Keeping the faith: A history of northern soul 9781526150974

Citation preview

Keeping the faith

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Keeping the faith A history of northern soul Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart 2020 The right of Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 9710 2 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Front: ‘The Last Night at Wigan Casino’ © Francesco Mellina

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Contents

Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1 Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England 17 2 In the days before Wigan 51 3 The beating heart of soul: Wigan Casino 82 4 Soul explosion, fragmentation and decline 110 5 The chosen few: the experience and practice of northern soul 140 6 Locating northern soul: place, class and identity 175 7 Race, gender, sexuality and the politics of northern soul 209 8 Going back and checking it out: myth, legacy, history and nostalgia 247 Conclusion274 Bibliography 279 Index 295

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The research for this book was conducted over a five-year period, but its gestation period was much longer. Along the way a number of institutions have been crucial in providing research support and a collegiate environment at a time when universities are being transformed from places of learning and intellectual exchange to businesses where research is measured for ‘quality’ and academics have been largely proletarianised. The Centre for Historical Research (CHR) at the University of Wolverhampton has attempted to withstand such pressures in a difficult economic and political environment. We would like to thank the CHR for supporting costs associated with archive visits, oral history interviews and conference attendance. John Buckley, Mike Cunningham, Eamonn O’ Kane, Laura Ugolini, Simon Constantine, Paul Henderson, Chris Norton and John Benson have always proffered advice when needed. Ros Watkiss sourced Audrey Wilkes’s diary and retains a detailed knowledge of the music scene of the 1970s in Wolverhampton. In the wider university fellow academics and music enthusiasts such as Aidan Byrne, Mark Jones, Gerry Carlin, Alan Apperley, Paul McDonald and Ben Halligan have offered insights and listened to progress reports, as well as fielding numerous alerts regarding deferrals of the book’s completion date. Across the UK, Europe and the United States a number of researchers, scholars and academics have been crucial in providing critical feedback on talks and lectures relating to themes explored in this book. The establishment of the Subcultures Network was a major development in creating a forum to bring together researchers in rethinking the histories of popular music in post-war Britain. Matt Worley and Lucy Robinson continue to fly the flag for the network across the world. Katie Milestone, Joe Street and Sarah Raine vi

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were also helpful and gave time to answer queries relating to sources and personalities on the northern soul scene past and present. A range of audiences have been exposed to various aspects of this book over the years in teaching sessions, seminars and conferences at the following institutions: the University of Michigan, the University of Wolverhampton, the University of Memphis, the Centre for Metropolitan Studies (Technische Universität Berlin), Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Kent, and the annual meeting of the Working Class Studies Association. The following archives and libraries have been indispensable in allowing access to their collections: the National Archives (London); the British Library (London and Boston Spa); the History Centre (formerly the Local History Library), Blackpool Central Library; Museum of Wigan Life and Local Studies (Wigan); Wigan and Leigh College (Special Collections); Bolton Library; and the Manchester Police Museum. Yet public repositories of historical sources can only take researchers so far in uncovering the popular culture of the post-war working class. Without northern soul’s own cadre of antiquarians, historians, curators and preservationists this book could not have been completed. Richard Cooper has been an immense help in providing copies of the main soul music publications of the 1970s: Blues and Soul, Black Echoes and Black Music. Steve Pollard also provided access to his personal collection of every edition of the first years of Home of the Blues, Blues and Soul and related ephemera from the Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino. Adrian Smith allowed us to use his original ‘Levine Must Go’ petition and address lists, and to quote from the diaries he wrote as a northern soul fan in the early 1970s. Audrey Wilkes shared her collection of diaries from the early 1970s when she worked at the Catacombs club in Wolverhampton. Les Hare and Wendy Withers discussed their recollections and insights over many meetings in the Fletcher Moss pub in Didsbury, Manchester. Alan Adams, Thomas Allen, Steven Charlson and Colin Ross were instrumental in identifying and introducing several interviewees to the authors. The northern soul DJ Dave Evison gave us a tour and commentary of his personal collection of assorted artefacts, club advertisements, flyers and handbills. Peter Kennedy, proprietor of Drumbeat Records, Chorley, supplied editions of Blues and Soul from the early 1970s. Two people deserve a special mention for making a significant contribution to this book in terms of sources, insights and ­encouragement. vii

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After two years of fruitlessly trying to locate the ­multitude of amateur magazines and fanzines that were produced within the northern soul scene in the 1970s, an email dropped into our inbox. Dave Rimmer, a veteran of the iconic clubs from Lancashire, informed us that he had almost every magazine and fanzine, and all in pristine condition. Dave allowed us to keep this material on long-term loan, and it has proven to be an indispensable source for giving voice to the thousands of young men and women who graced the dance floors of the northern soul clubs and lived and breathed its music, emotions and factions. The late Russ Taylor of Crocodile Records should also be mentioned here. Originally from North Wales but later of Manchester, he had a deep knowledge not just of soul music but the whole history of post-war popular music and youth culture. Russ’s ‘lock-up’ storage unit close to the Apollo Theatre in Ardwick Green, Manchester, was a treasure trove of Blues and Soul magazines published between 1972 and 1975, and associated documents relating to the Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino. Thanks must also go to all the people involved in the oral history aspect of this book. The authors travelled from north to south through the midlands and back again in pursuit of the multiple histories, experiences and emotions of northern soul. Interviewees gave their time in the most generous manner, often spending many hours entertaining us in their own homes. Some of these domestic spaces were themselves sites of northern soul where record collections, ­photographs and publications conveyed the centrality of music to individual life stories. Some interviews were conducted in coffee bars, motorway service stations and pubs, capturing the ebb and flow of modern Britain. Fragments of memories were also sourced through rushed telephone calls and informal conversations at social events. For all the people consulted for this book, soul music was and remains a constant. They are all now historians and curators of the scene, producing both printed and electronic acounts. Researchers can engage with these people through a multiplicity of Facebook groups, websites and Twitter accounts to uncover the famous, infamous and marginal in what some have termed the strange world of northern soul. Thanks should also go to Francesco Mellina for use of the photograph ‘The Last Night at Wigan Casino (1981)’ used on the cover of the book and mirrorpix for the interior shot of the Casino on the back. Keith would like to thank the following compadres: Andy Perchard, Ed Amann, Kev Jones, Chris Thompson, Angela Bartie, David Howell, viii

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Nev Kirk, Rick and John Murtough and Ian Mallalieu. But especially his sisters Bev, Gill and Lorraine, who provided a soundtrack of Motown classics throughout his formative years in Leigh and Mostyn. The miners of Point of Ayr also played a role in instilling a sense of working-class culture in all its nuance and complexity, particularly Keith Hett, Hugh Jones and the rest of the ‘secret six’. Nicola Ingram was a constant source of love and support, and is by now really glad that the book is done. Her intellect and insight are immense, and she is one of the few examples of a genuinely working-class academic working in our predominantly middle-class universities. Ellie Gildart, aged thirteen, is now carrying the torch and sharing Keith’s obsessions with soul music and Bruce Springsteen. A final dedication goes to the late Brian Gildart, thirty-nine years a coal miner, and bearer of the scars both physical and mental of being working class. Stephen would like to thank the University of Huddersfield and colleagues there who during his final years of full-time employment endured an obsession with ‘the book’ and provided resources and support for the initial research. In a similar vein, thanks go family and  friends for having listened to him talking about this obscure interest during the last few years. To like-minded individuals down the pub who have engaged in discussion and debate about the ‘scene’ and listened to sounds, many long forgotten, punctuated by inebriated cries of ‘Have you finished the book yet?’, this one’s for you. Having had the privilege, at a time that now seems aeons ago, of attending many of the iconic venues mentioned in this book, notably Wigan Casino, the Highland Room at Blackpool Mecca, Manchester Ritz and Top of the World, Stafford, Stephen would never have dreamt that one day he would be involved in writing a book about the subject. This book is dedicated to all those soul fans who kept the faith during the 1970s and early 1980s and have done so since, but especially those small knots of friends and acquaintances who either made the coach trip to Blackpool Mecca or, like characters in a John le Carré thriller, shuffled off into what seemed like endlessly dark nights to catch the last bus from Chorley or Horwich to attend Wigan Casino. A variety of public spaces have been occupied by the authors in discussing progress on the book, what had to be included, what should be cut, and what soul fans will say we have got wrong. Café Nero on Piccadilly Station Approach, Manchester, was a regular meeting point, located in a part of the city within walking distance of the site of the original Twisted Wheel club. Here is modern England with all its ix

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contradictions, inequalities and vibrant cultures. Hipster bars, rough sleepers, media stars and the remnants of an industrial working class carry memories of ‘the land of a thousand dances’.

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In the 1970s northern soul held a pivotal position in British youth culture. It originated in the English north-west and midlands in the late 1960s, and by 1976 it was attracting thousands of enthusiasts across the country.1 They flocked to hundreds of venues where ‘rare soul’ records by predominantly black performers, recorded mostly between 1964 and 1968, were spun by disc jockeys (DJs) who became legends of the scene. For much of the 1970s northern soul was largely ignored by the national music press and found little space in the wider media.2 The lack of awareness and marginalisation of northern soul in the lexicon of youth culture and popular music was linked to three interrelated factors. First, the scene predominated outside London, and was most prominent at the margins of cities and towns of the midlands (Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent) and the north-west (Wigan, Blackpool).3 Secondly, it was a retrospective scene that was steeped in nostalgia, locality and an identity that could not easily be absorbed by other music scenes and related youth subcultures. Thirdly, northern soul was largely a working-class scene, which did not produce influential intellectuals and commentators who would proselytise on its behalf in newspapers and magazines and on television shows. In popular characterisations of post-war youth culture and popular music there is an orthodox chronology that stretches from Teddy boys/rock’n’roll in the 1950s, the mods and rockers and the counterculture/hippy scene of the 1960s, and on to punk rock in the 1970s. Yet in 1976/77, the ground zero for punk rock, northern soul was arguably far bigger in terms of the number of specialist venues, participants and organisations that gave the scene a distinct identity.4 In recent years, sociologists, criminologists, musicologists and film-makers have given more attention to northern soul.5 The academic literature has tended to focus on the recent revival of the scene 1

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in the new millennium, predominantly from a sociological perspective that has been heavy on theory and often light on historical, social and economic context.6 Andrew Wilson’s Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity (2007), the first analytical book-length study, which followed in the wake of a small number of sociological articles on the scene, is a detailed account written by a former participant and latterly an academic criminologist.7 Wilson’s text draws on personal experience and oral testimony in exploring the origins of the scene and the links between northern soul and the use and abuse of amphetamines.8 This was complemented by a raft of memoirs and personal histories written from within the scene.9 All of these more general texts are of variable quality in terms of depth, analysis and social context, but are nonetheless indispensable for historians seeking to understand northern soul. Literature published by members of the general public is often too easily dismissed by academic historians. Used critically it offers perspectives and content that are lacking from what are generally perceived to be the more intellectual engagements with youth culture and popular music. Such texts tend to convey more of the emotion, feeling, sound and grit of youth culture than many of the more overtly intellectual interventions. Two recent books in particular stand out as providing a rich reading of the northern soul scene. Elaine Constantine’s Northern Soul: An Illustrated History, written by a film-maker in collaboration with Gareth Sweeney, and Stuart Cosgrove’s Young Soul Rebels: A Personal History of Northern Soul map the music, the fashion and the collective identity set against the economic and social changes impacting on Britain in the 1970s.10 In 2019 a major collection of essays, The Northern Soul Scene, was published by Equinox, edited by Sarah Raine, Tim Wall and Nicola Watchman Smith.11 Contributors were drawn from a range of academic disciplines, and some essays were written by prominent DJs, film-makers and iconic figures from within the scene.12 Essay themes included ‘the politics of dancing’, ‘myths’ and ‘gender’. Yet the book is not really a history of the scene and is generally written from an array of sociological perspectives. Only one chapter is by a historian, Joe Street. His biographical examination of ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’ draws on a number of primary sources.13 Other chapters are predominantly reflexive and represent a careful and empathetic analysis of what it meant/means to be a participant on the contemporary scene. Although the collection is very different from this book, it is nonetheless an excellent 2

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companion piece, particularly for those who are interested in developments after Wigan Casino, the seminal northern soul club, was closed in 1981.14 As the collection by Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith makes clear, both within and outside the scene there is much debate ‘about what exactly northern soul is, and how it should be understood’.15 Northern soul has its own historians, guardians, gatekeepers and curators, and it seems that there will never be total agreement among those who participated in and identified with aspects of the scene.16 This was an issue encountered by the authors in producing this particular intervention into the history and development of northern soul. Much work was done in forging a path through the factionalised northern soul networks that remain endemic to the scene, in order to get to the indispensable primary source material relating to the clubs and consumers of the 1970s. The many fanzines and wider ephemera are not deposited in archives but were in many cases covered in dust and debris in attics, spare bedrooms and garden sheds. Veterans of northern soul, the gatekeepers and curators, retain a suspicion  of academics and those they perceive to have little understanding of its peculiarities. For them there might never be a ‘real’ history of northern soul. This book does not aim for definitiveness. The title is quite purposely ‘a history’ as opposed to ‘the history’ of northern soul. Nonetheless, it is hoped that the book will generate much interest from within the contemporary scene, which remains a significant feature of the cultural practices of a large number of people who continue to populate the dance floors of northern soul nights held across the British Isles, Europe, America and Japan. This book forms part of the recent wave of work that has emerged to centre popular music and youth culture in studies of twentiethcentury British history.17 At a general level, the narrative histories written by Dominic Sandbrook on the 1960s and 1970s were underpinned by a revisionist critique which sought to dismantle some of the myths that had been attached to the ‘politics’ of popular music.18 In response, a number of historians, in particular those who formed part of the Subcultures Network that was established in 2012, have produced various monographs and edited collections that have sought to revisit the history of youth and popular music.19 The network has its own book series, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music, and its leading figures continue to deliver innovative papers on the international conference circuit. One of the aims of 3

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the network has been to attempt to ‘re-historicise’ the study of youth culture and popular music. This mission was driven by the fact that there were very few historians working in the field of popular music, with almost all serious academic work on the subject emerging from departments of Sociology, Cultural Studies, English and Musicology. The history of northern soul presented here continues this process of grounding the study of popular music and youth cultures in the broader economic and social contexts in which they developed.20 Where popular music and youth subcultures have been explored by historians, they have tended to analyse lyrics, images, fashions and identities to accompany broader insights into post-war consumerism, political movements and the relationship between culture and ­nationalism/patriotism.21 Such approaches have been a w ­ elcome advance on the more traditional narrative histories of post-war Britain, largely written from Oxbridge colleges, the desks of the Bodleian Library, and other august locations, which have very little content on, or regard for the importance of, popular music and the central role that it played in working-class culture.22 This book tries to dig deeper into the relationship between popular music and everyday life. Northern soul was just one of a multiplicity of music scenes, genres and trends that were central to working-class experiences, feelings and identities. Listening to music was a coping strategy for d ­ ealing with the rigours and exhaustions of school, work and domestic alienation, as well as being a soundtrack that accompanied memories of particular periods, episodes and events. In presenting northern soul as more than just a hobby or cultural diversion for its consumers, the book is unashamedly empathetic.23 As the working class continue to be caricatured, marginalised and, notably, largely absent from the upper realms of academia, it is important that their experiences, emotions and histories are recorded, published and disseminated. The primary aim of this study is to reconstruct the lived practices of northern soul in the more peripheral towns and cities of the midlands and the north. Much of the history of youth culture and popular music has tended to focus on London, Manchester and Liverpool. The fact that northern soul was ‘happening’ at the margins in the early 1970s led to it being read as overly nostalgic and an artefact of the previous decade. In the twenty-first century, northern soul has become part of a wider northern identity that has been constructed both from outside and from within particular locales that in the 1970s were already beginning to go through a process of deindustri4

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alisation.24 The construction of the ‘north’ in the national imagination has been meticulously explored by a number of historians, most notably by Dave Russell in Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination.25 The impact of deindustrialisation on working-class communities has also generated recent studies exploring the complex relationship between the erosion of manufacturing jobs and its impact on politics, culture and everyday life.26 Northern soul was a music that soundtracked thousands of working-class lives that were lived through industrial occupations such as coal, cotton and steel. In the 1970s such localities, occupations, cultures and identities were being eroded by the crisis in post-war capitalism and the slow conversion of Britain’s economy to one in which manufacturing was pushed to the margins.27 In the twenty-first century, northern soul has become part of the cornucopia of ‘northernness’ that is rooted in a particular time (the 1970s) and place (the industrial and post-industrial north). Yet such characterisations, although rooted in particular lived cultural experiences, also mask the complexity and nuance of the scene in terms of its geography, participants and identity. The chronology of the book mainly spans the years 1962–82. This twenty-year period covers the development of the soul scene in Britain: the rise of the mods in 1962–65, the development of the rare soul clubs from 1966 to 1970, the birth of a more formalised northern soul identity in 1970, reaching its high point in 1976–77, and its subsequent decline with the closure of the iconic Wigan Casino in 1981.28 An exact chronology for writing a history of northern soul will always be the subject of conjecture, debate and controversy.29 However, from the research carried out for this book it is evident that northern soul as a specific music scene with an associated dance style, fashion and particular practices such as the sale and consumption of amphetamines was formalised by 1971, reaching the peak of its popularity in 1976/77. Some from within the scene have argued that too many writers and commentators have sought to date the decline of the scene from the closure of Wigan Casino in 1981.30 However, the primary sources and oral testimony explored for this book reveal that by 1978/79 attendances were falling in some of the larger clubs like Wigan Casino, and that many more venues across the north and midlands were closing. The end of Wigan merely exacerbated a trend that continued into the 1980s. The subsequent resurgence of interest in northern soul in the new millennium is not the focus of this book, 5

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and that particular story has been told elsewhere in both the general and academic literature.31 The book draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources. As noted, the academic literature on popular music in general, and northern soul in particular, has tended to use sociological analyses and theoretical approaches. This study is primarily a social history that seeks to contextualise the scene in the economic, political and social cultures of 1970s Britain. The three main soul music magazines of the period­­– ­­Blues and Soul, Black Music and Black Echoes­ – ­provide fascinating insights into the development of northern soul, the multiplicity of clubs, venues and localities where it found most salience and, importantly, the voices and experiences of those who collected records, attended events and sought to articulate what the music meant to them as individuals and as part of a wider scene. The letters pages of these publications are a treasure trove for mapping the geography of northern soul, the creation of its organic intellectuals, and the thoughts and motivations of young men and women who participated in the scene. The chapters that follow also draw heavily on a number of magazines and fanzines that were published by those involved in the scene and that to date have not been fully utilised by scholars.32 Some of these titles, such as Hot Buttered Soul and Soul Time, pre-dated the more celebrated fanzine culture that formed part of the punk rock phenomenon between 1976 and 1978.33 Northern soul magazines and fanzines express the DIY ethos that was a strong element within the scene. As Lucy Robinson has noted, ‘there has been a growth of work on the history of the zine … Historians recognise them as an invaluable way into the messy traces left by subcultures … and the politics of identity.’34 In contrast with conventional music publications that tended to confine northern soul to the margins, these magazines offer distinct insights into the thoughts and experiences of young men and women, and the micro-battles that were taking place over questions of authenticity, exclusivity, commercialisation and identity. The utilisation of the magazines and fanzines is complemented by the use of the unpublished diaries of Audrey Wilkes and Adrian Smith. The Wilkes and Smith diaries offer a fascinating insight into teenage life in Wolverhampton and the soul clubs of Blackpool and Wigan in the early 1970s.35 The analysis of northern soul magazines is complemented by a reading of the scene from more conventional sources such as the 6

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records of police forces, local government organisations, and the national and local press. These sources have proved indispensable for gauging the broader culture of the localities in which many soul venues were located. The conventional music press, such as New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds, at best covered northern soul only sporadically in its most prominent years between 1973 and 1976, and at worst chose to completely ignore it. Nonetheless, the ways in which these publications constructed the scene shows that northern soul was enmeshed in a wider stereotypical view of the north and northernness. The use of documentary sources was complemented by a comprehensive oral history project in which 28 men and women were interviewed specifically for this book. The majority of the interviews were face-to-face and recorded, with a small number organised by telephone and email correspondence. The use of oral history has been crucial in documenting youth culture and the everyday consumption of popular music and continues to act as a democratising force in allowing people to tell their own stories.36 This study uses oral testimony to give space to the marginal and the marginalised in reconstructing the lives of working-class Britons.37 In contrast to the theoretically informed sociological literature on popular music in general, and northern soul in particular, this book is primarily a social history that dispenses with complex jargon and theory. Nonetheless, it is informed by particular approaches to the study of the past. E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class has been subject to a series of critiques and is now viewed as somewhat outdated.38 However, its analysis of the relationship between economic change, social identities and the forms of cultural practices that emerge from them still contains much that is useful to the social historian. Thompson and the historians he influenced were on a mission not only to challenge methodological and historiographical orthodoxy, but also to ensure that the working class appeared on the page as actors with their own thoughts, feelings, motivations, political identities and forms of culture.39 This study of northern soul is very much part of this long tradition in presenting a ‘history from below’ in which the participants on the scene find their voices at the centre of the narrative rather than at the margins. The structure of the book is both chronological and thematic. The first two chapters detail the transatlantic connections between black American music and its audience in Britain through the growth of 7

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interest in soul music in general and ‘rare soul’ in particular. There is an assessment of the Motown Revue Tour that traversed Britain during 1965, the soul club scene that emerged in its wake, the importance of the venues in which this music was played, and the growth of an associated culture. Central to the northern soul scene was a club culture that was linked to a number of British cities and towns. There is an examination of the music and atmosphere of clubs such as the Flamingo in London, the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the Catacombs in Wolverhampton and the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, charting the social context of the emergence and success of such clubs and locating them within the framework of strong local political and cultural identities. The rare soul scene of the late 1960s formed part of a northern soundscape that was still predominantly industrial and thrived in localities in which particular class and gendered identities were relatively fixed. The significance of the legislative framework and legal response to the spread of soul clubs is set against the concerns that the northern soul scene was generating in the local press. In the 1970s Wigan Casino symbolised the extent and success of northern soul, drawing members from across Britain and gaining international prominence in the media and through the music press in publications such as Blues and Soul. Chapter 3 explores the origins of the club, its music policy and the individuals who attended its famous ‘all-nighters’. It draws on a range of sources to reveal both the ‘localism’ and ‘nationalism’ of Wigan Casino and how it was able to broaden its appeal to construct a particular identity in becoming an international brand. The Casino is read as a symbol of the changing nature of particular British towns and cities in a period of rising unemployment and deindustrialisation. Chapter 4 charts the fragmentation and diversification of northern soul during the late 1970s. It illustrates the tensions and schisms that were created in the later years of northern soul’s pre-eminence. Such fragmentation is explored through a number of themes: musical preferences, factionalism between DJs and fans, new genres and styles in black music, the changing aspirations and tastes of consumers, the rise of rival venues and the increasing popularity of ‘all-dayers’. At the heart of these tensions was a debate that ran to the core of what northern soul was, or had become. Chapter 5 assesses how northern soul was practised and experienced by its participants, focusing on the centrality of the DJs to the 8

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scene, their relationship with fans and the way in which consumers lived and related to northern soul, including its well-documented involvement with illegal drug abuse. It explains how northern soul’s perception of itself as ‘different’ and detached conflicted with what were viewed by many as attempts to ‘commercialise’ the scene. This contributed to splits and tensions and to the emergence of a form of ‘penny capitalism’ that was complemented by the entrepreneurial pursuit of profit through the sale of rare recordings. Such activity strengthened the transatlantic links that the scene had engendered between Britain and several north American cities and resulted in the enhancement or rehabilitation of a number of US artistic careers. However, it was specific commercial practices relating to recordings that undermined the rhetorical discourse of ‘togetherness’ that was apparent in northern soul. This chapter evaluates the tensions within the scene and determines the extent to which commercialisation and northern soul’s association with illegal drugs led to its demise. The very term ‘northern soul’ suggests that the scene was regionally specific. The origins of northern soul might have been located in the English north and midlands, but it had a substantial following in other parts of Britain. Chapter 6 adds to the growing literature on the resilience of regional identities in post-war Britain and how this was imprinted on northern soul. It seeks to uncover the complexities relating to the scene’s geographical specificity and whether this was related to a set of particular structural, cultural and political factors. There were increasing racial tensions in post-war Britain in the 1960s. In the 1970s these currents took an organisational form through groups such as the National Front (NF) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL). Chapter 7 investigates how these tensions were manifested within northern soul. Through an examination of the artists, club promoters and consumers, it explores racial identities and how they were understood and reconstructed through the scene. The multiracial and anti-racist aspects of northern soul are critically assessed in order to challenge existing assumptions. Critically, the chapter notes the transatlantic aspect of northern soul and the dynamics connected with the reception and interpretation of what was perceived as an essentially black American musical genre by a largely white British working-class audience. The chapter also unpicks tensions within the scene around notions of gender and sexuality. Northern soul seemingly constructed a space where young men and women shared a commitment to music and dance. In contrast to other leisure 9

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activities, women were said to have played an equal role. Moreover, many felt that the club scene provided a safer environment than conventional nightclubs and discos where women were seen as sexual objects seeking heterosexual relationships. Yet this view has been somewhat romanticised, and it is clear that northern soul was heavily gendered, with males often policing aspects of the scene and defining what was and what was not northern soul. The chapter concludes with some discussion of the sexuality of the scene in the period when commercial disco presented a challenge­– ­both real and perceived­– ­to the music policy of some of the most prominent northern soul clubs. Chapter 8 discusses the legacy of northern soul beyond the 1970s during the 1980s and 1990s and through its revival in the twentyfirst century. It also explores the construction and dissemination of particular myths and histories of northern soul. In scrutinising the retrospective nature of the scene, it focuses on whether this was determined by the pace and displacement of musical trends throughout the 1960s and 1970s, or whether there was something distinctive about the need for northern soul to place itself in the past and what factors might have produced this affinity. The chapter also investigates northern soul’s propensity to look back on its own emergence and development, and its need to create its own icons and symbols, both during its heyday in the 1970s and into the twenty-first century. Each chapter has subheadings, many of which allude to the popular records that filled the dance floors of particular venues. Such recordings formed the very DNA of northern soul.40 Readers are encouraged to seek out these tracks in order to get an aural sense of the beat, energy, tone and passion of the scene. A selection of important collections of northern soul classics is listed at the end of the book.41 Studies of youth culture and popular music have gone through a number of phases in terms of how particular movements, fashions, genres and scenes have been classified. In the 1970s the term ‘subculture’ became a usable description and analytical approach for understanding Teddy boys, mods, rockers, aspects of the counter-­culture and in particular punk rock.42 Path-breaking work by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) based at the University of Birmingham in the 1970s was hugely influential; it was subject to later critique, but in recent years has undergone something of a revival.43 It is not the aim of this study to debate the merits of referring to northern soul as a subculture, scene, tribe or musical genre. As a piece of social history it is more squarely focused on the ways 10

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in which northern soul was both separated from yet connected to the broader culture of the midlands and the north and how music played a central role in the everyday life of its consumers. In most places in the text northern soul is referred to as a scene, as this was how it was characterised by participants in the 1970s. Interviews with Wigan Casino regulars that informed a feature published in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1976 suggest that ‘everybody connected with it calls it The Scene’.44 However, this is not to suggest that it did not have the attributes of a subculture in the classic CCCS mould. This book is inclined to allow the voices that appear in the magazines, fanzines and oral testimonies to speak for themselves. In terms of race, the language as it appears in the primary sources is retained, but more generally the term ‘black’ is used in relation to particular forms of music and political organisations.45 In other places, AfricanAmerican, West Indian and African are used to describe performers from those particular ethnic groups. Black music and soul music are the general terms used to describe the broad spectrum of music that fed into northern soul. However, it is important to note the multiracial, multi-ethnic range of performers who could be heard on records that filled the dance floors of particular venues.46 Similarly, when referring to the role of DJs on the northern soul scene, we have tended to use their ‘stage names’ except in Chapters 3 and 5, where we have also included their actual names to provide wider biographical context. Northern soul also had its own lexicon of words and phrases to describe events, sounds, records and forms of self-identification that were a crucial part of the scene: ‘all-nighters’, ‘all-dayers’, ‘stompers’ and ‘divs’ are key examples. The meaning and usage of these descriptors are apparent throughout the following chapters. This book is part of the recent trend to democratise the focus, writing and presentation of historical research. Youth culture and popular music were significant drivers of post-war consumption, entertainment, collective movements, passions and experiences. Northern soul fans were predominantly working-class and often clustered on the margins of the major cities and towns of the English north and midlands. They were individuals who created a scene, produced their own publications and eventually became curators of a history and past that was intimately connected to the social and political ruptures of the 1970s. Historians of post-war Britain can use the scene to open up a specific moment in a decade when a particular world of work, culture and community, soundtracked by popular music, was 11

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being dismantled by the forces of international capitalism, an attack on the solidarities of the labour movement, and the demonisation of the working class. Working-class culture in the decade that followed was appropriated and repackaged, or critiqued, marginalised and rendered powerless.47 Northern soul was one the largest club scenes in the post-war period, which attracted predominantly working-class youths in 1970s Britain. The records, dances, fashions, iconography and discourses of the scene were rooted in a decade that was still largely built on the industrial capitalism, economic structures and class cultures of the late nineteenth century. The high point of the popularity of northern soul in 1976–77 was also the period during which political shifts would usher in an intense process of deindustrialisation, a retreat from state intervention in the economy and the destruction of working-class communities. The scene was quickly emasculated by the nihilism and individualism of punk rock, a largely middle-class phenomenon that, although politically engaged, was as much the product of rampant individualism as it was of the economic and political ruptures that led to the advent of Thatcherism. In contrast, many of the original participants on the northern soul scene continued ‘keeping the faith’ through periods of unemployment, social hardship and seismic events such as the miners’ strike of 1984–85. The recent revival and popularity of northern soul can perhaps be understood as a striving for a scene that was built on the rhetoric of solidarity, collectivism and togetherness. It continues to form part of a British soundscape that has absorbed the beats, rhythms and dance steps of Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Wigan. Notes   1 For an insight into the strength and depth of the scene in what was perhaps its peak year, see text and images in the report for the Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976.   2 The scene was mostly exposed to a wider audience through Tony Palmer’s short documentary The Wigan Casino, which was broadcast in 1977.   3 For a critique of the London-centric presentation of youth culture and popular music, see Keith Gildart, Images of England through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock ’n’ Roll 1955–1976 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).   4 For an example of the complete absence of northern soul from this ortho12

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Introduction dox chronology, see David Simonelli, Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). This is also the case in David Fowler, Youth Culture in Modern Britain c.1920–c.1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement­– A ­ New History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). The scene does merit a short discussion in Bill Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 77–8.   5 There has been an increase in sociological literature on the scene, a number of popular documentaries, and two feature films; Soul Boy (2010) and Northern Soul (2014).   6 Two doctoral theses in this style that remain unpublished are Nicola Jane Smith, ‘Performing Fandom on the British Northern Soul Scene: Competition, Identity and the Post-subcultural Self’, University of Salford, 2009, and Lucy Gibson, ‘Popular Music and the Life Course: Cultural Commitment, Lifestyles and Identities’, University of Manchester, 2009.   7 For an example of this sociological literature, see K. Milestone, ‘Love Factory: The Sites, Practices and Media Relationships of Northern Soul’, in S. Redhead, D. Wynne and J. O’Connor (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 134– 49.   8 Andrew Wilson, Northern Soul: Music, Drugs, and Subcultural Identity (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2007).   9 For examples, see Russ Winstanley and David Nowell, Soul Survivors: The Wigan Casino Story (London: Robson Books, 1996); Mike Ritson and Stuart Russell, The In Crowd: The Story of the Northern and Rare Soul Scene Volume One (London: Bee Cool Publishing, 1999); David Nowell, Too Darn Soulful: The Story of Northern Soul (London: Robson Books, 1999); Dave Shaw, Casino (London: Bee Cool Publishing, 2003); Neil Rushton, Northern Soul Stories (Great Britain: Soulvation, 2009); Tim Brown, The Wigan Casino Years: Northern Soul, the Essential Story 1973–81 (Great Britain: Outta Sight, 2010); Richard Searling, Setting the Record Straight: Music and Memories from Wigan Casino 1973–1981 (Plymouth: Go Ahead, 2018). 10 Elaine Constantine and Gareth Sweeney, Northern Soul: An Illustrated History (London: Virgin, 2013); Stuart Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels: A Personal History of Northern Soul (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016). 11 Sarah Raine, Tim Wall and Nicola Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019). 12 The collection was dedicated to the late David Sanjek, an American academic who first envisaged the project. For his work on the scene, see David Sanjek, ‘Groove Me: Dancing to the Discs of Northern Soul’, in J. Terry and N. A. Wynn (eds), Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities (Jackson, MI: University of Mississippi Press, 2012). 13

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Keeping the faith 13 Joe Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 120–41. 14 For the relationship between Wigan and the Casino, see S. Catterall and K. Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, in B. Lashua, S. Wagg, K. Spracklen and M. S. Yavuz (eds), Sounds and the City Volume 2 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 369–87. 15 Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, p. 1. 16 For a critical reflection on this problem, see Andrew Wilson, ‘Searching for the Subcultural Heart of Northern Soul: From Pillheads to Shredded Wheat’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 179–96. 17 For example, see Gildart, Images of England. 18 Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London: Allen Lane, 2006); State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–74 (London: Allen Lane, 2010); Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–79 (London, Allen Lane, 2012). For a flawed attack on the ‘myths’ of popular music written through a middle-class Oxbridge prism, see Fowler, Youth Culture in Modern Britain. 19 For examples, see Gildart, Images of England; Matt Worley, No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 20 For an excellent recent example of the importance of dance in twentiethcentury British history, see James Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 21 See, for example, Peter Grant, National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 22 See, for example, Peter Hennessey, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006). 23 For a recent and much-needed empathetic general history of the working class, see Selina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910–2010 (London: John Murray, 2014). 24 For an idiosyncratic imagining of the history of the north, see Paul Morley, The North (and almost everything in it) (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 25 Dave Russell, Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). There are also interesting interventions on conceptualising the north in N.Kirk (ed.), Northern Identities: Historical Interpretations of ‘The North’ and ‘Northernness’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 14

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Introduction 26 See Steven High, Lachlan Mackinnon and Andrew Perchard (eds), The Deindustrialised World: Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017), and Jefferson R. Cowie and Joseph Heathcott (eds), Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialisation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 27 Surprisingly there is no space devoted to northern soul in Jon Stratton and Nabeel Zuberi (eds), Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). 28 Some historians have noted the importance of the mods in having a broader influence on post-1960s popular culture. In particular, see Richard Weight, Mod! A Very British Style (London: Bodley Head, 2013). 29 For the controversy related to the origin myths of the scene, see Sarah Raine and Tim Wall, ‘Myths on/of the Northern Soul Scene’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 142–63. 30 For example, see Paul Sadot, ‘I’m Still Looking for Unknowns All the Time: The Forward (E)motion of Northern Soul Dancing’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 292–310. 31 Many of the chapters in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, explore the post-Wigan venues and experiences. 32 Producers of ‘amateur’ northern soul publications tended to use the term ‘magazine’ rather than ‘fanzine’. Nonetheless, these publications shared the DIY ethos of the more celebrated fanzines that emerged in the punk and post-punk movements of 1976–84. 33 For punk fanzines, see Matthew Worley, ‘Punk, Politics and British (fan) zines, 1976–1984: “While the world was dying, did you wonder why?”’, History Workshop Journal, 79.1 (2015), pp. 76–106. 34 Lucy Robinson, ‘Zines and History: Zines as History’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Ripped, Torn and Cut: Pop, Politics and Punk Fanzines from 1976 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018), p. 39. 35 For the use of diaries in the reconstruction of youth cultures, see Melanie Tebbutt, Being Boys: Youth, Leisure and Identity in the Inter-War Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 36 For example, see John Robb, Punk Rock: An Oral History (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012). 37 The work of Alessandro Portelli has been essential in developments in the use of oral history for understanding the past. See Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 38 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963). 39 For an insightful analysis of the post-war trends in the writing of social history, see Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005). 15

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Keeping the faith 40 For a history of the scene through records, see Brown, The Wigan Casino Years. 41 For a selection of classic northern soul recordings compiled by one of the scene’s seminal DJs, see Searling, Setting the Record Straight. 42 The seminal works include S. Hall and T. Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Routledge, 1976), and Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979) 43 For a collection of essays that critically engage with the concept of subculture, see P. Hodkinson and W. Deicke (eds), Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes (London: Routledge, 2009). For a critical defence of the CCCS approach to youth culture, see essays in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of ‘Consensus’ (London: Routledge, 2015). 44 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 45 For the meanings of ‘black’ and its relationship to popular music, see J. Stratton and N. Zuberi, ‘Black Popular Music in Britain Since 1945: An Introduction’, in Stratton and Zuberi (eds), Black Popular Music in Britain, p. 4. 46 For the range of recordings played at Wigan Casino, see Searling, Setting the Record Straight. 47 This process was mapped by Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (London: Verso, 2012).

16

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1

Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England

This chapter explores the origins, reception and experience of soul music in the industrial north in the 1960s, and how it led to the creation of the ‘rare’ and ‘northern’ scene in the early 1970s. It charts the importance of the Motown record label and the impact that its recordings and the performances of its artists had on youth clubs, coffee bars, dance halls, bedrooms and personal identities. Brian Ward and Suzanne E. Smith have provided extensive analyses of the growth and impact of black music on the cultural politics of the United States.1 More recently, scholars such as Joe Street and those connected with the Subcultures Network have noted the transatlantic connections between American soul music and its audience in Britain.2 This music contributed to aspects of a northern youth culture that had its origins in the late 1950s, yet retained some features of a workingclass culture that had been created by communities forged in the coal mines, cotton mills and factories of the industrial revolution.3 The symbolic, yet at the time largely unsuccessful, Motown Revue Tour that traversed Britain during 1965, and the ‘rare soul’ club scene that emerged in its wake, became firmly rooted in the legend, mythology and iconography of what later became known as northern soul.4 The popularity of soul music developed in the context of a changing and in some ways unchanging Britain and a youth culture that was responding to the attractions of aspects of American popular music, fashion, film and patterns of consumption. Yet such processes were often mediated by class, gender, region and locality, most notably in the economic structures and shifting soundscapes of northern industrial cities and towns. In the clubs of Manchester and the centres of youth culture in its satellite locales, soul music provided a soundtrack of affirmation, transgression and temporary escape.5 17

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Soul time: mods and the emergence of the ‘all-nighter’ rare soul scene6 The mod subculture is indelibly linked with images of the 1960s.7 For historians, sociologists and a generation of memoirists, journalists and television documentary film-makers it has provided a template for mapping post-war British youth culture.8 It is also seen as a tributary that fed into the creation of northern soul, with many of the participants, historians and curators of the scene noting its connection to the mod culture of the mid-1960s.9 Yet the philosophy of mod that linked both fashion and music to evolution, progress and breaks with the past sits uneasily with what became northern soul’s commitment to preservation, commemoration, nostalgia and vinyl archaeology. The elements of mod that it did express were based on shared notions of authenticity and exclusivity. However, reading northern soul through mod masks some of the local peculiarities of the scene and the continued resonance of class; more importantly it marginalises the experience of women and others who were not involved in its more notable affiliations, codes and manifestations. Some young men might have found their way to northern soul via mod, but most women did not. This is not to say that mod and its attendant culture was not central to the origins of the scene, but it is clear that many people engaging with northern soul in its peak years in the mid-1970s had little or no relation to the mod culture of the mid-1960s. The bedroom, the parlour and the youth club were just a few of many places that provided a soundtrack of soul that operated beyond the parameters of mod in the industrial north.10 The key innovators in terms of soul music were the black American musicians Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and James Brown. The sound found a welcoming British audience from around 1962, and for the rest of the decade it formed a core component of British youth culture via record labels such as Atlantic, Motown and Stax. Soul music was promoted by innovative British musicians, the more discerning DJs and young music fans who were seeking sounds beyond the standard pop fare that was a feature of mainstream radio stations. Anthony Marks has outlined three reasons for the attractions of soul music at this time: ‘it was a minority taste … its appearance coincided with the growth of the discotheque … soul music was exotic … and knowledge of it was seen as a status symbol and privilege’.11 Such features would personify the developing rare soul scene from 1966 18

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Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England

and its later labelling as northern soul around five years later. In this process, particular DJs played a crucial role. Guy Stevens (1943–81) became resident DJ at the Scene club in 1963, where his esoteric mix of American rhythm and blues and English beat music attracted mods from across London and the rest of England.12 His enthusiasm was picked up by Roger Eagle, who had visited the club and went on to establish his own credentials as a promoter and enthusiast of soul music in Manchester.13 Eagle was to play a key role in the origins of the rare soul scene through his position as a DJ at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel club (1963–71). The Twisted Wheel would later gain iconic status as the ground zero of the northern soul scene. DJs were significant in creating informal networks of soul enthusiasts crossing paths in the northern clubs, and their reputations and sounds reached beyond the confines of the dance floor and into the parlours, lounges, kitchens and bedrooms of thousands of British homes. They created their own forms of dissemination in local fanzines and through record trading and exchange schemes that defined tastes, created scenes, and codified soul, and particularly rare soul, as a specific musical genre. In Manchester in 1964 soul fans could keep up with the latest releases by reading R’n’B Scene, edited by Eagle from his office in the Twisted Wheel.14 Yet ‘soul time’ in the north emerged from a variety of tributaries and the sounds emanated from a wide range of public and private spaces. Young women were sharing the sounds of black American soul music in bedrooms, youth clubs, and through the collective steps and styles being forged on hundreds of formal and informal dance floors. Shoes would be kicked off and living room carpets and rugs became sites for the consumption of soul music and the expression of its impact on the emotions.15 The foundation myths of the northern soul scene were largely created through a masculine lens, yet although there were few female DJs, women’s role in promoting, sharing and expressing their love of soul music was significant. The bridge that mod culture formed with the later northern soul scene took its most iconic and mythical form with the ‘all-night’ rhythm and blues scene at London’s Flamingo club. The Lancashire musician Georgie Fame was the key individual in epitomising the ‘northern’ connection with the growth and popularity of soul music in the mod subculture, the industrial towns of north-west England and the city of Manchester. Fame was born in the coal and cotton town of Leigh, located between Manchester and Wigan. From early exposure 19

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to rhythm and blues in the late 1950s he moved from employment in a cotton mill to performing in working-men’s clubs, theatres, dance halls and holiday camps. Fame never became a northern soul artist, but his career trajectory and canonical role in mod culture secured his place in the pantheon of key figures who formed the foundation myths of the scene.16 Through Fame and associated performers who played the Flamingo, the soundscape was one that swirled to the beats and harmonies of what would later become the sonic core of the northern soul scene. With the creation of the ‘all-nighter’, the Flamingo created the template for the later soul clubs: music, dance, amphetamine consumption, entrepreneurship, exclusivity and authenticity.17 The all-nighters at the Flamingo were attended by increasing numbers of young, working-class mods between 1962 and 1963. By 1964 mods across Britain were creating their own scenes, adopting variations of fashion trends and dancing to the increased output of American record companies that were finding success in marketing black performers and sounds.18 Club owners could see the financial opportunities that were opening up through youth culture. A similar kind of individualism and micro-capitalism would later appear on the northern soul scene in the form of penny capitalists who would buy and sell rare records, and create their own businesses, record labels and magazines/fanzines.19 Provincial versions of the Flamingo proliferated across the country in the 1960s, and in Lancashire they formed the nucleus of what would become the northern soul scene. In the towns of industrial Lancashire (Wigan, Leigh, Bolton, Bury, Burnley, Warrington) the original soul sounds of the period 1962–66 retained a particular resonance, notably working from the template created by Manchester’s Twisted Wheel club. These clubs attracted school-age teenagers, miners, factory workers and shop assistants, who viewed the spaces and sounds as successors to the hedonistic weekends that had been a feature of the working-class lives of their parents. Traditional blues and jazz held little appeal for the northern working class, whose hard lives and occupations attuned them to the exciting ‘three-minute’ melodies and dance floor fillers that from 1962 onwards were being pumped out of a multiplicity of recording studios in major US cities at a much faster pace. Detroit might have been the spiritual home of what was to become northern soul, but the scene also drew artists, sounds and styles from across the US.20 This was reflected in the success that black artists were finding in terms of record sales in Britain, 20

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and the fervour with which the music was consumed in record shops and in the formal and informal dance floors of clubs, coffee bars and domestic spaces. I’m where it’s at: working-class youth culture in Lancashire21 In the 1950s the industrial cities and towns of north-west England still bore the scars of an industrial revolution that had been built on the labour of the working class. Coal mines, cotton mills and grand Victorian civic buildings and railway stations were visible markers of industrialisation. Manchester was typical, with such architecture epitomised by its town hall and Victoria railway station. Collective identities had been created through work, locality and the booms and slumps of British capitalism. Work was both a barrier and a gateway to enjoyment of the mass popular culture of the post-war period. The streets of archetypal towns such as Wigan and Leigh were populated by working men and women whose lives were shaped by the factory whistle, the whip of the cable from the colliery headgear and the broader culture associated with these employment sectors.22 The lives of young working-class boys and girls were punctuated by the beginning and end of shifts, and adults leaving and coming back home each day from the pits, cotton mills and factories.23 Breakfast, dinner and tea would be accompanied by gossip, banter and tales of workplace peril, conflict and humour.24 These everyday habits and practices were soundtracked by the radio and the pop records that in the 1960s formed a core component of working-class youth culture. Music complemented the emotional responses to love, relationship breakdowns, and the rites of passage that signposted the formative years through school, work, marriage and maturity. Memories and nostalgia were soundtracked by soul music, mostly produced by Motown in Detroit, played in specific slots at engagement celebrations, wedding receptions and Christmas parties. Such intangible episodes, moments and feelings generated by listening and dancing to music are difficult for historians to access, but they do appear in the fragmented sources, documents and memories of those whose life was punctuated by the sounds of black America.25 In the early 1960s there were still visible signs of the importance of cotton to the economy of north-west England. Although some mills had closed they had not been demolished, and they stood as reminders of an industrial culture that had drawn on the labour of thousands of 21

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young men and women.26 In his description of cotton towns in 1964 the journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse claimed that you could ‘still see women gossiping on street corners … you can still see middle-aged men in mufflers and cloth caps’.27 The construction of an industrial past and present would be a particular trope adopted by journalists, commentators, film-makers and historians when seeking to make sense of the northern soul scene in the 1970s.28 Contemporary observers now see such images and readings as nostalgic, romantic and hackneyed.29 Yet particular aspects of this working-class life had some form of reality to the generations of people who lived in these localities.30 Moreover, these experiences became permanently lodged in the memories of parents and children, passed on through stories and the subtle markers and discriminations of the British class system. The oral testimonies collected for this study and explored in later chapters point to the importance of class, work, leisure and music in the lives of young people in the industrial north in the 1960s and 1970s. As with the cotton industry, the Lancashire coalfield had also faced declining fortunes. The industry had been contracting since the Second World War; seventy-seven collieries were nationalised, but a wave of closures in the 1960s significantly reduced the number of miners. However, in 1955 there were still sixty-four collieries, with twenty-five in the Wigan and Leigh area employing over 40,000 men.31 The miners maintained their comradeship through a network of pubs, clubs, sporting affiliations and political activities. In the small houses of the terraced streets an oral culture of workplace camaraderie, strikes, good times and bad times continued to instil a feeling of class and place in the collective memory, which would be passed down to children and would find its way into their sense of self and locality. Events such as the Leigh Miners Gala were symbolic reminders of the struggles of local colliers during the 1926 lockout and the promise of a new Labour Britain with the nationalisation of coal and the creation of the welfare state after the Second World War. This awareness of a shared past was not swept away by the modernity of the 1960s. Coffee bars, record shops and new fashions might have looked strange against the backdrop of mills and mines, yet in many ways they were complementary. Miners and factory workers continued to spend their minimal disposable income on dancing, drink and annual holidays to Blackpool. Older men and women were not immune to the popular music of the 1960s and it was never just the preserve of the teenager. The hundreds of working-men’s clubs, 22

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miners’ institutes and co-operative ballrooms controlled by formidable concert secretaries across the north developed a thriving cabaret circuit, in which ‘turns’ and ‘artists’ would belt out the contemporary chart hits of the period. Such spaces would form the architectural bedrock of ‘local’ northern soul scenes throughout the 1970s. The nationalisation of the coal mines, holidays with pay, increased wages and cheaper consumer goods allowed miners, cotton operatives, factory workers and shop assistants to express themselves through new forms of clothing, musical genres and dance steps. This is not to say that an attraction to and consumption of soul music was wholly class-bound, but its tempo, emotion, beat, rhythm and the lyrical messages it conveyed had a particular impact on workingclass youth that continued to have resonance in the 1970s and 1980s. Again, this is difficult for the historian to quantify and measure. However, oral testimonies, contributions to magazines/fanzines and the sheer number of clubs in the industrial and post-industrial north point to the fact that there did seem to be a relationship between locality, occupation, class and soul music. As noted already, listening to music and dancing were features of domestic and public spaces; music soundtracked everyday lives and offered perspectives and narratives related to notions of love, loss, belonging and solidarity.32 Popular songs would be collectively performed in the colliery showers, on the bus to the town centre, in cars on the way to the seaside and on summer outings organised by employers. The apparently superficial nature of much popular music and of the more commercial Motown sound have been remarked upon by critics and musicologists, and this could be the reason why the northern soul scene was neglected in the 1970s by academics who were attempting to link particular performers and genres to new forms of political identities and movements.33 In his autobiographical history of the northern soul scene, Stuart Cosgrove is critical of the way in which particular musical genres such as punk have been read as political, while northern soul allegedly ‘floated free from the politics of the day, but the reverse was true. The northern soul scene was rooted in the industrial towns … which across the arch of time faced unprecedented waves of deindustrialisation.’34 Historians are still to fully unpick the role that formally ‘apolitical’ popular music played in such processes and experiences. Yet it is clear that northern soul later became as much a part of a ‘workingclass north’ as Labour parties, trade unions, co-operative stores and 23

