Matthew Collin is a former editor of The Big Issue, i-D magazine and the Time Out website. He has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC and now reports for Al Jazeera from Tbilisi, Georgia. He has also written for many newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph and Mojo. His other books, This is Serbia Calling and The Time of the Rebels, were also published by Serpent’s Tail.

John Godfrey, who worked on the original research and interviews for this book, is a former editor of i-D, deputy editor of The Face and executive producer at Rapido TV. He now lives in Sydney, Australia, where he is the executive producer of factual and documentary programmes at SBS.

Praise for Altered State

‘At last somebody has written the real history of the last ten years, and written it with such wit, verve, empathy and profound intelligence. If you’ve been part of the scene in any way, this brilliant book will serve as positive affirmation. If you haven’t, yet still feel moved to pontificate about it, you will no longer have the excuse of doing so from a position of ignorance. I can’t recommend this marvellous piece of work enough and in a sane world it would sell more copies than any other book written over the last decade’ Irvine Welsh

‘The first full history of the dance boom which, fuelled by Ecstasy, has transformed British culture over the past decade: here you will also find the drive to transcendence, or oblivion, that is at the heart of British pop’ Jon Savage

‘Altered State is not just timely; it was crying out to be written’ Independent altered state the story of ecstasy culture and matthew collin with contributions by john godfrey A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

The right of Matthew Collin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Copyright © 2009 Matthew Collin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published as Altered State in 1997 by Serpent’s Tail

First published in this revised edition in 2009 by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd 3A Exmouth House Pine Street London EC1R 0JH website: www.serpentstail.com

ISBN 978 1 84668 713 6

Designed and typeset by olio at Neuadd Bwll, Llanwrtyd Wells f Printed in Great Britain by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, cr0 4td

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents

foreword (a long time afterwards) / vii prologue: a night in the eighties / 1

1 the technologies of pleasure / 5 2 / 45 3 magical mystery tour / 87 4 journey to the east / 129 5 freaky dancing / 148 6 travellers / 198 7 urban blues / 261 8 the chemical generation / 293

acknowledgements / 341 notes / 343 index / 348 foreword

(a long time afterwards)

When Altered State was written in the mid-nineties, the culture which it documents had yet to reach its peak. Although it had already been transformed from an underground scene with roots in renegade urban cults and the secretive psychedelic avant-garde into a mass-market phenomenon which brought recreational drug use into the social mainstream, at that time it was still evolving. What was first called ‘acid house’ and then the ‘ scene’ in the late eighties had turned into a multi- million-pound leisure industry known as ‘dance culture’; a far less mutinous and outlandish phenomenon, although its narcotic allure remained strong. It had become the most vibrant, diverse and long-lasting youth movement that Britain had ever seen, one which continued to send out cultural and political shock waves more than a decade after it began. The fundamental reason why it became so pervasive and influential was simple: it was the most extraordinary entertainment format yet invented. The combination of Ecstasy and had genuine transformative power: it could deliver altered states of consciousness; experiences which changed the way we felt, the way we thought, the way we lived. The scene had an inclusive, open-access ethos rather than a defined ideology, and this was the vital force which drove it forwards. It was a culture with options in place of rules; a series of possibilities which people could use to define their own identities, possibilities which could be adapted to each

vii altered state individual’s social background and belief system. The recurring story was of people being inspired by the revelatory flash of the primal Ecstasy experience, then getting involved and altering the direction of the scene by bringing in their own ideas and influences. Musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, criminals, political activists, and football fans all affected its development by adapting it to suit their own desires – hence the scene’s relentless dynamism, its constant self-reinvention and its unprecedented longevity. At its heart was a concerted attempt to suspend normal transmission, if only for one night; to conjure from sound and chemistry, however briefly, a kind of utopia – what anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey has described as a temporary autonomous zone. Such zones, Bey says, are ‘successful raids on consensus reality, breakthroughs into more intense and more abundant life’, fleeting moments where fantasies are made real and freedom of expression rules before external reality intervenes. Sometimes these autonomous zones could feel very real and very potent indeed. Ecstasy culture was no freak storm which burst miraculously from the ether. It was shaped by time, place, and very specific economic and social conditions: the late eighties in urban Britain, the end of the Thatcher years, when the psychic map of the country was redrawn. So long afterwards, it’s hard to imagine how powerfully the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher once dominated our ideological life and how much her politics divided us, but at the time it was inescapable. The Thatcher fantasy was about breaking free from the past, entering a paradise of unrestrained entrepreneurial and consumer opportunities where materialism was elevated to a creed, individualism was celebrated and collective action was discouraged or outlawed; an ideology which would define the decades that followed. Acid house and the rave scene expressed

viii (a long time afterwards) deeply-felt desires for communal experiences which Thatcher rejected – ‘There is no such thing as society’, in the words of her most notorious assertion – but they also seemed to echo her libertarian capitalist doctrine of market freedom and consumer choice. They provided an outlet for Thatcherite entrepreneurial impulses, even amplified them, enabling people to get involved, to participate rather than simply observe or consume, to do something, whether it was recording a techno track in a bedroom studio, organising a warehouse party or selling a bag of pills (although criminal entrepreneurialism probably wasn’t exactly what Conservative ideology envisaged). Simultaneously, the exponential increase in recreational drug use in Britain from the late eighties onwards, which was catalysed by Ecstasy – the ‘miracle pill’, as some of us saw it back then – ensured that the mainstream of youth culture became intimately connected with illegal activity. As drug use became normalised, criminality was democratised. What the author Irvine Welsh called the ‘chemical generation’ was also a generation of outlaws. Three separate pieces of legislation were introduced by the British government during the nineties in an attempt to contain the spread of Ecstasy culture; one of them even tried to outlaw electronic dance music, if it was played in certain circumstances. All of them were unsuccessful. The scene’s highest point in Britain, at least in terms of the sheer numbers of people involved, probably came some time after the start of the new millennium, a few years after the first edition of Altered State was published and more than a decade and a half after the origins of acid house in an obscure in an unfashionable district of south London. From then onwards, its populist appeal began to decline, although electronic dance music continued to evolve and Ecstasy continued to be an extremely popular drug in Britain, while elsewhere in the world its usage still seemed to be growing.

