1
Welcome to How Clubbing Changed The
World. Over the next two hours,
I'm going to show you how clubbing
completely transformed
the world we live in. Yeah.
Clubbing is the most significant
British cultural export
over the last 30 years...
it's a multi-million pound a year
global industry,
it's the sound
of your favourite popstar,
the look of your favourite shops,
it's changed the way we socialise,
work, and how we holiday.
Clubbing has changed our attitudes
to race, class, sexuality,
and even football.
You don't believe me?
Turn it up.
We're about to go deeeeep.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Disco.Detroit techno.
Electro house.
Drum and base.
I'm Idris Elba, DJ, actor,
lifelong raver, clean-shaven.
Over the next two hours,
I'm going to be counting down
40 of the most defining moments,
that have shown how clubbing's
changed the world.
Now, we've consulted with the
international clubbing community,
and this is what they came up with.
That's right, people,
we've spoken to some proper
club land heavyweights.
You know you're only in it
cos it's hot right now
Hot right now
Turn it up right now
Put your hands in the air
if you want it right now...
The roots of the modern mass market
phenomenon of clubbing
lie in the clubs of New York in the
'70s, and Chicago in the '80s,
where disco and house music emerged.
The beats may have been born
in America
but modern club culture as we know
it is definitely British.
In the late '80s, UK youth chanced
upon a drug and a music
that offered up an antidote to
Thatcher's recession-hit Britain.
I'm going to show you how the
cultural and political shockwaves
of this chemical and sonic collision
can still be felt all around us.
You see, the influence of club
culture has reached a new height
in the 21st century
as a fresh generation
of British and European producers
and DJs are creating sounds
that have revolutionised
success and the times when it all
went a bit Pete Tong.
This, my fellow beat junkies, is how
clubbing changed the world.
To understand how club culture
has become so ingrained
in our modern lives,
we need to go back to a scene that
started on New York's underground.
It was the '70s
and the city was suffering.
In the '70s, New York was going
through a real decline, financially.
A lot of businesses moving out,
you could just start a club
almost for nothing.
These cheap, empty spaces
gave underground clubbers
the freedom to do
exactly what they wanted.
Clubs like Paradise Garage
and The Loft
broke the mould and created
a blueprint for the clubs today.
The Loft was my taste, my friends,
and continuous music.
You really could get lost in there.
Disco came out from a melting pot of
black, Latino, straight, gay, white,
male, female as well.
This disco thing, that wasn't called
disco, by the way, at the time,
we were just clubbing. And they were
just playing hot records.
But, of course, once it becomes big,
you need to put a label on it.
Disco exploded
out of the underground
and into the public
consciousness in 1977,
when a film called Saturday Night
Fever hit the silver screen.
Because we want everyone
to see John Travolta's performance,
Saturday Night Fever
is now rated PG.
When people think about disco,
they think about that film.
It was a hugely important film.
Saturday Night Fever the movie
was about racism.
Dancing transformed this, you know,
tough guy race,
you know it's like, "Hey, let's get
in the car and go beat up the guys,
"you know, from the other
neighbourhood." But when he's on
the dance floor, everybody's equal.
'Saturday Night Fever, rated PG.'
The film was a box-office phenomenon
that penetrated British suburbia.
Even your gran in Skegness
was learning how to do the dance.
Ten years later, however,
things in suburban club land didn't
seem to have moved on all that much.
In 1987, record producer
Pete Waterman developed a TV show
that aimed to capture the '80s
British club scene.
That show was The Hit Man And Her.
Hello, welcome to The Hit Man And
Her. This is the Hit Man.
And this is Her.
We're at Chorley at Camelot.
It was a representation of kind of
cheesy nightlife
that did play kind of good dance
tunes, but was only on,
and people only watched it
because all the clubs shut,
and there was just nothing to do.
Let's go dancing, come on.
'This was the first night time
television show.
'The whole point of The Hit Man And
Her was, to reflect youth culture, '
the way it changes
overnight sometimes.
But halfway through production,
there was a musical
and cultural revolution.
Repetitive electronic beats
in four four time.
House music was taking Britain
by storm.
And these are the DJs,
these are the guys.
They're mixing it as they're going
along from one to the other.
This is what real club music's
all about.
There was a kind of vacuum of voids
before 1988,
and, you know, it was
waiting for something to come in,
and that thing was acid house.
Acid house culture was like
a revival of kind of the '60s
peace and love movement. And it was
about unity and togetherness.
It was so incredible, the turnaround.
Discos were always a place to sort
of be sort of slightly wary of.
But people were talking
to each other,
people were hugging each other.
The Hit Man And Her accidentally
captured the moment
this new underground British culture
was thrust into the mainstream.
And the result was something
uniquely chaotic.
Pete, what's the track?
I think it's...
I'm not sure, actually.
Not Elvis Presley, that I do know.
This is warts and all, that's what
it was like. There's a guy
taking a slash in the
background at one point,
because he can't make it to the loo.
We'd like to say thank you for
having us, and we'll see you soon.
Rave culture and the establishment
hasn't always been the easiest
of bed fellows,
but, with the world's eyes on
Britain for this summer's Olympics,
it was techno superstars,
Underworld,
that were chosen
to provide the soundtrack.
A lot of pressure on you.
Yes, and you can see
I'm laughing hysterically.
Across the globe,
what are we known for?
Rain, Beef eaters, rave.
Rave is the heart of our culture,
and now it's at the heart
of the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
And that is right and appropriate.
Underworld being part of the Olympics
was a great opportunity
to show the world,
"Yeah, when we party here,
we know how to party."
If we went back, say, 30 years,
that wouldn't
have happened for one minute.
But underworld wouldn't be
taking electronic music
into the heart of the mainstream
if it wasn't for this next lot.
None of us would have gotten
involved in electronic music
if we hadn't heard Kraftwerk.
Kraftwerk didn't make music
in a studio,
they constructed it in a laboratory.
And when they appeared on the BBC
science show, Tomorrow's World,
in 1975, a whole generation was
inspired to create electronic music.
Wir fahren, fahren, fahren
auf der Autobahn
Wir fahren, fahren, fahren
auf der Autobahn...
Those sounds were out of this world.
Where did that come from?
I have no clue,
how these sounds are being created.
Weisse Streifen
Gruener Rand...
They had a, first of all, unique
sound. They sounded like the future.
When you listen to it, you wonder,
like, "How did they make this music?"
We all had that similar experience,
whether it was listening to
Trans-Europe Express or Man Machine,
we were like, "Wow, so this is what
people can do with electronic music."
I remember being drawn into Autobahn
as a very young child.
It's one side and it's about
a motorway that's really long,
and you can listen it
and it's like a journey.
It's just this thing that goes
on and on, what are they doing?
It's not even an instrument.
I don't know what it is,
there's just this bubbling sound.
These tracks are incredible
and there's nothing still today
that sounds like them.
From the Autobahn, to the A577.
In 1978, a casino in Wigan
was voted above New York's Studio 54
in the Billboard Magazine Chart,
as best disco in the world.
The worst sound system
in the world was at Wigan Casino.
It was the pits.
But it really was
the most amazing atmosphere.
Misery is rushing down on me
Like a landslide.
I did go to Wigan Casino,
it was truly amazing.
I mean, the music was really loud
and it was just a sea of people.
You know, with talcum powder flying
all over the place, it was wonderful.
Baby, save me
Don't you let me get caught
Up in this landslide.
Red Star Records from
the industrial heart of America
had been the catalyst
for a unique '70s club culture
in the heart of Northern England.
Northern Soul.
Northern Soul was rare soul.
'60s, mostly.
It's four by four music that
sounds good when you're on drugs.
Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away
I've got to get away...
For the first time ever,
the DJs had become absolutely
quintessential entertainment.
When the DJ played that anthem,
the whole place would dance.
I mean, everybody.
Whoa, tainted love
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
Tainted love.
Four to the floor beats,
DJs, drugs, and all night dancing,
sounds familiar doesn't it?
But if you needed proof of the
modern dominance of dance music,
you need to look no further
than this man.
I cannot even imagine music that
doesn't want to make you dance.
I wanted to share my passion
for this music with the world.
In 2009, a certain Miss Kelly
Rowland heard an instrumental track
of David Guetta's and convinced him
to let her sing vocals.
When love takes over
Yea-ea-eah
You know you can't deny.
When Love Takes Over was born
and, by the end of the year,
it had gone platinum
in seven countries.
I'm like a Jedi, you know?
I'm focussed on what I do,
and I don't do anything else.