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hedonistic forms of consumption. The collective and individual emotions of working-class locales were often mediated by popular music, and particular songs and sounds were revisited to recall moments of happiness, sadness and affirmation. Nostalgia always loomed large in the industrial towns of the north in the twentieth century. It might have created ‘mythical pasts’ and romanticised notions of ‘community’, but it also had potency in sustaining collective values and solidarities. In the 1970s and 1980s such values and solidarities were to be seriously challenged by deindustrialisation and the transformation of the British economy that culminated in the defeat of the miners in the strike of 1984/85.35 The classic working-class holiday of a week at a coastal resort such as Blackpool was indicative of the continuities, changes and generational aspects of leisure, consumption and popular music. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Blackpool retained its culture of traditional clubs, pubs, fairground attractions and shops. Yet it was also a place where teenagers and young workers could find personal expression, cultural affiliations and a heightened experience of aspects of popular culture that they enjoyed back in their own localities.36 In Blackpool in the 1960s, the mod hangouts were the Roaring Twenties coffee bar on King Street and the Golden Nugget in Cookson Street.37 Similar spaces would form the nucleus of the later rare and northern soul scene in the town explored in the next chapter. The north showed a reluctance to automatically follow trends that were a feature of the constantly shifting modes of youth culture in the capital and the wider south. The sense of ‘where it’s at’ in contemporary youth parlance remained more static in Lancashire and the ‘greater north’ more generally. Markers of the counter-culture were less notable in towns such as Leigh and Wigan. In 1972 when the Bickershaw Festival was held in fields adjacent to the local colliery, the ‘hippies’ were met with a bemused response. A grocer claimed that they wanted to buy ‘yogurts’ but ‘not black pudding’.38 This is not to say that that the counter-cultural currents of the decade left no footprint in the north, but within working-class locales, youth culture remained more marked by the sounds and styles of 1962–66. More importantly, proselytisers for the rare soul scene in 1969–71 defined what became northern soul as a direct response to and critique of what they perceived to be a largely ‘southern counter-culture’. Once some young northerners had adopted elements of mod culture, they added their own embellishments and then sought to con24

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solidate and preserve aspects of the local scenes that they had created. Phil Saxe, a Jewish teenager from Stretford, took advantage of his father’s occupation as a tailor, which enabled him to stand out in the Manchester mod crowd with his limited-edition shirts and suits. In the towns and cities of the north local identity was wrapped up in a variety of cultural and political forms that fed into the performance, consumption and collective embrace of popular music. In Manchester, the mods in Prestwich were largely drawn from the middle class, whereas in places such as Stretford, Chorlton and Burnage there was a much stronger working-class element that went beyond an obsession with fashion and exhibited the greater aspiration of purchasing a Lambretta scooter. Soul music was played in the Browns dance halls that were situated above co-operative stores in industrial working-class estates in places such as Moston.39 Moston had a miners’ estate and a local club for men from Bradford Colliery, which was situated on the site of Manchester City FC’s current home. As with popular music more generally, soul music would find a secure presence in traditional working-class cultural and political spaces. In the 1960s/1970s miners’ welfares, co-operative stores and labour clubs provided rooms and equipment for the transmission of soul music to local youths, which they then carried into the iconic northern soul clubs of the period. In the industrial north the young white working class seemed to be receptive to the sounds of soul and in particular the recordings created in the Motown studios in Detroit. As mod reached peak popularity in 1964–66, young people in London left it behind and moved on to new scenes or embraced aspects of the counter-culture. In the northern towns, the scene, sounds and affiliations of mod proved to have greater resilience. It’s the beat: soul, Motown and the north40 The bright lights of London were a constant magnet for northern youths, although the reality was often more imaginary than real. Very few made the move from north to south permanently, but a northern presence in the city was notable during the football season when the teams from Manchester and elsewhere played their away fixtures. Some northern mods and aficionados of soul music made an occasional pilgrimage to clubs in London. Future northern soul DJ Brian Rae travelled from Warrington and experienced the sensory overload of the youth culture of the West End, ‘watching streams of 25

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s­ uit-wearing young Mods coming off trains and buses and frequenting the all-night clubs and café bars’.41 Rae and his contemporaries were blazing a trail for the thousands of northern soul fans who would traverse the country throughout the 1970s, attending the networks of clubs that would form the backbone of the scene. A do-it-yourself ethos was a core aspect of the northern clubs and was crucial in forging a sense of both collectivism and individuality. As noted, dancing to Motown records and related sounds was honed in bedrooms, living rooms, youth clubs, coffee bars and school discos. Dance would be an essential feature of the rare soul and northern soul scenes, driven by labels such as Motown, Ric-Tic and Okeh. Phil Saxe recalled that by 1965 Motown was extremely popular with the mods of Manchester. For him it ‘was all about the beat’. Motown could be heard in Stretford Bowling Alley, at the Swinging Door in Didsbury, and at city-centre meccas of youth culture such as the Oasis, the Jungfrau, the Mogambo and the Cona coffee bar. In 1966 Saxe was already in pursuit of the more obscure non-Motown recordings by Bobby Bland and the other artists who were under the radar of the more general consumers of soul music. Walking through the city in his three-button, single-vent mohair suit, steel comb in top pocket, Ben Sherman button-down shirt and brogues, clutching three or four albums by soul artists­– ­all this gave him a greater sense of self-esteem and recognition from his peers, who understood the more esoteric aspects of mod culture. The embrace of Motown was also a shortcut to conversation and possible courtship of teenage girls, who loved to dance to artists such as the Miracles, the Supremes and the Temptations.42 Joanne Bennett, a working-class girl from Chorlton-on-Medlock, started to navigate the coffee bars and beat rooms of the city centre in 1965, following the sound of Motown in particular and soul more generally. The Cona was her favourite hangout; she tended to avoid the Jungfrau and the Sovereign because they attracted an older and sometimes ‘undesirable’ crowd. Her knowledge of black music was consolidated by her brief employment in a record shop on Denmark Street in Moss Side, where she also heard bluebeat and ska.43 For teenage girls, music, fashion and dance blended together and provided an early entry point into the adult culture of clubs, courtship and passion. This was not a particularly ‘swinging’ experience, underpinned by affluence. For Bennett and her peer group, paid work was crucial in providing a small amount of money to buy a hit single or 26

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an item of clothing. Relationship building, courtship and personal relations were little changed from the experiences of their mothers.44 Partnerships and courtships continued to be forged in dance halls, at the travelling fairs and in the resorts of Blackpool, Southport and Llandudno. In 1967 the developing rare soul scene was given greater coherence, focus and identity with the publication and national distribution of the specialist magazine Blues and Soul. Formerly known as Home of the Blues, the first issue was published in October, with a portrait of John Lee Hooker on the cover. The editorial proclaimed that ‘gone are the days when R&B music was just for a handful of purists. Nowadays, it is readily accepted by the average record buyer.’ The issue carried an advert for the Soul City record shop located on Monmouth Street in London, which was ‘co-operatively owned and run by R&B fans’.45 After the publication of seven issues, Dave Godin attempted to define the music in his column ‘What is Soul?’: ‘Soul, to me, begins and ends in the emotional quality of a song … which is meaningful and significant and speaks to my own soul at least … Soul music is the music of now­– ­it is the most immediate and most avant garde of popular music.’46 Godin would go on to be a kind of ‘high priest’ of the northern soul scene. He was an ‘organic intellectual’ who argued that black American soul music was the most important art form of the twentieth century. Godin sought to popularise artists, labels and recordings but also to educate listeners on the links between the social struggles of black Americans and the production and performance of soul music.47 At this stage, in the south at least, Godin claimed that consumers of soul music were ‘middle class’, ‘grammar school ex-university people’.48 Yet Godin’s mission was to take the music to the masses. His intervention was both cultural and political. In his early opinion pieces he was critical of forms of popular music, and in particular aspects of the counter-culture, that seemed to marginalise black soul music. He remained a critic of the way in which white British and American performers had plundered black artists on their route to international fame and financial success.49 For Godin, soul would always be more than just music. This was reflected in the later emblems, discourses and iconography of northern soul. His enthusiasm and interventions would underpin the northern soul scene, but they also symbolised its factions and ultimate fragmentation in the late 1970s. Each issue of Blues and Soul contained features on artists, record 27

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reviews, reports of clubs and soul nights and letters from readers. Godin played a key role in promoting the cause of soul through his regular columns and responses to readers’ queries, which first appeared in the seventh issue. Through the readers’ letters the development of a specific rare soul scene can be charted. The growth of ‘soul discos’ in the north created an alternative to the mainstream pop and rock music that could be heard on conventional radio stations such as BBC Radio 1. The magazine increasingly moved from a balance between blues and soul to a greater concentration on the latter, creating some rancour in the letters pages.50 Godin’s emphasis on the communal and politically progressive nature of soul music provided a counterweight to the sensationalist denigration of youth subcultures in much of the contemporary tabloid press. Writing in 1969 in defence of the skinheads who attended the Soul City record shop, he argued that ‘soul music is so magical it spans all cults, cliques and social groupings, and this is why it has endured for so long, and it continues to do so’.51 The claims of authenticity that underpinned the developing rare soul clubs were driven by Godin and similar figures associated with the youth clubs and discos of the north. To Godin, ‘Real Soul appreciation begins with the ability to see through the superficial to the very roots­– ­to the bone of the bone­– ­and no chart ever created is going to help you do that.’52 He was critical of the way in which much of the British beat music scene had appropriated black American styles. In response to critical interventions in Blues and Soul in defence of groups such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, he retained his view of their superficiality: ‘I remain adamant in my refusal to acknowledge or recognise them as making any significant contribution to the scene.’53 In retrospective pieces Godin would continue to make broader connections between northern soul and society: ‘What was truly phenomenal about “Northern Soul” was not just its cultural implications, but also its political and sociological ones.’54 The springboard for this deeper and broader appreciation of rare soul music was the Motown record label, which by 1965 was a significant cultural phenomenon, notably among record-buying workingclass youths. The global success and influence of the Motown record label and sound has been the subject of multiple studies, including popular histories, academic monographs, biographies, autobiographies, magazines and fanzines.55 The history of the label, the sounds etched into the grooves of the vinyl recordings, the apparent brilliance 28

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of the musicians, lyricists and performers were all integral to the northern soul scene of the 1970s. The impact of Motown on British music in terms of influence and consumption has been summarised by Andrew Flory, and in television documentaries charting the role of black music in the development of post-war youth culture. Flory claims that Motown is ‘a fascinating case of transatlantic dialogue’.56 From 1962 onwards and into the 1970s, the hits of the Temptations, Mary Wells, the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight and many others formed part of a sonic soundscape that filled working-class leisure spaces with emotion, energy, elation, reflection and escape. For Jon Savage the key moment when Motown and soul music displaced the giants of the British beat boom in youth culture was the success of the Four Tops single ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ in 1966.57 This and many other Motown singles created the template for the ‘danceability’ of hundreds of subsequent northern soul classics. Youth clubs, school dances, fairgrounds, coffee bars, pubs, subterranean soul clubs, parlours and thousands of bedrooms were sites of collective and individual consumption of Motown. The visual imagery of towns and cities of the midlands and the north such as Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Leigh, Wigan and Manchester was of localities built on the industrial revolution; smoky foundries, redbrick cotton mills, colliery headgears, city centre railway goods yards and factories provided a stark contrast to the sonic intervention of soul music into traditional working-class communities, and into the cultural lives of its young adherents. And yet the music had been created in a similar social and economic context, exemplified by the industrial and working-class heritage of Detroit. Middle-class commentators and sections of the British left remained wedded to the notion that the working-class north retained a soundscape of brass bands, choirs and folk music. Such misguided prejudice and partiality was absorbed by documentary film-makers and socialist activists through to the 1980s.58 For much of the 1960s the middle-class left remained suspicious of the superficiality of popular music and the more accessible Motown sound. Similarly, the national music press in the form of New Musical Express and Melody Maker almost totally ignored the existence of the northern soul scene of the 1970s. Flory has noted that one attraction of the Motown sound was its offer of escape, affluence and ‘class uplift’.59 Yet such a picture tends to mask the continuities and ambiguities of the working-class 29

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c­onsumption of soul music in the industrial north and midlands. The formative years of Georgie Fame are again instructive here.60 His father had been a spinner and Fame was employed as a weaver at Lilford Mill. His musical journey from playing to the miners and millworkers of Leigh and Wigan to his embrace of rhythm and blues and ska music was completed by his contribution to the Tamla Motown tour of Britain in March 1965. The tour represented a ‘coming of age’ for Fame, and the acceptance among black performers that he was an authentic rhythm and blues artist.61 He returned to Lancashire when the tour stopped at the Wigan ABC and the Manchester Odeon, where he was cheered on by Ronnie Carr and other working-class friends who had made the journey from Leigh. Roger Eagle later recalled that there were only ‘150 people in attendance at the Manchester show’.62 The running order of the Motown shows was Earl Van Dyke followed by Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Fame and then the headline act, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.63 Each artist played for around twenty minutes while the others watched from the wings. Fame claimed that the tour had been his ‘greatest experience’ since he started in the business.64 As with consumers of northern soul, Fame felt that ‘rhythm and blues’ brought ‘honesty in music’ and ‘if you start off looking for truthfulness and meaning and maturity you’re starting on the right track’.65 Such discourses around ‘truth’, ‘faith’ and ‘belonging’ became part of the lexicon of the northern soul scene. The Motown tour was a disaster in terms of ticket sales, especially at shows outside London. In Bristol, the promoter had to give away one thousand tickets to the local black population concentrated in the St Paul’s district.66 In Manchester, there is no evidence that there was any significant presence from the city’s Moss Side district. This is not surprising, given the levels of poverty in this area and the fact that the local black population had their own network of small clubs. Moreover, jazz, calypso and ska were as popular as soul among recent immigrants. By the early 1970s some black youths in the district had embraced reggae and saw northern soul as ‘old-fashioned’ music.67 New Musical Express claimed that the Motown tour was ‘a flop’ which ‘left behind a trail of near-empty theatres halfway across the country’.68 Valerie Jameson from London wrote a letter to Melody Maker noting the low turnout at the show she had attended: ‘fans thought enough of their records to put them in the charts so why stay away from their live performance?’69 Yet it was the tour’s later symbolism, 30

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impact and legacy that became more important than the limited ticket sales.70 This was the kind of spectacular failure that would become a venerated staple of the northern soul scene. Its icons were those who had been victims of the brutal capitalism of the American recording industry, its sounds were those that had been left to gather dust in the back rooms of studios and record shops. Such individuals and artefacts were the kings, queens and diamonds of the northern soul scene. Motown concerts might have been sparsely attended, but to the more discerning fans of American soul music who witnessed the performances the tour proved to be a moment of epiphany in presenting an image of England where class and racial boundaries could be temporarily transcended.71 The mixed audiences at some theatres were symbolic of the way in which elements of English youth culture were laying the foundation of a more egalitarian and liberal society. Joanne Bennett felt, as a working-class teenager from a terraced street close to the city centre, that the music ‘was just so exciting’. Yet the music was not necessarily an expression of affluence in the way that has been suggested by many studies of the 1960s.72 Bennett saved labels from boxes of tea to send off for a voucher that could then be exchanged for a record.73 Money was still tight for many working-class families, and youths would have to contribute to domestic budgets and subsidise members who were in need of financial help. For Bennett and her friends, music began to become a more important part of their everyday life: waking up to the sounds of the radio in the morning, getting ready for work while a record played in the background, increasing the beat and tempo when applying make-up in preparation for a night out. The emotional impact of the sonic experience was difficult to articulate, but it was nonetheless shared by thousands who were emotionally, physically and culturally moved by soul music. The consumption of Motown records led to further initiatives that would also feature in the later northern soul scene. Young converts to the Motown sound became avid collectors of the label’s output and familiarised themselves with the biographies of the artists. DJs would introduce rarer examples from the catalogue in sessions in youth clubs and dance halls. Proselytisers became advocates for the music, building a scene in particular localities, while others such as Godin became nationally recognised experts and propagandists. Godin was central to the organisation and promotion of the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society, formed in 1963. Flory has estimated 31

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that membership of the society was anything ‘between 500 and 1,000 in the peak years of 1964 and 1965’.74 The society’s membership was primarily London-based, but its influence in the north was more longstanding and influential. Godin edited the periodic newsletters and press releases and provided readers with a wider contextualisation of the development of the Motown sound and the lives and inspirations of the key performers. An introduction to Motown led many to seek out similar sounds on the dozens of labels that sought to emulate the company’s success.75 Autobiographies, contributions to fan sites, forums and the interviews that were conducted for this study all bear testimony to the importance of Motown in providing the sonic template for northern soul. The foundations of the scene and its attendant mythologies came together in what was for many aficionados the ‘first club of northern soul’, the Twisted Wheel in the heart of Manchester.76 Right track: northern soul’s ground zero and the Twisted Wheel club77 In the 1960s Manchester was still very much an industrial city. Trafford Park to the west of the urban centre was a huge employer of labour in its engineering plants, factories, manufacturing and distribution centres. In 1967 it had over 50,000 employees, but deindustrialisation led to a rapid decline to 15,000 by 1975.78 At the end of the 1960s the remaining coal miners in the city were working underground at Bradford Colliery to the east of Piccadilly station and Agecroft Colliery in Salford to the west.79 Shirley Baker’s photographs taken in the 1960s and 1970s depict an urban space that continued to be blighted by poor housing, poverty and social deprivation. Yet the splashes of colour in clothing, advertising hoardings, shop fronts and street scenes bear witness to momentary episodes of laughter, glamour, hedonism and temporary escape from the macro and micro dramas of working-class life.80 Such lives were soundtracked by popular music, which became a more significant aspect of the urban soundscape, and for the more discerning consumer rare soul records could be heard in a range of subterranean clubs and suburban coffee bars. Phil Saxe grew up on the subtle dividing line between the cultures of class in suburbs such as Stretford, Chorlton and Didsbury. A grammar school boy, he lived in what he describes as a ‘lower middle class’ street that was in close proximity to a council estate.81 32

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He was an example of the ways in which youth culture delicately transcended elements of class identities in northern cities that had benefited from post-war slum clearance and the policies of the 1945–50 Labour government. Joanne Bennett’s working-class street was very close to Moss Side, and through the 1960s she would accompany older girls into its clubs, attended by West Indians, Africans and the white working class. Her style icons were the television presenter Cathy McGowan and the singer Sandie Shaw.82 Lack of money precluded extravagance in terms of the purchase of boutique items, yet McGowan’s and Shaw’s appearances on shows such as Ready Steady Go! provided young girls with a sense of glamour and style that was achievable to some degree. This was done through a culture of ‘make do and mend’, and subtle and skilful adaptations of what might have been perceived as more practical items of clothing. Dresses, skirts and tops were embellished and cut to create a style and image more suitable for the dance floors of the northern soul clubs. In Manchester, popular music and football provided respite from the drudgery of the home and the workplace, although both were heavily gendered. In the 1960s Manchester United and Manchester City drew the masses to their Old Trafford and Maine Road stadiums. United won the football league championship in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968. City won the league in 1968 and the FA Cup in 1969.83 Young men attending the city-centre music clubs complemented their love of soul music with support for their football team. Phil Saxe was a passionate Manchester United supporter and Les Hare, another soul fan, was a follower of Manchester City. Both retained a commitment to soul music and football throughout the 1970s.84 The connection between soul fans and football was also a feature of places such as Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Blackpool. Later, northern soul shared with football a devotion to particular clubs and localities and strong bonds of loyalty and passion. Yet it also provided a home for young men who felt alienated from the collective masculinity and tribalism of the football field and the heaving terraces. The Manchester Corporation Act of 1965 had completely decimated the coffee bar and club scene in Manchester, leading to mass closures and stricter licensing restrictions.85 Yet venues such as the Twisted Wheel survived and became northern outposts for mods who refused to embrace new trends, engage with the counter-culture, or relinquish their love of ‘the golden age of Motown’. For some this 33

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developed into an article of faith, in which cultural identity both challenged and complemented the life of working-class communities in the north and midlands. The Twisted Wheel was a northern version of the Flamingo, with its first all-nighter organised in September 1963. It had originally been a left-wing coffee bar symbolic of the New Left and beatnik culture of the late 1950s, providing a space for the various communists, socialists and political gadflies who populated the city centre. It subsequently attracted a roster of American and English soul performers who had commercial success and attracted sizeable audiences for their live performances. In 1964 Rave magazine described the Twisted Wheel on Brazenose Street in the city centre as having a ‘mod influence’, with an average attendee’s age of 18; a popular dance was ‘the monkey’.86 Georgie Fame again provided a key link between northern working-class youth, the Soho mod scene and the sounds of black America. Fame performed at the Twisted Wheel on fourteen occasions between 1963 and 1967.87 The roster of American soul singers who appeared at the club between 1963 and 1971 includes numerous legends: Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, Edwin Starr, Ike and Tina Turner, the Ronettes and Percy Sledge. To many attendees, subsequent writers and curators the club represented the crystallisation of what would later become the northern soul scene. Indeed some of those who performed there, such as Edwin Starr, would become icons of northern soul. Starr’s music was the connecting thread running through mod, rare soul and northern soul. In the 1970s no major venue could be considered a success without a performance from Starr. His hit single ‘SOS’ (1966) was as much a staple in soul clubs as it was in the provincial discos that accompanied events such as weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. Records such as ‘SOS’ were also important ‘conversion sounds’ that led listeners from Motown to rare soul and then into the northern soul scene. According to the club’s historians Keith Rylatt and Phil Scott, the mod scene in Manchester was very small until the Twisted Wheel became its promoter.88 Youths attending the club would have great influence on fashion trends, musical tastes and the popularity of particular dances. For Phil Saxe, the Twisted Wheel was more ‘hard core’ in terms of soul music, clientele and amphetamine use.89 The club was on the ‘right track’ in forging an identity that was true to the ideals of the original mod culture of the early 1960s. Joanne Bennett first attended in 1964 and mixed with the beatniks and mods, noting 34

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that ‘it had an atmosphere all of its own’.90 The mod weekend experience in Manchester would follow a particular format. Saturday afternoons were spent cruising around Manchester on chromed Lambrettas … before meeting up at the Cona … or the Mogambo. Early on Saturday night the Mod crowd would head down to the Jungfrau where, like the Cona, there was lots of space to park the scooters. At about 11.00pm, it was time to make the short trip down Deansgate to Brazenose Street, ready for the Wheel Allnighter.91

Because of its proximity to mainline and local rail networks, the club attracted youths from satellite towns and cities across the north-west, Yorkshire, the Potteries and the west midlands. This ensured that ‘tales of the wheel’ would be passed through friends and acquaintances, building the popularity of the club and contributing to subsequent mythologies. In Skipton, Adrian Smith remembered older brothers of friends who were ‘wheel regulars’ and soul record collectors.92 Saxe recalls older boys in Stretford telling him about ‘the Wheel’ and ‘what went on there’.93 A report by PC Barbara Hurst in 1964 noted that many of the youths who congregated around the Mosley Street bus station in the city centre were attendees of the Wheel.94 By this time the club had an estimated membership of 14,000, an incredible figure for a small basement premises.95 Rylatt and Scott stress that in the north mod was always more about ‘black music’ than fashion, and this was partly due to the Wheel.96 The centrality of the music and in the late 1960s the rarer soul sounds marked the northern mod scene as following a different and more idiosyncratic development. Other clubs in the midlands and the north emerged alongside the Twisted Wheel, including the Place in Stoke-on-Trent, which laid the foundations for the rare soul scene in the Potteries that would by symbolised by the later popularity of the Golden Torch. The distribution and consumption of amphetamines that had been a feature of the mod clubs of London, particularly the Scene and the Flamingo, was also a core component of the mod and soul scene in the north.97 This aspect of the culture of the Twisted Wheel attracted attention from the police, the local press and concerned commentators and parents. The following description by a female police officer taken from the Manchester police files provides a detailed description of the Twisted Wheel. At 12 midnight on Saturday 14th March 1964 … I went to the Twisted Wheel Coffee Club … In the largest room a group was playing and 35

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Keeping the faith people were standing around listening. It was very dark and crowded and couples were lying on the floor … It was impossible to pass through because there were so many people asleep or couples kissing and ­cuddling … The average age of members was about 17 years to 20 years but some looked about 14 or 15 years old … it was difficult to distinguish the sexes as the boys and girls were dressed in blue jeans and many of the boys had long hair … Because of the darkness … it was difficult to estimate the number of people there; I would say approximately 250.98

Such suspicions on the part of the authorities reinforced the exclusivity of the club and engendered a sense of collective difference among its members. Phil Saxe fully embraced the culture of the Wheel as a DJ, dancer, record collector/dealer and consumer of amphetamines. He noted the difference between the more respectable crowd who would attend to watch the live performers, and those who were much more interested in the all-night Saturday night/Sunday morning sessions.99 The selfidentification and secret codes of ‘the Wheelers’ would be transposed to the northern soul scene in the early 1970s. This was expressed through extensive knowledge of the music, clothing and dance, and through the wearing of cloth badges proclaiming allegiance to the club. Rylatt and Scott suggest that by 1965 the clientele of the Wheel had moved away from a distinct connection to mod and was more focused on the music; its exclusivity, rarity and the emotional attachment that it engendered in its consumers.100 The ‘scene setters’ and those viewed as having an acute knowledge of the scene at the Wheel would dance closest to the DJ’s booth.101 This connection to soul music in general and rare soul in particular proved immune to the shifting styles of youth culture in London and the south. The club’s association with rare soul was further cemented when it moved to new premises on Whitworth Street.102 For Saxe, the original Wheel had a more diverse range of black music and drugs. Bennett also felt that the atmosphere had changed, particularly when groups who had had chart success such as Manfred Mann played, attracting a totally different clientele.103 The Whitworth Street Wheel was far more amphetamine-based and pushed towards more up-tempo soul sounds. Dexedrine, ‘black bombers’, ‘green and clears’ became the core components of the pharmacopoeia of the Wheel all-nighter.104 Wheel regulars would obtain amphetamines through parents, friends, employees working in the medical professions, and through theft from local chemists. These ‘amphetamine veterans’ would pass on 36

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their knowledge, contacts and practices to those attending the soonto-be ‘superclubs’ of northern soul in Stoke, Blackpool and Wigan. From 1965 to 1971 the Twisted Wheel would continue to feature live soul performers from the UK and the USA, but the clientele became far more discerning in the pursuit of rarer soul sounds and the amphetamines that would sustain them through the marathon allnight dancing sessions.105 Through the decline of the original mods in London and the advent of the counter-culture and associated music in 1966–69, the Twisted Wheel retained its focus on rare soul music. It was here, according to Cosgrove, that ‘soul became a religion, one that the chosen few of the deep north would remain devoted to’.106 As with Godin and the pages of Blues and Soul, Roger Eagle was a crucial element in building a soul scene in Manchester. According to Dave Haslam, Eagle was one of the many ‘independents’ who were key in establishing the city’s musical foundations and legacy.107 He had moved from Oxford to the north in 1962 and gained employment at Kellogg’s in Trafford Park. He claimed that the city’s sense of separateness enabled a movement to develop and to sustain the rare soul scene. Eagle was connected to the clubs, DJs and record dealers in London, and used his encyclopaedic knowledge of black music to convert people to soul.108 As already noted, from his office on the premises of the Twisted Wheel he also published R’n’B Scene, which ran from 1964 to 1966.109 This publication would set the template for a multiplicity of magazines and fanzines that would drive and sustain the northern soul scene in the 1970s. Many of the rarer records played at the Wheel were produced by collectors, with some finding their way via the American airbase at Burtonwood.110 The culture of collecting, documenting and introducing previously unheard sounds to the dancers would remain a crucial aspect of the northern soul scene. Eagle and other DJs such as Brian Phillips at the Wheel were also communicators, educators and gatekeepers. They shaped tastes, codified definitions of soul music, and became celebrities in their own right in the micro world of the basement premises they inhabited. Eagle eventually grew impatient with the limitations of the scene that he had done so much to sustain: ‘A year or so, 18 months was great … Then it became just a question of a fast dance beat to keep people up all night. Most of them would be taking a lot of pills … they didn’t really want the bands on.’111 There was a tendency for the ­ amphetamine-fuelled dancers to express impatience with the 37

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live acts. In ­contrast, Brian Rae remained focused on playing what was termed ‘pure soul’.112 The club attracted groups of working-class youths from the steel mills of Yorkshire, the mines of Lancashire and North Wales, the central industrial belt of Scotland and a large mixed clientele from across the city and its suburban settlements. At this stage members of the Twisted Wheel used a variety of descriptors to define themselves and their affiliations: ‘rhythm and soul’, ‘rare soul’ and ‘Wheelers’ rather than ‘northern soul’ aficionados.113 According to Phil Saxe, the age range was probably 16–18 and predominantly male. He stopped attending the Wheel at the age of 19, moving on with many others into marriage, new movements and new genres.114 Tony Davidson was just 16 when he attended the Wheel, travelling from Prestwich dressed in his Levis and Ben Sherman shirt, and with a ‘pocket full of pep pills’.115 For soul fans who could not attend the Wheel on a regular basis, Motown and rare soul could also be heard on the radio via American Forces Network (AFN344).116 Youths who could not travel to Manchester for financial, personal or domestic reasons recreated their own ‘mini-Wheels’ in youth clubs, parlours and bedrooms. Saxe had served his apprenticeship in the same way, absorbing knowledge from the broader mod scene and spinning discs in his local youth club before graduating to the Wheel.117 Future northern soul DJ Kev Roberts in Mansfield heard of the Wheel from his brother’s friend.118 In 1966 the owners of the Twisted Wheel decided to open a coastal version in the resort of Blackpool. The building was situated on Coronation Street and operated for two years, but it did not run the all-night sessions that were a feature of the Manchester club.119 The Blackpool Wheel was a sonic intervention into the cacophony of noise, conversation and music of the popular and boisterous workingclass holiday spot. The club was divided into three levels containing a café, a dance room and a space with a stage for live performances.120 It was another crossing point on the developing network of soul music fans across the north. Many attendees also purchased soul records from a cigarette kiosk on nearby Victoria Street.121 The records played by the resident DJs created a summer soundtrack of hedonistic nights that remained rooted in the memory of young working-class holidaymakers.122 The club was sometimes blighted by fights between rival gangs who descended on the town, and it was a pale shadow of the Manchester premises. As highlighted in the next chapter, by the early 1970s Motown stars and soul music were as much part of the 38

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Blackpool experience as fish and chips, bingo, piers, thrill rides and ghost trains. Magic potion: from rare soul to northern soul123 The frenetic dancing styles that became a feature of the northern soul scene were created at the Twisted Wheel during its Whitworth Street incarnation. This developed alongside what Cosgrove refers to as a ‘hardening of the music policy’.124 Eagle later recalled that this dancing style was unique to Manchester: ‘Leg splits, knee drops, spins, back drops, slides … there was no precedent.’125 The Wheel dancing style was adapted, reshaped and diversified on hundreds of makeshift dance floors in youth clubs, living rooms and bedrooms across the north and midlands. Attendees of the Wheel would pass on their moves to younger brothers, sisters and friends. For some northern children in their early teens, clubs such as the Wheel were semi-mythical places that were just out of reach; alternative worlds where the rules of the domestic sphere and the community could be momentarily transcended. In youth clubs the rarer soul sounds shared deck space with chart hits of the day, offering glimpses of a secret world that operated beyond the confines of mainstream popular music. The Motown label was now just one of many, including Ric-Tic, Okeh and Golden World Records, that found space in the singles boxes of soul purists. These labels became part of the iconography of northern soul and underpinned its mythologies.126 The last years of the Wheel were personified by the up-tempo soul that fitted the faster dances and allowed for the full expression of sound, body and movement. Future Wigan Casino DJ Dave Evison, a mod from Stoke-on-Trent, visited the Wheel three times during 1969–70 while on leave from the army, and was struck by the frenetic dancing, the atmosphere and the sense that it was something very different from more conventional clubs in the north and midlands.127 For Les Hare, the Wheel held on to the mod identity of exclusivity through its presentation of the rare soul scene. Across Manchester, mod and soul were still popular in 1969/70 and the visual and sonic aspects of this culture were located on the street, in youth clubs and at the Wheel.128 Phil Saxe claims that the penchant for the faster sound was also developing in other less celebrated venues that were playing up-tempo soul away from the spotlight of the Wheel. For example, Wheel DJs were aware 39

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of a similar scene at the Top Twenty Club in Hollinwood, Oldham.129 Tammie, the young female protagonist of Vivien Tenny’s pulp novel Just Ask the Lonely, published in 1970, was perhaps referring to the Wheel when she mentions ‘just dancing ’n’ dancing all night long’.130 According to the club’s historian Keith Rylatt, in the Wheel’s final six months, ‘fifty per cent of the records spun were imports and all, by this time, were what could be called Northern Soul’.131 The Twisted Wheel closed on 30 January 1971 with a performance by Edwin Starr. Starr would later be canonised in life and death as one of the icons of northern soul. Contrary to myth, the club was not closed directly as a result of police and drug problems, although this could have been a contributory factor. According to the club’s historians, there were a combination of issues: stricter licensing requirements implemented by the council, the fall in attendances in music clubs across the city, and the exclusivity of the rare soul scene which did not encourage mass and popular participation.132 The closure led to an expansion and proliferation of northern soul clubs, yet there remained divisions between DJs, scene gatekeepers and sympathetic writers. Some wanted to preserve the exclusivity of the scene, while others wanted to create a movement that would bring rare soul to the masses. In October 1971 Blues and Soul magazine put out a call for soul DJs to write in with details of the clubs they were playing and the records that enjoyed the greatest popularity. The subsequent list included multiple nights and venues in Lancashire, North Wales, the west midlands and the east midlands, and even nights in Malvern and Salisbury.133 From the pages of Blues and Soul a map of rare soul networks and clubs was presented to readers. This focus allowed readers to connect with soul fans all over the country and overseas. It engendered a sense of being part of a national scene that seemed to be growing exponentially each month, feeding an interest in record collecting, attending multiple nights and venues and creating all the elements of northern soul. Music, fashion and insider knowledge constituted the ‘magic potion’ that produced the transition from rare soul to northern soul, which by 1970–71 was complete. The Twisted Wheel club formed a core element of the story of northern soul and the wider cultural history of Manchester. In Paul Morley’s extensive historical travelogue, he describes its transition from the home of blues through rare soul to northern soul, playing ‘serious music for serious people’.134 The regulars at the Wheel 40

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favoured a particular sound that the major American labels were no longer recording, producing or distributing.135 A subsequent published history of the Twisted Wheel includes a foreword by Godin in which he defines himself as a ‘champion of the right of northerners to make their own choices and different from the mainstream’.136 Yet the sounds that were filling the floor of the Wheel were not confined to this exclusive space. Dozens of other venues in the north and the midlands retained an affection for and commitment to the soul sounds of the mid-1960s. In fact some of the iconic recordings that formed the bedrock of northern soul were introduced to the Wheel from other locales, perhaps the most famous example being Leon Haywood’s ‘Baby Reconsider’, played by DJ Carl Dene in 1968 at the Chateau Impney in Droitwich. This club was a Black Country counterpart to the Twisted Wheel.137 The Sunday afternoon sessions attracted rare soul enthusiasts from across the west midlands.138 There were also dozens of other venues that were playing rare soul in the late 1960s, but none reached the mythic and iconic status of the Wheel.139 Many of these events were located in traditional working-class institutions, ‘electing committees and treasurers … in fading workers’ clubs, bowling clubs, miners’ welfares and industrial social clubs’.140 Such imagery would continue to define the scene from within and without down to the contemporary period. In 1970–71 Dave Godin created a conception of a northern soul scene that gave the rare soul milieu an identity that became more cohesive throughout the decade. The transition from ‘rare soul’ to ‘northern soul’ was defined by Godin and given national traction through his article ‘The Up-North Soul Groove’, published in Blues and Soul in two parts in June–July 1970. This was followed in January 1971 by his article on the Twisted Wheel entitled ‘Land of a Thousand Dances’.141 In this detailed piece he described his journey to the ‘north’s Soul lands’ and ‘the country’s most ardent and dedicated Soul fans’.142 It was as if all the life energy of the great city was channelled into this spot and hidden away under the ground for fear of disturbing the ‘respectable’ citizenry … The fellows in their mohair suits and ‘right on now’ black gloves … and Jackie looking as splendid as Brigitte Bardot … The dancing is without doubt the highest and the finest I have ever seen outside of the USA … everybody there was expert in soul clapping … Between records one would hear the occasional cry of ‘Right on now’, or see a clenched gloved fist rise over the tops of heads of dancers … 41

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Keeping the faith They are my kind of people … Soul music, like life itself, goes on and on. Because each and every one of us keeps the faith­– ­right on now!143

This was confirmation and recognition of a scene that had been created and consolidated in the subterranean rooms of the Twisted Wheel and made in Manchester. A few months earlier, Godin had prophetically predicted that in the seventies soul music is in for the biggest and widest acceptance in this country that it has ever had … People still want to dance and use music as a reflection of their own thought and feelings … it is inevitable that people will want to return more to the grass roots of popular music for fresh inspiration and exhilaration.144

Yet for some Wheel stalwarts such as Phil Saxe, Godin’s spotlight on the scene signalled its demise. True to the mod ethos, he moved on after the Wheel closed into the worlds of the Velvet Underground and David Bowie.145 Joanne Bennett retained an interest in soul, but had also broadened her musical tastes. The writer and historian Stuart Cosgrove recalled being given a cassette tape featuring sounds from the recently closed Wheel by a friend and seeing it as ‘like an initiation rite into a secret cult’.146 In Culcheth, a village close to Leigh, Dave Rimmer also heard stories of the Wheel and was exposed to the sonic atmosphere through his local youth club.147 In Stoke-on-Trent, Frank Elson heard about the Wheel while in the queue waiting for the Golden Torch club to open.148 In a retrospective account of the ‘northern discos’ published in 1975 it was clear that the closure of the Twisted Wheel in 1970 represented a significant point of departure. One regular noted that ‘something changed when the Wheel closed … we used go to clubs like the Mojo (Sheffield), the Lantern (Market Harborough), Up the Junction (Crewe), the Blue Orchid (Derby), but the police stopped the all-­nighters there too’.149 A letter to Blues and Soul from Roland Nixon from Bushbury (near Wolverhampton) informed Godin that ‘Soul is getting bigger all the time in his neighbourhood, and especially amongst young people in the twelve and up age bracket.’150 Godin distanced the scene from other musical genres and fads, further giving it a sense of exclusivity and authenticity. Listen to Radio One and hear the monotonous crap that they give out. Look at most of the record weeklies and see how they have gone ­downhill … this has hardly affected the Soul fraternity. We see it all­– ­a 42

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Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England circus scene that is not part of our scene … the trendies and the groupies have failed to notice that the real ‘underground’ music of Britain is, and always has been Soul.

In another column asking readers to send in examples of their favourite records, he noted that ‘they all tend to be rather obscure … [they] were not in any way hits over here’. Such records and labels would protect the scene from infiltration by casual observers and maintain its ethos of authenticity and exclusivity.151 After the closure of the Twisted Wheel, Manchester’s rare soul community found a new home at the city’s Pendulum club, close to Victoria station. This club does not have the same cachet as other locales in the history of northern soul, but it was an important venue for maintaining the scene in the city. Cosgrove claims that it was a launching pad for ‘records that eventually made their way to the forefront of the all-nighter scene … that seemed to give license to collectors and encouraged their taste for the esoteric, the rare and unheralded’.152 It provided a local space for residual displaced consumers and dancers, but it did not have the regional reach and prominence of the Wheel.153 The axis for the scene had now moved to the midlands. This does not mean that there were fewer people listening to soul music in the north-west, but the scene was dependent on venues that could quickly gain a reputation for the rarity of the music and the ability of the DJs to forge sounds and atmosphere to create the ultimate ‘all-nighter’. In 1972 the baton was passed from the Twisted Wheel to the Golden Torch in Tunstall, close to Stokeon-Trent. By this time the foundation myths of northern soul were firmly established. Such myths would both sustain and fragment the scene in the 1970s.154 Notes 1 Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (London: UCL Press, 1998); Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). See also Stuart Cosgrove, Detroit 67: The Year that Changed Soul (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2015). 2 Joe Street, ‘The Stax/Volt Revue and Soul Music Fandom in 1960s Britain’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014), 43

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Keeping the faith pp. 195–218; and Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’ 3 For the youth culture of coal and cotton towns in north-west England in the 1950s, see Gildart, Images of England, ch. 1. 4 See Andrew Flory, ‘Tamla Motown in the UK: Transatlantic Reception of American Rhythm and Blues’, in Brett Lashua, Karl Spracklen and Stephen Wagg (eds), Sounds and the City: Popular Music, Place and Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 113–27. 5 For a general economic and social survey of the city in the post-war period, see Alan Kidd, Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), chs 10 and 11. 6 Shirley Ellis’s ‘Soul Time’ (1966) was a very popular record at the Twisted Wheel club and became a staple of the northern soul scene. 7 Some of the material in this chapter originally appeared in Gildart, Images of England, chs 1, 2 and 5. 8 The literature on mod is now fairly extensive, but for a recent general history, see Weight, Mod! A Very British Style; Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson, Mods, the New Religion: The Style and Music of the 1960s Mods (London: Omnibus, 2013); and the critical interventions in Pamela Thurschwell (ed.), Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 9 For example, see Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels. 10 For the importance of the bedroom in the transmission and consumption of popular culture, see Sian Lincoln, Youth Culture and Private Space (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 11 Anthony Marks, ‘Young, Gifted and Black: Afro-American and AfroCaribbean Music in Britain 1963–88’, in Paul Oliver (ed.), Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990), p. 104. 12 For Stevens and his play-list at the Scene club, see Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, pp. 55–7. 13 For details, see B. Sykes, Sit Down! Listen To This! The Roger Eagle Story (Manchester: Empire Publications, 2012), chs 3 and 4. 14 K. Rylatt and P. Scott, CENtral 1179. The Story of Manchester’s Twisted Wheel Club (London: Bee Cool Publishing, 2001), pp. 79–80. 15 Interviews with Joanne Bennett and discussions with Beverley Calvert are illustrative of this more private and personal expression of a dedication to soul music. 16 For a detailed biography of Fame’s early years in Lancashire and at the Flamingo, see Gildart, Images of England, chs 1 and 2. 17 The Flamingo was subject to significant police surveillance. See files of ‘Working Party on Juvenile Jazz and Dance Club in the West End of London’, HO 300/8. 44

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Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England 18 For the multiplicity of labels that recorded rhythm and blues music in this period, see Ward, Just My Soul Responding. 19 For an example of the financial benefits of ‘record collecting’, see profiles of John Manship and Kev Roberts in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 164, 311. 20 For a social history of Detroit in this period mapped against the Motown sound, see Cosgrove, Detroit 67. 21 The Jades’ ‘I’m Where It’s At’ was a ‘floor-filler’ at Wigan Casino in the 1970s. 22 For Wigan and its construction as a particular working-class place, see Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’; Gildart, Images of England, ch. 1. 23 For a vivid reconstruction of the daily life of miners in this period, see Richard Benson, The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Yorkshire Family (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 24 This aspect of working-class lives has been most accurately portrayed in autobiographies and non-fiction novels. See, for example, Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), and more recently from a Yorkshire perspective, Benson, The Valley. 25 All of the oral testimonies recorded for this book give some articulation to feelings generated by soul music in both the public and domestic sphere. 26 Gildart, Images of England, ch. 1. 27 G. Moorhouse, Britain in the Sixties. The Other England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), p. 121. 28 This was most apparent in Tony Palmer’s documentary film The Wigan Casino (Granada TV, 1977). See also the feature on Wigan Casino that pre-dated Palmer’s film and appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 29 See D. Fowler, review of Gildart, Images of England, in History, 100.341 (July 2015). 30 For an empathetic history of the working class, see Todd, The People. 31 Closures increased in the 1950s and 1960s, further diluting the number of miners in Leigh and Wigan: they included Victoria (1958), Garswood Hall (1958), Maypole (1959), Welch Whittle (1963), Landgate (1960), Mains (1960), Giants Hall (1961), Standish Hall (1961), Ince Moss (1962), Wigan Junction (1962), Dairy (1962), Gibfield (1963), Robin Hill (1963) and Cleworth (1963). For detail on individual collieries, see Stephen Catterall, ‘The Lancashire Coalfield, 1945–1972: The Politics of Industrial Change’, DPhil thesis, University of York, 2001. 32 See Rosalind Watkiss Singleton, ‘“(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”: Romantic Expectations of Teenage Girls in the 1960s West 45

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Keeping the faith Midlands’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture and Social Change, pp. 119–46. 33 Northern soul was the major lacuna in the work of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies. 34 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 154–5. 35 In 1984 northern soul fans in the coalfields were forced to sell their precious records in order to get through the hardships of the strike. This was noted by soul fan and record dealer Les Hare in conversation with the author. 36 For a history of the British resorts, see John Walton, The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 37 Rave, No. 6, July 1964. 38 BBC Archive online, 1972: Bickershaw Festival, https://www.facebook. com/BBCArchive/videos/2532524090115188 (accessed 8 June 2020). 39 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 40 Major Lance’s ‘It’s the Beat’ (1966) was popular at the Twisted Wheel club. 41 Nowell, Too Darn Soulful, p. 16. 42 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 43 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 44 For a fascinating insight into personal relationships in twentieth-­century Britain, see Clare Langhamer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 45 Blues and Soul Monthly Music Review, October 1967. 46 Blues and Soul, No. 8, May 1968. 47 For short biography, see Dave Godin obituaries in The Independent, 19 October 2004, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ dave-godin-544348.html (accessed 29 April 2020); and The Guardian, 20 October 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/20/ guardianobituaries.artsobituaries (accessed 29 April 2020). 48 Blues and Soul, No. 12, September 1968. 49 See Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’. 50 For example, see letters in Blues and Soul, No. 13, October 1968. 51 Blues and Soul, No. 23, November 1969. 52 Blues and Soul, June 1969. 53 Blues and Soul, March 1969. 54 Dave Godin, ‘Foreword’, in Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, p. 20. 55 There are numerous academic and popular accounts of Motown. The best remains Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985). For a recent intervention that contextualises Motown in the social struggles of the 1960s, see Cosgrove, Detroit 67. 46

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Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England 56 Flory, ‘Tamla Motown in the UK’, p. 113. 57 Jon Savage, 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (London: Faber and Faber, 2015), p. 449. 58 This is most notable in Palmer’s The Wigan Casino. 59 Flory, ‘Tamla Motown in the UK’, p. 115. 60 See Gildart, Images of England, ch. 1. 61 For links between Motown sound and the city of Detroit, see Smith, Dancing in the Street. 62 Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This!, p. 59. 63 New Musical Express, 26 March 1965. 64 Melody Maker, 3 April 1965. 65 Rave, No. 13, February 1965. 66 Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, pp. 51–2. 67 Discussion with Stan Finney, 3 February 2018. 68 New Musical Express, 23 April 1965. 69 Melody Maker, 17 April 1965. 70 For tabloid press coverage of the tour and internal tensions among the performers, see George, Where Did Our Love Go?, pp. 139–41. 71 The sense of ‘epiphany’ on exposure to soul music was a common thread in the oral testimonies collected for this study. 72 The classic text linking youth culture to affluence was Mark Abrams, The Teenage Consumer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959). 73 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 74 Flory, ‘Tamla Motown in the UK’, p. 119. 75 For a visual sense of the multiplicity of labels, see Brown, The Wigan Casino Years. 76 For a detailed history of the origins and development of the club, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179. 77 Billy Butler’s ‘Right Track’ (1966) became one of the most iconic records on the rare soul scene. 78 Kidd, Manchester, pp. 188–9. 79 For an autobiography of an Agecroft miner in the 1970s, see Paul Kelly, The Last Pit in the Valley (Manchester: Unity Publishing, 2014). 80 Shirley Baker, Street Photographs: Manchester and Salford (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2007); the continuities and changes in Manchester between 1960 and 1973 are also visible in two feature films, one blackand-white and one colour, made on location in the city: Hell is a City (1960) and The Lovers! (1973). 81 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 82 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 83 For the social and economic context of Manchester and its relationship to Manchester United, see Eamonn Dunphy, A Strange Kind of Glory: Sir Matt Busby and Manchester United (London: Quarto, 1991). For the 47

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Keeping the faith overlaps between Manchester United and broader youth subcultures in the 1970s, see Ian Hough, Perry Boys: The Casual Gangs of Manchester and Salford (Reading: Milo Books, 2007). 84 Interviews with Phil Saxe and Les Hare, 23 August 2017 and 1 April 2016. 85 For details, see C. P. Lee, Shake, Rattle and Rain: Popular Music Making in Manchester 1955–1995 (Hardinge Simpole, 2002), ch. 4. 86 Rave, No. 4, May 1964. 87 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 110. 88 See Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 62. 89 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 90 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 91 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 179. 92 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 93 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 94 Manchester City Police report, 23 June 1964, box file on Manchester clubs, Police Museum, Manchester. 95 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 76. 96 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 67. 97 Many of the contributors to Rylatt and Scott’s history mention the distribution and consumption of amphetamine. Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 60–2. 98 Manchester City Police report, 23 June 1964, box file on Manchester clubs, Police Museum, Manchester. 99 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 100 Rylatt and Scott’, CENtral 1179, p. 109. 101 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 102 For an autobiographical novel of the Wheel in this period, see Dave, The Manchester Wheelers: A Northern Quadrophenia (Soul Publications, 2008). 103 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 104 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 105 For a detailed discussion of the records played at the Twisted Wheel, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, ch. 10. 106 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 29. 107 Eagle and others are contextualised in the history of the city in Dave Haslam, Manchester, England: The Story of a Pop Cult City (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). 108 Lee, Shake, Rattle and Rain, pp. 185–6. 109 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 80. 110 Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This!, p. 45; For the transmission of popular music through Burtonwood, see Gildart, Images of England, pp. 69–71. 111 Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This!, p. 62. 48

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Mods, Motown and ‘rare soul’ in northern England 112 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 169. 113 Godin, ‘Foreword’, in Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, p. 107. 114 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 115 Interview with Tony Davidson, 14 March 2019. 116 Blues and Soul, No. 28, 27 February–12 March 1970. 117 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 118 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 119 For details, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 147. 120 For profile and recollections of the Blackpool Wheel, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 147–8. 121 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 125. 122 For a list of Twisted Wheel DJs, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 165–70. 123 Lou Johnson’s ‘Magic Potion’ (1963) was played at the Twisted Wheel club. 124 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 28. 125 Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This!, p. 64. 126 For brief histories of Ric-Tic and Okeh, see Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 58–62. 127 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 128 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 129 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 130 Vivien Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely (London: New English Library, 1970), p. 63. 131 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. xvii. 132 For the reasons behind the closure, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 203. 133 Blues and Soul, No. 44, 9–22 October 1970. 134 Morley, The North, pp. 209–10. 135 Marks, ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, p. 107. 136 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. ix. 137 Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, p. 109. 138 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 77. 139 For a critique of Wheel-centric accounts of the creation of the northern soul scene, see Paulo Hewitt, The Soul Stylists: Six Decades of Modernism­ – ­From Mods to Casuals (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2000), p. 123. 140 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 37. 141 Blues and Soul, 8 January 1971. 142 Blues and Soul, 8 January 1971. 143 Blues and Soul, 8 January 1971. 144 Blues and Soul, No. 27, February 1970. 145 Interview with Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017. 146 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 13. 49

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Keeping the faith 147 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 148 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016. 149 Tony Cummings, ‘The Northern Discos’, in Charlie Gillett and Simon Frith (eds), Rock File 3 (London: Granada, 1975), p. 26. 150 Blues and Soul, 18–30 December 1970. 151 Blues and Soul, 4–17 December 1970. 152 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 48. 153 For recollections of the Pendulum, see Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, pp. 149–50. 154 For some of the more esoteric myths regarding the scene, see examples in Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 33, 62–3.