ix altered state

(The United Nations has estimated that in 2008 more than nine million people took the drug.) Re-reading Altered State now, it inevitably reflects the period in which it was written: the reckless enthusiasms, the exaggerated impulses and the sheer intensity of living through those high times. But although it might be, in many ways, a partisan insider’s account, the book also documents the seamier side of a culture based on illegal drug use, the problems created by criminality and excess, and the difficult questions about Ecstasy’s long-term effects which have yet to be properly answered. Millions of pills have been swallowed since it was first published, but scientists still can’t agree whether or not it causes any serious damage to the human body and brain, while attempts to restrict recreational drug use have almost always failed. Two decades on, the fallout from Ecstasy culture – social, political, legal and medical – continues to cause controversy. This new edition tracks the scene to its populist summit as well as following up some of the disparate post-rave subcults which were still developing when Altered State was first published. But despite the fact that Ecstasy culture is now a global phenomenon, the book still focuses, unashamedly, on Britain, where the scene (if not its drug and its music) first developed, and the formative years of acid house and rave culture in the late eighties and early nineties, when many of the most remarkable incidents took place – some of them so extraordinary it’s hard to believe now that they really happened. In recent years, those of us who were there at the time have regularly been asked to reminisce about our experiences for television and radio documentaries looking back on the era. It’s a sign that, like punk before it, acid house has now become an established part of pop history, respected and respectable enough for nostalgic retrospectives; a set of sounds and symbols which can provide inspiration to new generations,

x (a long time afterwards) but a moment which has passed, never to return. Most of these documentaries inevitably revisit many of the same incidents and anecdotes which appear in this book, and focus on the same cast of characters: the ones who became pop culture celebrities. The stories of those who simply participated, those who lived it but didn’t earn a living from it, have generally been overlooked. However, a couple of years ago, a British artist asked me to contribute text to a more unusual project which rediscovered some of these hidden tales. The artist, Matt Stokes, had sought to recreate the history of an all-but-forgotten collective of DJs from England’s north-west who had, at the start of the nineties, organised illegal parties in a cave in the wilds of the Lake District. He had collected their promotional flyers and DJ-mix cassettes, and had even built a facsimile of their sound system from old photographs and scribbled drawings. Sifting through these fragments of a lost era, the trajectory of these marginal figures seemed to be a kind of parable for those times, unknown yet remarkably familiar, encapsulating some of the universal experiences of the hordes of ‘ordinary’ ravers who followed the same path at other times and in other places. Their story began optimistically, with the raw idealism so often inspired by the first rush of Ecstasy: they wanted to spread the word, to make things happen, to live the dream. This, for them, was paradise revealed. ‘There were no inhibitions whatsoever,’ one of the crew later recalled, unconsciously echoing the words of so many people who experienced this sensation before and afterwards. ‘Everyone was on the same level, and everyone was really happy.’ They imagined, of course, that this beatific state would endure forever, and of course it did not. First gangsters moved in to steal the money generated by their illegal , then local newspapers started to publish hyperbolic headlines about the dangers of narcotised revelry, and finally the police set

xi altered state up roadblocks to stop their raves completely. After the parties were over, there was a long, uneasy comedown. Over the years that followed, the crew drifted apart, close friends became estranged, several people connected with the raves were jailed for drug offences, and one of them ended up dead – stories, again, which will be familiar to many of us who lived through all this. Some of the former ravers no longer wanted to talk about those days, perhaps having moved on to a more ‘normal’ life in which illicit drugs could have no part, and yet others still glowed with nostalgia. ‘They were special times,’ one insisted, ‘Really special times.’ But were they any more than ‘special times’? Was that all that it was: drug-crazed hedonism? Or was it – as many of us so much wanted to believe – more significant than that? Since the birth of acid house, the question of what it all really meant has so often been asked, and this book contains a whole range of answers, all inevitably dependent on personal perceptions, and ultimately, none of them definitive. Perhaps, looking back now, to simply have lived through those spectacular times was enough. Perhaps to have experienced those rapturous moments of communal abandon was, in itself, more than we ever could have hoped for. Matthew Collin 2009

xii prologue a night in the eighties

, 1988

We were handed the capsules at about ten o’clock. I cupped the little gelatin bullet in my palm and took a surreptitious look: it had an opaque white casing, just over a centimetre in length, slightly sticky with the heat and the perspiration of my fingers. It was just a capsule; its appearance offered no clues as to what its contents might bring. Well, here goes … I popped it into my mouth and crunched it between my teeth, feeling the gelatin splinter like cracked plastic and the white powder ooze out. Bitter, not like the queasy taste of paracetamol, but a sharper chemical tang which spread unpleasantly over the tongue and teeth. I washed it down with a mouthful of Coke, which didn’t quite rinse away the repulsive aftertaste, and we sat down at a table on the balcony overlooking the dancefloor. Ten minutes and counting. We were both slightly edgy, trying to make small talk, lapsing into fretful silence, both wondering what would happen next. Neither of us knew much – if anything – about this stuff, what it would do, what its after-effects were, whether it could harm us in any way. Where would it take us? Were there demons in this other world? Would we still be the same people when we returned? None of these thoughts took real shape, they just flitted darkly around the corners of our consciousness. Twenty-five minutes. Another sip of Coke. Rather have a beer, but we’d been told that this stuff didn’t really mix with

1 altered state alcohol. Sip the Coke. Sip, sip. Wait. Sip. Wait … was that something? A twinge? The lights seemed to shimmer strangely, just for a millisecond, a flutter in the belly, a tiny glow. I searched my metabolism for signs of weirdness. No? Forty minutes. Almost imperceptibly, everything shifted, like an elevator accelerating upwards. An overwhelmingly powerful charge surged through my body, rising through the veins and the arteries and the bones and the teeth, pushing me down into the plastic chair. Sit back … fuuuuck … sit back and hold on, let it carry me … My mind began to reassure my body: ride it, ride it, go with it. You’ll be alright, it’s good, it’s good, ride it. Then it eased slightly, and I felt a desperate urge to talk – to voice the babble of feelings which were welling up inside me. We exchanged a few, brief words, hardly a conversation, but it seemed infused with an intensity of meaning it never had before – like no conversation we’d ever had before. I understood his faults, his hopes, his dreams, his pain and joy, what he had been through, what we had been through together, what we had all been through, and I knew he felt the same. Now, in this moment, it was all resolved … it was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright. Then that wave crashed over me again and I was struck dumb … Oh … the feeling … sooooo strong … I couldn’t speak, but my emotions raged more intensely than they ever had before. Need to be touched … my skin felt clammy but sensitised beyond belief. ‘Are you alright?’ Paralysed, I found it difficult to nod yes. ‘It’s OK.’ He held my arm. ‘It’s OK.’ The light caress felt glorious. We clenched hands. Sensuous. Great. ‘I’m alright.’