Since then, everyone from Usher
to Akon has come in search of
some instant Guetta-fication.
He has become a modern
pop phenomenon like no other.
I wake up, I eat
and I make music all afternoon.
Then I take the plane,
I go to a new city, I perform.
It is a little bit of
a strange lifestyle, waking up,
you know, without knowing
in what country you are.
The worst part of it is that
I don't even ask myself any more.
That's my life.
To have this kind of life, you have
to be totally obsessed by music.
It's like insane.
Do join me after the break
as we follow clubbing
boldly out onto the catwalk,
deep into the world of consumerism
and we go back to
the very birth place of house music.
Dig out the white gloves, ravers,
we're only just getting started.
Welcome back to our countdown
of How Clubbing Changed the World.
Now, this is where clubbing
and consumerism collide head-on.
Now, at its very heart, clubbing,
raving, staying out all night,
whatever you wanna call it,
has always been about getting
together
and letting yourself go,
and throwing some serious shapes,
not something easy considering the
clothes we were wearing in the
'80s.
I think the designer era of the late
'80s was all about restriction.
Very close to the body,
big shoulders, you know, posing.
And it was about elitism.
I want money
That's what I want
That's what I want...
But when house music exploded out
of the underground club scene,
things started to change.
Suddenly everyone was dressing down,
cos people were just dancing.
And you couldn't be dressed up to
the nines,
because you were on the dance floor,
the stroboscope was flashing,
you'd be sweating like crazy.
There was this kind of hippy,
bonkers sort of look
that kinda crept in.
Acid house was actually
looked down on,
very much by these fashion people.
It was only
when it got too big to ignore,
that suddenly people started to
take it seriously.
As the '80s gave way to the '90s,
even the rarefied world of high
fashion
began to take notice of
clubbing's free and easy approach.
London designer, Rifat Ozbek, caught
the mood of the times
with his White Collection in 1990.
Rifat was a good mate of mine.
Really loves dance music,
and he was one of the first people
to kind of pick
up on the significance of clubbing.
A lot of the big fashion houses
suddenly realised, you know,
we can't go on selling to these,
you know,
super rich people who are sort of now
heading for their 50s.
And a huge youth quake happened.
Suddenly people like McQueen were
asked to design
for fashion houses in Paris.
It was that moment that you saw how
something from a small club
can then translate onto
a bigger scene.
As the popularity of club culture
grew in the '90s,
people began to wise up to
the marketing potential.
Nothing demonstrates electronic
music's relationship
with consumerism better than
Moby's album Play.
Released in 1999,
initially nobody was buying it.
We put out this record.
At first no-one was interested in it,
and then
we got a few licensing requests,
so I simply just sort of,
for better or worse,
probably for worse,
just kind of said yes to a lot
of things.
Advertising execs loved what they
heard and,
ten months after it was released,
every single track on
the album had been licensed
for use in TV, adverts and films.
Suddenly the album was a pop
phenomenon.
Every aspect of it was
completely accidental.
There was no strategy.
The success of the album signals
electronic music's ability
to sell everything from family
cars to chocolate.
'Thornton's, chocolate heaven.'
The thing that's most important
about electronic music is
that it just carries you away.
I think that that's the thing that
brands really want to do now.
Last year's DJ Fresh-inspired
Lucozade campaign was a classic
example.
Louder
Stronger...
It does fit really well,
and I think it's really good to just
be hearing it everywhere.
I used to work on the Lucozade
business,
rave culture and clubbing
transformed that business.
It was a bit more of a freedom drink
than Coca-cola and Pepsi,
which were the establishment.
There's been an on-going
co-opting of not just club culture,
but sort of like club aesthetics.
On a more mainstream retail level,
it is a little bit disconcerting.
For brands, clubbing represents an
attractive, energetic lifestyle.
But there is another aspect of club
culture that has filtered into
our every day lives.
And it all started in a cafe
on the island of Ibiza.
It's a place to watch
the sunset in San Antonio.
He was playing the right music
and they start to make CDs
and they got a massive success.
After raving it up all night,
most people need to relax.
In 1994, Cafe Del Mar released their
first compilation album
to cater to this need.
A whole new genre was born.
Chill out.
These compilations really were
the brand that started this sound,
and they went on to sell millions.
Ironically, chill out has become the
sound track to our daily grind.
It is the sound of your bank putting
you on hold,
or getting your legs waxed.
The aesthetics of the chill out area
have also influenced the look
of the modern corporate environment.
Our whole world has been
reconstructed by night clubs.
You look at this chair, this chair
would have been in a chill out area
in Space in 1989,
but it's now in an office, in 2012.
Offices look like chill out areas.
They're cool, they're designed,
they're basically a nightclub.
Foxtons is a really good example.
They've turned the estate agency
concept on its head.
They ripped it all out,
and turned it into a chill out room.
A bar environment.
I think they do it now without
even realising.
But dance music isn't always as cool
and sophisticated
as it likes to think it is.
I was doing The Hitman
and Her at Sale, the guy said
"Ladies and gentlemen,
Pete Waterman."
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah, I just
went, "What the shit is this?"
I literally took the record off him,
and phoned the guy in Belgium
and bought the record before
I started filming the recording.
Y'all ready for this?
In 1991, Pete Waterman released
2 Unlimited's Get Ready For This.
It stormed the charts globally, and
euro house has become the
soundtrack to our summer
holidays ever since.
Yeah! Yeah!...
Every year there's one record that
completely dominates the charts,
in kind of August and September
time,
that has been the big
holiday island smash.
Oh, we're going to Ibiza
Woah!
Back to the island...
These are cheesy, horrible,
horrible records,
but the very core of them,
it just means holiday.
But enough of these cheesy holiday
tracks,
it's time to go back, way back.
To the birthplace of house.
The year is 1984,
and the city is Chicago.
It started here in Chicago,
it's just a real underground thing.
You made the music out of your home.
We didn't have money to buy this
stuff, you know, so
everyone had to borrow everybody's
equipment, so you might have
one drum machine or keyboard going
all through the city of Chicago.
House is really a raw,
simplified version of disco.
DJs like Frankie Knuckles and
Ron Hardy began playing these
homemade disco tracks at clubs, such
as the Music Box and The Warehouse.
House music was born.
From this moment on, the sound
of clubbing would be electronic.
Whatever Frankie would play at
The Warehouse, that is house music,
everybody just went nuts over it.
The music that they heard,
they heard nowhere else in the city.
All of a sudden these little parties
start popping up.
Some of them would have signs
in their window that say,
"We play house music."
It was contagious, you know,
the whole city got into it.
In 1987, a Chicago house track
called Jack Your Body
by Steve Silk Hurley
went straight to number one in
the UK charts,
with virtually no radio support.
Jack, jack, jack your body
Jack your, jack your body
Jack, jack, jack your body
Jack your, jack your body...
Jack Your Body went to
number one, somehow.
Still don't know to this day how it
did, but it went to number one.
But that was the power of house
music.
Jack your body was a black and white
video of people
kind of jazz dancing,
and I thought, "That is so cool."
It was just so different to what you
were hearing on the radio.
So different to what pop culture
sounded like.
Jack Your Body brought house
music to Europe.
With the success of that, they were
flying us out there in droves.
A music with no popular appeal in
America whatsoever
had found its way across the
Atlantic, and been embraced
by a new generation of British
youth, hungry for change.
Gotta have house
Music, all night long
With that house
Music, you can't go wrong...
It was after four or five years of
this bleak economic landscape
of the UK then, bang, house music.
It was like "Yes!"
Set me free...
To me, it was a minority
kind of music here in America.
And, first time I went to the UK,
and I'm thinking,
"It's all white people here."
I hate to say this but, at that
time, nobody could dance.
Not like the States, man.
These people were dancing all goofy,
they didn't care how
they were looking,
they were horrible dancers, right?
But I love that,
because they didn't care, man,
cos it was just about having
a good time.
Gonna set you free...
Where would house be without the UK?
The birth was Chicago,
to take it global was the UK.
No sooner had Chicago house
conquered the UK
then another sound was beginning to
emerge from neighbouring Detroit.
That sound was techno.
Chicago House had more kind of,
it was wonderfully electronic,
but it had like a great sort of foot
hold in disco, whereas I think
Detroit techno had a kind of science
fiction element to it.
It was looking forward.
The music from Detroit was
slightly more harder edged
and slightly more industrial.
Because Detroit was a
pretty hardcore town.
Detroit is the grimmest place I've
ever been to in my life.
