Mark Moore was a true believer
House arrived in the UK amid a whirlwind of other styles: hip hop, go-go, new beat and electro were all fighting for attention, eclecticism was the order of the day, and few people saw it as anything more than another flavour to throw in the mix. But Mark Moore was a true believer determined to give house the focus it deserved. At Asylum (which became Pyramid) he joined fellow zealots Colin Faver and Eddie Richards and pushed the club to an all-house playlist, after which he DJed at many of the emerging acid house scene’s key clubs, including Spectrum, Shoom and some of the M25 raves. Inspired by the new sound, he made ‘Theme From S’Express’, one of the first British house tracks, an international hit and a UK number one in 1988. Having been switched on by punk and John Carpenter soundtracks, Mark began his clubbing life at The Blitz and Heaven, and established himself as a DJ in those heady pre-house years. In this interview he proves himself an astute observer of the shifting times, recalling incisively how ecstasy crept in to the London scene, arriving with a crash onto the giggling dancefloor at Leigh Bowery’s Taboo in 1985.
interviewed by Bill in London, 2.12.94 and 20.07.04
Was there anything about your early musical influences – in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s – that showed where you might be heading?
Everything was so mixed up. Everything was up for grabs and everything was played. You just went for good music rather than a genre. Looking back, we were listening to a lot of electronic dance music. What got me into it was this film by John Carpenter, Assault On Precinct 13. We went to see the movie and halfway through my friend’s sister said, ‘I can’t handle this,’ because it was too intense. People were leaving the cinema in droves. The music just blew me and my brother away: ‘What the fuck, this music is amazing.’
John Carpenter did his own music for his films, didn’t he.
He did. I remember my brother saying ‘Mark, Mark, they’ve released the music from Precinct 13. It’s called the Human League “Being boiled”.’ It wasn’t, but it was similar and the band was great, so we went to see the Human League everywhere. David Bowie would turn up to see them. There’d be people sat at the table reading Kafka books with a pint of beer. Before that, we heard ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘TVOD’ by the Normal. I was buying stuff on Mute. Later, electronic stuff from the States, Bobby O, the Flirts, Divine, we lumped it in with Soulsonic Force because it was from America. I remember hearing ‘Blue Monday’ and thinking, ‘What’s this rip off of Bobby O?’
And shortly after that, hip hop started arriving
The rap was coming in. I think I first heard ‘Planet Rock’ in 1982 and it would’ve been at Camden Palace, Steve Strange’s club. When we first heard it, we just thought ‘Ooh, what’s this remix of Kraftwerk?’ We thought it was something cool, but we didn’t think it was a new genre, because we’d been listening to the Human League and Depeche Mode. There was a time when it all switched over: some of my friends had been real stoners who listened to dub reggae and Lee Perry and suddenly you’d go round their house and they’d be listening to 12-inch Martin Rushent dub mixes, like the dub of ‘Happy Birthday’ by Altered Images, something ridiculously camp.

Where did you grow up?
North London, Hampstead, Golders Green. I was born in University College Hospital in London, in 1965. Perhaps! No one knows for sure and I’ve lied about my age since I was 12. My mother was from South Korea. She was one of the first people to come over here after the Korean War. All her hotel rooms were bugged by MI5 because they thought she was a communist spy. She set up a property business and we were living a lovely middle-class existence. She was the Evening Standard’s Businesswoman of the Year. Then she got divorced from my father and started losing her business and went bankrupt. Suddenly we were very poor. We had a nice house but no money and we were constantly hiding from debt collectors. Then she had a nervous breakdown and me and my brother were put into care. And then into a grammar school, Wolverstone Hall, the poor man’s Eton. A lot of people went there, like the brothers from Colourbox/MARRS, Martin Offiah, Ben Volepierre from Curiosity Killed The Cat. To me it was a safe place. I worked hard and got straight A’s.