2 a night in the eighties

I tried to sip. Couldn’t. Not possible. The rush seemed to last for hours but it must have only been a few seconds. Suddenly the music which had been pounding out of the speakers suspended above the dancefloor flashed right into focus, searing into the consciousness. It felt like the sound, each gorgeous slash of the riff, was slicing through every single cell in my body, transmuting its physiology. The drums seemed to sparkle in mid air, reverberating as if in a cathedral … and the bass … it was as though I’d never heard it before. It resonated right through to the core, pulsing from both inside and outside simultaneously. The tune separated out into its constituent parts, a lattice of textures, each ringing with angelic clarity, each sliding right into me, locking, holding, releasing … The pressure in my head lifted dramatically and I felt warm all over; stroking my arm gently I realised I’d broken a sweat without even moving. The world had opened up all around, the blank warehouse had somehow changed into a wonderland designed just for us, glistening with a mystic iridescence which I which I hadn’t been able to see earlier. New world. New sound. New life. Everything felt so right. A huge, glowing, magical YES. The friend who’d given us the capsules came back to our table. It was like seeing him again for the first time after a long absence; we’d all changed, but the elapsed time – could it be that it was only an hour? – made us realise how much we loved him and missed him. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, gauging the response from our smiles. ‘The music’s great, isn’t it? You’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to move, we’ve got to go and dance. Otherwise you’ll just sit here all night.’ We stood up unsteadily, and as we negotiated the stairs down to the dancefloor, we began to slide into the contours of the rhythm, becoming immersed in it, the bass curling round the spine, which felt like it had been loosened of its inhibiting

3 altered state rigidity, like it had slipped the bounds of all that was holding it – us – back, and could just flow, loose, warm, alive … And in a second we were among the throng, synched right into the matrix of bodies and sound; transported, transformed, together. Alright, the feeling resonated through us as the drums thrashed upwards towards climax, let’s go …

4 1 the technologies of pleasure

Where once there was frustration, alienation and cynicism, there are new characteristics among us. We are full of love for each other and are showing it; we are full of anger at what has been done to us. And as we recall all the self-censorship and repression for so many years, a reservoir of tears pours out of our eyes. And we are euphoric, high, with the initial flourish of a movement … Carl Wittman, A Gay Manifesto, 1969

New York City at the turn of the seventies. The end of the civil rights era, the last days of the hippies. At 1.20 a.m., one hot summer night in June 1969, the New York Police Department raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Police harassment of gay bars was common practice, but this time something snapped and people fought back, an outbreak of righteous anger sparking off a full- scale riot which continued through the night. ‘Queen power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb,’ declared one New York newspaper breathlessly.1 The Stonewall uprising, the ‘Boston Tea Party of the gay movement’, heralded a rising mood of militancy and public openness, the golden age of pre-AIDS euphoria. ‘The Stonewall riots were a watershed for gay people,’ remembers historian Ian Young, ‘and when the dam broke, a lot of idealism, anger and longing burst out of their social restraints …’2

5 altered state

As late as the sixties, homosexuality had been considered a medical condition, a pathological state, an aberration; gays were isolated and almost invisible. Now from this outpouring of repressed energy came the new politics of the gay liberation movement – and almost simultaneously, the emergence of a vibrant new nocturnal culture. Amid this heady mood, New York’s underground clubs experienced a dramatic creative upsurge. The Sanctuary in the Hell’s Kitchen district, one of the first flamboyantly gay dance clubs in the city, was a temple to joyous decadence. In his portrait of the era, , author Albert Goldman compared its decor to a Witches’ Sabbath, with a huge painted Devil flanked by a host of angels locked in sexual communion. Drinks were sold from chalices, Goldman reported, and pews were arranged around the walls, while the DJ, Francis Grasso, would preach from an altar above the dancefloor. Grasso helped pioneer the technique of seamlessly mixing one record into another; he would layer the orgasmic moans from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ over heavy percussion, cutting the bass and treble frequencies in and out to heighten the energy level, segueing from dirty James Brown funk and sweet-voiced soul to rock’n’roll, then on into hypnotic African drums and chants. ‘Francis was like an energy mirror,’ wrote Goldman, ‘catching the vibes off the floor and shooting them back again recharged by the powerful sounds of his big horns.’ Many of the Sanctuary’s dancers would load up on LSD, amphetamine pills or mood-altering quaaludes, and the men’s room became an orgy of rutting males hyped by the libidinous atmosphere. A new militancy was evident, too; when the police raided the club, hundreds would chant ‘Fuck you!’ in unison.3 By the time this ‘cathedral of Sodom and Gomorrah’ was shut down in 1972, after a state official described the club as a ‘supermarket for drugs’ and a ‘menace to the community’, the

6 the technologies of pleasure

Sanctuary had not only influenced the soundtrack of New York nightlife, but its very shape and form.4 The seminal after-hours club of the early seventies wasn’t actually a nightclub at all: The Loft was just that, a loft apartment on Broadway inhabited by a bearded, idealistic LSD aficionado called David Mancuso. Mancuso had been profoundly influenced by the ideas of psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, but the hippy ‘gatherings’ which he had been organising at his home since the sixties evolved into dance parties. Every Saturday night from 1970 onwards, Mancuso would fill his apartment with brightly-coloured balloons and throw it open to a crowd of hedonistic acolytes – a glorious rainbow mixture of blacks and whites, gays and turned-on straights – who would dance, sweat and romp until well into Sunday. He would lay on a buffet of fruit, nuts and juice, no alcohol, and play music he loved – songs of passion, spirituality and lust, a bridge between psychedelia and the disco era – through a hand-tooled sound system. Black and gay clubs have consistently served as breeding grounds for new developments in popular culture, social laboratories where music, drugs and sex are interbred to create stylistic innovations that slowly filter through to straight, white society. Mancuso may have been white, but his music was black and decidedly gay – the sound which would soon be known throughout the world as disco. He was also a zealot with very specific beliefs about how music should be presented. ‘He was searching for a new disco sound, a new mix,’ suggested Albert Goldman. ‘He wanted to trip people out, to lay them under a spell. Many people regarded him as a magician.’5 If you were a ‘Loft baby’, you felt part of a secret society of initiates (attendance was strictly by invitation), a privileged sect which was somehow describing new contours of human experience. ‘Dancing at the Loft was like riding waves of music,

7 altered state being carried along as one song after another built relentlessly to a brilliant crest and broke, bringing almost involuntary shouts of approval from the crowd, then smoothed out, softened, and slowly began welling up to another peak,’ journalist Vince Aletti wrote at the time.6 David Morales, later to become one of New York’s most famous DJs, would come down from Brooklyn carrying a spare set of clothes to change into, and stay at The Loft until six o’clock on Sunday afternoon; he remembers dancers on acid slipping into ecstatic reverie under Mancuso’s spell, limbs and brain synched into the matrix of percussion and melody. At this time, the dominant club sound was lush, orchestrated disco from Philadelphia, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’. MFSB’s ‘Love is the Message’ was its inspirational height, a careening wash of strings locked to a compulsive bassline and a manifesto of joy and hope: it became the anthem of black America and a nationwide number one hit in 1974. The Philadelphia International label was the Motown of the early seventies, its in-house session players fashioning a string of gems for MFSB, the Three Degrees, the O’Jays and countless others; a dance factory founded on the labour of virtuoso musicians playing drums, bass, guitar and strings. Philadelphia’s sumptuous orchestration was emulated by Salsoul Records – but this New York label would also herald another step forward. In 1975, disco producer Tom Moulton, a genuine innovator who was one of dance culture’s first remixers, started to make test pressings of his mixes on album-sized 12-inch vinyl. Moulton was already re-editing and stretching songs into more abstract, percussive forms; now he had the format to enhance his experiments yet further. The 12-inch single, the first new record format in almost thirty years, was revolutionary not only because it sounded so physically devastating over huge speakers, but it gave dance