And it was making this amazing,
euphoric, electronic music.
In 1987, a track called Strings
Of Life by Derek May's,
Rhythim Is Rhythim exploded
onto the underground.
Detroit techno had truly arrived.
If you listen to Strings Of Life,
this was just phenomenal that record.
And when the piano dropped it made
you cry, it made you laugh,
all these emotions came out
when you heard that,
you just thought "Wow, I'm here."
We'd not heard
strings in movement of this speed.
And, you know, on top of something
so industrial and spare
and stripped down.
And so it was kinda like strings,
and industry just met head on, man,
and it just made this most
beautiful noise.
Despite its huge influence, techno
remained an underground phenomenon.
But, in 1988,
Kevin Saunderson's Inner City
released a track called Big Fun,
and the sound of Detroit techno
hit the UK top ten.
We don't really need a crowd to
have a party...
I wasn't planning on having hits,
didn't think about having a hit
actually,
I just wanted to make a great track
with a vocal on it.
And it just took off
and kind of changed my life.
Having big fun
Those chord stamps and then that
beautiful vocal, over the top.
I've gone goose pimply
thinking about it.
We're having big fun
The first time I heard Big Fun
play in the UK, I mean,
the whole club just, everybody,
just was on the dance floor,
and it just blew me away.
Completely smashed the place to
smithereens. Brilliant.
We're having big fun...
Still today when I play that record
now, people are like, "Yep, tune."
We're having big fun...
The record Big Fun, that's
when I realised
the underground had
kind of gone into the overground.
Let me take you to a place I know
you wanna go
It's a good life
Hey, hey, hey...
Inner City's next release Good
Life was an instant classic,
and its influence of modern artists
is still felt today.
Good life, for me, just represents
everything I love about a club tune.
To write a song about joy and to
write a song about being happy,
is actually really hard.
Love is shining, life is thriving
in the good life
Good life
You can't make a record that good.
You put on Good Life,
you'll be like, "I don't know how to
make a record that good."
That's completely original.
The whole techno movement,
the whole Detroit thing,
it made electronic music soulful.
It was the first time I felt
emotion, like deep emotions that
I used to feel with funk and soul,
you know, from electronic music.
Good life...
Yes, I'll be right back.
Now, join me after the break,
as club culture terrifies the drink
industry,
gets its melon twisted in
Madchester,
and a few blokes from Croydon
completely change the face of
popular music. Peace.
Welcome back.
We're counting down
the most significant moments
in the history of club culture.
Now, ever since Buddy Holly strapped
on a guitar back in the '50s,
rock and roll has been
the world's dominant youth culture,
but, with the rise of house music
in the late '80s,
it seemed that Britain had suddenly
left rock and roll for dead.
In Manchester, a handful of bands
were beginning to be influenced
by this new sound.
In November 1989,
The Stone Roses and
The Happy Mondays
appeared on Top Of The Pops.
A new scene dubbed Madchester
came gurning into our living room.
Madchester was the moment clubbing
changed rock and roll,
and The Happy Mondays
were on a mission
to twist everybody's melon, man.
You're twisting my melon, man
You know, you talk so hip, man
You're twisting my melon, man.
They were working-class lads
that weren't necessarily
the best musicians,
but had a special togetherness.
He's going to step on you again
He's going to step on you...
You have a band that were
kind of indie, NME based,
but with
great rolling, driving beats.
That's what British youth culture
has always done better
than anyone else in the world.
They've always used all their
influences and put them together,
and come up with something amazing.
The relentless rise of club culture
meant Britain's youth wanted
to party later than ever before.
And, in 1989,
a club called Turnmills in London
was granted the first
all-night music and dance license.
24 hour party people...
When I first started
going out clubbing,
you could not go to a nightclub
after two o'clock.
Clubs used to shut at two.
Now it seems really early.
You know, everybody used to look
forward
to a four o'clock, six o'clock
finish, you know,
the all-nighter was
the real holy grail of going out.
The way Britain wanted to party
had changed.
Suddenly the idea of going to a pub
was out of date.
The drinks industry had to react.
What happened, initially, with house
music is people stopped boozing,
but they still carried on
getting out of it.
It's not like they were all
raving sober.
They were out of it
in a different way.
The alcohol industry looked round
and thought, "Right,
"we need to wise up fast."
If you went to a pub
in the '70s or early '80s
there'd be a bunch of men
that got away from their wives,
nursing a warm pint of beer.
What the drinks industry did was
it lobbied government,
and they opened up
a whole new world,
and that was basically
the world of All Bar One.
All Bar One is the kind of totem
of that '90s drinks culture.
All Bar One essentially
was meant to be a kind of pre-club,
maybe even slightly clubby
environment,
so hard surfaces
so that the music sounds good.
You stand up at the bar,
and there's big windows
so that men walk past can see
there's loads and loads
of fit women in there.
But it wasn't just pub environments
that were reacting.
The drinks themselves were being
aimed at a younger, clubbier crowd.
I think that alcopops were designed
with clubbers in mind.
Because, essentially, if you're
dancing, you don't want to be
holding a pint.
20 years down the line,
we have binge-drink Britain.
Your Saturday night out
has changed for ever.
From Cardiff city centre
to Los Angeles in our countdown,
the 2012 Grammys were dominated
by one unlikely artist.
A kid from LA called Skrillex.
He might look like a Goth,
but his beats are the nastiest
and bassiest to ever hit the US.
Skrillex got three Grammys for making
really, really hard dubstep
that would scare even me,
never mind my parents.
Skrillex winning three Grammys,
going up on the podium
and shouting out,
"The Croydon Dub Crew,"
was a massive, massive moment.
Yeah, that's right.
A three-time Grammy winner
was inspired by a homebrew sound
from South London.
Its roots are in Croydon
and South London.
Croydonia.
At a record shop, really,
where I used to work,
the blueprint was created by, like,
nine or ten producers in the shop.
Dubstep was a totally new
direction for electronic music.
People didn't know how to
dance to it.
It was half-time drums,
it seemed really slow to everyone
and it didn't make sense.
Then it did.
From Croydon
to stadiums across America,
dubstep has become one of the most
sought-after sounds in modern pop.
Even Britney Spears wants
a piece of it.
There was the Britney record where it
was like everyone was talking about,
"It's got a dubstep bit in it."
I still can't get my head round it
though, it's insane.
These days we take British
innovation for granted.
But, in 1983, before house music
was even invented,
a track exploded
onto the UK dance floors
that sounded a bit like
it had been sent from the future
to give us a slap.
That weird record,
that starts with this,
"De, de," then,
"de-de-de-de-de-de-de."
What's that? You can't do that.
Out of the ashes of post-punk band
Joy Division came New Order.
And with their 1983 track
Blue Monday
they turned the generation on
to the power of electronic music,
and really short shorts.
Blue Monday legitimised electronic
dance music for a lot of people
because it involved New Order,
who had so much credibility
because they had been Joy Division.
Suddenly, it was OK for punk rockers
and people who were into new wave
to like dance music.
How does it feel
to treat me like you do?
When you laid your hands upon me
And told me who you are.
Kraftwerk became a big inspiration,
and it was finding a way
of emulating that.
It was done in binary code
in those days,
which was absolutely unbelievable.
They were the pioneers.
They were the first.
There's no other British band that
made electronic music like that.
It was incredible that, you know,
you can play it now
and it still sounds as fantastic
as it did in 1982.
Blue Monday went on to become
the biggest-selling 12-inch record
of all time.
Four years later, in 1987,
although we had fallen in love with
house music from the States,
we weren't making it ourselves.
But all of that
was about to change.
There was a kind of race to see
who was going to be the first
new breed of British DJ
to put out a DJ record.
Cold Cut got there first,
and, of course,
MARRS' Pump Up The Volume came out.
And I thought, "How can I take
the house sound and make it
something that's mine?"
So, I came up with
Theme From S-Express.
I thought "Oh, my God,
what have I done?
"I've made
a disco/house hybrid record,
"people are going to crucify me,
they're going to kill me."
The Theme From S-Express was
released in April of 1988,
and went to number one.
But, while that track was
a big tune on the UK charts,
it was a track called Voodoo Ray
by A Guy Called Gerald
that became the defining
British acid house anthem.
Voodoo Ray, you know, when I heard
that,
I couldn't believe that an
English person had made that record.
You're just like, "Wow, this
guy from Manchester's made this."
I just remember hearing that,
thinking "Oh, there's a way forward,
that's brilliant."