My brother got into punk rock in early ‘77 and I remember staying at my Aunty Amy’s, bored, playing my brother’s records. I put on Patti Smith’s ‘Piss Factory’ and it totally blew my mind. Then I put on ‘White Punks On Dope’ by The Tubes, and it blew my mind. Then the final test was ‘God Save The Queen’ and by the end of it, no future! I was a punk rocker.
And that led to Billy’s and The Blitz
I met this girl at a punk party called Bowie Teresa, who looked exactly like David Bowie as he did in The Man Who Fell To Earth. She dragged me into the bathroom, and turned on the bath and took her clothes off and tried to get me to get in the bath with her, so immediately I thought, I love this girl. She was quite terrifying at the same time. I arranged to meet her, and she always seemed to be working late in Soho. In hindsight she was probably on the game. And she said, ‘We’re going to go to this great club, which is full of weirdos, freaks, rent boys and prostitutes. It’s called Billy’s. It’s a Bowie night and they play Bowie, Roxy Music, Kraftwerk’
It was Steve Strange’s first club, with Rusty Egan DJing, at Gossips. It was
Bowie ‘Heroes’, Roxy Music ‘Do The Strand’, ‘Editions Of You’. Rusty was definitely very influential for me. Very underrated. Along with John Peel, for the variety, and also this girl called Mandy who played at Marquee. Then Rusty Egan and Steve Strange opened another club: Hell, which was in Covent Garden, just round the corner from the Rock Garden. They opened it because Blitz was becoming quite well known, so it was a bit like the Blitz but more elitist, if that’s possible. We’d go there, and he’d be playing Grace Jones’ album where she’d switched from being disco to new wave and doing things like ‘She’s Lost Control’. And he’d be playing disco stuff like Change ‘The Glow Of Love’, which was cool, breaking down preconceptions.
My guru then was my friend Simon Green who was slightly older than me. He was totally heterosexual but covered in eyeliner and make-up looking really camp. ‘We have to listen to more Grace Jones and we have to go to more gay clubs! We can’t be punks forever.’ So we went to see Grace Jones perform at Heaven. The first gay club I ever went to. He arranged to meet me there. I went in actually petrified, I didn’t know anything – sexuality or whatever – still quite young. People were really friendly there. Went in the first bar, didn’t know the rest of the club existed, and just stayed in that bar all night. I remember seeing Amanda Lear on video there, ‘Geev a leetle beet of mmmph to me and I’ll geev a leetle mmmph to you,’ dressed in leather with a whip. But I didn’t see Simon so I went home!
My uncle and aunt moved out of their house in Finchley and let me and my cousins stay there. They were a bit older than me, but still young and from a hippie background. It was fantastic. We’d come back from clubs like Blitz, lay mattresses out on the floor and crash out there and listen to Kraftwerk and Psychedelic Furs’ first album. During the summer, rather than stay at my uncle’s I would go and have a holiday at the punk squats in Kings Cross. They were amazing. Every night you’d go to a punk gig. They were at the back of Kings Cross, towards Russell Square. There’d be loads of prostitutes in the area and they’d be giving you lectures about how shouldn’t run away from school.
At the time, did you ever think DJing was a career option?
Later on, when I dropped out of my job and I was DJing my mother was like, why don’t you get a proper job, why don’t you do something with your life?’ In the back of my mind I thought, ‘I will be discovered.’ Someone will come up to me and say we want you to be in our movie or we want you to be in our band. Even though I couldn’t sing particularly, I assumed this would happen, someone would realise you were a star and would sort it out for you. At that time everyone thought that: ‘Yeah, we’re on the dole and we don’t do anything, but we’re stars!’ Boy George was a star, even though he was doing absolutely nothing. Then he realised, hang on a minute, if I’m gonna be a star I’ve actually got to do something.
How did you get into DJing?
