Class of '88

by Wayne Anthony

  Genesis, Sunrise and Energy had already earned the respect of clubland, and Biology now joined the ranks. We’d planned on having a break from the stressful life of arranging such events – our past eight attempts had been crashed by Old Bill – so we welcomed the opportunity to let our hair down, party hard and let somebody else take the stress. Summer 1989 was a scorcher and saw a series of outdoor gigs. One major one was Biology’s DJ Convention, on a site in Watford for 10,000 people.

  We needed a hype flyer and came up with the caption ‘Why Can’t We Dance?’, which was simple, effective and to the point. We printed up 10,000 flyers, which were distributed at clubs across London. I also suggested that we should do a radio ad for the event, and volunteered to write a script and have it recorded. Everything we needed, from the sound system to drinks, had already been arranged. The only thing left to do was blanket promote the gig across London, so I went to the Noise Gate Studios and put this radio commercial together:

  This is a Party Political Dance Broadcast on behalf of the Biology Party.

  Here are the following requirements for this Saturday’s DJ Convention and gathering of the young minds:

  Firstly, you must have a Great Britain road atlas. Yes, that’s a Great Britain road atlas.

  Secondly, a reliable motor vehicle with a full tank of gas.

  Last, but not least, you must have a ticket and you must be a member.

  Your membership cards entitle you to free drinks all night. So we now end this Party Political Dance Broadcast on behalf of the Biology Party. Don’t waste your vote: stand up and be counted, because Biology is ON.

  It sounded the nuts and we were all very happy with the finished product, which was transmitted on pirate stations across the region.

  On the day of the party, the Biology promoter, Jarvis, came for me in a stretch Mercedes. We spent the entire day shopping and drinking on the Kings Road, where the latest designer clobber left us five jib out of pocket.

  The day quickly passed and we were soon en route to the venue in Watford. A pub called The Game Bird was one of the meets, just five minutes from the field we were using. We stopped there on our way through; the road for miles around was busy with traffic trying to find the site. The pub landlord couldn’t understand what was happening, but we assured him there was nothing to worry about and said we’d send the limo back to bring him and his wife to the party, so they could see the show for themselves.

  Biology had sold 4,000 tickets earlier that day, so we knew it was going to be a big night. When we reached the site, the staging, light show and sound system looked and sounded awesome. There were thousands of people there and it resembled a live concert as a collective line-up of DJs thrashed their sets out. There were side stalls along the field’s boundaries where everything from drinks to clothes was on sale. The atmosphere was electric and there wasn’t a policeman in sight.

  The site was hard to secure and people were bunking in where they could. Most party revellers did have tickets, so it wasn’t a big problem. I was on the stage looking out at the thousands of bopping heads, reconfirming my belief that this wasn’t a phase that was going to quietly fade away. Jarvis brought a van full of champagne for his pals and we all cracked a bottle open and sprayed the crowd. It sounds like an ego trip but it wasn’t, we were just happy the event was taking place and felt this was a victory and progression for promoters.

  This was the first outdoor dance party of its kind and it had taken a week to build the stage, without so much as a whisper from Dibble. We grabbed the opportunity to dance the night away in the middle of a field. The night was a huge success and Biology had pulled it off. The last guests left the green at 2 p.m. It was a beautiful sunny day and those that weren’t dancing were sunbathing.

  SUNRISE 1989

  Without a doubt, Tony Colston-Hayter and his team at Sunrise/Back to the Future were the most organised dance-party promoters on the circuit. They’d arranged some of the best gigs I’ve been to, and have to be the most well-known company in England. They were largely responsible for bringing dance parties into the mainstream and the public eye.

  Tony appeared on a number of chat shows, including Jonathan Ross’s show, where he handcuffed himself to the host as a protest against the new government bill, which had outlawed the events full stop. Jonathan Ross had to be cut free by the studio floor manager, and threatened to punch Tony on the nose. The next day the press reported stories about Tony offering Ross out in a boxing ring.

