lasted a few months as it was free to get in and we didn’t sell any drinks as mostly everyone was off their trolley on E. But that’s why they were up all night dancing. Swings and roundabouts. C’est la vie.

Club night Delirium had paved the way with an exclusively house music policy but closed its doors in December 1987, and DJs Noel and Maurice Watson moved to the Wag on a Friday to do Black Market main man Rene Gelston’s 100% acid house night. And in January 1988, the brothers became residents in the same club on a Tuesday for Translantic, where Ce Ce Rogers, Marshall Jefferson, Kym Mazelle, and Frankie Knuckles performed in February ’88 – for the almighty sum of £350.

Around the same time in the Empire Leicester Square, they played former St. Martins Art student Robin King’s Delirium Deep House Convention, and were joined by Fingers Inc., Robert Owens, Ralph Rosario, Dj Pierre, Adonis and Xavier Gold.

Helter skelter at Delirium. Photo: Dave Swindells

“It was make or break for me as the acts came at great expense,’ sighs King. “Unfortunately, only 250 people turned up and I lost about £4,000. It was a credible success, but a financial failure.”

But, this was just the lull before the storm. An unlicensed event, aptly named Hedonism, in a rundown furniture warehouse in Hanger Lane would create the blue print for the coming acid house tsunami.

MOVING INTO UNDERGROUND TERRITORY

“I got married in Wandsworth to Jenni on the day of Hedonism,” grins Danny Rampling. “Got married, had lunch in Joe’s Café, went home and changed, and then went and danced all night. It was a pivotal event.”

Hedonism was created by brothers Alun and Simon Gordon, and a third partner, Josh Wilkins. The brothers had gone to New York in the summer of ‘87 and caught DJ David De Pino at the predominantly gay Tracks NYC (sister to the Detroit club) on West 19th that featured dry ice, Muscle Marys, OTT drag queens on PCP and thumping house music via a monster sound system.

Bringing the vibe back to London, on Friday 26th February 1988 they launched warehouse night Hedonism, with DJs Colin Faver and Justin Berkman (who went on to found the Ministry of Sound) pumping out pure house music all night long. It not only hit the target, it blew the bloody doors off. Hedonism with its solid no-holds-barred one hundred percent Chicago, New York and Detroit house soundtrack was tough, urban, very London and utterly perfect.

“My first real ‘proper’ flat-out full-on all night house music session was at Hedonism,” remembers Nicky Trax. “Around 400-500 people jammed all night, the sound system was one of the best you’ve ever heard while the lasers smoke machines and graffiti decorated walls topped it off. It was an incredible sensory experience; stimulating and immersive.”

A wave of Doves and new clubs sprang up proffering this new acid house idyll while the crowds got bigger and bigger

This is something of an understatement. I personally walked in at 4.30AM and was hit flat. The bass growling through the pit of my stomach via one of the best sound systems I’d ever encountered, the treble tickling the spine while patrons danced furiously in semi trance, whacked out of their gourds. I then knew that this was it. This was going to be massive.

Three more Hedonism events followed; the scene exploded on a wave of Doves (unusually potent pills from Amsterdam) and new clubs sprang up proffering this new acid house idyll while the crowds got bigger and bigger all over the country.

“The effect of E was huge,” stresses Hacienda DJ Mike Pickering, the man behind the Latin House classic Carino of 1987. “I remember how over a three week period the crowds changed; I likened it to a Mexican wave starting one end of the club to the other. The whole atmosphere and look of the crowd changed, and DJ-ing was never the same again. Then on my Friday night Nude [at the Hacienda] the queues started forming around 6PM and by opening time stretched miles around the block. I then saw that this could be truly a global thing.”

The effect of E wasn’t just felt on the dance floors.

“The North was pretty grim back in the 80s,” remembers Graeme Park. “There was a recession and cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds and Nottingham weren’t the glitzy modern metropolises they are today.