Back then anyone with an artistic bent could be on the dole and go clubbing all week and somehow survive. It was easy for artists to thrive, bands to thrive. I got myself a bedsit and they were gonna stop my dole so I thought I’d better get a job. I found the cushiest thing I could find on their noticeboard, dressed up all punky thinking they’d never give me a job like that, and they gave me the job! So I was suddenly working for the Jewish Welfare Board looking after old people and the mentally handicapped. All my money went on paying the bedsit, whereas previously all my money went on records and clothes. No one wore designer clothes then, everyone made their own. You bought second hand stuff and jazzed it up.
The Mud Club had opened, I’d been going there regularly, every week. Jay Strongman was doing the downstairs and Tasty Tim was upstairs, playing schoolboy disco, glam rock. I’d take him mad things to play, some electronic stuff and then stuff like Rupert the Bear. People would run on to the dancefloor to dance to Rupert the Bear and this whole anti-cool thing came up where it was like are you gonna dance to this or are you gonna pose and look pretty? And everyone would just let their hair down and go completely crazy. So there’d be Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Julie Andrews’ ‘Lonely Goat Herd’. And people’d be dancing to it! He asked Philip Sallon if I could DJ with him. Philip said yes but completely panicked and rang me every day saying, ‘You’d better not fuck it up!’ Anyway, I did my set and everyone went completely crazy. So he said I could DJ there every week.
The Mud Club used to do one-off balls at Heaven, which were fantastic, and they saw me DJing and got me to do their club Asylum, which turned into Pyramid. So suddenly I was DJing with Evil Eddie Richards and Colin Faver at Asylum. First it was called The Asylum, and then to reinvent it they called it Pyramid. I started there in 1984, but I can’t remember when it started, maybe ‘82. I think it was on a Wednesday. Again, it was that alternative scene, very mixed, lots of straight people, very dressy. Most of the gay scene was very generic handlebar moustaches, listening to this cheesy Eurobeat. We were definitely the black sheep of the gay scene. I remember seeing Ian Levine in print saying, ‘Oh yeah, we thought that was the freaks night’.
We started playing house music very early on. We didn’t know we were playing it. It was just another electronic import thing we were playing along with Koto and the Italo disco stuff. ‘Hypnosis by Void. Or Void by Hypnosis. Yello, ‘Vicious Games’ was huge. Klein & MBO was massive. We were playing a lot of industrial stuff like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb, Cabaret Voltaire ‘Yashar’, and then the more poppy stuff like Pet Shop Boys, obviously New Order, Soft Cell… So the house stuff started getting slotted in as well. It was a while before we realised, ‘Wait a minute there’s loads of this stuff!’ We actually had Jamie Principal down to play, early days. Must’ve been ‘87.
What was he like?
He was cool. Very camp, quite Princey, vulnerable looking.
And were you playing anywhere else?
The Mud Club and then loads of warehouse parties.

Were you playing the off-the-wall stuff at Mud Club and more orthodox elsewhere?
Yeah, exactly. But even the Mud Club, it started to get more electronic. I’d come on after Jay Strongman who’d do the funk and hip hop, but I started incorporating the electro. The Mud Club went through so many changes. I remember after a while it became known as a hip hop and go-go club.
How long did you play at Pyramid?
I left in ‘88 because of S’Express, but it was still going then.
I remember seeing you guest at the Fridge in Sept ‘87 and it was the first time I’d ever heard anyone play only house music. It was very confrontational, like you were on a mission. Did you feel that way?
I did. Because most people hated house music. The whole of London was into rare groove and hip hop. I was known as a hip hop DJ in those days. I remember thinking the mixed gay crowd are really into house ‘cos it’s a progression of disco, but the straight crowd are never going to get into it, ‘cos they all smoke spliff, the main drug of London, so they want slower beats. Loads of my hip hop friends were like that. Took them to a club. Gave them an E. ‘We get it, this is amazing’. I remember when S’Express took off, in my first interview they asked me why they thought house hadn’t taken off in London and I said it was because the drugs were all wrong.
