Class of '88

by Wayne Anthony

  Zoe was safely tucked up in bed by now. When we left the hospital and I stepped out into the cold air, the trip, which had been lying dormant for a while, went straight to my head. I was temporarily blinded by a thick coat of snow that covered everything in sight. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Walking through the ‘snow’ was like floating on clouds, and everything was so bright I could hardly see. Danny shook me out of it and took me to my car, which he had picked up earlier from Zoe’s place. When he started the engine and pressed the gas we heard a snapping sound. The accelerator cable had broken because of the ice.

  The traffic on the roads was moving very slowly so we decided to walk home. On the way back I was seeing giant snowmen throwing snowballs at each other and a sledge pulled by reindeer flying overhead. It seemed to take hours to get back and I was really starting to feel tired, but at the same time I wanted to scream out loud. When I got home I drank a litre of orange juice, lay on my bed and crashed out.

  I went to pick Zoe up six hours later. When I got there she was already dressed and waiting to go. The nurse that she had kicked and punched was looking after her. Zoe couldn’t remember anything about the night before but, when I told her about it, she couldn’t express enough how sorry she was for the unprovoked attack on the nurse. Zoe told me that, when she awoke, she didn’t know where she was or if she was dreaming or tripping. When she saw my jacket, she knew I wasn’t far away and she was safe.

  We went back to her place to begin cleaning up the glass and mess, and she cried when she saw what she’d done to her equipment. She promised herself then that she would never take a trip again, but a little birdie has told me she has actually tripped several times since. Wow! She must be fucking crazy! But this was certainly a night I’ll never forget.

  DIMINISHED RESPONSIBILITY

  I’ve truly lost count of the number of people I’ve seen lose it completely due to drugs during the Acid House years. Some bad trips just never end. An example is one guy called Ben, who was a likeable geezer and stood six feet tall with shoulders to match. Somebody introduced him to us and he started coming out now and again with our regular group, which comprised around 30 lads and girls. Wherever we went, we usually had an unlimited guest list so one more person hardly made any difference. Ben had dropped his first tab only a few weeks previously, whereas by now we were virtually professional trippers. I shudder to think now of some of the things we did while monged: not only parachute jumps but dirt-track biking, haunted houses, the works.

  One night, Ben bought about twenty purple ohms and started trying to get us all on one with him. We weren’t up for it and left the pub early with some of the local talent. Everyone else stayed behind. Ben didn’t show his face for a while after that night so we gave his girlfriend a call to check he was OK. She told us he had had a mental breakdown brought on by LSD. The drug had completely deranged his mind and he couldn’t even recognise his own girlfriend. She couldn’t hack it, and left him.

  Ben was in hospital for a few weeks. When he came out, none of his family wanted any friends to visit him so we had to wait for him to contact us. Ben went to Keith’s gaff one day to find that no one was home. Ben knocked on Keith’s neighbours’ door and convinced them that Keith had phoned him and said he was at home in urgent need of assistance. Ben asked if the neighbours would allow him to walk through their house and jump over the garden fence. Keith’s place was guarded by Charlie the pit bull terrier – a vicious beast. Somehow, Ben managed to gain the dog’s confidence and get into the house.

  When Keith returned to an empty house later that evening, the dog had vanished. His neighbour knocked to tell him of his unexpected visitor and Keith drove to Ben’s place to see if he had Charlie. Sadly, Ben couldn’t remember even going to the house. He wasn’t the person we’d known a mere few months before: he’d lost everything, including his girlfriend, house, business… and mind. Keith loved his dog but realised the truth would never be known and he wouldn’t see Charlie again. Weeks later, Ben started coming down the pub again but he still clearly wasn’t over the LSD effect. He now regarded Keith as a god and wouldn’t let me speak to him. If I even went near Keith, Ben would growl and get ready to attack me: he thought I was a devil trying to denounce a god.