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2

In the days before Wigan

Central to the northern soul scene was a club culture that was linked to a number of British cities and towns in the north and midlands. Many of these locales had been urban and industrial, but by the early 1970s they were beginning the slow process of shifting away from manufacturing, though they still retained large numbers of factory workers. Clubs such as the Catacombs in Wolverhampton, the Torch in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, and Blackpool Mecca were indicative of how northern soul remained rooted in working-class localities and cultures. Although Blackpool was not an industrial town per se, it continued to attract thousands of industrial workers from across the north every summer. In many ways Blackpool was the personification of the working class at play. The dozens of pubs, clubs and leisure facilities continued as spaces of leisure, drink and dance for multitudes of industrial workers in the 1960s and 1970s. Like Blackpool, northern soul was to become indelibly linked to wider conceptions of the north and northernness (this process is explored in detail in Chapter 6). In 1971 a report in Record Mirror disparagingly argued that soul music was now being defined ‘by a portion of soul enthusiasts­– ­seemingly living in the North’. The writer, Tony Cummings, suggested that this was linked to the fact that ‘clubs didn’t close in the North’ and ‘Northerners were reluctant to give up the warm good times of a weekend Boogaloo accompanied by the local Newcastle Brown’.1 For Cummings, ‘the obvious demands for a strident and deliberate [sound] meant the dredging up of old records which all fall into a tried and tested style which could be vaguely termed “pop soul” or “pseudo-Motown”’.2 An editorial in Blues and Soul published a year later claimed that the magazine received ‘a barrage of letters either condemning Southern Funk or complaining about Northern 51

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­ isco-Soul’. It stressed that in terms of its reviews and categorisations D the magazine took a view on whether ‘a certain record will appeal more in the northern sector of our country’ and it should be accepted as ‘a comment not a slur’.3 Northern soul was being defined from below, but also shaped by sections of the music press, organisations and clubs that were being established to codify a sense of identity, structure and what became the dominant discourses that personified the scene. Soul fans across the country became partisans of an imagined geographical divide between north and south. A small number of outliers from within the scene tried to build a centrist bridge across the chasm. Phil Webberley from Gedling in the Nottinghamshire coalfield perhaps channelled the moderation of the district’s miners in a letter to Blues and Soul in the summer of 1972: ‘I constantly read of people praising Northern sounds and others praising Southern sounds but why is it that soul folk in this country very rarely praise a mixture of Northern and Southern sounds.’4 Manchester still retained its affiliation to rare soul and the legacy of the Twisted Wheel in the Friday and Sunday night sessions at the Pendulum club with DJs Dave White, Barry Tasker and Martyn Ellis.5 Nonetheless, the growth of the ‘soul disco scene’ was not for everyone in the north, with F. W. Lock from Newton-le-Willows claiming in Blues and Soul that an ‘aspect of soul appreciation is dead and the killer is the disco, at least, that is the story around here. Where once soul groups performed, we have soul discotheques.’6 The internal divisions and external critiques of the scene simultaneously strengthened its identity and fed its inherent factionalism. The proliferation of dedicated ‘rare soul nights’ and the growing popularity of the scene can be charted through the increased numbers of listings and adverts in Blues and Soul magazine and related publications that gave voice to participants, DJs and record collectors. Manchester’s Twisted Wheel had created a foundation and identity that by 1971 led to the flourishing of a northern soul scene that proved to be immune to the attractions of heavy rock, counter-cultural politics, and the diktats of music journalists and influential musicians. Northern soul thrived on the margins, out of sight of many who documented youth culture and popular music. Such marginalisation can also be explained by the fact that the scene was not read as part of the contemporary zeitgeist as defined by a London-centric music media. Yet for thousands of young people in the midlands and the north, rare 52

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soul was a core component of the night-time economy and the ebb and flow of everyday life. In the detailed histories of the 1970s by Andy Beckett, Alwyn Turner and Dominic Sandbrook there is no mention of northern soul and clubs such as the Twisted Wheel, the Golden Torch and Wigan Casino. The scene has no place even in their footnotes and indexes.7 Given the focus of these texts on class, culture and industrial politics, this is a major lacuna.8 Similarly, contemporary writers on youth culture associated with the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies produced no articles or chapters on the scene when it was at its peak. Yet in parts of the midlands and the north, rare soul was the soundtrack to lives that continued to be punctuated by the factory clock, the bus to the local colliery, and the dramas of working-class domesticity. As noted by Sandbrook, ‘one survey in 1972 found that almost nine out of ten were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their jobs, while eight out of ten were satisfied with their living conditions’.9 Yet ‘British politics and culture in the 1970s remained saturated in class consciousness; indeed, it is astonishing to reflect how little the affluent society had affected people’s sense of their own place within a social and economic hierarchy’.10 The rare soul scene was already a largely retrospective and nostalgic one, adding to a social and cultural identity that acknowledged a sense of history, collectivism and a shared sense of a recent past. This was displayed through the affiliations to particular soul clubs past and present (the Twisted Wheel, the Torch, Blackpool Mecca) that were advertised on the bodies of soul fans through cloth patches, and remained etched on the individual and collective memories of a generation of enthusiasts who crossed the country every week to savour and absorb the sounds of black America. Unlike the southern obsession with Victoriana and rural Englishness that was filtered through the fashion and music of the counter-culture, the soul fans of the north venerated the more recent past of the mid-1960s.11 There were dozens of clubs across the north and midlands that were playing rare soul, overlapping with the more coherent scene that had been created at the Twisted Wheel. In North Wales there was Payne’s Café Royal in Llandudno (Edwin Starr performed there in April 1972), Llanrwst Hall, and the Old Vaults, Denbigh. The roots of northern soul in Wales can be traced back through two tributaries: the influence that young mods in the 1960s had on local youths when visiting the coastal resorts of Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno for 53

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summer holidays, and the small groups of soul enthusiasts who travelled from along the North Wales coast to attend the all-nighters at the Twisted Wheel. Harry Thomas from the rural village of Gwespyr, a community of farm labourers, coal miners and factory workers, had been exposed to soul music through pirate radio and travelled on a weekly basis with friends from Prestatyn and Rhyl to the Wheel.12 In the shadow of the Wheel, soul music found its way into the youth clubs and discos of North Wales. In 1972 Godin described Payne’s Café Royal in a report for Blues and Soul. Rather faded and has obviously seen better days. Gone are the idyllic afternoons when the bright young things of the town would take afternoon tea with their chaperones and dance to a string quartet set in palms and aspidistras, whilst waitresses served tea-cakes and ­sandwiches … Had the staid patrons of the Café Royal at the turn of the century seen Saturday night’s carryings-on, they’d pass right out. Loud, vibrant and dynamic soul sounds flooded the chandeliers and cherubs, and the dance floor was given over to young people letting it all hangout ’72-style!13

During this period the listings of soul nights in Blues and Soul continued to increase. In Lancashire, Rochdale Town Hall and Clifton Labour Club, Blackpool, were two of many less celebrated venues for rare soul nights. In Staffordshire there was the Yeoman, there was the Hippo in Derbyshire, and there were other events on various evenings in places such as Doncaster, Nottingham and Leicester.14 The Up the Junction club in Crewe held all-nighters in 1972 and ‘was just 2 mins walk from Crewe Station’.15 In Yorkshire, one soul night in Selby was dubbed ‘The Museum Hall of Soul’. In Leeds there was the Central Soul Disco club.16 All of these locations and dozens more have their own unwritten histories, myths, legends and personal experiences. Yet three clubs in particular were key to the foundation myths of northern soul following the demise of the Twisted Wheel: the Catacombs in Wolverhampton, the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent and Blackpool Mecca. Music to my ears: Wolverhampton and the Catacombs club17 The autobiography of Gethro Jones provides a detailed insight into the culture of northern soul in Wolverhampton in the period 1971–73. Jones was raised in care homes, and as a teenager he lived on the Heath Town estate, which he described as ‘a spiralling complex of 54

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high rise flats’ which he hated.18 Jones was a skinhead, a follower of Wolverhampton Wanderers, and entered a process of conversion to the northern soul scene. He illustrates the multiplicity of subcultures and tribes that populated the town in 1971. Mods, rockers, Hell’s Angels, Teddy boys and skinheads all jostled for space on the streets and in the cafés and pubs at weekends. In the wake of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech there were major racial divisions and tensions.19 Jones attended discos in the Lafayette, the Connaught Hotel and the Cavendish, which had a divided dance floor where ‘black and white stayed apart’.20 He was entering a scene that had its origins in the initial burst of mod in 1964 yet still retained a presence across the west midlands, concentrated in a network of pubs, clubs and coffee bars.21 Wolverhampton and its surrounding towns retained a strong sense of class, occupational identity and a collective culture underpinned by raucous music. The sociologist Paul Willis, researching youth in the locality in the mid-1970s, noted that the ‘perennial themes of symbolic and physical violence, rough presence, and the pressure of a certain kind of masculinity … are more clearly expressed amongst “the lads” … particularly at the commercial dance’.22 His detailed ethnography of working-class boys in the town highlighted the resilience of social class and the ways in which it embedded them in a particularly rigid occupational, educational and cultural milieu. Jones’s autobiography is another example of the interplay of masculinity, violence, football and popular music, and how soul became enmeshed in everyday life. For Jones and many others, soul music was a continuous soundtrack that both generated and reflected particular emotions. As such it became a core component of their personal and social identity. This was affirmed through the developing discourse and rhetoric of northern soul, which affirmed ‘togetherness’ and ‘keeping the faith’. Noddy Holder of the band Slade recalled that his family home in Walsall was a ‘council house at the end of a long terrace’ that reminded him of ‘the opening credits of Coronation Street’.23 The Labour clubs and working men’s clubs of the area had shifted with the currents of popular music and were soundtracked by soul as much as they had been by variety and music hall acts in an earlier era. At the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s such clubs still dominated working-class locales.24 Wolverhampton had foundries and factories, and workers were employed in the car factories of the greater west midlands and at the giant steelworks at Bilston. Slade’s guitarist Dave 55

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Hill grew up on the Warstones council estate in Penn. In his autobiography he argued that the Black Country working class never really identified with the blues and always preferred the more up-tempo soul music of Motown. For Hill and his associates, blues ‘all sounded like the roots of the American Great Depression. It didn’t mean much to us in Wolverhampton, it didn’t really connect. We wanted a good time, something to take us away from how dark life was in those days.’25 Further afield in Coventry, local DJ and future record producer Pete Waterman was introduced to northern soul by ‘Joe’, a coal miner originally from Wigan who had moved south to work in a local colliery.26 As with the soul fans of North Wales, the music could be transported by permanent and temporary migration whereby young people moved from one locality to another, taking the sounds with them, proselytising and making converts. The rare soul scene in Wolverhampton had its own foundation myth that led back to the mods of the mid-1960s. The Chateau Impney in Droitwich was a club that attracted the town’s mods and also played an important role in building the structures of what would become northern soul. According to the record collector and soul enthusiast Neil Rushton, ‘The Smethwick Mob used to hire their own doubledecker bus to trek to the Sunday afternoon soul sessions.’27 The club played a range of records from labels that would become synonymous with the iconography and legend of the later northern soul scene, such as Ric-Tic, Golden World Records, Okeh and Cameo Parkway.28 Like many others, Rushton combined his passion for the emerging rare soul scene with a similar fanaticism for Birmingham City FC. He lists a number of soul venues in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as the Mayfair and the George Hotel in Walsall.29 For Rushton, Jones and their contemporaries, access to and acceptance by soul veterans enmeshed them into an exclusive group that had developed a strong sense of history and authenticity. A typical rite of passage would consist of initial exposure to the more popular soul recordings on labels such as Motown, small-scale dances in youth clubs and pubs, and then graduation to large-scale nights that attracted devotees of rare soul. In Wolverhampton, the Catacombs club became a centre for this culture and carved out a place in the history of northern soul. The Catacombs defined itself as ‘the leading R&B discotheque’ and had been a soul venue since 1965, converting purely to rare soul in 1967. It was one of many clubs and pubs in the 1960s and 1970s that contributed to the vibrancy of Wolverhampton’s night life.30 Prior 56

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to this it had been a lead-smelting works, an industry that was part of the industrial history of the Black Country; ‘the dancefloor was within old furnaces knocked into alcoves’.31 By 1972 it was notable as a venue for rare soul. Unlike the Wheel and the Torch, it was not an all-nighter venue (although it had occasional events); regular sessions ran from 8 p.m. to midnight and until 2 a.m. on Saturdays. Resident DJs included Blue Max, Alan Day, Barmy Barry, Farmer Carl Dene and Pep. The journalist Frank Elson made his first foray to Wolverhampton to visit the Catacombs in the summer of 1973: ‘The atmosphere is incredible­– ­a sort of electricity crackles around the place­– ­very subdued lighting quite crowded and fantastic sounds blasting out of numerous speakers. The dance floor and even the corridors were packed solid with dancing bodies.’32 The frenetic dancing that had materialised at the Twisted Wheel was taken to new heights in Wolverhampton, with Elson noting the presence of Alan ‘Iggy’ Edwards, ‘one of the famous “Headspinners”’­ – ­dancers who spin upside down with their hands on the floor.33 The quest for new sounds and recordings became a collaborative project between DJs and club members, with benefit nights organised to raise funds so that rare singles could be purchased and played by Pep. Blue Max was a record shop owner and entered the soul scene when he noticed young buyers ‘asking for records he had never heard of’.34 Yet unlike in other clubs and discos, the DJs were secondary to the music and made few verbal interventions.35 One DJ, Graham Warr, worked by day at the imposing Bilston steel complex.36 The club had a swear box on the door with the proceeds going to charity. Elson also noted the number of members who travelled from beyond the north: ‘a group from Northampton, quite a number of southerners … Cheltenham … Cardiff’.37 On his journey to Wolverhampton with other soul fans he envisaged a journey that could take in all the major venues at that time. Coach starts at Bromsgrove on a Friday night and drives to the Pendulum, Manchester, followed by ‘Va-Va’s’, Bolton, which brings us to Saturday morning. Onwards then to Blackpool where the day is spent sleeping or whatever until its time for the Mecca in the evening. Come Sunday it’s a late lie in for those that need it followed by a gentle run down to Tiffany’s, Newcastle, followed by home.38

Gethro Jones first attended the Catacombs in March 1973, which he described as a ‘totally underground scene’.39 It was here that the 57

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f­ ragments of varieties of soul that he had been exposed to became crystallised. This to him was a ‘soul nirvana’. His attendance at the club was part of a regular pattern in which he would engage with the range of venues that played rare soul music: ‘Our week was now broken up and set in stone, a routine we never deviated from. Saturday and Wednesday at the Cats, Sunday and Tuesday The Ship, and Saturday dinner time, The Octopus.’40 The Catacombs featured ‘rippled walls dripping with soul, hand clapping in the background, voices echoing from the floor’.41 Another attendee, Steve Powell, claimed that ‘Wolverhampton was to produce some of the best soul dancers in the country, setting the styles for many others to follow’.42 The influence of the Catacombs reached other venues and built a following for the more obscure sonic interventions in soul music. The Queen Mary Ballroom in Dudley held soul sessions, complemented by specific nights in smaller clubs and pubs across the Black Country. The growing popularity of soul music in Wolverhampton was confirmed when the more conventional and stylistically opulent Lafayette club organised Monday night sessions specialising in rare sounds and featuring live performances from black American performers such as Erma Franklin, the Chi-Lites and the Detroit Emeralds.43 Yet for Jones and others it was the Catacombs that personified northern soul in Wolverhampton. Elson characterised the Catacombs as ‘one of the all-time great clubs of Soul history … on par with the Mecca, Pendulum and Torch’.44 The club closed in July 1974. The Blackpool Mecca DJ and a key figure in the burgeoning northern soul scene, Ian Levine, characterised the venue as ‘basically a record collectors club’.45 It was crucial in connecting networks of enthusiasts from the midlands and the north and building an intergenerational appreciation of rare soul music that stretched from the mod clubs of the 1960s via the Twisted Wheel and into the heart of youth culture in the Black Country. With the aid of magazines such as Blues and Soul and an informal grapevine that connected soul enthusiasts, the reputations and legends of clubs could be built. Earthquake: Soul-on-Trent and the Torch46 In the perceived hierarchy of ‘foundation clubs’ of northern soul, the Golden Torch (later known just as the Torch) in Tunstall, Stoke-onTrent, became established as a space that personified the key attrib58

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utes of the scene. On the eve of its closure in 1973 it was already being canonised by writers, promoters and attendees in the pages of Blues and Soul and related magazines. Northern soul embraced elements of what Sandbrook has referred to as ‘nostalgic escapism’.47 For recently converted soul enthusiasts the scene might have been new, but many of the sounds belonged to an earlier decade. The Golden Torch was bought by Chris Burton in 1965 and gained a licence a year later. It had a fascinating pre-history as a church, a roller skating rink, a cabaret venue and then the Regent cinema. As with many northern soul venues, the Torch had been a centre for working-class culture and leisure activities. Burton described it as ‘the town’s bug hutch, the local dive where all the cheap films were shown’.48 The Torch became one of Stoke’s premier mod hangouts, forming a bridge to the later northern scene of which it became an iconic touchstone. Live performers at the venue would play a set and then travel up to Manchester for a later show at the Twisted Wheel.49 The 1960s history of the Torch gave the club a firmly grounded authenticity that played well with the construction of its image as the premier rare soul venue in 1972–73. Frank Elson was a Torch regular who started attending the club at the age of 14 in his black Cuban heel boots and Beatles jacket. He remembers the lines of scooters parked on both sides of the street.50 By 1968–69 the local mod scene had fragmented, and soul music developed away from the three-minute bursts of classic Motown and related labels. Burton continued to promote events at the club including reggae nights, heavy rock and more commercial pop, but from 1969 rare soul seemed to attract the largest crowds. The underground and ‘hippie’ counter-culture never really established itself among the working-class youth of the potteries and the Black Country. Stoke-onTrent and the surrounding area was still a predominantly workingclass and industrial conurbation in which men and women worked in the ceramics industry, coal mining and steel production. In the heyday of the Torch in the early 1970s, miners worked underground at eight collieries: Hem Heath, Florence, Holditch, Wolstanton, Silverdale, Chatterley Whitfield, Norton and Victoria. All the mines in Stoke-on-Trent were closed by 1998. The campus of nearby Keele University was close geographically, but was a world away from the coal mines, ceramic kilns and factories of north Staffordshire. A letter from Brian Bosworth to Record Mirror in December 1971 indicated that there was a sizeable rare soul scene. He told readers that he lived ‘in the North­– ­Stoke-on-Trent (Soul-on-Trent)’.51 The reinvention of 59

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the Torch complemented this mythology of the Potteries as having a predilection for a particular brand of rare soul music. The DJ Dave Evison claims that the development of the all-nighter at the club came from below: young mods persuaded the owners to create a night just for them.52 The Torch was one of many clubs that formed a nexus of discos and music venues that were a feature of the Potteries’ nightlife. Here industrial workers would gather in their hundreds to escape the drudgery of the mine and the factory, absorbing the sounds of black America through a cocktail of drink and nicotine, and, in the case of the rare soul venues, amphetamines. Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme had dances, cabarets and performances by soul acts such as Sam and Dave and Billy Preston. The Heavy Steam Machine in Hanley would host the Supremes in 1973. The Placemate club was in Newcastle under Lyme, while Trentham Gardens and the Victoria Hall, Hanley, were more associated with classic rock and mainstream chart performers.53 A Placemate was also opened in Manchester on the old site of the Twisted Wheel. However, two ex-Wheel regulars from Salford felt that soul venues such as this were becoming too exclusive: ‘what will happen when Soul brothers from places further than Manchester arrive expecting a continuum of the Wheel only to be told their faces don’t fit’.54 With the closure of the Wheel the symbolic axis of the rare soul scene had now shifted to the Torch. Elson found that the culture of the Torch all-nighter ingrained ‘a deeper knowledge of soul’ in those who became regulars on the scene.55 For Tony Davidson, a soul fan who had attended the Wheel, the Torch was where the ‘movement came overground … you could see the transition’.56 In its embrace of soul music the Torch started to gain a regional and then national reputation as premier venue for rare sounds. The first all-nighter took place on 11 March 1972 and included a performance by Edwin Starr, and in the following months it became the self-styled ‘country’s No. 1 All-Nighter’. A few weeks before the first night, local miners at Stoke’s eight collieries had been involved in a national strike that had led to a number of power cuts. The energy shortage had even delayed the publication of Blues and Soul magazine.57 Popular music in this period soundtracked a society that witnessed violence on the streets, on the football terraces and in shopping centres on Saturday afternoons. Between 1971 and 1974 the energy crisis and fluctuating economic conditions created domestic 60

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dramas in the kitchens and bedrooms of family homes. The rare soul scene was both a soundtrack and a source of escape, giving a generation of youths a social and cultural identity that complemented and challenged aspects of their everyday lives. Much of this connection between music and the thoughts and feelings of listeners is difficult to gauge from conventional sources, but it comes out quite forcefully in oral testimonies and recollections of the period. The Torch’s regular advert in Blues and Soul had a prominent spot on the bottom third of one of the features pages. The all-nighter ran from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m., with membership costing 10 pence and a 50 pence entrance fee.58 The club was soon running all-nighters twice a month and attracted a membership of over 5,000.59 The success of the Torch was partly attributable to its geographical location. Soul fan Ian Dewhirst noted that it was ‘reasonably accessible via the M6 and M62 motorways for lovers of Northern Soul’.60 The venue attracted indigenous soul fans from Stoke and the west midlands, but also groups from Lancashire and North Wales. Richard Cooper from Stockport found his love of rare soul while studying at Leeds Polytechnic and took a regular coach to the Torch.61 A letter to Blues and Soul in September 1972 indicated concern among Manchester soul fans, asking ‘did Soul in the north die out with the Twisted Wheel?’62 Yet the Greater Manchester conurbation and the surrounding towns soon witnessed a proliferation of soul nights in places such as Bolton, Leigh and Wigan. The growth of clubs in the midlands and the north cemented ‘northernness’ to the broader culture of rare soul. The Torch personified what would later become the iconographic signifiers of northern soul. Vince Price and Alf Robinson would share a car after coming off the afternoon shift at Point of Ayr Colliery in Flintshire and make the ninety-minute journey from North Wales to Tunstall.63 Price was from a family of Welsh coal miners and had been absorbed at an early age into the hedonistic working-class culture of drink, dance and music. Miners at Point of Ayr lived in villages situated close to the coastal resorts of Prestatyn and Rhyl. Price gained an appreciation of rare soul music through a girlfriend who he met when she was holidaying in Rhyl. Robinson’s background was more diverse. He was a West Indian who had been employed on the railways in Wolverhampton and came to North Wales as a coal miner working for a contract company. The black and ethnic minority population at this time in North Wales was minuscule. Robinson recalled the excitement he felt at the Torch listening to great music and then 61

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actually meeting black American performers and being able to have conversations with them.64 In 1972 the club hosted appearances by Jr Walker, the Drifters, Doris Troy and the Chi-Lites. For Price and Robinson the journey to the club and the overnight escapism provided a stark contrast to the dark and subterranean world of the mine. The solidarity and collective identity that they witnessed among dancers at the Torch reflected the culture that they were familiar with in the coal industry. This view was mirrored by the Torch’s owner, Chris Burton, who noted in 1973 that we have never filled the place with a lot of big bouncers looking for ­trouble … kids respect us for this … they look after their club. They come from all over the country to talk about the rare records and the artists­– ­in fact anything that involves soul music.65

The Torch was crucial in codifying the differences between northern and southern soul. Martyn Ellis, a DJ from the sprawling Wythenshawe council estate in Manchester, shared the view of ‘hordes of northern soul fans’ who were averse to the contemporary direction of soul music personified by James Brown: ‘his sort of funk was junk’.66 A letter to Blues and Soul from Jane Bridle, who visited the club from Luton, further illustrated the growing schism: the ‘soul scene in the south of England has been non-existent for a long time now … but my visit to Stoke has restored my faith … to all good people who go there to dance and listen or whatever: “Right on, brothers”!’ The editor concurred, adding that ‘there was none of the tension usually experienced in some of the southern discos and one got the feeling that the folk were there to simply and genuinely enjoy the music’.67 The magazine also played a role in the codifying process, and in February 1973 proclaimed that it would be including wider coverage of the clubs and sounds of the north. An editorial stated that though ‘the magazine is based in London, we are acutely aware that the north is enjoying its own private Soul boom’. It encouraged readers to make sense of their own experiences of the music and the scene through a new section written by readers under the heading ‘My Idea of Soul’ (this section of the magazine is analysed in Chapter 7). The first contributor, John Mayor from Manchester, produced a detailed piece on his conversion to soul music and his later immersion in the scene: ‘soul is poetry in motion, soul is living, soul is my life. Football is a “once a week sport”, soul is an “every minute of the day experience”.’ In his first ‘Check out the North’ column, Elson proclaimed 62

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that the Torch ‘is a place where I got an introduction to soul and I will lay odds that many of you reading are in the same position’.68 Yet the intensified focus on the north also generated some criticism. Alan Elsey from Norwich was one example of a disgruntled reader: ‘The north must be crammed full of soul record shops and discos … so surely soul sis’ and bros’ up there don’t need guidance … God, consider Norwich­– ­there’s not one single soul record shop or disco to be found anywhere.’69 A performance on 9 December 1972 by the soul singer Major Lance at the Torch became an instant legend and was preserved on a live recording.70 It was one of the most electrifying onstage performances seen in the history of northern soul, with over 600 fans packed into the small Tunstall club. Lance was accorded the all-important ‘legendary’ status among northern soul fans and described as ‘the original northern hero … who … gave his heart to his fans’.71 A later description of the performance enthused that Lance, ‘tall and jacketed’, had ‘bounced onto the stage’ to be greeted by: A hot steaming club with everyone clapping their hands raw and feet stomping for nearly an hour as the North’s all-time hero goes through his paces. The girls scream and dance at the front of the crushing crowd whilst hundreds of clenched fists many clad in leather gloves, arise in salute to black records in the early Twenties­– O ­ keh Records72

In a Blues and Soul article published prior to the club’s closure, Burton was talking of a successful future, with plans to extend the upstairs area to increase capacity. He also noted the growing popularity of soul and discussions he was having with promoters to bring acts to the Top Rank in neighbouring Hanley. He founded the International Soul Club, granting the Torch national recognition and gave some further structure to the rare soul scene. Yet Burton was aware that elements of the scene had already been lost to nostalgia and the shifting trends of youth culture. He claimed that ‘Soul has become a forgotten art form and people such as Rank are turning to outside expertise to bring the crowds in’.73 As with the Twisted Wheel, the Torch was crucial in cementing a sense of exclusivity, difference and authenticity. A reporter for Blues and Soul painted a vivid picture of the club. There is no disputing that the Torch is a shining oasis in a desert of nonentities calling themselves clubs … Every Saturday night they cram hundreds of soul folk inside … The place gets packed to the point where 63

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For some Torch regulars the night never ended, with some leaving Tunstall in the morning and travelling to the all-day session at the Seventy Six club in Burton-on-Trent. Elson described it as a clandestine venue in an unglamorous location behind a fish and chip shop that was ‘run by a group of local brothers’.75 One of the DJs here was Farmer Carl Dene, who criss-crossed the soul venues of the midlands and the north. He was a regular at the Chateau Impney, had visited the Wheel, and also regularly played sets at the Catacombs in Wolverhampton.76 Gethro Jones had been familiar with Motown music and Stax, but was starting to notice more obscure sounds reaching the floors of the Wolverhampton discos. In 1972 he acknowledged young men wearing Torch badges around the town.77 The popularity and exclusivity of the club was complemented by the culture of record collecting and the beginning of transatlantic expeditions by record dealers, soul enthusiasts and penny capitalists delving into shops in cities such as Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Record shops in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and their satellite towns were also noticing an increase in requests for more obscure recordings. The club attracted the attention of the police and the local council for its connection to the distribution of amphetamines and noise issues related to the fact that it was situated close to a number of residential streets. The pumping sounds of the club no doubt sounded like an earthquake to those trying to sleep in the adjacent houses. As with other soul venues, its location connected it to other aspects of northernness in the popular imagination. For the members it was a familiar space of polished dance floors, energetic moves and the unleashing of energy and anxieties that had built up through the working week. The exclusivity of the Torch was powered by the DJ, the music and thousands of attendees who graced its dance floor. Keith Minshull (known as the ‘King Spinner’) was an influential DJ, and according to Blues and Soul ‘it was his complete refusal to play anything but true soul that formed the foundations of the Torch’.78 He was sometimes accompanied by DJs drawn from what would become the heartlands of northern soul: Martyn Ellis (Manchester), Colin Curtis (Stoke), Pep 64

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(Wolverhampton) and Tony Jebb (Blackpool).79 A letter to Blues and Soul thanked the magazine for promoting the club: ‘your articles help to stress the fact that there is no other 100% soul scene to compare with it’.80 Dennis McDonald from Derby had been a convert to soul music and had been transfixed by attending live performances by artists such as Jimmy Ruffin, but this ‘elation was nothing to the feeling of togetherness that I experienced when I began visiting the Torch’.81 Writing in the New Soul Time fanzine in 1977 the DJ Dave Evison viewed the Torch as ‘the ultimate in NS heaven’. We danced as though our lives depended on it and as each Saturday passed by it was amusing to notice how various groups of Brothers and Sisters from certain areas of the country invariably ‘claimed’ a certain part of the dancefloor, and endeavoured to keep it from week to week i.e. the Manchester crowd were to the left of the stage.82

To some, the closure of the Torch in 1973 (discussed in Chapter 5) symbolised the end of the original rare soul scene, but to others it represented the beginning of expansion and national prominence. The final weeks of the club had cemented a scene that was growing in popularity. There were now competitions for best ‘soul dancers’. Recipients of the award included Ian Clowrey from Rotherham and Valerie Finlayson from Manchester.83 The closure did not end the growing popularity of soul clubs across the midlands and the north. The past, present and immediate future of the scene was most notably evident at Blackpool Mecca. Hold back the night: soul by the sea at Blackpool Mecca84 Blackpool, Britain’s leading seaside resort, went into decline like many others during the 1960s as the tendency to take foreign package holidays gained momentum. The town became more dependent on second-holiday, short-stay or long-weekend customers, many of whom were relatively more affluent, which gave Blackpool its staying power beyond the 1960s.85 In 1972, for example, 80 per cent of its 16 million annual visitors were day trippers.86 These visitors were at the forefront of demands for new and more modern entertainment: tastes began to change in the post-war generation, as a gulf opened between younger people and their parents. The vast proportion of visits originated from the working-class towns of northern England, the midlands, North Wales and Scotland.87 The resort’s response to 65

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these challenges and opportunities was what it always had been. As Tony Bennett observed: ‘Blackpool has represented itself as a town operating on the very threshold of modernity, exploring and pushing back the outer limits of progress [with] a distinctly northern, and especially Lancashire, articulation.’88 Blackpool was continually trying to reinvent itself and its attractions. The interwar period was significant both for the development of the town’s illuminations, in order to extend the summer season, and for the building of what came to be seen as the great temple of modernity­– ­the Pleasure Beach.89 While the reinvention was strategically based, it was private business rather than the local authority that took the lead in these endeavours.90 Overwhelmingly, however, as Walton and Wood noted: ‘Blackpool’s heyday came in the 1950s and early-1960s, although its entertainments failed to move with the times.’91 A key aspect of this trend was a decline in interest in traditional seaside entertainment on the part of a younger generation from the 1950s, which led to many of Blackpool’s theatres and places of entertainment facing the prospect of closure or change of use.92 The demolition of the resort’s iconic Palace Theatre, which had offered traditional variety fare and ‘old time dancing’, prefigured further retrenchment during the late 1950s and early 1960s.93 It also provided an impetus to the ‘reinventors’ of the Blackpool experience to implement enhanced moves to modernise its entertainment provision. A high-profile example of this came with the decision to redevelop the Hippodrome Theatre into the ultra-modern ABC Theatre; the theatre’s owner, ABC Television, moved to relocate its Night Out variety programme to the ABC in 1964, as the successor to its popular Sunday Night at the London Palladium.94 In terms of modernising its entertainments the resort scored a notable success, which accorded well with what John Urry has described as Blackpool attempting to ‘construct itself as irreducibly modern, as a cosmopolitan, international leisure centre, the “Las Vegas” of the north, having less to do with its previous Lancashire/northern/working-class associations’.95 Blackpool wanted to be seen as the UK’s leading entertainment centre outside London, and these developments gave this claim a significant boost. The appearance of many high-profile pop singers and groups during the early 1960s,96 including Cliff Richard and the Shadows, added to this sense of confidence that the resort was moving into a new era and was able to appeal to a more modern audience.97 This culminated with the Beatles appearing in the resort during the 66

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1963–65 summer seasons, including performances on Blackpool Night Out from the ABC;98 the Beatles headlined at the neighbouring Opera House on 16 August 1964 with two other major bands, the Kinks and the Who (then the High Numbers), the only occasion when all three groups appeared on the same bill.99 This mood of confidence endured throughout the 1960s, and by the end of the decade Blackpool was still winning plaudits for the breadth and quality of its entertainment offerings.100 However, if bringing modern, high-profile entertainments to the resort was meant to herald a new dawn for Blackpool, then it was a false one. The choice of Mike and Bernie Winters as comperes for Blackpool Night Out was seen as second best to the soaraway success of that other British comedic double act of the 1960s, Morecambe and Wise.101 While these performances proved popular with the youth, drawing large and enthusiastic crowds, Blackpool audiences tended to prefer something, certainly modern, but with an ‘old-time’ twist­– I­rish trio the Bachelors remained a popular and consistent resort favourite throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.102 By the 1970s Blackpool had largely slipped from national attention in terms of the acts it was able to attract, and audiences plummeted.103 In August 1965 the Beatles played ‘Yesterday’ for the first time in public at the ABC.104 The Fab Four were perhaps sending a message to the resort before they jetted off to the US on their third successful tour to claim their place in the history of modern culture. However, in seeking to modernise and rejuvenate its range of entertainments during this period the town had another plan, and what was seen as an ace card, looking to the one genre that Walton saw as being central to the Blackpool experience­– d ­ ance.105 Among Blackpool’s many dance palaces was the iconic Tower Ballroom. Thousands of visitors had over the years travelled to the town to visit ballrooms, most famously exemplified by the so-called ‘dance train’ of the 1930s, when the young and single ventured there on a Saturday evening from towns and cities in the north-west.106 It was, for J. B. Priestley, the most important aspect of Blackpool’s entertainment repertoire, offering ‘public dancing on a big and rather luxurious scale … where spinners and weavers by the thousand could dance on perfect floors to the music of good orchestras’.107 The resort needed a major new venue to continue this tradition, but one that would cater for modern dance crowds. Blackpool Mecca offered this prospect and was the focus of plans to redevelop the 67

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town’s central area during the 1970s.108 These plans included the large-scale redevelopment of the Golden Mile’s traditional seaside entertainments as part of the strategic redevelopment of the promenade. The Locarno New World Ballroom and Highland Suite, Central Drive, was duly opened by the Mayor of Blackpool on Wednesday 31 March 1965 to great fanfare, with an evening extravaganza of entertainment, one in which dance, in a variety of styles, was writ large.109 The local press commented prophetically that ‘this ballroom will range widely in its scope. As well as various types of dances there will be bingo sessions and even disc-jockey sessions for youngsters who are “with it”.’110 The venue later became Tiffany’s Ballroom in 1974, and many knew it as this, but it was known as Blackpool Mecca or simply the Mecca for most of its existence. The building has been described as ‘architecturally … hardly a tearjerker … an ugly, brutalist piece of 1960s concrete’,111 while another writer described it as ‘a drab looking building on the outside, three storeys of 60s architecture, a typical square structure of shapeless design’,112 having the appearance of a nuclear power station annexe. It was also frequently storm lashed due to its proximity to the unforgiving Irish Sea.113 Yet the interior revealed a different story. It was a certainly a grand project in terms of scale, originally built to accommodate 4,000.114 The main room had an expensive, Canadian maple, sprung dance floor, with artificial trees tastefully ‘planted’ around it, and at the time of opening it had what was acknowledged as a state-of-the-art sound system with the first video screen to be installed at a British dance venue.115 There were smaller ‘themed’ rooms within the complex such as the ostentatiously decorated, Melanesian-themed Bali Hai, and the Highland Suite, a Scottish-themed room located on the top floor, ‘abutting a balcony overlooking the main hall’, complete with ‘clan tartan, shields and claymores’.116 Although the Mecca was envisaged as having a multi-­entertainment role, which over the years included ten-pin bowling, Saturday afternoon wrestling and other events such as the United Kingdom beauty contest, it was primarily planned as a modern dance venue. At the outset there was a debate about whether the music should be provided mainly from live bands or from vinyl. While the Mecca hosted many live acts, it was clear from an early stage that it would be largely a DJ-centred dance venue in order to attract younger visitors.117 The Mecca continued the preoccupation with dance that Walton saw as 68

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central to the Blackpool experience.118 It was clear that the Mecca would be about promising customers ‘6 hours non-stop dancing’ at its ‘late nite spot’, with the mouth-watering prospect of a ‘sensational passport to Blackpool’s superscene’.119 The Mecca developed on the assumption that Blackpool’s renewal was assured and that the resort would continue to attract the required visitor numbers to what was heralded as ‘an essay in modernity’, marking a new golden age for the town.120 There was a feeling that by the mid-1960s Blackpool’s constant desire to renew and modernise itself had reached its apotheosis. For a few years after its opening the Mecca was popular, attracting visitors to what was seen as a ‘a highly successful venture which combined the technology of a club with the charm of a large ballroom’.121 However, within a short space of time this success came to an abrupt end, shattering assumptions about the  dash for modernity in the resort. The Mecca fell foul of trends during the 1960s that were running against it from the beginning. As James Nott has noted, increasing affluence and economic security allowed more choice over entertainment for younger people.122 More specifically and crucially for the Mecca, although the intention was to create a modern dance venue, its development was predicated on more traditional notions of a ballroom­– i­ t had a revolving bandstand built into the stage of the main room, for example123­– ­whereas, as Nott indicates, trends in popular dance were moving towards individual styles and a preference for smaller and more intimate venues.124 It was against this background of high expectations, initial success and a relatively sudden collapse in popularity that the Mecca developed its Highland Suite as a rare soul venue. One factor that helped the Mecca meet the challenges of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and maintained its popularity, was the decision to lay on free coaches to the venue from towns across Lancashire. Each Saturday there were several coaches from nearby Preston, while the service also provided extensive coverage in the north-west of England, particularly to the declining mill towns.125 Rare soul fans took advantage of this facility to attend the Mecca, at the same time as they began to travel on a regular basis to the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. As Tim Brown has commented, ‘Blackpool Mecca rather slipped into Northern [soul] at the Highland Room in the very beginning with rarer records slowly overtaking commercial sounds in keeping with a zeitgeist spreading around the north epicentred at the Twisted Wheel.’126 The fact that the Highland Suite was widely referred to as the 69

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‘Highland Room’ was somewhat misleading, in the sense that it was much larger than the term ‘room’ would suggest, having an official capacity of up to 500 people.127 It was an ideal venue for the inchoate rare soul scene in that it was large enough to accommodate a crowded dance floor, but intimate enough for the dialogue between DJs, dancers and record dealers to take place. From the late 1960s and the early 1970s the Mecca became two distinct arenas­– t­he main downstairs room which, as Dave Nowell wryly notes, became the preserve of those ‘drinking, cavorting and copping off with the opposite sex to the latest chart sounds’, and the upstairs, smaller Highland Room, which was where the serious rare soul fans gravitated.128 As a leading northern soul venue the Mecca had two periods of prominence; the first up to January 1973 when the Saturday night soul sessions in the Highland Room temporarily ceased, and, secondly, from March 1973, when they restarted, until the final cessation of Saturday night soul in November 1977.129 Recognising the growing popularity of soul music and acknowledging that the Mecca needed to broaden its appeal, interest in the genre gradually took hold at the venue. Initially at least, the ‘soul’ element at the Mecca was a low-key affair, with a Sunday night offering of Motown and Atlantic tracks played to a mainly local crowd. Tony Jebb and Stuart Freeman hosted the sessions in the Highland Room, with Jebb mainly playing soul­– ­with some rare soul­– ­and Freeman mainly playing pop. The Mecca’s reputation as a rare soul venue developed from 1971, with the Highland Room hosting regular Saturday night sessions. It was Jebb who established the Mecca’s reputation for rare soul during these early years, going on to attain legendary status and popularity among fans. In 1971 Dave Godin declared Jebb to be ‘the ever popular soulbrother who delivers the goods unfailingly to the brothers and sisters at Blackpool every Saturday night’.130 However, the figure who emerged from the early years at the Mecca to singularly affect the club, direct the sounds it played into the limelight, and have a major influence on the future direction of northern soul was Ian Levine. Levine was born and raised in Blackpool. His wealthy parents were members of the town’s business community and owned a casino and nightclub.131 Their wealth allowed them to holiday in the USA during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and after developing an early interest in Motown, Levine began to collect rare soul on these trips, amassing what was widely regarded as one of the largest individual collections in Britain.132 At an early age Levine’s 70

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interest in soul music saw him attending the Twisted Wheel, and he began DJing at the Mecca in 1971, teaming up with Jebb. As a rare soul scene it was clear that by 1971 Blackpool Mecca had been transformed into an important venue. Godin’s visit for Blues and Soul reported that just about every person who likes a good Saturday night was converging on the place. If you can imagine the crowds going into a football match, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of the front of the Mecca on a Saturday. They came by foot by bus … by coach-loads, and in cars! The broad front sidewalk was full of young people milling around.

Godin estimated the attendance that night as 5,000, with 2,000 in the Highland Room alone.133 Even allowing for some journalistic licence on Godin’s part, and taking into account Nowell’s point that the crowds were swelled by Godin’s presence, the turnout on that particular evening was large and certainly a massive increase on what the Mecca had been attracting not very long before.134 Godin’s essential point was that the Mecca had been steadily building up the crowds throughout the summer of 1971, and that the rare soul aspect was instrumental in propelling this upsurge in popularity remains indisputable. Godin’s visit to the Mecca allowed him to make the important assertion that ‘soul music has become the only true “underground” music in the country now’. Moreover, Godin stated that not only had the Mecca become a significant rare soul venue, but it had surpassed his expectations; he described the Highland Room’s soul output in superlative terms as being ‘impossibly rare’.135 The closure of the Twisted Wheel in 1971 was significant in boosting numbers at the Mecca, as the two-way pattern of attending both venues was now reduced to one-way traffic.136 While the venue, and the crowds it was now attracting, could hardly be described as ‘underground’, it is important to note that by 1971 the Mecca had in a real sense reprised, for many rare soul fans, the mod subculture lost to commercialisation during the 1960s. On New Year’s Eve 1971 the Mecca was again visited by Godin; on this occasion he arrived unannounced and gave it his seal of approval, praising ‘its richly deserved reputation’ and describing Levine as ‘indomitable’. Godin anointed him a ‘soul brother’, enthusing that ‘it was great to be one of the crowd and soak up the soul vibrations that echo all around that place’.137 Yet a change of management resulted in 71

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the closure of the Highland Room to its regular Saturday night soul sessions on 1 January 1973. It was felt that the Mecca could survive without its rare soul dimension and should concentrate on mainstream sounds. Jebb had taken up a residency at the Torch in 1972, and then at Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme. Later a ‘run-in’ with the Blackpool drugs squad saw him leave the scene altogether.138 The remaining soul DJs at Blackpool, Levine and Andy Hanley, left for the Torch and then the Top Rank in Hanley. Blackpool gave rise to a thriving local underground soul scene which helped the Mecca to flourish as a major rare soul centre. A great deal of the local pub and nightlife scene was at best described as ‘boring’ and at worse was replete with drunken violence, scrapes with visitors and antediluvian social attitudes. Added to this, nightclubs in the centre of the resort largely operated a ‘no locals’ admission policy, while the vagaries of seasonal employment meant that what was on offer was often inordinately expensive. For a location supposedly brimming with entertainment possibilities, Blackpool’s local music scene remained decidedly pedestrian and did not produce the sort of innovative departures in popular music available to fans in other towns and cities across Britain during the 1960s.139 Many locals saw the soul scene as a more congenial oasis compared to the offerings at other pub and dance venues, or indeed those from mainstream pop and rock acts that appeared in the resort. Yet within the northern soul scene some fans felt that the Mecca saw itself as a cut above the more basic soul clubs of the late 1960s. Gary, a northern soul aficionado from Barrow, told a reporter from the Sunday Times Magazine in 1976 that some referred to the club as ‘a poser’s paradise’.140 The Mecca opened again as a rare soul venue in March 1973. It then led the way as the scene’s main venue, as local teenagers and young adults were joined by others from the north and midlands, and from further afield. These aficionados rejected not only pop and rock but also mainstream contemporary black music in favour of a sound created and maintained by themselves, in the context of a resort that had earned a reputation for striving for modernity, innovation and reinvention, often in the teeth of challenging circumstances. In this, Blackpool echoed notions from its past, building on a tradition of dance culture involving repeated and ritualistic visits to seaside venues by working-class communities, but now in the modern setting of the Mecca’s Highland Room. The importance of this venue to the unfolding northern soul scene cannot be overstated. Blackpool 72

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Mecca would put an indelible and unique stamp on the northern soul scene during the 1970s. It’s growing141 Northern soul during this period was being developed both at national level and locally in the north of England, and each influenced the other. Soul was being given more airtime by the BBC for the first time, as it took ‘a more liberal attitude to black music than it had hitherto done’.142 At the same time several soul records had made it big in the charts, including Tami Lynn’s catchy ‘I’m Gonna’ Run Away From You’, which reached number 4; this record, originally recorded in 1965 as an obscurity, crossed over to pop when it was re-released in 1971. Demand was said to have been a result of a pirated version of the single selling in northern clubs. The number of soul recordings finding success in Britain allowed the music press to talk for the first time about ‘a unique soul surge’ in the summer of 1972.143 Significantly for the young northern soul movement, record companies were taking a keen interest in grassroots happenings at clubs in the north. In turn, the influence of the northern clubs was determining record company attitudes and outcomes in terms of both mainstream and ‘rare’ soul. The Pendulum in Manchester was one example of a club that continued to go from strength to strength, attracting ‘people from all over the country’.144 It had moved from its original location on Hardman Street into the basement of the Manchester Sports Guild building. Elson visited in spring 1973 and reported that ‘every Friday night without fail they have to close the doors shutting people out’. He also noticed a trend for displaying the iconography of soul on clothing. He met Les Cockell, ‘complete with sweater with SOUL knitted right into it’. Elson saw similar displays of do-it-yourself couture in Whitchurch, with men wearing sweaters with ‘Okeh’ and ‘Gamble and Huff’ stitched into the fabric.145 Yet concern over the ways in which the scene was producing factions was raised by readers of Blues and Soul. Trevor Kendall from Salford wrote a letter calling for a unified soul movement: ‘just accept that we do not all see eye-to-eye, and let each other alone to obtain pleasure from the particular brand of “soul” … Only then will the path in front of us be “straight ahead” and we will be able to confidently say “Right On”.’146 Internal tensions and factionalism over music, DJs, drugs, fashion and attempts to further popularise the scene were soon to become endemic. 73

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By the summer of 1973 the number of soul clubs and nights being listed in Blues and Soul was increasing exponentially. The scene was going beyond its traditional heartlands and reaching into the far north, to places like the Penny Farthing in Ulverston in the Lake District and the Cosmopolitan club in Carlisle. The Sombrero club in Chester-le-Street in County Durham also played ‘Northern Soul Sounds’. Elson noted that the ‘only true soul club’ in Scotland was on the US Polaris base at Holy Loch.147 The International Soul Club had expanded its nights to include sessions and live performances at the Top Rank Suite in Preston. Soul nights were also held at the Royal Hotel in Crewe, the Blue Room in Sale, and there was even a ‘miniTorch’ on the English Riviera in Torquay.148 Future record producer Pete Waterman was spinning soul sounds at Mr George’s nightclub in Coventry, imploring fans to ‘join our brothers and sisters from Burton, Stoke, Birmingham, Leeds and become a Coventry kid’.149 Waterman was able to convert regulars to the rarer sounds because ‘many of the paying customers don’t know what northern soul is all about’.150 Blues and Soul also announced that ‘Northern Soul Hits Huddersfield’ in an advert for a Sunday night spot at the Taurus nightclub.151 This was a West Indian social club that generally had a roster of reggae acts. On northern soul nights the two DJs were white.152 This was indicative of the fact that contact between black Britons and the northern soul scene remained negligible (this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7). North Wales retained and expanded its quota of soul enthusiasts and venues with nights at the Abbey Hotel in Rhos on Sea, the Dixieland Showbar, Colwyn Bay, and events in Wrexham.153 The smaller villages of North Wales had access to performances by artists such as Major Lance in Colwyn Bay, through the provision of specialist excursion coaches that linked Caernarfon, Llanrwst, Rhyl and Wrexham and points between.154 Barnsley had an ‘all-dayer’ at the Portcullis club, Sheffield had occasional all-nighters at Samantha’s, and there were similar events at Cleo’s in Derby and the Brit in Trent Bridge, Nottingham.155 In autumn 1973 the American DJ Jeff Milner visited the Pendulum club from Philadelphia, and was ‘very impressed with the Northern scene’.156 Many American record collectors, dealers and DJs remained perplexed by the popularity accorded to recordings that had never been hits in the US and that were already a few years old and, to them, out of date. The venue that firmly attracted the attention of the former Torch 74

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crowd was Va Va in Bolton. Va Va held its first all-nighter in April 1973. After a few months it was attracting over 400 people from across the country, with ‘always a large contingent from Yorkshire’.157 This was a far more plush and upscale club than many of the usual northern soul venues, and it spent £10,000 on equipment and lights.158 It had a distinct identity that was promoted through badges, car stickers and T-shirts. It also kept its sounds fresh and dynamic, with a flow of ‘fantastic new stock arriving from the States’.159 The Va Va all-nighter was a crucial nexus in the network of clubs that made up a dedicated weekend for those who criss-crossed the midlands and the north-west to dance, trade records and socialise. Lesley Stephen from Droitwich organised a coach to transport a midlands group to Bolton: ‘after Va Va’s they all shot off to Blackpool and spent most of the day either in pubs or sleeping … Sunday saw them all down at Tiffany’s in Newcastle.’160 Yet like the Wheel and the Torch before it, drugs led to a short-lived existence and the club’s closure. A retrospective profile in the New Soul Time magazine in 1978 recalled that ‘the car park outside was always full of people “wheelin’ and dealin’” from 11pm onwards, all ready to race downstairs when the first “Northern” side was played’.161 By the winter of 1973 northern soul had a significant presence across the nightclubs of the midlands and the north. The International Soul Club now had over 30,000 members and had grown by 8,000 since the closure of the Torch. Chris Burton promised ‘exciting plans for ’74’, ending his message with ‘Right On!! AND KEEP THE FAITH’.162 Yet for some, including the DJ Soul Sam, this was the beginning of the end, and 1974 would be the year when the scene fragmented: ‘in the early 70s the scene was at its best­– ­people enthusiastic on the floor and off it, plus few commercial pressures … Torch and Mecca was a rare record one, and the DJs were determined to keep it as such.’163 Nonetheless, the period between 1972 and 1976 represented the peak popularity of northern soul, and was later categorised as a kind of golden age by memoirists, autobiographers and veteran participants. The ‘soul boom’ that had been predicted by Record Mirror in 1972 was to reach its apotheosis with the opening of Wigan Casino, and it was this club that would exemplify the scene in the popular consciousness.164

