Adventures in LovE
OPENING PART - FREE: 21 July 1990, biggest mass arrest in British history: 836 acid house partying kids. Two more, Nancy and Joey, escape for a Manchester-Ibiza flight. Or, so they think...
Each week the story so far will come as a pdf so new readers can start the book with this. Find at the end.
what they knew -
this:
they would always be young
would always be kids in their hearts
the girls and boys of the Blackburn warehouse parties
ONE
1,000 Es
1,000 kisses
PROLOGUE
Sunday 22 July 1990
The lights going off over Gildersome; the scene lit fantastical.
A star-spangled sky of violets and crimsons and oranges and dream hues.
An explosion through us. Through warm air and sweet summer fragrance; through the never-ending sound of night. The sound of the young and the beat going on.
And, the vocal: “Alright, alright, alright.”
The drive from Lancaster to Shadsworth Road, Blackburn. Dancing in Sett End nightclub until lights at 1am.
Remembering this now; how this will be history in 50 years. Ephemeral, shimmering sense of what is occurring.
Leaving Sett End and hitting a thousand-motor convoy and the time of our lives. In the convoy and driving and arriving and jumping out and entering the warehouse. Diggers and dumper trucks and speakers and the DJ and the first tune and starting to dance and hoping this will go on forever.
At the warehouse party in Nelson, near Blackburn, 10,000 revellers got inside. 10,000 lives sparked. You danced and wondered at life rushing at you. Then Nelson was raided; at 7am the fuzz stormed the warehouse in riot gear. They packed batons and yapping dogs and fear. The kids were scared and the police were scared - of what we were, what they were not.
That was Nelson, Blackburn. This is Gildersome, Leeds. They cannot stop us. We will not be denied. Except: the police did it again, they pulled the same stunt. Raided the party, closed the fun down and tried to close us down too.
The police arrested everyone inside the warehouse.
Everyone.
They lined up cameras on tripods and filmed all the kids as they filed out.
As they walked into the dawn; walked dreamy-eyed into-
WOW.
Endless police officers and cars and vans. The police lined the kids up. Lined them all up and put them in cars and vans and drove them to police stations across West Yorkshire.
Processed them; locked all the kids up in cells…
Can’t escape the image; the strobe lights.
Warm Yorkshire air; the music still playing in the head, down the years, into old age, to personal history. The music: everything starts with the music and ends with the music. Tunes and tunes to move you. To make you remember these days. Relive these times.
Those times…
Nancy and Joey stood hand-in-hand on a hill overlooking the warehouse and watched the last police van take away the last kid - reveller No 836. The 836 kids arrested at Gildersome by West Yorkshire Police on the morning after the night before of Saturday, 21 July: the biggest mass arrest in British history.
836 kids.
It should have been 838.
But Nancy and Joey escaped; they escaped the police and escaped with £20K-plus in hot cash.
Except, it wasn’t over yet; they still hadn’t made it. They packed their passports and romance and had to make it from Gildersome to Manchester Airport and flee on escape-to-adventure airways before they were caught.
Caught by those Nancy and Joey ripped off.
Smile-a-minute, meanman Gypsy Gerard ‘Frenchy’ Toces.
And, the man. Mr Numero Uno who wholesaled Gerard T the 1,000 Es they stole from the Gypsy.
Have to make it.
They have to.
That sound-
Going around our heads.
Those words.
Always.
For us – Nancy and Joey.
ALWAYS.
“Just as long as we’ve got the other - we’ve got enough.”
Chapter 1
Nancy
A few days before
Nancy Kools in the Merchants public house waiting for the writer.
Listening to one of her DJ mixes on a Sony Walkman - bright yellow, 1988 issue, with sponge-covered headphones clamped to ears.
She wore dungarees decorated with daisies, a white Chipie grandad shirt, sandals by Kickers. Hair black and pigtailed, face freckled.
She sipped a pint of Red Stripe and listened to the mix.
Listened and dreamed:
Of spinning piano tunes on Saturday at the warehouse party. She was booked to DJ so got told where it was - Gildersome. On an “industrial estate” the organisers said. “Keep it to yourself. After Nelson, the police raid, how they got us all - we have to be careful. Everyone has to be.”
