Class of '88 Read online

  ‘Where’s the party, mate?’

  The most important ingredient, after the class As, is the music. KP had the tunes and we got a few of our pals to play a kicking party set of Balearic, New Beat and rock. The set featured tracks from artistes like Sure Beats Working, Flesh, The Thrashing Doves, Carly Simon and Prince, and was a refreshing break from Acid House. The combined effects of music, lights, smoke, strobes and Ecstasy brought on an incredible russssh and everyone in the room waved their arms in the air and went fucking mental.

  At midnight we had about 200 people in the warehouse but it didn’t look like getting much busier. Then, as if on cue, loads of cars started pulling up outside, and we received news that the Rave At The Cave in south London had been raided. Based in an old mechanics, garage in the arches at Elephant and Castle, it could hold 2,000 people and was very popular.

  Tonight the police had raided the gaff big time with video cameras, mobile strip-search units, sniffer dogs, news teams, the whole deal. Everyone in the place was strip-searched but only a few arrests were made, leaving hundreds of people pissing in the wind until they found out about our intimate gathering. My smile turned into a full Chelsea beamer as my levels of adrenaline went up a notch.

  I had already dropped a Cali so I felt extremely happy with myself and the party. We squeezed as many people inside as possible – what a fantastic atmosphere. It was togetherness, a unified race towards a brighter future. I went around to almost everyone introducing myself and thanking them for coming. Kiss FM’s Sarah HB, who was not a DJ at that point, was amongst the many revellers and so was Energy/World Dance’s Anton Le Pirate, who was then not yet a party promoter.

  When I first started promoting the event I had given invites to all the people I hung out with, but none of them had turned up. At about 4 a.m. they all made an appearance, having been elsewhere because they’d assumed my gig would be shit (cheers, lads!) My oldest friend, Keith, who I used to drink with, chase birds with and abuse class As with, couldn’t believe how many people had come. I knew Keith wanted to be a part of the action by the way he was talking about it. We go back a long way so I wanted to bring him in anyway. KP didn’t think we needed another partner but agreed to think about it.

  Meanwhile, the party was in full swing. People were dancing everywhere and on top of anything that would hold their weight. At 5 a.m. a fire bell rang out from the warehouse next door where we had a look-out. Shit! That meant Dibble was on the way!

  My stepfather was looking after the money for us; when the alarm went off we decided the money should be taken to a safe house. I ran upstairs along the balcony into the main room and to the bar, where by now Nikki was giving the drinks away free. I told her the score and we ran down the stairs to the front, gave her all the door cash, which she hid, and escorted her to the main entrance.

  The police had arrived and shut off the electricity; sadly, the party was over. Everyone had to leave. We stepped into the street through a corridor of laughing policemen, who were taking the piss out of everyone. Bods with wobbling jaws were walking out bare-chested into the cold winter air, sweat and steam rising from their bodies.

  ‘OK then, who’s the organiser? Does anyone know who put this party on?’ I heard a policeman ask as we slipped around the corner.

  This was probably Dibble’s first encounter with E’d-up party animals and I think they were quite surprised. None of us was stopped, so we met up at my place to have a count-up. We’d made two grand profit, which wasn’t bundles but a fucking good start. We sat down and went over the night’s events, still rushing from the pill swallowed earlier.

  ‘So what do you reckon?’ I was asked.

  Well, after four weeks of attending different clubs and house parties, with very little sleep and popping untold pills, and having seen our party brought to a premature halt, and having had to abandon all our equipment behind, I still felt pretty pukka. The planning, lighting and sound production and music had all worked like a dream.

  ‘I reckon we should have another party as soon as possible.’

  We went back to the warehouse later that day to check if the stuff was still there. Luckily, every single item of equipment was still in place. We quickly and nervously loaded up the van and high-tailed it out at light-speed. On our way back to a small lock-up garage we had in Walthamstow, all we could talk about was finding another gaff to stage Genesis Chapter Two.

