The Origins of British Dance Music, Rave & Club Culture: Part 1

Club culture, clubbing, EDM, raving or whatever you want to call it, is a global phenomenon today. Going to clubs or attending festivals is very much a mainstream activity and has probably been experienced by most people at some point. Gathering in a large area and listening to loud amplified electronic music played by a DJ is an all-too familiar experience.

There are many arches to the story of this cherished human pastimes' history and the roots can be traced back far into the past. Here I am going to lay out one particular path which starts in the mid-to-late 1980s in Ibiza. The Ibizan experience today, like many other elements of this musical and cultural story, is also widely understood by people all over the world… but this wasn't always the case. Thirty years ago this little-known 'secret' was cherished by a small select group of European jet-sets and a select smaller group of British youths and would explode, almost overnight, into what we know today as Electronic Dance Music culture.

Here in the UK this cultural change was simply monumental and changed the face of music, fashion and even the legal system to some degree. It even birthed a new type of music, 'music wholly denominated by a secession of repetitive beats', that was deemed 'far too dangerous' by the establishment and was made illegal to dance to.

InterRail Origins

By 1986, Britain's unemployment cues had reached record highs of over 3 million, or around 12% of the UK working age population and most of these were 16-24 year olds. Life for many young people equated to a stark choice between either joining the ever-growing ranks of the unemployed or being placed on one of the governments many pointless job schemes. Some, unwilling to accept this bleak route, chose a different path and using InterRail travel tickets they left the UK to travel to sunnier pastures in continent Europe. You would see many of the same faces smoking weed in the coffee shops of Amsterdam as you'd see on the dancefloor's of many of the clubs in the Mediterranean.

Nancy Noise: "There were a lot of guys that were your typical travelling InterRail-type northern lads who would just stop off in Sweden or Switzerland, and then bomb off to France, travelling here, there and everywhere and probably having quite a lot of shady dealings that would get them from A to B. You could just tell they were relevant faces from a scene that was just about to explode."

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Many of these 'InterRail types' would ultimately end up in Ibiza blagging, thieving and dealing drugs in order to make a meagre living so that they could avoid going back to the economic doom and gloom in England. Some, working in the bars, handing out flyers for the clubs or working on the clothes and jewellery stalls would discover another less mainstream side of Ibiza's nightlife. They would 'blag' their way into the open-air clubs, such as Amnesia and Ku, and once inside would either steal unattended drinks or chat up others to buy them for them. Many were experimenting with LSD and Ecstasy on the dancefloor's of these clubs and stood in awe at what they were experiencing. For all this was unchartered territory, something completely new and amazing. Many lifelong friendships were struck up that summer.

These kids weren't veteran international clubbers, back home clubbing meant mostly downing pints of eggy cooking lager, smoking 20 B&H cigarettes, dancing badly to crap pop music and engaging in the so-called 'meat-market' activity of 'pulling a bird, or bloke'… if you were lucky or having a fight at the end of the night. They weren't used to the mixture of gay and straight or the flamboyant dressing-up of the people at these clubs. Dancing alongside famous actors, models and people they had only previously seen on TV or in films and with people of all ages and races was simply mind-blowing to many of them… and to the eclectic mixture of European disco, pop and Chicago house music that they would never ever hear at home. All this accentuated by the wondrous effects of the high quality MDMA (ecstasy) and LSD that they were accessing. For many this was almost too good to be true.

Nancy Noise: "Ibiza was like a fantasy world. It was more exciting, more colourful, more worldly. It might have been because i was young, but the things we saw! Guys walking around on stilts with wedding cakes on their heads. A guy wearing a swimming hat with barbie and cindy dolls attached so their legs were all sticking out. This French couple who were always in luminous Lycra with high-rise platform shoes. The madness and extravagance and outwardness of the gay people you never really saw in Britain. Those were separate. Ibiza brought that all together, and i just thought it was amazing."

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

During the summer of 1986 the resident DJ at Amnesia, Alfredo, became aware of these young Brits after getting to know Nancy Turner (Nancy Noise), who was working on the island for her second season along with her friend Joanna McKay.