  One night in the local pub, some of the regular drinkers, who were at least ten years older than us, pulled knives on a friend of ours. Luckily, they never used the weapons, nor even threw a punch: the geezers were just drunk and giving it large. However, later that night a group of my mates were determined to go on a revenge mission on one of the aggressors, who lived across the way.

  Ben was with them and, before anybody could say anything, he ran up, booted the door in and went straight into the living room, yelling at the top of his voice. By the time we got in there, the older geezers were shaking with fear, flat against the wall. They’d definitely expected us to come around because there were knives and coshes all over the floor, but now their bottle had gone. They begged us to get Ben away from them and apologised for everything. We dragged Ben away from the scene and went back into the pub. After that night, Ben wasn’t seen again for about four years.

  When he did come back, thankfully, he was his old, pre-LSD self and hardly remembered a thing. He’d been in various hospitals, but now looked really healthy and well again. He was part of a security team and sweet as a nut. Looking back, I reckon he was lucky: he could easily have spent the rest of his post-Acid life in a straitjacket.

  A THATCHED NIGHTMARE

  I used to know a charlie dealer who’d bought a thatched cottage in a forest. It was a beautiful gaff set on a private road in the middle of the woods. It had a big garden with a large hedge that went all the way round it and a garage at the bottom. The cottage was the last in a row, and at night it was pitch-black outside due to the lack of street lamps. The dealer’s garden had a movement-sensor light that was turned on by anybody entering the garden. It was only triggered off by a figure over four feet tall so wasn’t activated by foxes, dogs or any other animals.

  I went round to score some gear and, when I arrived, the dealer, Paul, was in the process of chopping some chunky lines out. He and his pals had been sniffing for hours and I didn’t need much encouragement to join them in their binge. Time flew by and suddenly it was 4 a.m. and we’d been tooting nonstop for five hours. We were talking a load of garbage, but we were enjoying ourselves. We’d drunk a bottle of Jack Daniels and done a mountain of gear, when, as we sat there laughing and joking, we noticed the light in the garden had come on. We went to investigate and found nobody at all there.

  Now, not many people knew where Paul lived and anyone that did know also knew the kind of business he was involved in. They certainly wouldn’t just walk into his garden at this time of the morning and not show their face. The boys in Paul’s house immediately sprang into action and started loading up the shotguns that were displayed in a cabinet. Then they sat by the window, looking into the dark garden for movement.

  I’d only gone to Paul’s to buy some gear and suddenly here were all these geezers holding loaded weapons, coked out of their nuts! I said I thought we were being a bit rash and we should calm down a bit because the charlie was making the situation seem a lot worse. We all sat down on the sofa and chopped up another round in silence. By now my nose was seriously clogged up.

  Then the light came back on and we jumped up and ran over to the window. There was nobody there but the boys grabbed the shooters and pointed them through the window. After a couple of minutes the light went off again and we stood in silence. Then the geezers legged it into the garden and ran around pointing shotguns at shadows in the darkness. I couldn’t believe what was happening! The light came on again as Paul’s boys rushed to search all the bushes and the garage, but thankfully they didn’t find anyone. After half an hour I made my excuses and left.

  I bumped into Paul in the pub a week later and he told me he’d found out who had entered the garden. It turned out to be his brother-in
-law, who had come to see him but got spooked by the light and gone back to his car. He’d considered the situation for a while and then returned to the garden and repeated the whole process once again, before getting into his motor and driving off. He had no idea that a gang of paranoid, coked-up geezers had been prowling the garden ready to shoot him – no idea how close he’d come to being killed.

  SKID MARKS

  It was Saturday night: PARTY TIME! A load of us were round a friend’s house before going to a big dance party out in the sticks. Before we left for the gig, we canned a quarter-ounce of sniff. Our mate Dean has only got one leg, he lost the other in an accident, but was mad for life and did his best to have a normal, hectic, eventful lifestyle. He even drove a manual 325i BMW: he’d start the car by pressing the accelerator with his hand, then, once it was mobile, he’d quickly slip it into second gear and continue to change gears with his foot.