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Notes 1 Record Mirror, 11 September 1971. 2 Record Mirror, 11 September 1971. 3 Blues and Soul, 14–27 July 1972. 4 Blues and Soul, 11–24 August 1972. 5 Advert for Pendulum club in Blues and Soul, 3–16 November 1972. 6 Blues and Soul, 17–30 November 1972. 7 Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (London: Faber and Faber, 2009); Alwyn Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain the 1970s (London: Aurum, 2008); Sandbrook, State of Emergency. 8 For a reappraisal of the popular orthodoxies underpinning histories of the decade, see Lawrence Black, Hugh Pemberton and Pat Thane, Reassessing 1970s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 9 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 31. 10 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 32. 11 For the counter-culture and an imagined English past, see Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (London: Faber and Faber, 2010). 12 Interview with Harry Thomas, 28 September 2018. 13 Blues and Soul, 14–27 April 1972. 14 Blues and Soul, October 1970. 15 Blues and Soul, 30 June–13 July 1972. 16 Blues and Soul, 17–30 November 1972. 17 The Peaches’ ‘Music to My Ears’ (1966) was played at the Catacombs club, Wolverhampton. 18 Gethro Jones, They Danced All Night (Gethro Jones, 2016), p. 44. 19 For racism and responses in Wolverhampton, see Paul Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), ch. 2. 20 Jones, They Danced All Night. 21 For example, the soul acts remained a staple of the live scene at the Old Hill Plaza. See Dave Haslam, Life After Dark: A History of British Nightclubs and Music Venues (London: Simon and Schuster, 2015), p. 124. 22 Paul Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Aldershot: Saxon House, 1988), p. 36. 23 Noddy Holder, Who’s Crazee Now? My Autobiography (London: Ebury, 1999), p. 4. 24 For club life in Birmingham and the surrounding areas in this period, see Eddie Fewtrell and Shirley Thompson, King of the Clubs: The Eddie Fewtrell Story (Studley: Brewin Books, 2007). 25 Dave Hill, So Here It Is: The Autobiography (London: Unbound, 2017), p. 43. 76

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In the days before Wigan 26 Pete Waterman, I Wish I Was Me: The Autobiography (London: Ebury, 2000), p. 38. 27 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 77. 28 For a detailed survey of the origin of these labels, see Ward, Just My Soul Responding. 29 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 113. 30 For a detailed listing of the city’s clubs and pubs in this period, see Keith Farley, They Rocked, We Rolled! A Personal and Oral Account of Rock ‘n’ Roll in and around Wolverhampton and the West Midlands, 1956–1969 (Wolverhampton: Keith Farley, 2010). 31 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 38. 32 Blues and Soul, 6–19 July 1973. 33 Blues and Soul, 6–19 July 1973. 34 Blues and Soul, 6–19 July 1973. 35 For negative reactions to DJs speaking at the Catacombs, see Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, p. 249. 36 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 126. 37 Blues and Soul, 3–16 August 1973. 38 Blues and Soul, 3–16 August 1973. 39 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 107. 40 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 109. 41 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 116. 42 Quoted in Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 156. 43 Blues and Soul, 31 August–13 September 1973. 44 Blues and Soul, 17–30 August 1973. 45 Nowell, Too Darn Soulful, p. 41. 46 Bobbi Lynn’s ‘Earthquake’ (1968) was played at the Golden Torch. 47 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 41. For an account of the Torch in the context of Stoke-on-Trent in the 1960s and 1970s, see J. Ebrey, ‘The Golden Torch Revisited: A Less Respectable Potteries History’, in T. Edensor (ed.), Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent: Leisure, Space and Identity in the Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent: Staffordshire University Press, 2000), pp. 131–55. 48 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 49 For a personal recollection of the Torch by Dave Evison, see New Soultime, No. 1, 1977. 50 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016. 51 Record Mirror, 4 December 1971. 52 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 53 For the range of venues, see the classified advertisements in the Stoke Evening Sentinel throughout 1972–73. 54 Blues and Soul, 16–29 June 1972. 55 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016. 77

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Keeping the faith 56 Interview with Tony Davidson, 14 March 2019. 57 See notice of disruption in Blues and Soul, 3–16 March 1972. 58 Blues and Soul, 14–27 April 1972. 59 Blues and Soul, 1–24 August 1972. 60 Ian Dewhirst, sleevenotes to the CD, The Northern Soul Story Vol. 2: The Golden Torch (2007). 61 Interview with Richard Cooper, 10 April 2016. 62 Blues and Soul, 8–21 September 1972. 63 Telephone interview with Vince Price, 5 June 2017. 64 Telephone interview with Alf Robinson, 18 July 2017. 65 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 66 Blues and Soul, 16–29 March 1973. 67 Blues and Soul, 15 December 1972–4 January 1973. 68 Blues and Soul, 2–18 February 1973. 69 Blues and Soul, 13–26 April 1973. 70 Major Lance’s Greatest Hits Recorded Live at the Torch (vinyl, Contempo, 1973). 71 Black Echoes, 13 January 1979. 72 Black Echoes, 13 January 1979. 73 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 74 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 75 Blues and Soul, 16–29 March 1973. 76 For profile of Dene, see Blues and Soul, 27 April–10 May 1973. 77 Jones, They Danced All Night. 78 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. For recollections of the Torch, see Ebrey, ‘The Golden Torch Revisited’. 79 For a selection of the records that were popular at the Torch, see the collection released on CD as The Northern Soul Story Vol. 2: The Golden Torch (2007). 80 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 81 Blues and Soul, 3 August–13 August 1973. 82 New Soul Time, No. 1, 1977. 83 Blues and Soul, 16–29 March 1973. 84 The Trammps’ ‘Hold Back the Night’ (1975) was played at Blackpool Mecca and had wide crossover appeal. 85 Strategy for Tourism in the North West, North West Tourist Board, 1982. 86 Walton, The British Seaside, p. 64. 87 E. Webber, ‘Why is Blackpool so Popular with Scots?’, BBC News, 15 July 2014, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28227510 (accessed 4 July 2016). 88 Tony Bennett, ‘Hegemony, Ideology, Pleasure: Blackpool’, in Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woollacott (eds), Popular Culture 78

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In the days before Wigan and Social Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), p. 135. 89 Peter Bennett, Blackpool Pleasure Beach: A Hundred Years of Fun (Blackpool: Blackpool Pleasure Beach, 1996), pp. 31–6. 90 John Walton, Wonderlands by the Waves: A History of the Seaside Resorts of Lancashire (Preston, 1992), p. 32. 91 J. Walton and J. Wood, ‘Reputation and Regeneration: History and the Heritage of the Recent Past in the Re-making of Blackpool’ (2008), paper, p. 11, https://semioticon.com/virtuals/blackpool/walton_​wood_​ 2.pdf (accessed 25 November 2015). 92 Walton, The British Seaside, pp. 112–13. 93 D. Auty, arthurlloyd.co.uk, The Music Hall and Theatre History website, The Palace Theatre, Blackpool (2015), http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/ BlackpoolTheatres/PalaceTheatreBlackpool.htm (accessed 27 October 2015); Blackpool Gazette (online), 26 March 2012, https://www.black​ poolgazette.co.uk/26 March 2012 (accessed 18 February 2019). 94 Blackpool Gazette, 3 January 2014. 95 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002), p. 163. 96 B. Band, ‘Blackpool Opera House 1939–1989’ (pamphlet, 1989), pp. 46–7. 97 Blackpool Gazette, 3 January 2014. 98 B. Band, ‘Blackpool: Century of Stars: The Theatre including Concert Greats’ (pamphlet, 1999), p. 41. 99 Joe McMichael and ‘Irish’ Jack Lyons, The Who: Concert File (London: Omnibus, 2004), pp. 18–19. 100 ‘Bravo Blackpool’, The Stage and Television Today, October 1969. 101 British Film Institute, Screen Online (2019), Winters, Mike (1930–) and Winters, Bernie (1932–91), http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ id/1335058/index.html (accessed 6 February 2019); The Scotsman, ‘Comedians with Double Lives’, 22 July 2006, https://www.scots​ man.com/lifestyle/comedians-with-double-lives-1-1127098 (accessed 6 February 2019). 102 Band, ‘Blackpool Opera House 1939–1989’, p. 48. 103 Blackpool Gazette, 3 January 2014. 104 Band, ‘Blackpool: Century of Stars’, p. 41. 105 Walton, The British Seaside, pp. 108–9. 106 Andrew Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 90. 107 J. B. Priestley, English Journey (1934) (Ilkley: Great Northern Books, 2009), pp. 229–31. 108 Blackpool Herald, 10 June 1977. 109 Cyril Critchlow Collection of Ephemera, The Locarno New World 79

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Keeping the faith Ballroom Opening Celebration Ball, Mecca Locarno, New World Ballroom and Highland Suite, Blackpool, Programme, 31 March 1965, Vol 135: Other Blackpool Show Collections, Blackpool Central Library, Local Studies. 110 West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 31 March 1965. 111 John Robb, ‘Blackpool’s Highland Rooms: Why Can’t the North Keep its Pop Culture Heritage?’, The Guardian, 27 January 2009, https://www. theguardian.com/global/musicblog/2009/jan/27/highland-roomsblackpool-mecca-north-losing-pop-culture-heritage (accessed 29 April 2020). 112 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 279. 113 Bill Brewster and Frank Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (London: Headline, 1999), p. 89. 114 David Nowell, The Story of Northern Soul: A Definitive History of the Dance Scene that Refuses to Die (London: Pavilion, 2015), p. 95. 115 Blackpool Gazette, 31 March 2004. 116 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 56. 117 Blackpool Gazette, 31 March 2004. 118 Walton, The British Seaside, pp. 108–9. 119 Cyril Critchlow Collection of Ephemera, Volume 135: Other Blackpool Show Venues, Flyer for Tiffanys, Blackpool Central Library. 120 West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 31 March 1965. 121 Blackpool Gazette, 31 March 2004. 122 Nott, Going to the Palais, pp. 94–5. 123 West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 31 March 1965. 124 Nott, Going to the Palais, pp. 98–9. 125 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 126 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 56. 127 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 56. 128 Nowell, The Story of Northern Soul, p. 95. 129 Barry Doyle, ‘“More than a dance hall, more a way of life”: Northern Soul, Masculinity and Working-Class Culture in 1970s Britain’, in A. Schildt and D. Siegfried (eds), In Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Culture in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980 (New York: Berg, 2007), p. 318; Black Echoes, 26 November 1977. 130 Blues and Soul, 19 November–2 December 1971. 131 Bill Brewster and Frank Boughton, ‘Ian Levine: Soul Adventurer’, in Brewster and Boughton, The Record Players (London: Virgin, 2010), pp. 81–3. 132 Nowell, The Story of Northern Soul, p. 95. 133 Blues and Soul, 10–23 September 1971. 134 Nowell, The Story of Northern Soul, p. 97. 135 Blues and Soul, 10–23 September 1971. 80

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In the days before Wigan 136 Nowell, The Story of Northern Soul, p. 95. 137 Blues and Soul, 4–17 February 1972. 138 Ian Levine quoted in Brewster and Broughton, The Record Players, p. 83; interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 139 Pete Shelton, Rock-n-Roll Fever: Blackpool in the 1960s (Houston: Martin Powers Publishing, 2014). 140 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 141 The Temptations, ‘It’s Growing’ (1965). The track was performed as part of a Motown special on the popular television show Ready Steady Go! hosted by Dusty Springfield. 142 Record Mirror, 5 August 1972. 143 Record Mirror, 5 August 1972. 144 A night at the Pendulum is described in Hot Buttered Soul, No. 25. 145 Blues and Soul, 11–24 May 1973. 146 Blues and Soul, 11–24 May 1973. 147 Blues and Soul, 25 May–7 June 1973. 148 Blues and Soul, 22 June–5 July, 1973. 149 Blues and Soul, 20 July–2 August 1973. 150 Blues and Soul, 23 November–6 December 1973. 151 Blues and Soul, 14–27 September 1973. 152 Blues and Soul, 7–20 December 1973. 153 Blues and Soul, 14–27 September 1973. 154 Blues and Soul, 12–25 October 1973. 155 Blues and Soul, 23 November–6 December 1973. 156 Blues and Soul, 26 October–8 November 1973. 157 New Soul Time, No. 5, 1978. 158 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 23, October 1973; Bolton Library and Museum Services, Archives and Local Studies, Bolton Council Minutes, Va-Va Elizabeth House (Discotheque) plans, elevation, section, Call No ABJ/19/365/(1970). 159 Blues and Soul, 12–25 October 1973. 160 Blues and Soul, 14–27 September 1973. 161 New Soul Time, No. 5, 1978. 162 Blues and Soul, 28 September–11 October 1973. 163 Soul Source, No. 3. 164 Record Mirror, 5 August 1972.

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3

The beating heart of soul: Wigan Casino

Wigan is perceived as an archetypal industrial town and northern soul has now become manifestly linked to this legacy and history.1 For a wider public Wigan Casino would become synonymous with northern soul­– ­for many, both within and outside the scene, northern soul was Wigan Casino. It has been suggested that it was the ‘only one place … that … could claim to be the movement’s heartbeat’.2 Yet its reputation during the 1970s and since has been mixed. Many northern soul fans became incredibly loyal to Wigan and the memories it engendered. This faded former dance hall became for them a temple in which to worship. For others it is chiefly remembered as a venue that rose to prominence as rare soul emerged from the underground. Moreover, the Casino became aligned with a ‘traditionalist’ music policy based on ‘oldies’ at a time when northern soul was subject to factional divisions over music policy, as ‘progressives’ wished to move on to more modern representations of soul. To borrow a fan motif from the town’s rugby league club, Wigan Casino’s relationship to the northern soul scene is probably best summed up as ‘hated, adored, but never ignored’. Long before the night was all over3 Many towns in Britain are associated with the nation’s industrial past, but few would argue that Wigan has a claim to be the key site. The town has ‘become less a place than a state of mind in the British psyche’; a byword for industrial grime explored by a long succession of writers from Ruskin to Orwell.4 As Ethel Mannin, one of many ‘social observers’ to visit the town, noted in 1972: ‘Originally I had the frivolous intention of writing about Wigan for the hell of it. If we were to call the book England My Adventure, and it seemed we were, what 82

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more of an adventure than a trip to unknown Wigan?’5 Mannin’s path to Wigan was later retraced by Beatrix Campbell, Stephen Armstrong and Stuart Maconie.6 As with other centres of northern soul, Wigan has been characterised as belonging to both a real and imagined working-class past, replete with coal mines, pit ponies, smoky pubs, meat pies and rugby league. Wigan emerged into the twentieth century as a town dominated by heavy industry, particularly coal mining, iron, steel and cotton spinning. The Wigan coalfield had grown rapidly during the nineteenth century and the town was central to the industry in Lancashire, performing similar functions to other regional coal mining centres such as Barnsley in Yorkshire, Chesterfield in Derbyshire and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. Wigan was thus dubbed ‘Coalopolis’ or ‘King Coal’s Throne’.7 However, during the early part of the twentieth century two significant developments took place: first the start of the steep decline of the coal industry and second the town’s growing desire for modernity.8 Coal production and employment reached its zenith in 1913.9 After the First World War, output declined, as did the number of collieries.10 The dislocation of traditional markets wrought by the conflict, early ingress by oil, and electricity production beginning to rival gas production, with the concomitant decline in the market for coal, were all responsible.11 The industry virtually ceased within the town itself by the end of the war and was conducted in outlying areas for the remainder of the twentieth century. The sight of thousands of mineworkers rushing to catch trams or special pit trains from Wigan Central railway station to ensure they were in the 6 a.m. pit cage for the journey below ground at one of the collieries in the town’s environs became a regular feature of the interwar period. In the documentary Night Mail (1936) the colliery headgears are clearly visible as the train passes through the vicinity of the town. In the early twentieth century the social and political outlook of Wigan was transformed. It elected Labour-controlled town councils from the 1920s. It returned a Labour MP briefly in 1910 and has been represented by Labour from 1918 until the present day; adjacent Ince-in-Makerfield elected a Labour MP from 1906 until the abolition of the seat in 1983. Both seats were sponsored by the influential miners’ union­– ­the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation­– w ­ hich was affiliated to the powerful Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (from 1944 the National Union of Mineworkers).12 83

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Labour and its union supporters in Wigan became preoccupied with the need to shake off the town’s industrial legacy and embarked upon a scheme of modernisation. This came about through improvements in housing, health and education, with the construction of swimming baths and a first attempt at town-centre retail development in the 1930s, complete with mock Tudor buildings referring back to a pre-industrial past. Further progress was limited by the economic constraints of the period and curtailed by the advent of the Second World War. These changes were accompanied by the growth of a discernible middle class, hitherto largely absent in a town dominated by an industrial elite and a large, mainly mining working class. Combined with these developments were new opportunities for leisure, including several attempts to launch a professional football team, the establishment of a highly successful rugby league team, and the advent of popular entertainments in the form of cinemas and dance halls, which acted as counterweights to the traditional attractions of the public house. It was in this context that the Empress Ballroom opened on 1 November 1916, followed ten years later, as if to affirm this expansion of leisure and modernity in the teeth of the most embittered industrial crisis of the early twentieth century­– ­the miners’ lockout of 1926­ – ­by an extension to the ballroom as a palais de danse, opened with an accompanying mayoral ball.13 This extension would later become the part of Wigan Casino known as Mr M’s. From the interwar period, going to the ‘Emp’, as it was known locally, became a central feature of social life for many in the town and its surrounding locales. The depression of the coal trade during the late 1920s and the more general economic depression of the 1930s saw periods of large-scale unemployment among mineworkers.14 This malaise was strongly reflected in Orwell’s treatment of the town in The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937. Unarguably, the horrors of enervating economic and social deprivation were there for all to see. Nonetheless, Orwell pointed to images of an embryonic teenage culture where ‘the youth who leaves school at fourteen … can buy himself a suit which … at a little distance, looks as though it had been tailored in Savile Row. The girl can look like a fashion plate at an even lower price.’15 During the mid-1930s the Emp was blessed by the mood of modernity sweeping the town when it underwent a major refurbishment and extension, with the Mayor of Wigan giving it the official seal of approval, predicting that the modernised Empress Ballroom would be 84

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the ‘heart and soul’ of the town.16 This foreshadowed a later comment from Wigan Casino DJ Russ Winstanley that the Casino was ‘the beating heart of soul’.17 The Emp became a dance venue that was fixed in the memories of many Wiganers during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath.18 It continued to occupy a central place in the social life of the town until the 1960s, when changing social perspectives and preferences forced the Emp to alter direction.19 The grim industrial town that had repelled Ruskin a century earlier was moving on, as one observer noted: If George Formby senior could revisit Wigan today he would scarcely believe his eyes. The new schools, the shops selling salami and other foreign fiddle-faddles, the shining new Mini-Minors, and the girls in kinky boots and bouffant hairstyles would all convince him that he must have got off at the wrong station.20

During the 1960s, following a change of ownership, the Casino club, as the Emp was now styled, adjusted its focus to meet entertainment preferences that were altered from those of the grand local dance hall. Leading popular bands and singers performed there, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Moody Blues, and Tom Jones, along with mainstream soul acts from the USA such as Jimmy Ruffin, Ben E. King, Mary Wells, Ike and Tina Turner and Arthur Conley.21 However, changing tastes and dwindling audiences led to declining profitability, and inevitably the Casino’s future became increasingly uncertain. Wigan council’s desire for further and more substantive modernisation of the town centre fuelled this uncertainty as much as the decline of this once venerated dance hall. Modernisation, which had been deferred in the past, was now forging ahead, and the council wanted a new civic centre. The Casino stood in its way. As early as 1965, the council had sealed the fate of the former Empress Ballroom and its palais de danse by purchasing both. It had granted a 15-year lease on the buildings, but significantly with a breaking clause which stipulated that after ten years, if the property was required by the council for development purposes, it could exercise its rights of ownership. The fate of the buildings was effectively decided­ – t­he next 10–15 years would only be a case of borrowed time. The leaseholders therefore had little interest in maintaining or developing the venue.22 There was also the background of a worsening economic and social outlook for the town, as its staple industries, particularly coal and cotton, went into steep decline from the late 1960s, while 85

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new industrial development­– ­largely government-sponsored­– ­failed to sufficiently take up the slack.23 In 1972 the coal industry faced its first national strike since 1926. A story from the 1972 strike­– ­quite possibly apocryphal, yet nevertheless having an aura of authenticity about it­– t­old of a national newspaper reporter sent from London to Wigan to interview local miners. On reaching Wigan he asked where he could find groups of miners willing to talk­– ­the miners’ social club, the band hall, the homing pigeon huts? He was astonished to be told to go to nearby Arley Golf Club where the miners would be playing on strike days. It was, of course, true that miners played golf­– ­after all, this was 1972.24 Against this were images from the 1970s that showed more hackneyed and familiar stereotypes of Wigan and its environs, such as a film (contextualised in Chapter 6) about Plank Lane, Leigh and Bickershaw-Parsonage collieries, depicting young lads engaged in the traditional mining community activity of ferreting for rabbits, with images of miners, slag heaps, pit ponies and a steam train, and impenetrable local accents (requiring subtitles).25 Throughout its modern history Wigan has exhibited this confused juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern.26 However, the 1970s witnessed an unexpected shift towards modernity for the town, as it gained a status as a centre for northern soul for which it became nationally and internationally renowned. Night Owl27 Wigan had no specific history as a rare soul centre. Like other sizeable urban conurbations, it had its mod hangouts and scenes, particularly the Room at the Top club, which had gained something of a reputation as warm-up venue for rare soul fans before they journeyed to the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. The first all-night soul session at the Casino club in Wigan was on 22–23 September 1973. It came at a time when the rare soul scene was already quite well established in  the north of England and north midlands. The opening of the Casino was something of a fluke.28 Various factors, both planned and contingent, played a part: a legal loophole meant that all-nighters were permitted as long as alcohol wasn’t served; there was the availability of an elderly dance hall that had been earmarked for closure and demolition by the local council; there was a degree of commercial nous on the part of the leaseholder in realising its potential as a 86

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modern soul dance venue; and there was the badgering and impetus of Russ Winstanley, a local record dealer and DJ, in encouraging the initiation of all-night soul sessions.29 Russ Winstanley had been a soul fan since 1968, having attended both the Torch and Blackpool Mecca, and he had acquired a reputation locally as a soul DJ on Thursday evenings at Newtown British Legion club in Wigan, with a night styled as Russ’s Everysound Disco, and on Fridays at the rugby league club, as well as a running a record business from a stall on the town’s market, and later a shop.30 By 1973 it was clear that his work in Wigan was becoming more widely known, particularly in terms of the rare sounds he was dealing in and his intention to hold all-nighters at a local venue.31 Winstanley’s initial approaches to the Casino concerning the running of soul sessions were rebuffed. However, he had a key ally in Mike Walker, then a 23-year-old who had connections with Gerry Marshall, the Casino’s leaseholder.32 Significantly, Walker had also been a DJ with an interest in soul music, before becoming the Casino’s manager.33 At the time the club was running rock nights until 2 a.m., and Walker persuaded Marshall to end these at 1.30 a.m. to make way for all-night soul sessions starting at 2 a.m. However, as Marshall did not want to lose the rock nights to an uncertain experiment with soul, it was agreed that Winstanley should take the bulk of the risk by advertising the sessions and supplying equipment and DJs, with the takings divided on a 50/50 basis.34 At this point, as the Torch had recently closed, plans for the Casino were decidedly low key. As Winstanley stressed in 1979: ‘The Casino “niters” just seemed to be a logical progression, we never envisaged it becoming what it is today­– ­A Northern Institution.’35 The first three years of the club between 1973 and 1976 were its most successful and coincided with the high point of the northern soul scene. As early as November 1973 soul pundits were convinced that Wigan was going to assume the mantle of ‘the place to go’, replacing the Torch and the Twisted Wheel as northern soul’s epicentre.36 A year later the Casino really took off and asserted its claim to be the ‘beating heart of soul’.37 The addition of two important figures to the roster at Wigan gave the Casino an unassailable advantage over other venues: ‘the recruitment of DJ Richard Searling from Va Va’s in Bolton and Kev Roberts … helped seal Wigan’s place as the spot of the moment’.38 In Searling, Russ Winstanley had at his side a rising star, soon to be one of the most influential and innovative DJs on the northern soul circuit. Roberts, a young and enthusiastic 87

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record ­collector and DJ from the midlands with access to Simon Soussan, one of the main dealers in rare soul records at the time, with strong stateside connections, gave Winstanley the supply of sounds.39 Moreover, the Casino had an advantage over the other leading venue, Blackpool Mecca, in the fact that while the Mecca was closing at 2 a.m., Wigan was just opening. With a DJ roster headed up by Winstanley, Searling and Roberts, membership continued to climb. Fans began to make the regular trip from the Mecca after the Saturday night soul session to Wigan’s opening in the early hours of Sunday morning.40 As Constantine and Sweeney have noted: ‘Wigan Casino entered its peak years in 1974. Attendances in the first half of the year were reaching towards the venue’s safety limit of two thousand people every week.’ Similarly, in terms of its appeal: ‘The musical discoveries of the time were diverse and exciting. Many of the scene’s classic records were aired at this point.’41 The growing numbers visiting the Casino throughout 1974 were reflected in the opening of the Beachcomber café adjacent to the main building, in order to relieve congestion in and around the venue; this offered two dedicated DJs and specialised in Wigan’s working-class culinary staples such as pie, peas, gravy and chips.42 Wigan Casino presided over the five years from 1973 to 1978 when northern soul reached the height of its popularity, with the club regularly attracting over 1,500 fans each Saturday night. By 1977 membership was claimed to be 120,000, and by 1978 it had reduced only slightly to 100,000.43 It was also a significant club for the large numbers of fans who came from all over Britain. It has been estimated that 85–90 per cent of the dancers travelled to the Casino from outside the Wigan area, with lower levels of participation from within the town itself.44 Fans frequently made long and tortuous journeys, mainly from the north of England and the midlands, but also from much further afield: North Wales, Scotland, East Anglia and the south of England, by car, coach, train and hitch hiking. Throughout 1974 the Casino carried full-page advertisements in Blues and Soul promoting the regular Saturday–Sunday nighter, with sessions added on Wednesday and Friday evenings. The first anniversary nighter saw new DJs added to the roster including Pep (aka Ian Periera) of Catacombs fame; Frank (aka Ian Dewhirst), an upand-coming DJ from Mirfield in West Yorkshire; another Yorkshirebased based DJ, John Vincent from Sheffield, who had been involved in developing Samantha’s in the city as a northern soul venue; and 88

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ex-Torch DJ Keith Minshull. At the second anniversary all-nighter in September 1975, the veteran US soul artist Tommy Hunt performed. While his first impressions of the Casino were of a ‘dreary place’ housed in a ‘derelict building’, he later decided that ‘Wigan’s a beautiful thing’. He further described Wigan as having an ‘electrifying atmosphere’, highlighting that ‘the kids … had created their own ’60s style, spins and splits’.45 As journalist Frank Elson noted, ‘Like the Wheel, Junction and Torch in their days, Wigan Casino is the single most important thing happening on the disco scene.’46 Dave Godin also waxed lyrical about the sudden success of the club: In less than a year Wigan Casino has built up an enviable reputation amongst the soul fraternity through its all-nighters … a visit … is not only mandatory, but will also give a vivid and new dimension to the complex and often fascinating phenomena that we know and love as the Northern Soul scene.47

The overwhelming success of the Casino and increasing demand for an ‘oldies’-oriented music policy were significant reasons why a decision was made to open another dance floor known as Mr M’s or just M’s. The name was taken from the first letter of the surname of the Casino’s leaseholder, Gerry Marshall. M’s was established for two reasons. First, attendances at Wigan all-nighters grew enormously in 1974, with the first anniversary nighter in September one of the largest to date. There were concerns about safety and the need to reduce the numbers taking to the main dance floor. The addition of M’s meant a considerable increase in capacity to take the ‘overflow’. Secondly, it became evident from the first year at the Casino that ‘oldies’ were not only popular but that there was a sufficiently large and increasing demand to justify a second dance floor specialising in this aspect of the scene.48 An ‘oldie’ was an original soul cut from the 1960s, recorded during the period, and they were often played at one of the antecedent clubs such as the Twisted Wheel, Torch and Catacombs. By contrast, a record newly introduced to the scene was described as a ‘newie’. Confusingly, while this referred to a record ‘new’ to the scene, it did not necessarily mean a contemporary record. In fact, many ‘newies’ originated from the same period as ‘oldies’, but importantly they had only recently been discovered or introduced to the scene.49 Another category of record was the ‘stomper’, which Cosgrove describes as ‘a furious up-tempo record with big instrumentation, which ­dancers 89

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effectively stomp to’.50 Stompers became popular on the scene, especially at Wigan. For the wider public the stomper is probably the sound most associated with northern soul. Stompers were loved and vilified in equal measure. It is important to note that ‘oldies’ were very often stompers, but not all stompers were ‘oldies’, though the two terms were often used synonymously to deride these records during the factionalism that later beset the scene. M’s was located on the second floor and was joined to the main dance area by a small corridor. At a packed all-nighter Cosgrove described the atmosphere in M’s as ‘ferociously hot, like a colonial jail’.51 It was, however, in better physical condition and received more attention from the leaseholder than the main building, as it was used as a supper club when it was not in use for dancing.52 A number of DJs played M’s over the course of its existence, though it is most associated with stalwart DJs Dave Evison, Kenny Spence and the ‘Soul Twins’ Stuart and Neil Brackenbridge.53 M’s opened at 2.30 p.m. on most nighters and witnessed the inexorable growth in popularity of ‘oldies’ at the Casino, which later led to the club initiating ‘oldies’ alldayers and all-nighters in the main room.54 M’s has been variously described as a ‘scene within a scene’ or a ‘legend within a legend’, while Wigan’s critics have called it ‘the time warp in a time warp’ alluding to its fundamentalist ‘oldies’ policy.55 While it is not easy to pinpoint precisely when the Casino reached its zenith, Christmas and New Year 1976 would probably be the most likely time. Winstanley and Searling were able to hold court together as king and heir apparent, proclaiming their place as ‘The Country’s No 1 Soul Spinners’. The all-nighters were going strong from Saturday nights into Sunday mornings, 12.30–8.00 a.m., with a bevy of top northern DJs. In addition, further nights on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with no membership required, generated northern soul on an industrial scale. The Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve sessions saw live acts with dancing on two floors.56 In the opinion of the fans, the high-water mark for the Casino appears to have been around the mid-1970s. However, the magic had seemingly gone by 1977, as one fan later recalled: ‘going back to the early days of the all-nighter’s, it was the community of the casino. Expectations every week, it was fresh. This all seemed gone after all the media coverage. The best time’s where around the 2nd anniversary [September 1975].’57 90

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Underground, overground: Wigan and the commercialisation of northern soul58 Wigan’s rapid rise to prominence dominated the scene in 1974 to such an extent that it challenged northern soul’s ‘underground’ appeal, which had begun to ebb as the numbers attending the Casino grew markedly and it became less niche.59 One feature of the Casino that stands out and that many of its critics point to as crucial in its decline as a rare soul scene was Wigan’s turn to commercial recordings, many of which were not rare soul by any measure. This was complemented by the creation of a record company to market what were effectively ‘in-house’ sounds. This caused serious internal tensions within the wider world of northern soul. The ‘Wiganisation’ of the scene was also associated with increased national and international media attention during the mid-1970s. Journalists and documentary film-makers visited the Casino in order to understand the broader features of northern soul. Such exposure brought in a wave of what some on the scene referred to as ‘tourists’ and ‘day-trippers’, who would seemingly dilute the authenticity and exclusivity of the scene. The Casino’s manager Mike Walker was prompted to make the bold claim to Billboard in 1975 that: ‘Now that the sound is becoming more commercial … It is no longer an underground form of music.’60 Wigan’s emergence as the main centre of northern soul and its growing popularity was accompanied by a specific reaction to its rising national and international profile. This dominance manifested in several ways: first, through playlists that included records that were not rare soul but were more popular sounds; secondly, through the promotion of local live ‘soul’ groups; thirdly, through the release of modified versions of obscure 1960s recordings intended for mass consumption; and finally, through the promotion of the Casino’s own record label, which included genuine soul tracks, but also some tracks of questionable provenance­– ­covers and cover-ups­– ­that often lacked ‘soul credibility’ and that were given floor time in the Casino. These initiatives in combination produced a ‘Wiganisation’ of the scene, which came to be the wider public’s accepted view of northern soul, but which for many fans detracted from it­– ­some believed fatally­– ­and undermined its integrity. One early criticism of the Casino was the high number of instrumentals played. Although it was customary for northern soul sounds to have a strong vocal presence, instrumentals were not uncommon, 91

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and the traditional debate had been about whether or not instrumentals had ‘soul’ or should be recognised as soul recordings.61 However, the issue with Wigan was primarily one of quality: the excessive amount of time afforded to instrumentals and their authenticity­– ­with one critic in 1974 describing them in Black Music as ‘awful bootleg instrumentals’.62 Despite Russ Winstanley issuing a stout defence, Wigan’s critics believed that these recordings went far beyond what was legitimate ‘rare soul’ and that if the trend continued it would be the end of the scene.63 Two further developments in 1975 came as huge blows to some soul fans. Winstanley and a local pop group called Sparkle, renamed Wigan’s Ovation, recorded what was described in Black Echoes as a ‘mundane’ version of ‘Skiing in the Snow’, a popular northern soul track recorded by the Invitations in 1966.64 On 20 March 1975 Wigan’s Ovation appeared on the BBC prime-time music show Top of the Pops. Cosgrove later described it as ‘a date etched like a horrific murder in the minds of northern soul fans … the night that Wigan Casino died’.65 A few months earlier another ‘made-in-Wigan’ creation, a much-modified version of the song ‘Footsee’, was aired and credited to Wigan’s Chosen Few­– ­the original recording from 1968 was by a Canadian group, the Chosen Few. This was also broadcast on Top of the Pops, and featured the northern soul style of dancing, which was seen for the first time by a wider audience. Both ‘Skiing in the Snow’ and ‘Footsee’ were UK chart successes. ‘Footsee’ also contained working-class signifiers such as the sound of a football crowd sampled from an FA Cup match. The concept of promoting ‘homegrown’ acts and performers as authentic representations of northern soul might have made commercial sense, but the ‘Wiganisation’ of the scene through these manoeuvres certainly made no real sense. As Katie Milestone observes: ‘British northern soul acts began to be promoted by virtue of the fact that they were based in Wigan. It was almost as if during the period people had forgotten that northern soul was really the sound of black America and were starting to believe that soul came from Wigan!’66 Nonetheless, for some listeners ‘Footsee’ was just another record to be filed alongside more authentic sounds in the record boxes that fuelled the impromptu dance floors created in domestic living rooms and the more commercial discos held in community centres and pubs. Commercial considerations transcended soul fundamentals to the point that less than five years after the opening of the Casino, the local 92

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press attested to the scale of Wigan’s achievement: ‘Wigan Casino with its following of thousands of kids up and down the country is big business. Two record labels, a souvenir trade and a fashion industry are a direct spin off from one of the most surprising venues of uptempo American-orientated music around.’67 For the management of the venue, success was not measured in terms of the quality of its soul output. As Casino manager Mike Walker said: ‘The Casino has gained international recognition and respect and if that happened in a big city like London people would have expected it. But for a phenomenon like this to happen in Wigan is something that will always surprise and amuse people.’68 Such comments reinforced the condescending view of the town as being absorbed in parochialism and nostalgia. In 1978 the music press defined the sonic zeitgeist as punk, post-punk and new wave, with northern soul being largely ignored or caricatured.69 The Casino’s involvement with the mainstream was integral to its appeal spreading to both a nationwide and international audience. As Billboard noted in 1978: ‘The Casino has a good track record for reissuing “oldies” and turning them into national discotheque hits.’70 The Casino Classics record label, established by RK records and distributed by Pye, was developed on the back of the success of the club.71 For most northern soul fans these departures were not merely regarded as commercially opportunistic, but were seen as undermining the whole ethos of a scene that was built on authenticity and exclusivity. They were viewed as embarrassingly farcical ‘novelties’ even by pop standards. Commercialisation also reinforced the Casino’s success to a wider national audience. From the mid-1970s increasing numbers of ‘soul tourists’ descended on Wigan, while many who regarded themselves as committed northern soul fans began to drift away.72 Russ Taylor from North Wales moved out once it became ‘popular and conventional’, seeking solace in the contemporary sounds of punk rock.73 Another aspect of the commercialisation of the scene, which brought criticism of Wigan from DJ Soul Sam (aka Martin Barnfather), was not only that the Casino’s management were ‘lapping up’ the publicity being offered, but that Wigan had become so ‘tied’ to record labels such as Casino Classics that it had grossly undermined the  quality of its soul playlist to the degree that it was obliged play the labels’ records. This subverted its independence as a rare soul venue, unlike antecedent clubs such as the Torch or competitors such as Blackpool 93

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Mecca.74 Introducing sounds from established US soul artists such as P. P. Arnold and Judy Clay could not rescue this tarnished reputation. For many fundamentalists even the offerings from these artists were inferior pop rather than rare soul. Added to this, a string of runaway UK chart successes by ‘blue-eyed’ artists (Canadian singer R. Dean Taylor’s ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’, originally released in 1967 on the Motown subsidiary V.I.P label, reached number 3 in 1974; UK artist Wayne Gibson’s ‘Under My Thumb’, originally from 1966 and released on Pye’s Disco Demand label, reached number 17; and US group Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ ‘The Night’, originally released in 1972 without chart success, was propelled to number 7 in 1975 as a northern success) only served to confirm the belief that the Casino playlist was losing out to ‘commercial pop’. The critics were excoriating in their attacks, one commentator describing these moves as ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ and speaking of the Casino ‘losing the right to call some records soul’.75 The situation was exacerbated by the inability of the scene to produce discoveries of rare soul of the same quality into the mid- and late 1970s. As a result, as DJ Greg Wilson has written, ‘In an effort to fill the vacuum, the Casino would become associated with some controversial selections of its own, including the theme from the 60’s children’s TV show, “Joe 90” by Barry Gray & His Orchestra, along with another TV theme, “Hawaii Five-0” by The Ventures.’76 The Casino also established an in-house band to support artists on its label. The All Night Band produced recordings in their own right, including a track called ‘The Joker (Wigan Joker)’, with a B-side rendition of Earl Van Dyke and Motown Brass’s popular northern instrumental ‘Six by Six’, which had originally been released in 1966.77 This track even featured a vocal from Russ Winstanley. He commented that ‘Getting into the charts myself with a vocal record in a garage in Bolton for the “Wigan Joker” record was also a big kick.’78 If this was not problematic enough for the Casino’s critics, the release was bizarrely accompanied by a character in a Joker’s costume, who was ostensibly intended to tour northern soul venues in order to promote the recording. Ten thousand yellow vinyl copies were pressed in a limited edition in January 1979.79 What was not a joke, and was seen as plumbing new depths for soul purists, was Casino Classics’ pairing of some treasured artists and sounds with this type of material on ‘maxi singles’ (7-inch singles with more than two tracks) marketed to fans.80 94

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As a measure of how far the commercialisation of northern soul had gone by 1979, RK Records decided to delete the ‘maxi single’ ‘Three Before Eight’ (the last three songs that were always played at a Wigan all-nighter before the 8 a.m. close), featuring three Casino idols, Tobi Legend, Dean Parrish and Jimmy Radcliffe. The maxi was originally released in February 1978 to coincide with Wigan’s second ‘oldies’ anniversary, as a result of massive demand for the three tracks. When sales hit the 50,000 mark, the Tobi Legend track (‘Time Will Pass You By’) in particular was so popular that RK went all out for a final promotional push in an effort to chart the single again, the three-track maxi having already charted twice in the lower forties in the UK charts, but it was ‘deleted each time’ due to what was described as ‘regional sales’ (sales to northern soul fans mainly in the north and midlands). In turn, this meant that the price went up each time, as it became rarer, and ever more difficult to acquire.81 This was not only an exercise in manipulation to push the price up and propel the recording into the charts; it was recognition that the three rare soul tracks were now ‘commercial’ recordings in every sense of the word. The fact was that record companies were jumping on the Casino’s commercial bandwagon, weighing in for a slice of the success to the point that northern soul had effectively become ‘Wigan’. One of those involved in the commercialisation from the record company perspective was David McAleer of Disco Demand. Faced with criticism, he stated that: I don’t think we exploited the Northern fans as some people have said. The kids, the record buyers they liked the stuff we were putting out. We never bribed DJs to play records, people like Russ Winstanley played our product before release because they liked the sound and without them we’d never have got a hit.82

McAleer also claimed that the decision by record companies to produce these sounds was taken purely on commercial grounds and had nothing whatsoever to do with authenticity, provenance or taste: ‘We used to take these obscure titles into A & R [Artists and Repertoire] meetings and they’d listen to the stuff and say “horrible”­– ­when is it coming out? They couldn’t believe the sales we were getting.’83 Yet there were many northern soul fans who later remained unapologetic about the ‘commercial turn’ at Wigan. The view of one former Casino regular is illustrative: ‘[As regards] the pop tunes played 95

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at the casino, I think most people have selective memories or don’t want to admit that they danced/collected them … I did … anybody who disagrees is not being totally honest with themselves.’84 The extent to which commercial recordings became accepted as ‘authentic’ northern soul sounds at the Casino was best illustrated in December 1977 when, at a Wigan ‘revival’ night, Wigan Chosen Few’s ‘Footsee’ was played, before being ‘hastily taken off’ mid-play for fear of a negative reaction from dancers out on the floor. Yet according to the fanzine New Soul Time, ‘There was no need to worry’; the record was generally well received. Most fans ‘took it for what it was’­– ­‘a genuine Wigan oldie’.85 The commercialisation of Wigan was also indicated by a television documentary that was broadcast in 1977 (discussed in Chapter 8).86 For some purists, the broadcasting of the film to a national audience led to an influx of curious observers and day-trippers, which brought the scene from the underground to the overground.87 It was clear that while fans were critical of the film, there were several positive threads running through it which met their approval, including interviews with several ‘real soul fans’. According to a report in Black Echoes, some attendees at the Casino felt that their voices had come through in the film.88 It’s over for them: the long goodbye89 While it seemed that the good times were continuing for the Casino in 1977, things had not changed much for some time, aside from an increasing demand for ‘oldies’, with DJs Winstanley, Searling, Pep and Minshull leading the way.90 The fact that nothing much had changed was the essence of Wigan’s increasingly problematic position. Attendances were for the first time in serious decline. Prompted by a clumsy and coercive attempt to bind DJs to the club rather than allowing them to work at other venues, critics vented their spleen: ‘Everyone knows “Wigan” is played out and stale even if it remains the top all-nighter its falling attendances show that another all-nighter [at another venue] could leave it standing.’91 New Year’s Eve 1977 appeared to suggest otherwise, as the annual end-of-year nighter ‘bash’ was still popular, with 2,000 fans packing the Casino.92 Likewise, during the summer of 1978 Winstanley countered the critics by claiming that Wigan was as successful as ever­– ­opening half an hour earlier at 12 midnight for the regular Saturday–Sunday nighter 96

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in order to ease the crush to get in.93 He further contended that attendances were as healthy as ever ahead of the fifth anniversary nighter in September 1978.94 Supporting voices concurred: People moan that Wigan is half empty on Saturday nights and the blame is laid upon Russ and Richard for not playing the sounds. This is absolute crap as both Russ and Richard do care about the people who come. The blame lies with the so-called soul fans who’ve been given too much of a good thing.95

One argument presented was that too many sessions were spreading attendances more thinly and that while special events such as anniversary nighters continued to be popular, the regular Saturday nighters were more sparsely attended. Similarly, while the Casino was able to boast that membership had been maintained at around 102,000 in 1979, only slightly down from its 1977 level, overall membership did not necessarily translate into attendance levels.96 These were valid points, but they failed to adequately explain or address the underlying causes of the decline. A factor that helped maintain Wigan was that Searling and other DJs introduced newer sounds, which gave an impetus to those who sought a different direction from commercial pop and a largely ‘oldies’-oriented format. This led to a spat with Winstanley, and although Searling, unlike Kev Roberts who had been sacked in 1975, stayed, a ‘traditionalist’ policy held sway. The mood of decline was heightened further by an announcement in 1978­– five years after the Casino had opened­– ­to the effect that the building was to be demolished in two years’ time to make way for a new £12 million civic centre. By this time the physical state of the building had further deteriorated.97 In May 1978 the Casino Classics label released ‘How Long’ by northern soul idol J. J. Barnes­– ­it was now a case of how long for the Casino.98 With the venue facing serious difficulties for the first time, in 1978–79 it staged a series of ‘revival’ nights on alternate Fridays, culminating in the ‘mod’ revival sessions of 1979.99 The revival nights had begun in 1977 as an extension of the ‘oldies’ theme in response to fan demand; for example, a ‘Wheel and Torch’ revival night was held in November 1977.100 Later such nights were seen as a way of galvanising support in the wake of faltering attendances; a ‘Wheel ‘n’ Wigan’ revival night was held in October 1978, together with a bi-monthly special ‘Torch and Mecca’ revival, with live acts including the ubiquitous Edwin Starr.101 These were subsequently styled 97

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as ‘Torch and Motown’ revival nights before becoming ‘mod’ revival nights. Modism, like northern soul itself, struck a retrospective chord in the north of England and midlands. As one south of England ‘scooterist’ later noted: ‘it seemed that scooters had never really gone out of fashion in Lancashire and Yorkshire’.102 The mod revival was, in fact, musically more memorable for the proliferation of new bands and its association with the post-punk scene. Dubbed ‘Modrophenia’ by the music press in reference to Quadrophenia, the 1973 album by the Who, the revival was also strongly associated with the film of the same name released in autumn 1979.103 Black Echoes reported that ‘many Northern Soul followers are strongly against the recent upsurge in mod music being paraded as Northern Soul’.104 The DJ Soul Sam made the point that mods visiting northern soul venues were requesting music from the ‘original Mod-era’, which was largely sixties R’n’B that they had heard on the soundtrack to the film and ‘not even considered “oldies” on the Northern circuit’.105 To make matters worse, Russ Winstanley was playing reggae and ska in order to mollify the mod revivalists. The playing of ‘Al Capone’ by Prince Buster, to the delight of mods present in the Casino, was described as one of the few occasions when a Casino crowd ‘turned nasty’.106 The sight of ‘revivalist’ mods humming around the vicinity of the Casino into the wee hours on their scooters, or posing around the town, was a source of merriment. Veteran ‘soulies’ watched when a couple of lads approached the Casino ‘in full regalia carrying crashhelmets emblazoned with the Lambretta logo. All very smart until you realised that these lads were getting off a coach and neither of them owned scooters.’107 As the soul press rather colourfully put it, ‘some of the foulest smelling parkas in existence were dragged out of coal sheds and from under beds’.108 It was clear that both scenes had taken fundamentally different trajectories since the 1960s. In terms of its influence on events at the Casino and the northern soul scene in general, the only significance of the 1979 ‘mod revival’ was that it underlined the degree of difference between modism and northern soul at this time and how far the two scenes had grown apart from their roots. Wigan also attempted during the late 1970s and early 1980s to export the ‘Wigan franchise’ to other locations and venues. Two such initiatives were a series of all-nighters established in Carlisle, and various all-dayers in Oldham, designed to appeal to local soul fans. Mike Walker, Wigan Casino’s manager, was himself originally from 98

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Carlisle.109 The main venue was Carlisle Market Hall and occasionally the Cosmo Ballroom in nearby Harraby. The events were widely advertised and dubbed ‘Carlisle-on-Soul’. In Oldham there was a continuation of the mod revival theme touted as ‘two-tone all-dayers’, including an ‘oldies and mods’ room at Romeo and Juliet’s.110 Such ventures were clearly a boon for soul fans in Cumbria and Oldham and were judged a relative success, but they also smacked of desperation. The Carlisle venture was criticised in Black Echoes as a sideshow when the Casino should have been tackling more pertinent issues around the long-term future of the scene.111 Initiatives to rejuvenate the appeal of the Casino through revivals of one kind or another or by ‘exporting’ the brand were seen at best as attempts to resurrect a flagging venue, and in the case of the ‘mod turn’ as a push to cash in on passing trends. The reality was that by 1980 the Casino was in serious trouble. One visitor that year gave an impression of how much the venue had deteriorated since his last visit two years previously: I could not help noticing though how empty the place looked after about 4.00 … deserted with the dancefloor having fewer than 35 people on it at times a very saddening sight as one who can remember the Casino when it used to be packed … The numbers are down on what they used to be … There are spaces on the dancefloor where there never used to be and at times there are mighty big spaces too … The only thing that spoilt my enjoyment was the sadness reflected at how the place had lost so many regulars.112

By contrast, one feature of the Casino in its later years was the relative resilience of M’s as the ‘venue within a venue’, as it continued to be described, or as some put it ‘like a club of its own’.113 This resilience stood in stark contrast to the venue as a whole and underlined the fact that Wigan had effectively become an ‘oldies’ scene par excellence. Even as the Casino faltered during the late 1970s, M’s remained popular, as the queues waiting for it to open attested, and as was indicated by the fact that many fans travelled the length of the country specifically to visit. M’s not only survived as the great bulwark of the ‘oldies’ scene, it benefited from those who swelled the ranks who felt that ‘The “newies” are getting too funky and lacking in soul.’114 Increasingly, it also attracted younger participants­– ­‘second generation soulies’­– ­who had grown up listening to older kids and family members talking affectionately about the earlier northern venues and playing original ‘oldies’.115 The insularity that affected M’s in these later years and 99

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its degree of separation from the main venue prompted the rather barbed comment from critics that ‘It’s a pity that many Mr M’s fans don’t realise that life does exist outside this room.’116 The Casino as a whole saw a slight revival in attendances during the final couple of years, partly the result of what was acknowledged as an improvement in the quality of sounds after several indifferent years, but driven essentially by the news of impending closure. There were still some packed houses at Casino nighters as late as 1980, and many attracted over 1,000 fans.117 Ironically, it was the Friday ‘oldies’ nighters rather than the regular Saturday nighters that were doing relatively well. Essentially, Wigan was now largely an ‘oldies’ venue. As one fan later put it: ‘[I] remember the Saturdays in 1980 well, and the contrast to the oldies all-nighters which were unmissable (attended every one from Feb 76 to June 81). Never really realised at the time that the place was dying and arguably, the oldies all-nighters may have been a factor.’118 Wigan’s regular Saturday all-nighters were now a mere shadow of what they had been not many years previously, with attendances measured in the few hundreds rather than the few thousands.119 To add to the dark mood gathering over the Casino, Mike Walker took his own life in 1980, shortly before the venue’s seventh anniversary.120 Added to this malaise even soul fans of ‘a Wigan persuasion’ who had remained loyal became increasingly disenchanted with the direction the club had taken, believing it had ‘sold out’ in an attempt to align itself with commercialisation and a largely ‘oldies’ format.121 Criticism from within extended to the quality of ‘oldies’ on offer and became increasingly shrill towards the end of the decade.122 An ‘inability to negotiate a long enough lease’ was the official reason for the club’s closure, but there was talk of an extension to January or February 1981.123 In the event, the Casino’s lease went to September 1981. There was a short-lived initiative to move the all-nighters to nearby Tiffany’s.124 Notwithstanding the official legal position, the Casino could have been closed at any time during the previous sixteen years. The end of the club brought forth many elegant and poignant tributes, perhaps none better than that of Frank Elson: It sometimes felt like Northern Soul was just about the most important thing in the whole world­– ­and Wigan was its shrine, its Holy Grail and its Mecca all in one. The power and the fervour that the place evoked could have lit up a city had it been harnessed.125 100

