Disco – The History Of Punk
If you’ve been going through the other Roots of Punk pages you’ll probably be arriving at this one and thinking WTF has disco got to do with Punk rock? The simple fact of the matter is that a lot of the what would come to be termed ‘early punks’ frequented gay clubs and liked dancing for a few simple reasons – as a girl you avoided the lecherous male and if you were a bit ‘different’ the clubs tended to be more forgiving and welcoming.
People also liked new styles and being ahead of the game so at some point in 1976 these two seemingly opposing styles, Disco for want of a better word and the nascent punk scene began to rub off on each other both in fashion and adherents. Though the impact was predominantly in the South/London, it also happened around Manchester and most likely other areas.
John Harlow was one such person involved in the scene at the time who was present for all those swirling pre punk strands and who got swept into Punk rock with his mate Steve and who went on to play with the Moors Muderers and Photons and whose brother, Tommy Mac, was a legendary dancer in the clubs at the time.
Take it away John…
In 1969 I was a skinhead and did the ska thing first hand with the suits and shoes and then the boots and braces as The Sun came out with bovver boys and aggro. From then it was Bowie and once I heard him I was smitten and that was me into that music but I was always eclectic and loved soul and dance music as well. Never liked heavy metal though.
We used to go to clubs like Crackers, Chaguramas and Louises which was a big lesbian club, mainly the latter. We first saw the Sex Pistols not as a band but as people there; we got to know people like Marco Pirroni, Billy Idol and the Bromley lot. When you went to Louises, downstairs was where the lesbians were and upstairs was a bar where most of the faces what become later on Punks so yer Bromley contingent would be posing. There would be a contingent from St Albans and one from Wales like yer Chris Sullivan’s, Strange’s and Frank Kelly. It was a great place to be and even better for me because for some reason the barman would give me free drinks!
Philip Salon (pictured right by Ray Stevenson) used to be there a lot and was very ostentatious; he used to wear a sheet and pin with a Maltesers wrapper and wear nothing underneath. Each week he’d expand on that and then there would be some other gay people and they would try to be more flamboyant. It was more dressing up, but at the same time, the normal people were starting to dress differently from the people on the street.
We found out the doorman at a club in Neal Street called Chagauramas sold dodo’s (amphetamine tablets) so me and my best mate Steve Davis used to go there every Friday night to get our supply. One night he said ‘Why don’t you go in?’ and we said ‘It’s a gay bar’ and he said ‘Don’t be stupid go in’ so we did and had a look. We weren’t homophobic; we were blown away by the music and they were dancing in couples but like a jive kind of thing. There was a specific playlist that had a unique sound; a gay disco sound which was less aggressive funk music BUT wall-to-wall women. They used to feel safe down there – not getting groped etc and they assumed that we two male predators were also gay so we met some fantastic women down there!
From our holidays in Brighton and Margate mid-seventies and being adventurous we’d also go out of town to clubs. So if something was happening in London, say in Crackers, then when people went to clubs like the Goldmine in Canvey Island or Atlantis in Margate bits of fashion, etc would be picked up by those clubgoers and vice versa and were mixed up and becoming one kind of style. You could go to the Lacey Lady and technically the crowd were dancing to soul music but dressed as punks wearing a lot of plastic macs and sandals so there was something happening already on the ground.
Left – Lacey Lady July 1976 – Soul & Punk collide. Above – Fashion first – bands later
“Chris Hill told me that they were the only two Punk nights there. I asked Chris what music he deejayed but he said that he just compered the night. There had only been one or two Punk records made by then’, and ‘As you know, the Bromley Contingent were all Soul Boys/Girls (the fashion coming before the music) and were regulars at the Goldmine and then the Lacy, when Chris moved there in early ‘76.
Chris Hill reckons that Mick Jones was one of the best dancers on the Soul nights (in his finest Westwood clothes! ??). Both Siouxsie and John Lydon mention the Soul nights. It was Bernie [Rhodes – The Clash manager] as a regular that talked Chris in to putting them on on that Thursday!” Southend Punk
Everything was evolving. We went to Margate one day and we went to bingo to kill some time before the clubs opened and Steve won a water pistol. At Atlantis we were shooting water at everyone with these pistols which turned into people chucking glasses of water at each other but the next day everyone turned up in macs and raincoats and plastic bin liners to keep dry and it was like that for the whole weekend. Everyone was in plastic or whatever you could to keep dry and bits of that stuck.