Nancy was au fait with that. She was from well-to-do Haverbreaks, Lancaster affluent central; she was 17 and recently left Lancaster Girls Grammar School and didn’t take E or speed or smoke dope or do anything. She DJ-ed the local circuit. Harvey’s Nightclub, Crystal Ts, The Carleton, Brooks International, Gems, The Grange, Sugarhouse. Lancaster and Morecambe’s nighttime palaces. She played the dancing dens of Blackburn and Burnley: Sett End, Monroes, Manhattan Heights, Angels, the rest.
Nancy with an Italian dad, a Lancaster-born mum; she showed her dad’s dark looks and packed her mum’s mind. She’s 17 and mixes house music like a dream, rivalling DJ Ducky as the best around.
Nancy pressed fast-forward on the Walkman and heard a soaring sound. Like everyone jigged on the skies. She’d spin tunes to move them at the warehouse: ones that gave the rush of release. She could name them all. It’s Magic, Let Me Love You For The Night, Pacific State, Airport ’89, 2 Hype, Hardcore Uproar, Hold Me Back, Dream 17-
Dream 17.
End the set with this; watch the lights flash across the heads of partiers as they dance in their groups making one big group, a throng that gets inside themselves like the music gets inside them.
But: the Margaret Thatcher Government engineered moral panic. Newspapers were fed scare stories, alarmist bull. They wanted to be fed. Headlines screamed. Tabloids made serious hay.
The Sun – SPACED OUT! And: SHOOT THESE EVIL ACID BARONS.
Maggie T created the mood; it’s populist, a vote winner. Classic divide and rule shtick. The youth didn’t care; the kids were kids partying until the break of yawn. And yawn never broke.
Nancy fast-forwarded to Dream 17 by Annette and hit play. Bum-bum-bum, bum-bum: the bassline a strut, swagger. Tickle-tickle-tick: the snare a brag and promise. “Can you feel my love/can you feel it, hold on to me boy/stay close to me boy” - the vocal haunting.
The sound of Blackburn. The sound of the night.
Nancy pondered again the records that kept coming out of nowhere; where were they made/who made them? House Music a rush of youth that kept rushing. Like the past two years - the drive to Blackburn to Shadsworth Road and partying at Sett End before the convoy to the party.
The warehouse.
A thousand cars on the hills of Blackburn.
Lights as far as you could see.
Then, eerie, poetic vision – the warehouse building looming and the kids arriving and parking up and rushing to be inside and hear the first song.
Orchestral, glorious, uplifting, fun fun fun.
Everyone young.
Never being so young again.
This summer - never coming around again.
Chapter 2
Harry
Williamson Park
Harry Blue watched the vista where Morecambe bay went past Lancaster to the Lake District to the mountains.
He sat in his cream-coloured Bentley ‘87 and dialled the volume up - to Mozart, it’s a requiem.
Harry was a writer; he did hackwork for the Lancaster Guardian, was a stringer for the local rag. He wrote slimmed down memoirs of small town figures and disc-jockeyed a late-night radio show on Primrose FM, the local station. He was Mr Local who nipped Johnnie Walker Red and nurtured an ever-growing frustration. He could not quite compute, clarify what stymied, upset.
It was something like this: boredom and how to escape boredom; he worked on it. He was Lancaster University educated, an approaching-brilliant student who got a 1st in Russian Studies who pushed 35, and had a wife, a little girl, a nice place on South Road. And a ball-busting urge to escape boredom; to live a life. Whatever that was.
He kept on gazing at the vista past the castle and across the water; the view of the mountains spectacular. In winter they were snow-covered - the Lake District went alpine; in summer they became purple-brown and shimmered sun haze. There was a bona fide, buttock-drenching heatwave incoming – the radio blared about it; early next month mercury would hit mid-30s and beyond, August 1990 was going to be a roaster. July was already warm and getting warmer.
Harry B swigged Johnnie Red and thought about the girl and what an easy sell it was. Nancy Kools, the name had to be made up - no-one got called that, did they? He looked into her – yes, the electoral roll showed her family name as Altobelli, Italian, her dad owned the eatery of the same name in town – Altobelli’s.
When they met, Harry told Nancy: “I’m writing a book on the Second Summer of Love.” He blushed and said, “Guess what it’s called? Yes, that’s right - Second Summer of Love. It’s about the Blackburn warehouse parties and the kids drawn to it. The social fabric, how youth coalesces around a cultural once-in-a-generation happening.”
