Class of '88 Page 2

  Camden Palace holds 3,000 people and tonight it was so rammed that we could hardly move. A group of around 300 enthusiastic clubbers by one staircase were going for it big time, waving their arms in the air as if they were demented. The DJ was playing ‘Salsa House’ by Richie Rich and now and then he’d talk into a mike hooked up to the PA system.

  ‘This one’s for the Ecstasy posse!’ the DJ yelled.

  Everybody in one corner began shouting, ‘Ecstasy, Ecstasy, Ecstasy!’

  We joined them and shouted out loud, ‘Ecstasy, Ecstasy, Ecstasy!’

  Some punters glared at us, wondering what the fuck we were going on about. Most of the punters were very smart-casual but us lot were in smiley T-shirts, bandanas, ripped jeans, ponchos, African robes, oversized jumpers, dungarees, straw hats and Timberlands with laces undone. This was our uniform and we wore it with pride.

  My rush was peaking and I felt huge energy and love for the people around me. I looked over the hundreds of bopping heads cramming the dance floor, directly at the DJ on the main stage. A laser clicked on and created a giant blue time tunnel. The smoke machine gave the vision a surreal edge and I stood staring at it for a while. Another world beyond this huge vortex beckoned me to its shores. My body twitched nervously until my astral projection began to rise from my body and my transparent spirit looked down at me, looking back at him.

  I viewed the images from both angles and felt as though I had two minds, both evaluating the situation. Leaving my physical body, the astral projection started slowly gliding above the heads of 1,000 party animals towards this fascinating doorway to another dimension. Although the spirit was in real time, an eerie silence engulfed the dome. Footsteps echoed loudly as I walked across air whilst preparing to enter a future or a past … then hands raised in the air broke the smooth surface of the laser walls.

  A familiar voice called my name and I felt the sound of blood rushing through my veins: russsssssshhhhh.

  ‘Oi oi, you OK, mate? Drink some water and sit down for a minute. It’ll pass soon, don’t worry.’

  ‘I feel really sick,’ I groaned.

  ‘Just try to hold it together as long as you can, but if you’re sick you’ll feel a lot better.’

  My jawbone was shaking rapidly, making my teeth clatter. The noise vibrated throughout my body; this powerful effect was unlike anything I’d experienced before. My whole body felt light and my mind felt intensely stimulated. The bad feeling soon passed, and in no time I was wandering around the club smiling at everyone.

  You could tell the people who were on E: they’d come up and give you a hug. The other punters just looked at us as if we were mad, or gay. But no one gave a shite what anyone else thought, or if it put a black mark against their credibility. If judgement was passed on the merit of my behaviour and the sight of a big yellow smiley-face T-shirt, it wasn’t my problem. Right now the only emotion I could feel or express was love. Four hours flew past and I found myself back with the Ecstasy posse, having happily met a bucketload of new friends. My rush had stabilised but my energy levels were still surprisingly high.

  All my mates were shouting, screaming at the tops of their voices, ‘Get right on one, matey, get right on one, matey!’

  One guy walked straight up to me who resembled a Shoomer and was dressed in flares, knitted jumper and Converse boots. His jawbone was all over the gaff and with an accent that was pure Eton, he said, ‘Are you E-ing?’

  I fell about laughing. ‘E-ing? I’m off my nut, mate!’

  We shook hands and he shuffled over to someone else, asking the same question: ‘Are you E-ing?’

  The DJ was on a roll and each track he played was greeted by loud applause. ‘It Takes Two’, ‘Sharp as a Knife’, ‘Dream Girl’, ‘Snappiness’ and ‘The Dance’ were all part of his wicked set. The end of the night came in a flash. The DJ played his last track, which apparently he always spun at the end of his set every week.

  Three thousand people were singing ‘Ain’t nobody loves me better, makes me happy, makes me feel this way’ by Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, Chaka Chaka Chaka Khan. It was 3.30 a.m. We drove back to our manor with music blaring and heads bopping. I was dropped off home and hugged each of my friends before disappearing into the house. I was starting to feel tired so went straight to bed. I had the best sleep for ages. When I awoke in the afternoon I felt totally refreshed and ready for the night ahead.