  GENESIS CHAPTER TWO: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

  We spent the following week searching for warehouses. Our search covered three industrial estates with no sign of a suitable venue. It was an easy enough procedure: when we spotted commercial-lease boards for prospective sites, we’d pull over and have a look through the windows.

  Driving through the backstreets of Hackney a week earlier, we had seen reflections of disco lights through a warehouse window. Stopping by the entrance, we went inside to investigate. The spacious building was perfect and big enough to contain at least 4,500 people. Some geezers were gathered round a DJ console mounted on milk crates at the far end of the building. Music was playing quietly in the background whilst poxy lights on boxes strove to keep up with Acid House beats.

  We approached the group and, after brief introductions, we asked if the warehouse belonged to them. Yes, was the reply, so we proposed a deal to hire it from them for one night. The guy doing all the talking was about six feet four inches tall, and had a big build and a bald head. He totally dismissed our suggestion and told us to forget the idea. We left feeling rather gutted that we hadn’t found it before them, but this gripe quickly went out of our heads.

  Keith called me a few days later to arrange a meeting. He sounded really anxious and wanted us to come over straight away. He’d negotiated a partnership deal on the grounds of finding a legal warehouse that held 5,000 people, and had already spoken to an owner who was waiting for Keith to get back to him. With stakes like this we had nothing to lose and bundles to gain.

  Keith took us to the venue – the same one we’d seen days earlier in Clapton Pond! I couldn’t believe it, and immediately counted a whole flock of chickens before they hatched. We asked the owner how much he was being paid to hire out the place and he told us £300. We immediately offered him £500 a night for five days: an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was waiting for a deposit from the other firm and said that if he didn’t have it by Wednesday the venue was ours.

  That was the longest two days of my life, but we returned to the warehouse on the following Wednesday. The other mob had never showed and we didn’t want to lose this venue, so we gave him two and a half grand there and then. He gave us the key, a hire lease (a handwritten bit of note paper) and our work began the next day.

  I still couldn’t believe those guys hadn’t turned up; they must be crazy! I was very happy, though. Things were looking up: we had a legal warehouse that could hold 5,000 people and Christmas and New Year were just around the corner. This marked the beginning of a new era and the start of a roller-coaster ride through Heaven and Hell.

  Our task of cleaning up had begun. Hundreds of used car tyres littered the building and we stacked them at one end of the warehouse before deciding to use them. A lot of thought went into the decor, which was very important to us. We wanted to create a party dreamland on a low budget. We brought a load more parachutes and some nets and got a real seven-foot Christmas tree. A bundle of new white canopies was nicked from a building site and we had inflatable props, fluorescent coloured card and ultraviolet coloured spray paint.

  We used the tyres to build a large bar area and a semi-circle guard around the DJ console, then created a UV-lit tunnel at the entrance and covered it in canopies. The whole warehouse floor, including many oil puddles, was sprinkled with sawdust, which gave it a snow or cloud effect. The parachutes were fastened to the ceiling and the giant nets, sprayed with paint, were dangled from the roof in front of the DJ.

  We fixed the projectors in various areas and built plastic cages around the inflatable props
: one a skeleton, the other a multicoloured gorilla (the only ones we could get). Then we covered the Christmas tree with pieces of fluorescent card and stuck a UV over it; the reflections from the card looked better than the real lights. We’d created an ultimate party dreamland: now all that was needed were the bodies to fill it.

  The printer did us 500 flyers and we spent the whole weekend promoting the Christmas Eve gig. Then one morning, just as we were back in the warehouse slogging our guts out to get it finished in time, we were having a spliff break when the entrance door was booted in. It was the big skinhead bloke we’d met on our first visit there. He had a sawn-off shotgun in his hand and was going berserk.

  ‘You nicked my venue, you cunts,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on a minute, mate. You either use that shooter or listen to what we have to say,’ I answered.