He was elevating his language, hoping to hint sophistication.
Nancy Kools demure and impressed. Like his wife never was; Amber had his number. Harry Blue was an ideas-machine and nothing else. He was thwarted and nothing else. But not this time. What he cooked up this time would show Amber. The book plus the clandestine act that became more and more comfortable. This was showing Amber, this showed him - what he was truly capable of.
The Mozart went epic – Wolfgang M was born and died that way. Harry had ideas but not the talent, that’s what Amber kept telling him. “Be happy,” she repeated. “You’ve got a niche. You’re established - in Lancaster and Morecambe. Stop having pretensions.”
The choir on Mozart took the vista places; the Johnnie Red jolted. Harold Blue flew over mountain-tops and saw himself fizzing and pulsing and alive.
He had to laugh - at himself. He laughed at this, too: the same play about the book that snared Nancy worked on the lad as well. He lapped up Harry’s Second Summer of Love patter.
The lad – Joey Miller, who was nicknamed “Two-brain” because his reputation said he was clever, too clever. “Preternaturally”, apparently - the word Joey used to explain his smartness. Two-brain eyed Harry like he didn't expect Harry to understand. Harry told him, “Give me an example of this ‘beyond normal’ brain of yours.” And Joey laughed and said, “I’ve got two, remember, and be patient, you’ll see.”
It sealed the deal; Joey Miller was in the book, would fill the “acid house raver role” in Second Summer of Love, compliment Nancy’s DJ act. Harry switched from Mozart to Haydn, read “Symphony No 45” on the CD player, the Bentley tricked out in ivory-leather seats, maple-wood trim.
Harry “got the car off his folks”. That’s what he told Amber, how he sold driving up to the house one day in the brand-new motor. It was a slick cover story. Truth as lie. He got the move from the Russians he studied, those Kremlin operators knew how to dissemble, masquerade. Because: his folks were rich, remained filthily so. They owned acres of Bentham farmland. In fights with Amber, Harry claimed she married him solely for the family money. It was untrue – Harry knew it; knew he sounded pathetic as always when they argued.
The one other Bentley Turbo around town had been the velvet-red number driven by the Gypsy who lived on the Lancaster/Morecambe border: Gerard ‘Frenchy’ Toces. Then Gerard got rid of the Bentley for a white-coloured Sierra Cosworth that had fins on the back because it was far less showy. Apparently.
Harold Blue knew all about Gerard but the Gypsy didn’t know all about Harold Blue.
He dialled up Hadyn, a sombre note hit the ‘87 Turbo; like the whole world was sorry for itself. He liked the line, wrote it down in his pad – and added a note: “Maybe weave this into the intro of Second Summer of Love – why Acid House is needed for the youth – because ‘the whole world is sorry for itself.’”
He fired the ignition and pointed the Bentley down Quernmore Road towards town, the Merchants pub. Yes, Two-brain Joey Miller was the acid house raver, and Nancy Kools the DJ who would give him chapter-and-verse about the warehouse from the inside.
The party was happening on Saturday night, at Gildersome - was top-secret because of what happened at Nelson – the warehouse raided a few months ago. Nancy told Harry all about it; the party on an industrial estate near Leeds where the ravers from Blackburn would drive in convoy across the Pennines and converge.
With what Harry cooked up it was ideal. All was nice and ideal.
Chapter 3
He parked the Bentley by the castle and tasted Johnnie R and walked down the hill to the juicer.
The Merchants packed out. Town faces, students and workers downed lunchtime pints. Harry clocked her in an instant; Nancy K hanging over the jukebox by the end of the bar, sucking on a Red Stripe. The Merchants an exposed stonework joint; three tunnels for seating plus steps to a first floor and another bar.
Nancy turned and saw him and pointed outside; the track she selected on the jukebox started in, flooded the sound system. He bought a Red Stripe and joined her.
Nancy smiled. “Not offering me a drink?”
Harry indicated her glass and smiled. “When you finish.”
They sat at a table and watched traffic chug down Meeting House Lane, Lancaster smalltown-ville, everyone knew everyone or knew someone who did. He eyed her flower-power/dungarees get-up and felt a stiff in his suit. It was expensive, off-the-peg from Joseph’s in town, and he still felt a square.