Nancy Noise: "Amnesia had been open a couple of weeks and I was in there every single night early, without fail. I was on a mission and did not want to miss any of it, dancing in front of the same speaker every night. One night Alfredo ran from behind the decks and was suddenly dancing in front of me, I was so shocked, he shouted ‘Who are you?’ I just about got the word out ‘Nancy’, he must have thought who’s this crazy stalker !! Anyway that’s how we became friends, he gave me tapes after that and I hang out more by the DJ booth rather than lurking around it which I had done before to see what records Alf and Leo (Mas) were playing!"

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Below is a playlist of some of the records that Alfredo was playing at Amnesia during this time. An eclectic mix of various wide-ranging genres of music from all over the world that have that laid-back Mediterranean feel to them, which Alfredo mixed with the more harder sounding electronic House and Techno records coming out of the United States.

Elkin & Nelson - jibaro

The Cure - Pictures Of You

Semilla negra (original)

Izit - Stories

Enzo Avitabile - Black Out

Housemaster Boyz - House Nation

Nitzer Ebb - Join In The Chant

(Picture by Dave Swindells)?

Joanna McKay's father was an pilot for British Airways and could get cheap airline tickets for his daughter and some of her friends and this would cement the pairs access to the island on a semi-regular basis. After a while Joanna's younger sister, Lisa, started to hear stories about this wonderland over the sea and wasted no time in flying out to experience the open air clubs for herself…  and as often as possible. A close friendship with Nancy began to bloom and after establishing themselves as regular faces in the the clubs Nancy Turner and Lisa McKay became known as Nancy Noise and Lisa Loud, due to the vocal enthusiasm expressed on the dancefloor for the whole wondrous shebang. From there they would go on to become notorious key DJs on the Balearic Beat circuit, both in Ibiza and back home in London

DJ Harvey on What the Balearic Sound is?

Trevor Fung, Ian St Paul and The Project

By the summer of '87 many more Brits than before started to fly over to Ibiza to sample the decadence on the island. Fleeing Britain in their droves in a bid to escape the increasingly depressed conditions they now had a central meeting place to congregate and organise themselves before going on to the main Balearic clubs.

A few weeks into the start of the season Trevor Fung and his cousin Ian St Paul decided to open their own small club just a few hundred yards outside of the main bar area in San Antonio. They rented the upstairs bar of an existing club, set up a sound system, tape player and some decks and called it The Project. Trevor was also running a club night back in Streatham, London with Paul Oakenfold which he also called The Project which had acted as a social club for some of the regular faces in Ibiza.

(Picture from testpressing.org)

The Project Bar in Ibiza was a little out of the way, a few hundred yards outside of the main bar area in San Antonio, which wasn't initially seen as ideal by the pair but in the end this became the making of the place, as it was really noticeable standing out on it's own surrounded by hundreds of British revellers drinking, talking, dancing and listening to the records and tapes of Alfredo's sets that Trevor and friends were playing inside (nothing was mixed, they just put records and mix tapes on), stuff ranging from Prices - Sign "O" The Times to early stuff on Chicago's Trax Records alongside some of the other records that they managed to ID from the mix tapes from Amnesia.

Prince - Sign O' The Times

Farley Jackmaster Funk - Farley Knows House

Kenny Jammin Jason with Fast Eddie Smith - Can U Dance?

Trevor Fung: "In ’87 it was about 30-40% Brits, but a lot of working-class Brits. I was playing all the Chicago stuff mixed in with Prince ’cos that Sign "O" The Times album had just come out. But it wasn’t to do with the music in that bar, it was to do with the people. And in the crowd, there was Nancy Noise, a young worker, and Lisa Loud. Loads of people used to come over and see us. We had a brilliant time. It was a fantastic summer."

(Picture from testpressing.org)

Trevor Fung: "We used to be packed every single night. We weren’t just packed in the bar, it was packed in the street, too. So what we used to do, ’cos everyone used to be saying, ‘Where you goin'?’ So slowly we’d be meeting people in the clubs, we started selling their T-shirts; Ku, Pacha etc. started selling tickets. So people’d come to us. We had the tickets, we had the T-shirts, we had everything. There was a community there."