The feeling of the bass line
in Voodoo Ray
was like the hollow echoing
sound of The Hacienda,
and the toms and the drums
were basically
the steps or the dancers, like,
stepping.
Voodoo Ray went Top 20 in 1989,
a track made for the UK's
clubbing underground
had become a pop sensation.
I was very surprised about
Voodoo Ray getting into the charts.
It was mainly, like,
an underground acid house track,
and not
anything to do with chart music.
These days being a club DJ
is as cool as it gets.
But it hasn't always been that way.
If you told anyone you were a DJ
in the '70s, a full-time club DJ,
they'd just assume
you worked at Butlins.
When I started DJing
you were just above the glass
collector in the pond life of clubs.
DJs were the naffest
people in the world.
Suddenly it became the coolest thing.
Superstar DJs
Here we go.
In 1993 Paul Oakenfold
was asked to support
the biggest stadium rock band on
the planet, U2,
on their world tour.
In that moment the superstar DJ
was born.
Superstar DJs
Here we go.
I never thought I'd get offered
a tour as the opening act
in stadiums with U2.
I think the tag of the superstar DJ
only came about
because we was playing
to so many people.
The two monitors, turntables
and mixer, and a DJ,
rocking the house of 20,000 people.
Never before had club DJs
been so idolised.
By the late '90s, DJs had officially
become the new rock stars.
There was a period in the '90s when,
you know,
there was a ridiculous
amount of money being spent on DJs
and it was great.
I done Mick Jagger's 50th birthday
party, then they asked me
to go on tour with
The Rolling Stones.
But I said no.
Because they wouldn't pay me
enough money.
Most DJs aren't really oil paintings
to look at
but become superstars, sort of,
by default
because we put bums on seats, and
so we get treated like rock stars.
So, there you have it,
from the village disco to the
biggest venues in the world,
the club DJ has conquered it all.
Pack your glow sticks and join me
after the break
as we head out
to the sunny island of Ibiza,
we try and figure out what the
blouse and skirts Jimmy Savile has
to do with all of this,
and get our heads around
some proper dirty drum and bass.
Selecta!
Welcome back.
We've been counting down the most
defining moments
in the history of clubbing.
To fully understand the explosion on
the modern club culture,
we have to hop on a plane to Ibiza.
Terrible.
In 1987,
a young Paul Oakenfold decided to
celebrate his birthday on the island
with a few mates.
What they discovered would change
the course of club culture forever.
It was my birthday
and I wanted to go to Ibiza
and spend it with my friends.
Four of us went on holiday to Ibiza
to celebrate Paul Oakenfold's
birthday.
That's when house music was emerging
and there was all these
wonderful open-air clubs.
One night, the birthday party
went to a club called Amnesia
for an experience
they'd never forget.
You're on holiday,
dancing under the stars,
it's the first time I'd been
in an environment where I felt free.
The man on the decks at Amnesia
was a DJ called Alfredo,
and his non-stop eclectic
mix of tunes created a vibe
that the lads from London
had never experienced before.
Basically, I tried to play
music from every country.
Every style, of every time.
You're listening to Cyndi Lauper,
next to Run DMC,
next to Farley Jackmaster Funk
doing a house record.
And you're like, "Well, where the
hell are we going here?"
I know for a fact if someone had
done that in London in '87,
people would have
thrown bottles at him.
Once you set it in a magical setting,
it just becomes
something that people,
you know, that they
just live for it.
The sensation I got from the dance
floor, the atmosphere,
I wanted to make them dance.
I really wanted to make them dance.
What they had discovered
was an entirely new Balearic
clubbing lifestyle,
and they were determined to take the
vibe back home with them.
We didn't really want
the holiday to end,
so we ended up bringing
the music back with us.
It was, "OK, we're gonna do this
back in London", that's what we did.
And we went our separate ways
and we did our own thing.
The holiday that has gone down in
clubbing folklore.
But what exactly did they do when
they got back to London?
Well, bear with me,
we'll get to that later.
The figure of the club DJ became so
big in the '90s that suddenly
any pop star worth their salt
wanted a piece of clubbing's cool.
The age of the club remix
was upon us.
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain...
I think, in the '90s,
what basically happened
was people understood that
power of dance music.
And then you got a large amount of
records that were being released
where the remix was better
than the original version.
In 1996 Armand Van Helden was asked
to remix a song
by a kooky American songstress,
Tori Amos.
The result bore no relation to the
original whatsoever,
and took the idea of the remix
to a whole new planet.
I was given Tori Amos' Professional
Widow original with the parts.
Prism perfect
Honey bring it
close to your lips, yes...
The song is not a very radio-friendly
crossover type record.
It's got to be big, I said...
I have the bass track, which is just
a guy on the base for 3? minutes.
You know, live bass.
Do-do-do, do-do-do.
I just heard one little bar,
I was like, "oh!" And then I looped
that bar, and there's your bass.
I just found little vocal snippets,
chopped them up on the sampler,
like she would say something,
I would hit a line and hit a line,
and it's almost like
so you're kind of like making
another melody with the vocals.
Honey bring it close to my
Honey bring it close to my lips,
yeah
Honey bring it close to my
Honey bring it close to my...
Armand Van Helden turned
it into a worldwide smash.
These remixes were so good,
they were so much better
than the original version that it's
completely reinvented
the way that we look at producers,
the way that we look at musicians,
and the way that we kind
of look at music in popular culture.
Pop quiz.
Who invented the art of
club DJing as we know it?
David Mancuso? Grandmaster Flash?
No, think again.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
How are you today?
Jimmy Savile did invent
the DJ in the way we know it today.
There's no question.
Jim has fixed it for you...
In 1947, a young ex-miner
called Jimmy Savile
became the first person to play
records continuously,
and charge people
to come and hear him play.
First DJ I ever saw with two decks
was Jimmy Savile.
And, I have to tell you,
he was fantastic.
When this record was
playing on this side,
I'm getting the record ready
for this side.
And the fellow says, "My God,
are they in that much of a hurry?"
And I said, "Yes, my people are",
and that's where the
two decks came from.
And now that's a
worldwide phenomenon.
Top groups, top records,
top everything.
In the early '90s house music
began to get harder,
faster, and fragment
into different styles,
jungle, hardcore, hard house,
trance, happy hardcore,
speed garage, UK garage,
drum n' bass.
But, their essential DNA
remain the same,
electronic beats you could dance to.
One of the catalysts for this
musical fragmentation
was a club called Rage, put
on by DJs Fabio and Groove Rider.
We noticed that when we was
kind of like,
kind of embellishing
the music with break beat,
the energy changed a bit.
Let me hear you...
It got a little bit more darker,
a little bit more people were
kind of grooving in a slightly
different way.
It was our chance for us
to create this proto-jungle style.
When a young raver called Goldie
went to Rage,
he was inspired to start creating
tracks of his own.
Goldie had so much swagger that,
even though I
didn't know who he was,
I was like, "Who's this guy?" His
pivotal moment came with Terminator.
What was different about it was
Goldie used time stretching,
for the first time ever.
You're talking about
things I haven't done yet...
There was a lot of equipment
in the studio,
and I'd seen a HF harmoniser.
The daddy.
Terminator is out there...
By misusing an old piece of guitar
kit, Goldie invented
a revolutionary technique called
time stretching.
If you want to play a guitar at one
pitch you can play it,
but then if you want to sound
like it's ten guitars you can have
guitars playing pitch down
and guitars playing up.
But they're playing
at the same time. Hmm.
So, if I put break beat through
that, digital break beat?
"I don't know,
no-one's ever done it."
I'm like, "Let's wire it up."
In that moment the pitched up sounds
of jungle became
the serious sounds of drum n' bass.
We're running this break beat,
it was the funky drummer,
on constant loop,
and I remember holding it.
And I said, "Check this out,
it goes duf duf, duf duf.
"Let's try do do do, doo doo,
doo doo, doo doo."
And it was just like the most,
it was like every hair on every
follicle on my entire body
just stood up, and it was like,
"What the hell have we just done?"
Drum n' bass before was
kind of slighted for,
this music was speeded up vocals,
it sounded cartoonish,
and this was serious,
this was science.
Inner city life
Inner city pressure...
In 1995 Goldie released Timeless,
it was a genre defining album,
and cemented Goldie as the
popular face of drum n' bass.
I think with drum n' bass,
you can't hark back to anything
in the past that sounded like it.
It was the first thing since punk,
that we could call British,
ours, it was invented here.
I was a big drum n' bass
and jungle fan at the time,
and the UK kept that
thing like the royal crown.