All my friends at the Mud Club were like, ‘Why do you have to keep playing this house music?’ They didn’t get it and it took ecstasy for them to get it. I was on a mission, I thought, I’m not gonna give in. I’d play ‘Strings Of Life’ at the Mud Club and clear the floor. Three weeks later you could see pockets of people come on to the floor when I played it, and dance and go crazy to it. And this was without ecstasy. And they turned out to be people like DJ Harvey. I remember at the Fridge many times thinking, ‘This is hard work, I hope no one shoots me!’.
What was the crowd at Pyramid?
It was 70 percent gay. A lot of straight people who wanted somewhere to go where they weren’t hassled. Racially it was mixed, a lot of black gay guys went, they loved the house music and they also loved the soulful electronic stuff like Janet Jackson’s ‘Control’. I also had a big hip hop following from the Mud Club. A lot of the main homeboys and breakdancers went there because they were bored. First time they came they were terrified, and then one of them would go to their mates, ‘It’s alright, it’s safe,’ and then more of them would come along. And they’d be breakdancing to the house music. They even asked LL Cool J to come down one time and he came. He loved it, thought it was freaky.
Drugs weren’t that important. Maybe a bit of speed or LSD, but not huge amounts. It was more a case of have a beer. Not a lot of people would do cocaine: it was still considered a great luxury in those days, although Pyramid was very Euro jet set, very rich people would fly in from Italy. It was a mixture of rich types, rent boys, debutantes and strange axe murderers! The Pet Shop Boys would always go there, Jimmy Somerville, and one time Liza Minnelli came down, so it was a strange mixture of high life and low life.
When did you do your first E?
I first heard about it when friends would come back from New York, saying, ‘We’ve had this new drug and it’s like, you feel like you’re not off your face at all, but you are totally off your face at the same time.’ What’s it like? ‘Oh, it’s like a constant orgasm for six hours.’ I remember, they’d always come back with about ten Es, and they were like gold dust, they’d sell for about £30.
I heard things about Cindy Ecstasy on the Soft Cell record, and seeing the Soft Cell ‘Non Stop Erotic Dancing’ – you know, the compilation video, and that was very drug-orientated. It had all things like ‘Sex Dwarf’ and ‘Memorabilia’, which would start off ‘Trip, trip, trip, trip, tripping.’ At first I thought they’d written it on LSD, but then I realised no, it’s this ecstasy thing.
I heard rumours that Stevo was on it all the time, and he’d go into meetings on ecstasy and come out really on top with a brilliant time. Kevin Millins, I remember him saying he got his first one off Marc Almond. Tony Gordon used to have quite a few Es in Taboo days. I remember buying one off him for £30 and it didn’t work.
My first one was at White Trash. Noel Watson was DJing and the music was a mixture of the Jackson 5 and Skipworth and Turner, spiritual and uplifting soulful stuff. I thought this was the perfect ecstasy music.
So here and there I’d take it. And then I guess I didn’t have it for a little while, just here and there it would crop up. I remember having a conversation at White Trash with George Michael about it. He said, ‘I’m sick of people in London who are on ecstasy, thinking they’re so cool, and don’t they realise it’s been around in America for years.’ He was in a corner being really miserable. I remember thinking maybe you should take one yourself George, but he was going through a lot of stress in those days.

Tell me about Taboo, then?
Taboo was great. I had to finish my set at Pyramid and run over to Taboo. It was really fantastic – again a mixture of high life and low life. I didn’t realise at the time it was so crazy because of the ecstasy, but in hindsight that makes sense. People would come back from New York loaded with ecstasy and give them out.
Who were the high life element, was it pop stars like George?
