“Richard. It’s the phone for you, my love. Better come quickly, it’s long-distance.” She dropped her voice to almost a whisper as if the authorities might be eavesdropping. “I think it’s from somewhere in Europe!”
I hopped over the privet hedge and ran into Mrs. Northcott’s hallway where the large black handset lay waiting for me next to the receiver.
I grabbed it and uttered a quick “Hello?”
I didn’t recognize the voice but I instantly knew the caller’s name.
“Richard, this is Alan Lawrie from IDEA. Can we talk?”
Alan Lawrie was the founder and owner of IDEA, International Disc Jockey and Entertainment Agency, the largest booking agency for DJs in Europe. Europa Booking had started to compete with IDEA but Alan’s company was still, by far, the biggest, having more than 160 clubs throughout the continent.
Alan continued on the phone. “Peter Brown called me. Says you just returned from Spain. Bet that was fun. If you want to come back out to Europe I would love to book you. Interested?”
He’d obviously been hoping I’d say yes because within five minutes Alan had laid out a touring itinerary for me. I would start in just eleven days on the first of October in Helsingor just north of Copenhagen, then head over to Jutland, central Denmark, for two months, then down to Switzerland in the new year where I could meet up with Peter Brown again, then stay on in Switzerland for another month but move to Basel and from there I would go to Vienna, Austria. Did it sound good?
To me at that moment it could not have sounded any better. Alan advised bringing a car if I had one as it would make getting around a lot easier, and unlike Norway with its mountainous ridge running right through the center of the country, mainland Europe has the best roads in the world. I had ten days to get it all together; car, insurance, ferry tickets . . .
I realized that my much-loved MG would be too small to hold me, my record collection, my clothes and everything I’d need for a year on the road in Europe. With Dad’s help I traded it in for a more sensible vehicle, a red Vauxhall Viva with all the trunk space I could need. It wasn’t my little blue sports car but hopefully it would be perfect for my upcoming exploits.
Herald Express, September 1975
The local press gave me a very nice send-off. Dad called the newspaper that had run an article on me in February and filled them in on the adventure ahead of me. The editor sent over a reporter and photographer and the story ran in two papers blanketing the south of England, The Herald Express and The Western Morning News. That’s when I knew for sure that my Dad, despite his entreaties for me to teach, was secretly proud of my travels and was living vicariously through my exploits. And boy, was I happy to share them with him.
GOLDEN YEARS
The ferry crossing to Copenhagen was anything but smooth. An early seasonal storm rolled south from the Artic and whipped the North Sea into a frenzy. The normal twenty-foot waves reached the towering heights of fifty to sixty feet causing the decks to be secured, meaning we were locked beneath and couldn’t go outside for fresh air for fear of being swept away to our certain death. Below deck the vessel stank of diesel and vomit and even though I don’t normally get seasick, on this crossing I threw up with the best of them.
I was curled in a fetal position in one of the three deserted restaurants on board when an old salt came up to me and handed me a tomato.
“Eat it,” he commanded.
“I can’t,” I replied. “I’ve been throwing up for hours.”
“That’s why you need to eat it,” he continued. “Something slimy like this in your belly will come right back up and bring all the bile with it. It’ll clean you out and you’ll feel better.”
I took the tomato and staggered across the pitching deck to the cramped bathroom. I only managed one bite before I regurgitated the red-skinned fruit along with the remainder of my stomach lining. He had been right about it triggering your vomit reflex, but he was wrong about something else—I didn’t feel one bit better.
I arrived in Copenhagen on September 28 with two days to spare. I planned that deliberately so I would have time to meet Alan and get to know him a little. He promised that he would find me a place to stay while I was there so I could have a couple of days to play around in the big city before heading forty miles up the coast to Helsingor.
Alan and his glamorous wife, Julie, made a lovely couple and Alan was true to his word. He had a stack of contracts for me to sign and set up a photo shoot to take some updated publicity shots. He introduced me to Zed and Baba Bailey, a husband-and-wife DJ team that lived in Copenhagen and said I’d be staying with them.
Zed and Baba lived on Landskronagade, a street that stayed busy all year long because situated at the end of their road was the liquid equivalent to a pot o’ gold, the main Carlsberg brewing company factory which conducted daily tours of their facility and were very generous at handing out samples of their product. It was common to see a large group of tourists walk in and then roll out about an hour later.
Their apartment was a gathering place for British DJs. Zed and Baba were the friendliest, most welcoming people in the world and would go out of their way to help you. As a result it was more common than not for them to have a DJ or two crashing on their floor. You didn’t even have to give them any notice, just show up and they’d find a place for you to sleep. For two nights I helped them uphold that “open door” reputation as we sat around swapping war stories from the road.
They told me I’d like Helsingor and they weren’t wrong, it was beyond amazing. The town was set on Oresund, a body of water that connects the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Barely three miles across Oresund is Sweden, so close that at night you could watch people turning on the lights in their houses.