“Nobody lived in city centres and they were pretty dismal. Unemployment was high and there was a Thatcher government, so the rave scene was an escape from the harsh realities of modern life. Acid house and ecstasy was the perfect antidote and nobody cared who you were. Gay, straight, black or white; plumbers, barristers, shop workers, doctors, football hooligans… they all came together to party all night long with a soundtrack like no other.

By now this cultural tidal wave had its own clothing mores and was developing its very own argot; ‘On one matey,’ ‘radio rental,’ ‘Jack and Jills,’ ‘monged ‘, ‘munted’ etc. Much taken from ye olde Cockney Rhyming slang tradition (itself created to baffle undercover cops) it was often deliberately absurd, rapidly obsolete and consciously irritating.

Meanwhile, all over the country little warehouse parties full of happy, euphoric ravers were cropping up most weekends, along with weekday one nighters.

HAPPY CULTURE

Back in the clubs, Shoom moved to a bigger venue, RAW at the YMCA in March 1988, and in April Oakenfold and Ian St. Paul teamed up with Gary Haisman to do Spectrum at Heaven on a Monday night. The first night was under-attended with only about 300 in a space that held 2,000. “We were in trouble,” admits Oakenfold. “Then after a few weeks it went massive and was packed every week.”

1988 – party goer, Paul Oakenfold, Lisa Loud, Ian St Paul and Gary Haisman. Photo: Dave Swindells

Soon people were coming from all over the country; in particular a big Manchester contingent. So Spectrum productions became more and more ambitious; one week there were confetti snowstorms, another saw a huge E covered in silver foil coming out of the ceiling to Ride of the Valkyries; while even more remarkably, one Monday night I saw Lisa Minnelli sitting drinking champagne on the balcony.

Spectrum flyer 1988. Artwork Dave Little

“Looking around Spectrum one night,” reminisces Johnny Rocca, who DJ’d in the back room and looked after a lot of the scenic productions, “there was all these proper hard football hooligan firms there that I knew and I thought ‘Oh no, it’s going to kick off!’ but it didn’t, as everyone was so off their face on the best E ever, they were all hugging each other and totally loved up.”

(It still tickles me that chaps who’d a few weeks before been fighting viciously over football were embracing this music that had, in the main, been created by gay black Americans. But such was the power of the pill.)

“I used to go to raves in Blackburn that were massive,” enthuses Dave Beer, the main man behind Back to Basics in Leeds. “And then it spread all over the North, and it was lovely because before, if you came from Leeds and you went to an event in Manchester or Liverpool you’d get your head kicked in. But during the house days we all accepted each other and suddenly got on and danced as it was all about love and acceptance. It changed people’s lives forever.”

And all the while preposterous shenanigans flourished.

“I remember on my 40th birthday in ‘88,’ interjects Rocca. “I was DJ in the back room and they had a little kids’ play pen in the bar. So I climbed in it with Dave Little and spent the whole night rolling about with a variety of strangers and friends. Totally off my tits, it felt like I floating was in a lovely big bath. It was the best night of my life. You could do what the fuck you wanted back then as it was all about love and acceptance. But it was full time, like going to war, a military campaign; we all lived it to the max, going out every night of the week till dawn for months on end.”

The acid house scene is lovingly recollected by all.

“One of my fondest reminiscences is of Barry Mooncult – who’d been a proper nasty Chelsea football hooligan – rearranging the petals of a daisy he’d found, and trying to revive it by pouring mineral water on it,” recalls DJ Andy Weatherall. “It had that effect on people.”

Undeniably, Spectrum’s huge success signaled the scene’s move from subculture to superculture.

In June 1988 Nicky Holloway opened The Trip at The Astoria that, a smash from day one, had queues around the block, and folk dancing in the fountains underneath Centrepoint till they were dragged away by the peelers.

I recall a pile of about 20 punters writhing around on the floor and my business partner asking me, “What on earth is going on Chris? What have you done to our club?”