I mean, they were not letting
anybody get a touch on it.
My solution basically was,
"Yeah, OK, but nobody's put it over
house beats, dancing."
In 1996 Armand Van Helden's remix
of Sneaker Pimps' Spin Spin Sugar
accidentally
created an entirely new sound.
Speed Garage.
In essence, it was a house record
but he took a real strong
jungle sort of bass line, and added
it to American garage beats.
From that speed garage was born,
and from speed garage,
the two-step sound came.
With a little bit of luck we can
make it through the night
With a little bit of luck we can
make it through the night...
The roots of UKG and even though it's
like the US... has come from US house,
we kind of took
it and kind of stamped our own way.
Hollering the rinsin' sound
Hollering the rinsin' sound
Hollering the rinsin' sound
With a little bit of luck...
I can one word it. Catchy.
Yeah, OK.
That's it. Little Bit Of Luck,
catchy. You don't forget it.
Artful Dodger, Rewind, catchy.
You don't forget it.
Re-rewind
Enter Selector...
In 1999, Artful Dodger featuring an
unknown Craig David went platinum.
UK garage was suddenly
a household sound.
The first time I heard that
was at like an under-18s thing
in Croydon,
and it was likethesong.
Like, everybody just went mad,
girls were screaming.
From the front to the back,
that's where I was at
You know, you know the Artful
Dodger do it like that...
It was different, it was kinda
weird, like, you know, a bit wacky,
and there was a lot of fun in it.
There's certain sounds in it
that if you heard in a record now
you'd go, "Oh, my God."
There's like a little oink.
But it made sense,
it was huge, that record.
When the crowd go wild...
That was the record that introduced
the world to Craig David.
And, for a lot of people,
that was the record that introduced
a lot of people to this two
step sound.
Do you really like it?
Do you really like it?
We're lovin' it, lovin' it,
lovin' it
We're lovin' it like this...
UK garage was the moment that
clubbing got seriously blingy.
We're lovin' it, lovin' it,
lovin' it
We're lovin' it like this...
You'd see huge crews of people
driving around in Audi TTs,
drinking champagne.
You know,
DJs being given wads of cash.
It did get very, very bling,
very champagne.
Everyone was like, had the champagne
life, with like lemonade wage.
Do you really like it?
Is it, is it wicked?
Course it is.
Don't go anywhere, folks,
when we get back,
club culture goes for a spin
around the M25,
picks a fight with the police,
flirts with Tony Blair,
and we go back to the night
that set the template for modern
British clubbing.
Sin.
Welcome back to our countdown of
clubbing's most significant moments.
I'm Idris Elba,
in case you were wondering.
Now, in the late '80s, as the
popularity of house music exploded,
a whole generation
wanted to dance all night long.
Unlicensed warehouse parties in city
centres were springing up everywhere
but the police would shut them down.
This new British youth movement
was reaching critical mass
and something had to give.
I think the kids just felt like,
"We need something."
And, you know, the funny thing was,
there was a feeling this was coming.
You know, it felt like a revolution.
It really, really did.
A handful of young entrepreneurial
house-heads began organising
huge illegal raves
in secret locations around the M25.
In a world before Facebook
and mobiles, getting to raves
was a bit of a mission.
Well, apparently only one person
knows where it is.
What, in the whole place?
Getting to the party
was equally as exciting
as actually being at the party.
What happened, you'd go to buy the
tickets, when you bought the ticket
you were then given phone numbers
that you'd call from call boxes.
'Thank you for calling the location
information line concerning biology.'
We had to put our 10p in
to find out where these parties were
and then get out our A-Z,
our street maps and work out
where we were going to be going
at two o'clock in the morning.
If you're going to find this party,
you've got to get on the M25,
find exit number 15 and awayyou go.
I remember,
like a scene from Close Encounters,
we just saw this light beaming
from about a mile in front of us
and we was like, "Wow, that's it."
Overnight, the M25 raves
became a matter of national concern.
Middle England was outraged
and the man in charge
of policing this new phenomenon
was former Chief Superintendent
Ken Tappenden.
When this all first started,
we were quite mystified.
We didn't know what to think
and we were bemused by it.
In these small towns,
the biggest problem they had was,
like, missing cats and dogs
and here they had 30,000 people
off their head on drugs.
My constituents were ringing up,
saying that
"There is an absolute commotion
and chaos here in the village.
"Just hundreds of cars have appeared
with thousands of people.
"They're all going to some kind of
show and, my God, we can hear it."
I cannot bear to see you leave me
I'm begging you, don't go
Begging you, begging you...
As you can see,
this is the expanse of the field
and you can see how, eventually,
there was 20,000 people
in this field and no way could
we stop that for three nights.
What they couldn't understand was
here were all these people
that had the ability to mobilise
thousands and thousands of young
people every weekend.
The government and the police were
looking for the ulterior motive.
They just didn't understand
that all it was for
was so that people could go
and take drugs in a field.
I had never seen anything like it
in my life
and neither had the MPs
when we called them out.
They could not believe
we can't do anything
and someone put in the paper
they thought they saw
the Commander dancing.
But the music was wonderful.
That M25 raves were clubbing as it
had never been seen before
and, against the backdrop
of Thatcher's Britain,
they reflected a divided
generation's desire to get together
and party as one.
This wasn't an elitist thing,
it wasn't just about London
and cool people.
This was about everyone.
Everyone could be a part of this.
A party for everyone.
Sounds like a politician's dream.
In their 1997 election campaign,
Labour presented themselves
as a young, with it alternative
to the previous Tory government.
Modern, forward looking, utterly
in tune with the times and instincts.
What we do say
is that Britain can be better.
Things can only get better...
At number 15,
it's Labour campaign anthem
Things Can Only Get Better
by D: Ream.
A club banger that had
been around for four years.
Of course, young people
like catchy tunes
and it was no doubt very effective
as part of Labour's appeal
in the '97 election.
But was it just a handy slogan
or was Labour trying to speak to
a whole new generation
of Cool Britannia clubbers
in a new way?
Blair was the new wave, wasn't he?
He would adopt anything
and everything to make himself
look cool to those people
and it kind of worked for a while.
..Can only get better...
How much this song swung Labour's
landslide victory we'll never know
but, any way you cut it,
raving politicians?
No, mate.
While Tony Blair was moving into
10 Downing Street,
two French producers called
Daft Punk
were redefining the limits
of what dance music could be.
In the 1997 they released
their debut album Homework.
People weren't able to pull off
dance music albums before Daft Punk.
It was totally way off
what was happening at that time.
They were such big risk takers.
Like Around The World,
let's just say.
Slow and had the vocal
and everything.
It was like, "What? No.
What is that?" It was crazy.
Around the world
Around the world
Around the world
Around the world...
But it wasn't just their sound
that blew people's minds.
Dance music videos were always,
like, cheap, cheesy and, you know,
Daft Punk came, working with
the best directors, like...
They were coming with an artist
statement and that was new.
The follow-up album, Discovery,
turned the generation of kids
into urban beats on to house.
A lot of kids of my generation
with a similar background to me,
that was the album.
Because what they did is they made a
house album with hip-hop techniques.
Harder, better
faster, stronger.
Kanye West was introduced to
Daft Punk by DJ A-Trak.
That then resulted in Kanye sampling
Daft Punk on Stronger.
N-N-Now that that don't kill me
Can only make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
Cos I can't wait much longer.
Most of the music from Homework
on till now in dance music
and, by the way, and R&B and rap now
- homage to Daft Punk.
Without a doubt.
Our work is never over
Work it harder...
They are the Led Zeppelin of
dance music, as far as I'm concerned.
Our work is never over.
Right, remember the holiday
Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling
took in Ibiza?
Good.
Well, here's what happened
when they got back to the UK.
In Ibiza, we found something
that no-one else did
and when you find something
no-one else does and it's fantastic,
the first thing you want to do
is share it.
Paul Oakenfold and Danny
were trying to recreate the scene
that they had found in Ibiza.
God bless them, they wanted to
recreate that on Streatham High Road
on a wet Thursday which shows
a beautiful, you know,
it's a beautiful dream to have.
Determined to recreate
the Balearic vibe,
the boys started
their own club night.
Danny and Jenny Rampling's club
Shoom which opened in 1987
has gone down in clubbing folklore.
I created a club called Shoom
in a basement in SE1
which was a very rundown area
on the South Bank of London.
We were left alone
to do what we wanted, really.
Within months,
Shoom helped transform a holiday
epiphany into a clubbing phenomenon.
