Class of '88

by Wayne Anthony

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I heard Dick’s voice say.

  ‘It’s Sergeant Anderson, you fucking ponce.’

  ‘Yeah, so what do you want?’

  ‘We’ve got your boys here and they’re a bit worse for wear. Do you want to speak to one of them?’

  ‘What boys?’

  ‘Dick, get us out of here,’ Keith said.

  ‘Dick, get us out of here!’ laughed the sergeant. ‘Well, Dick, what are you going to do? Listen, it’s all over. We’re here for a few months and we want a piece of the action. A big piece. Your schoolboy services have now been terminated. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think we should have a meet,’ Dick said.

  ‘We’ll meet you in Kingsbury Wood. If you can’t find us, don’t worry – we’ll find you. You’ve got exactly one hour.’ Click.

  ‘Well, boys, it looks like we’ve got a mini-war on our hands. Ain’t this great?’ said another bumpkin voice.

  ‘Let’s do what we’ve got to do, and get out of this shite country,’ said another. The sergeant began to address us. ‘Now we’re all going to be partners, I should apologise for the way you’ve been treated. We are men of honour, action and few words. I guarantee you that nobody – but nobody – will ever lay a hand on you boys again. I’m not going to remove your hoods yet, but your ordeal will be ending on a good note within the next couple of hours,’ he said.

  ‘But what about Dick and his security?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t worry. They won’t give you any trouble. You have my word on it,’ he said.

  Keith and I were taken outside and put into the van. We drove for fifteen minutes before the vehicle screeched to a halt and we were dragged out, frogmarched into dense woodlands and tied to a tree. They threatened us with death if we made a sound. The van sped off and the forest was alive with the sound of the animal kingdom. Hours seemed to have passed before we heard branches breaking and leaves crunching.

  ‘They’re over here,’ said a voice.

  ‘Fuck me, you boys look like shit,’ said Dick.

  Our boys slowly removed the stiff hoods and gags, which were stuck to our cheeks, heads and mouths. I looked at Keith and saw his face was bloody and bruised. He said that I looked just as bad. We ran to our rescuers’ motors and went to Keith’s gaff for an urgent meeting.

  Our security team told us they didn’t want to tango with this firm because it would result in a massive loss of life. I asked them if they were leaving us in the hands of the sergeant and said I thought their whole purpose was to protect us and our loot. Dick simply said that the sergeant’s firm were the meanest outfit in the army and would go all the way.

  Keith had some charlie in the house, which Dick poured into our head wounds to numb the pain before stitching them up with a needle and cotton. We knew if we went to hospital we’d have to answer too many questions – and we didn’t feel a thing, anyway. We got some women to come round with some more charlie and nurse us back to health. But our battered and bruised bodies ached for weeks.

  So the 64-thousand-dollar question was: do we carry on?

  Dick said that if it was any other firm than Anderson’s involved, his boys would have defended our organisation to the death. He also said our attackers were a tough bunch of lads who worked really well together, so our door would be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in the country. It was clear his earlier brave talk had been all front – he was shit-scared of Anderson. I asked him if he thought Anderson would rip us off and he said he didn’t think so, but he couldn’t guarantee it.

  We ran the problem over in our minds. We’d worked so hard to ensure Genesis was a success and had always figured paying 25% wasn’t too bad for the protection we were supposed to get. Now a bigger, badder firm wanted 50%! Where the fuck would it end? And yet, even with these calculations, we could still walk away with 30 or 40 jib from each party: a nice little earner if everything ran smoothly.

  I got a call from Anderson a week later and we arranged to meet them in a barn somewhere in the country. I reckoned it was the place we were held prisoner because when we walked inside it had the same smell. There were around 35 geezers standing around inside the barn and a wooden table in front of them was crammed with firearms.