Two weeks later Love opened at the Wag with two floors of crucial house music from 10PM till 6AM. Initiated and promoted by Rod Marsh and DJ Dave Dorrell (who’d had a number one record with Pump Up The Volume), Love proffered the UK’s finest house music DJs such as Dorrell himself, CJ Macintosh, Pete Tong, Jeremy Healey, Paul Anderson and Andy Weatherall et al, whilst also pulling in likes of Mike Pickering and Graeme Park from the North, and legends like Tony Humphries, Little Louie and Frankie Knuckles from over the water in the US.

1988 the queue round the block at the Wag, London. Photo: Dave Swindells

Because it was legal, proper and on a Friday, customers traveled from all over the UK; there were 500-metre queues each week. But the downside of the market was the drop in drinking. Whilst floors filled up, the bar take plummeted to nothing. I recall a pile of about 20 punters writhing around on top of each other on the floor and my business partner asking me, “What on earth is going on Chris? What have you done to our club?” My only reply was a cheeky gurn.

THE SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE

Love spawned the nomenclature, ‘The Second Summer of Love’. For that and the next few summers Rod, Dorrell and I took Love to Ibiza monthly with our residents DJs, and took over Amnesia on a Friday and Pacha on a Saturday. Back in the UK things were moving fast and the movement was spreading.

“I’d never witnessed such electric energy and enthusiasm in my life as at the Friday Nude night at The Hacienda,” smiles Graeme Park. “It was a night for hedonists by hedonists. I doubt we’ll ever see the like again.”

“All over the country you’d see these freshmen walking into a rave,” chuckles Johnny Rocca. “And they’d be all wide eyed and nervous, not knowing what to expect, then you’d see them dithering about, deciding whether to buy an E which was £20 a pill (£60 now). Then next thing they’re on the dance floor drenched with sweat, and you’d see them outside at 5AM still off their box looking as if they’d found God.”

Times were tough. Disaffected youth weren’t happy. They needed something that was their own

Indeed, I’d liken them to Moses when he came down off the mountain but the big difference was that Mo hadn’t swallowed his tablets! Looking back, for many this was the chance they’d been waiting for. Times were tough. Disaffected youth weren’t happy. They needed something that was their own that their parents and the powers that be disapproved of. Said youth went into their first acid house night as civilians, dropped a pill and came out disciples of this futuristic epicurean religion and went forth and multiplied.

ANARCHY IN THE UK

It was at this time that unauthorised, anarchic parties started popping up everywhere until barely a field was empty. Getting stranded in the countryside and asking a cow for directions home became tres chic in the UK.

“I thought at the time that this house music palaver was both amazing, and also that I hated it,” recalls BBC London’s Robert Elms. “I knew immediately that this fledgling scene was the next big thing, but this will end in a field I thought. Hippies, mud, terrible clothes and no discernment. It was so all encompassing and all consuming and there has been nothing like it since. It was the last spaced out, loved up, lilac-clad hurrah of indigenous British youth culture.”

“My first rave experience was in a massive field somewhere in the Midlands,” recalls Wolverhampton-raised DJ Sarah Walcott, who was 18 at the time. “Thousands of people jumping for joy, running around smiling and hugging each other; but mostly dancing, smiles of ecstasy on their faces. The defining moment was the sun rising, smiling like an Inca God over us, it was beautiful! Hands out raised to the sky, all of us together, was a magical moment! From that moment we knew we were part of something that was extraordinary.”

The youth, just as they had with punk, considered anything The Sun hated as being something worth following

On the 17 August 1988 The Sun led with the headline, ‘Scandal of the £5 drug trip to Heaven’. They got it totally wrong, as they claimed everyone was tripping on LSD and not on Ecstasy, but the headline ultimately only served to promote the concept even further, as the youth, just as they had with punk, considered anything The Sun hated as being something worth following. And so, while the authorities were sharpening their knives (as they had with Teddy Boys, Mods, Hippies and Punks) the movement exploded.