  The press continued publishing headline stories about Sunrise parties and personal articles about Tony, the man they labelled The Acid King. One of his biggest gigs was in an aircraft hangar in White Waltham, which turned out to be the highest-profile event in the history of dance parties. One front page read: ‘Spaced Out: 25,000 Trippers At Britain’s Biggest Acid Party’. Another reported: ’20,000 People On Acid’.

  I couldn’t say precisely how many people were in attendance but I did know it was the biggest gig I’d been to. We stopped at a service station en route to the hangar where hundreds of lost people had congregated. Tony had given me directions to the venue, so I got them all to follow me. The convoy included a hundred cars or more. The headlights illuminated the long, dark roads and country lanes. I was driving the lead car, which gave me a clear view of what was up ahead. We were on a narrow lane when I spotted a small convoy of British Army vehicles carrying some kind of war missiles. I would have loved to see the expressions on their faces when they looked into the rear-view mirror and saw a huge convoy of cars coming up behind them, especially on a normally quiet lane with barely a flow of daytime traffic. Why these hundreds of cars in the early hours?

  I was right behind the transport carriers, who were driving at 30 mph. When the opportunity came we overtook the trucks and pressed our horns, screaming ‘Aceeed!’ The soldiers returned the compliment, shouting at the top of their voices. It took about two minutes for the convoy to pass the squaddies, then we moved on to the hangar.

  On entering the site we were confronted by one of the largest gathering of dance-music enthusiasts I’d ever set eyes on. The sound system ripped through the hangar and vibrated the ribcages of the people standing next to the speakers. There was a multi-tiered dance platform erected in the middle of the arena, which was packed with people getting down to some House music. It was a moving experience to see and feel the energy and atmosphere of this huge gathering.

  At 10 o’clock the next morning the sound system was turned off and the last few thousand revellers were asked to leave the building while the crews recovered their equipment. A fellow named Mark pulled up outside the hangar in a red Ford Sierra, which packed a deafening stereo system. It was a beautiful sunny day, and 200 people danced to his stereo until 6 p.m.

  On the way home, we stopped at a service station and were shocked to see the event had made front-page news. Sunrise went on to organise a series of massive parties in different locations around the country, and as we all now know, their much-publicised gigs became a national underground phenomenon.

  ESTABLISHMENT REACTIONS

  The media had been sniffing round the Acid House scene for a while and after Sunrise’s huge event in White Waltham, Fleet Street had a field day. The journalists were hyped up to the max and published misinformed articles, which told how the hacks had risked life and limb to bring their stories to the public’s attention. First, they called promoters Mr Big, then topped the assault off by calling us drug barons. They blamed promoters for anything and everything that happened within a 20-mile radius of any party location.

  In all honesty, if the press hadn’t given the topic as much editorial coverage as they did, dance parties might have died a quiet death and remained underground and attended only by a select few. Then suddenly, in as little as one month, everyone in Britain had heard of Ecstasy and the huge, secret, illegal parties. The stories stirred up interest from people all over the country. I’m not saying it was all down to the press, and it’s quite possible
the nation would have caught on without the media’s focus. But it would have taken a very long time before our nans and granddads would have heard of Ecstasy.

  The newspapers brought E to the doorstep of every household in England. The people who did make the drugs couldn’t have wished for a better promotional campaign. This was their dream come true. We’d be partying hard at Energy, Sunrise or another big gig, and on the way home we’d stop at a newsagent and buy three or four national newspapers with front-page stories about where we’d just been. The same went for regional, and local, tabloids, as well as magazines, TV and radio stations.

  One of the all-time classic examples of a sensationalised story in a national newspaper told how a journalist bravely risked personal injury to take the famous pictures from White Waltham that appeared as part of a huge spread. He said he discovered thousands of Ecstasy wrappers covering the hangar floor, and built a whole story around this theory. Ecstasy wrappers? I have never in all my past years of taking pills seen an Ecstasy wrapper. If anyone out there has seen one, please send it for my attention via the publisher. I would be most interested in examining this unique paraphernalia.