  ‘No, you fucking listen: this place is mine, do you understand?’ He walked up to me, pointing the gun at my head.

  ‘Look, calm down. You were meant to pay the deposit last week but never showed. What did you expect us to do?’ asked KP.

  ‘Where’s the owner?’ the skinhead said, lowering the gun.

  NUTT! I headbutted him square on the nose and grabbed the arm that held the shooter. KP took a run and whacked him over the head with a lump of wood. He fell to the floor, dropping the shooter in the process. KP quickly picked it up and shoved it in his face.

  ‘Now you listen and you listen good. We don’t want any trouble. It’s your own fuckin’ fault you lost the gaff, not ours. If you want to see anyone about it see the guvnor.’

  He nodded, and we slowly let him up. ‘You’re right, I’m sorry, mate. It’s just when I heard you were in here I thought you were taking the piss,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ I answered. ‘Look, you better go and not come back unless you want a war.’

  We searched him for more shells and found four in his pocket and two up the spout. We took them off him, gave him back the firearm and fucked him off. I wouldn’t say I was a fighter I hate violence. I’ve always liked money, beautiful women and living a good life. Keith likes the same things as me but we’re both as game as a beagle. In certain situations instinct takes over and you do what you have to if you want to survive. I had to sit down for a while after he went; my heart was beating faster than when I’ve been rushing.

  The next day, on a wet afternoon, the entrance door to the warehouse swung open and in walked two guys and a gorgeous chick.

  ‘Hi, my name’s Tony Colston-Hayter,’ one of the geezers said. ‘I run Sunrise. Have you heard of me?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve heard of you. What about it?’ I said.

  ‘We’re looking for a venue to stage a Christmas party. How about letting us join up with you guys? I had 4,000 at my last party in Greenwich.’

  Then two more guys came walking in from the back of the warehouse, which made Keith lose his rag. ‘What you fuckin’ doing?’

  ‘It’s OK, they’re with me,’ said Tony.

  Keith wanted to do them for sneaking about, but he calmed down after a few minutes and we got to talking. This time we had a legal venue so we knew that even if we couldn’t fill it at first, once word got out it would be rammed.

  ‘We don’t really need any help,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll bring 4,000 people with me and we’ll split the profit fifty-fifty. What do you say?’

  Sunrise had already staged the biggest dance party in the country, so I knew he could deliver exactly what he claimed. I told him we wanted to do Christmas ourselves but would think about sharing a New Year’s Eve. Tony was happy with this arrangement and exchanged numbers before leaving.

  We knew loads of girls who’d agreed to hand out flyers for us, which was great. They were a good-looking bunch who created a buzz when they were together. They’d just shout ‘Genesis, this Saturday!’ at the top of their voices to attract maximum attention. Before you knew it, the flyers had all been given out and the girls just yelled the details out. It was hard work but we enjoyed it tremendously. We got a good reception at each club we flew around, making sure everyone leaving got a flyer.

  Driving around London during the early hours of the morning is really tiring. Then you’d be up at the crack of dawn running about doing the stuff that could only be done in office hours. This usually amounted to more promoting, putting yourself about, making sure everyone knew where and when. There was always something to do, even if it meant doing odd jobs in the warehouse. Late lie-ins simply didn’t fit our schedule. We’d be out continually, reminding people about the gig and maximising the hype.

  Genesis, Genesis, Genesis: we ate, spoke and lived only Genesis. This was something we deeply believed in, it wasn’t just about having parties. We were all bearing witness to a happily unified nation and projecting good karma to one another, which was well worth the graft. Under that roof we forgot our troubles and those of the mad world around us. We were fully interacting with people whom under normal circumstances we’d have passed by in the street without a glance. We knew it was something special.