Nancy indicated the music coming from speakers mounted by the door. “You know this one?”
Harry shrugged and tuned in to the lyrics. “I’ve got the power?”
“Power by Snap.” Nancy tossed her dark hair and grinned. “Come on Mr Writer, this book is going nowhere if you’re not authentic.”
Harry got a wooze from the lager; it mixed with the Johnnie Red. “That’s where you come in – you’re the DJ, the Acid House expert.”
“I prefer the term House.”
“Why?”
She kept her tone light. “Because that’s where Acid House comes from, Harry – House Music – and that comes from Chicago, New York, Detroit.”
Harry did a faux-snort. “You want to play this game you could go to prototype house, disco, blues music, Africa antecedents.”
Nancy laughed. “Impressive. You have done some research.”
Harry nodded. “And for the purposes of the Second Summer of Love, it will be Acid House.”
Nancy nodded, drained her bottle. “Come on Mr Meany, a drink. The least you can do.”
Harry felt a surge of well-being as he made the bar. She was gorgeous and near half his age and made him feel great. He got a look of himself in the bar mirror: straight-haired, this side of ugly; how he’d describe himself as a character in the novel he’d never write.
He ordered two jars of Red Stripes and made back outside, walked into glinting sunshine and Nancy’s dark eyes and heard what Amber implored: “Be happy.”
Try then, at least.
He sat down and slid Nancy’s beer to her. “About Saturday - my plan is, as I said, get to the place early, for some colour, atmosphere. Make sure I don’t miss anything. It’s on the Treefield Estate, right?”
Nancy smiled. “That’s what I’ve been told. Harold – are you really going to be able to write a whole book out of Saturday night? Come on, Nancy K needs to know.”
He shrugged and eyed her. Clever, cool: Nancy Kools. “This weekend - more or less, sure. That’s the skill of the writer.” Harry threw his best smile and she met his eyes and he looked away. “This weekend, plus you and other contributors telling me stuff – about the warehouse parties before this one, the thrill, excitement, what Nelson was like. I was there too, but as an observer, I wasn’t there like you were. The police raid, Strawberry Fields playing when they rushed in at 7am– that’s prime colour, novel-like material. I can do a chapter or two about the first summer of love – the sixties, all that stuff. Backstory to enable the front-story.”
Nancy nodded – he told her this before; the last time they met. “You ready to tell me who the other people you’re speaking to are yet? There’s three of us, right – the main people in it?”
He was prepared for the question. “I can tell you one of them. A lad called Joey Miller – lives in Scotforth, was at Nelson, went to many other warehouse parties, he's been telling me. He’s going to Gildersome too, of course. Do you know him? Everyone calls him-”
“Two-brain.”
“You know him.”
Nancy got a look in her eye. “I know who he is.”
“Okay.”
“His reputation.”
“Which is?” Harry knowing what Nancy was going to say; wanting to hear it from her.
She shrugged. “A bit up himself, vain. Forget two-brain, he’s too-vain – what I like to call him behind his back.” Nancy giggled and gave Harry that stare-eyed look. Like she understood the world on her terms despite being only 17. “But, yes. He is smart –” Nancy’s stare-eyed look became a smile. “That’s Joey Miller. So, now, come on.”
“What?”
“Who else is in the book? You said three main people, there’s me, Joey. And? Come on shoot, who’s the third?”
Harry twinkled, enjoying this. “Can’t tell you – or they’ll kill me.”
“Haha.”
It was true: Gerard Toces agreed to talk for the book on an anonymous basis only. He and his cousin, Temmy, would be peddling Es at Gildersome like they knocked out pills at previous warehouses and around Lancaster and Morecambe. Punting them via their No 1 foot-soldier: Joey Miller, the lad having worked for them more or less since ecstasy hit the area circa six months ago and Gerard procured a large slice of the market. Did so in that quiet yet formidable way. The Gypsy only two years older than Nancy - just 19 yet was deferred to big-time: by his coterie of street-dealers and by the Traveller community he dominated.
But: if Harry revealed who Gerard was, or mentioned Temmy by name - gave any clue to their identity, then Gerard would be out of the book and he and Temmy would be sure to come and see Harry and Gerard ‘Frenchy’ Toces would have his cousin administer a lesson in why it was prescient to be able to keep your mouth shut when told to.