In complete contrast
to other clubs at the time,
Shoom was a place
where everybody could party.
You had black and white people
dancing. You know.
In the '80s it was kind of
a bit like black guys danced.
You know, white guys stood
around the side and watched,
you know what I mean?
This was for everyone.
As we walk hand in hand
Sister, brother
We'll make it
to the promised land...
I was talking to some posh girl
and I said that my dad was a painter
and she said, "Oh, fantastic.
"My mum has got a gallery in Mayfair.
"Maybe we could get him in."
And I was like, "No, he works for
Greater London Council.
"He paints garages, doors."
That's really where the blueprint
for the rave scene came out of,
Shoom, actually.
It was an intoxicating mix,
to say the least.
Shoom had set the blueprint
for the modern clubbing experience
but the design for the first flyer
would give birth
to the unifying logo
of the acid house generation.
Danny Rampling approached me
and said I need a flyer.
The only requirement he asked for,
to this day I remember, was,
"I want smiley faces on it."
Originally designed in 1964
as a logo for an insurance company,
the smiley face was hijacked briefly
by American counterculture
in the '70s
before crashing back
into popular consciousness
with acid house
in the late '80s.
You hear it in Phuture
Shoom and Spectrum
We call it acid.
We adopted the logo.
It represented what we were about,
peace, love, unity and happiness.
But, to the establishment
and the tabloid press,
the smiley face came to symbolise
the evil of acid house.
That symbol was our culture
and they made it,
"Oh, anything to do with that,
that symbol is bad, is evil."
The smiley face was the symbol
for the acid house generation.
It represented how we were feeling.
It's just a secret Masonic signal of,
"Yeah, I'm down with that."
But if we are talking about clubbing
and branding
then none come bigger than this.
Ministry of Sound was started
by a bunch of people
who had an absolute obsession
to recreate a state-of-the-art
New York nightclub.
In 1991, a disused bus shelter
just up the road from Shoom
opened its doors for the first time.
The Ministry of Sound would
quickly establish itself
as the most powerful brand
in clubland.
It was the first time where
what we had as a cottage industry
became an industry and that was
the significance of the Ministry.
It's always been that backbone
to everything else that's gone on.
In the wake of Ministry's success,
other clubs like Renaissance, Fabric
and Cream opened around the UK.
This was the age of the super club.
When I was resident at Cream, I used
to go up there every single Saturday.
Two years, every single Saturday
and people would drive
from all over the country.
It was amazing.
It was a very, very good time
for the club scene here in the UK.
The '90s was the golden era.
By the turn of the millennium,
the bubble had burst.
The golden age of the super clubs
may now be over
but the power of the brands
they created have extended
far beyond
the confines of the nightclub.
The super clubs, you know,
were more about a lifestyle
rather than an environment.
I mean, the Ministry has gone through
any number of musical evolutions
but its alternative,
live for the moment lifestyle
has lasted a lot longer than
any of the individual forms of music
that it plays.
Can you feel that?
Can you feel that?
No? OK.
That, my brethrens
and brethren-ettes,
is the feeling of the top 10
on the horizon.
Now, you stick around cos we are
going to go clubbing in Manchester,
look at how the dancefloor
has taken the gay culture
into the mainstream
and play with a machine
that kick-started the revolution
in the music industry.
Boom.
This is it,
we're in top ten territory now,
there's no turning back.
Now, despite having a huge
following in the early '90s,
dance music was still operating
on the margins.
Unlicensed warehouse parties
and outlaw raves
were where you got your fix.
The last place anyone expected
dance music to succeed
was Glastonbury Festival.
Home of hippies, crusties
and rock and roll.
There was this real sense
that there was a lack of, you know,
dance music, or acid house,
at Glastonbury.
It took a while to seep in.
They had sort of jazz world
and blues world and everything,
but there wasn't a dance tent.
And, so, we always just used to play
little side parties
out of burger vans
and things like that.
But, in 1994,
two brothers who played techno
with torches strapped
to their heads,
were booked to play the Other Stage.
No-one was quite sure
how it was going to go down.
I remember being back stage
tuning my synths,
probably for the 20th time,
and I just heard the roar
of the crowd for the first time.
I was just getting sicker and sicker,
I actually vomited
before I went on stage, honestly.
I think I nearly lost it then,
you know, it was just like,
"Oh, my God, what have we done?"
You know?
At number ten in our countdown,
Orbital's performance
at Glastonbury in 1994
has gone down as one of the greatest
festival performances of all time.
It went so well, it was so obvious
that people wanted this type of din.
Michael Eavis is going,
"Oh, well, actually...
Well, that worked, didn't it?"
Let's open a dance area.
The flood gates had been opened,
and ever since, electronic music
has been taking centre stage
at festivals every summer.
God is a DJ...
It was quite a proud moment,
I think,
of our acceptance into pop culture,
that we'd broken out of nightclubs
and were worthy of a stage
at a festival.
Rocking the main stage
in front of 40,000 people...
"Not bad for a couple of blokes
pushing buttons," you might say.
But technology has always been
at the heart of dance music.
In 1987,
a couple of house heads from Chicago
stumbled across a piece of equipment
in a second-hand store that would
kick-start a musical revolution.
For those that don't know,
this here is called
a Roland TB-303 Bass Line.
Me and Spanky
and a group called Phuture,
we picked this up
at a second-hand shop for 40 bucks.
And this was basically designed
to emulate a bass guitar,
and it did a real crappy job of it.
But... I realised that, you know,
I can make this bass sound...
do like, some weird stuff, so.
I was like, "I'm going to just
twist these knobs in a crazy way,
"cos I like warping that sound."
And I was like, "All right,
let me start twisting the knobs."
And then we was like...
Like jamming, like this.
And we were just,
"Yeah, keep doing that."
He said, "Pierre, keep doing it,"
so I was like, "OK, OK."
I'm turning the knobs,
and then we got a sound real crazy.
And then I started
turning like this,
and then we was like, "Oh, that's it
right there, that's it."
The resulting tune was Acid Tracks.
Our number nine - a relentless
12 minute, 303 mind warp,
which single-handedly invented
an entire new sound...
Acid House.
When Acid Tracks came out
they lost their minds.
You know, I don't know what happened,
man, with that song.
You know, something just like...
That machine, that TB-303
had triggered his brain cells
and stuff.
It didn't really have a beginning,
or middle, or an end.
It just was.
It's a point of genius.
This was ground-breaking DIY music
being made on a shoestring budget.
Now everybody could get involved.
It's very cheaply done,
very affordable, very street,
very gritty, which is what the scene
was all about.
Technology was coming down in price
at the time.
So suddenly you could afford to buy
bits of kit, to make these records.
There's a bit of that
punk rock spirit...
anyone can do it,
just get up and do it.
You were in control.
You didn't have to go to outside
agents and knock on the door
and say, "Please, can I make some
art in your studio?"
You didn't have to ask
anybody's permission.
For the current generation
of bedroom producers,
making a massive club
tune has become
more affordable and accessible
than ever before.
Because of laptops,
anyone can make a beat at home,
put it on the internet
and create a huge hit.
So, this is a very, very big
revolution.
People can go from
zero to hero so quickly.
You've got a French kid called Madeon
in his bedroom in Nantes,
who literally listened
to The Beatles,
listened to Daft Punk records and
kind of worked out how to make music,
almost like cracking a multi-level
Xbox game or something.
Posted a link on YouTube and...
You know, a few months later
he's headlining Coachella.
Making a track in your bedroom
is all well and good,
but breaking into the charts
is another thing entirely.
Charley says, "Always tell your
mummy before you go off somewhere."
In 1991,
The Prodigy released Charley,
sampling a talking cat
from a public safety campaign.
Many initially dismissed it
as a novelty record.
I remember Mixmag -
the biggest magazine of the time...
absolutely slagged it off and said,
"What kind of music?
"They're using this cartoonish,
kind of, you know, take on music
"and they're breaking it down
into the lowest common denominator."
Charley says, "Always tell your
mummy before you go off somewhere."
Charley is musical genius,
because it was so simple.
Anything that comes out of that
track just hits you in the face,
and slaps you one side
and backslaps you on the other side.
Defying their critics,
The Prodigy went on to become
the face of rave culture
for the MTV generation.
I think that a lot of artists
in the electronic area,
before The Prodigy,
hadn't necessarily delivered it
in a really easily definable way.
It was all a bit faceless.
When I toured with them in '92 they
were all wearing harlequin costumes
and it was all big celebratory
hands-in-the-air rave music.
And then, a few years later,
they were tough rock guys.