Yeah, Boy George, [TV producer] Janet Street Porter. I think she was going out with Tony James then [of Generation X]. There were up and coming designers like John Galliano, and ABC would be there, in their freaky cartoon phase, fresh from their success with How To Be A Zillionaire. And Fiona Russell Powell, the writer from the Face. Everyone remembers her TV appearance on the Tube with ABC where she took off her coat and she had this belt with dildos stuck all around it; it was live so it was too late to do anything. She’d be there. And the ecstasy would be dished out and somebody would just fall on the floor, and someone else would go, ‘Yeah, good idea,’ and fall on the floor as well, and then the whole place would fall down in unison, this mass bundle of writhing bodies. And that would happen every week at Taboo. It was a lame night if that didn’t happen.
You had great people like Space Princess, who was this lovely guy: Mark Lawrence, an amazing six-foot black model from the north. He used to go to northern soul clubs, then decided he was gay and came to London. Jeffrey Hinton, who was the DJ, along with Rachel Auburn. I think Princess Julia did the cloakroom. Mark Lawrence, who started DJing later at Daisy Chain.
Jeffrey, Space Princess, Mark Lawrence and Mark Time who used to be in Hot Gossip would practise these dance routines at home, with Malcolm Duffy. And once they got into the club they’d do this formation dancing with anyone willing to join in. Suddenly the floor would be taken over by people doing formation dancing. And they’d do this move with a kick and a turn and everyone would fall over in unison as part of the routine.
At the time, the people were just as important as the club, as the DJs, as the music, they were the stars as much as anyone else. The week after Pyramid there’d be a fashion show and people would be chosen out of the crowd to appear, or people would be asked if they wanted to do a drag act, a mime or weird performance art, which they’d do next week at Pyramid. It was so inclusive. I totally missed that in the ‘90s.
It was that performer-consumer dynamic wasn’t it?
Yeah. I think it’s back now with the small electro clubs.
What music was played at Taboo?
It was totally cheesy, hi-NRG, Italo, some of it great, some of it atrocious, but once you’d been in there and you were drunk or on ecstasy, it was fuckin’ amazing! I heard Taffy ‘Step By Step’ played to death there by Jeffrey Hinton. The Taboo anthem was ‘After The Rainbow’ by Joanne Daniels, and when you listen to it now, you think how could we have liked something so tacky? Weak electronic production, but it was so fucking brilliant at the time. Jeffrey would do his own edit where he would elongate the best bits with these mad sound effects over the top. Very underrated DJ, Jeffrey. Very trippy and some of it was completely out of beat, but it didn’t matter. It totally suited Taboo. Sometimes he would let the records clash for a full two minutes and everybody would be like, ‘Woaargh! This is fucking crazy and amazing!’
Jeffrey also used to do the music for Bodymap. In those days they always used to have fashion shows, have the models come on in freaky clothes, and one of the models would collapse and suddenly all the other models would collapse on them. That was Bodymap, which came from Taboo.
How long did Taboo run for?
It must’ve been a year. About 1985, you’d go to the club and people would be missing, and you’d be like, ‘Where are they?’ People started disappearing. And you realised they were suddenly becoming ill or dying. Aids suddenly became very there. It went from this thing you talked about that was happening in America, to something very real. A lot of the creative people started dying out. You’d be wondering, ‘Where’s Space Princess? Is he just staying in tonight, or is he dead?’ Then you’d hear months later that so-and-so had died. It became a very bleak time. People started dressing down more, they didn’t want to look freaky, they wanted to look healthy, they didn’t want to be associated with this disease. So everything started falling apart and the fabulous parties started to become less fabulous.
Just when acid house was about to make an entrance.
There was a void and into this void I knew there was something waiting to step in. I remember taking Philip Sallon to the Future which was in the back of Heaven and just saying ‘This is the future, literally the future. It’s what’s gonna happen next.’ He said ‘Don’t be silly they’re just kids from the suburbs.’ He just couldn’t understand what I was on about.
Had you noticed ecstasy being used in Asylum or other clubs you’d been playing in?