  Saturday came to mean Sin at the Astoria on Tottenham Court Road, so the next night the lads picked me up and off we went. Although we had been out the night before, we looked OK, considering. Our timetable for the night was to get pilled up first, go to Sin and then on to the Slaughter House.

  Nicky Holloway hosted Sin, where the auditorium was split on to two levels: a ground floor and a huge balcony area. Outside was the now obligatory massive queue, which you virtually needed a telescope to see the end of. A crash barrier and a long piece of thick rope kept the bods at the head of the line in order. The queue-jumping trick at the Astoria was to wander casually around the corner, keeping one eye on the security and the other wide open for an opportunity to duck under the rope at the front. You’d do this two at a time and as the next lot came round they would slip in front of you.

  Before we knew it we were behind the DJ, jumping up and down on the tables. This wasn’t the same experience as Camden Palace. Here, it seemed as if everyone in the whole club was on Ecstasy. Everybody waved their hands in the air and began clapping in time with the music.

  Five, four, three, two, one, blast off! Yellow tab down the hatch, fire in the hole, prepare for meltdown. The mere thought of having the same rush as I’d experienced hours before was sending shivers down my spine. I bumped into loads of my new-found friends and some of my old ones and we hugged, expressing our friendship and a bond that would never break.

  Around fifty of us huddled together and started chanting ‘Aceeed, Aceeed, Aceeed!’ and the next minute the whole place was chanting it, giving us a huge rush. The upper circle of the theatre had tables and chairs around the entire balcony and everyone was dancing and going nuts on top of them. I was under the influence of E but the electric atmosphere was overwhelming and seemed to exceed the drug.

  I stopped dancing for a moment to absorb this stimulating energy and glanced across the room and spotted some friends sitting near the front circle. Their body language told me they weren’t fully in control. One mate, Kacy, was leaning over the balcony watching 1,000 or so people grooving on the dance floor. I watched him for five minutes before he climbed on to the rail and sat down. There was nothing to prevent him falling 30 feet to the ground.

  I started pushing my way through the crowd, not taking my eyes off him for a second. To my complete horror he kept both hands on the rail and tried to put his foot down on what he thought was the floor. The only object within reach was a lighting can attached to the wall. He felt the fixture beneath his foot and went to step off. With only seconds to spare, someone spotted him and grabbed him just in time.

  Kacy didn’t even know what had happened. His eyes were almost closed and he was a total mess. I asked him if he realised somebody had just saved his life, but unfortunately he couldn’t even understand what we were saying. When I called Kacy the next day, he was uneasy and in a state of disbelief.

  The gang of us came out of the Astoria still buzzing and nobody wanted to go home. A crowd was building up outside the club and across the road near some water fountains. A car pulled up at the traffic lights, blasting out a new clubbed-up version of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. Everyone started dancing in the roads and on the pavements. People were jumping in the fountains and traffic was brought to a complete halt for about half an hour.

  The crowd were going nuts, screaming ‘Street party!’ Charing Cross Road is one of London’s busiest roads and the tailback of cars reached all the way to Trafalgar Square. People in convertibles were standing on the seats of their cars, waving their hands to the music, and other people were dancing in the
traffic. For that brief moment it was People Power, a feeling of total freedom. This wasn’t just some passing cultural fad: it was going to be huge. We got to the motors parked in nearby Denmark Street and flicked coins to see who was going to drive. After half an hour’s wait for the drivers’ rushes to stabilise, we were on our way.

  The Slaughterhouse was an old warehouse in the Smithfield meat market. I don’t know if it originally operated as an abattoir or was just given that name by the promoters. The streets around the party location were bursting with energy but we drove to the front of the building to discover the doors had been closed because the venue was filled to capacity.

  The thousand-strong crew outside tried their hardest to gain entry but this just made matters worse. Buzzing or not, we weren’t getting into that gig and so we ended up at a pal’s gaff where we danced to loud music until 11 a.m.