  I told Anderson that we didn’t want any heavy weapons on the warehouse sites or at the safe houses. He said the security arrangements were made by him, under advice supplied by us. He introduced us to the SAS-style unit and told us we had nothing to worry about because, as a productive crew, they were unstoppable. It was agreed we’d take care of organising the gigs and leave the rest up to them. They promised that none of the punters would ever get smacked and, if a situation developed, it would be dealt with quickly, quietly and with no violence. We had no choice but to believe him.

  GENESIS 1989: FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH

  Next, we found a venue for 8,000 enthusiasts in a huge warehouse set on a quiet industrial estate in north London. The electricity wasn’t working and our sparky couldn’t fix it, so he wired extension leads to a couple of street lamps. This winter evening promised to attract by far our largest audience yet.

  Genesis, Sunrise and Energy were the biggest dance-party organisations in the country, and one of the perks for retaining such a reputation was the fact that we were on every party, club and pop-concert guest list in London. We’d also have a trail of women from the club entrance to the bar. As I’ve said before, most of the women didn’t mind being used and abused just to be in the company of well-known promoters. They would keep us entertained for days after the event, acting out our schoolboy fantasies. We’d book suites in the Savoy Hotel and have our own private sessions. It could easily cost us ten to fifteen grand a time but, fuck it – easy come, easy go! As Robin Williams said, cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re earning too much money.

  But we weren’t just addicted to the drugs. It was the excitement of the parties, the transformation of a nation, the culture of change. The clothes, fast motors, top restaurants, five-star hotels and beautiful women were pretty cool, too. Your bank account would get severely zapped in the shortest amount of time: on Monday you’d be holding 50 jib, on the Friday you were already squandering the rainy-day stash. My mum nearly passed out when she found out the ridiculous money the suits I was wearing cost. After that, I kept it to myself.

  Genesis really was going from strength to strength now, and for this next party we were all fired up and ready to go. The venue looked wicked, and just seeing the warehouse kept me going through all the bollocks we got from the security. Nevertheless, I had a gut feeling that this would be a difficult one and all the blagging ability in the world wouldn’t be enough for us tonight. So I got on the phone to the back-up crew and instructed them to set up the emergency warehouse as quick as possible. And my instincts proved right: as soon as I sent somebody down to the meeting point, he was besieged by punters and Old Bill.

  ‘Heads up, everyone, we’ve got a slight problem at the meeting point,’ said a voice over the radio. ‘The police are arresting the point staff. Shall we stop them? Over.’

  ‘How many people are down there?’ I asked.

  ‘Roughly a thousand. The roads have been blocked off at both ends. We’re trapped in between a hundred or so riot police and they’ve already nicked the lads holding the maps. Over.’

  ‘We’ve got to somehow get directions to the people outside the blockade,’ I said. ‘Try to recruit some workers to tell everyone where we are. Start sending them straight away. If you need more help, I’ll send someone up to you.’

  I telephoned the back-up team to see how they were getting on. Everything was running to plan and would be ready in an hour. I told them that if they were quicker I’d double their wages. When I went outside to check for signs of life, blue flashing lights were tearing down the road and I ducked behind some bushes in time for them to drive straight past. They were looking for the warehouse but our vehicles were all parked inside the building specifically
in case this happened.

  A load of cars slowed down directly outside the venue and I peeped out from behind the bush. A fleet of riot vans screeched to a halt and I told everyone over the radio they were on to us. I had a few grams of charlie, some puff, the moody lease, a phone and a walkie-talkie in my pockets. If I moved I would be spotted and I knew that attempting a blag could only get me nicked, so I stayed put.

  The police ran straight into the warehouse, where there were only 40 staff members. I jumped over a wall behind me and came around the outside of the fence to the main gate. More and more Old Bill vans were pulling up and the police were moving people on. I told a few people the details of the back-up warehouse and the word spread like wildfire. Cars screeched off on their way to the other place.

  Keith, KP and some of the crew came casually strolling out through the main gates. They told me Dibble weren’t confiscating the equipment, just making everyone pack their stuff away. We sent someone inside to get our cars, and told as many people as possible to follow us. Then we drove in convoy though the streets of east London to the substitute warehouse, a square building on two levels which could hold roughly a thousand on each floor. The electricity source was in working order, and there was no sign of Dibble.