Parties popped up in grand stately homes, on farms and on racetracks; in London, every night a good half dozen acid house after-hours spielers were open till they shut in Soho full of gangsters, trendies, trannies, hookers and ravers. In Brixton you had Mendoza’s with DJs Fabio and Grooverider, while those not in the know after the clubs had finished simply congregated around a car with a good sound system and blasted out the house music until the cops arrived. A night out became an hilarious adventure fuelled by E– looking for parties, getting lost, taxi journeys, the police, running out of petrol, being stranded. Every calamity was hilarious.

SUNRISE

Luckily, the tube was running by the time I left professional gambler, card counter and veritable genius, Tony Colston-Hayter’s first event (with Roger Goodman), Apocalypse Now, August 88 in Wembley film studios.

“When Tony said he wanted to start putting parties on, none of our group questioned it,” says his sister Charlie. “We all jumped on board and took on different roles. Tony found a loophole in the law that said it was legal to put on a private party, so everyone became a Sunrise member, and they were going to a private party. They all had membership cards and we sent out newsletters (by post, no internet or Facebook in those days). We ended up with about 30,000 Sunrise members by August 1989.”

The first Sunrise occurred on 8 October 1988 in Wembley, four days after ITN had transmitted a damning six-minute report about the dangers of ecstasy, and so the police busted it. Undeterred, Tony then put on a bash at a secret location near his home in Buckinghamshire. About 1,000 guests experienced a rather incredible evening that ended at 8AM with Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin. So we didn’t worry and were happy as sand boys.

But this was perhaps the last un-maligned event of the time as by now the powers that be had fully cottoned onto this ‘thing’ that was happening and began to crack down.

All the press needed was something to hang their coats on to lambast the movement and sell newspapers. This came in the form of 21 year old Janet Mayes who died at the end of October 1988 after taking a couple of Es. Oddly the first death – 19-year-old Ian Larcome who died after he allegedly swallowed 18 ‘little fellas’ after a police stop and search – went largely unreported. He probably wasn’t pretty enough.

Meanwhile the BBC banned all acid house. Lick-arse DJ Peter Powell commented, “It’s the closest thing to mass organised zombie-dom. I really don’t think it should go any further.” We didn’t agree, and neither, it seemed, did the public.

“We were racing up the pop charts with the track I did with D-Mob, We Call It Acieeed,” recalls frontman Gary Haisman. “We were already there, then at the last minute they cancelled us and said we’d been banned. It didn’t stop us getting to number one though.”

1989 the Metropolitan Police in their infinite wisdom publicly declared open hostilities with the acid house scene, and invaded a small soiree of some 150 people on a boat on the Thames

There’s nothing like a banned record to propagate a youth movement, just ask the Sex Pistols. And so the popularity of acid house and the raves that went with it catapulted beyond our wildest imaginations. As did the absurd police attention.

In November 1989 the Metropolitan Police in their infinite wisdom publicly declared open hostilities with the acid house scene, and the next day invaded a small soiree of some 150 people on a boat on the Thames, pulling out all the stops. Undercover rozzers in bandanas, smileys and dungarees, scores of riot police dressed in crash helmets and protective boiler suits carrying shields; frogmen, launches and searchlights.

It was the Raid on Entebbe, but on the Thames at a tiny party. An impressive haul of just nine middle class party people were arrested for having a good time, being friendly and sharing half an E.

On a more serious and utterly unjust note, organisers Robert Darby and Leslie Thomas were charged with “conspiring to manage premises where drugs were supplied” and were sentenced to 10 and six years imprisonment respectively. You’d get less for rape.

The genie was out of the bottle and 1989 was to become the year that house music made serious money for farmers with empty fields, warehouse owners, ecstasy dealers and bottled water companies

Still the scene grew. James Perkins started his Phantasia events at Cheltenham; Fabio and Grooverider opened Rage; Sunrise sold 4,000 tickets for their Guy Fawkes bash, and Wayne Anthony commenced his series of Genesis events in the East End.