  Dean loved going out partying and taking untold amounts of drugs. He was an absolute Hoover when it came to sniff. We all went to a party together and dropped a Cali en route. We were heading for a big event held in a series of marquees. It took four hours to get there so by the time we arrived we were off our nut. There were thousands of people in attendance and everyone had a good time: the lights and sound were bang on.

  The party got a bit tense now and again because people were taking the piss out of Dean, who was dancing around on one leg. He was pilled up and having a great time and probably didn’t even notice the people behind him who couldn’t believe what they were seeing and were jumping up and down on one leg. We didn’t think this was funny and had a few heated arguments, but we didn’t let it spoil our night: we were buzzing hard, mate, and nothing could touch us.

  It was raining for most of the night, and at one point it was pouring down and people were still riding the fairground attractions and getting completely soaked in the process (I never could understand that kind of people). After eight hours, the party sadly came to an end and we made our way to the motor, still high on the drugs consumed during the night. Thousands of cars hit the road at once and caused massive tailbacks of traffic, but there was a narrow country lane that went in the opposite direction to the other cars. We decided to go that way and off we went at 50 mph.

  My pal Touch had just purchased a brand-new automatic BMW a few days earlier. Our mate Dean was in the passenger seat and three of us were in the back. After a couple of miles we approached some built-up traffic. Touch was slightly out of it and pressed the accelerator and brake at the same time, which caused the vehicle to jerk uncontrollably but not stop. We were twenty yards from skidding into the car in front of us when Dean pulled up the hand brake.

  The back of the car came sliding around to the right, did a 180-degree turn straight off the road and landed on its side down a massive ditch. We laughed our bollocks off! Loads of people came running over to the car to find us creased up in laughter. The car was a write-off but we were fine: not even bruised.

  We had to squeeze into our pal’s motor and drive all the way back to London crammed together in two cars. Touch didn’t want the night to end on that note and suggested we go to his place to cane a half-ounce of gear he kept in reserve. We reached his gaff and immediately got out the champagne, Jack Daniels and powder, pouring the contents of the bag on to the glass table.

  Touch went to pick up his glass to toast our safe return and somebody knocked over a carton of orange juice, which completely drenched the gear. It was soaked right through and not even a toot could be recovered. Things normally seem to happen in threes so I quit while I was ahead and went home.

  PART FOUR

  Comebacks and Conclusions

  GENESIS REUNION 1992

  Probably unwisely, and two years after we’d staged our last party, we tried to make a Genesis comeback in 1992. However, the party landscape had changed a lot since we’d last tried to put on a big event, and almost inevitably our efforts ended in misery and failure. I guess they always say you should never go back.

  A close friend of ours owned some shares in a roller-skating rink in north London. It was purpose-built, but also licensed for all-night dance parties. A City venture capitalist whom I knew via a mutual friend and who had heard about the large sums of money to be made in dance parties approached me and offered us the funding to stage two parties at the rink. He gave us a big budget and told us to do whatever we had to do.

  When it came to booking the DJs, instead of sticking to the old-school formula, I tried to go with what was happening in the mainstream, which was hardcore music and not the style we played at our original gigs. I booked all the big-name hardcore DJs and two of the biggest MCs, plus state-of-the-art special effects, lighting and a massive stereo sound.

  We flooded the market with 100,000 A4 colour flyers and put five different commercials on pirate radio stations and Kiss FM. The gig received loads of press and was featured in an Easter club guide on TVAM and in the Daily Mirror. We had high expectations and got excellent feedback from clubbers. We even received fanmail congratulating us and wishing us good luck for our comeback gig.

