History of England 1-6

The guitar, the supremely workingclass instrument, now ceded place to the synthesizer, an unmistakable symbol of modernity. This portable electric keyboard provided the distinctive sound of the early Eighties with a frantic but colourless buzz. The prevalent timbre of the voices was dull and punctuated by leaps into falsetto. The old word ‘band’, connoting brotherhood, was replaced by ‘group’; impersonal, expressive of nothing. It was a fitting reflection of the age. Indeed, with ‘groups’ springing up and dying back over mere months, it was small wonder that many artists, women in particular, chose to go solo. The pop musicians of the period were seldom openly gay, but it scarcely mattered; the queer ethos was everywhere. As if in reaction, groups like Wham! evoked the style of Fifties rockers in their sun-swept, if ersatz, masculinity. In one of the period’s better ironies, it transpired that George Michael, the lead singer and the supposed embodiment of clean-cut heterosexuality, was himself gay.

And at a time when homosexuality had become the object of increasing hostility, gay groups were well placed to resurrect a forgotten musical genre in the protest song. Frankie Goes to Hollywood was a largely gay group whose music suffered so much tinkering in the studio that only trace elements of its members’ contribution were discernible. The public cared little, however. In ‘Relax’, they offered a song so obviously suggestive of sex that it was taken off the air. In the video for ‘Two Tribes’, world leaders were shown in a boxing ring. During the Seventies, English musicians had largely eschewed the great questions of the day; even the Sex Pistols addressed them only obliquely. In any case, no focus for anger could exist when there was still a political consensus. In the Eighties, an enemy had arisen in the human shape of Margaret Thatcher. Now a spring of dissent could blossom.

By the late Eighties, the individualism of most recent music had receded before a movement whose aim, if it had one, was the dissolution of the self. ‘Acid house’ had arrived from the United States by way of the party island of Ibiza. It was an almost entirely electronic confection, with musicians nowhere to be seen. The dull thrum of the beat was overlaid by a still darker bass note, and within those liberal confines the ‘songwriters’ were free to add whatever tunes or lyrics they could lift from other artists. The effect could be mesmerizing or galvanizing. LSD was the amuse-bouche for early acid house. However, the drug was quickly displaced by MDMA or, when taken in pill form, ‘ecstasy’. The emblem for the drug, and for the music, was a smiling face. For a time, the ravers were indeed all smiles, but the drug was still illegal. The government began to clamp down on the revellers and the concerts decamped to the countryside, where ‘raves’ could continue unmolested. ‘House party’ no longer evoked a weekend away in a stately home, but a vast open-air concert in the dead of night. There was a gathering known as the ‘Second Summer of Love’ in 1988, where 50,000 attended, and a third in 1989.

Initially these conclaves proved almost impossible for the law to detect. However obvious the signs of their presence – lorries, lights, stadia, music swelling over fields of sugar beet – the raves could spring up anywhere, and the organizers proved adept at luring the police into countryside cul-de-sacs. But such strategies fell victim to an ancient principle: once the crime has been committed, time favours the law. The police began to adopt the methods of their quarry and soon the illegal outdoor ‘rave’ became little more than a wistful memory.

The music itself was to prove yet another example of the English genius for restitching foreign fashions. In front of a solitary disc jockey mixing melodies and beats, dancers swayed and writhed as if before a priest preparing a sacrifice. Indeed, it seems more than coincidental that this movement ripened in tandem with a religious revival, one as striking as it was ephemeral. The Pentecostal movement, largely Afro-Caribbean in origin, had spread to the white suburbs and even into the city. There it became ‘charismatic’. As if its meaning had not already changed enough, ‘house party’ could now refer to a weekend away on an evangelical retreat. There was a surge of new religious movements or cults, with Mormons, ‘Moonies’ and Hare Krishna devotees increasingly in evidence. The first tales of alien abduction began to be heard and garish rumours of satanic sexual abuse slid into the tabloid press. Happily, they proved insubstantial, but they too were a sign that the so-called age of consumption was avid for the wondrous, the bizarre and the unearthly.