The genie was out of the bottle and 1989 was to become the year that house music made serious money for farmers with empty fields, warehouse owners, ecstasy dealers and bottled water companies, and the whole of the UK was consumed by this wave of goodwill – all initiated by a gay club in Chicago and bolstered by Ecstasy.

“The attempts to clamp down were always doomed, due to the sheer numbers of people and the ingenuity of how to get around the authorities,” chuckles Graeme Park. “The police were only paying lip service to an outraged right wing press and government. They knew they were on a hiding to nothing.”

STILL RAVING ON

The police, the authorities, and the property developers might be moving closer, but for now the scene is a long way from being locked off

Today, as traditional nightclubs close for business left and right, illegal raves or unlicensed all night parties are popping up again all over the UK, as the new Vice online documentary Locked Off, directed by Rhys James and presented by Clive Martin reveals. “The police, the authorities, and the property developers might be moving closer, but for now the scene is a long way from being locked off,” concludes Martin.

“Something like this is needed now in the UK as society is in a mess divided through politics and social media,” concludes Danny Rampling. “And it’s sad to see the rise in the level of violence, knife crime, hate racism and the far right. What we did was change people’s attitudes and gave them a certain empathy and love for everyone. This is needed right now.”

“I suppose back then people felt like anything was possible, which is a good collective energy to be around,” concludes DJ Nancy Noise (top photo, in hat). “My daughter has said to me quite a few times, ‘you’re so lucky Mum, what you went through; being part of something like that’. And you know what? We were.”

To read Part I of this journey click HERE

Chris Sullivan promoted a long list of warehouse parties, founded and ran the Wag Club and is a former GQ style editor who has written for many others including Italian Vogue, The Times, Independent and The FT. He now is Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art specializing in ‘youth’ cults.

The three-CD mix celebrating the Second Summer Of Love. The period from 1988 through 1989 as compiled by Paul Oakenfold, Nancy Noise and Colin Hudd is out now on though New State Music.

Limited edition signed lithographic prints of Spectrum; Land of Oz. Boys Own posters etc are available from www.davelittle.co.uk

Chris Sullivan

The post Second Summer of Love – Ecstasy, the rave explosion and underground parties appeared first on Silver Magazine.

“Three elements collided in 87/88 to make this unique cocktail of hedonism that took over the world,” says DJ, promoter and producer Dave Dorrell, whose landmark club Love at The Wag gave that heady summer its indefatigable moniker, the Summer of Love.

“The first was this music from Chicago called ‘House’; which was modern, up-tempo, relentless and underground, and was designed for dark basements and flashing lights, which was a new paradigm then. Another element was chemical – Ecstasy, of course – an amphetamine-based drug that gave you tons of energy, along with a certain euphoria; and finally there was fashion, which was loose, unstructured, and the perfect accompaniment to the other two. When this hit the UK it went through the roof. It was flawless. It was revolutionary and it was absolutely bloody marvelous!”

House music had been around for a while in the UK. Releases such as Your Love by Jamie Principle and Acid Tracks by Phuture (DJ Pierre, DJ Spanky Spank and Herb J) had done the rounds in groovy club North and South while Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk’s Love Can’t Turn Around had the audacity to hit number 10 in the UK in October 1986. Jack Your Body by Steve Silk Hurley reached number one in the UK charts in February 1987.

Maurice and I wanted to bring … this house music to London. It took a while to take off because house was considered to be “too gay” by a lot of clubbers

But at the time house music was simply another genre mixed up with hip-hop, disco and rare groove. DJs such as Mike Pickering in Manchester, Graeme Park in Nottingham, Derby-born Hector Heathcote at the Wag Club (who played Your Love, the first house record I ever heard, in ‘85 after a record buying trip to Chicago), and brothers Noel and Maurice Watson, sensing that it was time for a change, were mixing more and more house music into their sets.

“London was locked tight by the Rare Groove scene,” remembers Belfast born Noel Watson. “But Maurice and I had been to clubs like The Paradise Garage, Area, Danceteria etc, so we wanted to bring that here, and this vibe, this house music to London. It took a while to take off because house was considered to be “too gay” by a lot of clubbers.”