I only noticed it at Taboo. I knew there was a New York scene where people were doing it. And then nothing for a few years [after Taboo], and then I went to Paul Oakenfold’s Future and Danny Rampling invited me to Shoom. Previous to Shoom, ecstasy never took off big-time apart from Taboo. It didn’t spread across the alternative gay scene or the trendy clubs.
I remember the gay scene being really late to pick up on the whole house revolution, besides the Pyramid. The generic gay scene was a good year or so slow to pick up on it. They stuck with their Eurobeat, but then they got stuck into it with a vengeance and made up for lost time. I definitely think The Pyramid was the first house music club in England. I’m not listening to anyone else about this!
Tell me about S’Express. How did that come about?
I was living with my mother, staying on the sofa in a council flat in Harrow Road, and Rhythm King had opened up across the road, in Mute Records. I’d go and hang out in the offices and see if I could get some free imports and stuff. And I’d be like, ‘You should sign this’ or ‘Sign this, it’s great!’ I got them to sign Renegade Soundwave, I got them to sign Baby Ford. And of course, I got them their first hit with Taffy, and I got them another hit with Beatmasters and the Cookie Crew ‘Rok Da House’.
I didn’t particularly ask for anything but they said, ‘Oh you better have some money. You’ve done so much for us, can we do anything for you?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got some ideas, can you put me in the studio with a producer. They hooked me up with Pascal Gabriel who I got on with instantly. He had the same musical loves as me, and we did ‘Theme From S’Express’ and ‘Superfly Guy’.
I made a conscious decision that even though it was a house-influenced record, I didn’t want it to be a copy of a house record, so when you compare it now it doesn’t sound very typical. Not only influenced by house, but all the other things I loved, like Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Philip Glass, punk rock. And I wanted it to be ironic as well, so it goes ‘I’ve got the hots for you’ which was definitely a comment on the crassness of disco lyrics. At the time disco was still a dirty word. I remember thinking, I’m gonna get crucified for bringing disco back.

So did you go in there with a big bag of samples?
Yeah, but I wrote other bits for it like the bassline and got my friend in to do the ‘esss expresssss’ bit. We cleared everything and people hadn’t heard of clearing samples in those days. You could clear samples for £250 in those days.
How many were there, I know the Crystal Grass one?
Plenty. I’d rather not say. It was early days when things were signed on backs of toilet roll!
What were the early reactions?
I wondered what the DJs would make of it. I thought I’d play it at Pyramid and that would be it. I remember playing it to Kid Bachelor at an i-D Magazine shoot for all the up-and-coming DJ talent. Coldcut and everyone played their new stuff and Kid said yours is the best one there. Rhythm King pressed some up on white label, but it took ages for it to come out because of the clearances, so people had these white labels for months and months and magazines would say, ‘When is “Theme From S’Express coming out?”’ Finally, it did.
And you were thrust into a whirlwind of promotion.
I was making a comfortable living being a DJ by then. But I had to stop and promote it around the world for about a year and a half.
Doing PAs?
A few, and a short tour, but it was more TV and interviews around the world. They’d film for TV while we mimed. S’Express was too early. It was breaking down the doors for dance music and people didn’t get it in a lot of places. It would’ve been easier a few years later where I could’ve just gone and done a DJ tour to promote it.
There was a lot of resistance from the powers that be, Radio 1 didn’t want to support it. Someone wrote a letter to the Musicians Union saying that Mark Moore was being interviewed saying he was a non-musician – I was quoting Brian Eno – and they said he should be thrown out of the MU and not allowed on Top of the Pops. Rumour has it this letter came from a very famous producer. But it was cool. It opened the doors for others.
I remember Derrick May being really excited that S’Express had done this. Derrick May said to me, ‘It’s like a party and you’re the only ones there and you’re waiting for everyone else to come to the party.’
How did you end up DJing at Shoom?