8 the technologies of pleasure music a new dynamic: both length and depth. Remixers could extend the breakdown – the few bars where the instruments dropped out leaving just bass and drums to carry the pulse – into a mesmeric tribal drum ritual, like the African drums and Latin percussion records which had fired up The Loft. The first commercially-available 12-inch was Walter Gibbons’ remix of ‘Ten Percent’ by Double Exposure on the Salsoul label. Transformed from a three-minute single into a nine-minute epic, it was aimed directly at the club underground of . Salsoul’s themes seemed to speak intimately to a gay community: passionate, sensual, charged with sweat, sex and the ecstasy of . Disco continued to accelerate into the future. From the mid-seventies onwards, a series of records began to emerge that used electronics to revolutionise the form: Giorgio Moroder’s compulsively metronomic production of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, the opulent sleaze of Cerrone, Patrick Cowley’s wide-screen productions for gay diva Sylvester. Many of these records were inspired by European , as disco felt the impact of the stark minimalism of the German synthesiser quartet Kraftwerk. On 1977’s Trans Europe Express and 1978’s The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk styled themselves as glamorous robots, ‘Showroom Dummies’ in identical suits tapping out motorik rhythms on computer keyboards. Kraftwerk had come from the fringes of Germany’s classical avant-garde, yet their vision of a synthesis between man and machine tore through black American dance music. ‘I don’t think they even knew how big they were among the black masses back in ’77 when they came out with Trans Europe Express,’ hip hop innovator Afrika Bambaataa explained. ‘I thought that was one of the best and weirdest records I ever heard in my life … It was funky.’7 Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, alongside producer Arthur Baker, reworked Trans

9 altered state

Europe Express, adding rapped lyrics and accidentally inventing a whole new musical genre: electro. Electronics and studio mixing techniques seemed infused with possibility, giving fresh impetus to disco as it first boomed, and then almost went bust. By the end of the seventies, what was once an had been increasingly commercialised as it became America’s leading nightlife scene, and a backlash had started to gain strength. The release of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977 had brought disco to the mass market, caricaturing it and ironing out its depth and complexities in the process of commodification, largely shedding its black and gay context. The fictional tale Saturday Night Fever was based upon, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nik Cohn, was a portrait of working-class youth who poured their frustrated dreams into a frantic outburst of weekend lunacy. But although the film helped to turn disco into a multi-million-dollar business, it also made it seem cheap and trashy, a mere fad. Record companies started to pump out increasing numbers of substandard disco mixes in an attempt to cash in on the phenomenon while it lasted, while in New York, the city’s most famous club, Studio 54, was more concerned with celebrity glamour than musical innovation and communal spirit. A crusade against disco began, led by rock DJs on radio stations across the US. It culminated in a ‘disco demolition’ rally during a baseball match in Chicago, where explosives were used to blow up thousands of records in a symbolic attempt to kill off a culture which they despised as both superficial and inauthentic (although their campaign also had a noxious undercurrent of homophobia). But just as it seemed that disco was suffocating on its own spectacular success, evolving technology began to change its very nature. Black music has always been at the cutting edge of new invention, from the electric guitars of the Chicago

10 the technologies of pleasure bluesmen to the primitive sound effects employed in Motown’s Detroit studio and the space-age big bands of Parliament and Funkadelic, and now disco’s emphasis also started to shift, as the music moved on from the surging, string-driven grooves of Salsoul and Philadelphia International. The record labels that exemplified the new, increasingly electronic dance sound were Prelude and West End. Both employed the finest remixers of the moment to lace the grooves with synthetic textures which sometimes echoed the deep space of Jamaican dub reggae. Many rock critics regarded disco as frivolous and throwaway – ‘Disco sucks!’ was their battle cry at the height of the late seventies backlash – yet here were disco mixers traversing the frontiers of the possible, auteurs who attempted to heighten consciousness using sound, virtuosos whose instrument was the recording studio itself: DJs like François Kevorkian and Brooklyn-born . The , the club where Levan played from 1977 until its closing night in 1987, was a former car-park in New York’s SoHo district. It had an awesome sound system, possibly the best in the world, custom designed by the city’s premier sound technician, Richard Long, and lovingly refined by Levan. ‘As you climb its steeply angled ramp to the second floor, which is illuminated only by rows of sinister little red eyes,’ wrote Albert Goldman in 1978, ‘you feel like a character in a Kafka novel … From overhead comes the heavy pounding of the disco beat like a fearful migraine. When you reach the “bar”, a huge bare parking area, you are astonished to see immense pornographic murals of Greek and Trojan warriors locked in sado-masochistic combat running from floor to ceiling. On the floor of the main dancing room are the most frenzied dancers on the disco scene: the black and Puerto Rican gays, stripped down to singlets and denim shorts, swing their bodies with wild abandon, while from

11 altered state their hip pockets flow foot-long sweat rags that fly like horses’ tails.’ 8 Levan, born Laurence Philpot in 1954, was a graduate of David Mancuso’s Loft, and one of the finest ever conjurers of the psychoactive power of dance music to create a fleeting vision of spiritual utopia. ‘Larry Levan used music as a unique storytelling vehicle that transported his audience on a collective journey, reaching to the roots of their emotions and releasing unparalleled waves of excitement and energy,’ suggested the Garage’s backer Mel Cheren and François Kevorkian.9 Although ‘garage’ music, which took its name from the Paradise Garage, later came to mean uptempo house music with a gospel-style vocal, Levan had an incredibly eclectic taste, playing anything that captured the devotional, life-affirming feeling he was after: disco, soul, funk, reggae, post-, European electro-pop, even German kosmische synthesiser epics like Manuel Göttsching’s ‘E2: E4’. ‘He would experiment with records that most people wouldn’t go near,’ says Cheren. ‘He really was an engineering genius as far as sound was concerned – they even have speakers that were named after him. He was brilliant. He wasn’t an easy person but most artists aren’t. He was very self-destructive – but there were a lot of DJs at that time that were very self-destructive.’ Levan mixed records as if he was trying to work the drugs that were percolating through the dancers’ brains – trying to play their body chemistry – creating a homology between sonic texture and the chemically-elevated cortex. ‘Larry invented new levels of bass and treble that worked on various parts of your body,’ believed fellow New York DJ Richard Vasquez.10 As pure mood enhancement, his mixes of Taana Gardner’s drugged- out, metallic ‘Heartbeat’ or the Peech Boys’ shimmering ‘Don’t Make Me Wait’ were without peer, staking out new frontiers for disco in the early eighties. ‘The way people party now, the