Trevor's cousin, Ian Paul, later changed to Ian St Paul, was central to the 'acid' revolution, he was the ideologue with the vision of what was to come later back in London. Ian went to Amnesia at the start of the season in '87 and was reawaken. He and Trevor and their DJ friend Paul Oakenfold had lived in New York City during the very early 80s and had experienced many nights at the Paradise Garage and now Ian was finding the same kind of magic and energy at the Ibizan clubs as he'd experienced in NYC years earlier. He was totally energised by this.

appyammer: "On our first night we went to “The Project Bar”, in San Antonio. The Project was run by Trev and his cousin (another mate from Cashalton), Ian Paul. Books and mag articles have him down as Ian St Paul... I dunno where the “Saint” bit came from... he was far from being a Saint!... to me he was just Trev’s cousin, a part time cocktail barman from Rumours Covent Garden. In Ibiza however Ian was like a messiah. He had in-roads to everywhere and anywhere and everyone on the Island knew him. He was a main “face” and knew the best sources on the Island for drugs. The Project Bar was a small place, no decks (just tapes) but was very popular, particularly with UK workers out there. They had a few girls “propping” (handing out flyers) from South London as well as Sheffield and Newcastle etc and regulars at the bar included Lisa (Loud), Nancy (Noise) and a few other faces I’d seen about from back home at Streatham’s Project at Ziggy's. Trevor played all sorts of tapes in there including some of mine. It was a real mix of Hip Hop, Go Go, early House, Funk, Soul and even the odd rock or indie tune which I was kind of use to and considered it the norm from previous Ibizan visits. That first night I remember Trev saying “wait till we finish here Al, I’ll take you somewhere that’ll blow you mind..”.

http://ldnbcnstory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/great-posts-5.html

(Picture by Dave Swindells)

Invigorated by what he experienced the word quickly spread amongst the Brits there in Ibiza and soon everyone made the daily trip to Amnesia for MDMA fuelled nights of dancing to the eclectic mixed sets by Alfredo. The club soon became so accustomed to the British crowds that they were let in for free and dubbed "the crazy English" by the staff and locals.

appyammer - on first time going to Amnesia: As we approached Amnesia I was already feeling highly elated and Chrissie and I were jabbering on about how good we felt. From memory I don't think Trev even told us what we’d taken, just that “Its like nothing you’ve ever had before.” I think later that night I was told it was Ecstasy but I hadn’t really heard of it and I wasn’t bothered anyway. It just felt unbelievable. We walked through the entrance of Amnesia with Ian and Trev without paying and at this point I was lusting after every pretty girl I looked at... there were many in Amnesia! I remember this really cute bird in a Batman T-Shirt I got chatting to who was a friend of these two Geordie girls who were both bang into LSD. I’d met them earlier that night back at The Project. “Batman” was stunning, model like eve and she was from Ladbroke Grove. I was larging it and was full of confidence.. I tried all week with her... got close, but eventually drew a blank! I was conscious of being under dressed compared to many others in Amnesia but this merely heightened the feeling of elation. It just felt so privileged and special just to be in such a glamorous place. I wore ripped jeans and a red and white stripped long sleeved Stone Island t-shirt I’d brought from Woodhouse in Oxford Street. I can’t remember the footwear (probably espadrilles or something **** like that!) but I wore the same outfit nearly every night I went to Amnesia... it felt comfortable and right! The majority of others in Amnesia were high class Spanish or other European disco goers. Most were a few years older than us and there were a few men in designer suits, sort of Miami Vice meets George Michael style. I don't remember much of the clubs interior details. The walls were high with Palm Trees around the perimeter, there was a raised stepped area (like a sort of terracing) to the rear, and there was no roof back then. There was also an area in one corner near the dance floor with some kind of netting hanging down where a lot of the South London and English faces seem to congregate and dance that mad-like kinetic dance in small groups. We readily joined in took another capsule and danced till the sun came up.. I’d never been to a club quite like Amnesia. It was (and still is to this day) the best Club I had ever had the privilege of being in.

http://ldnbcnstory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/great-posts-5.html

First Es and On To Amnesia

A week or so before Paul Oakenfold's 24th birthday, on the 30th of August, a small group consisting of Johnny Walker, Nicky Holloway, Danny Rampling and Oakenfold gathered on the island after hearing about the burgeoning scene from friends at their DJ club nights back in London.