And Helsingor held a major attraction for me. One of the Shakespearean plays I had studied and acted in at Westminster College was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and here I was walking the grounds of the very castle that inspired the Bard to write his masterpiece. All he did was change the name of Helsingor’s castle from Kronborg to Elsinore, inspired by the name of the town itself. I felt as if I were stepping back into the past.
But history was not the inspiration for the club, Svingelport; it was anything but old. It was everything I loved about Scandinavian discos and more. The sound system cranked, the lights were cool and the girls were red-hot. But it did have a very unusual time schedule. The doors opened at eight and the bartenders would put on a cassette that the DJ had left for them. At ten I would go on live and crank the music until a little after midnight. Then it would be a mellow mix for about forty-five minutes as you awaited the arrival of the Swedes. Then, by 1 a.m., you were rocking out again and stayed, full throttle, until five in the morning when the club closed.
This unique format was put together because in Sweden (like Norway) the clubs closed at midnight. So at that time all the young Swedes would empty out of the bars and clubs, stampede to the ferry terminal and cross the Oresund from Helsingborg (Sweden) to Helsingor (Denmark) where the licensing laws were a lot more liberal. Plus as the ship sailed between two different countries the tax laws were relaxed and on board during the short ten-minute ferry crossing the cigarettes and booze were all duty-free and therefore less than half the price they would cost in the regular shops.
So every night, like clockwork, at 12:40am the club would suddenly double in capacity as it filled to the brim with drunken Swedes reeking of nicotine and Bacardi. But they staggered in ready to party and I was the guy to make sure that these tipsy Norsemen and women had a good time. When closing time rolled around I would attempt to mellow out the rowdy dancers and send them home with a huge ballad like “Feelings” by Morris Albert or “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc.
After the crowd dissipated I would leave the club and head back to my apartment which was a short walk through the old town. Those early mornings were magical. Most people were still asleep and the timed security lights that burned all night mixed with the first rays o
f the sun as it rose over the Oresund. Often a fine mist would drift in from the waterway and make the cobblestone pathway slippery. I would hold on tightly to the girl that I was with to make sure that she didn’t take an unexpected tumble on those smooth, damp pebbles.
Without exception my route home would lead me to Falhlmans Konditori, a wonderful little bakery whose store window promised an unending assortment of delights. Though the shop would be closed for another hour, ten feet below street level the bakers were hard at work mixing flour, water, butter and sugar into pastries until they were ready for the wood-fired oven. The smell of their delicious baking filled the air, teasing your taste buds and luring you to Falhlmans.
Several of the bakers were regulars at Svingelport so when I bent down and knocked on the old wooden hatch in the alleyway behind the store they would be anticipating my appearance which had become as regular as the dawn and would pop open the ancient trapdoor and hand me a freshly baked loaf straight out of the oven at no charge. I would heed their warning, “Forsiktig det er varmt!” with a smile.
Good, I’d think to myself, I love it hot.
We would tear the loaf apart right there and then and chew on big chunks of that incredibly delicious fresh bread, its crust crunchy, the insides still steaming and soft, almost melting in your mouth. Whether it was the time or the place, or both, that contributed to the experience, it remains one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. My companion and I would laugh, hug and finish off that freshest of breads before we even reached the door of my waiting apartment.
It was an unforgettable time to be young and in Europe, working as a DJ, and a brand-new song from David Bowie that I had just been sent and had started playing summed it all up for me, these were “Golden Years.”
I received my new promo pictures from Alan and suddenly my white suit and I were all over that Danish coastal town.
Promo picture, October 1975
My other regular routine was going to the club a little early and putting together demo tapes for the radio. As great as DJing in the clubs across Europe was, I remained determined that one day I’d get on air with my own show. After an hour or so of working on that I would take a break from recording and get on the empty dance floor to stretch and practice my karate.
I’d been studying Shotokan since my early days at Westminster College but because of my traveling had not been able to take a class or visit a dojo for almost sixteen months. So I would work through the moves on the empty dance floors in the clubs I was playing as it gave me the space and height that even the biggest of the DJ rooms couldn’t provide.
When I went back to Europe this time around I was in a car and I had room for a few extra things so I brought my nunchucks with me. These Japanese fighting sticks were a homemade pair I’d put together using two fifteen-inch pieces of one-inch birch linked with six inches of thick nylon twine. They were perfectly fine for my use which was practice and fitness. At quite a few of the discos, the barbacks, who were the only other people in the club with me at the time, would ask to try them out, occasionally resulting in hilarious outcomes and more than a few bruises.
I really didn’t think anything about them apart from that they were a sporting hobby item like my speargun back home. I didn’t have any idea how grateful I would be just two months later that those nunchucks were with me in Denmark and not at home in Torquay in my top drawer.
November had flown by and my memories of my month-long gig in Horsens, Denmark were already thankfully fading. It was a small town with a club that didn’t go out of its way to impress the clients. And they in turn didn’t seem picky. As long as the beers were cold and the music was loud, they were happy. The hours were shorter there than in Helsingor as I was now on the mainland of Denmark—Jutland—rather than on the island of Sjaelland which is home to both Helsingor and the country’s capital, Copenhagen, so there were few tourists. But it was during my stint in Horsens that I came across a record that became a springboard to disco’s worldwide explosion and an artist who was destined to be its figurehead.