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However, as Brown has commented: ‘the Wigan Casino finale was long, protracted and a little grubby but the truth is that the venue passed away with comparatively few tears’.126 It had effectively run its course. As Haslam notes: The golden age of Northern Soul had ended some years before the Casino had. Wigan had got boxed in, its regulars tolerating only a certain style, still clinging to an era of black soul music in America that black soul music in America had long moved on from. The reservoir had run dry.127

A complaint from Wigan’s aficionados was that the Casino used the ‘long ending’ as a way of generating commercial gain. One visitor noted: ‘we arrived at Wigan at midnight to find lots of other idiots all prepared to be ripped off for the now infamous “last all-Nighter”, featuring “soul” star Tommy Hunt for £3 a ticket … I saw him at Blackpool last summer for a 50p cover charge.’ The fan ‘left the Casino, probably for the last time, clutching my genuine Casino seat flap, which is up for auction’. This summed up the aggrieved mood of resignation at the tacky ending of such an iconic and revered venue.128 The longawaited eighth anniversary month of September 1981 arrived with the announcement of a plethora of events. This only served to underline the feeling that the finality was being exploited, but for the ever faithful these were times of high emotion and the need to be there was all-important. The Casino advertised ‘The Final Programme’, a veritable extravaganza of goodbye events, kicking off with a Bank Holiday all-dayer on 31 August with the strapline ‘Everyone will be there! including all the top Wigan Jocks’; a ‘Farewell’ nighter on Friday 4 September; a ‘Wigan Memories’ nighter on Saturday 5 September; a ‘Northern 60s’ nighter on Saturday 12 September; a last ‘oldies’ allnighter on Friday 2 October; and finally the nighter to end them all­ – ­‘The End of an Era Nighter’ on Saturday 19 September, which, as it turned out, it wasn’t.129 The close was greeted in a surprisingly circumspect and muted way by soul commentators. Elson, writing in Blues and Soul, characterised it as the ‘long goodbye’ with the finale an anti-climax for many.130 The last all-nighter was on 5 December 1981. The ‘three before 8’ were played for the final time. The crowd would not leave the building. In order to ‘break the hysteria’ and mollify the fans, a 7-inch single was chosen at random and played. This was the last record ever played at the Casino­– ­Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You 101

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(Indeed I Do)’, which henceforth became one of the most sought after and valuable records on the scene.131 For Wigan’s prime mover, Russ Winstanley, the morning of 6 December 1981 was one of huge emotion. He drove to Rivington, a village eight miles from Wigan by a large reservoir on the edge of the West Pennine Moors, to reflect: ‘I was just completely and utterly heartbroken. It had been eight years of my life, playing three times a week, every week, and now it was over. It was dreadful.’132 Whatever else Wigan’s fans and its critics thought and said, few would doubt that this was, indeed, the muchvaunted end of an era moment. Ricky Andrew from Rhyl expressed his sadness in a letter to Black Echoes: ‘there now stands a void in my life … Saturday nights will never be the same again.’133 The significance of Wigan Casino in northern soul history is difficult to overstate. It played host to over 400 all-nighters between 1973 and 1981.134 It was without question the ‘place to be’ for northern soul fans, and an immeasurable success as a venue.135 Commercialisation through what has been called here the ‘Wiganisation’ of the scene has been characterised as at best misguided opportunism, and at worst an act of betrayal against the soul underground which missed an opportunity to open up ‘rare soul’ to the world, though it should be noted that the extent to which this might have occurred is questionable. Godin consistently argued that the underground soul movement would remain just that and would never command a mass audience in Britain, while ‘soulies’ themselves were comfortable with the ‘underground’ moniker.136 The dash for commercialisation has also been seen as one of the main developments that undermined Wigan Casino in particular and the northern soul scene more generally. As Soul Sam noted: ‘Unfortunately, it was the over-commercialisation of Wigan Casino that hampered the development of Northern Soul.’137 Contrarily, without commercialisation the northern soul scene would not have become known to a wider public, as former Casino ‘oldies’ DJ Dave Evison acknowledged: The ironic thing was that we all wanted to hear this great music … But when the rest of the world did, we thought it had gone too commercial. The commercialisation was a good thing in the sense that it got public attention, but it gave entirely the wrong impression of the Northern Scene.138

The question remains, where should Wigan be positioned in relation to the development of northern soul? At one extreme, espe102

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cially for those not ‘on the scene’, Wigan Casino was northern soul. Conversely, for the Casino’s sternest critics, Wigan had for a large part of its existence little to do with northern soul; Wigan and the ‘Wiganisation’ of northern soul had effectively stolen the scene from them and in doing so had grossly misrepresented it.139 Between these extremes a popular view of Wigan is that it represented the apotheosis of northern soul­– ­the highest point of its development­– ­certainly in terms of the excitement it created around the scene and the profile it gave it. For those more critical of its legacy, the Casino marked the finality of the scene, albeit it was a long, eight-year ending. It seems astonishing that some of the more ‘progressive’ figures involved with the scene made few visits to Wigan following its opening years of success. One was DJ Colin Curtis, who on M’s opening in 1974 felt so despondent about the future of the scene that he recalled: ‘I remember sitting there on its [Mr M’s] opening night and saying … This is the beginning of the end of northern soul. I felt regurgitating all this stuff again for people who didn’t want to move on was such a retro move.’140 Many critics of the Casino focused their ire on Russ Winstanley, ‘Mr Wigan’ as he became known, as a key figure in both the commercialisation of the scene and in championing a ‘traditionalist’ music policy. However, this tends to overlook his innovation in establishing Wigan as a centre for rare soul during the early 1970s. A report in Hot Buttered Soul in 1973 characterised him more positively as a highly regarded DJ and rare soul collector/dealer.141 Even during a period when it was argued that Wigan had sold out to commercialisation and become ossified by its largely ‘oldies’ format, Winstanley won accolades in the fanzine New Soul Time for introducing ‘first timers’ (records previously unplayed), particularly from the Motown ‘oldies’ stable.142 Indeed, a more recent observation suggests that history will be kinder than many of Wigan’s critics anticipated: ‘If every musical movement needs a central figurehead, there are few who would argue that the Northern soul crown belongs fully on the head of Russ Winstanley.’143 Wigan Casino heralded the arrival of northern soul on the national and international scene and was perhaps a natural outcome of the growing interest in rare soul. Yet as Tony Cummings suggested in a critical piece in 1975, the ‘northern scene’ was already well established before the club opened its doors in 1973.144 Wigan, as celebrated as it was, rather than being the natural outcome of the development of 103

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northern soul, was, in fact, an ‘accidental’ though certainly by no means ‘incidental’ outcome, which witnessed the venue presiding over a scene that rapidly flourished and expanded into the mid-1970s, followed as quickly by its decline into the early 1980s. Notes 1 See Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’ 2 The Scotsman, 19 September 2008. 3 ‘Long After Tonight is All Over’ was recorded by Jimmy Radcliffe. Released in 1965, it gained mythical status as one of the records played in the ‘three before 8.00 a.m.’ slot at Wigan Casino. 4 S. Catterall, ‘Otherness Plus the 3Cs Minus Orwell: The Wigan Pier Experience’, Labour History Review, 70.1 (2005), p. 103. 5 Ethel Mannin, England My Adventure (London: Hutchinson, 1972). 6 Beatrix Campbell, Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 1980s (London: Virago, 1984); Stuart Maconie, Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North (London: Ebury, 2007); Stephen Armstrong, The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited (London: Constable, 2012). 7 C. B. Phillips and J. H. Smith, Lancashire and Cheshire from AD 1540 (London: Longman, 1994), p. 275; ‘A map that shows why Wigan was King Coal’s Throne’, n.d., uncatalogued MSS, typescripts and maps, Special Collections, Wigan and Leigh College. 8 For Wigan miners in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, see Raymond Challinor, The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners (London: Frank Graham, 1972). 9 For a survey of the twentieth-century coal industry, see David Powell, The Power Game: The Struggle for Coal (London: Duckworth, 1993). 10 F. A. Gibson, Statistical Summaries of Tables on behalf of the Mining Association of Great Britain to the Commission of Inquiry re: Minimum Wages and Hours (Presentation Copy, Cardiff: Western Mail, 1919). 11 W. Prest, ‘The Problems of the Lancashire Coalfield’, The Economic Journal, XLVII (1937). 12 For a history of mining trade unionism in Wigan and its environs, see David Howell, The Politics of the NUM: A Lancashire View (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989). 13 Wigan Observer, 18 September 1926. 14 Prest, ‘The Problems of the Lancashire Coalfield’, p. 267. 15 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier [1937] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 79. 16 Wigan Observer, 29 September 1936. 17 Wigan Observer, 29 September 1936; Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 146. 104

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The beating heart of soul 18 Winstanley and Nowell, Soul Survivors, p. 157. 19 For popular culture in Wigan and neighbouring Leigh in the 1950s, see Gildart, Images of England, ch. 1. 20 J. Pratt, ‘The Pier-And All That: John Pratt Takes a Look at Modern Wigan’, Lancashire Life, 12.4 (1964), p. 39. 21 Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, p. 371. 22 Wigan Observer, 1 April 1966. 23 Lancashire and Merseyside Development Association (LAMIDA) Report, The Decline of the Cotton and Coal Industries of Lancashire, Manchester, April 1967; Catterall, ‘The Lancashire Coalfield’, pp. 376–441. 24 For a recent reappraisal of working-class identities in this period, see Jon Lawrence, Me Me Me? The Search for Community in Post-war England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 25 On the Road: Jimmy, Cakey and Enrico (Granada, 1975). 26 Most notably in Tony Palmer’s documentary The Wigan Casino (Granada, 1977). 27 ‘Night Owl’, a recording by Bobby Paris from 1966, became a significant dance floor filler at Wigan Casino. 28 S. Jelbert, ‘Tony Palmer’s Wigan Casino Film Comes to DVD’, The Guardian, 15 April 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/ apr/15/the-wigan-casino-tony-palmer (accessed 3 April 2020). 29 Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, pp. 179–81; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, pp. 373–4. 30 Northern Noise, No. 1 (n.d. [1979?]). 31 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 22, September 1973. 32 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 146. 33 Billboard, 31 May 1975. 34 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 146. 35 Northern Noise, No. 1 (n.d. [1979?]). 36 Blues and Soul, 9–22 November 1973. 37 Blues and Soul, 18 June–1 July 1974. 38 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 47. 39 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 40 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 25 (n.d. [1973?]). 41 Constantine and Sweeney, Northern Soul, p. 100. 42 Northern Noise, No. 1 (n.d. [1979?]); BBC Radio Manchester, Richard Searling, ‘Northern Soul’, broadcast, podcast, 28 October 2016. 43 Blues and Soul, 26 September–9 October 1978. The membership is the number of people Wigan Casino claimed to have had registered as members of the soul club. We have been unable to unearth the actual membership book or lists, so we are left with various estimates and claims. It should be noted that membership does not mean aggregate attendance or relate to estimates and claims of attendance at the venue. 105

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Keeping the faith 44 Dave Nowell, emailed questionnaire to authors, 27 July 2016; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, p. 374. 45 T. Hunt, Only Human: My Soulful Life (New Romney: Bank House Books, 2008), p. 209. 46 Blues and Soul, No. 129, 26 February–11 March 1974. 47 Black Music, September 1974. 48 Black Echoes, 23 September 1978. 49 A. Pilgrim, ‘Wigan Casino: Memories of the “Heart of Soul”’, Past Forward: The Newsletter of Wigan Heritage Service, No. 34, summer 2003. 50 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 272. 51 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 71. 52 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 53 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 54 Black Echoes, 26 February 1977. 55 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]); New Soul Time (n.d. [1977?]). 56 Black Echoes, 18 December 1976. 57 Comment by Gary William Keen (Sam), BBC Lancashire, ‘Heart and Soul of Northern Soul’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/content/ image_​galleries/russ_​gallery.shtml (accessed 26 October 2018). 58 ‘Underground, Overground’ was not a northern soul track but the theme tune to the popular BBC children’s television programme The Wombles, first broadcast in 1973. 59 Constantine and Sweeney, Northern Soul, pp. 100–1. 60 Billboard, 31 May 1975. 61 Double Cookin’: Classic Northern Soul Instrumentals (2010), CD, Kent Records; Soul Source (2013), instrumentals, http://www.soul-source. co.uk/soulforum/topic/286421-instrumentals/ (accessed 9 May 2013). 62 Black Music, September 1974. 63 Black Music, May, June and September 1974. 64 Black Echoes, 29 May 1976. 65 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 93. 66 Milestone, ‘Love Factory’. 67 Post and Chronicle, 14 May 1978. 68 Post and Chronicle, 14 May 1978. 69 For a critical reading of the music press in this period, see Patrick Glen, Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967–1983 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 70 Billboard, 29 July 1978. 71 Black Echoes, 30 June 1979. 72 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016; interview with Richard Cooper, 10 April 2016. 73 Interview with Russ Taylor, 21 April 2016. 74 Soul Source, No. 3 (n.d. [1979?]). 106

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The beating heart of soul 75 Hot Buttered Soul (n.d. [1975?]). 76 Greg Wilson, ‘Northern Renaissance’, 21 November 2013, https://blog. gregwilson.co.uk/2013/11/northern-renaissance/ (accessed 21 March 2016). 77 Soul Cargo, No. 8, 1 December 1978. 78 Northern Noise, No. 2 (n.d. [1979?]). 79 Black Echoes, 13 January 1979. 80 Black Echoes, 14 April 1979. 81 Black Echoes, 24 March 1979. 82 Black Echoes, 29 May 1976. 83 Black Echoes, 29 May 1976. 84 Comment, Netspeaky, posted 23 August 2006, ‘Wigan Casino May 1980’, Soul Source, repr. from Blackbeat No. 4, https://www.soul-source. co.uk/articles/soul-articles/wigan-casino-may-1980-r552/ (accessed 13 April 2016). 85 New Soul Time (n.d. [1977?]). 86 See the Tony Palmer documentary, The Wigan Casino (Granada, 1977). 87 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 88 Black Echoes, 7 January 1978. 89 Timi Yuro’s ‘It’ll Never Be Over For Me’ (1969) was a notable record on the northern scene. 90 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 91 New Soul Time, No. 2 (n.d. [1977?]). 92 Black Echoes, 14 January 1978. 93 Black Echoes, 15 July 1978. 94 Black Echoes, 23 September 1978. 95 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 49, December 1976–January 1977. 96 Blues and Soul, 21 September–8 October 1979. 97 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 98 Black Echoes, 12 May 1978. 99 The mod revival of 1979 is in need of significant research. For some insights, see Garry Bushell, Time for Action: Essays on the Mod Revival from the ’79 Frontline (London: Countdown Books, 2012). 100 Black Echoes, 19 November 1977. 101 Black Echoes, 4 November 1978. 102 W. Routledge, Northern Monkeys (Marple: Think More, 2013), p. 200. 103 New Musical Express, 14 April 1979. For analysis of The Who’s album and film, see Thurschwell (ed.), Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture. 104 Black Echoes, 27 October 1979. 105 Shaw, Casino, p. 68. 106 Shaw, Casino, p. 69. 107 Shaw, Casino, p. 68. 108 Blues and Soul, 25 September–8 October 1979. 107

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Keeping the faith 109 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019; Blues and Soul, 25 September–8 October 1979. 110 Black Echoes, 23 February 1980. 111 Black Echoes, 5 May 1979. 112 ‘Wigan Casino May 1980’, Soul Source, repr. from Blackbeat No. 4, https://www.soul-source.co.uk/articles/soul-articles/wigan-casinomay-1980-r552/ (accessed 13 April 2016). 113 Soul Source, No. 7 (n.d. [1979?]). 114 Soul Source, No. 7 (n.d. [1979?]). 115 Soul Source, No. 7 (n.d. [1979?]). 116 Okeh Northern Soul (n.d. [1980?]). 117 Black Echoes, 29 March 1980. 118 Comment, Carty, posted 30 March 2006, ‘Wigan Casino May 1980’, Soul Source, repr. from Blackbeat No. 4, https://www.soul-source.co.uk/ articles/soul-articles/wigan-casino-may-1980-r552/ (accessed 13 April 2016). 119 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016; comment, Polyvelts, posted 21 August 2006, ‘Wigan Casino May 1980’, Soul Source, repr. from Blackbeat No. 4, https://www.soul-source.co.uk/articles/soul-articles/ wigan-casino-may-1980-r552/ (accessed 13 April 2016). 120 Okeh Northern Soul (n.d. [1980?]). Inevitably, while there was speculation concerning this tragic event, all suggestions pointed to personal rather than professional issues as probable factors. 121 Black Echoes, 14 April 1979. 122 Soul Cargo, No. 12, 1 August 1979. 123 Blues and Soul, 23 September–6 October 1980; Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 210. 124 Searling, Setting the Record Straight, pp. 19–20; Black Echoes, 26 September 1981. 125 Blues and Soul, 23 September–6 October 1980. 126 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 220. 127 D. Haslam, ‘Northern Lights’, City Life (Manchester), No. 23. Photocopy from Wigan Archives with no date. City Life was first published in December 1983 and was a weekly, so issue 23 is probably May or June 1984. 128 Midnite Express, No. 3 (n.d. [1981?]). 129 Blues and Soul, 25 August–7 September 1981; Black Echoes, 26 September 1981. 130 Blues and Soul, 25 August–7 September 1981. 131 Local Life, Wigan North Edition, February/March 2015. 132 Local Life, Wigan North Edition, February/March 2015. 133 Black Echoes, 12 September 1981. 134 BBC Radio Manchester, Richard Searling, ‘Northern Soul: Wigan 108

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135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

144

Casino’, broadcast 2 March 2018; Local Life, Wigan North Edition, February/March 2015 Black Echoes, 23 September 1978. Blues and Soul, 22 October–4 November 1971. Shaw, Casino, p. 75. Winstanley and Nowell, Soul Survivors, p. 111. Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 97. Hot Buttered Soul, No. 22, September 1973. New Soultime, No. 4 (n.d. [1977?]). M. Devlin and S. Taylor, ‘The 40 Essential DJs of the Past 40 Years!’, Blues &​Soul, online, No. 1094, 2019, http://www.bluesandsoul.com/ feature/226/the_​40_​essential/ (accessed 9 July 2019). Cummings, ‘The Northern Discos’, pp. 23–31.

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4

Soul explosion, fragmentation and decline

Following the meteoric rise and boom of the early 1970s, at a time when northern soul seemed unassailable, it was beset by a series of challenges from the middle of the decade. The scene had to contend with new styles in soul and dance music, particularly what was termed New York disco, disco funk and jazz funk. There were also internal splits, which gave rise to a virulent factionalism between those who wanted ‘northern’ to remain true to its roots as a retrospective scene grounded largely in the 1960s, and those who sought a new direction, giving rise to the new style of modern soul. Attempts to meet these challenges through initiatives that sought to appease factionalism saw the establishment of a further major club at Cleethorpes on the Lincolnshire coast. There were attempts to try to bring these styles together through the expansion of mixed-format events and venues, and a move towards all-dayers as opposed to all-nighters. Such moves, although achieving some success, were not enough to forestall the decline of northern soul through the second half of the 1970s as the scene became increasingly fragmented. Soul galore1 The three years between 1973 and 1976 mirrored the success of northern soul at Wigan Casino as northern England generated an extensive network of clubs. In 1973 Blues and Soul declared that there were ‘extensive soul goings on in the north’ and that ‘the north is enjoying its own private soul boom’.2 Without question these years were heady times for the scene, with an unprecedented proliferation of venues, and increasing attendances and record sales. After a short break during the first few months of 1973, Blackpool Mecca’s Highland Room was opened again. The demise of the Torch had 110

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set in train a series of events. Two of the Torch’s DJs, Colin Curtis and Keith Minshull, had left ahead of its closure and moved to the Top Rank Suite in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. Both Curtis and Minshull then went into residence at the Mecca to front the newly resurrected Saturday night sessions.3 Thereafter, Ian Levine replaced Minshull to form a DJing partnership with Curtis. Both were then joined by Andy Hanley. There were great expectations from the new partnership of Curtis and Levine, with fans predicting that ‘this place is gonna be real big-time and with the great sounds that are played, it can’t go wrong’.4 It was clear that the soul nights were now an established and important part of the Mecca’s programme, recognised as a priority for its management rather than being ancillary.5 Dave Godin visited Blackpool in December 1973. He reported: A continuous stream of traffic approaches, turns and shuttles its human cargo into the entrances … an escalator no less swiftly lifts one to the first floor. Soon enough one is at the end of the wide hall that leads to the Highland Room, certain that the endless stream of humanity that was continuously arriving behind you is being put on the efficient conveyor belt to the realms of pleasure up above.6

The Mecca also developed strong links with nearby towns including Preston, from where large numbers of fans took advantage of the free coaches from the town to the club.7 Preston itself developed a strong soul scene of its own led by the Top Rank Suite, dubbed ‘The North’s Real Soul Scene’, where Levine and Hanley held a Sunday soul session, although the venue became better known as a cabaret lounge and featured visiting US soul acts including Major Lance and Erma Franklin.8 Additionally, a number of smaller discos came on to the local scene supported by specialist record dealers in both Blackpool and Preston.9 An illustration of the confidence of the scene during this period was the expanding strength of northern soul in the Stoke-on-Trent area, even though the main venue, the Torch, had closed. This trend was led by several venues which became prominent, notably the Steam Machine in Hanley which held all-nighters during 1973 and 1974 and acquired a reputation for live soul acts.10 Another venue, the Top Rank Suite, having already established itself as a leading northern soul club, held events during the same period which were frequently advertised as ‘Torch Revival All-Nighters’ in order to capitalise on recent memories and experiences.11 Another important venue in the 111

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area was Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme, which had been running soul sessions since the late 1960s.12 This expansion and clustering of venues occurred in many ‘marginal’ areas­– i­n both the cultural and geographical sense­– i­n the north and midlands. Cheshire and Shropshire witnessed an expansion of venues during 1973–76. These included locations such as Crewe and the small towns of Oswestry, Northwich and Whitchurch. There were also venues in rural locations such as the Raven, Prees Heath, and Nantwich Civic Hall and its cricket club. These played host to both top northern soul DJs and headline soul acts direct from the USA.13 American soul artists jetted in to perform in pubs and village halls; venues were packed to the rafters with fans dancing through the night in places which had a week earlier held a village fete. Country lanes built for tractors became clogged with carloads of ‘soulies’ heading off to some obscure location in a complex of venues that had sprung up overnight in this corner of the rural north-west and north midlands. Another aspect of the northern soul boom of 1973–76 was the emergence of new venues and established clubs which went on to become ‘legendary’. One example was in Sheffield. Soul had struggled to establish itself in the ‘steel city’. It had been an important feature of the city’s famous King Mojo club during the 1960s, but following its closure in 1967 there were no venues to encourage the sounds and the atmosphere.14 However, in 1971 Samantha’s opened, promoted by a young local soul fan, John Vincent, with the first alldayers launched soon after.15 As a venue, Samantha’s offered limited possibilities, ‘being an upstairs venue above Silver Blades ice skating with a room about three times as long as wide and a relatively small dancefloor’.16 After an initial struggle the club saw its popularity soar in 1972, with attendances jumping from around 60 to 250, boosted by former Torch regulars in the area and later by the addition of top DJs including Richard Searling, Soul Sam and Pep.17 By the mid1970s, Black Echoes was reporting that Samantha’s attendances were topping 600.18 In addition to new venues, one event held on Saturday 6 April 1974, billed as ‘the Greatest Soul Event of all Time’, came to symbolise the scale of the boom. This was a soul extravaganza at the Queens Hall, Leeds. A bevy of live acts were lined up for the 12-hour marathon, including two northern circuit regulars­– ­Major Lance and J. J. Barnes. This was ostensibly an amalgam of northern soul and 112

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funk, but northern was writ large.19 The rather grandly named venue was in reality a former tram shed.20 As it transpired it was a rather shambolic and uninspiring spectacle, but the fact that nearly 7,000 fans attended­– a­ record for a single northern soul event­– i­llustrates the numbers who were on the scene at that time, given that it was competing with a Wigan all-nighter on the same night.21 There were also less successful attempts to arrange the first soul weekenders in Majorca, though the fact that these were even being attempted gives a sense of the confidence pervading the scene.22 One author has estimated that in 1975 the number of northern soul fans attending venues in Britain was 100,000, and the scene was at its zenith in terms of mass popularity.23 By 1974 northern soul had attained a geographical reach that extended to cover a vast swathe of the north of England on both sides of the Pennines, with important venues in Barnsley, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Todmorden, Wakefield and York on the Yorkshire side, and Burnley and Oldham on the Lancashire side, all playing host to regular events.24 The level of interest in the northwest of England during the 1973–76 period is best illustrated by the fact that in addition to the two centres in Blackpool and Wigan, the Carlton club, Warrington, just 13 miles south of Wigan, which had held soul sessions since 1972, started to hold its own northern allnighters from the spring of 1974.25 The Carlton held a Friday allnighter with Saturday evening sessions advertised as ‘Wigan warm up’ events.26 There was also the Blue Room at Sale Mecca, where Levine and Hanley would ‘try out’ new records on the audience before airing them at Blackpool.27 By the mid-1970s there were few towns and villages in ‘northern’s heartlands’ which did not cater for fans on a regular basis. Breakaway: New York disco and funk fever28 By the mid-1970s, despite the northern soul boom, it was clear that the scene was facing threats both perceived and real. Much of this came from the emergence of New York disco and jazz funk. There were considerable overlaps between genres, styles and terminology, and a myriad of interpretations and categorisations. Disco funk and funk, singular, were used more commonly than disco or jazz funk as a lingua franca to denote a sound and style which, for fans, was neither so close to disco per se nor as esoteric as jazz funk. However, for 113

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the purposes of this discussion the two alternatives will be described as New York disco and jazz funk. New York disco defined a music style that emerged from the USA during the early 1970s. The ‘New York’ appellation was added for two reasons. First, it differentiated this style from other ‘discos’ and disco types such as ‘northern disco’, which was a popular term used to describe the rare soul scene. Secondly, soul music has both by philosophy and practice been strongly associated with location. Soul aficionados used locations in the USA to typify particular ‘sounds’. The Chicago sound was different from the Detroit sound via the Motown record label, which itself differed from the Memphis style, mainly via the Stax label, while the Philly sound was connected to Philadelphia and the record label of the same name.29 Hence, New York and disco­– ­New York being the city most associated with this style of dance music.30 Most commentators on the scene saw New York disco as a threat to northern soul. Some purists railed against disco with a fervent ferocity. There were some panicked observations suggesting that northern soul was in danger of being eaten away by the latest ‘fad’. The fanzine Deeper and Deeper stressed that the ‘dreaded Disco bug continues to sweep away everything in its path’.31 In the early 1970s there might have been some justification for this concern, but this air of fevered antipathy grew in the late 1970s when disco witnessed great success, largely bypassing northern soul to become a widespread popular mainstream genre. One reason for the level of angst about disco was that both it and northern soul were dance music scenes, and disco was a potential competitor that might occupy the same space. Another was northern soul’s intrinsic elitism vis-à-vis other music styles, especially disco, which was seen as inferior, ephemeral, lacking depth and in many cases downright tacky. Some within the northern soul scene took a more nuanced view. Disco was viewed initially as what was being played at Blackpool Mecca by Ian Levine. Dave Withers, soul enthusiast and later a DJ at Top of the World in Stafford, made the most balanced and persuasive argument regarding the scene’s ‘New York connection’ in 1977. Withers maintained that disco should not necessarily be a threat. The roots of the music were the same, and many revered soul artists were making disco records, and that ‘must be healthy for soul music’.32 He believed that the ‘continuity’ this brought to the scene was important.33 Where it involved established soul artists, particularly northern 114

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soul artists, fans were more forgiving about this transition to disco, with one commentator in Soul Time noting that in ‘76, one of the most encouraging developments must be the re-emergence of some of the big soul names of the 60’s’.34 One example was US recording artist Garnett Mimms, who had recorded a northern soul classic, ‘Looking for You’, in 1966. In 1977 he had a disco smash with ‘What It Is’, then styled as Garnett Mimms and Truckin’ Company. In this sense Mimms was both a northern soul and disco idol, and many more artists soon fell into this category.35 However, Withers criticised Blackpool Mecca, believing that Levine had gone too far in extending his playlist in 1976 from a high percentage of modern soul sounds to new releases that were heavily disco influenced, and asserting that he ‘should have used its independence to play a mix of sounds’. Importantly, this assertion was not based on a critique of disco per se, but on the quantity and especially the quality of disco sounds played. He argued that ‘If we are to retain any identity we must play predominantly different records from commercial discos.’36 This put Withers more ‘onside’ with disco than most northern soul fans might have wished for, yet it was a judiciously fair appraisal of where the scene stood in relation to disco, while simultaneously maintaining its integrity. The great fear of disco remained just that. There were few converts directly from northern soul to disco.37 The significance of the relationship lay only in the way that disco occluded northern soul during the late 1970s, rather than supplanting it. Disco only ever constrained and diverted northern soul, which continued to attract large numbers of fans up and down the length and breadth of Britain during the 1970s; but disco, emerging from the underground, became essentially mainstream, whereas northern soul, even at its height, remained relatively marginal. Fundamentally though, both scenes coexisted in a stand-off at many venues, with northern continually casting condescending glances in disco’s direction. In fact, there is an argument to suggest that it was northern soul that influenced disco rather than the other way around. As Shapiro has argued: ‘The culture of Northern Soul would not only parallel the nascent disco scene in New York, but profoundly influence it as well.’38 It was, however, jazz funk that proved most problematic for northern soul. Although both were preoccupied with the sounds of black America, the two presented seemingly different musical cultures. Northern soul’s leanings were predominantly retrospective­– s­ ounds 115

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involving past recordings. Jazz funk, as Bradley has commented, ‘revolved around contemporary sounds­– ­the more up-to-date the better’.39 Furthermore, as Lyons suggests, jazz funk continued the obsession with America, but like disco it had a contemporary edge; this reached deeper into British music dance culture than northern soul was able, or indeed wished, to do: DJs played soul and funk music imported from the United States in discotheques but also in pubs and American-style bars decorated with flashing lights, ritzy furnishings, plush carpets, dimly lit black interiors, mirrored walls and fake palm trees. Here the music conjured up images of neon-lit streets and American nights full of sensual pleasures.40

However, the jazz funk scene in the north and midlands was different from that in the south of England, and in reality shared many common values with northern soul, as Steve Cesar and Stuart Cosgrove recognised, writing in 1978: ‘The Funk scene in the North has borrowed the best things from the Old Northern Scene­– ­travelling, long friendships, knowledge of the music and homage to Black America.’41 Both were similarly associated with notions of rarity and idolised ‘fabled’ venues.42 More tellingly, in terms of commonalities, many of the jazz funk sounds aired during the late 1970s, particularly at mixed northern soul and jazz funk events, were not the traditional interpretations of a jazz funk sound.43 This was what soul fans would rather clumsily describe as the ‘soul end of jazz funk’ or ‘soulful funk’, which appealed to them rather than pure jazz or the extremities of funk as purveyed by performers and groups such as James Brown, Parliament or Funkadelic. Even northern soul ‘traditionalists’ with an interest in ‘oldies’ and the grittier soul sounds of the 1960s would acknowledge some approval of this style that was ‘not too disco or jazz funk’. The relevance of overlaps between genres and styles was very much to the fore, to the extent that descriptions were often ill-defined, with quite fluid categorisations. During the late 1970s it became clear that what was described as New York disco was not the great threat to northern soul, with which it largely coexisted; rather the threat came from disco funk and jazz funk, as a number of leading DJs and northern regulars made the shift.44 While direct converts were not huge in number, the shift was large enough to be noticeable, and importantly funk was attracting more new fans who did not have previous involvement in the north116

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ern scene.45 As Frank Elson noted in Blues and Soul in 1979: ‘The Disco/Funk Scene has arrived fully now and needs no extra push to get it going. There are people going to clubs like Angels [Burnley] and Cassinellis [Standish, near Wigan] who have never been to a stompers type club.’46 Some DJs also made the move from northern soul to jazz funk, usually via a rather slow, uncertain metamorphosis throughout the late 1970s. Sometimes these moves also encompassed disco, although it is noticeable that the term was rarely used in the singular, the music being more frequently described as disco funk or some other combined term which gave it more credibility, though it also usually had the quality of sounds to match. Such moves complemented the shift towards more modern sounds in northern soul. Levine and Curtis at Blackpool Mecca were the most celebrated of the DJs involved in this process. Following the ending of Saturday night northern soul sessions in November 1977, Curtis teamed up with DJ John Grant, initially at Smarty’s in Manchester in 1978, where he began his transformation from northern soul in earnest. Curtis established a formidable partnership with Grant over the next four years, as both performed a pioneering double act at Manchester’s Rafters, a venue that became the most important in the development of jazz funk in Britain outside London and the south-east.47 Others too moved over to funk either permanently or alongside working in northern soul. An early convert was Birmingham-based Graham Warr who had made his mark as a DJ at Wolverhampton’s Catacombs club, but by 1974 had begun the journey to funk, initially with a foot in both camps, until he made the decisive shift during the late 1970s.48 Another was Ian Dewhirst, again someone very much in the northern mould, with stints at several leading clubs including Wigan, and regarded as an innovative DJ, who as a fan had made the weekend pilgrimage to both Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino. It was, however, a trip to the USA, involvement with successful recording artists Shalamar and finally his association with the Central Soul Club in Leeds that saw him align himself with more ‘progressive’ elements in northern soul and make the metamorphic transition to modern soul, funk and disco.49 One of jazz funk’s greatest acquisitions was Richard Searling. Searling’s metamorphosis from prince apparent of northern soul to jazz funk and modern soul was one of the more remarkable. A stint on Radio Hallam allowed him the freedom he had not fully enjoyed at Wigan Casino to refashion a new 117

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direction for his sounds.50 This manifested itself from 1978 at Angels nightclub in Burnley, where he led a highly influential midweek session. As Searling later recalled: ‘It was a nice change from all the Northern gigs … I didn’t know much about this scene like I did with Northern at the Wigan Casino … but it was fresh.’51 As if to emphasise the point, by 1979 jazz funk had symbolically parked its tanks on the lawn of the great temple of northern soul in the Wigan area just up the road from the Casino in neighbouring Standish, where Cassinellis proclaimed itself as the ‘North’s Leading Jazz-Funk Club’. Colin Curtis fronted a weekly Friday session on which ‘crews’ of jazz-funkers from the north and midlands descended.52 In 1980 Wigan Pier club opened its doors, fronted by an accomplished and enthusiastic soul, funk and disco DJ, Greg Wilson, from the Wirral. Wilson recalls at the time that northern soul ‘was on its knees, Wigan Casino struggling in its forlorn efforts to re-create the halcyon days of the 70’s’. He went on to become a legendary DJ and record producer, while the Pier became an influential and iconic club.53 Significantly, both Cassinellis and Wigan Pier enjoyed black participation largely from outside the area, which the Casino never equalled.54 This was the final denouement for northern soul, as a new generation of soul fans arrived, together with new times for black music in Britain. Wilson later proclaimed that jazz funk occupied the ‘gaping hole between northern soul and rave culture’.55 That’s my soul The categorisation, meaning and practice of northern soul were always the subject of debate. This debate can be characterised as both ‘external’, mainly taking place during the first half of the 1970s as the scene emerged from the underground, and ‘internal’, emanating from the tensions within northern soul between factions of DJs and fans. This was highlighted in the battle over music policy between Wigan Casino and Blackpool Mecca, in which ‘traditionalists’ were lined up against ‘progressives’. Linked to this was a further, more specific conflict, arising in the mid-1970s, which pitted those who favoured ‘oldies’ against new sounds or ‘newies’. In 1972 the music journalist Tony Cummings and his colleagues hired a coach from London to go Blackpool to see what all ‘this Northern fuss was about’. He was unimpressed. He was especially scathing about the specificity of northern sounds, which he distin118

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guished from soul in general: ‘a never-ending thumpity-thump Detroit beat’. Cummings believed that northern was an ‘artificially created scene’ and that it was being given a contrived momentum by the practice of DJs and promoters plugging certain sounds and controlling the release­– ­thus enhancing the rarity and, of course, the value­– o ­f sounds which in his view were of inferior quality compared with what he believed was a superior and more diverse range of soul. He was implacably against the notion that a soul record had to be ‘up-tempo’ to be accepted as soulful, which in a real sense attacked head-on the northern position that a particular soul sound should be ‘danceable’.56 A consistent aspect of Cummings’s critique of northern soul made a distinction between those soul fans who liked to listen to the music for its qualities and those who saw it as predominantly dance-oriented­ – ­the usual assumption from northern soulies was that it was essentially dance music. According to Cummings, northern fans would put up with virtually anything as long as it was, in their terms, ‘danceable’, even covers, rip-offs and bootlegs, whereas a ‘soul purist’ would have or should have eschewed these discs.57 Godin presented a stinging rejoinder to Cummings in Blues and Soul: ‘Gone, apparently, are the days when we could all live and let live, and we Soul brothers and sisters moved in a world that was wide enough for all shades of taste and opinion.’58 While there was undoubtedly some validity in the points made by Cummings, equally many northern fans argued a contrary position in suggesting that their take on rare soul was more authentic and relevant than his. The problem with the debate was that it did not create the space for a full and frank discussion about rare soul, but instead became entangled in a unproductive and predictable ‘North vs South’ standoff, with the latter taking a funk or funkier direction and the former a more retrospective up-tempo direction based on ‘stomper sounds’. Cummings intervened in 1975 in a more visceral way as the northern soul scene reached the height of its popularity by accusing it of exploiting fans.59 Other voices reinforced such criticisms as some of northern’s more shady practices were fully exhumed. Music journalist Idris Walters reflected on the state of the scene in 1975, claiming that it was dying at a time that many would regard as its zenith. He touched on several of the themes raised by Cummings: That auto-nostalgia for better days has set in. That the dancing isn’t what it was … The music spread thinner by the record companies and 119

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In 2004 Les Spaine, who during the mid-1970s was DJ at Liverpool’s Pun club, a leading funk-based venue that largely catered for the city’s African-Caribbean community, was interviewed by DJ Greg Wilson and was equally scathing: a lot of Northern is the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s got to be rare. It’s got to be unavailable and the guy’s got to have died young of tuberculosis, working on a car line in Detroit. The minute it became popular they didn’t want it … I’m not saying there wasn’t good Northern Soul, but quite a lot of it was musically bad and it was very old.61

If external criticism of northern soul was problematic, it was nothing compared to the disagreement that arose from within the scene in what became northern soul’s best-known conflict between Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino. It is generally acknowledged that this originated in the Mecca’s increasing propensity from 1973 to play more contemporary soul and new releases with a very different sound to that being played at Wigan. The introduction of one record­– ­the Carstairs ‘It Really Hurts Me Girl’­– ­has been pinpointed as a seminal moment when the split occurred. It signalled a new direction at Blackpool, culminating in a decision in 1974 only to play new releases, thus putting the Mecca directly at odds with northern soul fans who held a firm adherence to retrospective sounds, reinforced by a growing interest in ‘oldies’, particularly at Wigan. This was a fracture on a seismic scale. The Mecca’s new direction and the split that ensued with Wigan set in train two developments­– ­the emergence of what Brewster and Boughton have characterised as the ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ factions of the scene, and the advent of what became known as modern soul.62 In 1975, at the height of northern soul’s popularity, New Musical Express opined that: Internal dissension is the bane of any cult, and though the Northern Sounds soul movement might seem healthy from the outside, in 120

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The feud rumbled on throughout much of the mid-1970s and was frequently embittered, with Wigan and DJs from other venues hitting back at Blackpool. For example, Soul Sam, then an implacable ‘traditionalist’, announced in Black Echoes that ‘Due to the fact that Ian Levine and Colin Curtis now play 100% new releases at the Blackpool Mecca, I have decided to make a stand on behalf of stomp fans. Both Russ Winstanley and I myself got together and agreed to play no new releases.’64 There is a tendency to assume that the ‘great split’ was something that emerged after Wigan Casino opened its doors and Blackpool Mecca initiated its new direction, leading to a state of ‘soul civil war’ between the two factions.65 However, the seeds of this split were sown at the very beginning of the northern scene. Dave Godin, on a visit to Blackpool Mecca on New Year’s Eve 1971, made an important observation: I noticed that there is a slight mellowing in the sounds that are making it big up there right now, and a slight move towards a mellow-funk ingredient in some of them, so distinct from the sharp, clean-cut uptown style that has been big in the North for so many years.

Rather than criticise these moves, he felt that this might appease commentators such as Tony Cummings: ‘This is all to the good, and will confound those critics of the Northern scene who will claim that the sounds they dig lack their specific ingredients to be classified as Soul music.’66 Yet it was clear from Godin’s visit to the Mecca in late 1973 that he was unhappy with the venue’s turn of music policy. Colin Curtis had recommended a playlist from the night headed up by a sound that typified Godin’s concerns­– ­‘California Montage’ by Young-Holt Unlimited – a­ jazz-inspired soul instrumental and a popular piece for many Meccagoers.67 This sound, and others on the playlist, was enough in itself to dissuade Godin, though, as ever, he remained at his diplomatic best. He stuck to his mantra that the scene was all about ‘soul brothers and sisters sticking together’.68 Many northern soul ‘traditionalists’ were less diplomatic­– ­‘funky shit’ being a common refrain.69 Playlists became ever more ‘visionary’ and experimental. This of course attracted and repelled fans in equal 121

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measure. Indefatigable Mecca devotees in Black Echoes in 1977 were full of praise for Curtis and Levine for playing ‘sounds that have generally speaking become more imaginative’, but to the critics this was ‘funk’, in many cases pure jazz and, worst of all, the dreaded disco.70 As ‘traditionalists’ recoiled, another related problem emerged for Blackpool Mecca. The debate became not only polarised but highly personalised. Of the two leading Mecca DJs, it was Levine who became the subject of fiercest criticism for taking the departure too far down the disco route. This criticism came from within what would ordinarily be regarded as the Mecca’s own constituency. It was based more on frustration than anger with Levine for what many fans saw as a missed opportunity to take the scene further in a ‘modern soul’ direction, based on new ‘quality’ sounds emerging from the USA, instead of Levine’s increasing appetite for a disco orientation. In this context fans began to differentiate between Curtis and Levine. The former was perceived as more of a ‘soul purist’ than the latter.71 Curtis was thus spared some of the more extreme criticism, being treated to the rather veiled and equivocal comment that he ‘has been hitting a really funky groove lately’.72 Similarly, Curtis’s playlist indiscretions were excused as a result of him having to acquiesce with Levine in order to keep the peace in their frequent arguments.73 In contrast, Levine became the target of a fully fledged assault from several different directions, including a letter and petition from regulars to the management of the venue requesting that he be replaced for what they saw as going beyond the boundaries of acceptable soul music. There was also a dance floor protest with some fans sporting ‘Levine must go’ T-shirts and badges and confronting Levine with a similar petition.74 If this was not enough, he also faced a revolt at a Manchester Ritz all-dayer, where he was DJing at a mixed northern and funk event, and was subjected to scathing verbal attacks from ‘traditionalists’ on the dance floor.75 The finality of it all was expressed by Dave Withers after a visit to Blackpool Mecca in 1977. In a report for New Soul Time he stated that the club had reached the point of no return in extending its playlists to 100 per cent new releases: a ‘choice of music’ which is ‘more liberal with each passing week’, through its ‘interpretation of today’s New York [disco] Scene’; Withers effectively suggested that the Mecca had ceased to be a northern soul venue in any accepted sense.76 There was also a belief at large that Levine’s career had moved on, as he was now an established and well-regarded record producer working 122

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with US-based artists.77 Regardless of these fundamental differences within northern soul, a great body blow was dealt in late 1977 when the Mecca’s Saturday night sessions were terminated, ending a near seven-year run.78 The Mecca continued its soul connection for the remainder of the 1970s into the early 1980s through frequent all-day events, Bank Holiday specials and the occasional soul extravaganza, but its fabled Saturday night soul sessions never returned. The other factional debate on the scene was over ‘oldies’ and ‘newies’, and was strongly linked to the divisions between ‘progressives’ and ‘traditionalists’. The ‘oldies’ scene in northern soul was evident almost from its birth, and it could be argued, with some justification, that in the beginning it was the scene. As Godin commented in 1970: ‘I am convinced myself that the whole oldies scene starts off up North.’79 The differences between ‘oldies’ and ‘newies’ and the ensuing arguments they gave rise to might have seemed to be a storm in a not very large teacup to those unfamiliar with the scene. However, to those who waged campaigns in favour of either style these were basic articles of faith at the heart of what they believed to be authentic and relevant about soul music, and which drove them with an almost messianic zeal. If northern soul was a religion, then ‘oldies’ would be akin to the saintly relics of the faith, carried forth before its disciples and not to be touched or interfered with, and brought out on special occasions such as anniversaries. ‘Newies’ were akin to a revised catechism­– ­acceptable to some members of the faith, but questioned and held at arm’s length by most. There were, of course, agnostics who obtained succour from both styles and sounds. At the height of the debate in 1976, Black Echoes undertook a poll of preferences among northern soul fans, and found 60 per cent expressing a preference for ‘oldies’, 27 per cent for ‘newies’ and 13 per cent for both styles.80 This was not an entirely surprising outcome, given the pre-eminence of Wigan at the time as an ‘oldies’ quasar, and given that the scene was by nature a retrospective one. However, that nearly a third came out in favour of ‘newies’ is more surprising and portended changes within the scene. Had this poll taken place four or five years later the percentages would quite probably have been reversed. With enthusiasts, DJs and fans taking sides it seemed that the schism over the two styles might consume the scene, and, like the other arguments taking place at the time, might ultimately destroy it. Accordingly, wiser heads were constrained to call for unity. Richard 123

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Searling, for example, opined that without a balance between the two the scene would not survive: this scene and all its excellent clubs and followers can only survive if DJs will realise that no one crowd at any club desire either a 100 % new releases or total ‘oldies’ playlists, but the cream of both styles. It’s both selfish and small-minded to limit oneself and one’s records to one rigid style, and positively criminal to attempt to erect barriers to try and divide the scene.81

Interestingly, two aspects of Searling’s intervention concerned ‘balance’ and ‘quality’. It was not so much an argument over ‘oldies’ and ‘newies’, as most fans enjoyed both; it was a dispute over the dominance of one style over the other and the quality of offerings from both sides. Clearly, Wigan with its ‘oldies’ dominance was criticised for its bias, though it is less well known that this criticism was based not only on the quantity of ‘oldies’, but on their quality. For example, in an assessment of the 1977–79 period at the Casino by DJ Pat Brady, published in the fanzine Talk of the North, he commented that he was ‘sick of the rubbish they churn out every week … the last two years have seen the place go down the drain’. He compared Wigan’s output unfavourably with the quality of ‘oldies’ on offer at Leeds Central Soul Club.82 This could easily be taken as just one of the routine differences that arose between DJs, but Brady further pointed to the practice at many ‘oldies’ events of playing a sound repeatedly in an almost ritualistic manner, which not only broke a rudimentary DJing rule, but also linked to Searling’s point regarding ‘balance’.83 Again, it would perhaps come as a surprise to those unacquainted with northern soul who associate it with a particular up-tempo sound­ – ­a sound which many of its followers worship with a fanatical zeal­ – ­that, as Haslam later indicated, ‘the label then and now, hides a multitude of sounds and styles, and tensions between purists and populists’.84 Elson supports this claim by stating that ‘Northern Soul is the most Catholic form of music there is’.85 Contrary to what might be thought of as a ‘typical’ northern soul sound, there is no orthodoxy. True enough, there are sounds that have come to typify how people might think of a northern soul record, and there are those who have championed this style, but there are many facets and multiple influences that have shaped its enduring soundscapes. Some commentators have paid attention to the Blackpool–Wigan 124

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conflict because it is believed that the rivalry proved fatal for northern soul. Thus, Brewster and Boughton offer a powerful account: these two clubs would preside over the death of the scene … as they fought over the soul of soul, enduring the scene’s bitter identity crisis, disputing the direction to be taken when the world’s supply of great lost tunes was finally exhausted … Curtis and Levine were considered heretics and pariahs for what they were doing. However, they took northern soul out of its fossilised past and into the future.86

Certainly, these conflicts were palpable and every bit as vicious in the ‘high politics’ of the scene as these commentators suggest. Yet from a fans’ perspective they meant much less, as Gethro Jones notes: ‘We as dancers hadn’t got time for them … There was no us and them on the scene! To us Northern was Northern.’87 The factionalism of the scene passed most people by. During the mid-1970s, 40 per cent of records played at Wigan had been played at Blackpool Mecca and most dancers enjoyed sounds from both, oblivious to the crisis seemingly engulfing the scene.88 At the same time attempts were being made to forge a more consensual music policy, initially at Cleethorpes and then at other venues at the end of the decade. The end of the pier show: Cleethorpes Cleethorpes emerged at a time when the argument between Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino and the scene’s ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’ was at its height. It is generally acknowledged that northern soul had four major iconic venues­– ­the Twisted Wheel, Blackpool Mecca, the Torch and Wigan Casino. However, strong claims have been made for a fifth major site at Cleethorpes on the north Lincolnshire coast. The club was the brainchild of ‘[h]usband and wife team Colin and Mary Chapman from Scunthorpe’.89 Cleethorpes consisted of two venues: the Pier and the Winter Gardens. Mary Chapman was the promoter and was already organising soul events at Cleethorpes Winter Gardens, including all-dayers billed as ‘The Talk of the North’ through Lincolnshire Soul Club.90 There was a desire among fans, however, for an all-nighter as well. The management of the Winter Gardens originally refused and so it was the Pier, which was operated by the local council, that finally agreed to hold them. Later the Winter Gardens was run in tandem as the numbers attending the Pier increased markedly.91 Cleethorpes 125

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ran as an all-nighter for thirteen months between February 1975 and May 1976.92 The Pier attained iconic status. According to DJ Ian Dewhirst, it was ‘the greatest venue as far as mystique goes’:93 I used to get to the Pier about four in the morning and by that point all you’d hear was stomp, stomp, stomp from about a mile and a half away. It would be the dancing. It was surreal. There’s this Place, jutting out into the sea … All you can hear is STOMP! Multiplied times a thousand.94