  GETTING SORTED

  The meeting point for our Christmas Eve gig was the Lea Valley ice rink on Lea Bridge Road. We sent somebody to man the point at 10 p.m., and within fifteen minutes about 100 cars pulled up outside the warehouse. We had an instant queue of 300 people who were all really excited about finding the party. My sister Teena was taking the money at the door and I stood at the end of the tunnel so that I could see the look on their faces as they walked into our man-made vortex.

  When the first guests came through the hanging canopies their facial expressions were full of amazement. They could see time and great effort had gone into making this night memorable and successful. We were given the rubber stamp of approval by each guest who came through the door, which pleased us no end. I felt like the man from Del Monte had said yes.

  Although we didn’t know it at the time, this event put us up into the premier league of organisers and promoters. We’d only actually booked four doormen that night, a few guys Keith knew, and we got swamped with people. By midnight, 600 pilled-up fanatics were holding hands and chanting ‘Aceeed, Aceeed, Aceeed!’ We felt real proud – our dream was a success and it was all down to us.

  The decor worked wonders at enhancing the effect of the Ecstasy, and together they generated a euphoric atmosphere. I remember loads of different people telling me how fantastic the Christmas tree lights were. What lights? It was just small pieces of fluorescent cardboard under a UV!

  Even the police were great. They drove past a few times, asking our doorman if everything was OK. A rumour circulated that undercover cops were poking around inside. But, at the end of the day, I was a user, not a dealer. I had nothing to hide. I was very strict about bods blatantly taking drugs or skinning up in plain view of everyone.

  People got a real shock when I instructed them not to be so open about the drugs. ‘Who are you?’ they’d ask, and I’d tell them it was my party. They’d say, ‘This is an Acid party, are you joking, or what?’ I assured them I wasn’t joking and they did as I asked, not believing what they’d just heard. But this was possibly the only legal site in the whole of England and we weren’t going to lose it for anybody. It wasn’t just that we were trying to keep the drug abuse covert and all the good qualities overt. It only needed one journalist to snap someone off their nut and the Old Bill would be all over us like a rash. While I was making my way to the decks I came across a young boy who looked about fifteen. He’d got his head back and was looking at the ceiling with arms outstretched by his sides, turning around in circles. The flyer clearly stated that our party, warehouse or not, was strictly for over-eighteens only. I’d no idea how he’d got past my sister. I said he had to leave and take whoever came with him, which turned out to be his brother and his pals.

  ‘You’d better take me to your brother,’ I said.

  We went up to a group of about seven guys. I told his brother I thought the kid was too young to be there and he p
unched me in the face. Before it all went completely wobbly, I told him who I was. A load of my pals suddenly appeared behind me, asking if everything was all right. I turned to the brother and said that he’d better leave right now, and that if I were a different person I’d serve him up. But, as it was Christmas, I escorted them to the door, gave their money back and told them to piss off.

  The attendance for that night was about 900 and a brilliant time was had by all. At 10 a.m. on Christmas Day, 200 people sang ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’ and Christmas carols. I hadn’t seen crowds harmonising like that since going to football many years before. Everybody introduced themselves to each other and wished Merry Christmas to all. By noon everyone had gone home except for a few friends who stayed behind. I was having a piss in a corner when I found a bag of class-A substances. There was some powder, Es and Thai grass. I sat down with the others and shared out its contents.

  I didn’t want the Es because I had to eat dinner later that day. If I couldn’t eat my Christmas dinner my mum would kill me. But I chopped up some long lines of charlie (hoping that the buzz would wear off in time for dinner) and we had a good old sniff.

  There were ten of us left in the warehouse, all good friends, so I decided to put a few more tunes on and we danced until 2 p.m. My two partners and I hugged and congratulated each other and gave one another a grand as a present. We went back to our parents’ houses for dinner. My mum always lays on a delicious spread and works hard to make the day perfect. I didn’t eat much and soon passed out on the sofa. My mum and stepfather had bought my sisters a karaoke machine each, so the house was going off severely. I only managed to sing one track all the way through: ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling’ by the Righteous Brothers.