I had been reading about this song in several of the music publications and it intrigued me to no end that the BBC had banned it before it was even released. The record was described as “sex on vinyl” and the more I heard about it the more I wanted to play it. I had my father order me a copy from London and send it over. He called to tell me it was on its way but cautioned, “I tried listening to it at home but your mother had me turn it off. She said it was far too rude.” That was just what I was hoping for and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive in the mail.
When it finally came I was shocked to see it was over sixteen minutes long. My first thought was that it would be perfect to play if I needed a bathroom break. Then I slipped it on the turntable. Wow, it was as if the future had just exploded in my room, I had heard nothing like it before; the vocal was repetitive and hypnotic, the background beat came from a synthesizer not a drum set, and the message was perfectly clear, “Let’s have sex!” Perfect for a Dick Sheppard disco set.
I played it that night at the club but I deliberately held it back and waited until the evening was drawing to a close, the alcohol had kicked in and the beer goggles were on. I introduced it with a simple “Here’s a song for anyone who is looking for a little love tonight,” and started the twelve-inch.
At first everyone gave me the sideways glance that every DJ is used to getting when they play a new track that the audience doesn’t recognize—I’m always tempted to get back on the microphone and yell, “This will be your new favorite song in about a week so just go with it”—and no one got up and danced. After two minutes the floor was still empty but I noticed that the people at the bar and sitting at the tables were starting to move in their seats and look around with a kind of “Should we be the first?” vibe. Then three girls got up and starting dancing, almost swaying together on the floor and then singing along with the chorus as it repeated over and over.
It was as if they had opened the floodgates and made it safe to dance. The whole club seemed to move onto the floor as one and quickly couples matched up and began to grind on each other. My gut was right, it was the perfect late-night “let’s hook up, go home and get wild” song.
“Love to Love You, Baby” played for sixteen minutes, packed the floor and changed so many people’s minds about what disco could be. I knew that night at that small club in Horsens that I was witnessing an evolution in music and the birth of a superstar, Donna Summer. After the song finished I was mobbed by people wanting to know what they had just danced to. I was happy to tell them, knowing that from then on out it would be one of my top requests.
After the club closed I read the label carefully and saw that the track was written and produced by someone called Giorgio Moroder. I remember thinking that I hoped this wouldn’t be just a one-off record for him. I wasn’t the only one impressed by his music; unknown to me in places as far apart as Liverpool, Basildon and Paris, kids would also hear his music and decide that they too would want to play a synthesizer like that and the only way to do it would be to start a band.
Winter was coming on strong as I wrapped up my month in Horsens, and my short, fifty-mile drive to Herning was treacherous due to black ice on the roads. I was already dreading my next road trip, all the way to Kreuzlingen in Switzerland, 1,200 kilometers away. And I’d have to do it in one day to make it to my gig the next night. That upcoming trek stayed in the back of my mind all month.
The club in Herning was a mess when I arrived on Monday afternoon, December 1. Less than forty-eight hours before, during a raging Saturday night party, a big fight had erupted on the dance floor. There was only one bouncer in the club so all the bartenders leapt over the counter to help break it up, but the turning point was when the DJ, a tough-as-nails ex-seaman from Grimsby, got involved and waded in throwing haymakers.
He seriously hurt two of the people who had started the fight, one so badly that he had to be transported to hospital. Two tables were broken
and three of the speakers surrounding the dance floor had their fronts kicked in and had to be replaced. As a result there was no dancing the first two days because the sound system was down. Instead the club just opened for drinks and bar food.
Wednesday, December 3, was almost a re-opening party. It was also my first night playing and one that gave me a permanent reminder of what went down.
I arrived early to test the new replacement speakers. I don’t know what the previous ones had sounded like but these had some great bottom end and I knew they would be perfect for songs like B.T. Express’ “Do It ’til You’re Satisfied” and The Bee Gees’ “Jive Talking.” I did a quick workout on the floor for thirty minutes, then cleaned up in the manager’s office and got ready for work.
The night was uneventful and a little slow, but it was midweek and people were still nervous about the violence that had happened there that past Saturday. We closed early, at midnight, and with just a few people remaining in the club I didn’t wait for it to clear out. Instead I said goodnight to the bartenders, trying to remember as many of their names as possible, grabbed my bag with my workout clothes and cassette player in it so I could have music in my room, my practice nunchucks; and walked outside to my car.
The flame-red Vauxhall Viva was parked close to the club in the spot saved for the DJ and I opened the passenger door and put the bag on the seat. I was just about to toss in the nunchucks when I heard “Fanden!” behind me. I knew that word. It is almost the same in Swedish and Norwegian and was one of the first curse words I had learned. It means “Devil” and is directed at someone you don’t like.
The person yelling “Fanden!” definitely didn’t have me on their Christmas card list. He had been hiding behind the car next to mine. He was around my height and build but he was holding a broken beer bottle.
World in My Eyes: The Autobiography Page 11
