1.Prologue
London nightclubs in the mid 80s were mostly about rare grooves and hip hop. They were frequented by working-class youths, who enjoyed themselves by drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. But musically speaking, they were somewhat conservative. They had yet to accept the house music coming in from Chicago and New York.
In the summer of 1987, three British DJs—Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway, and their friends—traveled to Ibiza on vacation. They caught wind that a club called Amnesia was hot, and decided to check it out. There, they would have their first experience with ecstasy—which was newly available in pill form—and were taken aback by the music being played by resident DJ Alfredo. Not only was he spinning the latest Chicago house, he was also putting on records that the three had previously considered completely unhip—music by artists like Kate Bush and George Michael. His uninhibited style completely blew them away.
Upon returning to London, Rampling, Oakenfold, and Holloway began to organize their own club events and establishing the acid house scene in the U.K. Their efforts blossomed over the course of the two following summers—1988 and 89—and evolved into an underground rave scene in the early 90s.
In this article I will cover the Second Summer of Love and the rave culture of the early 90s.
2.Ibiza and the Balearic Sound
Ibiza first began opening up to tourism in the 1950s, when vacationers from around Europe arrived to experience paradise firsthand. The island was also a destination for those trying to get away from the fascist Franco regime on mainland Spain.
In the 60s, as hippie culture spread from San Francisco around the world, many hippies traveled to Ibiza seeking idyllic rural life—and cheap rent. As Vietnam devolved into a quagmire and anti-hippie movements accumulated steam around the world, disillusioned flower children from the U.S. and Europe arrived in search of utopia. They were idealists and dreamers, painters and photographers and artists who talked about their dreams on the beach, played music and took drugs, and sold clothes, accessories, and other crafts at flea markets. At the time Ibiza nightlife consisted mostly of bars, which served locals, seafarers, and tourists. Eventually celebrities began going to Ibiza as well—including musicians like the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, and even progressive rock legends Pink Floyd. The latter even wrote a song about it, called “Ibiza Bar".
In the mid 70s, American disco culture spread around the world, also taking root in Ibiza. It was around this time that large-capacity venues (known as superclubs) began to open on the island. Among the best known are Pacha (capacity 3,000), which is known for its iconic cherry logo; Privilege (capacity 10,000), considered the largest club in the world; Amnesia (capacity 5,000), known for its foam parties; and Es Paradis (capacity 3,000), known for its water parties. These four clubs remain open today and are considered sacred clubbing spots, although with the new coronavirus pandemic their future—and indeed, the future of the island as a clubbing destination—is in doubt.
In the 80s, the clubs upgraded their soundsystems and began taking a more serious approach to sound design, having come to understand that dance music was meant to be felt by the entire body rather than simply heard with the ears. Ibiza DJs would freely mix tracks from genres like disco, pop, soul, jazz, funk, Latin music, flamenco, cinema music, and early hip hop and early house—a style which would come to be called Balearic beat. One of the pioneers of this style was the aforementioned DJ Alfredo of Amnesia—the guru who inspired Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfield, and Nicky Holloway. Alfredo would become resident at most of the main clubs on Ibiza at one time or another during the 90s onwards, and today is regarded as a Balearic legend. In 1991, he came to Japan for the first time and took to the decks at Shibaura Gold.
Following the Second Summer of Love, DJs from the U.K. would start to travel to Ibiza for the summer season—drawing record visitors to the island every year starting the 90s. The afterhours party scene grew. It became a badge of honor for DJs to be asked to become a resident at any of the island’s temples to club culture.
Today, tourism accounts for the majority of Ibiza’s GDP, but problems caused by overtourism have resulted in repercussions for the island’s nightlife. Over the past decade, more and more locals are voicing their concern that there are too many unlicensed parties, that tourists are ruining the island’s natural beauty and giving it a bad name. They started to take the island back. Starting the mid 2010s, the police began cracking down on more and more free beach parties. The government instituted a 6 o’clock curfew for nightclubs, and began hitting visitors with a tourism tax and environmental tax. In 2018, certain areas of the island instituted a 3 A.M. curfew for clubs and bars, and a midnight curfew for outdoor terraces.
Gradually over the past decade, Ibiza has shifted its focus from young party people on a budget to wealthy, celebrity clientele. Paris Hilton, the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels, was given a five year residency at Amnesia between 2014 and 2018, where she helmed the decks for the club’s foam parties.
●Ibiza Compilation Picks
3.The Second Summer of Love
After witnessing DJ Alfredo’s freewheeling genre-hopping and mixing, Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway returned to London in a daze. Almost immediately, they began trying to find ways to recreate their Ibiza experience, and their efforts would lead them to each start their own clubs/parties.
Rampling started an invitation-only party called “Shoom"—inspired by the fact that an ecstasy high would hit you like “shoom"! Future house and techno legend Carl Cox provided the soundsystem and DJed for the first two parties.
Paul Oakenfold started an acid party called Spectrum on Monday nights, and an indie rock and dance party called Future on Friday nights. This eclecticism would later lead him to remix tunes for some of the U.K.’s biggest rock bands.
Holloway started an acid house party called Trip, and in 1990 opened a club called Milk Bar. Starting in 1992, he began hosting Milk Bar events in Ibiza—paving the way for international DJs to hold their own parties on the island during the summer season.
Of the three, Paul Oakenfold would go on to reach rockstar-like levels of popularity. In 1993, he joined U2 on its world tour, and the experience of observing Bono would help him develop a superstar DJ aura and the DJ skills to command the attention of a stadium full of people. Backstage, he watched how hard the staff worked to make sure the shows went off without a hitch, which taught him how large-scale music events were supposed to come together.
Separate from the adventures of Rampling, Oakenfold, and Holloway, house music and Detroit techno had already arrived at a club called Hacienda in Manchester, north of London, around 1986. In 1987, DJs began playing acid house, and ecstasy pills arrived from Amsterdam. At the forefront of this scene were DJs Mike Pickerling, Graeme Park, and Jon DaSilva.
The acid in acid house was originally not about LSD or any other hallucinogen, but rather about the otherworldly sounds produced by the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that ecstasy was the catalyst that sped up the acceptance of acid house music in Manchester and London shortly thereafter. Ecstasy was the reason that a community sprouted up around the scene; even those who were anti-house—like football hooligans—were out on the dance floor embracing one another unabashedly.
The excitement inside the clubs became so great that it gradually spread outside. Organizers brought soundsystems out to parks and beaches to hold free parties (raves). This underground movement reached its peak in the summers of 1988 and 1989. Because of its similarity to San Francisco’s Summer of Love back in 1967—the fact that the movement was centered on young people and the embrace of drugs that opened your mind and made you feel blissful—the phenomenon was called the Second Summer of Love. The counterculture/subculture that evolved out of this scene became known as rave culture.
●Recommended U.K. DJ Picks
4.The Rise of Underground Rave Culture in the U.K.
Around the time of the Second Summer of Love, U.K. laws made it difficult for clubs to operate afterhours. But naturally, the more you aren’t allowed to do something, the more you want to do it. Young clubgoers went searching for places where they could dance. As a result, the scene shifted from inside the clubs to the parks, open fields, and beaches around the outskirts of London, where organizers would hold free parties—in other words, unlicensed raves.
The U.K. economy at the time was in a slump. The textile industry had stagnated, resulting in the closure of many factories and warehouses. These locations became the stage for these unlicensed parties. As the scene grew larger and larger, the raves needed larger, more powerful soundsystems, more lighting, more lasers, more fog machines. Organizers started inviting big-name international DJs to headline their events. Ravers would take ecstasy, or the cheaper, easier-to-obtain LSD, and a feeling of oneness would come over people out on the dance floor. It was around this time that rave culture began to spread throughout Europe, to America, and even to Japan.
At first, the police would see young ravers dancing out on the street at sunrise and not know what to do with them. Ecstasy was still not on their radar. But gradually, British politicians and mass media would begin to criticize the culture. In fall of 1988, the British tabloid The Sun conducted a promotional campaign offering t-shirts with yellow smiley faces on them, and called acid house “cool and groovy”. However, just a few weeks later, they published an articled entitled “The Evils of Ecstasy”.
With more and more conservative parents decrying the society’s failing morals, radio and TV stations in the U.K. began to ban acid house. The police began to aggressively crack down on unlicensed raves. In July 1990, 836 people were arrested at a rave called Love Parade. In 1992, police attempted to end an annual rave called the Avon Free Festival by driving hundreds of travelers into neighboring counties, with one county deciding to confine them to common land at a village called Castlemorton. The ravers simply got the party started there, eventually drawing an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people for a party that lasted a full week.
Another reason for the crack down was ecstasy-related deaths. In July 1989, a 16-year-old girl collapsed at the Hacienda after her boyfriend gave her a pill, and she became the first person to die of ecstasy in the U.K. With each subsequent death, the authorities moved to further crack down on the raves.
This would culminate in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, which defined rave music as “sounds wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats." 100,000 people took to the streets to protest the law, but it would end up passing anyway.
The electronic dance music scene collectively scoffed at the law. The Prodigy released a song called “Their Law”. The intelligent dance music group Autechre released an EP called Anti, with packaging that included a sticker with a disclaimer for DJs: "have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment.”
In any case, the number of illegal raves decreased following the passage of the law. Instead, organizers began going through the proper channels and holding legal, licensed festivals and raves. Ironically, “their law” had the effect of galvanizing the scene and bringing it out of the shadows.
5.Epilogue
Why did the Second Summer of Love occur in the U.K.—a largely conservative society with a clear-cut class system?
More than an embrace of acid house and electronic music, the Second Summer of Love was the direct result of the exhilarating, freeing experience of attending a rave under the influence of ecstasy.
The U.K. had seen an influx of immigrants starting in the 70s and 80s, after which tensions began rising between people of different races, religions, and lifestyles. At a rave, however, all attendees are equal and as one, even rebels, snobs, and delinquents. For outsiders, a rave was their paradise. In that sense, rave culture was a counterculture that developed in response to Thatcherism.
British people are also known for being reserved and not outwardly expressing their emotions. Under the influence of ecstasy, however, no amount of self-control stands a chance. This idea is perfectly encapsulated in the smiley face symbol. (Also see: Fatboy Slim’s logo.) Rave culture is a tie-dye alternative to gray, cloudy London skies.
Another important thing to consider is the fact that you don't have to have an advanced degree to become a DJ or producer of electronic dance music. As long as you have good taste in music, motivation, and a record bag, even someone from a working class background could become a popular DJ. Among those DJs, the chosen become superstars who are worshipped by their followers like a god. Just as rock music did in the 60s and 70s, dance music in the 80s and 90s provided one of the few ways outside of sports for working-class individuals to transcend social class.
Next time, we will explore the U.K. rave and club scene post-1994, and see how the culture spread throughout Europe, the U.S., and Japan.