Danny Rampling used to come to Pyramid, ‘cos that was the only place in London to hear house music: Pyramid, Jungle and possibly the Mud Club, which was a mix of hip hop and house – though it was a battle to slip in the house stuff. And when I got a test pressing of S’Xpress, Danny came running up, shouting, ‘What’s this record? I have to have one. My name’s Danny and I do this club called Shoom, and DJ at Kiss, and I have to have one!’
Can you describe your first time at Shoom.
Everyone told me it was such a friendly place, but I walk in and there’s smoke everywhere, and when it cleared everyone was walking around like Night of the Living Dead, and I thought, ‘This isn’t a very friendly, happy place, what are they talking about?’ Then, about an hour later, suddenly people are coming up and hugging you and ‘What’s your name?’ ‘I love you, you’re great!’ I thought, ‘Wait a minute, they’re all on ecstasy!’
The first time there were only about 100 people. Straight away I met some guy who was the Shoom dealer, I think there were only two dealers in those days. He just came up and said, ‘Oh I’ve seen you DJ, I think you’re really cool, this is for you mate, thanks for the music.’ And when Spectrum opened he got arrested, he was probably one of the first guys to get arrested for it.
What did you think of Shoom?
I’d been playing house for a couple of years, and I thought, at last a straight crowd that gets it, that understands the whole music (I’d never been to Paradise Garage). Although they had to go to Ibiza to get it, and take drugs to get it, it was another club that was doing more or less what I was doing – which was mixing up alternative stuff which they called Balearic Beats. I thought wow, I’ve found the perfect place, and then Danny asked me to DJ. It was perfect timing. S’Express was pressed and I remember Colin Faver saying, ‘I don’t know if I can play this at Shoom, ‘cos it’s really discoey, and then he played it and they went completely insane. I remember the Shoom newsletter listed S’Express as one of their top records.
How much did you get into the scene?
Totally. It was totally what I was looking for. I already had the gay scene. They understood the records, but they wanted more of a garagey vibe, and I was playing a lot of acid stuff. Whereas this scene totally understood it when you dropped something like Scarlet Fantastic ‘No Memory’. The Shoom scene was so open-minded, you could drop anything that was danceable. And people’s attitudes. Just coming up and shaking your hand saying, ‘I’ve seen you on the telly mate,’ Not being all weird: ‘Oh he’s a pop star’. They were really down to earth and I could just be myself with them.
Were there a few people there you didn’t expect?
I remember seeing a few people from punk days who I hadn’t seen since then. Going to Shoom and seeing Boy George, Paul Rutherford, Patsy Kensit.
Do you think ecstasy genuinely changed things?
I remember you’d hear people saying, ‘Oh all the football firms are here at the Trip, it’s going to kick off, it’s going to be a blood bath’ – and it never happened. A lot of people had their minds opened up. I’ve always come from a spiritual background, with my mum being a Buddhist, so it was great to see these people discovering spirituality and things like that – and it was great talking to them. It was like a door had been opened to a lot of these people, and they realised about acceptance and tolerance.
Did E bring people out of the closet?
Yeah, I think it’s true. A lot of people who were having problems with their sexuality, took an E and were set free of their inhibitions. I think it’s a great way to come out, dealing with it in that way. I think it’s done a lot of good for those people who were unsure about their sexuality.
How life-changing do you think it was?
Was and is! It was very life-changing. It’s changed music. I’ve always lived by ‘Everyone is my friend until they prove they’re not’, and that was strengthened by the Second Summer of Love. I guess nowadays it’s a naive way to be. The first wave of ecstasy opened up so many people’s minds, but the constant caning of it merely helped to close them again.
You didn’t talk about that scene in interviews.