GAY BEGINNINGS

Lest we forget, ‘house’ music was named after the Chicago gay club ‘the Warehouse’, while other gay clubs such as Frankie Knuckles’ The Power Plant, also in Chicago, and New York’s Paradise Garage (nicknamed the “Gay-rage”) with Knuckles’ best friend DJ Larry Levan, was where the music was coming from. MDM (a close relative of ecstasy) was the drug of choice with a bit of LSD thrown in.

I went to Garage in August 1980 and, after running the gauntlet of drug dealers outside who proffered everything from Quaaludes to Mexican mushrooms, PCP, Acid and THC, made my way up this ramp and into this huge space filled with about two thousand rampant, almost totally black and Hispanic gay men. Dressed in singlets, t-shirts, trainers and shorts, they were all totally off their boxes, dancing their asses off.

The atmosphere and sheer power of the music hit you like a brick in the face. I had never seen or heard anything like it

The atmosphere and sheer power of the music hit you like a brick in the face. I had never seen or heard anything like it, and the only woman I saw in the place was my girlfriend. But the influence of US gay clubs on the resultant UK and international rave scene is paramount. It would not have existed without them.

Back in 85/86 the only clubs I can recall that played a good chunk of house music (mixed with the likes of Feels Good by Electra and Don’t Make Me Wait by The Peech Boys) were gay clubs like The Pyramid at Heaven on a Wednesday, with DJs Colin Faver and Mark Moore; The Jungle at Busby’s on a Monday with Faver, Vicki Edwards and Fat Tony, and the mixed gay night at the Wag on a Saturday with DJs Fat Tony again and Hector – all of which also, and not coincidentally, had a big MDMA presence.

In 1986 certain promoters who crossed into the London/gay/fashion scene began employing DJs with an eye of the future. Robin King and Nick Trulocke (whose girlfriend at the time was Clothes Show host Caryn Franklyn) did Delirium at the Astoria, beginning September 1986, with DJ’s Noel and Maurice Watson who injected a fair slab of house music into their mix.

ECSTASY

Another aspect that seemed new but wasn’t was Ecstasy, AKA Methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA, which was first synthesized in 1912 by German chemist Anton Köllisch. The US military used it in experiments in the 1950s while hippies had caned it since the mid sixties. It was named Ecstasy by businessman Michael Clegg in 1981 who manufactured it legally in Texas and sold it as a ‘fun drug’ that was “good to dance to.”

MDMA by 1980 was all over the US and was the number one drug of choice for patrons of the aforementioned gay discotheques, and was legal in the US till July 1st 1985. As for the UK, it was illegalised in 1977, but it wasn’t until 1980 that, to fund their visits, enterprising New Yorkers (including my then girlfriend) smuggled in significant amounts of the powder to sell in underground clubs like Le Beatroute in Soho, after which it became more and more popular amongst groovy club goers for whom Ibiza Town (and not San Antonio) was a premier destination.

THE IBIZA CONNECTION

The playground of naughty jetsetters such as Grace Jones (who was Tony Pike of Pike’s Hotel’s girlfriend), Terry-Thomas, Amanda Lear, Roman Polanski, Steve Strange, Freddy Mercury and Kenny Everett (whose orgies were legendary), Ibiza had been the premier destination for Spanish gays and hippies escaping the wrath of Franco (whose fascist regime ended in 1975) and was as camp as a row of pink tents. It was like the Blitz, Taboo and Studio 54 on Sea.

Transvestites (some on stilts) roamed the streets handing out flyers for its premier nightspot The Ku Club that featured a swimming pool, an abundance of extremely beautiful people (many wearing very little) and unbridled hedonism. I‘d been going to the Ku since 1981 and there was nowhere else like it in the world. It and Ibiza were unique. At the clubs you’d see transvestites (on stilts), a man dressed in full American Indian kit con feathered head dress, a couple in Day-Glo Lycra and huge platform boots, Cavaliers, a couple in loin clothes with Aladdin Sane hair and make up. And all in 90 degrees heat. It was off the Richter Scale.