I think the clever thing
about The Prodigy is that
they've always been a band,
even though only really Liam
does the production
and plays the instruments.
There was the sense of all of them
being on stage together,
all of them performing together.
It wasn't just this faceless
producer behind a wall of equipment,
it was a crew.
I'm the trouble starter
Punkin' instigator...
Their influence and unbending
dedication to dance culture
over the last 20 years
is truly incredible.
The Prodigy arethe ones
that has changed the face
of everything that we know today
when it comes to rave music.
The longstanding legacy of it is,
it allowed dance music a chance
to get into the charts
without compromise.
I'm a firestarter
Twisted firestarter...
But Prodigy's Keith Flint
isn't the first flamboyant figure
to grace our dance floors.
Believe it or not, and hear me out,
he owes a lot
to early gay club culture.
We're lost in music
Caught in a trap...
If there wasn't gay clubs
in New York in the '70s,
inventing disco music,
then dance music as we know it would
be a completely different thing.
And if gay people weren't looking
for underground electronic sounds,
then house music
wouldn't have existed either.
We're lost in music...
In 1969, it was against the law
to be homosexual in the US.
Gay men faced a lifetime
of oppression.
Their clubs were a haven.
All too often, raided by the police.
To me, is a tragedy...
There weren't allowed to be
gay clubs.
It was all very secretive.
Gay culture was clearly
an illegal culture.
Everything would change
on the 28th June
at the Stonewall Inn, New York.
The police came to shut down
a party, but this time,
after years of persecution,
the gay community had had enough.
I think that night, they were being
pushed around a lot by the police.
People just got very excited -
"We're not going to take it."
And they really exploded,
and started turning over cars,
and it really got everyone together.
With Stonewall, gay people
were saying, "Actually, no."
You know? So, it's not that
the world changes, youchange.
And when you change, you know,
you kind of liberate other people
because you say,
"You can't do that to me any more."
You make me feel
Mighty real...
After Stonewall,
gay culture was out and proud
on the dance floors of New York.
And that was just the beginning
of mainstream acceptance.
I think there's probably
an acceptance of gay culture
by the way that music crossed over
into straight clubs.
I think when people realise that
you dance to a record that goes,
"You think you're a man,
but you're only a boy,"
or "It's raining men,"
you realise you kind of
got sucked into the gay world
without prejudice.
Flamboyant freedom of expression
hasn't been the only legacy
of New York's
sexually liberated club land.
At the dawn of the '80s, New Order
visited the city's nightclubs,
and were inspired by what they saw.
We'd seen very under-designed
clubs in New York,
and really enjoyed them.
And come back to Britain
and Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson
had a vision.
They had a dream
about people like us
having somewhere to go
in Manchester.
The result was The Hacienda...
part live venue,
part art experiment.
When it opened in 1982, no-one
was really sure what it was for.
It looked great when there was
nobody in it, which was quite handy,
cos the first seven years
there was nobody in it.
The first few DJs that I ever hired
said, "Where's the microphone?"
I said, "Well, I've ripped it out,
we're not having a microphone.
"Play music,
people don't want to hear you talk."
And it was so unusual in those days.
This boy knows a hot tune,
he definitely knows a hot tune.
But then the soundtrack changed.
By 1989, the club was heaving.
At number six, it's the moment
that Hacienda got a cloakroom.
Move your body
Move your body...
When house music happened
it was just full of people.
It was like this space
had been designedforthat music.
Every time I went to Manchester
I felt like I was in Chicago.
You know, the energy was glorious.
The Hacienda was fantastic.
The Hacienda had made Manchester
the coolest place on the planet.
And the whole city
reaped the rewards.
Students came to Manchester
specifically to go to The Hacienda.
People like The Chemical Brothers,
they were in Manchester
and they kind of formed out of that.
It was really, really important,
it brought a whole new generation
of creative people into that city,
and a lot of them didn't leave.
But the vision turned sour
when the city's gangsters cashed in.
As the violence increased,
the public decreased.
So, literally towards the end
in '95/'96,
you had a club full of gangsters.
With spiralling debts, the club
closed its doors for good in 1997.
But the spirit of The Hacienda
lives on.
The Hacienda was a kind of gift
from New Order
to the people of Manchester, and
I will for ever be grateful to them.
Don't even think about
flaking out now.
Go get a cup of tea, some biscuits,
but, when you get back,
I'll be looking at the top five
defining moments in the history
of clubbing.
I'm going to show you
how the power of rave
terrified the Government, changed
the law, changed the way we holiday
and look at how our special
relationship with the USA
may have just got
a little bit more special.
Welcome back to
How Clubbing Changed the World.
This is it.
Get your heads down, get your hands
in the air, we're going top five.
Now, by the late '90s, clubbing
had firmly established itself
as Britain's most lucrative
leisure industry.
A generational shift from
the traditional family holiday
to the clubbing holiday
was occurring.
In 1997,
a television show hit our screens
that captured this new phenomenon.
Ibiza Uncovered just redefined the
way that we look at going abroad.
'Tonight on Ibiza Uncovered,
we join Kelly, Lucy and Sian,
'who've just finished their A-levels
'and are ready for a week
of club madness.'
I think, for a lot of people,
the rite of passage is going on that
lads' or ladies' holiday abroad,
whether it be to Ayia Napa, whether
it be to Ibiza or Majorca
or Cos or Malia.
And the thing that draws people over
to those islands
is the events that happen,
and it's the big club nights.
A trip to the Med to see your
favourite DJs, the clubbing holiday
has become a yearly pilgrimage
for every British teenager.
My first clubbing holiday
was Ayia Napa.
That was amazing.
Every single night, clubbing.
Even though everyone gets ill,
I remember like thinking,
"I can't survive any more",
cos raving every day for two weeks
kinda takes its toll.
But I loved Ayia Napa so much.
I'm going to remember it forever.
Things like cheap flights
to places like Ibiza,
took people out of their
environment. You know?
You don't have to go
clubbing on Doncaster,
you can go clubbing
on a beautiful beach. You know?
So, it opened people's
minds to that.
Ibiza, Ayia Napa, dream gigs.
But to make it there as a DJ,
you have to start somewhere,
and often, it's not entirely legal.
Pirate radio stations,
the underground at its most raw.
The thing that gave me a break
into like music
was definitely pirate radio.
I remember being in the kitchen
with my mum and like trying to
sort our aerial out so we could hear
it and try to tape it.
And it just absolutely
blew my mind that
someone in like North London
could hear my voice.
Darkness can't get me to sleep yet
I'm not that weak yet
I just want it louder...
If you lived in South London, you
listened to Delight FM, or Upfront.
But then if you lived in the East,
there was Rinse,
which was like kinda
playing the same stuff
but you'd always say,
"Well, your one was better."
To run one takes nerves of steel,
and a head for heights.
At one point, we had the pirate radio
station running from my bedroom.
And I remember people running
out of my kitchen,
and picking up whatever
they could find, in case
they found someone up there that was
trying to steal the antenna.
You're in tune to Kiss FM, London's
premier unlicensed radio.
One of the biggest and most
influential pirates in London
was Kiss.
Back then, home to renegade DJs
like Trevor Nelson,
Gilles Peterson and Tim Westwood.
In the early days, pirate radio was
so integral to dance music culture
because there was no outlet
for it on the radio.
Kiss was the most amazing
radio station.
For a few years, it was the voice
of London. It was in
every shop you walked down
Oxford Street or the King's Road,
everyone's car, it was brilliant.
I'll take you down, deep down
where the love lives...
So, at number four,
Kiss becomes the UK's first legal
dance station in 1990.
The establishment can no longer
ignore the clout of club culture.
In 1991, Radio One responded by
grabbing a pirate DJ of their own.
Pete Tong.
It was, you know, very old school,
and they were very supportive
but supportive in the way of like,
"Do whatever you want to do,
"we're all off down the pub
on Friday.
"Here's the keys to the radio
station."
He started The Essential Mix show
that continues to spread
the love of dance music globally.
We were able to fan the flames
of something that was really genuine,
and then it kind of caught fire.
Whether it's pirate radio
or illegal raves,
club culture has always presented
a challenge for the authorities.
By the early '90s, the M25 free
party scene had spread nationwide.
And renegade ravers were forging
an unlikely alliance
with the traveller community.
When 40,000 revellers gathered
at Castlemorton
for a free rave in 1992,
the government had had enough.
This summer at Castlemorton
and other places saw outrageous
and unacceptable examples
of the problems caused
by New Age travellers and ravers.