  What the reporter actually saw was tiny squares of silver paper, the kind that comes from a theatrical special-effect explosion. As far as risking life and limb goes, they must have been pushing their bosses for danger money. Nobody cared about their picture being taken and the only people that wouldn’t have liked to be photographed would have been promoters and their security teams. I have a huge selection of newspaper and magazine cuttings from 1989–90, and in the hundreds of pieces in my collection there are no pictures of promoters, staff, security or DJs at illegal dance parties. If the journalists were threatened, or if their cameras or films had been confiscated, you can be sure they’d have told us all about it.

  Even though journalists bombarded the public with bad press, in one week during 1989 five dance recordings stood defiantly at the top of the charts. Acid House’s most aggressive opponents were the tabloids, yet Radio One and other stations also banned any record that used the word ‘acid’ as part of a song. No matter how high the record reached, it was censored or had to be changed on specifications laid down by the radio authorities.

  The press invented their own frownie face instead of a smiley symbol, and one national tabloid launched a ‘Ban Acid House’ campaign and recruited a host of pop stars to speak out against dance culture and Ecstasy. Up until the media attention, you’d see most of these artistes off their nuts dancing in front of a strobe light every Saturday night. It’s no surprise that pop stars spoke openly about outlawing the dance parties. Their careers were at risk and, to add insult to injury, their replacements were to be utterly unknown DJs and producers from England, the USA and Italy. Kids were no longer interested in worshipping pop singers: in the Acid House world, everybody in the club or at a dance party was a star.

  One national newspaper wrote about how police feared dance-party promoters (we were ‘drug barons’ again) with our ‘tear-gas-wielding security teams with fierce dogs’ and suggested that paratroopers should be dropped at the next bash to teach everybody present a hard lesson! OK, maybe it would be true to say that a small minority of people were prepared to fight for their right to party, but I know of only two occasions when riot squads and their vehicles were attacked by party people. They were normally E’d-up, fun-loving sorts.

  However, the police had become accustomed to dealing with illegal parties and went all out to stop the events by any means necessary. In the process of carrying out their well-publicised raids a lot of innocent people got hurt. The tabloids backed them to the hilt, and I’ve put the following list of headlines together from cuttings in my scrap book. None of these headlines have been fabricated and they all appeared at various times in tabloids, regional newspapers or magazines around the country:

