With spring coming it felt as if I had arrived in paradise. Ten days into my residency it got even better. Tor called and asked if I would remain in Bergen an extra month. The manager had requested it and even though Tor would have to reroute a couple of DJs he wanted to keep his number-one club happy. I was over the moon. This was where I wanted to be!
DJing at Hotel Norge, Bergen, Norway – March 1975
The next six weeks flew by and with just five days left in April I had no idea where I would be heading next. Tor kept telling me that he had something lined up “for sure” but was waiting on the contract. I arrived early at Hotel Norge that night for dinner and the manager walked over and asked if he could join me. He sat down and after a few minutes of small talk he told me he would be sorry to see me go. I nodded in agreement and said that I was the one sorry to be leaving.
He stared at me for a second and said, “I thought you didn’t like it here that much?”
I was stunned. “Are you kidding? Your club is wonderful, the best place I’ve ever played.” I replied.
Now it was his turn to look puzzled. “But we wanted you to stay for the entire summer but your agent said you didn’t want to and would only give us one extra month.”
You could have knocked me down with a feather. Summer in Bergen would have been a dream—living in my waterfront apartment, DJing at an amazing venue, and dating some of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen.
“Let me call Tor,” I said.
There was no answer that night so first thing next morning I called again and got him on the phone. I tried to keep it under control.
“What’s the deal with Hotel Norge?” I asked. “They tell me they asked to have me stay on for the summer.”
Tor paused. I knew he was thinking of his answer, not because he had problems with his English, he was incredibly fluent, but because he knew I wouldn’t like what he was going to say.
“I promised another club that you would go back and play for them,” he replied.
“Who? What club?” I wanted to know.
“Bonanza, in Tonsberg. They want you back. They’ll pay a lot more.”
“No fucking way!” I yelled. “The manager didn’t even talk to me once while I was there. They don’t want me back.”
Tor took a breath. “I don’t know what went on there but they like you a lot. You brought a lot of business to the club. So you’re going back. It’s just one month.”
Yeah, right, that’s what the firing squad told the condemned man, “It’s just one bullet.” November in Tonsberg had been the longest, most boring month of my life.
“No. I’m not doing it. I’m staying in Bergen.”
“You can’t,” Tor said. “I have an exclusive two-year contract with the owners of Hotel Norge to provide the DJs there. They won’t let their manager break that contract; it would cost them too much money. I have another DJ going in there in four days and you are going back to Tonsberg.”
It was my turn to pause. When I spoke I knew what I was saying but it still twisted a hole in my gut.
“Fuck you, Tor. I’m not going back to that hole. I quit. I’ve got four more days here then I’m gone.”
I slammed the phone down and stood there staring at it for at least two minutes without moving, wondering if I’d just hung up on my DJ career.
Five days later I boarded another DFDS ferry. But this one was taking me away from Scandinavia and back to England. I ignored the light rain that fell as I stood on the stern for almost an hour watching the cliffs and fjords of Norway recede into the distance and with them the memories of the excitement of the European clubs and my dreams of becoming a big-time DJ. It was one of the saddest moments of my life.
BLISTER IN THE SUN
Have you ever been away for a job or a vacation that seemed almost life-changing then come home and felt that moment of anti-climax, that feeling of “gone so soon” or even “Did it really happen?” Everything seems a little smaller, a little quieter, the colors muted.
That’s how it felt returning to Torquay on May 3, 1975. My childhood friends Mike Frost and John Bennett tried to cheer me up by taking me to our local pub, the Devon Dumpling, and offered kind words like “Well, at least you tried and had a good time while it lasted” but I didn’t see it in the past tense. Those clubs were still there, the music was still playing and the girls were still chasing the DJs, it wasn’t over, it was just that I wasn’t a part of it any more.
So what now? Take a residency at a club in Torquay for the summer and be in the same situation come September? I’d done that before and it didn’t seem exciting to me dealing with all the drunken holiday-makers down from Glasgow or Slough for the weekend. Plus, it wouldn’t stop raining! It was driving me nuts. Sure, it rained in Norway, but not like this. Three days back in England and not a glimpse of blue sky, just a constant downpour. I knew what I had to do.
I hopped onboard the 28A bus and headed into downtown. With my dripping umbrella rolled up beside me I sat facing the travel agent inside Thomas Cook and made a simple request.
“I want to go somewhere sunny,” I stated.
“Where do you have in mind?” she asked.
“Anywhere,” I said, “as long as it’s sunny.”
She wrinkled her brow, unaccustomed to clients who didn’t have a set destination planned.
“Okay,”—she flipped through a stack of brochures—“and when would you like to go?”
“Tomorrow?” I said.
Now she was really taken aback.
“Are you serious or are you just wasting my time, young man? You don’t know where you want to go and you want to leave tomorrow? Well I never . . .”
The sight of the 200 pounds in cash that I slapped down on her desk cut her off in mid-sentence.
“I’m not pulling your leg. I just don’t like the rain. I want to go somewhere sunny. If I can’t go tomorrow, then I can go the day after. But I’m serious about it.”