12 the technologies of pleasure drugs that are in the street, everything has got to be wild and crazy and electronic,’ Levan once insisted.11 Although drug- taking was far less open than it would become in British clubs, an astounding pharmacopoeia of substances was being consumed in the name of pleasure on the gay scene of the time – pleasures that Levan freely and copiously enjoyed. His club buzzed with energies of all kinds: musical, sexual, spiritual, chemical. The final night of the Garage, on 26 September 1987, marked the end of an era, the last gathering of a clan who to this day insist that the sense of nocturnal spirituality that Levan engendered has never been recaptured. Artist Keith Haring, whose iconic graffiti covered the building’s walls, returned from Japan just to be there. ‘Under the spell of Levan’s narcotic mix, people seemed to transcend human limits,’ journalist Frank Owen wrote. ‘Men crawled around on their hands and knees howling like dogs, while others gyrated and leapt as if they could fly. After a 24-hour marathon, an exhausted crowd gathered in front of Levan’s DJ booth and pleaded, “Larry, please don’t go”.’12 After the Garage closed, Levan’s notoriously prodigious capacity for drugs, particularly heroin and cocaine, reached critical levels. He spent his rent money on pharmaceuticals, sold his precious records, and his mood swings became extreme. ‘When Larry knew the Garage was going to close, he freaked. He went on a self-destructive binge,’ recalled DJ David DePino.13 He missed club bookings, screwed up his studio work, and his health deteriorated. On 8 November 1992, Larry Levan died of heart failure. He was thirty-eight. chicago and detroit

The almost devotional intensity of the atmosphere in the

13 altered state black gay clubs of New York created a template that has been employed, knowingly or not, in dance cultures ever since. As black people, the dancers were excluded from many of the economic and social benefits of mainstream America; as homosexuals, they were excluded from its moral universe; as black homosexuals, they were even prevented from expressing their identity within their own communities. This contributed to a powerful frustration which found its release in the clubs, the only place where they could truly be themselves and play out their desires without fear or inhibition. The explosion of energy was enormous; the bonding too. Compounded by drugs, the rhetoric of unity and togetherness which echoed down through club cultures to come was forged in these clubs: disco and house both mixed the secular, the invocations to sexual abandon, with the spiritual, the wistful yearning for a ‘better day’ when ‘we will all be free’. Larry Levan had started his career at New York’s Continental Baths, where Bette Midler also got her break, accompanied on piano by a young Barry Manilow. The Continental Baths was the most famous of the gay sex-dens known as ‘bath-houses’ (the rest of which were shut down in the eighties by the city’s health department as AIDS devastated the gay community). It was primarily designed for orgiastic abandon, complete with saunas, showers and private rooms – but it also had a dancefloor where men could sweat out the physicality expressed in the music. Levan’s friend, a South Bronx-born ‘Loft baby’ called Frankie Knuckles (his real name, not an alias), was also a DJ at the Continental Baths. Knuckles had worked with Levan before, as assistant to another pioneering mixer, Nicky Siano, at the Gallery. Siano was a bisexual drug fiend and a genuine musical innovator, and his club had been one of the birthplaces of disco in the early seventies. ‘There were points when the music was

14 Index

ABC, 67 Batchelor, Kid, 59, 76 Adamski (Adam Tinley), 95, 118, BBC Radio 1, 138, 146–7, 285, 297, 124 338 Adelaars, Arno, 34 Beard, Maggie, 61, 68 Adonis, 17 Beard, Roger, 61, 68–9, 71, 208 Adrenalin (club), 135 Beastie Boys, 52 Adrenalin (sound system), 223, 229 Beatles, The, 92, 120, 179 Advance Party, 241, 246, 248, 250, Bedlam, 223, 228 254 Beloved, The, 81 A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Berens, Camilla, 245 Simpson), 160, 191, 195 Berkmann, Justin, 34 Aletti, Vince, 8 Betts, Leah, 319–27, 331 Allen, Stu, 152, 282 Bevan, Will, 292 Almond, Marc, 34–7, 40, 74 Bey, Hakim, viii Altern-8, 270 Bez (Mark Berry), 149, 151, 153, Anderton, James, 161 156, 189–90, 195 Angus, Colin, 206, 222–3, 319 Biology, 102, 108, 117, 121, 124 Anton the Pirate, 95, 122 Black, Matt, 60 Apocalypse Now, 90–1, 105 Black Box, 111, 124 Art of Noise, 52 , 195 Atkins, Juan, 19–21 Black Moon, 255 Amnesia, 49–52, 54–5 Blade Runner, 20, 96 Amnesia House, 267 Blair, Tony, 248, 329–33 Asher D (Ashley Walters), 289–90 Blakemore, Colin, 318 Association of Dance Party Bomb the Bass, 60 Promoters, 122, 124 Bones, Frankie, 181, 263 Avon , 228, 237, 242 Boston Group, 28–9 Aztek, 216 Bowery, Leigh, 42–3 Bowie, David, 51, 179 Back to the Future, 97, 109 Boy George (George O’Dowd), Baker, Arthur, 9, 149 37–8, 40, 67 Ball, Dave, 34–6 Boy’s Own, 57, 71, 93, 192, 266, 297 Bambaataa, Afrika, 9 Branson, Richard, 78–9 Banton, Buju, 276 Bright, Graham, 117–18, 121–2, Barker, Andy, 156, 160 124, 165, 177, 209, 245, 261, Barker, Eric, 155–7 301, 328 Barnes, Sue, 140, 268 Brown, Ian, 166–7 Barrett, Jeff, 151, 167–8, 182 Brown, James, 6, 276 Barton, James, 338 Bug, The, 292