Both attendances and membership quickly grew. By the time of the first anniversary, the Winter Gardens’ all-dayer in October 1975, membership had jumped from 200 to 6,000.95 However, Brown has suggested that the venues were destined to be ephemeral and problematic: ‘After arriving with a huge fanfare in ’75 Cleethorpes all-nighters were remarkably quiet and clearly lost friends in high places at Blues and Soul with scarcely a mention from either Godin or Elson.’96 Ongoing issues over the management and operation of both venues did not help ensure a longer existence as an all-nighter location.97 Following its demise, Cleethorpes was resurrected as a midweek soul destination in the Winter Gardens, and in the late 1970s as an all-dayer venue with a mixed northern soul and funk format.98 These developments were made in the hope that Cleethorpes might recapture its glory days as one of northern soul’s iconic venues, though it never repeated the halcyon days of 1975–76 when it competed as a leading northern soul all-nighter venue. In 1979 the sessions came to an end ahead of what would have been its fifth anniversary over issues with the local authority.99 A debate has ensued about the significance of Cleethorpes in northern soul’s history. One view, typified by Elson, is that Cleethorpes was relatively unimportant.100 This is supported by Levine, who has argued that it was only pushed to the forefront ‘because of the attention that Dave Godin gave to it’, Godin having become increasingly concerned about the Blackpool–Wigan conflict. There is a great deal to support this claim, as Cleethorpes emerged as a product of the northern soul boom at a time when the Casino–Mecca conflict was at its height, and it was thought that the promotion of a third venue might either assuage the differences, or offer a way ahead with ‘a sound that was essentially an amalgam of the Casino and Mecca’.101 However, there are those who have argued that, rather than 126

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Cleethorpes being measured in terms of its role as a short-lived arbitrator in the Casino–Mecca split, it was in fact a club worthy of consideration in its own right. The very fact that it was different has allowed claims to emerge that it was important because its music policy permitted more diversity. However, it was not only this freedom that gave Cleethorpes an edge. According to DJ Ian Dewhirst, while it ‘offered an alternative’ to the entrenchment of Wigan and Blackpool, its success was as much derived from the way the venue was managed and organised. As Malc Burton, soul record collector, dealer and DJ, notes, this, together with the music policy, established Cleethorpes as a pioneer for the future: ‘The … vision, enthusiasm and “pioneer spirit” Mary had for Cleethorpes, was developed via the assembled DJs, encouraging them to “get on with it”, and giving them belief in what they were doing … helped pave the way for a broader musical outlook, acceptance and understanding on the scene.’102 Soul Sam concurred that the way Cleethorpes was managed was central to its success: ‘The atmosphere was so relaxed and friendly, there were no arguments amongst the DJs like there were at Wigan. Because of this there was no hierarchy in the DJ staff, we all worked as a team.’103 This argument was certainly borne out in terms of fan popularity. A poll undertaken by Black Echoes in August 1976 rated Cleethorpes as third behind Wigan and Blackpool in the top five current favourites among northern fans.104 Similarly, many attest to Cleethorpes as a ‘special venue’ with distinct qualities that marked it out from other clubs. As one aficionado writes: Enjoyed Wigan late ’73 and ’74 but when Cleggy opened in ’75 it was a whole different game for me. It was easier to get to, the music policy was better by taking the best of Wigan and Mecca type sounds of the day being spun by a stable of local guys plus guests … what made Cleggy for me was the friendliness of it, it really was like Mary & Colin’s family. I … felt like I belonged somewhere.105

The importance of Cleethorpes was in providing a template for how northern soul could or should have gone forward, free of faction, doctrinaire music policy or domination by fiefdoms of leading DJs. It provided northern soul’s link between the heady days of the early 1970s and the challenges brought by the end of the decade, when the scene had to adapt in the face of changing tastes and preferences and attempted to fashion a different direction. 127

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Trying to bring it all together: the uneasy alliance One of the key features of northern soul during the second half of the 1970s was the relationship between different elements of the scene­ – ­between ‘oldies’ and ‘newies’­– ­and its relationship with other competing genres of black dance music, mainly disco funk and jazz funk, with attempts to suit all tastes and factions by bringing these together at one single venue or event. Holding these ‘mixed’ events was a tacit acceptance that northern soul as a single entity was in decline. Two venues that came to epitomise this trend from the mid-1970s were the Manchester Ritz and Birmingham Locarno, under the auspices of Neil Rushton’s Heart of England Soul Club. A related feature of these developments was the increasing importance of all-dayers in contrast to all-nighters. The all-dayers were nothing new and had been a feature of the scene from the beginning, but they increased in number and became more the norm by the end of the decade. Neither was the mixed-format concept new. It had been a feature at many venues including Whitchurch during the early 1970s, and in some of the clubs of the midlands and south of England such as Shades of Green in Northampton, which, conscious of competing tastes in its locale, offered both ‘northern’ and ‘funk’ as early as 1972.106 The mixed-format events have been described by one fan as ‘bizarre’.107 At Manchester Ritz, for example, with a DJ roster of up to twelve, Levine would do a Mecca-inspired set, playing cutting edge disco and jazz funk sounds from Idris Muhammad, T-Connection and New York Port Authority, followed by Dave Evison with a blast of Wigan Casino ‘oldies’, who then handed over to Colin Curtis for a funk set, all with different crowds of dancers taking to the floor. Having these different styles under one roof led to a ‘collision’ of fashions as the dance floor emptied of northern fans to be replaced by the disco-funkers. In 1977 New Soul Time described the scene: ‘40” bottoms, flat leather shoes and bowling shirts were replaced by Woolworths sandals, drain-pipe pants and lumberjack shirts’.108 By 1976, a year after its all-dayers began, Manchester Ritz was an overwhelming success, pushing Wigan Casino on attendances, and regularly drawing 500 more fans to its all-dayers than Wigan’s regular Saturday all-nighters. This gave increasing weight to those who argued that it was necessary to give fans the opportunity to experience a diversity of sounds, with Wigan criticised for going too far down the ‘oldies’ route.109 In 1977 the popularity of the monthly 128

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all-dayers at Manchester Ritz saw the format move to a regular fortnightly session.110 Rushton promised punters ‘our greatest show yet’­ – ­an all-dayer event with two live acts from the USA and a line-up of leading DJs across the spectrum of northern and jazz funk sounds. At Birmingham Locarno, which had begun monthly all-dayers a year previously, he proclaimed that ‘unlike many venues we are NOT just playing stompers and oldies­– ­instead we’re spinning the best cross­ ldies and newies’; a clear signal that this was an section of sounds­– o attempt to assuage factionalist tendencies.111 By the time of the Ritz’s third anniversary Richard Searling told Black Echoes that the club had achieved the right balance: ‘the blend between rare “Northern” oldies and Funk … the dance floor being packed solid for most of the day to all styles of music’.112 Other clubs achieved a similar balance. An examination of the experience of several venues in Yorkshire and the east midlands illustrates both the challenges and opportunities that the mixed format brought. During late 1976 and 1977 the West Riding Soul Club held northern soul all-dayers and nighters at Wakefield’s Unity club.113 The club took an avowedly ecumenical position on music policy, with ‘oldies’, ‘newies’ and later jazz funk and disco. In July 1977 an ‘oldies’ all-nighter covered in the fanzine Soul Cargo was remarkable because it included the addition of New York disco­– ­described as New York disco ‘Unity Style’­– u ­ nderlining the non-partisan nature of the venue, with a line-up of funk and disco DJs.114 It was a similar yet more cautionary tale at Tiffany’s in Halifax, where top DJs from Wigan occupied the roster. Pat Brady, a recognised ‘oldies’ DJ, was aware of the pitfalls of one form of music dominating venues and that catering for mixed tastes was the only way to ensure survival. As Brady noted: The club has had its ups and downs. The conflict between the extreme New York Disco and Soul factions grew, and although the attendances were stable at between 200–250 people the management decided that a policy of Northern Soul only was a way of increasing attendances and reducing friction. This idea proved to be disastrous as during the trial period of a month in which a ‘stompers only’ ruling applied, figures [attendance] slumped dramatically, thus proving that the vast majority of music lovers prefer to hear a mixture of soul music.115

Within four weeks of the trial the venue was back to a balanced 50/50 format between styles and was slowly rebuilding attendances.116 129

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Two further venues that typified the quest for a successful b ­ alanced format were Nottingham Palais and Leeds Central Soul Club. Nottingham Palais ran soul sessions from late 1975 until 1983, and was like Wigan Casino in the sense that it was a traditional ballroom with a main dance floor and two smaller dance floors on different levels. Nottingham saw itself as a serious rival to more established clubs and hoped to compete as a leading all-dayer venue with a roster of top northern DJs.117 Although initially established with a purely ‘oldies’ format, it quickly became a mixed venue with a highly successful disco and funk following and a varied mix of DJs. By 1978 the Palais was being discussed as being on a par with Wigan, attracting attendances in the region of 1,400 to its Sunday all-dayers, which certainly made it one of the more popular clubs of the late 1970s and proved that the balanced mixed format could be a success.118 It was a similar scenario at Leeds Central Soul Club, another venue which vied to become a major player on the scene based on a mixed format attracting large numbers of fans from across the north of England.119 The fact that two of northern’s leading Yorkshire-based DJs, Pat Brady with his ‘oldies’ pedigree and Ian Dewhirst with his progressive leaning, were major influences at the club helped the mixed format to succeed, although unlike many mixed-format venues, northern soul­ – ­both ‘oldies’ and ‘newies’­– ­and funk were offered on two different nights of the weekend.120 Despite indications that the mixed format could and did work, there were contrary trends which suggested that northern soul was being eclipsed by other styles during the late 1970s. One indication was the arrival of the ‘big bash’ or ‘monster’ dayer and weekend soul festivals. Neil Rushton, through the Heart of England Soul Club, was an important promoter of such events. They were informed by developments in jazz funk in the south of England. These were big in every sense of the word, involving huge numbers of fans, a roster of DJs in double figures and large halls. They were held at a variety of locations including Belle Vue, Manchester; Blackpool Mecca; Queen Mary’s Hall at Dudley Zoo; and Trentham Gardens Ballroom.121 In 1979 the Heart of England Soul Club held two-dayers at Blackpool Mecca on Easter Bank Holiday and May Day. The first of the events attracted an estimated 2,700 fans, followed by another big turnout on May Day. They were aimed mainly at attracting jazz funk and modern soul enthusiasts to the main room, with a line-up of DJs to reflect the jazz funk bias. Northern soul was confined to the Highland Room, 130

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with five DJs clearly intended as ‘second fiddle’, despite a strapline that proclaimed that it was the all-dayer that ‘revives the northern in soul’.122 Mixed-format events in an environment where northern soul­– ­particularly ‘oldies’­– ­was regarded as having been superseded by jazz funk and modern soul could be problematic, as they ran the risk of encouraging some fans to make comparisons, especially where the quality of the ‘oldies’ on offer was seen to be inferior. For example, in 1978 the huge Blackpool Soul Festival, attended by an estimated crowd over nearly 3,000, with the strapline ‘The Funk goes on’, offered disco funk and jazz funk in the main room and northern soul with a mainly ‘oldies’ format in the Highland Room.123 This led one disgruntled fan to comment in Black Echoes: I found the Highland Room despite all the top named DJs efforts only a shadow of Northern Soul’s former glory, whilst downstairs in the Main Hall it was electrifying from the word go … when musically aware punters are subjected to nothing more than bland mid-Sixties Pop dirge, is there any wonder at their willingness to create a new Soul scene?124

The expansion in mixed-format events and venues was, for some, having a negative impact on the scene. Writing in the Soul Source fanzine, Soul Sam was critical: ‘too many venues … competing for a market that isn’t really expanding, so many not surprisingly lacked atmosphere … it … has proved difficult to get dance reaction, except to the most well-established sounds’.125 This situation accelerated in terms of the number of competing northern, funk and mixed alldayers, to the extent that on some Bank Holiday weekends there were so many events that it was described as ‘suicidal rivalry between promoters who should have been co-operating to ensure the scene survived’.126 Similarly, the myriad of different soul styles at the same venue suggested a lack of focus and direction. Okeh Northern Soul fanzine felt that ‘mixing 60’s oldies with newies, from whatever era, is creating confusion amongst followers’.127 Contrarily, the relative success of the mixed-format events proved that most fans were quite eclectic in taste.128 In 1976 both Richard Searling and Dave Evison declared that northern soul ‘was not dead’ as some had claimed, but acknowledged that fragmentation had now brought forth three categories: the ‘old Northern’, the ‘new Northern’ and ‘New York disco’.129 By 1980 this fragmentation was even more pronounced. Elson described the 131

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scene has having four recognisable sectors: ‘[o]ldies 60s and early 70s dancers, but not necessarily stompers’; ‘seventies and late sixties dancing soul-midtempo sounds’; ‘a mixture of 60s “oldies” and mid70s stompers with no direction of any sort’; and finally ‘70s obscure Disco stuff that is danceable but bears no relationship to soul music itself’.130 While it is possible to argue over the precise nature of these categorisations, the essential point was that even by the mid-1970s and to a significant degree by the end of the decade, there was effectively no single discernible northern soul scene. The decline of northern soul was a protracted affair complicated by long-term fragmentation. Despite the setbacks, Wigan kingpin Russ Winstanley remained upbeat about the state of the scene in the autumn of 1977: ‘When the Casino first opened there were only around half a dozen regular clubs but now there are about half a dozen regular nights plus dozens of dayers and up to a hundred local clubs. So seriously, the scene’s in the healthiest state it’s ever been in.’131 However, there were enough indications during the late 1970s, with the ending of sessions at the Highland Room at Blackpool Mecca in 1977 and at the Carlton club in Warrington, to set alarm bells ringing. There were other indicators too. The termination of Sunday all-dayers at Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme in 1978 due to falling attendances­– ­the club described by Winstanley ‘as the most famous and successful scene around Stoke’­– ­was one thing, but coupled with the news of a ‘lack of interest in the Potteries’ in northern soul in general it was the nearest thing the scene could have had to a death knell.132 Furthermore, 100 per cent northern events were a decreasing feature throughout the late 1970s and a rarity by the end of the decade. The Brit club in Nottingham announced that it was Nottingham’s only 100 per cent northern night in 1977.133 The mixed venues and events were gradually taken over by jazz funk and modern soul throughout the late 1970s. By the 1980s, following the demise of Wigan, these styles had taken over completely. Greg Wilson later reflected on what he witnessed on the dance floor following Wigan’s closure: After the Casino, the already dwindling Northern Soul crowd dwindled some more. I remember a couple of Jazz-Funk All-Dayers I played during the early 80’s where the 2nd room hosted Northern Soul. There was hardly anyone there, just a couple of dozen friends of the DJ’s. It was all pretty bleak to see how far the mighty had fallen. These 132

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Soul explosion, fragmentation and decline Northern rooms soon vanished, with Jazz Rooms taking over, so that by 1983 you could have been forgiven for thinking that Northern Soul had completely vanished off the face of the earth.134

Factors beyond the control of the scene were also having an impact. There was from the late 1970s a changing economic and social context. Relatively benign post-war economic conditions were deteriorating in many of the areas in which northern soul fans lived and worked. During the early to mid-1970s it was not unusual for fans to attend soul events most nights of the week.135 Maintaining a ‘soul lifestyle’, with the rising cost of club membership and travel, the expenditure on acquiring a rare record collection and moving with fashion trends, gave way to the need for economic survival.136 The recession of the early 1980s was offered as a contributory factor in the decision not to continue with northern soul sessions after Wigan’s closure.137 By the late 1970s and early 1980s economic decline was becoming critical, as areas of Britain that had been northern soul strongholds were in the grip of a serious economic depression. Fans who had been in full employment for most of their working lives were now looking at long periods of unemployment or a different, less secure work regime. The election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 with a specific political agenda hastened such trends. Northern soul’s demise was not directly tied to economic and political change­– ­its decline had set in long before Thatcher famously appeared outside Number 10 for the first time­– ­but the regions and communities most affected by these developments were also hotbeds of the scene. Linked to this was generational change, with an increasingly aspirational youth who flocked to modern soul and funk venues­– a­ t least those who were in work or able to afford it. An older section of the northern soul community had ‘outgrown the music as family commitments took priority’.138 Right across northern soul’s heartlands the paraphernalia of life as a ‘soulie’ was being boxed up, placed in attics and clearly labelled ‘yesterday’. The history of northern soul in the 1970s was one of initial boom during the period 1973–76 followed by fragmentation and steady decline. In many respects this trajectory closely paralleled the rise and fall of Wigan Casino. It had to compete with other forms of black music while simultaneously undergoing several introspective and challenging debates from within. Yet despite the seemingly fractious 133

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differences that exercised northern soul for the best part of a decade, the scene did not experience a formal split. Northern soul’s preoccupation with retrospective sounds and its inertia in moving towards newer and more contemporary sounds made it seem outdated. However, despite the considerable factional differences, it maintained a fragile unity. As one fan attested in 1976, there was something inherent within northern soul that brought its fans together rather than driving them apart: As long as people want to dance there will be a Northern scene; the style of music may change, as we are witnessing at the moment, but the scene will nevertheless survive as it has done in the past, because people always want to hear sounds that are exclusive to the North.139

‘The North’ in this context referred to something that was intangible rather than actual, though all who subscribed to the notion instantly recognised it; less a place than an imagined set of circumstances, a set of feelings, and of course, in this context, sounds. Contrarily, this also extended to include sounds that were not traditionally perceived to be ‘typically’ northern and included strong elements of an emerging modern soul movement and disco funk. As northern soul entered a new decade it was hardly recognisable in terms of the form it had taken between 1970 and 1976. Its great centres had gone or were soon to go; many of its top DJs had moved out or moved on; its fanbase had crumbled as a majority had left the scene or moved to others. It was much diminished and indeed much changed. However, northern soul did not die at the close of the 1970s. Rather, it went underground again at the dawn of the 1980s, and it did so largely in a united rather than divided fashion.

Notes 1 Jackie Wilson’s ‘Soul Galore’ (1966) was featured in the film Soul Boy (2010). 2 Blues and Soul, 2–15 March 1973. 3 Blues and Soul, 25 May–7 June, 8–21 June 1973. 4 Blues and Soul, 20 July–2 August 1973. 5 West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 2 June 1973. 6 Black Music, January 1974. 7 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 8 Blues and Soul, 8–21 June 1973. 134

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Soul explosion, fragmentation and decline 9 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 10 Blues and Soul, 21 December 1973–14 January 1974. 11 Blues and Soul, 20 July–2 August 1973. 12 Black Music, November 1974. 13 Black Music, November 1974. 14 D. Manvell and J. Firminger, Memories of Sheffield’s King Mojo Club (Sheffield: ALD Design and Print, 2003). 15 Black Echoes, 6 November 1976. 16 Hinkley Soul Club, Samantha’s, http://raresoul.org.uk/hinkleysoul​ club/samanthas.htm (accessed 20 August 2014). 17 Blues and Soul, 30 August–13 September 1973. 18 Black Echoes, 6 November 1976. 19 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 49; Blues and Soul, 12–25 February 1974. 20 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 21 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 49. 22 Blues and Soul, 30 July–12 August 1974. 23 Hewitt, The Soul Stylists, p. 141. 24 Blues and Soul, 30 August–13 September 1973. 25 Blues and Soul, 21 May–3 June 1974. 26 Blues and Soul, 30 July–12 August 1974. 27 Blues and Soul, 26 February–11 March, 2–12 March, 26 March–8 April, 23 April–6 May, 7–20 May 1974. 28 The Steve Karmen Big Band’s ‘Breakaway’ (1968) was a popular instrumental played at Wigan. 29 Blues and Soul, 19 January–1 February 1973. 30 Hot Buttered Soul, September 1973. 31 Deeper and Deeper, No. 8 (n.d. [1978?]). 32 Ward, Just My Soul Responding, p. 427. 33 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 34 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 35 Deeper and Deeper, July 1977; Black Echoes, 2 October 1976. 36 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 37 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 38 P. Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), p. 37. 39 L. Bradley, Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2013), p. 259. 40 J. F. Lyons, America in the British Imagination: 1945 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 73–4. 41 Talk of the North, No. 2 (n.d. [1978?]). 42 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 43 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 135

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Keeping the faith 44 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 45 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 46 Blues and Soul, 28 August–10 September 1979. 47 Black Echoes, 10 June, 15 July 1978. 48 Black Echoes, 26 August 1978. 49 B. Brewster and F. Boughton, ‘Ian Dewhirst: A Northern Soul’, in Brewster and Boughton, The Record Players, pp. 100–11; Six Million Steps, ‘Ian Dewhirst’, 10 November 2006, http://www.sixmillionsteps. com/drupal/node/78 (accessed 1 June 2019). 50 Black Echoes, 22 April 1978; Shades of Soul, No. 29, 2000. 51 M. Cotgrove, From Jazz Funk to Acid Jazz: The History of the UK Jazz Dance Scene (London: Author House, 2009), pp. 90–1. 52 Blues and Soul, 20 May–2 June 1980; Black Echoes, 30 June 1979. 53 Greg Wilson, ‘Northern Renaissance’, 21 November 2013, https://blog. gregwilson.co.uk/2013/11/northern-renaissance/ (accessed 21 March 2016). 54 Rushton, Northern Soul Stories, p. 93; Cotgrove, From Jazz Funk to Acid Jazz, pp. 94–5. 55 Liverpool Echo, 22 September 2016. 56 Record Mirror, 20 November 1971. 57 Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (dir. Joe Boy, Odeon Entertainment, 2012), DVD. 58 Blues and Soul, 24 September–7 October 1971. 59 Cummings, ‘The Northern Discos’, pp. 23–37. 60 Street Life, 15 November 1975. 61 G. Wilson, ‘Les Spaine, Extract from Interview’, January 2004, updated January 2011, electrofunkroots, http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/ interviews/les_​spaine.html (accessed 28 June 2018). 62 Modern soul has a number of definitions and overlaps with northern soul, but its chief distinguishing features from northern soul are that it has ‘more influences from funk and disco’, is more technologically advanced in production than many northern sounds and is mainly associated with soul recordings released from the 1970s onwards; Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, pp. 89–93; Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 272. 63 New Musical Express, 7 June 1975. 64 Black Echoes, 1 January 1977. 65 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, pp. 89–93. 66 Blues and Soul, 4–18 February 1972. 67 Black Music, January 1974 (aka Young-Holt Trio). ‘California Montage’ was a record often played at the end of Saturday night sessions at Blackpool Mecca.. 68 Blues and Soul, 24 September–7 October 1971. 136

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Soul explosion, fragmentation and decline 69 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 70 Black Echoes, 3 September 1977. 71 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 72 New Soul Time, No. 2 (n.d. [1977?]). 73 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 74 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016; handwritten letter and petition, signed D. Reardon, in the possession of the authors (n.d. [1977?]). 75 Cotgrove, From Jazz Funk to Acid Jazz, p. 133. 76 New Soul Time, No. 2 (n.d. [1977?]). 77 Black Echoes, 4 June 1977. 78 Black Echoes, 26 November 1977. 79 Blues and Soul, 8–21 May 1970. 80 New Musical Express, 7 June 1975. 81 Black Echoes, 16 October 1976. 82 Black Echoes, 5 May 1979. 83 Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 84 Dave Haslam, Adventures on the Wheels of Steel: The Rise of the Superstar DJs (London: Fourth Estate, 2001), p. 107. 85 Interview with Frank Elson, 21 August 2015. The northern soul repertoire also included what were described as ‘slowies’; lower tempo recordings used to slow the pace or give dancers a break during allnighters. 86 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, p. 97. 87 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 279. 88 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 27 (n.d. [February 1974?]). 89 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, pp. 97–8. 90 Blues and Soul, 21 October 1974. 91 Cleethorpes All Nighter: Tribute Trailer, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=G3DUxlX34x4 26 April 2009 (accessed 26 April 2019). 92 The Cleethorpes Story (Goldmine Soul Supply, 1997), audio CD, sleeve notes. 93 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, p. 98. 94 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, p. 98. 95 Blues and Soul, 14–27 October 1975. 96 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 116. 97 Black Echoes, 10 July 1976. 98 Black Echoes, 13 January, 7 and 21 October 1978; Hot Buttered Soul, No. 49, December 1976–January 1977. 99 Black Echoes, 24 March, 27 October 1979. 100 Interview with Frank Elson, 21 August 2015. 101 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, pp. 97, 98. 102 Edited comment, Malc Burton, posted 26 June 2011, ‘Mary Chapman The Queen of Northern Soul’, Soul Source, https://www.soul-source. 137

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Keeping the faith co.uk/forums/topic/204796-mary-chapman-the-queen-of-northernsoul/ (accessed 4 May 2016). 103 Shaw, Casino, p. 64. 104 Black Echoes, 28 August 1976. 105 Comment, Dave Turner, posted 26 June 2011, ‘Mary Chapman The Queen of Northern Soul’, Soul Source, https://www.soul-source.co.uk/ forums/topic/204796-mary-chapman-the-queen-of-northern-soul/ (accessed 4 May 2016). 106 Blues and Soul, 26 April–11 May 1972. 107 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 108 New Soul Time, No. 2 (n.d. [1977?]). 109 Black Echoes, 20 November 1976. 110 Black Echoes, 5 March 1977. 111 Black Echoes, 19 February 1977. 112 Black Echoes, 23 September 1978. 113 Black Echoes, 12 February, 4 June, 9 and 16 July 1977. 114 Soul Cargo, November 1977; Black Echoes, 5 November 1977. 115 Black Echoes, 8 July 1978. 116 Black Echoes, 8 July 1978. 117 Flyer, West Midlands Soul Club, all-dayer, Nottingham Palais, Sunday 29 February 1976; Hot Buttered Soul, No. 43 (n.d. [December 1975– January 1976?]), No. 44, February/March 1976; Black Echoes, 24 June 1976. 118 Black Echoes, 5 March, 5 November, 17 December 1977; 4 March, 6 April, 15 July 1978. 119 Black Echoes, 14 January, 25 February, 18 November 1978; 1 September 1979: Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 120 Black Echoes, 10 June 1978; Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 121 Black Echoes, 12 February, 28 May 1977; 22 April, 20 May, 10 June, 24 June 1978; Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 122 Black Echoes, 28 April 1979. 123 Black Echoes, 17 June 1978. 124 Black Echoes, 26 August 1978. 125 Soul Source, No. 3 (n.d. [1979?]). 126 Okeh Northern Soul, No. 6 (n.d. [January/February 1982?]). 127 Okeh Northern Soul, No. 6 (n.d. [January/February 1982?]). 128 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 129 Black Echoes, 27 November 1976. 130 Blues and Soul, 20 May–2 June 1980. 131 Black Echoes, 19 November 1977. 132 Soul Cargo, No. 12, 1 August 1979; Black Echoes, 4 February 1978. 133 Black Echoes, 14 May 1977. 134 Greg Wilson, ‘Northern Renaissance’, 21 November 2013, https://blog. 138

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135 136 137 138 139

gregwilson.co.uk/2013/11/northern-renaissance/ (accessed 21 March 2016). Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. Okeh Northern Soul, No. 6 (n.d. [January/February 1982?]). Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 201. Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000; interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. Black Echoes, 28 August 1976.

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5

The chosen few: the experience and practice of northern soul

Northern soul is one of the more distinctive and long-standing music scenes. This claim largely rests on the roles played by two principal actors­– ­its DJs and its fans. How these parties experienced the scene and performed within it are crucial to understanding how northern soul developed and thrived during the 1970s. Northern soul was based on incredibly strong bonds of loyalty to the music, and these permeated relationships within the scene, often to the exclusion of those outside. Northern soul has also been linked to several features that have a darker side, principally its dealings in bootleg recordings, which have frequently cast it in a poor light. Moreover, the scene will always be associated with illegal drug use, particularly amphetamines. These links and associations were clearly manifest, yet they should not detract from the more positive aspects of the scene in giving young people a source of identity and introducing them to a broader understanding of the history and development of black music. Northern soul played a crucial role in resurrecting the importance of long-forgotten artists and extending the careers of others. Soul stars such as Edwin Starr, Tommy Hunt, Major Lance and many more remain icons of the scene. Last night a DJ made my life1 One of the main characters on the northern soul scene was the DJ.2 The ways in which DJs interacted with each other and their fans reveal some specific peculiarities. Brewster and Boughton and Shapiro have charted the growing importance of the DJ in modern society, occupying a central place as a curator of records and arbiter of music tastes. While the DJ certainly held this role in the development of northern soul, the relationship with consumers was more nuanced. Northern 140

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DJs had to win the respect of the fans through the sounds they played or discovered. At the same time, fans were subject to the DJ in that the DJ introduced and championed the sounds that fans listened to, and determined trends. DJs were also in a strong position to control the supply and demand of rare recordings and their value. However, this had to meet the approval of fans. As Richard Searling acknowledged: ‘there was no hiding place at the Casino … If you lost the floor you had to get it back very quickly.’3 Essentially, the relationship between DJ and fan was symbiotic. As Dave Shaw observes: ‘It was customary for the dancers to applaud each record as it ended, to show not only appreciation for the individual records, but also thanks to the DJ for playing it.’4 DJs sometimes worked from a single venue, although most operated in several clubs over a weekend, taking up a roster spot of about an hour at a typical all-nighter, along with midweek sessions. The main division in terms of music policy was between those who specialised in ‘oldies’, those known for breaking in new discoveries, and others, from the mid-1970s, who were more funk, disco and modern soul orientated. The DJs had several features in common. They were almost exclusively male and broadly of the same age group. Russ Winstanley was 21 when Wigan Casino opened. Sheffield DJ John Vincent started at 15, before he went on to Samantha’s, being described as a ‘veteran of the scene’ in 1974. Kev Roberts was a teenager when he joined the DJ roster at Wigan in 1973.5 Brian Rae and Soul Sam were exceptional, being in their mid-30s during the 1970s and thus considered elder statesmen. With youth came a degree of naivety, and much of the political wrangling on the scene during the 1970s was in part a product of the ‘youthful exuberance’ of those involved. For example, Ian Levine, only 20 in 1973, has acknowledged more recently that he went too far in pursuing his ‘progressive’ agenda across the scene.6 The DJs fell into four broadly chronological cohorts. The first were DJing during the 1960s period and comprised the senior ‘guard’ at the Twisted Wheel, Torch and Catacombs. These included Brian Rae, described as ‘probably the first of the pure soul deejays’. Rae, from Warrington, was an original Twisted Wheel DJ and had been at college in London during the early 1960s, where he was part of the mod scene.7 The second cohort, who emerged as rare soul took off and northern soul boomed during the early 1970s, included most of the Wigan and Blackpool contingent. A third group came to prominence 141

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during the second half of the 1970s, particularly at newer venues such as Cleethorpes and St Ives. These included Poke (aka Blair Heyden) and Arthur Fenn. Typical of this third cohort, and someone who became strongly associated with Cleethorpes, was Ginger Taylor (aka John Raymond Taylor), who had been a DJ around his home town of Todmorden and nearby Burnley in partnership with Eddie (aka Eddie Antemes).8 Another popular rising star was Nev Wherry, who was voted East Anglian Soul Club’s No. 1 DJ at its St Ives, Peterborough and Bedford venues, and would undoubtedly have featured more prominently in the pantheon of northern soul DJs had it not been for his untimely accidental death in 1980.9 Others emerged from another soul outpost at Yate, near Bristol, including the highly regarded and influential DJ Ian Clark. The final cohort were those DJs who had been around during the 1970s, but who only came to major prominence after northern soul’s golden age had ended during the 1980s. These included figures such as Guy Hennigan, Keb Darge and Dave Withers at the Top of the World club in Stafford. Few of the northern DJs came from or were based in the big cities of the north and midlands. Most were drawn from the smaller towns and villages and rural areas in these regions. Soul Sam was based in Overton-on-Dee, near Wrexham. Colin Curtis (aka Colin Dimond) hailed from rural Staffordshire, and Kev Roberts was brought up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but was born in the Derbyshire Dales village of Wirksworth, associated more with lead mining, quarrying and oat cultivation than the mean streets of urban America with which Roberts would later become familiar on record-buying missions.10 Two DJs from either end of northern soul’s golden period­– ­Les Cockell at the Twisted Wheel and Blackpool Mecca and Guy Hennigan at the Top of the World­– ­were respectively from Settle and Skipton in North Yorkshire, while Pat Brady was from Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Ian Dewhirst was born in Brighton, but moved to the north of England aged five, and was based in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. It was a similar case with DJs who came to prominence during the late 1970s such as Arthur Fenn, who came from Selby. Wigan’s two leading DJs, Russ Winstanley and Richard Searling, were scions of mill and pit Lancashire. Winstanley was a ‘Wigan lad’, born and raised in the town; he went to the local grammar school and had worked in dyeing and car parts distribution. His father was an overlooker in a cotton mill and his mother worked in a jeweller’s 142

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shop.11 Searling came from the Tonge Fold area of Bolton and was originally destined for a career in teaching and later worked briefly as a civil servant.12 The places that northern DJs came from were hardly teeming metropolises; like much of the scene they were at the geographical and cultural margins of the north of England and midlands. Some DJs came from wealthier business backgrounds­– ­Dave Evison in Stoke and Ian Levine in Blackpool were two notable examples, but both largely grew up in the social milieu of these areas, and the influences on their lives were little different from those of most northern DJs whose backgrounds were essentially working class.13 As the northern soul scene developed, many of its top DJs gained a reputation in terms of either the quality of the oldies they played or their ability to discover and break in new records. The moniker ‘legendary’ soon followed. Searling acquired this reputation, with many fans elevating him to god-like status. One observer from the late 1970s concluded that ‘Richard still rules the Casino’; another stated that Searling was ‘a genius’.14 More recent characterisations have continued in this vein: ‘Up North, Richard Searling is viewed by many as nothing less than a soul music god.’15 When Wigan Casino was in serious decline, many fans believed that it was Searling who, between 1977 and 1979, had effectively ‘held the all-nighter together’.16 One skill that enabled Searling to navigate the choppy political waters of northern soul during the 1970s was his ability to operate and gain respect in both the ‘traditionalist’ and ‘progressive’ wings of the scene.17 The DJs had individual styles and approaches. Soul Sam, an indefatigable presence on the scene, was widely acknowledged as one of its more durable and colourful characters, being described in action by New Soul Time in 1977 as ‘lurching about like a depraved honey monster behind the decks’.18 The quirky individualism of the DJs was part of the attraction for fans. The rather eccentric pairing of Levine and Curtis was one example. Dave Evison, described by Cosgrove as ‘a garrulous ex-soldier from Stoke’, would frequently appear from behind the decks to join the dancers, with ‘a distinctive dance style, and somehow managed to use his leather shoes to clap against the dance floor to the beat of a big tune’.19 Another characteristic of the DJs was their chutzpah. Competition among DJs and the pressure to stay ahead of the game by continually pleasing dancers was ever present, and was only sustained through zeal and enthusiastic confidence. Soul Sam, reflecting on his DJing career in 1981, commented: 143

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‘I’ve been into black music for longer than I care to remember … For years in the late 60’s and much of the 70’s this led to an almost fanatical interest in what became called “Northern” Soul.’20 Enthusiasm and boldness sometimes gave rise to accusations of elitism. One comment made to DJ Ian Dewhirst by a record mogul was ‘Aren’t the big DJs up north big headed?’, which Dewhirst took as a compliment rather than an insult.21 Conversely, Frank Elson characterised Curtis as an exemplar for ‘up and coming DJs’ due to ‘his total lack of arrogance’.22 Some DJs possessed this down-to-earth quality which helped dispel some of the elitist tag. Nevertheless, the leading northern DJs were a sharp bunch in terms of the knowledge and expertise they conveyed regarding rare soul, or the direction they felt the scene should take. Many were avid collectors, searching tirelessly for new sounds, always seeking the next ‘monster’ or ‘big thing’ in order to put one over on other DJs, impress the fans, generate sales, or discover the rarest of the rare to upstage the purists.23 Northern soul’s golden age came before the professional and highly paid DJs of later years.24 As one commentator stated: ‘my memory of their introductions of tunes owed far more to the Wheeltappers & Shunters Club and bingo callers … than to professional DJs’.25 The majority of them were not professional. They were primarily soul enthusiasts and record collectors. What made the DJs so compelling was that they were, as Kev Roberts suggests, imbued with a parochialism that proved authentic to their fan base.26 Cosgrove marvellously captures this in his memories of Wigan Casino: ‘The acoustics allowed you to hear the sometimes garbled intros … men with thick Lancashire accents who were more interested in breaking new records than in improving their elocution.’27 Many of the DJs­– f­or example, Searling and Evison at Wigan­– ­had parallel careers such as record dealing, production or working for record companies. Most, however, were in completely separate jobs. Soul Sam was a geography teacher. On one DJ roster at Wigan during the late 1970s there was a chef, a painter and decorator, two engineering machinists and a moulder.28 Bub (aka Dave Buttle) was a coal miner from Barnsley. In 1978 he described his personal journey in the fanzine Talk of the North: ‘The Wheel will always stick in my mind as the place which started the kind of life I was to live. Expelled from school, sacked from numerous jobs, landed in court, various prisons and finally ending up as a quite popular D.J. (so I am told).’29 Bub would witness the decline of the northern soul scene and the coal 144

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industry, culminating in the defeat of his trade union in the miners’ strike of 1984–85. DJs were haunted by the risk of failure at the decks and had to keep up with the demands of the crowd. A weekend in the life of Ilkleybased Pat Brady in March 1979, for example, saw him DJ at four different all-nighter venues on one Friday night, then another four allnighter sessions on Saturday night, including a 280-mile round trip to Peterborough. The ‘nighter’ spots were of approximately one hour duration each. He rounded the weekend off with a Sunday evening session.30 Fellow Yorkshire DJ John Vincent recalls that working fulltime as a DJ was a matter of exhausting schedules and of becoming ‘drained’, but that it was the passion for the music that drove him on: ‘Many times I woke up in my car on a Monday morning and had to drive to find a signpost just to find out where I was.’31 The competitive demands on DJs were palpable, as Brady related: The pressure’s on. It’s my first All-nighter for the East Anglian Soul Club. The other DJs … all have excellent unknowns [records]. My luck holds and the crowd responds favourably to my spot. It’s a relief when it’s all over. As the other DJs take the decks I reflect on the fact that there’s no room for complacency. Sam plays four of five records I don’t have, all of which I want. Depression sets in. I wonder if the other DJs feel the same way. Sure enough before I go Sam asks me about some of the records I’ve played. That cheers me up somewhat!32

For a scene riven by factional differences it displayed a remarkable degree of fraternal collegiality, nowhere more so than among its DJs, who, despite profound differences and intense rivalries, managed to maintain professional integrity and a strong sense of esprit de corps, as well as good-humoured bonhomie involving some light-hearted sending up of each other which must have rubbed off on fans in a favourable way.33 A willingness to work together with mutual respect, often in a competitive atmosphere, which transcended differences over music policy was some credit to the DJs associated with the scene. I’m in with the in crowd34 Northern soul fans were a particularly distinctive group. The initial motivation to become involved with the scene was quite similar in the case of many fans. A common route was via the youth club, listening to pop music in general and then to Motown and other mainstream soul. Another was listening to pirate radio stations such as Radio 145

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Caroline’s soul output. Others were influenced by older siblings who attended soul clubs. As one noted: ‘It was the older lads, the ones sneaking into the northern soul all-nighters who introduced us to the music … That’s how we learned to dance; we just copied what they were doing.’35 Some were introduced to rare soul through friends. In some cases it was a particular sound they found congenial that turned them on to northern soul. Blackpool-based DJ Pete Haigh, for example, speaks of Jack Montgomery’s ‘Dearly Beloved’ as firmly anchoring him in the scene.36 Frank Elson had similar recollections, described in quasi-religious terms as a sort of ‘conversion’, ‘like a light shining’ or a moment of ‘epiphany’ as he was introduced to a particular ‘sound’.37 Central to such conversions was a rejection of mainstream pop and other genres such as punk.38 Hanging around specialist record retailers was also an important entry point, not only in terms of buying records, but also through meeting like-minded individuals and established ‘faces’ on the scene.39 The venue was important to northern soul fans; smaller, dingy, less well-appointed clubs were favourite haunts.40 As one fanzine contributor delightfully put it in The Sound of Soul: ‘Most people at an all-nighter prefer the rough-as-a-bear’s-arse type places.’41 Over the period of the 1970s there were many venues where northern soul featured. Attempts at compilation suggest well over 200, possibly up to 250.42 There was a hierarchy of clubs, which could be divided into a few major venues, several intermediate ones and scores of smaller ones. Many were transient, others ran throughout the 1970s, while many existed on modest attendances, usually in the face of stern local authority scrutiny.43 There were often several clubs in a region or geographical area, forming clusters of venues: for example, around Blackpool, Stoke, Cheshire and North Wales, Yorkshire, the east midlands and eastern England. It was not unusual for fans to attend several venues in one weekend. Many attended both Blackpool and Wigan on the same Saturday–Sunday, while others went to several events at the weekend and then attended one of the midweek clubs. Venues were challenged by changes in music policy, taste and fashion, and by local authority and police responses to the drugs issue, yet some clubs stood out for their longevity­– ­Nottingham Palais was one. There were also smaller, more unsung venues at the local level. For example, Druffies at Dukinfield rugby club in Manchester celebrated its sixth anniversary soul night in 1977.44 Different venues offered a variety of experiences for fans. Some of 146

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the smaller venues were ‘warm-up’ clubs before fans made their way to places such as Wigan. The Britannia or ‘The Brit’ in Nottingham was one such club.45 Leyland Trades Hall was another important warm-up venue for ‘soulies’ in central Lancashire.46 Some venues were ‘winddown’ spaces with a Sunday night session before a return to work on the Monday morning. Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme was one of the more famous of these, as was Baileys in Sheffield.47 Others gained a midweek reputation, such as the Blue Room in Sale.48 One of most fascinating aspects of the scene was the manner in which venues were accorded iconic status even though they had a limited longevity: the Torch (18 months), Cleethorpes (13 months) and Va Va (less than a year). Even the major centres of Wigan and Blackpool lasted only eight and seven years respectively. All-dayers held some advantages over all-nighters. Chiefly they did not attract the same level of local authority scrutiny and opprobrium and thus were easier to obtain permission to operate. Added to this they were less likely to attract fringe elements than nighters, where what were described as the ‘real villains’ hung out, and they were easier to police.49 They were logistically easier to organise and travelling was more straightforward for fans. Venues that had fallen foul of the police or local authorities over all-nighters were resurrected as all-dayers, though they never held the same cachet. A few venues triumphed in spite of the fact that they did not hold all-nighters, most notably Blackpool Mecca. Yet a decision to hold an all-nighter put a place on the northern soul map, and a few successful ‘nighters’ would put the venue on the road to becoming a legendary club. One extraordinary aspect of the scene was the age of those involved. As with the DJs, fans were very young. In 1979 in Black Echoes, one fan commented that the average age at Wigan was 18, early twenties being considered the oldest; many fans were only 14 or 15, having sneaked off to the Casino without their parents’ approval.50 There was for many teenagers something furtive about ‘nicking off’ to an all-night venue, with their parents believing that they had stayed at their friend’s house for the weekend. Alcohol-free bars meant that age was not strictly policed. These experiences were repeated hundreds of times each weekend throughout 1970s Britain.51 These youngsters were at the forefront of shaping northern soul and the direction it took, as Mike Walker, the manager of Wigan Casino, acknowledged in 1978: ‘The Casino was and is a success by virtue of the kids. They created the demand and we were able to cater for it. I think the 147

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s­ uccess surprised everybody concerned apart from the ones who were creating it­– t­he kids out on the dancefloor.’52 The notion that the scene was, in part, created by young fans was not lost on Dave Godin, who said that this was one of the characteristics that had attracted him to the scene: ‘I really admired the northern soul scene because it was something that had grown organically, from the bottom up.’53 Age differentials among soulies became more obvious as fans matured. As one fan commented in 1979 in Soul Symbol fanzine: ‘Believe me being aged 24 and in the Casino these days you really feel a relic.’ Another recalled seeing a dancer who was balding and wondering what he was doing at Wigan.54 During the second half of the 1970s the scene was beginning to have issues with age differentials. One result was that it began to promote separate nighters for under-18s. This concept was introduced at the KGB Club in Sheffield.55 Ostensibly this was a concession to dance floor etiquette, as some of the younger dancers were getting in the way of older, more experienced ones. There were wider concerns though. Lucy Gibson has written of the ‘generational conflict’ between older soul fans and those new to the scene. There has been a tendency to see this in terms of older fans as ‘traditionalists’ and newer, younger ones seeking something more ‘progressive’, and this was undoubtedly the case in northern soul’s post-golden age.56 However, this perspective was more nuanced during the late 1970s, particularly at Wigan Casino, and cut across the traditional and progressive elements. Here, many older fans, who felt they were more ‘soul discerning’, directed criticism towards younger fans, many of whom were under 18; it was felt the youngsters had been attracted to the scene by the hype of the mid-1970s and were seeking an ‘oldies’ bias over the quest for a more progressive and modern sound, and that the Casino was pandering to their preferences.57 Age and elitism often went together. Some of the younger fans ‘were in awe of older soulies’ who had been around the scene for a while.58 Although the age differences were not great, for younger fans the difference was a chasm, and this was especially so given that the older crowd regarded themselves as the guardians of the scene. The 1960s crowd thought of themselves as particularly ‘blessed’. Frank Elson describes the 1960s as ‘magnificent in every respect’.59 It often seems that northern soul’s obsession with the 1960s was based on something more than just a type of sound. ‘Epochal’ and ‘apocryphal’ could be taken as motifs with which to define the scene. Northern 148

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fans have been described as ‘living in a time warp’, an ill-defined nostalgic period somewhere in the recent past that only existed in the minds of its disciples­– n ­ ot a real place, just a set of congenial circumstances defined by a particular sound. Northern soul was thus a constant search for some unobtainable belle époque. The late 1970s crowd had a different outlook which was much more aspirational, with a penchant for smarter venues rather than the dilapidated dives beloved of an earlier generation, although Blackpool Mecca was always perceived as a more upmarket club. Northern soul contained an element of elitism both towards other music genres and styles and within its own ranks. This underpinned the exclusivity of the scene. Senior figures were treated like deities. Those who were ‘faces’ at the Wheel or Torch, who possessed the largest and rarest collections of records, those with particular inside knowledge and who were arbiters of taste and trendsetters were northern soul royalty.60 Ian Levine was held in esteem initially because of his wealthy background, which allowed him to amass one of the largest collections of rare soul records in the UK, acquired on trips to the USA at a time when a flight to America was a distant dream for most fans.61 Bernie Golding notes that ‘hanging around’ with Levine meant knowing one’s place right down to where one sat on visits to Blackpool or Wigan.62 The pecking order also involved knowledge and expertise about records, or dancing ability. The best and most innovative dancers were deferred to out on the floor. The scene could also be very cliquey, especially in terms of record connoisseurship.63 This sense of superiority also shaped the way the scene moved and the way it created trends and tastes. These tendencies were a continuation of what Joe Street sees as an important part of the 1960s scene which had a ‘sense of being different, and in many ways superior’.64 Elitism could, however, be reinterpreted as another aspect of the scene­– ­the need to show respect. Those who had been on the scene for some time felt that they had earned the respect of others because of the contribution they had made, the knowledge they had acquired and imparted, or because of the sacrifices they had made for their love of northern soul.65 Most expected and gave respect. There was a notion of having to serve an apprenticeship to gain acceptance. Disrespecting the scene or breaking its unwritten rules could prove problematic. At the bottom of the pecking order were those referred to as ‘divvies’, ‘divs’ or ‘youth club divvies’, as many had entered the scene via this route.66 A ‘div’ could be someone without knowledge of 149

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the scene, outside of it, someone who had shown disrespect or who was not streetwise, who had displayed naivety in purchasing a record and had been ‘ripped off’ by a dealer, or who was perceived as a charlatan.67 ‘Divvy’ was also used as a term of derision between factions. For example, during the Wigan–Blackpool conflict, a comment made on entering the Mecca was that ‘this place is full of Divs’.68 Elitism grew as factionalism increased and attitudes within the scene became more rigid. Cosgrove saw the scene in the mid-1970s ‘hardening into a zealous sect with its own strict rules’.69 Elitist attitudes towards those outside the scene developed too, as Dave Shaw reflected at Wigan: These were lads who used to pick fights with the soul crowd who walked up Station Hill to the Casino from the trains. A good night out for them was sinking fifteen pints, staggering to the fish and chip shop and starting a ruck [fight] on the bus home … I loathed them.70

However, violence at northern soul events was remarkable for its rarity and was usually isolated to drug or record dealing related issues, if fans felt they had been ripped off.71 As one promoter noted, he would need to employ ‘something like 25 supervisors to steward an event of 1,000 punters at an ordinary disco’.72 Most events were self-policing, and northern soul was remarkable in allowing people from different areas of Britain to mix in an unchallenging environment. As one fan commented at an event at Whitchurch Civic Hall in Shropshire in 1973: ‘it’s easy to make friends at soul discos where there’s none of the uneasiness that one experiences at other types of discos’.73 In February 1978 there was a ‘monster’ all-dayer event at Manchester’s Belle Vue with a crowd estimated between 1,000 and 1,500. DJ Pat Brady was supported by a huge contingent from Yorkshire. Some trouble was anticipated by the police and local authority between this group and the Lancashire- and Manchester-based soulies present. There were strong links between northern soul and football allegiances, and this was an era noted for football hooliganism and violence; however, the event passed off without incident.74 Where there was violence it was often a result of the ‘othering’ of soul fans. Fights with punk rockers in Wigan were quite common. In one incident in 1977 two fans were injured, one suffering a punctured lung, and a doorman suffered facial injuries. There were other confrontations as fans faced punks armed with bottles and glasses, and running battles ensued.75 Soulies frequently described the ‘two worlds’ of alcohol and non-alcohol with regard to locals on a night 150

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out in the vicinity of northern soul venues or on public transport, and when the two collided things could ‘get nasty’.76 At the very least soulies could expect some verbal abuse: ‘a lot of soulies used to get hassle from pissed up [drunken] Wiganers as they made their way from Wigan bus station to the Casino’.77 Violent encounters with nonsoul fans became the stuff of legend and were reported in fanzines such as Soul Symbol: Nearly every bugger was tooled up [carrying weapons] and ready for ruction at Wigan … As we were moving out of the station a crowd of lads came bursting back in­– ­here we go I thought … I was in for a shock when I hit the pavement. The Old Bill [police] were everywhere … We were quickly herded together and then escorted to the ‘casino’.78

Soulies could, and did, hit back as well. As Nowell has noted there were some tough characters among the ranks at Wigan: It was a daunting experience just going round the corner on Station Road and meeting up with gangs outside the Casino. They were mainly dressed in long leather coats, wide trousers and the girls in pleated skirts … The boys had attitude and they were not the type that you hoped that your daughter would bring home for afternoon tea.79