I was exporting London to Ibiza and didn’t think of doing it the other way around. I just didn’t think it would ever work. Others disagreed

In 1985 in an effort to spend more time there I started bringing Wag DJs to the island. I was exporting London to Ibiza and didn’t think of doing it the other way around. I just didn’t think it would ever work. Others disagreed.

At the end of August 1987 four friends – Danny Rampling, Johnny Walker, Nicky Holloway and Paul Oakenfold – went to San Antonio Ibiza to celebrate the latter’s 24th birthday and meet up with their old pal DJ Trevor Fung who, working there, informed them of this club on the other side of the Island named Amnesia and this new drug called ecstasy.

“You and I used to go there after the Ku who used to give out hot chocolate dosed with magic mushrooms at dawn,” reflects Steve Holloway, the first Wag DJ to play on the island. “It was never that busy, but then again we never arrived till after 6am.”

For yours truly, Amnesia took off only after Alfredo started mixing New York and Chicago sounds around 1985, after which it started opening at 5am where it attracted all the local club workers, who went bananas.

“In Amnesia, DJ Alfredo fused all these different types of music including Paradise Garage stuff, ‘Jibaro’, the Woodentops, Cindy Lauper and Talking Heads,” explains Danny Rampling, the man behind the legendary one-nighter Shoom. “He inspired us all.”

“I felt very surprised by all this English boys and girls loving the records I was playing,” reflects Argentine Alfredo Fiorito. “In Amnesia, background or social class didn’t matter and it was freer and cheaper than elsewhere. Also the British appreciated this open-air club and partying together with people of different nationalities, ages and colour. And, as I always say, they weren’t the main thing but the drugs certainly helped.”

DJ Nancy Noise had worked there for two summers before 1987.

“I was going out every night all night at Amnesia, Glory’s, Ku…” she explains. “It was those nights that led to clubs like Future. It was a special time in London during the Summer of Love but I wouldn’t say those nights altered my life as much as the nights in Ibiza previously. If I could relive just one night of my life again it would have to be a night in Amnesia. It was the best place on earth!!

Dawn rising at Amnesia ’89 Photo: Dave Swindells

BRINGING IT BACK TO LONDON

“We all came back and all started clubs, mixing Balearic with Acid House and it went off in a way that we could never imagine,” recalls Rampling. “We broke down barriers and we were all about inclusion and bringing people together breaking down race, colour and sexual mores.”

“It became the most important and the best holiday we ever had,” reminisces Oakenfold. “We were compelled try and recreate it, even if it went tits up.”

The first UK club that Alfredo played in in the UK was Project in Streatham, opened by Oakenfold shortly after his return from the island. Initially billed as an Ibiza reunion the club was open till 6am, and Oakenfold played tracks he’d heard in Ibiza; The Chant by Nitzer Ebb and Why Why Why by the Wooden Tops – two records that might have been played at the Blitz club in 1980 – alongside the few Chicago house and New York dance tunes that were available then.

Project closed after six weeks, and Oakenfold, with his business partner Ian St Paul, moved their operation to The Sanctuary at the back of Heaven where Future was born. A tiny dark room that held just a couple of hundred it was intimate, and really bloody hot.

Indeed, what Rampling did with Shoom, and Oakenfold with The Project and Future was bring back this distinctly Ibicencan approach

Oakenfold’s manager Mickey Jackson remembers it well. “It became the place to be in London, with everyone (including Prince!) coming down, but we were all there for each other and not because of who’s who; it was our scene and everyone was invited. I remember when Leigh Bowery waltzed onto the dance floor in a wide dress lit head to toe in light bulbs. He was awesome so the crowd gave him a bit of room while he flashed his bulbs, pirouetted a few times and left!”