  The stage was set and the venue looked the nuts. I remember walking into the centre of the arena. Giant projection screens covered the full length of a side wall. A mate, Pops, designed the artwork for the screens. He had come to our early parties and discovered that he had a talent for designing artwork for flyers, backdrops and projectors. He still creates artwork for a number of companies throughout the UK. It gave me a real rush when I saw our flyer projected on to the screens.

  But ticket sales were disappointing: we’d only sold around 1,500 and had 500 guests. Our investor lost over ten grand that night, and we walked away with no wages. That was in return for six solid weeks of hard graft. In retrospect, we should have stuck by our principles and played the music we’d become known for. We’d tried to second-guess the crowd and play what we thought they’d want – hardcore and progressive House. It scared people off, and we learnt our lesson.

  However, undeterred, we decided to have one last, desperate blast. Our investor, who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, was disappointed with the failure of the previous event but was a staunch geezer and agreed to fund another event. The scheduled date was only four weeks away and we had a lot of hard work to do. Time was ticking away so we printed 100,000 A4 flyers.

  I wanted to apply the pressure and keep it on. Everywhere you looked there was a team out promoting Genesis. Our flying crew worked all the hours they could and everyone involved gave it their best. During the second week of the campaign we heard disconcerting news that Raindance were staging an event on the same night as ours. Raindance had a fully licensed site for 5,000 people in Barking, Essex. They were enjoying a very successful run of excellent events. The company were well established and their gig was guaranteed to be rammed to capacity. This was a huge blow to our organisation and left the event in jeopardy. Still, we went all out to promote our gig as the best choice for a stimulating night of enjoyment.

  It didn’t work. The event was a bigger flop than the first one and we lost another thirteen jib. We were gutted and the investor wasn’t too happy either, but he cut his losses as part of the gamble. Again I found myself mentally, physically and spiritually drained of energy. I am often asked if I have any regrets about spending so much money on good times and material possessions. I do have some regrets, but I’d rather regret something I’ve done than something I haven’t. But, having done it all already, that was it for me. I’d had enough.

  CONCLUSIONS

  Drugs will always play a part in social behaviour. In writing this book I didn’t set out to glamorise substance abuse, and by no means to knowingly encourage anyone to take part in any sort of drug ritual. The dangers speak for themselves and the mass-produced synthetic drugs on today’s markets are potential killers. Before you give in to the urge of abusing your mind and body and risking death, you have to take a good look at yourself and ask your subconscious some positive
questions – beginning with ‘Why?’

  Ecstasy is the perfect weapon for waging war against mankind. The drug makes you feel highly stimulated and engenders love towards your fellow man. At the same time, it destroys brain tissue at an alarming rate and could create a nation of braindead people who won’t be able to think for themselves. This is a thinking person’s world: don’t let them take away your ability to think clearly and wisely.

  The medical profession says that it will take years before all of the long-term, negative side effects caused by Ecstasy become apparent. It’s probable that the Class of 88 will be among the first to experience some of these at first hand. There has been an unfortunate number of deaths since the pill started to break through to the mainstream in 1988. One factor agreed by doctors worldwide is that long-term Ecstasy abuse causes irreparable brain damage. They also know that revellers, from the veterans of 1988 to the relative rookies of 1997, will provide research material for the medical fraternity for many years to come.

  Hey! I don’t mind saying that’s scary fucking shit. To think that, in another two or three years, the first real casualties of 1988 will surface as psychiatric patients suffering from a previously unknown brain disorder. Key words for the present time and the future are Love, Trust, Friendship, Unity, Education and Optimism. We have to rebuild the parts of the mind that have not been affected by drug abuse.

  I’m not blaming my drug abuse on anybody but myself. I take full responsibility for the joy and pain I have inflicted on myself. We all control our own destinies. In the near future, when the full extent of the damage caused by Ecstasy has been measured through the Class of 88, people will decide to stop slowly killing themselves. But we have to act now. The drugs available today and those to come will drive you towards the same graveyard. Armed with this knowledge, we must regain control of our lives.