Tales of punk rockers going through shop windows in Wigan town centre as a result of coming off worse in fights with soulies are not apocryphal. Such episodes served to create and underpin the strong sense of solidarity among northern soul fans. The scene displayed this strong sense of solidarity and togetherness more generally. As one Casino regular, Fran Franklin, put it, northern soul was like ‘a silken thread that holds people together like a band of steel’.80 This came out in other ways such as dance in what Tim Wall describes as ‘the sense of communality of the scene’, ‘shared competences’ and ‘collective experience’ exhibited through the ‘soul clap’, a ‘unison clap [made] at agreed points in the music’ by dancers, usually to emphasise the beat or a beat change.81 The sense of the difference of soulies from other members of society was common, as they found it difficult to explain their weekend nocturnal lives to their family and friends. This strong sense of belonging and identity has been the subject of frequent comment. An association has been made with freemasonry, with its ‘ritual, special outfits and a strong sense of camaraderie’. As one practising freemason and modern-day northern soul fan observed: ‘I find the two interests ­complementary … that sense of belonging … like a masonic lodge, all stick together 151

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… Northern Soul … perfectly complements Freemasonry.’82 Northern soul was awash with examples of ritualistic behaviour­– ­the ‘three before 8’ records played at Wigan Casino prior to the end of allnighters, the need for, and importance attached to, venues and event anniversaries, the repeated pilgrimages to venues accompanied by regular social protocols­– t­ hese are just a few examples. It’s in the groove Northern soul would not have been what it was without its attention to record curatorship and connoisseurship. This aspect of the scene was almost a ‘world within a world’, as many chose to absorb themselves in the pursuit of rare records with just as much zeal as those out on the dance floor. The scene was predicated on rare recordings and the term ‘rare soul’ came to define it. Most of the leading DJs had begun life as avid collectors. Ian Levine amassed a huge collection of rare recordings and was known to have an encyclopaedic memory of label catalogue numbers.83 Even an average fan would go without meals or other purchases to be able buy a rare or special sound particular to them.84 As one noted in the Shades of Soul fanzine: ‘In Wigan days when I was earning 15 quid a week a “monster” would cost £25 or about a week and a half’s pay.’85 The source of obsessive attraction for many fans were the obscure US labels. Some of these, such as Okeh, became legends on the scene, even being tattooed on to the arms of some dancers. For Adrian Smith, Okeh and other labels such as Vee-Jay, Cameo Parkway and Ric-Tic spoke of faraway exotic Americana, which fed into the dreamscape of northern soul.86 Most venues had a record bar where collectors and dealers gathered, with the rarest recordings commanding high prices. Given the importance of this aspect of the scene and the quest for authenticity, or what some have described as a ‘pure soul sound’ originating from the fabled black America of the 1960s, it might be expected that nothing would have interfered with this process. In fact the opposite was true, as northern soul acquired a reputation for practices which at best were pushing at the limits of what was fair or morally acceptable, and at worst were illegal. The scene thus became a market for recordings which Searling has described as ‘those of questionable parentage’.87 Moreover, northern soul’s relationship with authenticity was complex. This was witnessed most infamously during Wigan Casino’s ‘commercial turn’. 152

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The technology involved in some recordings was rudimentary by modern standards; produced on low budgets, the quality of northern soul records was often poor. Heb Rooney of visiting US group the Exciters commented about some of the sounds he had heard on a UK tour in 1975: ‘I got a taste for it [northern soul] and I love some of those older sounds … but a lot of them are bad old records which aren’t played or recorded too well. You can hear all sorts of bum notes and singers right out of tune.’88 Yet low-budget, poorly recorded mono sounds were gold dust in the hands of collectors, and their flaws were a big part of the attraction. The imperfection gave the vinyl an intrinsic authenticity. Ostensibly, while there was a quest for soul purity and scarcity, northern soul was principally a search for a specific sound which overrode all other considerations. The ‘right sound’, as one fan put it, ‘made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up’.89 Some have similarly suggested that the sound was ‘uplifting … and stayed in the memory’.90 Others have pointed to the ‘driving beat to dance to’.91 The sound had to be ‘danceable’, which accounted for some of the more esoteric records on the scene. As northern soul boomed, so did a variation in the practice of bootlegging. In popular music in general the term is used to describe making a direct recording at a venue (of a live concert) or a disc of demos or complete recordings that had not been previously released by the artists. In northern soul, direct copies of recordings that had been previously released or masters (master recordings) from the vaults of studios were known as ‘pressings’. This was a form of bootlegging in all but name. Master recordings were obtained either legally or illegally and copies made using a record-pressing machine. Pressings were sometimes referred to as EMI discs simply because this was the most common type of pressing machine available in Britain at the time. These were hardened, vinyl-coated metal discs.92 This practice became a major issue around the mid-1970s and was discussed in the fanzine Hot Buttered Soul: One thing that has arisen is the number of EMI discs circulating around the scene … It’s illegal and prosecutions abound. Sounds are selling at Wigan at incredible prices. I saw an Eddie Fisher ‘I never knew’ pressing for £35 and I watched one guy pay £80 for Self Soul Satisfaction 93

The point about pressings is that there was a question of moral integrity which ran to the core of what northern soul represented. Godin and others argued that it was essentially the sound of black America, 153

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and that the originators of these sounds had monumental struggles just to earn a living. One comment from 1976 in Black Echoes is illustrative of such tensions: On the night when one fanatical Northern DJ eagerly handed over £170 for a copy of the then ultra-rare dance floor packer ‘Seven Day Lover’, the guy who actually made it­– ­you know, not the one who played it first, the merchant who bootlegged EMI discs or the journalist who originally wrote about it­– ­but the man who sung his heart out in a tiny Georgia studio, was waiting for a break, a break so relentlessly denied to him … he was playing in a tiny club with the house band for a few dollars. That’s if he was lucky.94

It was argued by some that this was a stain on northern soul, whether fans bought into it either knowingly or unknowingly. As Chris Savory, a soul record collector, broadcaster and writer, commented in 1974: ‘The most unfair criticism of Northern Soul revolves around that most topical subject of pressings. Let’s get it straight­– ­the people who provide these goods are not Northern Soul fans, no matter what organisation they belong to.’95 A few clubs and DJs took an early stand against pressings. The Howard Mallett Soul Club in Cambridge would not, as many clubs did, post a playlist in the soul press in order to attract fans, on the basis that ‘we have not the slightest desire to encourage the certain few people in our midst (Pressing Merchants) who seem intent on killing the once uncommercial Soul Scene’.96 This was the exception rather than the rule, however, as a widespread pressings operation took hold. The period 1974–76 saw pressings in greatest abundance as the demand for records escalated, as did prices. Since it was mainly DJs who obtained legal masters from record companies, it was often alleged that they were involved in the practice. The counter argument was that these were rare recordings, and that by producing pressings they were being made available to as wide a range of fans as possible. The downside for DJs was that not only were pressings no longer rare, but the quantity produced forced the price down in the longer term. As a result, a mixed picture emerged of some DJs who would publicly condemn pressings, but who would otherwise become involved or support the practice, and others who did not, either because of integrity issues or because of the adverse problems it created. However, the pressure was always on DJs to acquire an in-demand sound. Fans were especially critical of DJs in this regard: 154

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The chosen few [M]onetary considerations play a significant part in the whole structure of the Northern Disc market. This is exemplified by the payment of exorbitant prices for rare discs regardless of their musical quality. DJs seem annoyed by the ‘pressing’ of in-demand items, not because of the legality involved but because it devalues their collection and makes sounds readily available.97

The finger of blame was also pointed at bootleggers in the USA who were cashing in on the soul boom in Britain, but apart from the scale and sophistication of stateside operations, this merely diverted attention from what was a widespread practice. Pressings were so common that the fanzine Soul Cargo commented in 1978 that they were ‘now an integral part of the northern soul scene’.98 There was also a criminal element involved at the extreme end of the production of pressings. In 1974 Black Echoes reported examples of telephoned threats to those involved in speaking out against the practice.99 The covering up of records arose in response to the bootlegging of rare sounds, mainly through pressings; the artist and title would be disguised so as to protect the original version from being copied. Cover-ups usually involved attributing a different or fictitious performer to a song, and/or giving the song a different title. The object, as Cosgrove suggests, was to ‘hide the real identity’ of a rare artist and/or title, while the exercise was primarily aimed at ‘protecting a DJ’s unique access to the sound’. For example, the northern soul classic by Bobby Paris, ‘I Walked Away’, was attributed to Bobby Diamond. Donald Jenkins and the Delighters’ ‘Somebody Help Me’ was covered up as Clifford Binns’s ‘I Walked Alone’. The numbers involved became large enough for soul fanzines such as Shades of Soul to publish helpful glossaries for fans with the original recording details and the covered-up version.100 The problem was that the sheer number and complexity of recordings meant that negotiating this minefield was difficult even for those with the expertise. For the uninitiated it proved infuriatingly impossible.101 However, it was not necessarily the practice of covering up that was the issue. The objection was how it undermined the integrity of the scene. Some sounds became more famous under their covered-up designation than under their actual identity.102 Many DJs employed the practice, especially those at the cutting edge of breaking in new discoveries. Searling acknowledged that he increasingly had to resort to covering up; one observer from 1978 described him as the ‘king of the Cover-Ups’.103 He commented on the parlous situation in terms 155

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of bootlegging, opining that 1976 ‘was certainly a disastrous year for collectors of rare Soul … It certainly looks like we’re getting back to a 1973 … when in the space of about seven days, about 20 top sounds were bootlegged.’104 It was widely recognised on the scene that covering up had become a regrettable but legitimate way of ensuring that northern soul’s quest for new discoveries was maintained in order to ensure its survival.105 It was only as the scene went into decline that the need to cover up became less urgent.106 As competition developed between DJs and venues and as the scene expanded, there was an incentive to acquire the latest rare sounds, whether artists or recordings. This created rivalry and a degree of anxiety among competing DJs and venues. One factor that encouraged the practice of covering up was the sheer dominance of Wigan and the larger soul clubs during the mid-1970s. These clubs were keen to bolster their position even further as major centres for rare soul sounds among fans by claiming that these recordings were ‘broken’ (first played) at their respective venues, to the detriment of other, often less significant clubs, even though the tracks had, in fact, been aired first at these venues by DJs who had not received the credit. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that the leading venues played to larger audiences and therefore enjoyed an exaggerated kudos, as these rare sounds were seen to have ‘taken off’ at these locations first. The reaction of DJs and promoters at lesser-known venues was to resort to ‘covering up’ their previously undiscovered sounds, thus leading to further expansion of the practice.107 The complexities involved in these practices were frequently lost even on those who should have been acquainted with them, as Dave McAleer of the Disco Demand label noted in Black Echoes in 1976: ‘A lot of the people in companies just don’t understand the scene. You can talk to them for hours about records getting covered up, or pressed, or whatever and they still wouldn’t understand.’108 The association with rarity led to northern soul developing its own market for recordings, with some individuals becoming influential in supplying and controlling the sounds entering the scene. In this context another ‘northern soul legend of a different kind’ was Simon Soussan. From a French Moroccan background, Soussan lived in Leeds and later moved to Los Angeles. Variously described as a ‘villain’ or a ‘likeable rogue’, his name was well known, but few fans ever met him. He was better known to promoters, record dealers and DJs, to whom he supplied records, many of which it was alleged 156

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were ‘questionably obtained’.109 Frank Elson interviewed Soussan at Blackpool Mecca in 1974 and concluded: ‘Personally I have no doubt that some of his pressings are legal but I have my doubts as to how many.’ However, many observations regarding Soussan, including more recent reflections, have been more favourable about the maverick record dealer and producer.110 Soussan’s contribution was later described as nothing less than ‘single-handedly providing the Northern Scene with fresh and vibrant platters on a weekly basis’.111 This has excused Soussan’s alleged indiscretions in northern soul folklore to some degree, though as Brown suggests: ‘It has become convenient to hold up Simon Soussan as the Northern Soul antiChrist.’112 The reality is that Soussan effectively became the lightning rod for many of northern soul’s excesses, in which many on the scene participated. Bombers and greens and clears113 Northern soul’s association with drug abuse – mainly amphetamine based – has been well documented in an ethnographic study by criminologist Andrew Wilson. Wilson’s book, mainly based on Wigan Casino, is a sobering reminder that many young people died on the scene from illegal drug use. It begins ‘in memory’ of over twenty soul fans ‘who did not make it’.114 Another grim statistic is that up to fourteen deaths could have been attributed to drugs in one year at one venue alone during the mid-1970s.115 When it is considered that these are just the better-known episodes from northern soul venues, it puts the scene’s association with drug abuse into stark perspective. The use of Preludin (‘Prellies’) was evident in the jazz scene and rhythm and blues clubs of the late 1950s and early 1960s.116 The rare soul scene and later the northern soul scene developed a wellestablished notoriety for pill popping. Illegal drugs and the Twisted Wheel were almost synonymous.117 The club had a reputation for drug abuse from its earliest days. The Wheel earned the nickname the ‘Domino Club’­– ­‘domino’ being street slang for amphetamines­– ­because of its association with drug taking.118 The venue even passed into youth folklore with its own comedic ditties printed in the fanzine Northern Essence (to the tune of ‘Teddy Bears Picnic’ with officer’s names believed to have originated from the Oldham Drugs Squad during the 1960s): 157

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Keeping the faith If you go down to the Wheel Tonight You’re sure of big surprise For Sgt Booth and his squad will be there Smashed up to their eyes For Reeves and Giles Will also be there With lots of bombers and blueys to spare All at the Twisted Wheel pillheads party119

Another song was believed to have been sung by Wheel patrons in an all-night café after they had been thrown out of an all-nighter and were waiting for the Sunday afternoon session to begin: (To the tune of the ‘Red Flag’) Oh Dexedrine so yellow and small You’re driving me up the wall120

Comedic youthful exuberance which poked fun at the local drug squad suggested a blasé and naive attitude towards a danger that could and did kill. The fact that the local police in Wigan held their annual ball at the Casino was a source of fun, as was the old joke about the road sign seen on entering the town: ‘Please reduce your speed’ (speed was a common street name for amphetamine).121 There were allegations that the police planted and supplied drugs at venues in order to effect an easy ‘collar’ (arrest). This was a more common and consistent accusation made against the police by soul fans throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A tongue-in-cheek survival guide to visiting Wigan Casino, published in Soul Symbol in 1974, gave patrons some useful advice regarding undercover police in the building: The police are easy to spot. They look completely normal wearing serge trousers and denim shirts when in fact everyone else is wearing baggy trousers and ‘T’ shirts. They will have big feet and are easily distinguishable by their red embarrassed faces. They will try to plant some drugs on you. If they do, try to sell them back. This will confuse the policeman so much that you will be able to run away quite successfully.122

The Twisted Wheel divided opinion between those who saw it as a cutting-edge venue and those who pointed to its drug associations and undesirable clientele. A link was also made between illegal drug abuse and music policy at the club, to the extent that it dissuaded Roger Eagle from further involvement at the venue, as it ‘forced his quite eclectic playlist towards a single, stomping beat’.123 158

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From the 1960s and into the 1970s chemist shops were fair game for those who required illegal drugs, especially those on their way to a venue.124 The notoriety of the drugs issue surrounding northern soul sometimes preceded its fame as a music scene. In March 1973, at a hearing at Stoke-on-Trent magistrates court following a drugs seizure at the Torch, the prosecution informed the magistrate that ‘[a]pparently the club has a reputation for a certain style of soul music’, to which the magistrate replied, rather sarcastically, ‘Is that all?’125 As with the Wheel, a core component of the culture of the Torch was the distribution and consumption of amphetamines.126 The police were a constant presence in and around the club, and its notoriety was soon reported in the chambers of the city council and the pages of the local press. On 14 March 1973 it made the front page of the Stoke Evening Sentinel, with a headline that read ‘Tunstall Club a Drug Centre’. David McEvoy, representing the police, was reported as telling the city licensing justices that ‘The Golden Torch has a national reputation as a place where drugs can be obtained and for trafficking in drugs.’ He added that since ‘July 1972, 40 people had been involved in drug offences’. He noted that the club ‘attracted people from a wider area­ – ­from the south coast, to the North of England. Some came from Scotland.’ The piece went on to claim that the Torch’s owner, Chris Burton, had visited Burslem police station and was aware of the scale of the problem. McEvoy added that the problem was not just drugs but also ‘people being admitted under age, people with criminal records … poor hygiene … chaining emergency exits and overcrowding’.127 In the following evening’s edition, space was given on the front page to a defence from Burton in which he stressed that there were ‘No junkies in my club’. He disputed the figure of 70 per cent of attendees taking drugs that the police had claimed and said it was ‘probably five per cent’. Burton said he had banned certain people in September, adding that he did not care about ‘people taking drugs as long as it is not on my premises’. The reporter described the club as having a ‘reputation for gospel-type soul music with an American influence’. There was also an attempt to quantify the number of people who had been to the club: ‘last year there were 62,000 customers from a membership of 12,500’. Burton was reported as saying that this was ‘a specialised form of music that has its devotees and they are very passionately involved with their music’.128 With the Torch becoming a focus for the police and local media, Blues and Soul published an anti-drugs editorial pointing to the 159

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fact that this kind of illegal activity had already led to the closure of Manchester’s Twisted Wheel. It is no secret that the much-loved Wheel Club in Manchester was closed at the instigation of the Drug Squad; thus many hundreds of Wheel regulars were made to suffer for the selfish deeds of a bunch of  so-called brothers and sisters. Many of the people who kept the Wheel turning have gone on to keep the Torch burning­– ­but, sadly, a few soulful junkies have followed on too … we are making this earnest plea­– i­f you care for your music, if you care for your brothers and ­sisters … come clean when you come to the clubs.129

This exposed the contrasting images of the scene: on the one hand it was dependent on the connection between the sounds and amphetamines, and on the other there was an attempt to present a more nuanced image to the public on the part of the minority who shunned drugs. Legal cases reported in the Stoke Evening Sentinel were indicative: David William Rivers, a welder and DJ from London, was accused of being in possession of drugs in the Torch. He was searched by the drugs squad in the venue, which the prosecutor claimed ‘has a reputation for a certain type of soul music’. A man from Shrewsbury was fined £50 for selling ‘aspirin type tablets’. The magistrate noted that he was ‘a “pusher” but he was not pushing what he was supposed to be pushing’.130 Another young man from Cheltenham was prosecuted for selling harmless ‘yellow tablets’ at ‘12 for £1’. He had been stopped by police in his vehicle on a link road to the M6 en route to the Torch.131 However, the police were unsuccessful in another case where it appeared that their evidence had come from a forced confession. A 20-year-old apprentice fitter from Bury ‘denied possessing a capsule containing amphetamine sulphate’. He had travelled to the Torch with eight friends in a van.132 Detective Sergeant Ernest Gardiner claimed that the majority of people attending the club used amphetamines. In February 1973 the police set up a temporary roadblock just off the M6, which resulted in sixteen people being charged. At a meeting to discuss the renewal of the club’s licence in March 1973, ‘the justices heard from members of the drug squad who visited the club that the numbers of people present were more than 400 and that many were aged 15 and 16’. PC Margaret Brumbill added that ‘she had arrested three young girls … they had been given tablets to stay awake’. The hearing also took evidence from a resident who lived opposite the club who complained about the noise made by people 160

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leaving the premises.133 The city licensing committee ruled that the Torch’s entertainment and drink licence would not be renewed. The decision was underpinned by a duty ‘to protect the young’. Ray Shaw, a former councillor, felt that the ‘character and integrity of the kids in Tunstall has been damaged … They do not want to know about drugs.’134 Here was an attempt to differentiate the soul crowd of the Torch from local youths. Gordon Dale, the chair of the committee, argued that ‘the demand for a club of this type was not a local demand but a demand by people from all over the country’. Representations made in defence of the club came from John Abbey and Frank Elson of Blues and Soul. Abbey claimed that ‘the Torch was one of the best venues in the country for soul music’ and that ‘soul music and drugs do not go hand in hand’. Elson was more forthcoming: ‘Occasionally I do see passing of drugs and hear talk about “gear” [drugs] … but you have this in every club.’135 In his column for Blues and Soul soon after the closure Elson adopted a more vociferous tone in his attack on the amphetamine peddlers and consumers: ‘all the pill-heads can cut another notch on their guns. To a trophy with the words “Twisted Wheel” they can add “Torch”. They can start looking around for another club to defile and ruin. They make me SICK.’136 Many of the former Torch regulars now attended the northern soul all-dayers at Tiffany’s in Newcastle under Lyme, with ‘people travelling from Wolverhampton, Manchester, Worcester and Nottingham’.137 Va Va in Bolton also went the way of many other all-nighters. The police started to express an interest in the use of drugs at the club, and the management decided that it was in their best interests to end the sessions. ‘One Friday in August 1973 Va Va simply didn’t open, leaving coachloads of soulies stuck dumbfounded in the car park.’138 After the demise of the Torch attention turned to Wigan. On the eve of Wigan Casino’s opening a warning was issued to fans hoping to attend the new venue via the fanzine Hot Buttered Soul: ‘don’t get up to tricks that might cause the all-nighters to cease. Wheel and Torch fans will know what I mean. The Feds [police] plan to be very tight and strict.’139 Nevertheless, Wigan Casino became infamous as a significant centre for the consumption of illegal drugs. By the end of the decade the club’s notoriety for drug misuse was widespread. A solicitor defending a 17-year-old girl at Manchester magistrates court charged with dishonestly handling drugs alleged to have been stolen from a doctor’s car said she had been introduced to the ‘drugs 161

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s­ub-culture’ at Wigan Casino.140 Locals made a strong association between the club and drug abuse. One 16-year-old local lad delivering Sunday morning newspapers recalled his first encounter with the ‘mythical soulies’: ‘Strangely attired and accented out of towners wandering the streets of Wigan asking for directions to the swimming baths at 9 in the morning with eyes like saucers [due to being drug addled]’.141 As Haslam notes, Wigan’s atmosphere in part resulted from the extent and range of illegal substances on offer: ‘The proliferation of drugs at Wigan Casino contributed to its heady atmosphere; at various times different drugs were the rage, including Riker’s black bombers, Filon, Duramin … and Dexadrine. Late in the 1970s there were plentiful supplies of home-made amphetamine sulphate and back street versions of dexies.’142 The association with drugs nagged at the scene as it struggled during the late 1970s. One comment in Hot Buttered Soul in 1977 on an episode at a Manchester Ritz all-dayer was that the drugs issue was dragging the scene further into the mire: The apathy of the Northern fans is not the only coffin nail currently being hammered in as the recent disgusting exhibition at the Ritz when a group of lads decided to show everyone just how ‘big’ they were by ‘O.D.-ing’ [overdosing] in front of all and sundry. God knows that the scene has its bad elements but what we need are grown up sensible soul fans, not a load of bloody idiots.143

As venue after venue closed because of drugs-related issues there was a belief that the drugs scene might be the cause of northern soul’s undoing, rather than its factional differences. As one fan writing in Black Echoes in 1977 commented: Northern fans say that the N.Y. Disco sound is going to split the Northern Scene, well the only thing that is going to kill the Northern Scene are the kids who take speed. The closure of Northern clubs through drug problems is getting quite out of hand now … As long as Northern fans take drugs, clubs will close, and one day the process will speed up and before you know there will be hardly any clubs left playing Northern Soul.144

It was suggested that when the closure of Wigan Casino was announced in 1978, the ‘soul fans mourned, and the police and magistrates heaved a sigh of relief’.145 It was consistently believed by the management of the club that the drugs issue was overplayed.146 However, Searling recalls that ‘at the Casino we’d have the drug squad 162

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arriving, and the drugs busts were a regular worry’.147 It was felt that the police­– ­specifically, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, James Anderton­– b ­ elieved that the Casino was a ‘den of iniquity’, and that Anderton had ‘got it in’ for the club, an attitude that would align well with his personal and religiously inspired campaign against crime.148 A few high-profile raids on the Casino ordered by Anderton resulted in no drug seizures of any significance, despite widespread allegations. Investigative reporters who attended all-nighters at Wigan confirmed the lack of drug-related activity.149 The Casino management pointed to the low level of drug seizures at the venue and argued that they worked closely with the police in tackling the problem. One of the great mysteries of northern soul is why, given Wigan’s association with illegal drug use, it was never closed down, as were so many other venues. This has led some to allege that the Casino management and the police did indeed work closely together­– t­ oo closely for some, although it must be stated that there have never been any formal allegations, or anything proven in this regard.150 Wilson suggested that Wigan’s longevity may have arisen from the ‘benign image of Northern Soul’ carried by both the national and local media, in which Wigan featured prominently, and which the town was keen to engender, wedded to ‘the personal and political relationship of the town’s moral elite and Gerry Marshall as leaseholder/owner of the Casino’.151 This can be contrasted with the poor relationship that existed between the owner of the Torch and the police in Stoke. It should also be noted that seizures at venues are an inaccurate guide to actual levels of drug abuse, as in many cases pills were ‘dropped’ (taken) prior to entering venues. The purpose of taking drugs was to stay awake all night or to induce a state of euphoria. The downside was, as one fan put it, the ‘unpleasant wash up which got to you’.152 Attending nighter after nighter while taking drugs often became more of a ‘turn off’ than a ‘turn on’ and led those who could manage it to stay clear of illegal substances. Regrettably, others were sucked into a world of drug abuse. This strained personal relationships and led to arguments between friends.153 Another problematic aspect of drug abuse was that ‘coming down’ from them could lead to feelings of paranoia or flashbacks, especially from some time-release drugs, which would occur at work, school or college. As Cosgrove writes, Va Va was memorable for its darker side through ‘its mirrored walls and the paranoia they induced in blocked-up [drug-fuelled] dancers’.154 163

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Feelings of paranoia were also manifested in a collective way. ‘The night no-one was shot at Troggs’ is an example of this phenomenon. Troggs was a small nightclub in Farnworth, Bolton, with a colourful reputation and social milieu.155 One night in the summer of 1973 the club held an all-nighter in the immediate wake of the Torch’s closure. The club was unsuitable for a large-scale all-nighter and was overwhelmed by hundreds arriving from all over the country. There were problems chiefly because the police prevented the mass of fans from getting into the club, while simultaneously preventing those inside from leaving. Hundreds of fans hung around outside, with the night ending in a chaotic shambles. Many came away believing that someone had been fatally shot in the cloakroom. Indeed, the amount of blood on the wall and ceiling of the club and on fans’ clothing suggested that something grisly had occurred in the mayhem. The view remained for a long time afterwards that a named individual had been shot dead. In fact, a local thief had spied his opportunity in the chaos to steal personal belongings. He was discovered by fans and given a beating. The question of what actually happened that night at Troggs entered northern soul folklore and was still the source of speculative discussion over forty years later. While there were several issues at play, one consistent feature is that there were hundreds of pilled-up fans present.156 The drug-fuelled atmosphere had contributed to a paranoid rumour mill which translated into something bordering on mass hysteria. While this occurrence was untypical because of its scale, such episodes were not uncommon. Furthermore, paranoia related to people new or unknown to the scene, or from someone under the influence of drugs who assumed that anyone dressed differently was a member of the drugs squad, could be potentially difficult, even violent.157 In terms of violence caused through illegal drugs, fans have attested that Wigan could be dangerous, as there were ‘people who you had to be very careful around’. It was prudent to attend ‘with someone who was known on the scene and who could vouch for you’.158 Despite these risks there were stout defenders of the scene’s association with illegal drugs, both for pragmatic reasons (staying awake) and the fact that they had always been as integral as the music. As one fan noted in Black Echoes in 1977, event promoters were ‘naïve’ in their 164

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The chosen few disapproval of amphetamines at all-nighters … and expect the people who attend to be … as law abiding as them … Most of the people work hard all week and simply would not have the energy or enthusiasm to dance all-night without the aid of a few pills. ‘Speed’ has been an intimate part of the scene from the beginning as much so as even the sounds … without gear there would be no all-nighter … their ‘buzz’ is as important to a good night as the sounds played.159

Drugs allowed people to talk to all sorts of characters who they would not dream of talking to ordinarily, breaking down barriers between fans from different parts of the country.160 Dave Godin, a consistent critic of drug abuse on the scene, argued in Blues and Soul that the practice of taking drugs in order to reach a state to enjoy it insulted soul.161 Other fans described going to Wigan as ‘an ordeal’ in the sense that they had to travel some distance and needed to stay awake all night, and that without recourse to illegal substances there would have been no sense of euphoria.162 Wilson has argued that legislation introduced during the 1960s, specifically the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 aimed at dealing with incipient drug misuse, had the unintended effect on the scene of leading to the reduced availability of pharmaceutical supplies of amphetamines, which in turn led to the ‘mixing of opiates with amphetamines [and] introduced a number of young people to opiates’. According to Wilson this led to increased numbers of deaths among northern soul fans, whereas fatalities from amphetamine use were ‘very rare’.163 It is also worth noting that many soulies who popped pills did not see themselves as ‘druggies’; rather they believed that real drug abusers were those who indulged in riskier abuse with opiates or other illegal drugs, particularly where this involved intravenous methods. There was also a belief among soul fans that they were being unjustly harassed by the local authorities and police in closing down all-nighters because of illegal drug abuse. By contrast they pointed to pop festivals and arrests at those events, which did not result in them being closed down. Northern fans detected a bias against allnighters. This, for some, confirmed a class bias in favour of middleclass hippies against working-class northern kids who were into black music.164 How much truth there was in this is debatable. Nevertheless, it persisted, together with a belief that soulies attending nighters had become ‘folk devils’ and the subject of a ‘moral panic’, like the mods and rockers before them, as highlighted in Stanley Cohen’s seminal 165

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work.165 This was confirmed by the heavy-handed paramilitary-style policing of nighters, authoritarian magistrates, panicky local authorities and a hysterical press. Godin, nudged into this debate some years later in 1995, suggested that there was at least a degree of exaggeration in associating northern soul with drugs, propagated by critics of the scene.166 The extent of drug misuse on the scene has been the subject of debate. At Wigan the weight of opinion points to drug abuse being ‘substantial’ or ‘rife’.167 Others, critical of the northern/drug link, such as DJ Kev Roberts, conceded the ‘inevitability’ that the ‘scene and drugs are inexorably linked’, or as one veteran fan succinctly put it, ‘no gear, no scene’.168 Roberts later reflected on the relationship between DJ, sound, dancer and drug abuse: ‘Wigan was 95 per cent drugs. If a person is swallowing by 12 and speeding by three, you’d best be ready with something fast.’169 Observations such as ‘a large part of the scene but not the majority of the scene’ and ‘50 per cent on drugs at all events, but especially nighters’ are common in the oral testimonies. It is also clear that levels of substance abuse among fans ranged from those who kept well clear of gear, through to ‘occasional pillheads’, ‘regular pillheads’ and others at the extreme end who were more heavily into drugs.170 Tragically, for some, illegal drugs meant a premature death, but as Barry Doyle notes, ‘for most it was just a phase which they packed away with their baggy trousers and patches’.171 * * * A great strength of northern soul was undoubtedly the people who made the scene. Both the DJs and fans ensured a sense of solidarity and purpose, which in turn created a strong sense of identity. This has been recognised as an abiding characteristic of the scene down the years. Yet two of the most negative aspects of the scene have been highlighted here­– ­northern soul’s uncertain relationship with authenticity, linked to some questionable aspects of record dealing, and its association with illegal drug use. An interesting observation from a fan in 1975 discussing what was wrong with northern soul indicated that it was the ‘three p’s, pressings, pills, and pop’, ‘pop’ referring to commercialisation.172 Issues with recordings and drugs have been cited as having seriously undermined northern soul to the extent that they brought about its downfall. Some have gone as far as to argue that pressings were the ‘main cause of the decline in interest in the scene’.173 166

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These negative features have often been justified as ‘integral’ to the northern soul scene, as though there was something of an inevitability about them. This seems to be rather complacent, even an excuse for the scene’s excesses. Conversely, some of northern soul’s fiercest critics have been excoriating in their assessment. Les Spaine, for example, uses a drug-related analogy to make the point about recordings: I think a lot of real Soul fans who were into the Northern scene were used. I could see very little real difference between the way the people who ran the Northern Soul scene carried on, and drug dealers with junkies. Now that might sound extreme but you analyse it. They had their market, they got it hooked and they kept it hungry 174

This assessment is similar to how music journalist Tony Cummings perceived the emerging scene in the early 1970s. There were specific circumstances that made northern soul more susceptible to these problematic features. In developing his critique of the scene, Cummings pointed to its small size and its market for records.175 This made the scene particularly vulnerable to influence, or as its critics have suggested, manipulation. When northern soul sold large numbers of records or there was an initial surge in sales following a record release, largely through DJ play and word of mouth at venues, it tended to exaggerate the record’s importance and increase demand. As a result, phrases like ‘sensational demand’ became the order of the day.176 Promoters, DJs and record dealers were able to control demand on the scene. This in turn determined prices, and prices were sky high for rarities. This created fertile ground for bootlegging practices to take hold. Regarding illegal drug use, if northern soul is taken in the broader context of other music scenes, particularly dance scenes, the drugs phenomenon was not untypical, either before or since the 1970s.177 The association with illegal drugs arose from a well-established pillpopping tradition from the 1960s, which, combined with often ‘marginal’ venues tied to up-tempo all-night dancing, created a perfect environment for illegal drug use. In 1971 Cummings argued that the scene turned ‘a blind eye to pill pushers’, and suggested that having created a ‘lucrative market in recordings those who profited from it did not want lose it’.178 While there might be some validity in this argument, the problem is that it implies that those propagating the scene were always in a position to do something tangible about the 167

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drugs issue, while ignoring the fact that for the most part they consistently and unequivocally spoke out against drugs.

Notes 1 Indeep’s ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’ (1981), while not a northern track, was a popular dance record in a range of discos and nightclubs. 2 For the role of DJs on the music scene, see Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life; Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around; Haslam, Adventures on the Wheels of Steel. 3 Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (dir. Joe Boy, Odeon Entertainment, 2012), DVD. 4 Shaw, Casino, p. 89. 5 Black Music, October 1974. 6 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 7 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 169, 187–9. 8 R. McKeever, On the Right Track with Northern Soul DJ Ginger Taylor (Furness: Peninsula Press, 2009), pp. 19–26; Hot Buttered Soul, No. 25 (n.d. [1974?]). 9 Black Echoes, 8 March 1980. 10 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 11 Local Life, Wigan Edition, February/March 2015. 12 See Searling, Setting the Record Straight. 13 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 14 Black Echoes, 13 January 1979; New Soul Time, No. 4 (n.d. [1977?]); Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 15 M. Devlin and S. Taylor, ‘The 40 Essential DJs of the Past 40 Years!’, Blues &​Soul, online, No. 1094, 2019, http://www.bluesandsoul.com/ feature/226/the_​40_​essential/ (accessed 9 July 2019). 16 Black Echoes, 14 April 1979. 17 Soul Time (n.d. [1977?]). 18 New Soul Time, No. 4 (n.d. [1977?]). 19 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 75. 20 Midnite Express, No. 1 (n.d. [1981?]). 21 Black Echoes, 10 July 1976. 22 Blues and Soul, 25 August–7 September 1981. 23 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 24 D. Haslam, ‘DJ Culture’, in S. Redhead, D. Wynne and J. O’Connor (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 150. 25 DJhistory.com, Entry 191, 22/07/2009, ladyboygrimsby, http://www. djhistory.com/forum/fao-ian-dewhirst-bpool-mecca?page=6 (accessed 168

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The chosen few 7 July 2016). The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club was a TV variety show which ran on Granada TV between 1974 and 1977. It was set in a studio mock-up of a northern working men’s club, which it sought to parody. Its central characters were Manchester-born comedians Bernard Manning and Colin Crompton. Crompton played the part of the club chairman and compere, with a demeanour and delivery that was stereotypical of northern provincialism, complete with comedic malapropisms. 26 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 27 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 75. 28 Black Echoes, 22 September 1979; Northern Noise, No. 1 (n.d. [1979?]). 29 Talk of the North, No. 3 (n.d. [1978?]). 30 Black Echoes, 21 April 1979. 31 John Vincent, ‘All about Northern Soul’, October 1999, http://johnvin​ cent.info/article.htm (accessed 31 March 2015). 32 Black Echoes, 21 April 1979. 33 Black Echoes, 10 July 1976. 34 Dobie Gray, ‘The In Crowd’ (1965). 35 S. Holmes, ‘Life and Soul’, Freemasonry Today: The Official Journal of the United Grand Lodge of England, No. 30, Summer 2015, p. 41. 36 Interview with Pete Haigh, 14 July 2017. 37 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016. 38 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 39 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 40 Interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 41 The Sound of Soul, No. 3 (n.d. [1982?]). 42 Over the period of the 1970s there were many venues where northern soul featured. One attempt at compilation suggests over 200 such venues. Northern Soul Official, entry: Northern Soul, posted 3 December 2013, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernSoulOfficial/ posts/10151801705221569 (accessed 25 June 2014). 43 Black Echoes, 16 October 1976. 44 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]); Black Echoes, 26 February 1977. 45 Black Echoes, 16 July, 30 July 1977; Blues and Soul, 25 August–7 September 1981. 46 Blues and Soul, 12–28 January 1974. 47 Blues and Soul, 25 November–8 December 1975. 48 Blues and Soul, 26 February–11 March, 23 April–6 May, 7–20 May 1974. 49 Street Life, 15 November 1975. 50 Black Echoes, 19 May 1979. 51 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 52 Post and Chronicle, 14 May 1978. 53 Transcript of interview between Jon Savage (aka Jonathan Sage) and 169

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Keeping the faith Dave Godin, 11 February 1995, kindly supplied to the authors by Jon Savage. 54 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016; Soul Symbol, No. 8, September 1979. 55 Black Echoes, 3 June 1976. 56 Lucy Gibson, ‘Nostalgia, Symbolic Knowledge and Generational Conflict’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 248–67. 57 Black Echoes, 15 July 1978 and 5 May 1979. 58 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 59 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016; interview with Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017. 60 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. 61 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 62 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 63 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 64 Street, ‘The Stax/Volt Revue and Soul Music Fandom’, p. 202. 65 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 66 New Soul Time, No. 4 (n.d. [1977?]). 67 Black Echoes, 29 May 1976; Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. The word was spelled either ‘divi’ or ‘divvy’. It was a specific application of the word to mean stupid or foolish person. 68 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 287. 69 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 69. 70 Shaw, Casino, p. 124; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, p. 377. 71 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 72 Soul Symbol, No. 8, September 1979. 73 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 23, October 1973. 74 Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 75 New Soul Time, No. 4 (n.d. [1977?]). 76 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 77 Routledge, Northern Monkeys, p. 94. 78 Soul Symbol, No. 8, September 1979. 79 Dave Nowell, ‘Art from the Soul’, Lancashire Life, November 2002. 80 Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (dir. Joe Boy, Odeon Entertainment, 2012), DVD. 81 Tim Wall, ‘Out on the Floor: The Politics of Dancing on the Northern Soul Scene’, Popular Music, 25.3 (2006), p. 441; Jordan Wilson, ‘Wigan Casino 1978­– ­live recording from balcony’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mrnWH_​ kRD98 (accessed 14 March 2018). See author’s ­comments regarding sound quality. The synchronised handclap of the dancers mid-song is noteworthy. 170

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The chosen few 82 S. Holmes, ‘Life and Soul’, Freemasonry Today: The Official Journal of the United Grand Lodge of England, No. 30, summer 2015, pp. 41–3. 83 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016; interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 84 Interview with Tony Davidson, 14 March 2019. 85 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 86 Interview Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 87 BBC Radio Manchester, Richard Searling, ‘Northern Soul’, broadcast 28 October 2016. 88 New Musical Express, 7 June 1975. 89 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 90 Interview with Harry Thomas, 28 September 2019. 91 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016; interview with Steve Pollard, 2 April 2016. 92 Togetherness, No. 10, autumn 2002. For a history of bootlegging in popular music, see C. Heylin, Bootleg! The Rise and Fall of the Secret Recording Industry (London: Omnibus, 2003). 93 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 45, April–May 1976. 94 Black Echoes, 8 May 1976. 95 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 27 (n.d. [February 1974?]). 96 Blues and Soul, 23 April–6 May 1974. Not publishing a playlist would retain the anonymity of rare artists and recordings, at least for a while. A published playlist would be quickly taken up by pressings purveyors, circulated and promoted in order to push up demand among eager fans and thus increase the price and value. The pressings industry would then meet that demand by producing multiple copies of the discs. 97 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 32 (n.d. [July 1974?]). 98 Soul Cargo, No. 8, 1 December 1978. 99 Black Music, May 1974. 100 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 270; Shades of Soul, No. 8, August 1986; No. 9, December 1986. 101 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 102 Interview Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 103 Black Echoes, 26 August 1978; 17 March, 7 April 1979; Talk of the North (n.d. [1978?]). 104 Black Echoes, 5 January 1977. 105 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]). 106 Okeh Northern Soul, No. 5 (n.d. [1981]). 107 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 39 (n.d. [August 1975?]). 108 Black Echoes, 29 May 1976. 109 Comment, Ian Dewhirst, posted 29 March 2008, ‘Will the Real Simon Soussan Stand Up!’, Soul Source, https://www.soul-source.co.uk/ 171

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Keeping the faith forums/topic/69272-will-the-real-simon-soussan-stand-up/ (accessed 23 June 2015). 110 Blues and Soul, 18 June–1 July 1974. 111 Togetherness, No. 9, summer 2002. 112 Brown, The Wigan Casino Years, p. 27. 113 Bombers refers to black bombers, an amphetamine, and green and clears­– ­often referred to as ‘g and cs’­– ­was another amphetamine with a distinctive green and clear capsule. 114 Wilson, Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity, p. viii. 115 The Way of the Crowd (Northern Soul Productions, 2004), video. 116 Gildart, Images of England, p. 53. 117 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 97–107. 118 Talk of the North, No. 3 (n.d. [1978?]). 119 Northern Essence: Soul Music Magazine, No. 4 (n.d. [1979?]). 120 Northern Essence: Soul Music Magazine, No. 4 (n.d. [1979?]). 121 The Observer, 8 January 1978. 122 Soul Symbol, No. 3 (n.d. [1974?]). 123 Brewster and Boughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, pp. 82–3. 124 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 266. 125 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 10 March 1973. 126 For a detailed analysis of amphetamine on the scene, see Wilson, Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity. 127 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 14 March 1973. 128 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 15 March 1973. 129 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 130 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 7 March 1973. 131 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 1 May 1973. 132 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 15 May 1973. 133 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 15 March 1973. 134 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 16 March 1973. 135 Stoke Evening Sentinel, 16 March 1973. 136 Blues and Soul, 13–26 April 1973. 137 Hot Buttered Soul, 1974. 138 Hinkley Soul Club, Va Va, http://raresoul.org.uk/hinkleysoulclub/vava. htm (accessed 13 January 2014). 139 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 23, October 1973. 140 Wigan Observer, 7 March 1978. 141 Interview with Stephen Charlson, 1 April 2017; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, pp. 377–8. Fans leaving a Casino nighter often went for a morning dip in the baths. 142 Haslam, Adventures on the Wheels of Steel, p. 125. 143 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 49, December 1976–January 1977. 144 Black Echoes, 5 February 1977. 172

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The chosen few 145 Post and Chronicle, 12 December 1978. 146 Winstanley and Nowell, Soul Survivors, p. 52. 147 Haslam, ‘Northern Lights’, City Life (Manchester), No. 23 (photocopy Wigan Archives, May or June 1984?). 148 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 17–22; M. Prince, God’s Cop: The Biography of James Anderton (London: Frederick Muller, 1988). 149 The Observer, 8 January 1978. 150 Interview with Russ Taylor, 21 April 2016; interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 151 Wilson, Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity, p. 44. 152 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 153 Interview with Adrian Smith 29 April 2016; Talk of the North, No. 3 (n.d. [1978?]). 154 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 70. A link has been made between amphetamine use and psychosis. 155 Nick Statham, ‘Gran’s Book Recalls Teenage Years as a Member of Farnworth Skinhead Gang’, The Bolton News, 31 January 2018, https:// www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/15908791.grans-book-recalls-teenageyears-as-a-member-of-farnworth-skinhead-gang/ (accessed 28 January 2019). 156 Blues and Soul, 27 April–10 May 1973. 157 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 158 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 159 Black Echoes, 12 March 1977. 160 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 161 Blues and Soul, 28 July–10 August 1972. 162 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 163 A. Wilson, ‘Mixing the Medicine: The Unintended Consequence of Amphetamine Control on the Northern Soul Scene’, Internet Journal of Criminology, 2008, http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12394/1/200321_​ 6720%​20Wilson%​20Publisher.pdf (accessed 9 May 2019). 164 Blues and Soul, 20 July–2 August 1973. 165 S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003). 166 Transcript of interview between Jon Savage (aka Jonathan Sage) and Dave Godin, 11 February 1995, kindly supplied to the authors by Jon Savage. 167 Wilson, Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity; Dave Nowell, emailed questionnaire, 27 July 2016; interview with Southport Group, 19 August 2017; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, p. 378. 168 Interview with Russ Taylor, 21 April 2016; interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 173

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Keeping the faith 169 Brewster and Boughton, ‘Kev Roberts Casino Royal’, in Brewster and Boughton, The Record Players, p. 95. 170 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016; interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016; interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016; interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016. 171 Doyle, ‘“More than a dance hall, more a way of life”’, p. 322. 172 Cummings, ‘The Northern Discos’, p. 28. 173 Shades of Soul, No. 8, August 1986. 174 G. Wilson, ‘Les Spaine, Extract from Interview’, January 2004, updated January 2011, electrofunkroots, http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/ interviews/les_​spaine.html (accessed 28 June 2018). 175 Cummings, ‘The Northern Discos’, pp. 30, 33. 176 Soul Cargo, No. 9, 1 February 1979. 177 Shaw, Casino, p. 40. 178 Record Mirror, 20 November 1971.