  GENESIS CHAPTER ONE

  I’d never even thought about organising warehouse parties until one night at Spectrum. I was talking to the kind of new-found friend I’d been making a lot of: the sort you meet while you’re off your nut and tell your life story to. Everybody called him KP and I’d only met him a few weeks previously.

  ‘There’s a lot of money to be earned,’ KP said.

  Until then I’d worked in the music industry, managing bands. The idea of a completely new project intrigued me and I agreed to think it over. ‘What would we be called?’ I asked.

  ‘Something with depth and meaning,’ he replied.

  KP had limited experience from arranging a few small gigs in the past. He said it was just a matter of finding a deserted warehouse, printing 500 flyers and distributing them to clubbers we met whilst out painting the town red. He had all his own equipment, including a sound system, some lights and a box of wicked tunes. Costs could be kept to a minimum and amount to no more than a grand: drinks would be on a sale or return basis, flyers cost £80, the doorman would be my stepdad, the bar manager his sister Nikki, DJ Tony Wilson took £100 and KP or myself would be on the door taking the money. We were one big, happy, productive, family affair about to put the G into hard graft.

  A title is very important when marketing new ideas, and has to be thought over very carefully before a final decision can be made. We didn’t want to change our chosen banner at a later stage for any reason, so the name had to be right from the start.That night I brainstormed myself unconscious and into a deep sleep, but not before noting ten titles that really stood out and made my hair stand on end.

  The favoured choice for me was Genesis, a beautiful word that I thought summarised the Zeitgeist. This was an era that was dramatically changing millions of lives the world over, a time of evolution and revolution in the mass consciousness, of non-violence and positive attitudes. The fact we became one of the pioneering companies who influenced the New Age gave me a greater high than drugs ever could. You could keep the Swinging Sixties and the warehouse parties of the early Eighties: ‘Get right on one, matey!’

  A logo was the next step, and it had to represent the feelings of our company and also an understanding of this new society. The long search for a simple solution ended with a picture of Zeus, the highest of the Greek gods. This wasn’t an attempt to offend any religions or cultures – the face simply complemented the name perfectly and gave the title more strength, feeling and body.

  Top of our agenda, then, was to find a suitable warehouse away from residential properties, because local people would be the first to call the Old Bill, and if Dibble turned up before the event started, we’d be fucked. Secrecy was of the utmost importance. We couldn’t afford to tell anyone where the gig was. Nobody knew, not even the lighting and sound crews. Everything was on a need-to-know basis.

  Why? Because news of venue locations travels fast in this game. If the site address were given out in advance it would mean people turning up too early at the venue instead of at the designated meeting points. This draws attention to the venue and, before you know it, disaster strikes: the Old Bill turns up in force and every piece of equipment in the gaff is confiscated.

  Meeting points were strategic strong points when organising parties, and promoters took full advantage of these tactical positions. They couldn’t be too close to the venue, because that made the Met’s job of finding us far too easy. It had to be somewhere that most people could find without difficulty and somewhere with enough space for cars to park so as not to obstruct other road users.

  One of our guys would be assigned the job of keeping this point under tight control and giving directions to anyone who asked. If they didn’t ask, he wouldn’t tell them. Veteran clubbers knew anyone found standing around the arranged meet had the venue details. The logic being that if you didn’t know to ask the person the address, you must be the Old Bill. It was very simple, really.

  Some friends had the keys to a small warehouse in Aldgate East. So KP and I went down to inspect the property and surrounding area at 1 o’clock on a cold and wet Tuesday morning. The entrance was near the corner of a very busy road so we had to be doubly careful not to be seen. The keys we’d been given didn’t fit the main doors, so we walked around looking for a weak point of entry until we spotted an open balcony that ran inside the building and down some stairs to the front entrance. We scaled the wall and reached the balcony in no time and, seeing an open window, we climbed in.