Harry heard about what happened to Joey’s predecessor as Gerard’s prime pill seller and-
He closed off the thought, killed his drink, watched Nancy follow.
Harry saying: “The reason for this meeting is for you to give me a sense of how you’re feeling a few days out from the rave. You know, I can build a chapter out of this – your hopes, fears, how you-”
“Come on Harry, you can do better than that - ‘hopes and fears’? You sound corny, I hope your writing is better than that kind of speak.”
Nancy laughed and Harry felt his blood prick. “Actually, how people speak is never an indicator of how they will wri-” He laughed, caught himself. “I do sound pompous.”
Nancy, toning surprise: “I was only joking. Or maybe… half-joking, half-teasing.”
“My wife and daughter say the same. I bang on about ideas for books and they tease me and I rise to it and Lottie, my little girl, says: ‘Daddy, calm down, we’re only joking.’”
Nancy’s eyes lit up more. “How old is she?”
“Five.”
“Bright by the sound of it - like my sister. Here.” Nancy brought a photograph from her dungarees pocket. “There’s Esmerelda.” Harry saw a pic of a mini-Nancy, dark hair, dark-eyed, maybe five or six. “She looks the same age as Lottie.”
“She’s six. You have a photo I can see?”
“Of?”
“Lottie - your daughter.”
“Oh – no.”
“You should – it's a nice thing to have with you all the time.” Harry auto-pilot nodded; she said: “Esmerelda’s standard line to me is, ‘Nancy, can we play that song again?’”
Harry pulled his notepad and pen. “This is the kind of stuff I mean. Your sister – Esmerelda – always wants you to play acid house music, which song?”
“Call it a record or tune and it’s not acid house – I told you, it’s house. And no, it’s I am the Resurrection.”
Harry blanked, Nancy read him instantly. “By the Stone Roses – indie music, baggy, not house or acid house or rave.” She giggled, Harry kept blanking. “Jesus,” said Nancy. “You’re writing a book and you’ve got the title right and that’s about it.”
More chuckles, Harry laughed too – had to. “The Stone Roses. I’ve heard of them, don’t worry about that.”
“But you don’t know the song?”
He shook his head.
“A classic, believe me.”
“I do.”
“Spike Island?”
“Eh?”
“Never mind. Here.” She palmed him her Walkman, put the headphones to his ears. She hit play and Harry heard this - a bang-bang of drums, a bassline that crept in and kept creeping, now taking over, taking control.
Of the way Harry began to feel.
Minutes passed; Nancy kept smiling. And now at the end of the song: an intro – the song was supposed to stop. It did, dead; but then came back to life like the first song with the lyrics and bass and drums was a warm-up for this which was an assault on sensation, guitars, a crashing beat becoming noise and NOISE and melody and a strange tenderness; like everything – this hot July, his book, the kids partying - raised up before him and he got a fleeting sense of Lancaster and Blackburn and Nelson and Gildersome never so beautiful, apt, as when hearing this now. Epic, sweeping; like Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, the best of them.
Nancy watched him. “You get it don’t you, Harold? Feel it.”
“Not my usual thing. But, yes.” The song tapered off, ended finally.
“As I said, that wasn’t even house. House music is better. What’s your usual thing?”
“Classical.”
Nancy nodded – like that was cool. Harry said. “I’m not sure why.”
“Is it like the posh car you drive?”
“Eh?”
“For effect.”
“Haha.” Harry waved his notepad. “Come on, more drinks and then start giving me a flavour of what you feel like, two days out from a rave that is going to be illegal and could be raided.”
“Warehouse, not rave.”
Harry smiled and brandished his pen. “Tell me.”
Nancy Kools did. She started riffing on Thatcher and the media hysteria over house music and rave. She spoke quick, with passion - of the music, the summer going on right now.
She was in her element and Harry got that.
NEXT WEEK: Joey ‘Two-brain’ Miller on the Lancaster-Morecambe borderlands:
Call it coke, posh, nosebag, or 65 (the price of a gram in £s). Gerard and Temmy did 65 near-constant. Along with barbs, speed, acid, dope and E – whatever they could ingest.
Adventures in LovE, pdf below
