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HAPPY DAZE: ACID HOUSE AS IT HAPPENED


This article was originally published as part of UAL Subculture Interest Group (SIG) Newspaper. SIG is a collective established in 2019 by a group of PhD students and research staff with an interest in subcultures, especially music, style and youth cultures, and their intersections.



If I asked you all to find a photograph that epitomised the acid house subculture, then the chances are that you’re going to show me an image by one man. That man is Dave Swindells.

 

Swindells chronicled the acid house phenomenon of the late 1980s from day one. Not only as a photographer and the then-editor of the nightlife section of Time Out but also, and perhaps more meaningfully, as someone who really was there in the thick of it week-after-week as an enthusiastic punter: one of his and my generation’s very own.


Trip - Acid House x Paisley Park - what a meeting of mind and body © Dave Swindells
Trip - Acid House x Paisley Park - what a meeting of mind and body © Dave Swindells

The first acid house clubs Future and Shoom in March of 1988. Dave was there. Spectrum, Trip and Mutoid Waste Company. Dave was there. Events held in car parks and bus depots. Dave was there. Throughout a year of deep cultural and subcultural significance, Dave was there.

 

And many more at other times besides; Boy’s Own at East Grinstead, Amnesia in Ibiza, Fascinations at Downham Tavern, all of them subcultural landmarks.

 

His genuinely iconic images have defined and documented a period in time that not only left an indelible mark on a great many of the young people who were actually there, but also instigated something of a loosening of attitudes in Britain – sadly all too temporary given the benefit of hindsight – and a reshaping of the night-time economy. Club culture as we now know it was born, and the first 24-hour dance licence in the UK was granted on the back of the events of acid house to Turnmills in the then somewhat down-at-heel area of Clerkenwell at the start of the 1990s.




 

Now in his latest book Acid House As It Happened published by IDEA, Swindells brings together some of those iconic photos, other images less well known and his own recollections of 1988, the year of acid house. It’s a thing of beauty in its own right, but especially for those of us who were there. I may not be in any of the photos. I may not have been in those clubs when those pictures were taken. But I was there, in those very spaces and others just like them in 1988, hedonistically cashing in on being 22 years old with London as my playground*.

 

For those of you not around when acid house happened – and that’s probably most of you reading this – its significance to those who were may seem purely nostalgic, nothing more. But it came at a time of bitterness, division and hardship in a bleak and grey post-industrialised and Conservative-ruled Britain. For the country’s youth back then, the emergence of acid house seemed to signal that their time had come; the old guard were finished and a brave new day-glo world of possibilities was here.



 

Of course, it didn’t completely work out like that but it wasn’t without significance. So, as Tears For Fears sang in their politically-driven homage to acid house Sowing The Seeds of Love: “Everyone read it in the books, in the crannies and the nooks, there are books to read for us.” Matthew Collin’s Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House and Sheryl Garratt’s Adventures In Wonderland are recommended starting points.

 

And it did mean something to many of us who were there – it’s at the core of my PhD research – although most would never have thought it back then. In a brief exchange during the launch of Acid House As It Happened at the fashionable Dover Street Market, I put it to Swindells that he could never have conceived back then that we would be here now more than 30 years later contextualising, historicising and reminiscing acid house. Laughing loudly, he replied with a simple yet emphatic “no”.

 

Still, in his book he does acknowledge the significance of the time he captured: “These pioneering clubs and illicit, underground parties tore up the rule books about how people could socialise together, a direct response to fresh-as-paint Acid House tracks, an egalitarian, dressed-down style and Ecstasy suddenly being easily available.”




There was a hint of that same spirit in the momentary coming together of tribes at the launch, a suitably heady brew of young fashionistas, streetwise geezers, haute couture cognoscenti, Leigh Bowery-esque models and, of course, original acid house heads. All of which set against the backdrop of Balearic and house classics from bona fide scene legends Kid Batchelor, Nancy Noise and Terry Farley.



In closing her introduction to Acid House As It Happened, the aforementioned Garratt, former editor of The Face and clubbing stalwart, notes that we are again living in a troubled world but issues an optimistic old-school rallying cry: “Once more, we’re facing hard times. The barriers are being re-built, the old strategies of divide and rule returning. But all of that disappears on a crowded dancefloor, which is why clubbing, to me, has always been a radical act, as well as a joyful one. It’s time to move your body, and let the music use you. Can u feel it?”

 

* Other subcultures are available.

 

Words by Tim Gibney

 

 

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