S’Xpress wasn’t from that scene – it was just me listening to the house music I was playing, and Shoom was starting round about the same time so it all tied in nicely. The reason I never talked about ecstasy in the early days of S’Xpress is ‘cos I didn’t want the scene ruined. I knew if I was to mention ecstasy in interviews with the national papers, they’d jump on it – and that’s what happened. People would ask me from The Sun and the Daily Mirror, is acid house anything to do with drugs, and I remember just lying.
One day, I think it was in the Mirror, it said, ‘Next week we expose the evil face of acid house’ – and there’s a picture of me there. I got on to my lawyers straight away. When it came out it talked about the evils of acid house, and Mark Moore from the band S’Xpress who doesn’t take drugs and is a good boy. They chickened out, ‘cos they were obviously thinking to put it all on me as the leader or something.
I didn’t want to be the one responsible for putting this wonderful scene overground.
When the Trip opened that’s when it it became totally massive – roadblocks outside – the police car would come up and turn the siren on and everyone would start raving to it, dancing to the siren. I remember talking to Kevin Saunderson at the Trip, and saying, after this everybody will go to the car park, and he thought it was the name of a club. But we ended up in the car park, and he says, ‘Oh I see what you mean now,’ with everyone dancing round this one car with a tape on. He was amazed.
Before that, Paul [Oakenfold] opened up Spectrum, and round about that time the record had come out and it had been a hit. And I remember going to the first Spectrum, and there were about 200 people there – empty but such a brilliant atmosphere. We went off to Europe to promote the record, and when I came back a few weeks later, I went back to Spectrum and the queues were all the way round the block – it had exploded. There were all these trendy faces I knew from the trendy scene, who were there, and I thought yeah, it’s going to be massive.
Paul asked me to do the odd DJ spot at Spectrum, and I remember seeing Leigh Bowery turn up in a completely mad costume, and people were just off their heads going, ‘Wow what is it?’
After that came the big outdoor raves. I used to go to those things, but I can’t remember the first one I DJed at. My first impression was it was like a ‘happening’. You’d go up the motorway, and all you could see was a huge line of cars, everyone off their face in their cars.
What memories do you have of that period?
I think you fell in love with your friends, which is the way it should be. It was a total love affair with your friends, without the sexual side of it. I remember it as one of the happiest days, years, of my life.
Although punk rock was fantastic, and New Romantic. I’m lucky enough to have memories of different scenes. With punks and New Romantics, you couldn’t imagine them doing everyday things like shopping in Tescos – it was like, how did they live, how did they eat? The New Romantics it was de rigeur to be bitchy, one minute you’d be best friends with someone, the next minute you’d be total enemies. I have photos of people I used to know in the New Romantic days – they were there on the Shoom scene looking totally laddy, and I have pictures of them from the New Romantic days with lip gloss and blusher. They take me aside and say please don’t show those photos. It’s like they lived two different lives.
Why were you such a campaigner for house?
I knew that house music would take off. Eventually.
Why, though?
Because I loved it! I thought it was so fucking brilliant and I couldn’t understand why no one else did. I just thought, ‘This music is fucking great!’ But no one else agreed with me at the time. At The Fridge in ‘87 I told them to put a sign up saying ‘We play house music here’. That way, if you had been warned, you couldn’t complain. In theory!
Which dancefloors in particular did you clear with house music?
Mainly at the Mud Club. Luckily it wasn’t a constantly cleared floor. I’d clear the floor with Strings of Life and bring them back with Dead or Alive or James Brown. If you’re playing someone else’s club your job as a DJ is to entertain while still being dangerous, taking risks and retaining your own identity. However, if it’s your own club I think that gives you license to do what the fuck you want. I’m actually proud of the times I’ve cleared dancefloors. My attitude was this: the people who left didn’t matter to me whatsoever. What mattered were the one or two people that stayed on the dancefloor whose lives were changed. And those people would go on to do something else.
Like who?
Pete Heller, Laurent Garnier, Trevor Jackson, Daft Punk. I get people coming up now and saying, ‘You changed my life. You played this at that club and I saw the light!’

© Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton