“THERE ARE NO STRANGERS HERE

JUST FRIENDS YOU ARE ABOUT TO MEET…”

At seventeen and deep into the night, I was taken to a nearby town by older, far cooler peers who swore that God existed in music and dance. Struggling to live with the societal pressures that oppressed slight, fey and queer boys like me, I wasn’t a stranger to nightclub escapes—any Gen X would attest that a boy with even a hint of lip fuzz could start clubbing at thirteen.

Education derailed by Section 28, mental health struggles were borne silently and any discourse surrounding mental health was as minimal as to be invisible. So the novel promise here, was that there would be no angry men guzzling beer. No small-town dancefloors doing the two-step to Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers. Nothing but stages and plinths, and strobe lights upon eager faces; none of these people would take my teeth out, break my nose and leave me for dead – just because of the way my voice sounds when I open my mouth to speak. No potbellied Billy’s and Bobby’s menacingly enquiring, you queer?

The venue, built by architect Ernest Runtz as a music hall theatre in 1899 to play host to Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, and Harry Houdini – now housed, in its royal boxes, the 1990s most cutting-edge DJs and U.K heritage genres. Marquee talents who hosted a variety of themed weekly club nights – from Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules, Fat Tony and Graeme Park. To Allister Whitehead, Danny Rampling, Lisa Loud and Phil Faversham. Boy George, Paul Van Dyk, and Pete Tong.

Thank God, for Barry Faulkner, the genius behind this Mixmag favourite – or we never would have had the visionaries he assembled in one place to call home…

Empire, Palace of Varieties.

Revered by all discerning UK clubbers of yesteryear, it was where I threw down my teen angst and personal grief. A place that cleansed imperfections through beat and bass, drowning any pain inside, with live performances from K-Klass, Tony Di Bart and Sonique, to the uber-cool regulars, Jeremy Healy and Danny Rampling, fronting SUGAR SHACK, by appointment to elegance, dancing every Friday night.

As I stepped onto the historic proscenium arch stage for the first time—a fledgling raver, hider of hurts, repressor of tears, and seeker of acceptance—a shifting cascade of coloured lights sliced through the smoky haze. Out of the darkness, an electric army of youth emerged, mingling exuberantly amid an air of euphoric expectancy, with performance artists on stilts – their spectacle lending a surreal, mythical quality to the night as we prepared to become part of an unforgettable set, in a golden era of club culture. One that defined a generation both by those who were there and the lore passed down to those who weren’t.

Loud electronic drum beats throbbed through my tiny ribcage as sublime, melancholic piano riffs washed over us. The rhythm melted into swirling cadences and dancing ceased, as we cascaded into elongated, synthesized strings, stretching into a poignant silence that bathed us in a floodlit white trance. The eyes. Oh man, the whites of those eyes still shimmer in my memory, a luminous echo of a crowd held in entranced silence. Every face illuminated, able to look upon one another as we emitted whistles of joy and approval (or just lit another fag).

The beat dropped; music roared back and arms shot high into the night, a sea of dilated irises and kindred souls hurtled back into darkness. We plunged once more into dancing—into etching castles in the sky. This was the miracle of sentient life. It was a revelation: I was no longer alone with my queer otherness. I threw my arms up to the gods as they did, surrendering to the cosmic rhythm.

Around the Empire, wall-mounted Alphonse Mucha lithographs and Byzantine-inspired mosaics invited revellers further into a dreamlike space steeped in historical exuberance, Art Nouveau, and Renaissance splendour.

Wherever eyes fell—amid pounding hips and pouted lips—the heavens teemed with enraptured hedonists up on dress circles of ornate balconies and private boxes gilded with whimsical baroque cherubs. In these lofty perches, the well-connected of clubland surveyed their flock of impressionable youths, while the DJ’s efforts watered our thirsty souls under the gaze of a marble statue of HEBE, Goddess of youth and cupbearer of the gods.

Piano riffs swept in, heralding hope love and empowerment —a promise carved in sound. Then Amos Pizzey’s deep male vocals emerged, gospel in prose, delivering the most rapturous lyrics I had ever heard. It imparted a holy bliss upon us all, each Empire dancing soul, lifted by its power…

Lights fell, and lasers carved shapes into the haze as the bass dropped again—immediate and intense. Every hair follicle stood to attention as spaced-out glares met my own, while our sweat dripped from the ceiling in testament to the raw energy of the connected moment. I could never ever forget it.

As the strobes dimmed and the final beat echoed into the quiet of the early morning, a silence took over—a silence that felt both heavy and strangely liberating. My mind was thrown wide open, and I trusted that love was the only true light. I had pined for this sense of belonging—wandering through countless wrong places without ever knowing if it existed—and for what felt like an age.

Here, felt like home, and I could still feel the residual warmth of the crowd long after the music had stopped. Music became both truth and beauty, reflecting back a collective intimacy that only dance can conjure. Raw, unfiltered connections, long before the arrival of social media and smartphones.  

It was an organic attachment, a live endearment assuring us that none of us are alone in our sins. As long as our souls meet in the language of music, separation is simply impossible —a truth that, in the modern age, seems all but forgotten.

I was lucky enough to catch the final breaths of the Hacienda—and was there too, at Miss Moneypenny’s, The Republic (Gatecrasher) and the Music Factory‘s Love To Be, and of course Tall Trees. And that was just the straight nights, don’t even get me started on the northern gay scene… a whole other story.

I am feeling raw and reflective because I have things going on health wise – not to get mopey, but there’s nowt like an MRI scan to get you looking back at life – but my modern isolation is content, and filled with memorabilia, and recreated feels that echo through my home of a bygone age. The epic transition from a lost little raver obsessed with House and grassroots electronics, all the way to to Trance. The last great days of a pre-digital world where I met my man.

Music really did save my life, no matter how feral or written off my beginnings were. I believed in Amos’ message, and I still do – if only others could feel it.

I’m calm about whatever comes next, because I became the creative I had always dreamed I could be, and found the love I had always craved, and for anyone who has ever sought solace in melody or discovered a part of themselves in the lyrics of a song, this narrative stands as a testament to the transformative power of music and its ability to capture the shared human experience in all its forms. Don’t lose belief. Keep seeking. Keep fighting. Keep hope alive.

Of course, it wasn’t all neon and hearts. My estranged parents really should have anticipated the inevitable when I worked for them as a DJ in one of their pubs, but instead they handed me their spare three-bedroom house to manage, at seventeen—oh boy that made me, ‘a users dream’ most popular when 2am lights came up.

And to Neil, Leanne, Dominique, and Elizabeth—if you should ever read this, know it’s all forgiven. That chapter was undeniably formative, and like all human stories, it had its dark turns. Motives were murky, and the psychology of a comedown could scare even the devil. But if you didn’t lose your mind at some point in the ’90s, were you really there?

In our darkest times, we might do well to remember that light often emerges in the most unexpected places—music bonds us tenderly, assuring us that none of us stand alone in our faults or sins. When our seeking spirits resonate with music’s unvarnished truth amid life’s painful discoveries, all divides vanish—exposing the manufactured illusions intended to separate us from our collective strength, and the true power of our togetherness.

We have never had more connectivity and yet we have never been more divided by the ongoing struggles, for true equality and inclusion. I hope and pray that the youth movements of today all wake up to how humanity is being played. They’ve lost dancing – but with so much else in decline, where do they now find their tribe? Where is their togetherness within the digital and often superficial connections many people experience today, when race, gender, sexuality, and more, are the tools of such cynically manufactured culture wars?

Is it possible that in our quest for digital omnipresence, we have unwittingly traded the physical pulse of collective euphoria for a quieter, more solitary form of connectivity? What have we gained—and what have we lost—in the process? I can’t help but wonder how today’s digital connections measure up to the raw intimacy of those nights.

With clubs closing at a heart-breaking pace and thirty years after my introduction to the Empire’s Sugar Shack, I remain proud that music and dancing are still the things I do not live without. Huge shoutout to the amazing, WALLABY FC, who gave me 15 years worth of mixes I thought I’d never hear again. You have to be a certain type of person to get it. Perhaps it’s now confined to home sessions through a Mixcloud set and a bottle of five-times-filtered vodka, but those rushes endure though all manner of my own self care —the hope, the naïveté, and the love-soaked ease. Though my hair is leaving me, my beard has turned nearly all grey, my moves persist, and my heart still dares to hope, seeks joy and loves, a lot.

I know today’s youth navigate a vastly different world, but we Gen Xers have made our own beds by now. I hate to say it but I did warn those who once shared my journey—those now facing the biting realities of mortality, their decisions and the passage of time—that I’d been preparing for this new normal for decades, even as people called me a lunatic that had taken too many drugs.

I am just happy and grateful to have survived this long, and every day is a new blessing in my somewhat reclusive existence. Sure, I would like to have my written works published, but beyond that I have nothing to prove. I’ve much to say and much more to share. They’re still open wide, my sleeping eyes, but I’ve been there, done that, and am now just a content old dog observing – taking in the lessons of life, and trying to be a decent person. Even if that means having fewer friends, keeping my own counsel, and not being as accessible online or otherwise.

To the younger generations: Please don’t lose faith and know that magic does exist. Remember that we once found havens in the darkness—a place where music united us, where every beat brought us closer, and where we danced, belonged, and lived through it. Though the times may be tougher now in new ways, the need for those sanctuaries of acceptance and unity remains more urgent than ever—to promise that one day, the tides will turn back toward better days.

So dance, my brothers and sisters, even if it’s just in your kitchen.

Dance for what or whom you lost and loved the hardest, for time watches from above and within—and as the preacher proclaimed in the church of freedom, all our sins will wash away.

‘MAY THE SHACK BE WITH YOU’