Photographer Dave Swindells was there when rave hit London in 1988. His new book captures the first, frenzied nights of the ‘second summer of love’
Dave Swindells: ‘Nicky Holloway’s Trip opened at the Astoria in June; by July there were 2,000 people queueing every Saturday. One night, after it kicked out at 3.30am, people started following this black car and its sound system down into the underground car park below the YMCA, the beats echoing off the concrete walls.’
The venue, behind Charing Cross station, was packed with revellers dancing energetically to a variant of house music that had recently emerged out of Chicago, typified by squelchy sound effects from a Roland TB-303 synthesiser. Spurning the dressier fashions of the 80s London club scene, many in the crowd were wearing baggy jeans and T-shirts or jumpers with loud, clashing patterns. There was a euphoria in the air that couldn’t be explained by musical appreciation alone.
What’s amazing is how many of those people are still out clubbing. So many friendship groups are still going strong’s nightlife editor for another 21 years, but he never experienced anything quite as explosive and thrilling as the rise of acid house. Aged 26 at the time, he had grown up in a London emerging from recession, where the options for clubbing – in the no-holds-barred sense he witnessed at Future – were severely limited.
A couple of months later, the tabloid backlash began, focusing on the widespread availability of drugs at acid house nights, though theSwindells was careful to keep drug references out of his reports , but he doesn’t hold back in the book – we see the full gamut of gurning faces and loved-up hugs, and even someone waving a sign with “Drugs” written on it. “The unbounded enthusiasm was partly drug-induced,” Swindells says. “But it was incredibly liberating and exciting.
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