  I was feeling very irritable. Our last event had been the biggest warehouse party to date, and here we were now in a building that wouldn’t contain a third of the people we expected. Not only were we letting ourselves down, we were waving goodbye to at least 70 grand. But the fact was that these enthusiasts needed somewhere to go, so we had to do our best to supply another building. There were a number of parties that night, including Sunrise, which was somewhere out of London. If our party wasn’t a success, that was where we’d be heading.

  I telephoned the back-up lads to open the gates and drove straight into the yard. Some of the security were already in place, and 500 party people were standing in line by the entrance. We got inside, quickly letting everyone in. So far, no Old Bill. The venue looked quite good considering the short amount of time that had been put into decorating it. The boys had done a fine job and would be rewarded for their efforts. Sergeant Anderson brought all the equipment from the command centre, and while we waited for the drink vans to arrive, I sent someone to 7–11 to purchase every non-alcoholic beverage in the gaff.

  My mood was picking up. The people who had made it this far were really excited about being there. The thrill of the chase had given them an extra rush: they’d been caught in roadblocks, stopped, searched and had to drive across London in convoy, and at the end of it they were standing in a warehouse dancing their tits off surrounded by thousands of people feeling exactly the same way. Nobody cared how big the venue was and the sole intention was to enjoy ourselves to the max.

  I was staring out of the small office window upstairs when I saw a convoy of riot police vans slowing to a halt 500 yards from the venue. 300 people were in the yard severely going for gold so I went outside, jumped on top of my car and shouted for everyone’s attention. I told the party people that the police were outside and the only way we could win was to make as much noise as possible so they’d think twice about walking through the gates.

  Everybody climbed on top of their cars and started chanting: ‘Aceeed, Aceeed, Aceeed!’ Man, what a feeling! The shouts echoed into the night sky and hundreds of voices sounded like thousands. The DJ inside must have heard us, because the music was turned down and the whole warehouse joined in. A policeman’s head peered over the closed gate, then he jumped over and unlocked the iron bolts that held them together. They swung open and a full riot squad stood on the other side. Shocked by the sight, we quietened down for a moment.

  The police started making some kind of war cry, banging their shields with their truncheons. They began to move slowly towards us and the people nearest to them ran back to where we were standing. Loads of people came out of the warehouse into the yard. The police cries were getting louder. Shouts of ‘Stand firm!’ went around the gathering and the chanting started again: ‘Aceeed, Aceeed, Aceeed, Aceeed!’

  The police abruptly stopped their advance and we got louder and began clapping and jumping up and down. The sea of blue and plastic shields retreated and headed back to their vehicles. The people had won their right to party. This called for a celebration and all the drinks were on us. The crowd were wildly ecstatic and all the grief that had happened earlier that night was quickly forgotten.

  I was called to the door on the radio to find Tony and his full crew. The Sunrise gig had been stopped by the Old Bill. I was glad to see them, but sad that their party had been fucked over. At the end of the day, though, this was the chance we took, and there was never any guarantee your party wouldn’t be stopped. Unless the venue had a music-and-dance licence, it wasn’t legal.

  We went upstairs with Tony and two of his people, Alfie and Charlie, and spent the next couple of hours abusing an unlimited personal supply of Peruvian flake. There was a club called the Tunnel Club, ten minutes down the A2, and the riot squad had bravely gone on to raid that.

  PART TWO

  Hard Times

  WESTWAY BLUES

  We were feeling unbeatable at this stage in our party-organising career – but this was about to change. We had always known that we couldn’t stay one step ahead of the police for ever, and as Dibble grew wise to our plans and began to second-guess our moves, it became harder and harder to organise illegal dance parties. It sometimes seemed that no matter what we tried to do, the Old Bill were wise to us before we even got moving. As 1989 progressed, the happy days of getting away with it were well and truly over and our hard times began.