Crackers [run by DJ Mark Romain] in Wardour Street was becoming big for dancers and jazz funk and freestyle really competitive and my brother, Tommy Mack, was one of the few white guys who could dance on the dance floor and was well respected in that crowd (pictured left with Union Jack skinhead haircut at Crackers 1976). For more on Crackers and the daytime Soul sessions click here.
The fashions at the club were unique for the time: Cowboy boots, army surplus gear, peg trousers, clear plastic “jelly” sandals and wedge haircuts were de rigueur for a Crackers soul-boy. (This at a time when you were likely to be called a “poof” or even beaten up for wearing anything more outlandish than a polo jumper.)
It was the dancing, however, that really set Crackers apart. Unless you had real moves, you couldn’t even get near the dancefloor.
To Norman Jay, a Crackers regular, the club was the starting point for the way Londoners party today. “It was the first (London) meeting place of black, white, straight, gay. The clientele originally was very gay. It wasn’t a gay club per se, but it was hip and fashionable. Yes, the music was brilliant, but it was the coming together of different social groups and races. That was what was groundbreaking.” Crackers
The Lyceum on a Monday night, Sombreros in Kensington on Thursdays: the Global Village, where Heaven now is, on Fridays, the 100 Club on Oxford Street on Saturdays. Most notable and most potent of them all was Crackers on Dean Street, on the edge of Soho itself and at the very centre of the world.
Anyone who ventured on to the square at Crackers had to have steps, and the bottle to produce them under the gaze of the unforgiving throng. Some of the top guys at Crackers are legendary still: Horace, Tommy Mac, Jaba, and the daddy of them all, Clive Clark, a charming black guy who went on to become a professional choreographer, but started out scorching the opposition on Friday afternoons in Dean Street. When these boys were on the floor, a circle would form to give them an amphitheatre in which to perform. They would then pull out moves and steps with a wickedly competitive edge, legs flying like lasers, some new twist or turn eliciting spontaneous applause from the closely watching circle. The Way We Wore by Robert Elms
My mindset then and is still today to let the people decide the best dancers for themselves. I used to shout “Make some noise if you like dancers!” My drug is and always has been music and dancers like Dez Parkes, Trevor Shakes, Pinky, Horace, Tommy Mac and dozens more top, top dancers. I’m in love with all of them. They were such talented guys and the competition, oh my God, between them was like Ali and Frazier. The music diversity was my department and I played everything across the spectrum of the musical rainbow. Take one colour out of the rainbow and it isn’t a rainbow, from Jazz, Soul, Funk to Reggae. Mark Roman – Soul Survivors Magazine
| Clothes – Bleached jeans – Punk t-shirts, sleeves rolled up to the shoulders – Black/blue suede ‘pixie’ boots – Horse riding boots -Crown slippers – Black army surplus jackets complete with epaulettes – Ski jumpers – Leg warmers -Skin tight elasticated jeans | Top 10 – Donald Byrd – Change Makes You Wanna Hustle – Eddie Harris – Is It In – Maceo & The Macks – Across The Tracks – Rhythm Makers – Zone – The Blackbyrds – Gut Level – Lonnie Liston Smith – Expansions – D.C LaRue – Cathedrals – J A L N Band – Street Dance – Crystal Grass – Crystal World – Barrie Waite – The Sting |
Then it went to the Goldmine in Canvey Island and then that was picked up in the press because anything like that they loved. There was also a Beatles thing going on and where we got our Beatles jackets with no collars; there were parties playing Beatles music all night and it was more the Harrow/ Holland Park posher crowd in that scene but it was fantastic and you met fantastic girls who you wouldn’t normally mix with.
New fashions and music only seemed to last for a few months then it would move onto something else. The Summer of 1976 was a great year for soul and dance music – Brass Construction – Moving on. That’s when the two things started mixing up. Going from girls music and rock music started to be a mixture and people from the different social groups mixed up.”
Of course, it couldn’t last – while a lot of the music was underground, when Disco went big it really antagonised our FM/AOR rock loving cousins across the sea.
A prevalent slogan that took hold at the time was “Disco Sucks” – which more than just a direct statement of dislike – it was often used as a homophobic slur aimed at Disco’s proponents, and the people who Disco represented. This culminated in Disco Demolition Night, when 50,000 people gathered in Comiskey Park in 1979 to watch a crate of Disco records be blown up by Rock DJ Steve Dahl.
https://stereooutput.com/2019/02/18/disco-demolition-night-was-weird/
Fantastic 1970’s gay night club page history here | Crackers page here
TalkPunk
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