Everything Starts With An E
“…Imagine the world’s leaders on pills, then imagine the morning after, wars causing disaster, don’t talk to me, I don’t know ya. But this ain’t tomorrow, for now, I still love ya…”
(The Streets, Weak Become Heroes - 2002)
I couldn’t name too many records that explicitly reference ecstasy in the title or lyrics. A few party tunes at the turn of the 90s engaged us with a nod and a wink (The Shamen, Happy Mondays, Chimo Bayo, and more than a few hardcore tunes). Others such as Green Velvet “La La Land”, the Chemical Brothers “The Pills Won’t Help You Now”, The Verve “The Drugs Don’t Work” or Pulp “Sorted…” adopted a slightly more cerebral, solemn or satirical tone. None of them though, with the exception of Mike Skinner, ever fully captured what it was actually like to take a pill.
Ecstasy/MDMA remains a tricky talking point with the potential to complicate life for artists and other public figures. Something too confessional can throw up legal/professional headaches or leave you at the mercy of a bloodthirsty media. The name ‘Leah Betts’ in lurid sans serif headlines still haunts parents and PRs alike. Drugs are a difficult area to write about because you don’t know who is reading, what the implications might be or how you will be judged. You don’t want to compromise family, friends or colleagues and you certainly don’t want a knock on the door.
Western societies are now roughly 40 years into the chemical carnival inadvertently unleashed by Dr Alexander Shulgin’s pharmacological experiments in the 70s, a phenomenon niche underground scenes, sects and subcultures successfully kept behind closed doors until the word got out. There are now three, possibly four, generations with some direct or indirect experience of not just the drug but the entire ecosystem around it.
As such, I think enough time has elapsed that I can lift the lid on what it was like for a naïve West Londoner to get involved in something so clandestine. A few years ago, I wrote a piece on afterparties which seemed to strike a chord. Judging by the reaction, most of the people reading that were of similar age or older. People who had earned their stripes on the rave frontline and who knew exactly what I was writing about. What I didn’t divulge in that essay, however, was where the chemical odyssey began or how life-changing it would become.
Palmer’s Green (North London) 2001. An Australian colleague mentions a forthcoming party in Acton. At the time, there were still a lot of squats across West London with Antipodeans particularly drawn to them. These were people who formed their own transient expat communities whilst travelling, living and partying hard in Europe before resuming civilian life back home. Inexplicably, I found myself at one such party. A girl I fancied from work had said she would be there but never turned up. As seemingly the sole Englishman in the building I would have to endure the same 5 hours of relentless hard house that everyone else there seemed to live and breathe. About an hour in, a Kiwi girl came around and opened a small pouch “Do you want one of these?”
I had spent much of the 90s outside London, a pretty square kid coming of age, often depressed, heavily impacted by unattainable women, a shitty course, and a bruising parental divorce. Much of it in Exeter, where the dominant student culture revolved around cider and spliff, the music more of the Bukem, Portishead or Air variety. Whilst there were occasional nods to the last vestiges of free party rave culture in Devon, I wasn’t part of it, with no profound interest in Eatstatic, Loop Guru or Sheep on Drugs.
Back in London, this more or less continued with old college friends, albeit now accompanied by trips to cheesy or indie West End clubs such as Equinox Scandale or LA2 – invariably followed by disappointment, compounded by long nightbus journeys home that reeked of kebabs, shrieking or suburban menace. Everything changed that night in Acton. The first pill, the total mental and emotion confusion, sharing stories with random people, telling a colleague you barely knew that you had always trusted him. Many of those seasoned pros in attendance no doubt found it amusing, but the impact of that night affected me in ways I still don’t fully understand today. The clandestine nature of this lifestyle makes it difficult to talk to therapists, even when anonymity is assured. You learn to internalise these thoughts and feelings over time because they cut to your core.
The chemical serotonin rush that ecstasy fuels isn’t the same as a celebratory, orgasmic or exercise-induced endorphin boost. People call it ‘euphoria’ but as an introvert it often felt to me more dreamlike, as though you were immersed in some extra sensory adventure where all noises, images and lights get distorted and everything feels oddly pleasurable. Over time the fabled ‘lovey dovey’ vibe familiar to novices morphs into something else, a need to connect to music in a friendly space with other people who get it too, the innocence giving way to a mutually understood etiquette that governs how dedicated clubbers live.