348 Buller, Fonzo, 165 Continental Baths, 14 Burial, 292 Coronation Street, 159 Bush, George (senior), 105 Courtney, Dave, 139 Cowley, Patrick, 9 Cabaret Voltaire, 55 Cox, Carl, 58, 335 Camden Palace, 40, 74, 132, 136 Crass, 201, 203 Captain Beefheart, 151 Cream, 294, 335, 338 Castlemorton Common, 228–33, Creft, Tony, 163–4, 176, 178–9 237, 239, 241–2, 253, 255, 260 Cresser, Stephen, 155, 167 Central Station Design, 167 Crowley, Gary, 67 Centre Force, 137–8, 142–6, 242, Crozier, Brian, 104 276 Culture Club, 37 Cerrone, 9 Cunnah, Peter, 331 Chambers, Paul, 276 Cure, The, 35 Chambers, Tintin, 95–6, 102, 108, Curtis, Ian, 148 113, 127 Cybotron, 19–20 Champion, Sarah, 159 CzechTek, 259 Cheren, Mel, 12 Chic, 150 Dance Academy, 333 Chip E, 17 Dasilva, Jon, 154, 160 Circus Warp, 229 Davies, Nick, 200 Clark, Fraser, 203–5, 210–11, 221, Davis, Paul, 190 251 Davis, Rick (3070), 19 Clark, Michael, 67 Deconstruction, 191 Clarke, Hewan, 150 Delight, 193 Clarke, Kenneth, 236 Delirium, 56 Clash, The, 167 , 35 Clink Street Studios, 75, 77, 132, DePino, David, 13 140, 206–7 Desert Storm, 246 Clinton, George, 20 Detension, 214 Club Dog, 203, 210, 251 Dirtbox, 74 Club For Heroes, 40 Dixon, Steve, 272 Coaker, Vernon, 332 DiY, 210, 212–13, 223, 227–9, Cockles, Tommy, 129–30 237–8, 253, 255 Cohn, Nik, 10 Dizzee Rascal (Dylan Mills), 291 , 60 DJ Digs, 213, 253 Coleman, Nick, 64–5 DJ Gizelle, 257 Colston-Hayter, Tony, 87–97, DJ International, 17, 152 100–2, 104–6, 108–9, 116–17, DJ Pierre (Nathaniel Pierre Jones), 19 119–22, 125, 127, 136, 164, 210, DJ Ron, 274, 277 212, 218, 267 D Mob, 80 Cons, Paul, 154–6, 172, 183, 194 Doblin, Rick, 31, 317–18

349 Dongas, 244–5 Festival Eye, 230 Donnelly, Anthony, 156, 164–5, Fiorito, Alfredo, 50, 57–8 186 Flesh, 194 Donnelly, Chris, 156, 164–5, 186 Flynn, Paul, 328 Dorrell, Dave, 60 Fountain, Nigel, 335 Double Exposure, 9 4 Hero, 279 Dow Chemical Company, 23, 25 Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 67 D:Ream, 331 Frantz, Chris, 189 Drug Enforcement Administration, Freaky Dancing, 170–1, 184 24–5, 30, 32–3 Freedom Network, 245 Dry, 174, 185 Freedom to Party, 116–18, 123–5, Dungeons, The, 137 127, 165 Freek FM, 286 E by Gum!, 309–10 Fry, Martin, 67 Echoes, 135, 143–4 Full Metal Jacket, 93 Eckel, Cymon, 57 Fun City, 95 Ecstasy, Cindy, 35–6 Fung, Trevor, 51, 53 Edgewood Chemical Warfare Funk, Farley ‘Jackmaster’ (Farley Service, 22 Keith Williams), 16, 18, 59 Edmonds, Noel, 127 Funkadelic, 11, 20, 150, 179 , 124, 160, 167–8, 181, 191 Future, 58, 62, 70, 72–3, 134, 153, Eisner, Bruce, 28 208, 265 Elms, Robert, 67 Encyclopaedia Psychedelica, 203, 205 Gallery, The, 14 Energy, 96, 102–3, 108, 113, Garage, The, 154 117–18, 124, 140 Gardner, Taana, 12 Engels, Friedrich, 158 Garratt, Sheryl, 78 ESG, 148–9 Gatecrasher, 294, 337–8 Eshun, Kodwo, 282 Genesis, 93, 121, 135 Evolution, 204–5, 221 Gibbons, Walter, 9 Exodus, 246–7, 301 Gibson, William, 18 E-Zee Possee, 109 Gilbert, Gillian, 148 Gilroy, Paul, 20 Fabio (Fitzroy Heslop), 95, 261–5, Ginsberg, Allen, 60, 204 278, 283 , 118, 208–10, , 148, 185, 191, 196 212 Fantazia, 267, 273 Golden, 294 Farley, Terry, 57, 69, 90, 93, 166, Goldie (Clifford Price), 277–9, 266 284–5 Faver, Colin, 57, 59, 74 Goldman, Albert, 6–7, 11, 204 Feeney, Simone, 214, 232, 241, 243 Goose, Simon, 228 Fenton, Greg, 175, 192 Gordy, Berry, 21

350 Göttsching, Manuel, 12 Heseltine, Michael, 199 Grandmaster Flash, 264 Hill, Jon, 294 Grasso, Francis, 6 Holloway, Loleatta, 111 Grateful Dead, 68 Holloway, Nicky, 53–4, 57, 72–3 Green, Andrew (Two Fingers), 274, Hook, Bernard, 148 279–80 Hot, 153 Gretton, Rob, 150 Hot Mix 5, 16–17 Grieve, John, 326 Howard, Michael, 245, 248–9, 327 Griffith, Debbie, 214, 232 Howells, Kim, 289 (Raymond Bingham), Hug Club, 43, 63 261–5, 278–9, 283–4 Human League, The, 35 Guinere, Spencer, 63, 69 Hurd, Douglas, 101, 111, 116, 201 Guru Josh, 124 Hurley, Steve ‘Silk’, 59 Huxley, Aldous, 27 Haçienda, The, 149–51, 153–8, Hypnosis, 137, 209 165–6, 168, 171–4, 183–5, 187–8, 193–4, 196–7, 213, 284 Records, 276 Haig, Matt, 338 , 166–9, 179 Hannett, Martin, 157 Inter City Firm, 131–2, 134, 141, , 149–51, 153–7, 143, 145 166–9, 179, 181–2, 185, 188–9, 191, 194–6, 208 Jackson, Herb, 19 Hardy, Ron, 16–18, 20, 264 Jackson, Michael, 100 Hargreaves, Ken, 177 James, Mandi, 164, 185, 188, 308 Haring, Keith, 13 Jam MCs, 157, 165, 174 Harrison, Mark, 213–15, 217–20, Jansen, Karl, 314 222–4, 227, 231–4, 236, 238, Jason, Kenny ‘Jammin’, 16 259 Jazzy M, 59, 74 Harrison, Alexander, 214, 232 Jefferson, Marshall, 17, 19 Hart, David, 104–5, 122–3 Jefferson Airplane, 298 Haslam, Dave, 168, 181, 336 Jenkins, Glenn, 247, 301 Hattersley, Roy, 101 Jiba, 251 Hawkins, Jason, 63, 67, 73 Johnson, Philip, 276 , 213, 217 Johnson, ‘White’ Tony, 174, 184, Healy, Jeremy, 336 187 Heath, Adam, 52, 56, 72, 85, 152 Jolly, John, 81 , 57, 68, 78, 263 Jones, Grace, 49–50 Hedonism, 75, 154 Jones, Oliver, 264 Hellawell, Keith, 332 Joplin, Janis, 21 Helter Skelter, 98, 111 Joy, 164–5 Hendrix, Jimi, 21, 151, 262 Joy Division, 148 Henry, John, 311–12, 315, 322 Judge Jules, 335, 338