She looked at the money and back at me. “All right then, let me see what I can do. I’ll make some calls. If you’d like to come back in an hour . . . ?”
I killed sixty minutes buying used jukebox singles at Torquay’s indoor market then returned to Thomas Cook. This time she was all smiles. “How does Spain sound to you?”
It was not only sunny but hot as I walked across the tarmac towards the Spanish Customs and Immigration at Barcelona airport. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been truly warm without being bundled up in fifteen layers of clothing or rubbing my hands together in front of a roaring fire. This was glorious and it was only the tenth of May! I thought about this mini-break; ten days down here before flying back. That should be long enough to get a nice tan before I had to return to the inevitability of England.
The travel agent had booked me on a charter flight out of Luton airport near London. It was part of a package deal that included the round-trip air to Barcelona, ground transportation to Lloret De Mar and ten nights in a hotel with full board. As it was off-season and last minute the whole thing had cost me less than eighty pounds. Squinting up at the blazing sun I knew I would have happily paid double that.
It took the rickety shuttle bus just over an hour to get to Lloret De Mar. As we bumped our way down the cobblestone road into town the Mediterranean lay in front of me like an invitation, glistening in the sun.
Within minutes of checking in I hoofed it through the center of town and dove into that legendary sea’s embrace. It felt so good to swim again in the sea that was the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of independent thought and democracy. There is something magical about its waters and I could feel five millennia of history flowing though me and washing away my angst.
I wandered back through the town a little slower so I could check out the shops and bars. And there, just steps from my hotel, was a small building with locked double doors painted a bright blue with a logo that read “Moby Dick Discoteca.” Discoteca? Right away I knew where I was going
that night!
There were a few people lined up in front of me that evening waiting to pay their admission fee to get into the Moby Dick. As I stepped up to the window I slipped my “International Disc Jockey” business card to the cashier and asked if they did a discount for DJs. She looked at it for a moment then called the bouncer over. My business card seemed to disappear in this giant’s hand but it served its purpose.
The monster glared down and commanded me to “Wait here” and went inside.
Seconds later he reappeared with another guy.
“I’m Tony, the manager here,” said the other guy. “You come for the DJ job?”
I hadn’t but if he was offering . . . I gave Tony a quick twenty-second rundown of my DJ experience as he sized me up.
“You’re a west-country boy.” It was a statement not a question. “I’m from Birmingham but spent a lot of my hols in Devon. Here’s the deal. We just reopened for the season and don’t have a DJ yet. I was going to play tonight but if you want to do it then I can concentrate on getting the bar up and running. No money, but no charge to come in and your drinks are free all night.”
Sounded good to me. I just had a couple of questions.
“Do you have records?” Tony nodded. “And when do you close?”
Tony grinned, “When the punters go home. Could be two, could be five. Never know.” This might be a long night but I was up for it.
The Moby Dick was quiet until around ten-thirty, that’s when it exploded with people. The club held around 400 but no one at the door could count that high so it wasn’t unusual to have 600–700 crammed inside. That’s actually a DJ’s dream. The busier it is the easier it is to keep them dancing. Plus if the club is jammed, sometimes even if a song comes on they don’t like it’s better for the customers to just stay on the dance floor than to have to battle their way off of it. That night I made sure everybody stayed on the floor.
The Philadelphia sound was huge in the disco scene at that time. Elton John was one of the first to notice how popular it was becoming and incorporated it into one of his songs that became a massive hit for him, “Philadelphia Freedom.” But the real deal was the music written by the two guys who had created the entire movement, Gamble and Huff.
If you saw their names on a record then you knew you had an almost certain winner going on your decks. I was happy to see that TSOP, The Sound of Philadelphia, was well-represented in the Moby Dick record collection. I would drop in The Three Degrees, “When Will I See You Again,” Harold Melvin’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way” or “TSOP” itself by MFSB and the screams of excitement from the tourists packing the dance floor would drown out the music.
With the crew at the Moby Dick, Lloret de Mar
– Summer, 1975
But the ultimate secret weapon for the DJ was the first major disco single to cross over into the mainstream as purely and proudly a disco record not one trying to masquerade as a pop or funk song. Even the title was the dance it was entreating everyone to do - “The Hustle” by Van McCoy. I had two copies of the seven-inch and would mix into them back and forth making a long, extended version and do that five times a night and still be asked to play it “one more time.”
Just before 3am the crowd started to dissipate. I was flirting with a tall, blond Dutch girl who was also just beginning her Spanish vacation and ready for a holiday romance when Tony came into the booth.
He looked at the girl and then at me and grinned. “I see you’ve discovered one of the perks of the job. You can wrap it up now. Good first night. I’ll be here later today around noon to do inventory. Come on by and we’ll grab a sandwich and work out what you need to stay for the summer.”
With that he turned and was gone. I looked at the girl and was tempted to ask if she too thought that that was a job offer but I didn’t want to blow my cool so instead I cued up the last song and said goodnight to the stragglers in the club and “See you tomorrow!”