  The venue could hold about 300 people, with maybe another 50 on the balcony. There was loads of rubbish scattered about the place but nothing too bad. Even the main entry door could be unlocked from the inside. We didn’t have to break into any part of the building, and so we left it exactly as we found it so as not to arouse suspicion. We’d found our site.

  The flyer we’d had printed to our specifications contained the necessary party information. It would be no more than an ordinary flyer by today’s standards, but back then it was one of the best I’d ever seen. Private Party laws meant flyers had to be printed as invites. The phrases ‘No invite – no entry’ and ‘Over 18s only’ had to feature prominently on all flyers.

  As well as proclaiming our parties to be private events, this tactic was also a way of keeping certain undesirables at bay, from the Old Bill and dickheads to journalists. We only handed flyers out at specific clubs and parties where we figured anybody attending would be on the level.

  Think back and remember that, in those days, there were no more than 5,000 party people and clubbers in the whole of England, and half of those were in Ibiza or Tenerife. Party details were spread by word of mouth, and back-handed flying: if you were there, then you must know someone who knew someone. One big happy family. If you didn’t know someone’s name, you knew their face.

  The people who actually brought the invites to the doors of gigs were usually new to the scene. The veterans knew this was to cover ourselves within the law. Barring the geeks already mentioned, we’d let in anyone who didn’t look dodgy. The ones who did fit the look of Dibble were astonished when they were refused entry. We don’t have anything against the police – we just wanted our night to last as long as possible.

  There was a club or house party on virtually every night and we personally went out and handed flyers to the type of people we wanted at our shindig. When giving someone a flyer we’d always say exactly what it was, e.g. ‘Genesis, 10 December’. Our aim was to fix the name in people’s minds as well as to promote the event. We got a fantastic response from everyone; they all loved the name and logo.

  I remember feeling very nervous before our first night. The butterflies in my stomach were flapping like mad. We’d been out promoting our gig the night before, so we didn’t get much sleep. This was what we’d been working our bollocks off for, what we’d been planning, and tonight was the night.

  At the time I didn’t personally know any other party organisers, so I didn’t know if my panic attacks were normal or not. This was all completely new to me and I didn’t know what to expect. I did know that it was extremely nerve-racking. One, we were in a bu
ilding we shouldn’t be in. Two, the police could arrive at any time and we’d get seriously chored. Three, if no one turned up we’d be very embarrassed. This event had to work or I would just lose faith and quit.

  We entered the warehouse at approximately 5 p.m. on Saturday night. It was winter and felt like the dead of night. We were close to the City, which is very quiet at this time with hardly any traffic on the road. Once the venue was cleaned up and secured we called our van driver, who for security reasons had parked ten minutes away. Having a van outside the site wouldn’t be a good idea because it had all the equipment in it, and if he got caught we’d be up shit creek without a sound system.

  There are a lot of warehouses in the area so it’s not that unusual to see a van being unloaded. Part of Petticoat Lane market runs along this road and opens on Sundays, and a few vans were scattered along the road anyway, but I didn’t want to take the chance of parking ours there. The van pulled up outside and we quickly began loading its contents into the building, then began work on transforming a dirty warehouse into a state-of-the-art dance arena.

  During the previous week we had visited an army surplus store and bought a carful of props, including giant snow nets, white and green camouflage nets and full-size parachutes still in their packs. We slogged our guts out setting the equipment up and then moved on to the props, which we pinned up to the ceiling and around the walls. We had three old still-projectors, which projected on to the chutes and nets and the venue looked like the interior of a futurist nightclub. It was the nuts, mate!

  Even if the party flopped I knew by now that I would enjoy myself, and the visuals gave me a surreal feeling of warmth. A small room next to the one we were using made a great bar. We put a table across the doorway; the bar was operational.

  The meeting point was set for 10 p.m. and I went to see if anyone had turned up. At ten to ten there wasn’t a soul in sight – my bubble had burst. Twenty minutes later I returned and found fifteen cars parked with clubbers running from one car to another. They were in high spirits and really up for it, jumping on their cars and dancing in the street.