351 Jumping Jack Frost, 265–6, 274, Long, Richard, 11 277, 284 Loog Oldham, Andrew, 90 Jungle, 56 Loud, Lisa (Lisa McKay), 66, 69, 89 Kamins, Mark, 150 Love Decade, 125, 178 Kemistry (Kemi Olusanya), 263, 276, 278, 280 Mackintosh, CJ, 60 , 277 Mad House, 206 Kensit, Patsy, 67 Madonna, 150 Kesey, Ken, 21, 216 Major, John, 117, 236, 240, 243, Kevorkian, François, 11–12 245, 248, 250, 328–31 Kingston, Stephen, 334 Mancuso, David, 7–8, 12 Kitchen, The, 156 Manilow, Barry, 18 Kiss FM, 53, 146–7, 285, 297 Manning, Bernard, 149 KLF, The, 111 Mansfield, Michael, 115, 248 Knuckles, Frankie, 14–17, 264 Mantronix, 152 Konspiracy, 174–5, 183–5 Marden, Marie, 48–9, 71, 84 Kool FM, 276, 283 M/A/R/R/S, 60 Kool Herc, 264 Marsh, Jon, 81–2 Kraftwerk, 9, 19–20, 35, 152 Martin, Kevin, 292 Ku, 49 Marx, Karl, 158 Kubrick, Stanley, 93 Massey, Graham, 160–1, 168–70, 173, 181, 188 Labrynth, 140–2, 268 Mason, Paul, 171 Laing, RD, 41 May, Derrick, 16, 19 Land of Oz, 79 Mayer, Herb, 104 Leary, Timothy, 7, 21, 27, 42, 121, Mayes, Janet, 80, 92 204, 206, 224, 252 Mayes, Steve, 57 Led Zeppelin, 6 McClarnan, Gary, 158, 188, 193 Lee, Simon, 217, 225–6, 234 McFerrin, Bobby, 92 Legg, Barry, 327–9, 331 McGough, Nathan, 190 Leighton, Claire, 171 McKenna, Pete, 273 Levan, Larry, 11–15, 38, 43, 150 McKenna, Terence, 221–3, 252 Liberator, 251 McLaren, Malcolm, 119 Liberty, 125, 240 MC Romeo, 286 Lifeline, 308–10, 322 Merck, 22 Lil Louis, 100 MFSB, 8, 18 Linnell, Mike, 309 Michael, George, 40, 136 Live the Dream, 164–5, 170 Midler, Bette, 14 Living Dream, 267 Milne, Hugh, 33 Lodge, Alan, 327 , 34, 294–5, 329, Loft, The, 7–9, 14 335, 339

352 Mixmaster Morris (Morris Gould), O’Jays, The, 8 206–7, 251 Oliver, Mickey ‘Mixin’, 16 Model 500, 20 O’Mahoney, Bernard, 324–5 Mondo 2000, 224, 252 Ooops, 251 Monroe’s, 193 Orbital, 124, 207 Moore, Alan, 62 Otchere, Eddie (James T Kirk), Moore, Jonathan, 60 269–70, 274, 279–80 Moore, Mark, 57, 59–60 Owen, Frank, 13 Morales, David, 8 Oz, 193 Moroder, Giorgio, 9, 19 Morris, Stephen, 148 Padilla, José, 47, 50, 52 Morrison, Jim, 21 Pacha, 49 Most Excellent, 192–3 Palumbo, James, 294–5, 329, 331 Mother, The, 254–5 Paradise Garage, 11–13, 34, 38, 41, Motown, 8, 21, 179 148, 150, 286–7 Moulton, Tom, 8 Paris Angels, 179 M People, 194 Park, Graeme, 59, 154, 193 Mr C (Richard West), 75–6, 207–8, Parliament, 11, 20 225 Partington, Darren, 160 Murdoch, Rupert, 104 Pasha, 135 Music Box, 16–17, 19–20 Pay As U Go Kartel, 288 Mutoid Waste Company, 202, 251, Pay Party Unit, 106–7, 114–15, 118, 259 124, 126–7, 233, 237 Peace Convoy, 61, 199 Nasmyth, Peter, 41–2 Peech Boys, The, 12 Neal, Cedric, 16–17 Peel, John, 297 Nelson, Chris, 174–5, 184–5 Pennant, Cass, 132 New Order, 148–50, 179, 182, 191 Perception, 267 Ninja Man, 276 Petridis, Alexis, 338–9 Nixon, Richard, 21 Phantasy, 111 Noise, Nancy (Nancy Turner), 69 Philadelphia International, 8, 11, Noon, Jeff, 159 15, 18 Northside, 179 Phillips, Dom, 179 Nude Night, 151, 153–4 Phuture, 19 Numan, Gary, 19 Piccioni, Dave, 125 Pickering, Mike, 58, 150–2, 154, Oakenfold, Paul, 52–3, 56–8, 62, 160, 165, 191, 193–4, 272 68–70, 79, 86, 91, 135, 150, , 49, 99 156, 166, 181–2, 207, 263, Pod, 238 335–6 Poole, Michelle, 241, 254 Oasis, 194, 296, 331 Portillo, Michael, 104 O’Callaghan, James, 316 Powerplant, The, 16–17