From that initial epiphany, over the next 10-15 years, barely a week or month went past where there wasn’t a ‘big weekend’ of some kind. What started at house parties went on to cover many of London’s clubs, warehouses, party pubs and events stretching from the Big Chill, Lowlife and Bestival to Worldwide, Ibiza and Barcelona’s nexus of tiny shebeens. The excitement, the tunes, the discussions on forums afterwards, the knowing comments and innuendos, the intense feeling that you had gained acceptance into some subversive community where you knew what was what and were safe from the kind of people who turned up on a Saturday to chuck glasses at say the Hammersmith Palais (1993).
E coincided with a massive shift in my musical tastes. It all suddenly mattered, in a way the rest of your life suddenly did not. Too many records to mention, so many irreplaceable moments. Elle, Sandstorms, Sueno Latino, Berlin Sunrise, Lets Be Young… music that overwhelmed you with instant hooks and waves of melancholy, music that seemed to speak to your brain in abstract ways nobody could ever quite explain, expertly timed in each instance to meet the moment and enhance the rush. The DJs knew, the punters knew, the staff knew, the promoters knew. The great dirty secret that dare not speaketh its name in public. When it was good, it was amazing, akin to finding your calling, seeing Earth from above, meeting God. Provided of course, all the stars aligned.
When you scaled the heights, reality ceased even though, objectively, it was a fleeting mirage. Your brain eventually catches up. The naivety gives way to cunning. How to source the goods, where to keep them, how to get them past Fort Knox aka the Ministry of Sound. You never knew where this stuff came from or what was in it, nor did you ever ask questions. In general, the dealers I knew were courteous, chatty and not noticeably different to anyone else in your life. I knew people who were joiners, chefs or who worked in bicycle shops. One was deeply religious. Another spent his winters practising yoga in the Himalayas. More often than not, the most frustrating aspect for the ‘punter’ was just the hanging around.
It might involve meeting someone in a Lancia at Loughborough Junction, or an Italian crustie in an Islington pub, or simply meeting a mate of a mate at a party. Thrills. Nerves. Comedy misunderstandings. Ambiguous texts. Unclear abbreviations. Codes that required instant cracking “Is Charlotte coming to the party or just Emily and her friends?” Are there dogs on the Tube? Is this guy under surveillance? Are they duds? You lived on your wits and adrenalin.
Suitably, in the early years, there was intense excitement ahead of the party. The journey, the pre-party pub, the warm-up soundtrack. With colleagues, there was an extra frisson, as you shook off the barnacles after work. Going to see James Holroyd at AKA in Holborn, realising people you worked with loved the same music, thinking you were mates for life, the camaraderie, the buzz. Or so it felt. I lost touch with them all, but for a while I felt like the King of the Castle. And then the paranoia and lack of ambition during the week. Are these people real friends? Who do you confide in at work? Who is one of us and who is one of them? Is this all getting out of hand?
There were points where it did all get too much, where you wondered whether it was all worth it. The ruined relationships and negligeable productivity. The moments whether it should’ve crossed your mind that you were now psychologically addicted, when people started to distance themselves, the rumour mill activated and bosses started to get suspicious.
For a while, the drugs were everywhere. Sometimes in pubs, at wedding parties or during work outings, at the dinner table or in chain bars. Looking back, I have no idea how many people clocked or what got said. What was it all for? Just delayed yoof, a cathartic phase or someone all at sea? Did it mean anything or was it just a laugh? Were those years wasted or was this the exciting face of living London in the fast lane? Laughably misplaced pretensions to ‘cool’ that could never be realised. As an only child prone to introspection, you waste too much time asking daft questions.
I guess the jury is still out on the ‘chemical generation’. It is perhaps still too early for the science to reach definitive conclusions, and there isn’t yet the data to span entire lives. But anecdotally, I think part of your brain is rearranged forever. The unknown is to what extent that would have happened anyway. It’s a mug’s game speculating but my advice to a younger man getting into music and the lifestyle, is to never let it overtake you, never let it become an addiction, always have a life apart from all this to keep you anchored.
It took leaving England to really get some distance and perspective on it all. Much of the last 10 years has been spent trying to mentally regroup in a world that owes little to that previous life. Letting go of the regrets, the stupid and selfish behaviour, the reckless moments, which reached a nadir as I lay there on a bed in a Glasgow apartment in a catatonic state after taking a ‘Rocket’ at the Sub Club, earnestly wondering whether to call my mother to apologise for everything I ever did or said. But there are also all the warm, fuzzy memories, the exposure to beautiful records and a cast of brilliant people who have remained loyal friends throughout. And that for me is the enduring legacy of E.