  25,000 GO WILD ON ACID

  SEND IN PARAS TO BEAT DRUGS EVIL

  BUSTED! COPS’ HUGE SWOOP FOILS ACID HOUSE PARTIES

  FURY OVER M25 ACID HOUSE PARTY

  THE ACID CRAZY DEVILS

  TANKED-UP TERROR OF ACID INVADERS

  CON BEHIND GIANT ACID HOUSE BASH

  ‘LEGAL’ ACEED SHOCK

  ACID THUGS BLITZ COPS

  TOP HEART HOSPITAL IN ACID TERROR

  RIOT POLICE BATTLE ACID PARTY YOBBOS

  ‘FIGHT ME,’ ACID KING TELLS ROSS

  ACID PARTY PLOTTER GETS 5 YEARS

  8,000 IN ACID BASH INVASION AT VILLAGE

  PHONE BAN HITS ACID HOUSE PARTIES

  BEEB IN ACID FILM SNUB TO POLICE

  COPS GIVE OK TO ACID PARTY

  VILLAGE FURY OVER 13 HR ACID RAMPAGE

  ACID WINS

  GUNS SEIZED IN ACID HOUSE SWOOP

  FURY AS ACID PARTY LOUTS GO ON RAMPAGE

  DON’T COME TO THE PARTY SAY POLICE

  231 HELD AT GIANT M-WAY ACID PARTY

  LSD DEVILS

  SMASH THESE EVIL ACID PARTIES

  ACID GUARDS SET DEVIL DOGS ON RAID POLICE

  CHAMP ON ACID

  ACID HOUSE RIOT CHARGE

  RAVING MAD

  DAWN PATROL CAN PARTY ON

  KIDS DEFY COPS

  ACID PARTY KIDS LOSE £160,000 IN RIP OFF

  END OF ACID LINE

  FAMILIES HIT BY COPS’ ACID BLOCKADE

  ACID’S LAST STAND

  DRIVERS’ ACID MOB TERROR

  ACID HOUSE DRUG KINGS ARE GUILTY

  DRIVER IN ACID PARTY BLOCKADE

  POLICE BLITZ FOILS THE ACID HOUSE PARTY NETWORK

  DEVIL DOGS FIGHT ACID RAID COPS

  ACID BOUNCERS HURT 16 COPS IN CS GAS RIOT ACID JAMS TUNNEL

  CS GAS HEAVIES BEAT OFF ACID PARTY COPS

  COPS BACK OFF IN ACID HOUSE BATTLE

  ACID PARTY BOSS IS CLEARED

  ANOTHER ACID CRACKDOWN

  M25 ACID PARTY’S MR BIG DOES A BUNK TO COSTA DEL SOL AFTER £500,000 RIP OFF

  BBC SNUBS POLICE OVER ACID PARTY

  M1 ACID KIDS FOIL COPS IN DASH TO RAVE UP

  ECSTASY – THE SUN CRACKS SECRET DRUG RAVE-UP IN HANGAR

  ACID YOBS IN RIOT

  JAIL FOR PARTY BOSSES

  THE WAREHOUSE PARTY BOOM

  DRUGS POLICE RAID NIGHT-CLUB

  ACID PARTY CURB

  POLICE BLOCK THE ACID PARTIES AND SAY BATTLE MAY BE OVER

  POLICE TURN OFF THE ACID

  20-HOUR ACID PARTY STORM

  HOT-LINE ON ACID HOUSE

  THIRTY ACID HOUSE REVELLERS ARRESTED AS POLICE JOIN FORCES

  CLAMP ON ACID PARTIES

  ACID HOUSE PLEA TO CONSERVATIVE PARTY POOPERS

  DEMOLITION MEN

  A special police squad known as the demolition men were hand-picked to combat the rise of illegal dance parties. Their central intelligence command centre consisted of 27 senior officers whose brief was to gather information on dance parties and anybody connected to the organisations who promoted them. They compiled databases and information packs with details of promoters and their staff, and the packs were then sent to police stations and councils around the country.

  The name of every known person involved in the staging of illegal events, addresses and telephone numbers was logged into the department’s central computer. DJs, printers, flying teams, pirate radio stations, sound and lighting crews, ticket outlets and agents were all documented. They controlled Special Patrol Groups (SPGs) around the country who were deployed for the sole purpose of closing down any dance party they came across.

  The shop-a-promoter hotlines were manned 24 hours a day. Undercover cops would stand outside nightclubs, hanging around the people that were distributing flyers to clubbers, trying to listen out for information on promoters, the next big events, venue clues or anything else that could be of interest to the squad. Once they found out which events were taking place, and the meeting points, a full riot squad would be sent out armed with hit lists.

  Gigs were placed in order of importance: the bigger events were stoppe
d first, closely followed by some of the smaller gigs. The unit’s success rate was very high and most events were stopped with the minimum of resistance. It wasn’t the same as in the very early days, because in those early days the squads were not as organised as the promoters: on most occasions the police were taken completely by surprise and when the venue address was released the unit would rush to the site to be confronted by thousands of people.

  Once the national squad was formed, life became a lot tougher for promoters, and this introduced a new aggressive breed of promoter and punter. When the police units were nice they were very nice, but when they were bad they were very bad. In my time of organising and attending illegal dance parties I’ve seen three full-on clashes with the department.

  On one occasion an event in the country was stopped by the squad. There were hundreds of people walking along a dark, quiet road towards the party location. Several police vans blocked their path and around 70 officers stood in front of their vehicles with truncheons and shields in their hands. The punters’ advance stopped short ten yards from the unit and the commanding gaffer ordered us to turn back or arrests would be made.

  A group of geezers pushed their way through the crowd out to the front and started shouting obscenities at the policemen. The squad sprang into action and ran towards the group, which caused panic as everybody turned to run away. The officers starting hitting anyone they could. The stampede suddenly stopped and changed direction, running straight into the oncoming squad.

  A battle commenced as the unit tried to hold their line. The commanding officer realised the seriousness of the attack and called for calm on a megaphone. After ten minutes of fighting it all calmed down, but everyone was still standing their ground. The officer told the crowd they could have the party if the violence ceased and the punters screamed with joy.