  One example was a party we tried to put on in the spring of ’89. Henzil and Lennie Dee were the promoters behind Unit 4, a south-London-based company that produced a series of memorable events with attendances of 3,000 or more. The atmosphere at their events was electric and everyone was out to enjoy themselves. Henzil called me one day and asked us to meet the partners at a venue they had discovered beneath the Westway, near Paddington station. The huge, round building was directly under a flyover and could easily hold 15,000 people. It was the best venue I had seen. There were giant colour murals on the walls, painted for a party that had been held by Mutoid Wasteground, who later became the Mutoid Waste Company. We used to decorate our venues as twilight states, but these guys were a different class.

  The Mutoids built huge, moving, fire-breathing robots and sculptures out of scrap iron, and also painted these amazing artworks. The music policy was hard House and Techno – they had a big following who knew exactly what to expect. The murals went around the whole venue and included images of smiley faces, the sun rising, a country at war, a cemetery, the earth and star constellations. The full-colour backdrops looked like masterpieces of modern art. The ceiling was 60 feet up and broken windows surrounded a centrepiece in the roof. There was loads of bird shit, glass and rubble on the deck.

  I telephoned a fellow promoter called Jarvis and got him on board, then sent a flyer to the printer. On the day of the gig we went to the venue at midday. It was well concealed beneath the flyover and away from other buildings. It was really easy to find and had parking space for 10,000 motors or more. We brought a team of twenty to help clean the shit up. To make sure none of the glass would fall down off the roof because of vibrations from the music, we climbed up on to the roof and smashed out the already broken windows. It took four hours to get rid of the glass from the panels, but we finally did it.

  But all our efforts were in vain. Six hours later the equipment crews turned up outside with the rigs and, as if on cue, a police vehicle came around the corner and pulled up next to their vans. We were peeping through a gap in the wall. Within ten minutes, more vans turned up and nicked our crews. They didn’t even glance in our direction.

  We got on the phones, trying to sort out another crew. It was 8.30 p.m. and we were running out of time and luck. There was no sign of a system. The generators had been taken
along with the vans so darkness soon engulfed the dome. People were turning up at the meeting point five minutes away.

  Someone got hold of a lighting and sound crew who were soon en route to the venue. We gathered firewood and anything flammable to light a series of bonfires all round the dome. The murals looked really effective, and flickered in the glow of the flames. We tried our best to hold the fort until the vans turned up.

  But the police got there first and quickly put an end to the charade.

  GENESIS 1989: THE PROMISED LAND

  We were at the peak of our success, where each of our events attracted over 8,000 people, but we knew we had a fight on our hands with the police now, and events from here on in only confirmed this fear. The press and police authorities were now latching on bigtime to what was actually taking place.

  The only other promoter staging large-scale dance parties was Sunrise, who had created a sister company called Back to the Future. From their beginnings as a covert operation, Sunrise had raised the stakes and gone overground, introducing membership clubs and using huge licensed venues. They also compiled a national mailing list of people who attended their events. This way they could get word directly to the people that counted, not just at nightclubs and parties but in the comfort of their own homes.

  Although Genesis, Sunrise and Energy controlled the monopoly of larger-scale events, a number of promoters staged smaller, more intimate gatherings. You’d see the same set of people at all the underground gigs staged by Kaleidoscope, the Fridge, Shoom, RIP, Hypnosis, Clink Street, Labyrinth, Confusion, Slaughter House, The Hacienda and Queens, a pub in Slough where promoters would meet after parties. These parties were held in London, the Home Counties and Manchester in small sweat-boxes that were home to serious hardcore party animals.

  Sunrise initially created the big party boom, closely followed by us, Energy and Biology. Everyone thought that as promoters we earned a lot more money than we did, so you’d meet false people on a daily basis. Gold-diggers were under the impression we raked in £250,000 a gig. After six events they were calling us millionaires. Everyone wanted to know you and hang out with you. A steady flow of bods would walk up, shake your hand and comment about how much you were worth. Even some celebrities said we had more money than them, but I’d have swapped bank accounts with any of them.