There was a problem,
and it was a problem which
I think government couldn't ignore,
and government had to deal with.
There will be no soft option under
the Criminal Justice Act.
In 1994, the government passed
the Criminal Justice Act.
A piece of legislation aimed at
gatherings of more than 20 people,
listening to music characterised
by a series of repetitive beats.
They can't shut down Glyndebourne,
they can't shut down, you know,
the Rolling Stones comeback tour.
They can only shut down
a group of people
who want to listen to house music.
I mean, it's outrageous.
Well, no-one ever suggested that
orchestral music was being played
in circumstances
which caused serious distress
to inhabitants of any locality.
The people's right to party
versus state control.
It was a battle that went
straight to the heart
of British civil liberties.
Submission is a crime.
You have a duty to resist this Bill.
The Criminal Justice Act
is still around today.
That Bill did a lot of damage
to the outdoor party scene,
but it actually fuelled the indoor
super-club scene,
and clubs became bigger
and business became bigger.
The rise of clubbing as a global
commercial phenomenon
over the last 25 years
has been unstoppable.
But there's always been one place
where dance music
never quite caught on.
For the last two decades, the
dominant sound of US youth culture
has been hip hop and R'n'B.
I remember that in 2007,
like, to hear dance music,
you had to go to the committed
dance station.
You can find me in the club,
bottle full of bub
Mami, I got what you need if you
need to feel a buzz...
The big change for electronic music
came when Lady Gaga and Black Eyed
Peas took electronic rhythms,
put it on their commercial songs,
and that got played on pop radio.
I gotta feeling
Oooh-oooh
That tonight's gonna be
a good night
It's not what David Guetta
did on the song,
it's what David Guetta
does every night.
I'm featuring the culture.
Tonight's the night
Let's live it up
I got my money
Let's spend it all.
Together, we created a record
that really changed
American pop music, you know?
Here we come, here we go...
I Got A Feelin' opened up
mainstream America's ears
to the sound of four-to-the-floor
house beats.
It's crazy because now it's dance
music only on the radio.
It's unbelievable.
I did not see this coming.
I definitely did not see this coming.
Yellow diamonds in the light
Now we're standing side by side
In 2011, British DJ, Calvin Harris,
produced Rihanna's We Found Love.
It spent ten weeks at the top
of the US billboard chart,
going quadruple platinum.
We Found Love, essentially,
is Calvin doing
what Calvin's done over here
for seven years, but putting
Rihanna over the top of it,
and all of a sudden,
a lot of people are going,
"What's this? I like this."
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love
in a hopeless place...
It's been a long time coming,
but the US mainstream
has now finally caught on and
they've given it a new name, EDM.
Electronic dance music.
The hottest R'n'B artist in
the world raving it up in a field.
America may have invented
house music,
but Britain invented
modern club culture.
And now, we're selling it
back to 'em, man.
That's the weirdest thing is,
it's kind of people
talking about this new EDM thing.
It's like,
"You invented it 20 years ago
"and we've been loving it
for 20 years."
UK magicians take something
that comes from America,
and turn it into something
that can appeal to masses.
Club culture has been the greatest
British cultural export
of the last 30 years.
Now, it's finally cracked America,
it looks like it's here to stay.
Dance music, and the DJ,
help resuscitate a dying industry.
It shows the power of this music,
and this music that I heard
in Red Records in Brixton, and if
you would have told me at the time,
you know, it would even been
around in 2012,
I would have said, "No chance."
Over the last two hours, we have
been looking at how club culture
has become the most pervasive
musical and cultural phenomenon
on the planet.
But what is the most significant
moment in club culture
that has shaped the world
we live in?
It's time to reveal
what was voted in at number one.
What I heard,
it was made for marriage guidance,
that's what I was told, in America.
In California, wasn't it?
It was first synthesised... Ah...
Was it in the '80s?
I'm guessing in the '60s.
Was it '45 or something?
We used to make our own
when I was a teenager.
100 years ago, Anton College,
a German chemist, was attempting
to develop a lifesaving drug
that would help blood clot.
The drug he synthesised
was MDMA, aka ecstasy.
Sweet sensation
The music that we play...
1912!
Wow.
Oh!
Wow, really?
Now that I dig. 100 years ago.
MDMA sat around in laboratory
drawers for decades
before an American doctor, Alexander
Shulgin, rediscovered it in 1976,
exploring its psychotherapeutic
effects.
But the mass social impact
of ecstasy wasn't truly felt
until it collided with house music
in Britain in the late '80s.
There were two major drugs
revolutions of the late 20th century.
One was in 1968, people taking LSD.
That was a tiny group of people.
20 years on, ecstasy,
everyone took it,
and it totally altered the world.
It turns out increased levels
of serotonin and dopamine
had a side effect -
it made you want to dance all night.
What ecstasy, MDMA, did, was it kind
of released a lot of inhibitions.
You know, you really just
felt at peace with the universe.
I remember my first ecstasy
experience was in Scotland,
and I remember about 90 minutes
later going to a friend of mine,
I was like, "I don't think it's
working, I don't feel anything."
And he looked at me and
he was like,
"Your pupils are dilated,
you're dancing like crazy,
"you're grinding your jaw,
and your hands are sweaty,
"and you're going like this."
He's like, "I think it's working."
I was like,
"Oh, yeah, you're right."
One night, someone gave me a pill
and I just suddenly went wwhhooaa,
I get it now.
And the tune was going,
"Finally, it's happening to me,
right in front of my face."
And, yeah, I got on a table
and danced and celebrated
this kind of awakening of a part
of me that I never knew existed.
By the early '90s,
a million Es a week were being
taken in Britain alone.
This was illegal recreational drug
taking on an unprecedented scale.
The euphoric effect of MDMA
was even filtering onto violent
football terraces.
We're doing this club,
and we got Millwall
and West Ham and Chelsea,
their crews in the club,
and I'd be like, "If this goes off,
we're all in trouble."
And then the next minute,
they're all popping pills
and cuddling one another.
And then you're thinking,
"This is unbelievable."
Eezer Goode, Eezer Goode
He's Ebeneezer Goode.
On the terraces,
they stopped singing
"You're going to get
your fucking head kicked in",
and they started singing,
"Let's all have a disco."
He's Ebeneezer Goode...
The Premiership owes a lot
to ecstasy.
Like any illegal drug,
ecstasy came with its own dangers.
I know that there's been
lots of people that have been
brought together through ecstasy.
I'm sure there's equally as many
people that have fallen out over it.
And even more people
that have developed
really serious mental problems
from it.
One of the down sides of ecstasy was
that we didn't know what was in it.
You didn't know these were
the consequences, so...
Then you had people
who were unfortunately dying
on the cocktails of drugs
that they were taking for the night.
There are parents who say goodbye
to their 17-year-old daughter
on the Friday evening, 5.00,
and the next time they see that
daughter is in the mortuary.
And that's the danger of drugs.
Despite the real dangers,
people still take the drug.
Ecstasy has caused a chemical
and cultural revolution
on a massive scale, and our society
has been changed for ever.
The world you live in now
is shaped by ecstasy.
The creative industries
came out of that.
The whole informality
of our culture, the class,
the seeming classlessness
of our culture, came out of that.
Definitely,
barriers were broken down,
and I think a lot of snobbery
was broken down.
It's about love, unity,
equality and empathy for the person,
you know, dancing next to you.
So, yeah, it opened up
a lot of people's minds.
These guys who were doing these
raves, they were either a banker
or a brick layer,
or working in the bakery,
and then suddenly, they were like,
"I want to try something",
and, you know, "I can do this.
I can start something."
There was a lot of, a real lot
of positivity came out the movement.
So, there you have it. Ecstasy.
The drug that met house music
and transformed our society.
These days, clubbing has become
a global language. In an age
where we have less opportunity
for communal experience,
clubbing has become
a way for people to get together
and worship as one,
in the church of dance.
I think dance music and club culture
is the most powerful
thing in the world.
It's an international language.
It doesn't matter where
you're from or where you're at,
you can be dancing to the same tune
and you relate to people.
There is this spiritual
component to it,
where there are thousands of people
with their hands in the air,
having these transcendent
sort of communal experiences.
There is something about the unity
in a club that I've just never seen.
It's almost like Utopia,
it really is.
Now, if my countdown has got you
in the mood for a proper rave up,
there's no need to head out.
Just push back your sofa,
pump up the volume,
get your bredrens over,
as Channel 4 brings
six of the world's top DJs
live into your living room for the
ultimate house party. Yeah!