Being a DJ in Spain during the summer season is like almost nothing else on earth. Everyone there is on vacation, out to have a good time, away from their family and any chance of discovery or ridicule. Put them in a bar that pours cheap, generous drinks and set them loose on a hot, sweaty dance floor that pounds with sexy beats that resonate through your body encouraging any inhibitions to be thrown to the wind and you have a recipe for debauchery that hasn’t been seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Even Caligula would have felt at home inside a Spanish disco in July or August.
It was hard to go home alone when the club closed. Sometimes you just wanted to sleep but there was always at least one girl who would not let you leave by yourself.
“Come on. I’m only here for a couple more days. Why not?” It was a common refrain and it wasn’t just me as the DJ who would hear it, but the bartenders and the bouncers as well.
With the dependable weather guaranteeing endless days of scorching summer sunshine and the night’s promise of excitement, my schedule became almost set in stone.
I would arrive at the club at nine at night and spin until five in the morning. I’d go back to my apartment with a happy tourist and then sleep until ten in the morning. I’d get up, head off to the beach, stopping on the way to grab a sandwich to take with me. I’d usually meet up with some of the crew who would save me a place on the sand and we’d swim, nap and snorkel until late afternoon. Then it was back to my apartment to recuperate with two hours of sleep before a quick dinner and do it all again with someone new. Party, sleep, party, repeat.
September came far too quickly. It had been an unforgettable four months. Mum and Dad had come down to visit in July and I found them an oceanfront apartment for two weeks that was owned by the local family of one of the bartenders. They were hesitant at first to stay in such a busy holiday hotspot, but apart from an intense sunburn that savaged my poor father and blistered his skin on his second day and restricted him to the darkness of their rental unit for forty-eight hours, they loved it!
After Dad recovered and we put on the sunblock, he and I would swim together in the warm water for hours, and on the two evenings that I had off while they were visiting we went to flamenco clubs and danced the night away, drinking sangria and feasting on paella. On their last morning in Lloret De Mar Mum and Dad hugged me tight and said how sorry they were to have to go.
Now, two months later, with the season winding down and the town empty of tourists, I was the one who was sorry, as I sat on the bus to Barcelona to catch a flight back to England to once again ponder my options.
HOME AGAIN
It was strange to be at home in my childhood bed at number 22 in Torquay. It was almost exactly twelve months to the day that my European adventures had started but there I was, a year later, and back in the same situation.
Dad reminded me that I only had until the following May to validate my degree for teaching. If I didn’t get a job in a school by then my degree would count for very little and I would have to go back to college for a year and take a separate teacher’s diploma if I wanted to teach.
“It would be good to have something to fall back on,” Dad cautioned me.
But I didn’t want to teach and I certainly didn’t want to fall back. My theory was if I had something to “fall back on” then if the going got tough I would eventually give up and use that safety net. I wanted to push forward, to give myself no alternative but to succeed and if there were the inevitable bumps in the road, then so be it.
I loved music, I loved discovering new songs and I loved playing live to an audience. I needed to talk to someone who could relate to what I was feeling so I called my friend Peter Brown at his house outside of London, on the off-chance he was there. He wasn’t, but I talked to his mum, who told me he was DJing in Switzerland and she’d let him know I was back in England and that I’d called. I didn’t want to just sit around and do nothing so I got busy trying to do anything to advance my stalled career.
Back from Spain in my home studio with my record case
&
nbsp; I was already on a few promotional mailing lists so I used the time to write letters to the other major record companies in London telling them I was a DJ and listing all the clubs I had played at and the thousands of potential record buyers who were exposed to my music every week. I asked to be placed on their mailing lists so I could get the records free and ahead of their release date and that way promote them to my audience. I think I forgot to include that I was actually unemployed at the time.
I set up a makeshift recording studio in Mum and Dad’s front room using my DJ gear and ubiquitous Phillips cassette recorder and started making new demo tapes for the radio stations that were beginning to pop up around the UK as the British government was forced to release their iron grip on the airwaves. In addition to the usual suspects—the BBC, Capital Radio, 208 and UBN—I also sent tapes to Radio Clyde, Swansea Sound and a half dozen others.
To keep my hand in the music scene I volunteered at Torquay’s Hospital Radio and for two hours a day I would play requests for the patients languishing in the recovery wards and the intensive care units. After my shift I stuck around to work on redesigning the antiquated studios to make them more DJ-friendly and brought the wiring up to code so that the station wouldn’t go off the air every thirty minutes or so due to a short in the circuits.
On September 20, I got a phone call.
My parents didn’t actually have their own phone in the house. Instead they had an arrangement with our next-door neighbors, a lovely couple named Tommy and Margaret Northcott. Tommy was the former captain of the Torquay United football team whose crowning achievement of his playing career was leading Torquay to a three–three tie against the then-unstoppable Tottenham Hotspur, “Spurs,” in a thrilling 1965 FA Cup matchup. But those days were behind him and Tommy now worked as a plumber and was a fantastic family man.
He and Mrs. Northcott were more than happy to have calls come in for us and would yell over the fence that “so and so” is on the phone. On that day I heard her shouting for me.
World in My Eyes: The Autobiography Page 10