Trevor Fung: "What happened was, it was someone’s birthday, not sure whose, I think it was Paul’s. Paul had come over earlier in the season, but he didn’t like it and went back. Anyway, he rang us up again and said he wanted to come out and he wanted to bring Nicky, Johnny and Danny. We found them a place to stay. I said, ‘You’ve gotta come over and see the place, it’s going mental!’"

A villa near San Antonio, near the bay was hired as the group, being young, though it would be a cool flash thing to do. On the first night of the trip they bumped into Trevor who enthusiastically told them about Amnesia. Some of the group had been coming to Ibiza since 1982 but had just been drinking lager, hanging around San An and going to the Cafe Del Mar in the day and to Es Paradis during the night - pretty much just doing the regular 18-30s lads holiday thing. They hadn't ventured to the open air clubs in the south of the island. Trevor also told them about this new exciting drug that they just had to try.

appyammer: "It’s difficult to remember exactly how many South London and English faces were Amnesia regulars in the summer of 1987. In the three weeks that I was there I went almost every night. A few days into the first week the in-famous four arrived. I was DJing in a small bar in San Antonio (owned by Manola a spanish friend of Trevor’s) when Paul, Danny, Johnny and Nicky arrived and I was one of the first from home that they bumped into. Obviously I knew Paul well. I’d met Danny earlier that year when he DJ’d at Punters Wine Bar in Kingston and I knew Nicky from The Special Branch and Zoo gigs, but I’d never met Johnny before. Paul was real excited and I remember him banging on and asking loads of questions about Amnesia and he kept asking me if House was big there. The problem was describing the music of Amnesia and when I told them it WAS great but it wasn’t all one sound and “not much house really” he didn't seem to understand. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. Paul Kept asking me “well what is it then Al?” but I didn’t have a constructive answer. “Just go, you’ll like it”, I said. I knew Paul had a broad taste, we often argued at home about music ..he had me labelled as a Soul and Jazz head and he was into a more rock/hip hop sound. I knew he’d like Alfredo. Paul took to Alfredo’s sound immediately. Danny, Nicky and Johnny followed shortly after "

http://ldnbcnstory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/great-posts-5.html

Trevor Fung: "We'd definitely all changed. We'd taken our British reserve, that guard down. Wearing black, sitting at the bar, too cool to talk to anyone - that had all gone. Over there everyone was talking to each other, you were a different person. Happier, because of the sun as well as the Es. It wasn't just drugs. We didn't have drugs all the time. Es were just an excuse. We probably needed it to express ourselves then, but it was all in us all the time. It was fun. We'd all just come out of ourselves."

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Trevor took them to The Project and at the bar he gave them all a small transparent capsule with a sandy like substance inside.

Trevor Fung: "When they came over, I took them to the bar. And they were like, ‘Fucking hell, can’t believe this’, which I think was more to do with the staleness in the scene in London at the time."

First Trevor took them to a San Antonio club called Nightlife, Rampling and Oakenfold swallowed their capsules while the others watched on with slightly reserved anticipation.

Half an hour or so later on seeing his friends looking so happy after taking their's Nicky Holloway decided to take his too.

(Picture by Dave Swindells)

Nicky Holloway: "By the time we left Nightlife to walk over to the Star Club I was on cloud nine. I found these two girls I knew from Special Branch [London Soul & Funk night], and I was like, "come with us, come with us, we're going to Amnesia!"