353 Precinct 13, 165 Ricaurte, George, 315–17 Prelude, 11 Richards, ‘Evil’ Eddie, 59, 74, 76–7, Prendergast, Martin, 152, 154 206–7 Price, Martin, 160, 168 Richardson, Leroy, 172, 174, 187 Primal Scream, 207 Rimbaud, Penny, 187, 201 Prince Charles, 266 RIP, 76–7, 206 Principal, Jamie, 17 Roberts, Chuck, 257 Proctor, Steve, 57, 63, 67, 84, 89, Roberts, Dave, 87–9, 94, 97, 102, 92 109, 120, 127 Prodigy, The, 270, 283, 323 Robertson, Justin, 155, 175, 192 Project Club, The, 51–2, 56–7 Rockwood, Wayne, 136 Pyramid, 56 Rodol, Mark, 295, 339 Rogers, Ce Ce, 111 Quadrant Park, 193 Roland, 16, 18–19, 95 Quando Quango, 150 Rolling Stones, 167, 179–80 Rosario, Ralphi, 16 Radio Caroline, 138 Roxy Music, 179 , 334 Rubin, Jerry, 121 Radio London, 138 Rucker, Rudy, 224 Rage, 262–3, 278 Run-DMC, 52 Raindance, 126, 267 Russell, Phil, 198, 201 Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree, 33–4, Rutherford, Paul, 67 46, 49, 85 Ruthless Rap Assassins, 195 Rampling, Danny, 53, 57–8, Ryder, Derek, 151, 167, 181 61–2, 66–7, 69–70, 83–5, 88, Ryder, Shaun, 149–51, 153, 156–7, 90, 147 167, 169, 179–82, 186, 189–92, Rampling, Jenni, 58, 62, 66–7, 195 69–70, 84–5, 90 Raquels, 324–5 St Paul, Ian, 51–2, 56, 58, 61, 65, Rat Pack, 267 67–8 Ravescene Magazeen, 268, 275, 279 Salsoul, 8–9, 11, 15, 18, 111 Reagan, Nancy, 31 Sanctuary, 19 Reagan, Ronald, 30–1, 105 Sandy, Jarvis, 102–3, 124 Rebel MC, 274 Sasha (Alexander Coe), 193 Reclaim the Streets, 256–7 Saturday Night Fever, 10 Reese, 20 Saunders, Jesse, 17 Release, 81, 310 Saunders, Nicholas, 301–3 Renaissance, 294–5, 338 Saunderson, Kevin, 19–20, 269 Renegade Soundwave, 263 Savage, Jon, 54–5 Reynolds, Simon, 270–1 Sawyer, Miranda, 190 Rezerection, 267 Scanlon, Blane, 70 Rhythim is Rhythim, 20, 100, 137 Scargill, Arthur, 104

354 Schifano, Fabrizio, 313 Squall, 301 Scott, Ridley, 20 Staines, Paul, 104–6, 113, 116, Sett End, 163 118–19, 121–3, 125 Sex Pistols, 51, 150, 152, 167, 180, Stalker, John, 132 201, 289 Staunton, Debby, 216, 225, 254 S-Express, 60 Stevens, Jay, 27 Shamen, The, 76, 124, 205–8, 222, Stingily, Byron, 154 225, 269 Stokes, Matt, xi Shelleys Laserdome, 193 Stone, Paul, 75–6 Sherman, Larry, 19 Stonehenge People’s Free Festival, Shock, 74 61, 198–201, 208, 213–15, 227, Shoom, 58, 61–4, 66, 69–70, 72–5, 230–31 77, 81, 83–5, 88–90, 93, 112, Stone Roses, 155, 166, 168–9, 179, 152, 154, 203, 208, 211, 265, 181, 185 269 Stonewall Inn, 5 Shulgin, Alexander, 22–6, 42, 82, Storm (Jayne Conneely), 263, 268, 221, 319 272, 278 Shulgin, Ann, 23, 25 Stranglers, The, 167 Shut Up and Dance, 264–5, 274 Stratford, Craig, 143–5 Siano, Nicky, 14 Strauss, Richard, 92 Silver, Peter, 241–3 Strudwick, Tim, 137, 209 Simenon, Tim, 60 Studio 54, 10, 34–5, 74 Sinnott, Will, 206–8 Summer, Donna, 9 Smart Es, 270 Sumner, Bernard, 148, 156 Smith, Earl ‘Spanky’, 19 Sunday Roast, 276–7 Smith, Tommy, 162–4, 176, 178 Sun Ra, 301 Smiths, The, 159 Sunrise, 91, 93, 96–7, 100, 105, Snap, 124 108–9, 116–17, 120–1, 140, 164, Soft Cell, 34–6, 74 210, 212, 267 Soul Mafia, 55 Sunset FM, 146 Soul Sonic Force, 9 Swallow, Andy, 134–5, 137, 142, Soul II Soul, 74 144–6 Speakman, Nick, 170, 184 Sweat it Out, 156, 165 Special Branch, 53, 73 Swindells, Dave, 43, 91, 122–3, 132, Spectrum, 68–70, 72, 74, 76–7, 79, 267 89–90, 95, 132, 135, 153, 156–7, Sylvester, 9 208 Synergy, 207 Spice, 192 Spike Island, 181 Taboo, 42 Spinmasters, 156–7, 160 Talking Heads, 189 Spiral Tribe, 214–23, 225–9, 231–4, Tappenden, Ken, 106–7, 112–13, 238, 240–3, 245, 251, 254, 258 115–16, 118, 124, 126–7, 233

355 Taylor, Jeremy, 95–6, 102, 108, 114, Wag, The, 40, 78 118, 127 Walker, Johnny, 53, 57, 59, 69 T-Coy, 154, 160 Ward, Colin, 131 Technotronic, 111 Warehouse, The (Chicago), 15, 17 , 258–60 Warehouse, The (Leeds), 35 Terry, Todd, 74 Watchmen, 62 Texas Group, 29–32 Waterboys, The, 135 Thatcher, Margaret, viii, ix, 55, 102, 104–5, 117, 124, 131, 180, Watson, Maurice, 56, 59 199, 201, 233, 236, 244–5, 328, Watson, Noel, 56, 59 330 WBMX, 16 The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, 119 Weatherall, Andy, 57, 132 The Sound of Music, 41 Wells, Steven, 189 Thompson, Frazer, 299–300 Welsh, Irvine, ix, 293, 302–4 Thompson, Hunter S, 45 West End, 11 Thorne, Mike, 34, 36 Weymouth, Tina, 189 Three Degrees, The, 8 Wharehouse, The, 74 Thunderdome, The, 157–8, 160, White Goddess Festival, 216, 235 165, 174–5 Wieczorek, Joe, 140–2, 268 Tiesto, 336 Toffler, Alvin, 20 Wigan Casino, 272 Tong, Pete, 147 Williams, Steve, 157, 170 Tonka, 210, 213, 223 Wilson, Robert Anton, 221 Torpedo Town, 235 Wilson, Tony, 134–5 Trax, 17, 19, 59, 152 Wilson, Tony (Anthony H), 148, Trip, The, 72–4, 77, 80, 89–90 183, 185, 191 Twice As Nice, 287 Windross, Norris ‘Da Boss’, 288 Turnmills, 126 Windsor Free Festival, 198 2001: A Space Odyssey, 92 Wittman, Carl, 5 World Dance, 117, 122 Underground Resistance, 269 Wylie, Pete, 67 Unique 3, 263 United Systems, 250–1, 254 X, Willy, 242 U2, 334, 336 , 19 Vasquez, Richard, 12 Young, Ian, 5 Venue, The, 165 Youngblood, Sydney, 111 Virus, 251, 255 Vision, 273 Zoff, Leo, 25 Vox Populi, 251 Vukovic, Lu, 75–7

356