Indeed, what Rampling did with Shoom, and Oakenfold with The Project and Future was bring back this distinctly Ibicencan approach, mix it with acid house, put it in a tiny club, add smoke machines and flashing lights, throw in a decidedly London edge and open the doors to a crowd, many of whom had never have considered going to Amnesia, Ibiza Town or the Warehouse in Chicago.

And their timing was perfect, as that summer quality ecstasy had hit the streets by the truckload. The Summer of Love was under way.

“The music and attitude was great,” clarifies Gary Haismann, whose record We Call it Acieeeeed stormed up the charts in 1988. “But this wouldn’t have happened without the ecstasy. It would be like the first Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967 without LSD – no fucking way Jose. In the summer of ‘87 the Dutch turned MDMA into tablets that were easy to sell, easy to take and as strong as fuck, and their importation coincided with the rise of all these clubs like Shoom and Oakenfold’s Project in Streatham, and your night in Clink Street.”

Shoom 1988 Photo: Dave Swindells

IT FELT LIKE PUNK

After a dismal first night at Shoom, for the second night a month later Rampling went flat out. They filled the basement with dry ice and strobe lights and pulled in DJ Colin Faver who’d cut his teeth paying Euro disco and electro at Steve Strange and Rusty Egan’s club The Camden Palace.

A former punk rocker, Faver (who was give MDMA by Soft Cell associate Cindy at the Camden Palace in 1984) was all about electro and up-tempo throbbing beats and as such was the man for the job. To add to it, Rampling now used the soon-to-be-ubiquitous smiley logo, printed on a t-shirts he’d bought from RAP in Covent Garden. Designed by Simon ‘Barnzley’ Armitage the look certainly hit the zeitgeist head on, and they had themselves a hit.

“The energy in that basement was profound,” remembers Rampling. “It was fun, and apolitical, and all about the music. But like punk it gave a lot of people the chance to be creative and be a part of something that was theirs.”

“We had 50 people at Shoom on the first night and queues of 2,000 three months later,” says Rampling. “ It was mind blowing.”

“My brother Joey supplied the sound and I helped him,” chuckles DJ legend Norman Jay. “And as Colin Faver was blasting it out a top volume and the smoke machines were pumping out these kids climbed into the tiny space in the speakers and these were powerful – 10,000 watt reggae sound system speakers. I knew than that something was happening. I loved the madness, the anarchy and the punk rock DIY attitude. Out with the old and in with the new.”

By January Shoom (the name describes the rush of E as it hits) was off the scale and had developed its own mores and style of dress. Bandanas, Converse, dungarees, baggy t-shirts and long hair; it was utilitarian, cheap, accessible. And suited the scenario down to the ground.

“We had 50 people at Shoom on the first night and queues of 2,000 three months later,” says Rampling. “ It was mind blowing.”

DAWN OF THE RAVE CULTURE

This was now a scene with its own music, drugs, clothes, attitude and philosophy. It was destined to kick off.

“Shoom was like travelling into a different dimension,” smiles Charlie Fitzgerald, formerly Colston Hayter, whose uber rave promoter brother Tony was dubbed ‘the acid house king’.

“It was like transforming from a chrysalis into a butterfly. Like suddenly belonging. There was no ego, no pretentiousness, no shoulder pads, nobody hitting on you, and definitely no handbags! It was just people on the same level having the best night of their lives. It was so hot in there we were melting, and I remember being in the bar area and pouring bottles of Perrier on our heads. It was such a shock when the lights went on at the end of the night. I think Danny played Why Can’t we Live Together [Timmy Thomas 1972] but everyone sang ‘Why can’t we Shoom Together’, and then it was over and I didn’t want it to end. And it didn’t. That was just the beginning…

In part two Chris explores the explosion of house and the dance culture, from its storming burst into popular culture, and the hedonism of illegal parties and raves… to read Part II click HERE

Chris Sullivan promoted a long list of warehouse parties, founded and ran the Wag Club and is a former GQ style editor who has written for many others including Italian Vogue, The Times, Independent and The FT. He now is Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art specializing in ‘youth’ cults.

Chris Sullivan

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