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Johnny Walker was still a little apprehensive. 'I hadn't tried any drugs apart from a dab of speed' They all took theirs, and I saw them all running around the club, hugging each other, big smiles, and I though "Oh well, this doesn't look so bad". So I had mine". "

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

From there on to Amnesia.

Arriving at Amnesia

Trevor Fung: "Then we went to Amnesia. Fucking hell! We was all off on one there. Danny Rampling skipping round the room and jumping speakers. Chaos. Wish I had pictures, they’d be worth something now. I don’t remember seeing Nicky much that night, but Johnny… Johnny was sitting in a speaker. Danny was jumping up and down. Paul was like ‘I can’t fucking believe this, it’s changed since I last been here!’."

For Rampling in particular Amnesia was a complete life-changing revolutionary and spiritual experience. He was simply floored by the sonic experience that Alfredo built from behind the decks. He blended textures and styles of music in a way that Rampling had never heard before. A mixture which he likened to being similar to that of Larry Levan from the Paradise Garage in New York, except this was a purely European version. The experience of dancing in the open warm air under the stars surrounded by the diverse mixture of people positively amplified by the effects of the Es they had taken was simply mind-blowing. Surrounded by bright white painted walls and Mediterranean tropical plants it was like being in the Garden of Eden. Only here the forbidden apple was very much allowed.

(Picture by Dave Swindells)

Back in England at that time, with a few very underground exceptions, the clubs mostly only played one type of music, Rare Groove, and London was full of bad vibes and attitude. At Amnesia, on the other hand, you had 7,000 people all dancing to Cindy Lauper, U2, Italo-dance, euro-disco, pop, acoustic, house, techno and electro. You name it, if it had that 'right vibe' it would be played by Alfredo. This was truly revolutionary to the 4 reveller DJs. Something they all had big plans for once they returned home.

Cyndi Lauper - What's Going On

U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

The Night Writers - Let The Music Use You (Club Mix)

The effects of taking MDMA, or Ecstasy, with good friends for the first time made the whole thing make perfect sense. While on E all the white mainstream English acts like Kate Bush or Queen, which they had all turned their noses up to in the clubs back in London, now suddenly felt perfect… and mixed in with the thumping limbic electronic beats of Chicago and Detroit they sounded magical, dream-like and mesmerising.

That night all four of them changed forever. They had their 'E' epiphany, an almost religious experience that would later happen for millions of British people in the clubs and raves that would spring up across the country.

(Picture by Dave Swindells)

Danny Rampling: "I sat on top of the speakers or in front of the boxes the whole night, having a right ball, it was an amazing experience"

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

(Picture by Dave Swindells)

Back at The Villa By The Swimming Pool

Back at the villa the next day the four of them discussed what they had experienced the previous night at Amnesia.

Nicky Holloway: "Afterwards, we went back to the villa. It was weird. We were all standing in the pool, holding hands listening to Art of Noise's 'Moments in Love', like a load of wallies. All chilled out and loved up, thinking it was going to change the world, thinking that if everyone did Es there would be no more wars."

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/aug/12/electronicmusic

Art of Noise - Moments in Love [beaten]

Danny Rampling: "I felt as if I'd been to heaven and back. We discussed the whole thing, and I said "This has got to happen in London!"

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Johnny Walker: "What would happen next was decided in the pool that day listening to that tape of Alfredo's set. 'That was the mission then, to get back to London, find these records and carry on that vibe."

- Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture by Sheryl Garratt

Johnny Walker: "We went back again later in the season and got a tape of Alfredo's set. After the club we'd go back to the villa, trying to work out what the tunes were, even though a lot of them were English. We were DJing in soul and jazz clubs and no one was playing house in London at that time, apart from in gay clubs. He'd play two copies of 'House Nation' which he'd cut up and stretch out, then play a George Michael track."

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/aug/12/electronicmusic

Paul Oakenfold worked for promotion company Rush Releases so he was able to find out where to source the records that they ID'd from Alfredo's tapes. Primarily they were alternative pop records. Some of the records could simply be picked up in HMV. The tides were now set for what was to happen that autumn back in London.