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6

Locating northern soul: place, class and identity

The very term ‘northern soul’ suggests that the scene was regionally specific.1 This view was reinforced in the national music press in specialist publications such as Blues and Soul, Black Music and Black Echoes, and in a multiplicity of magazines/fanzines and retrospective studies. The origins of the scene might have been located in the English north and midlands, but it also had a substantial following in other parts of Britain. Yet the attachment of the scene to the more unfashionable, largely post-industrial locales of the country remains resonant in both academic and popular constructions of northern soul.2 Such a view of the scene and its people has also been underpinned by the framing of northern soul through particular workingclass tropes, identities and associated cultures. Yet the linking of northern soul to social class and a wider conception of northernness was disputed from the initial classification of the scene in 1970.3 This chapter focuses on locality and class to interrogate both the myths and lived experiences of the scene in the towns and cities of the north and midlands.4 It complements and engages with the literature on the resilience of regional particularities in post-war Britain and the relationship between popular music, youth culture and identity.5 Points north, south, east and west: mapping the geography of northern soul In what was perhaps the peak year of northern soul in 1976, Black Echoes listed the top five locations as Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca, Cleethorpes Pier, the Ritz in Manchester and Samantha’s in Sheffield.6 Chris Bloor, writing in Hot Buttered Soul, noted the geographical specificity of the scene: ‘in most towns and cities in the North … the main type of music played is Northern’.7 Below the level 175

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of the large ‘superclubs’ there were dozens of nights organised in multi-purpose dance halls, working men’s clubs, miners’ welfares, hotels and pubs. Lancashire is the county most closely associated with northern soul, providing the foundation myths of the Twisted Wheel and the iconic Wigan Casino. In Manchester there were events in large venues such as the Hard Rock in Stretford, the Apollo Theatre, Ardwick, and the more specialist Pendulum club in the city centre. North of the city in the industrial towns of Burnley and Accrington there were smaller venues forming part of the extensive tributaries that led to Wigan Casino and Blackpool Mecca. Travelling west of the city, Bolton, Leigh, Warrington and Wigan had significant scenes throughout the 1970s. Such localities were steeped in the legacy of the industrial revolution and its concomitant working-class cultures, institutions, organisations and identities. Since the 1960s the process of deindustrialisation across the towns and cities of south Lancashire had led to the closure of cotton mills, coal mines and factories. However, a significant industrial workforce remained as an important part of the local economy. In this context it is unsurprising that the geography of northern soul was so important in contributing to both external and internal conceptions of the scene. Outside Lancashire, northern soul was similarly rooted in predominantly working-class localities that had been shaped by the resilience of particular industrial occupational identities and associated cultures. In Yorkshire, there were clubs in Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley and in smaller villages that were connected to the coalfields that still employed thousands of miners. A group of steelworkers from Teesside were also regulars at the Twisted Wheel.8 In the 1970s Yorkshire remained an industrial powerhouse with its coal mines and steel plants. Yet the victory of the miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974 masked what would be the longer decline of heavy industry. Northern soul in Yorkshire attracted coal miners, steel workers, factory operatives and shop assistants. The white rose of the county was displayed on cloth patches and related ephemera, exhibiting a twin pride in affiliation to the scene and to a broader sense of Yorkshire identity.9 The way in which the music was overlaid with a sense of local and regional pride was crucial in consolidating northern soul’s connection to place and class.10 The west and east midlands might have been geographically distant from Lancashire and Yorkshire, but here the connection to an industrial working-class past and present was also significant. The 176

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region provided two foundation clubs of northern soul: the Catacombs in Wolverhampton and the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent. Coventry had soul nights, and significant events took place around the coalfields of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire in places such as Cotgrave and Coalville.11 Local scenes both complemented and grew out of the wider geography of northern soul. Coaches travelling north to Wigan and Blackpool led to the forging of new friendships and relationships that reinforced musical preferences, occupational identities and shared experiences. Regional peculiarities and cultures in the west and east midlands could sit uneasily with wider conceptions of the north and northernness, but these were minimised by a broader opposition to London and the shifting parameters of the consumption of soul music in the south. The sense that ‘the north’ was different and distinct was also reflected in the broader popular culture of Britain in the 1970s, where drama and documentary sought to preserve the shared struggles and solidarities of the working class. The use by soul fans of particular terms such as ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘togetherness’ and ‘faith’ were connected to both British working-class and African-American discourses of identity. In Wales northern soul was largely confined to the coastal north. The geographical proximity of North Wales to Merseyside and Lancashire and the in-migration of a sizeable English population to the towns and villages of Flintshire, Denbighshire and the resorts of Llandudno, Rhyl and Prestatyn impacted on local youth culture. Soul enthusiasts from across North Wales were a sizeable minority at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel and later Wigan Casino. Soul nights flourished throughout the 1970s in Llandudno, Colwyn Bay and in the industrial villages that fed the coal and steel industry on the Dee estuary and around the town of Wrexham. The scene in South Wales was minuscule, though there was a coach that travelled from there to Wigan in 1977.12 This lack was partly attributable to the geographical distance between South Wales and the heartlands of the scene in the midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Young men and women in North Wales were drawn to the cities of Liverpool and Manchester rather than looking south to the more distant Welsh cities of Cardiff and Swansea. As with Lancashire and Yorkshire, soul nights in North Wales were held in miners’ institutes, pubs and hotels in workingclass localities.13 In the far north, Scotland had a thriving scene and throughout the 1970s coaches travelled to Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino. 177

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Yet as with Wales there were some regional variations. John Garden from Stirling, writing to Blues and Soul in 1976, claimed that he lived in an area ‘that has never heard of Northern Soul, and Soul clubs in Scotland are few and far between’.14 In contrast, John Howard, Derek Boyden and Ali Caesar argued that the scene in Scotland that did exist was not riven by the factionalism around the notion that ‘funk’s better than northern or vice-versa’. For these Scottish enthusiasts, ‘soul [was] soul’.15 The city of Dundee spearheaded the scene in Scotland. In 1976 Black Echoes reported that ‘Northern sounds have taken off in a big way, north of the border’, and in Dundee leading promoter Tony Cochrane had been holding all-dayers at the Angus Hotel, under the auspices of the Scottish Soul Society. The Marryat Hall also began to hold what became Scotland’s longest-running series of all-nighters.16 Scotland’s first soul festival was held in the city in June 1978.17 Edinburgh, with two leading northern soul venues at Tiffany’s and Clouds, was the closest rival to Dundee. Tiffany’s ran ‘The Talk of Scotland’ northern soul all-dayer at Easter 1977, and later in the decade Clouds held all-nighters.18 Three further locations became prominent during the late 1970s: Aberdeen, Ayr and Stirling. Aberdeen’s Centre City Soul Club organised all-dayers in 1977 at the Crescent Hotel.19 Later the Music Hall Aberdeen put on all-nighters in 1979 and 1980.20 Ayr’s Darlington Hotel ran all-dayers in 1978, and at the end of the decade Stirling emerged as a leading centre with 100 per cent northern nighters and all-dayers at the Albert Hall and Leisure Centre.21 Significantly, northern soul did not make inroads into Scotland’s most populous region of Strathclyde in terms of major venues. While the Glasgow area had its share of northern soul fans, many of whom travelled to England, there was, as DJ Keb Darge notes, ‘no real interest in Glasgow’.22 As with Lancashire, Yorkshire, the midlands and North Wales, Cosgrove has also noted northern soul’s connection to working-class locales in Scotland.23 The term northern soul is something of a misnomer in the sense that venues existed across the length and breadth of the country, although there were far more clubs and specialist nights in the midlands and the north. The Wheatsheaf pub in Fulham had midweek and Sunday rare soul sessions from the early 1970s. In 1972 the Shades of Green club in Northampton held a northern soul night every week.24 Similarly, the Southern Soul Club’s Hunston Hall, Chichester, had a place for northern at its Saturday night sessions, alongside funk and commercial soul, as did Bournemouth’s Maison 178

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Royale and the Roundup club in Aldershot.25 Moreover, the scene’s writ did not run in the whole of the north of England. Although there were fans in Liverpool, the scene never made major inroads there, as DJ Greg Wilson explains: ‘Northern Soul … wasn’t played at all in Liverpool … where a funkier groove was the order of the day.’26 The counter-culture was also more deeply rooted in the city, with bands such as Pink Floyd and other progressive rock artists retaining prominence throughout the 1970s. This was noted by the journalist Paul Du Noyer in his assessment of Liverpool’s fall from grace as a centre of popular music in his claim that ‘in 1972 it wasn’t as hip as Wigan’.27 In the south midlands only Redditch had all-nighters and the north Worcestershire and north Warwickshire areas represented the most southerly point of northern soul’s heartlands.28 Significantly, in both a geographical and cultural sense northern soul was largely absent from some of the major English cities of the north and midlands, including Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham, although each of these did have occasional events and nights. The most important geographical area to emerge outside of the scene’s heartlands was in eastern England, based around a cluster of towns: St Ives in Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and Cambridge. By 1976 this area had extended as far south as Bedfordshire and into Hertfordshire, over to Norwich  in the east and abutted more established scenes in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. There were local factors that helped expansion in the east of England. The influence of sizeable US airforce bases in the area was important.29 American servicemen were regulars at Northampton’s Shades of Green club.30 John Anderson’s Soul Bowl dealership­– o ­ ne of the largest and most important northern soul record shops in Britain­– w ­ as based in Kings Lynn. The promotional work of Ken Cox and the East Anglian Soul Club was also influential in developing and expanding the scene in the region. Cambridge had an established soul scene from the late 1960s, when the Howard Mallett Soul Club became prominent.31 During the early 1970s northern soul was played at the Intercom disco in Kings Lynn.32 It was, however, the small fenland town of St Ives which rose to prominence as the major northern soul centre outside of its traditional areas. The St Ives scene was based in the St Ivo recreation centre. It attracted fans from all over the country, with Soul Sam on the DJ roster. By 1976 northern soul was ‘booming’ in eastern England, with Peterborough’s Wirrina Stadium joining 179

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St Ives, ­featuring a regular Friday all-nighter, an ‘oldies’ all-nighter every other Saturday, as well as live acts.33 The Peterborough area also saw an expansion of venues holding sessions in 1976, while at the same time there were ‘dayers’ in Kettering in Northamptonshire.34 Cambridge’s Taboo club was running all-nighters in 1976 and at the southern tip of the cluster both Bedford and Kempston also had sessions.35 From 1977 the all-nighter mantle passed to the East Anglian Soul Club at fortnightly sessions at the Fleet Centre, Peterborough.36 Another part of England where northern soul spread outside its traditional boundaries was Yate in Gloucestershire, 12 miles from Bristol. While not as geographically extensive as the east of England cluster, the Southern Soul Club’s all-nighters at the Stars and Stripes club became one of northern soul’s most iconic outposts during the late 1970s.37 It proved especially popular as a coach trip out for fans from the north and midlands. The addition of an ‘oldies’ room upstairs boosted attendances, as did the club’s reputation as a meeting point for record dealers.38 Attendances at Yate during 1977 and 1978 were consistently around the 300–400 mark, which was impressive for an area not usually associated with the scene; a record 1,000 packed into the club in June 1979. There was a widely held view that Yate had ‘come a long way since the days of coaches to Wigan’, and rather than being an outpost of northern soul it had become an important venue in its own right to rival the more established clubs in the north and midlands.39 Although northern soul fans were present in north-east England the region was relatively slow in developing a local scene. The most important centres in the region during the early 1970s were the County Durham town of Chester-le-Street, specifically the Sombrero club, and Newton Aycliffe. In 1974 the Sombrero was described as ‘the only Soul place in miles’.40 In Newton Aycliffe there was a regular band of 30–40 northern soul fans who attended events on the scene, and Friday night northern soul all-nighters were held in the town.41 During the late 1970s there were moves to increase the profile of the region. This included a regular column in Black Echoes called ‘North East Blast’, collated and written by DJ Paul Mooney. At the close of the decade, one of the biggest northern soul events of the decade was held, with a ‘spectacular’ at the Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle, in January 1979 led by Soul Sam and Dave Evison.42 However, as elsewhere, events were in decline in the north-east, where, as quickly as northern soul took hold, it was giving way to funk and mixed-style events. 180

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Of hopes, dreams and tombstones: the north, northernness and northern soul43 The place of popular music in wider conceptions of regional identity remains the subject of much debate.44 Andy Bennett has pointed out that in relation to music and particular geographies, ‘the “local” is a contested rather than fixed space’.45 He argues that ‘in a very real sense, music not only informs the construction of the self, but also the social world in which the self operates’.46 This argument can be applied to northern soul, but needs some interrogation, as the attachment that many had to the scene did relate to a sense of fixed foundations, accepted myths and solidarities. The contested nature of the local is useful in exploring the relationship between the north, northernness and northern soul. The version of the north that has been connected to northern soul is the working-class and Labourist version that began to fragment at the high point of the scene in 1976. This image was reinforced by journalists and film-makers.47 Within the scene there is evidence that many fans were indeed drawn from the industrial working class, yet there was a constant tension between some participants and the more vocal and articulate insiders who wanted to dispel what they perceived to be the negative constructions of class, place and occupation. For Michael Bracewell, the suburbs were ‘the spiritual home of English pop’.48 The peripheral towns of the industrial north and midlands can make similar claims for the development, popularity and resilience of northern soul. Bracewell constructed the north as ‘a region of mythological darkness’ that produced its own strand of punk and post-punk icons such as Mark E. Smith and Morrissey.49 Unlike rock music, northern soul generally eschewed the worship of icons and instead coalesced around particular sounds. The priority was dancing to particular rare recordings by largely obscure artists. For the working class of places such as Barnsley, Wigan, Leigh, Burnley and Bolton, the darkness of the dance floor was a site of affirmation, collective experiences and solidarities that ensured that the scene would retain resilience and continuity. The north consisted of a range of identities and cultures that northern soul both complemented and transgressed in a decade that was to usher in a partial eradication of a region that was both imaginary and real.50 For Dave Russell, the north was defined and ‘othered’ by writers and politicians in London. When it was explored more critically by 181

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novelists, film-makers and journalists in the 1960s, many still fell back on familiar tropes.51 Northern soul was characterised in the same way by journalists in the music press from the outset, and retrospectively in its later period of decline and subsequent resurgence. Yet the industrial towns of the north and the coastal resorts were not as onedimensional as popular caricatures would suggest. They contained large numbers of industrial workers, more marginalised families that the welfare state had bypassed, and a thriving middle class that was also defined by occupation, income, culture and respectability. Pete McKenna, a northern soul fan from Blackpool, recalled that the resort consisted of ‘three different zones; North, South and Central’ and ‘two sprawling council estates of Grange Park and Mereside’.52 It was coincidental, but nonetheless apt, that the Blackpool version of the Twisted Wheel club was located on Coronation Street. First broadcast in 1960, in the 1970s the TV series Coronation Street remained a constant in the cultural life of working-class homes. The characters and images that graced the screen in fictional Weatherfield remained familiar to those who lived in terraced streets close to factories and coal mines, and they recognised the matriarchs, womanisers, gossips and tap room philosophers who were a staple of the weekly drama.53 The foundation document that was crucial in defining northern soul was Dave Godin’s ‘The Up-North Soul Groove’, published in two parts in Blues and Soul in the summer of 1970.54 He began the feature by criticising the closed cultural world of the capital: ‘One of the biggest troubles of living in London is that it does to tend to create an insularity that makes its inhabitants think the country begins and ends with the GLC perimeter.’55 He linked the continued popularity of rare soul in the north with the working-class hedonistic culture of the region, ‘where kids are less concerned with creating an effect’.56 Godin interviewed three soul fans from the north who equated soul music with ‘good times’.57 The rest of the article detailed the obscure ‘oldies’ that were popular in clubs such as the Twisted Wheel and Blackpool Mecca. Later in the year, he informed readers that his mailbag was evidence that ‘The North continues to swing … it is great that such oldies should take on a revived lease of life.’58 In December, Godin made what he termed ‘a pious pilgrimage to the Soul-lands of the North and Midlands’, where he planned to meet many of the people who had been writing him letters about particular clubs.59 Godin’s feature marked the transition from the rare soul scene to one that became specifically labelled as ‘northern’. For Godin, the north 182

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was indeed ‘another place’ that proved to be immune to particular aspects of popular music and youth culture in the south. The article led to further reports and letters in the music press through which battles were fought over identity, authenticity, place, commercialisation and sound.60 In 1971 Tony Cummings (as noted in Chapter 2), writing about northern soul in Record Mirror, described the clubs, DJs and punters as ‘static’.61 This was a characterisation of the scene as belonging to an industrial and working-class north that was traditional and overly nostalgic. Cummings set the template for the ways in which the classification, definition and dominant constructions of northern soul were subsequently deployed. For Cummings, what he termed ‘disco soul’ ‘appeals first to the feet and Northerners were reluctant to give up the good times of a weekend Boogaloo accompanied by the local talent and Newcastle Brown’. The young working-class dancers of the north had retained their connection to soul music rather than adopting the ‘ice-cold pseudo-intellectualism of progressive music’.62 This reflected Russell’s view that ‘the North has generally been coded as masculine … and set against a more effeminate South’.63 Cummings also argued that the sense of difference, faith and importance was codified by the ‘bible of Soulies’, Blues and Soul, and the ways it pandered to the ‘unsophisticated’ consumers of black music ‘by continually advising its readership that the soul centre of England’ was ‘in the North’.64 This piece and subsequent articles by Cummings led to a significant backlash from Godin and readers of Blues and Soul.65 Godin had an acute sense of social class which informed his anarchist and libertarian politics. In 1970 he told readers of Blues and Soul that in Britain the colour barrier has never operated along the lines that it has in America, but an identical parallel can be seen in our own caste system which is based on class. Working class people can still be made to feel very awkward in the company of middle and upper class people.66

Such views were reflected in his defence of northern soul and its apparent northernness in 1975: ‘many northern soul fans are sick and tired of seeing the scene they helped create abused, vilified and p ­ rostituted … the musical idioms of the mid and late sixties so intrigued the North they couldn’t bear to surrender them up when the media dictated they should do so’. He viewed this as a ‘marvellous example of collective affirmation’ and that ‘the North has tried to keep the faith 183

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with the music they love’.67 In the same year Godin was writing the scene’s obituary, proclaiming that ‘Northern Soul is Dead!’ He took aim at the exploitative capitalists and businessmen, but also at the purists who were refusing to play records ‘at the merest rumour that the performing artist was white’. Nonetheless, he defended his consistent view and critique of the ‘high-nosed purists of the South who couldn’t abide the music’.68 He vowed that he would no longer use the term northern soul in his column.69 Godin attacked Cummings and other associated southern journalists and record companies. He was exasperated with the way in which Cummings was ‘so thoroughly obsessed with the working-class aspects of the northern scene’. To Godin, northern soul ‘was quite amazingly classless’. In his anarchist politics he did not share the conceptions of class adumbrated by assorted socialist, communist and radical organisations of the 1970s. His view was that ‘there would be much less strife in the world if people just accepted their lot in life’.70 Yet the northernness of northern soul had already been cemented in the music press and had some traction and longevity among those who participated in the scene. Later in his career, when the scene reached its peak popularity, Godin remained critical of the ways in which it had become locked into particular images, sounds and identities. In his column for Blues and Soul in 1977 he offered the following position: ‘the term “Northern Soul” was distorted out of all proportion to its original meaning because people … took the word “North” in a literal geographical sense … Its original meaning was aesthetic, not geographical.’71 Nonetheless, as the advertisements for clubs in the magazine indicated, along with the number of subscribers and contributors to letters and pen pal pages in various magazines and fanzines, the north remained central to the scene. The popularity of Wigan Casino reinforced the connection between the north, northernness and northern soul, and it became the focal point for outsiders in making the link between locality, class and culture. Godin returned to the subject of class and northern soul in later interventions, claiming that soul fans were indeed ‘predominantly working class’.72 This view is echoed by the oral histories that were collected for this book. The DJ Dave Evison claimed that ‘it was predominantly working class, but it did take all sorts’.73 For much of the 1970s the battle between north and south regularly appeared in soul publications, with the high point in the period 1971–74. A letter from J. Finlay in Blues and Soul in 1972 was indica184

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tive of the ruptures: ‘There are two factions working within the field of [soul] music­– ­Northern Soul and … Southern Soul … the main difference between the types of music are basically tempo and the atmosphere, private or collective, which they provide, apart from the facile, geographical sectarian differences.’74 Building on the critiques of northern soul that had been laid down by Cummings in Record Mirror, a number of readers challenged the magazine to move away from a focus on the north and the emphasis on difference and fragmentation. In an editorial commenting on the North vs South battle, the magazine outlined the ways in which readers had accused it of ‘inciting the problem by referring to records as being ideal for the North’. In its defence, the editor claimed that such classification was ‘certainly not derogatory but merely a statement that a certain record will appeal more in the northern sector of our country’.75 Nonetheless, in early 1973 Blues and Soul had given significant space to Frank Elson to develop his ‘Check out the North’ section, thus reinforcing the importance of northern soul to a significant slice of its readership. In the years 1972–73 the magazine noted that ‘sales have increased so much in the North’.76 The fact that the soul press continued to use the term ‘northern’ was no doubt embraced by those in the north who remained attracted to particular records and were nostalgic for the original sounds of the Twisted Wheel and the Torch. To interrogate the meaning of northern soul, readers of magazines and fanzines were invited to express their own views. In 1976 DJ Soul Sam, in Hot Buttered Soul, sought to answer the question ‘What is Northern Soul?’ He pointed to its geographical specificity in the ‘North Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire’.77 Yet other contributions to the ‘What is Northern Soul?’ sections of various magazines were notable for lacking a clear description of its regional and class bases. Wigan DJ Russ Winstanley focused on the ‘electric … religious atmosphere’ and ‘experiences and feelings’.78 Some tied the scene to wider identifications of northernness. Dave McCadden, the editor of Soul Time, proclaimed in the first issue, published in 1976, that ‘this is not my mag, it is your mag, it is the North’s mag. If you want to complain about any aspect of the North, then write to us.’79 Two years later, Talk of the North magazine located the scene and its history as being ‘the Midlands’ and ‘the North’.80 From the outset, Godin and Elson had worked to mount a critical defence of northern soul by dismantling some of the stereotypes and tropes deployed by its critics. In the spring of 1974, Elson explained 185

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that the divisions between north and south were ‘a bit dated as far as geography is concerned’. Yet he admitted that ‘there are far more “Oldies Dance Discos” … in the North’.81 Both Godin and Elson were proselytisers for soul music in general and were robust in their efforts to prevent factionalism. The rhetoric of ‘keeping the faith’ was also blended with calls for unity and solidarity and the notion that ‘divided we fall’.82 In its industrial heartlands northern soul formed part of a wider shared cultural identity through which an attack on the scene was read as a more general critique of the working-class north. Mac, Steve and Adrian from Barnsley responded to Elson, claiming that he ‘no longer refers to our music as soul but as northern dance music’.83 In 1976 Elson felt that northern soul fans who travelled from the south were engaging with a wider regional culture that still exhibited the trappings of the traditional working class: The boy and girl who get on a train in Reading on a Saturday morning heading for Blackpool, or Cleethorpes or Wigan … are only interested in having a good time. Dancing to the music they love, perhaps a walk along the seashore, some Lancashire … Fish and Chips and a big lollipop with a face on it then … it’s time to head home.84

Such depictions no doubt reinforced particular images of the north for those travelling from the midlands and the south. Yet it was also a further example of the ways in which northern soul was becoming more specifically northern in image, locality and presentation. The cloth patches worn by soul fans depicted Blackpool Tower, the red rose of Lancashire and the white rose of Yorkshire. The columns by Elson in Blues and Soul were often woven with particular tropes relating to class, demeanour, accent and locality. The hopes and dreams of soul fans were articulated and expressed on the dance floors of localities that were going through a process of deindustrialisation, with the colliery slag heaps and abandoned cotton mills providing tombstones for a world and a culture that was beginning to fragment. Just like the weather: coal, cotton and soul85 Depictions of northern soul by contemporary commentators contextualised the scene against the declining fortunes of the British coal and cotton textile industries, most notably the film-maker Tony Palmer in his documentary on ‘The Wigan Casino’ for Granada television’s This England series in 1977 (examined below). Just like the 186

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region’s weather, aspects of its popular culture were characterised as gritty, grey and dull. Portrayals of northern soul in Wigan bore some resemblance to those offered by Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937: ‘As you walk through the industrial towns you lose yourself in labyrinths of little brick houses blackened by smoke, festering in planless chaos’.86 Seventy years later the broadcaster Stuart Maconie pointed to the continuities in Wigan’s pleasure-seeking culture that stretched across the decades: music, drink and the consumption of pies.87 Connell and Gibson have noted that ‘musical forms and practices originate within, interact with, and are inevitably affected by, the physical, social, political and economic factors which surround them’.88 Northern soul developed and retained its popularity in the 1970s in the coal mining and cotton textile areas of Lancashire. There were a multiplicity of soul clubs in a variety of premises in the towns of Wigan, Leigh and Burnley, where such industries remained part of the social fabric and memory. Northern soul was transmitted through the sound systems of local and regional DJs in places such as Wigan rugby league club and Burnley cricket club. Burnley had its own Soul Satisfaction Society which organised bus trips to other clubs across the north-west.89 Elson described the scene in Accrington: ‘pleasant local clubs that abound in the North in similar buildings that just seem to go on forever’.90 Some of the most iconic artists of the scene had names that would not have been out of place among the coal miners of Leigh and Wigan: Tommy Hunt, Roy Hamilton, Jimmy Radcliffe and Frank Wilson. Hunt became a cult figure for the Wigan crowd and remained astounded by the fact that it was ‘incredible to have a club so much into soul’.91 In his ‘personal history’, Cosgrove noted that there was a ‘sizeable cadre of pit workers on the northern soul scene’.92 Elson, the son of a miner, traces the working-class and industrial component of the northern scene back to the mods of the 1960s. In Stoke-on-Trent ‘mods were miners … tough lads’.93 Dave Rimmer believes that it was ‘really a scene that was strong in mill towns’.94 Kev Roberts, another miner’s son from Mansfield, immersed himself in the world of northern soul in the 1970s.95 Some on the scene also saw fashion as a statement of class identity. Adrian Smith from Skipton, who attended Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino through the 1970s, felt that the clothes and music constituted a ‘working class scene’ with its ‘working class urban uniform’: ‘sta-prest, DMs, Brutus shirts, bowling shirts’. Clothing was 187

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embellished with embroidery and patches signifying a collective identity and sense of place.96 As noted earlier, Bernie Golding recalled that there was at least one bus that travelled to Blackpool Mecca from many of the sizeable towns in Lancashire in the early 1970s. For Golding this was an extension of an older tradition of ‘Wakes Weeks’, when workers from mill and mining towns would converge on the resort. As with working-class localities and workplaces, the scene also adopted the tradition of bestowing nicknames on club regulars, usually associated with place of birth or the locality in which the person resided.97 Similarly, the dance floor of Wigan Casino can be read as a map of the midlands and the north. When entering the venue, on the left you would see ‘the Stoke corner at the top’; Leigh had another position, as did Skipton, Selby and the Scottish and North Wales contingent.98 The opening of Wigan Casino gave northern soul its centre of gravity. The manager of the Casino, Mike Walker, felt in 1974 that the name of Elson’s ‘Check Out the North’ column in Blues and Soul should be changed to ‘The Road to Wigan’, given that the club was ‘the single most important thing happening on the disco scene’.99 Yet within the Casino the tensions between modernity and nostalgia were apparent, with the Mr M’s section of the club characterised by Soul Time fanzine in 1976 as being ‘the time warp in a time warp’.100 The club was located in the north, and its embrace of nostalgia, tradition and relatively fixed cultures made it distinctively northern. In this respect it is unsurprising that journalists and film-makers read the Casino as being embedded in the longer history of the coal and cotton communities of the region. Tony Cummings promulgated the connection between northern soul and the culture of the wider industrial north. In his lengthy article on ‘the strange world of northern soul’, published in June 1974 in Black Music, he constructed a fantasy narrative of a dream experienced by soul singer Eddie Foster at his home in San Francisco, in which he journeys across the ocean and through the soul locales of the United Kingdom: And as it moves up the centre of the land, the spirit sees the nature of the ground beneath change. There are the scars of the Industrial Revolution. Factories, large satanic mills, the ugly grime and dirt … Now the spirit feels its goal is near, Yorkshire, Lancashire, the North … The strange unfamiliar names of the cities … Manchester, Wigan, Blackpool.101 188

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The spirit of Foster arrives at the ‘beating heart of northern soul’, and then he wakes from his dream asking himself ‘where the hell is Wigan?’ Cummings reinforced the class and occupational dimensions of the scene in his descriptions of Tiffany’s in Stoke and Blackpool Mecca. At Tiffany’s he engaged ‘in a corner downstairs two teenage youths one a factory hand from Preston one a railway worker from Crewe’. Another fan commented: ‘we work hard. Bloody hard, and we want to work hard on the dancefloor.’102 Cummings depicts Blackpool through the prism of an industrial north that was a relic of the past. Blackpool is the grossest, silliest, happiest, saddest, most glamorously tawdry place on earth. It confirms the stereotype image of the Northern Herbert on holiday (kiss-me-quick hats and trousers rolled up to the knee …) I scrutinise faces. Faces of hard working guys who sweat for twenty pounds a week in workshops and then spend almost that much sweating in venues like this.103

Negative constructions of the north and northern soul were also articulated by television comedians such as the Goodies. In 1975 they released a record entitled ‘Black Pudding Bertha: The Queen of Northern Soul’, which deployed familiar tropes and caricatures. A letter to Black Music asked ‘where do we go from here? Could it be Eddie Waring singing “Let Me (score a) Try Again”, on a live album from Wigan Pier? Or Wigan’s Ovation topping the bill at the Wheel Tappers and Shunters’ Club?’104 Yet beyond the levity there was a serious discussion within the scene about such negative stereotyping of the north in general and northern soul fans in particular. Cummings’s article generated a significant response in Black Music, challenging his characterisation of northern soul and defending it from its critics in the wider media. Six months later in January 1975, Cummings returned to the scene with an article entitled ‘Northern Soul Revisited’. In this piece his focused on the bootleggers, DJs and commercial exploiters. Russ Winstanley of Wigan Casino told Cummings that, ‘unlike Blackpool we are trying to keep the Northern Soul scene truly Northern’.105 For Cummings this confirmed what he referred to as an ‘unreasoned regionalism’ which dominated ‘large portions of the northern fans’ attitudes’.106 This again sparked debate, with the DJ Dave Evison writing from Manchester in defence of the scene and the north more generally: ‘You’ll find throughout the North of England that “harmony” has always been accepted as one of the great assets of our music.’107 189

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Subsequent reports on northern clubs by Cummings in Black Music continued to push the northern soul/northern working class nexus. In his review of Wigan Casino in the winter of 1975 he painted a now familiar picture: ‘The Casinoites are dressed for the heat. Muscled arms bulge from … shapeless bowling shirts. The rail workers from Crewe, packers from Preston, steelworkers from Sheffield and factory hands from Burnley stand shoulder to shoulder.’108 Cummings spoke to Les Cockell, a veteran of the scene, who he described as having a ‘low drawling accent’, who explained that ‘I cum t’night t’see Exciters, I daunt really like Wigan, thought it t’was greet atmosphere t’night.’109 Cummings ended the feature with the opinion that northern soul would continue to flourish, as ‘it still fills such a vital social need for socially deprived working class youth that cannot be splintered by any outside pressure’.110 Class and place also loomed large in Gordon Burn’s feature on Wigan Casino, published in the Sunday Times Magazine in February 1976. Burn located the Casino ‘deep in what is called Northern Clubland’: ‘arriving in the middle of the night it is necessary to negotiate impassive bodies on the stairs, and sweat, suspended in the air, condenses on the lips like chip fat; the dance floor sways constantly like the Stretford End at Old Trafford’.111 Burn interviewed Gary, a 20-year-old who ‘mends fruit machines for a living’. Gary claimed that there was rebellion in the scene aimed at the south, where soul enthusiasts were ‘middle-class white-collar workers’. Yet ‘in the North’ soul ‘was, still is, very much a working-class scene’.112 Burn’s feature included photographs taken by Red Saunders, the cofounder of Rock Against Racism. The images convey the grittiness and starkness of the club, with teenagers slumped over rudimentary tables and chairs with pop bottles, ashtrays and the associated detritus of the ‘all-nighter’. The construction of the north as ‘other’ and as trapped in an industrial past that refused to bow to the processes of deindustrialisation and modernity was also a feature of the ways in which towns such as Leigh and Wigan were characterised by dramatists and television writers. Coronation Street was a mainstay of working-class television viewing. The opening credits showing the terraced streets of Salford and the characters who frequented the bar at the Rovers Return were familiar northern tropes that became firmly embedded in the collective memory of the children of the industrial north. The ‘street’ provided images of the resilience of class and industry, local particu190

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larisms that were often stereotypical but nonetheless real. The coal mines of Leigh and Wigan (relocated to Yorkshire) were presented in the drama Sam (1973–75). The writer Alan Bleasdale used Leigh and Bickershaw colliery as the backdrop to his short television play Early to Bed, made in 1974. The location shots depict Victorian terraces, the looming colliery headgear and the centrality of Plank Lane Labour Club to the cultural life of the miners. Frankie, the coal miner and self-styled cabaret crooner, is presented complete with broad Leigh accent, powered by pints of beer and fish and chip suppers. A year later viewers in the Granada region were again introduced to Leigh’s coal miners in the documentary short film On the Road: Jimmy, Cakey and Enrico (1975). The film opens with shots of Parsonage and Bickershaw collieries, with miners emerging out of the darkness of the mine and into the warren of terraced streets. The viewer then follows local teenage coal miners Jimmy, Enrico and their friend Cakey as they go ‘ferreting in Plank Lane’. The past and present of working-class life and locality here appear unchanging: barren landscapes punctuated by colliery headgear, coal waste and polluted ponds. As the boys pursue the rabbits on the land between Bickershaw and Parsonage collieries a steam train hauls coal tubs along the track. The boys wear their hair and clothes in a similar fashion to the dancers of Wigan Casino and show little sign that life could be different. In the same year, Ken Loach’s Days of Hope (1975), broadcast on BBC1, presented a version of labour history marked by the betrayal of the nation’s miners by the moderates of the Trades Union Congress and the revisionist social democracy of the Labour Party. Tony Palmer’s film Wigan Casino (1977) is a companion piece to such dramas and documentaries depicting the north. Palmer’s presentation was later the subject of critique in retrospective discussions from within and beyond the northern soul scene.113 Nonetheless, his attempt to fuse Wigan’s industrial past with the then contemporary working-class youth culture of the north should be reappraised in the context of the period when it was devised, produced and broadcast. Palmer’s approach to the ways in which popular music could be explored as a way of understanding broader economic and social experiences was first formulated in his documentary All My Loving (1968), and followed by his expansive series on the history of popular music, All You Need Is Love (1977).114 In Wigan Casino viewers are presented with another take on the unchanging north which combines a soundtrack of folk music, northern soul and images of Wigan’s past 191

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and present, interspersed by interviews with ex-miners, factory workers and regular attendees of the all-nighters. The opening shots of Wigan Casino are a melange of power stations, canals, terraced streets and dancers pounding the floor of the Casino. A dancer and laundry worker at a Leigh hospital further anchors the ‘northernness’ of the film with her broad accent and working-class signifiers. Record collector and Wigan regular Dave Withers peppers his contribution to the characterisation of the scene with phrases such as ‘a sense of belonging’ and ‘community feeling’. He is presented working at a lathe, in a similar fashion to Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton in the opening scene of the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). A Socialist Worker newspaper seller is filmed walking through Wigan market. The soul soundtrack switches to Elgar and then to traditional folk songs performed by Leon Rosselson, accompanied by images of the Heinz factory production line. This is followed by an interview with a retired miner, recalling tragedy, poverty and death in the Lancashire coalfield. Work is a central motif in the film, from mining to textiles through to the contemporary drudgery of women’s labour in laundries. Photographs of Edwardian workers are mixed with images of 1960s council housing and high-rise grey concrete flats and external shots of the Casino. The inner world of the Casino and the frenetic dancing offer both an affirmation and transgression of the wider working-class culture of Wigan and Leigh. The final scene of a rag and bone man traversing the terraced streets in search of the detritus of penny capitalism captures a world that had been built in the industrial revolution and that was still holding out in the face of economic and cultural modernity and the process of deindustrialisation that had been set in train with the colliery closures of the 1960s.115 Eight years after the filming of the documentary, the miners’ strike of 1984–85 and the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers signalled the end of coal mining in Wigan and Leigh.116 The last mine in the Lancashire coalfield, Parkside Colliery, was closed under John Major’s Conservative government in 1993. Unsurprisingly, Palmer’s film has subsequently been used for images of northern soul dancing and to affirm the northernness of the scene. Insiders were and remain critical of the ways in which the film exaggerated the geographical aspects of northern soul.117 Elson and others challenged the ways in which Wigan Casino was being connected to aspects of working-class identity. In one of his reports 192

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from the Casino in 1976 Elson interviewed Terry Jones, who was a student and not one of the ‘brickies’ labourers or factory workers that outsiders usually use in a subtle attempt to put the northern soul fans down’.118 Elaine Constantine later argued that attendees of Wigan Casino ‘weren’t victims of the mills and their community’.119 Yet contemporary reactions to the film were more forgiving. In the weeks following the broadcast, the DJ Russ Winstanley wrote a letter to Black Echoes that praised the way it ‘accurately summarised our scene’, while adding that ‘Wiganers will probably wince at the shots … of old Wigan, especially the pier and cobblestone streets’.120 Northern soul’s connections to particular regional and class-based experiences cannot be completely denied, and all the sources explored for this book point to their salience. In 1978 the Clwyd Soul Club organised by Mark Speakman had a regular weekly session at the miners’ welfare in the village of Ffynnongroyw, close to Point of Ayr colliery.121 Miners from this area had been attendees at the Torch and formed part of the soul community in North Wales that was sustained throughout the 1970s. In the Yorkshire coalfield, Barnsley was a hub for northern soul enthusiasts. Youths from Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire would travel through the Pennines to the Londoner pub and its soul nights.122 Dodworth colliery miner ‘Bub’ became a significant figure on the scene throughout the decade and into the 1980s.123 Also in Barnsley, Elson reported on a northern soul night at the Portcullis, where the ‘South Yorkshire people are very typical of northern soul people in their enthusiasm for having a good time … music is almost completely oldies’.124 Johny Pitts, a black ­working-class northern photographer and writer from Sheffield (son of Richard Pitts, a member of American soul band the Fantastics), has recently argued that ‘there was certainly something about the grit and the pain in the music born of oppression that resonated with white working class communities’. Yet he remains sceptical of Godin’s stress on comparisons between racial oppression in the United States and class discrimination in the industrial north. For Pitts, the scene ‘was about escapism … to finish a week’s graft in the pits or mines or steelworks and lose yourself in a foreign exotic culture for a few hours on the dancefloor’.125 For enthusiasts of northern soul in these industrial communities, the music punctuated their everyday lives and formed the soundtrack for their weekends. However, the industrial culture of which soul music formed a part was beginning to be transformed through colliery closures and a more general process of 193

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deindustrialisation that would be a feature of British society in the 1970s and 1980s. Just another heartache: deindustrialisation, solidarity, fragmentation126 Raphael Samuel, in his analysis of the folk revival of the 1960s, characterised the network of clubs as a ‘kind of refuge for the sociologically orphaned­– ­the ex-working class from whose ranks the new generation of singers were largely recruited’.127 Such a process was more complex on the northern soul scene. Young men and women were drawn from a multiplicity of working-class occupations: factory hands, miners, office workers, retail workers. The scene was never really ‘closed’ and notable figures such as DJs Ian Levine, Dave Evison and Rick Cooper were more solidly middle class. Yet northern soul exhibited continuities with an older yet resilient industrial culture that was forged on hedonistic Saturdays and the centrality of the dance floor. Chris Bloor, writing in Hot Buttered Soul, claimed that ‘in the North 90% of the people go to discos to dance’.128 In June 1974 an article titled the ‘funky freaks of the far north’ was published in New Musical Express. Roger St Pierre found evidence of a ‘large cult … [in] the land where the mods are still marching … where you can skip back into history by entering a discotheque’. There was a ‘“tight knit and community feeling” to the northern cult’. This was a largely sympathetic portrait, noting that ‘if a cult of such epidemic proportions was happening in London, rather than far-off Blackpool, Keighley, Warrington and Manchester, the pop press would be full of it’.129 Conservative historians such as Dominic Sandbrook have noted that in the early 1970s, when northern soul was reaching its peak of popularity, ‘11 million people out of a workforce of 23 million belonged to a trade union, and their numbers were swelling all the time’.130 Culturally, Sandbrook contrasts this period with the 1960s, when youth culture was bound up with modernisation, futuristic design and optimism; the early 1970s were years when ‘the future fell out of fashion’.131 Stuart Cosgrove deploys similar tropes when writing soon after the closure of Wigan Casino in 1982, depicting the northern soul scene as one that thrived in ‘the slightly seedy environments of old dancehalls and railway stations’.132 More recently, Mark Duffett has argued that ‘northern soul fandom locates itself in relation to working-class identity’.133 The experiences of Gethro Jones, to 194

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judge by his diary entries from 1974, confirm the resilience of class identities and cultures and the way these were tightly woven into his thoughts, narratives and engagement with the scene.134 Cummings described northern soul as a cult-like working-class religion: ‘a religion has now evolved with its own temple (Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca), high priests (the disc jockeys), false prophets (the bootleggers) and congregation (thousands of working class kids pulled from the heavy industry belt of the north)’.135 This article, along with Godin’s earlier piece published in 1970, formed a template for subsequent readings and characterisations of northern soul set against the backdrop of a recent industrial past. In 1975 New Musical Express followed up its investigation from a year earlier and despatched Vivien Goldman to Wigan. She found a culture that contained many accoutrements of what she perceived to be northern identity: the jam-packed Edwardian-style venue that is the Wigan Casino has seen many, many events in its time, but nothing as strange as the weirdo phenomenon of Northern Soul. Wherein many youngsters, mostly of Anglo-Saxon origin, assemble at 12.30 on a Saturday night/ Sunday morning, intent on forgetting the frowstiness of an existence which in weekdays consists of boring dead-end job, or no job and no money … dancing the night away to singles long since forgotten … ­resurrected from the mouldering vaults of warehouses in Chicago or junk shops in Bury … to live again as the focal point in the lives of thousands of Northern working-class kids … It all begins at the fish and chip shop next door … Its crammed full of young Wiganites, and the atmosphere is electric over the Hall’s meat and potato pies. Also served is that peculiarly Northern delicacy, squashed processed peas in gravy.136

A year later, Godin felt that participants in the scene in the north had a ‘slavish devotion to a past that can never return’.137 Burn, in his Sunday Times Magazine feature, noted that Wigan Casino had been a dance hall ‘for nearly 60 years, its stark interior little altered since the ragtime days’.138 In his description of driving between soul venues in Barnsley and Mexborough, Elson’s prose painted a picture of Victorian industrialisation and pollution: ‘huge chimneys and red glows with smoke and fumes pouring out … the locals call it Hell … it certainly looks like it’.139 Similarly, Dave McCadden from Manchester replied to a report by a visitor from the south to a northern soul venue who had painted a similar picture: ‘Did he think there would be plush wall-to-wall carpeting and silver ashtrays … I speak for all northern 195

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fans when I say I don’t give a damn for the opinion of some curious visitor … who didn’t try to understand the ethics of the North’.140 McCadden also defended the badges and the associated accoutrements that were displayed by dancers: ‘Badges are merely a way of saying “Look, I’m a Northern Soul fan” … Don’t expect the North to be full of goodies and baddies. It’s a mixture of both.’141 Andy Newbold from Doncaster was ‘a true believer of non-­commercialisation’. His view was that the northern scene’s potency, togetherness and solidarity had been built ‘to break from London and the South’s dictation of the music scene’.142 Kev Roberts recalls very few attendees from the south and that the scene was ‘generally a northern thing’.143 For Steve Pollard, the social context was an important aspect of the scene: ‘terraced housing … Lancashire and Yorkshire … mundane work … Northern Soul gave them the ability to escape into something different.’144 Reports of trips to northern towns such as Wigan and Blackpool reveal that engagement with the scene was often complemented by participation in the broader working-class culture of these locales. A review of Blackpool Mecca in New Soul Time in 1977 is indicative: ‘On to Blackpool … looking forward to the walk on the prom, a go on the fun fair and a pint.’145 Fanzines also featured experiences that personified working-class alienation. It’s the Beat had an occasional ‘What Northern Soul Means To Me’ column. In an issue from 1979, Johnny from Chester said, ‘I have to work with wankers … 40 hours a week, and when the weekend comes I just want to enjoy myself.’146 In the specialist soul press, ‘northern’ had its own pages: Elson’s column in Blues and Soul, ‘Stomping Ground’ in Black Echoes and occasional detailed features and club night advertisements in Black Music. The portrayal of the decline of northern soul mirrored wider criticisms of the north and its inability to move with the changing times.147 For Samuel, ‘the North was turned from an avatar of modernisation into a byword for backwardness’.148 In contrast to the dominant view first promoted by Hebdige of subculture being a type of resistance to some form of ‘ruling ideology’, northern soul had a far more complex relationship to local, regional and national identities.149 Bob Dickinson, writing to Blues and Soul in 1974, gained ‘real lessons’ about the scene when he moved to the north in 1972, where ‘a lot of people … listened to soul and nothing else’.150 Looking forward to 1976, Godin used his column to pronounce on the future of the scene. Striking a pessimistic note, he felt that ‘we have to take into 196

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consideration the general economic gloom that surrounds the country, and seems likely to do so for the foreseeable future’. For Godin, ‘saddest of all’ was the fact that ‘the total collapse of the Northern circuit as either a viable or practical alternative to BBC obstinacy has meant that soul music is again dependent solely on non-media support and the demands and enthusiasm of the grass-roots to keep it going’.151 He was also critical of elements on the scene that were destroying it from the inside. Using tropes associated with northern soul that he had earlier challenged, Godin felt that its ‘proletarian following’ consisting of ‘Brut-soaked masses could be exploited and corrupted’.152 The veterans of the Twisted Wheel and the Torch were already writing the obituaries of northern soul in what were arguably its peak years of 1974–76. Dave Price from North Wales wrote a letter to Blues and Soul full of wistful reminiscence and nostalgia for a golden age: ‘the All-Nighters do not have the atmosphere they used to have … the wonderful scene there was on both Victoria and Piccadilly Stations in Manchester as people gathered … to converge on the Twisted Wheel’.153 Editorials in Black Music also highlighted the contradictions in the scene between collectivism, solidarity and the capitalism that was one of its key drivers: ‘For all their soul brother image and “keep the faith” slogans, they are bloodsuckers on the body of black music.’154 Neil St John and Ian Clowery from Chesterfield shared the view that commercialisation was responsible for people moving away from the scene: ‘the moment it became publicised it has slowly declined eg badges, key rings, soul pens’.155 Godin concurred, stressing that ‘all revolutions devour their own children’.156 A letter from J. Bywater from Leeds to Black Music under the heading ‘northexploitation’ argued that northern soul would ‘die a tragic death’ through commercialisation.157 By late 1977 both the national soul press and self-published magazines and fanzines were reporting falling attendances at the major clubs and the nights held at ad hoc venues across the midlands and the north. Writing in Hot Buttered Soul, Dave McCadden claimed that ‘Northern Clubs are closing … places like Wigan are half empty on Saturday nights’.158 In the same year, an article in Black Echoes entitled ‘Is Support for NS Waning?’ noted falling attendances in Nottinghamshire.159 Elson also addressed the subject, asking ‘Is Northern Soul Falling Apart?’ He detected fragmentation and factionalism, which did not bode well for the future: ‘I’m not going to 197

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advocate any kind of socialistic revolt against money on the scene … what I do want to see more of is people becoming a little more tolerant in their treatment of other people’s opinions.’160 His report on Samantha’s in Sheffield noted that the manager was concerned that attendances ‘were about as low as he could allow them to be’.161 Godin argued that the strength of the scene could be its undoing, because of its aversion to mass popularity. He implicated some of the DJs in this situation: ‘the DJ … should realise that part of his function is to help to mould tomorrow’s tastes’.162 For Godin, the scene was being undermined by drugs and the static nature of its culture. In 1976 he was already claiming that ‘speed kills, nostalgia kills, and right now both those two elements are having far too much sway’.163 In 1977 various northern soul magazines and fanzines were reporting the resilience and continued popularity of the ‘oldies’ scene. Pat Brady wrote in New Soul Time that the ‘oldies boom’ had now ‘reached massive proportions … to such an extent that nearly all the top venues were holding regular “Oldies Revivals” i.e. “Torch”, “Wheel” and even “Wigan” revivals’.164 The DJs themselves did not adopt the presentational style of their more cosmopolitan peers on national radio and in the more conventional clubs, who delivered their announcements in the style of New York DJs. In contrast, DJ ‘Ginger’ at the Ritz in Manchester would perform ‘in his broad Burnley accent’.165 The entrenchment of what was perceived to be ‘real northern soul’ was codified by various fanzines such as New Soul Time, which was published ‘for stompers, by stompers, about stomping’.166 Many of the fanzines were published in working-class areas of the midlands and the north in places such as Stretford (Manchester), and Cotgrave (Nottinghamshire). Their readership was largely drawn from those attending the key venues on the ‘oldies’ scene in Lancashire. Some on the northern soul scene saw it as an escape from the suffocating culture of working-class masculinity. Johnny from Chester was a regular attendee at Wigan Casino, and in a letter to It’s the Beat fanzine in 1978 he said that ‘all the lads at my horrible engineering works just live to drink and shag and watch football’. He preferred ‘hearing all the oldies’ in Mr M’s.167 In other localities, northern soul was often caught between a traditional working-class parent culture and the more modernist images and soundscapes of contemporary music. Dave Thomas wrote a letter to Blues and Soul in 1974 alerting readers to the fact that the soul night at the Winsford British Legion had been displaced by the return of bingo.168 The local-centric nature 198

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of the scene in the midlands and the north was also linked to the lack of mobility available to working-class youth. As a result of financial constraints and a feeling of safety within their own specific milieu, the imagined south was some distance away both geographically and culturally. For Kev Roberts in Mansfield, ‘Nottingham was doable … London felt so far away’.169 Paul McDonald concurs that travelling was a slow process through the hierarchies of the scene, in which you would progress through the local, regional and then national clubs such as Blackpool and Wigan.170 Writers such as Elson and Godin criticised the southern media for continuing to ignore soul and instead elevating punk music. Elson wrote that it was ‘sad to find that in these enlightened times soul music is still regarded as second class’.171 Contributors to publications such as Blues and Soul also noticed that by 1977 the scene was not as it had been some years earlier. Chris Gillard’s letter was indicative: ‘An era never to be repeated­– ­a legend in its own right­– N ­ orthern Soul­– ­RIP … Savoured only by the true appreciative followers … Keep On Keeping On!’172 Ironically, such obituaries were being written when the nation was being made more aware of the scene through the broadcast of Tony Palmer’s film. Wigan Casino, although still popular, was delving further into a celebration and affirmation of a glorious and mythical past with its Twisted Wheel and Torch revival nights.173 The perceived crisis in the scene was highlighted by Elson in his feature on ‘Northern Club Closures’, published in Blues and Soul in November 1977. He reported that after eight years Blackpool Mecca was coming to an end, following the closure of the Carlton club in Warrington, St Ives and other smaller venues.174 The closures were linked to concerns over drugs, falling attendances, shifts in music policy and the penchant of young people to flit between a range of subcultural identities. Yet Elson celebrated the spirit and atmosphere that had been a feature of the scene since its inception at the Twisted Wheel: ‘it’s the sound, touch and smell of the people … I’ve found it in Cricket Clubs, British Legions, Social Clubs, Mecca monoliths and dance halls with water running down the walls … in Wrexham, in Manchester, in Wigan … and it’s there in Sheffield.’175 Here again we see a construction of the scene within a wider industrial and soon to be post-industrial context. In 1979 the DJ Dave Evison, writing in the fanzine Soul Source, reflected on the originality, authenticity and apparently ­continuing 199

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solidarity of the scene. His column was entitled ‘Up ‘T’ North’ and he proclaimed that ‘we have built our world famous reputation for being unique and mystifying to the blatant envy of the outside world’.176 The deployment of a particular version of northernness continued to be promoted by fanzines such as It’s the Beat. The cover proclaimed that it was a publication for the ‘Northern Soul Scene in the Heart of Industrial Britain’. It went on to list Derby, Sheffield, Nottingham, Doncaster, Newcastle, Birkenhead, Wigan, Birmingham and Manchester.177 The scene in some of the northern towns now relied on grassroots organising and funding to maintain its presence in the broader youth culture. Dave Moore and the ‘Burnley Crowd’ subsidised soul nights in various venues such as the 110 Club and the British Legion.178 Accrington was another northern town where the fight to maintain a scene was notable. A report in Talk of the North on the Spinning Jenny club illustrated the longevity of northern soul and its struggle to maintain a position against the influences of other forms of music. It was one of the small, closely knit clubs that form the backbone of the scene … a popular soul haven with soul folk from Burnley, Accrington, Todmorden, Nelson and surrounding areas for a few years now … Towards the end of ’77 the influx of New York Disco sounds caused a split … after falling attendances they switched to the new ‘Stompers Only’ regime.

The editor stressed that ‘the Spinning Jenny is a fine example of what can be done on a local level’.179 David Lovell from Halifax wrote to Black Echoes summarising the growth and impact of the scene on the region: ‘please don’t knock something that had a great deal to do with the north’.180 A recurrent feature of northern soul throughout the 1970s was the fact that its obituaries were being written and rewritten as the decade progressed.181 By early 1980 the scene had been seriously diminished. Elson visited Wigan Casino, noting that there were ‘areas of space on the dancefloor where there never used to be any’.182 Some contributors to the soul press connected the decline of the scene with the broader economic problems associated with Thatcherism and the erosion of industrial localities and working-class communities. In 1981 Okeh Northern Soul reported on the ‘lack of finance in most circles of life at present’.183 In contrast, Scotland saw the expansion of its scene. In 200

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1979 Black Echoes reported that ‘for years, the rare soul followers from north of the border have made the long trek south to attend the major all-nighters in the Yorks/Lancs/Midlands areas. The last 12 months … have seen the emergence of Scottish venues in their own right.’184 The ‘Cat’s Whiskers’ soul night in Burnley was the ‘self-styled talk of the north’, attracting crowds from ‘Manchester, Stoke, Hull, North East Yorkshire’ to dance to ‘good time Northern Soul’.185 However, these bright spots only masked the wider decline of the scene and its retreat into its ‘northern’ heartlands. With the colliery and factory closures of the early 1980s, some northern soul fans now had to sell their precious records in order to supplement lower wages or unemployment benefit.186 Unsurprisingly, northern soul does not feature in the major histories of popular music and national identity.187 Its class, locality and isolation were seen as old, faded and nostalgic in the 1980s and 1990s when there was a tranche of academic and journalistic publications on the history of popular music. Yet in parts of the north, Englishness was still bound up with memories of a recent past. For Robert Colls, this was underpinned by ‘images of labour, industry, self-help and community values’.188 Northern soul had its own history, myths and discourses that rooted it within existing conceptions of the north and  northernness. For John Barrett, the photographer and documenter of the scene, ‘northern soul was as British as fish and chips’.189 For fans such as Gethro Jones growing up in places like Wolverhampton, northern soul was a way in which they engaged with other young people, absorbed culture, created identities and mythologised space, localities and regions.190 The process of deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s can be mapped against the rise and fall of northern soul, providing another heartache for working-class youth in the context of rising unemployment and the ravages of Thatcherism. Notes 1 For northern soul and place, see Joanne Hollows and Katie Milestone, ‘Welcome to Dreamsville: A History and Geography of Northern Soul’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 20–40. 2 For the experience of everyday life in post-industrial cities in the 1990s, see Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser, A Tale of Two Cities: A Study in Manchester and Sheffield (London: Routledge, 1996). 201

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Keeping the faith 3 For a critical reading of the impact of the myths of the scene, see Raine and Wall, ‘Myths on/of the Northern Soul Scene’, pp. 142–63. 4 For an analysis of the relationship between music and ‘space’, see Andy Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), and John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place (London: Routledge, 2003). 5 For example, Russell, Looking North; Gildart, Images of England; Lee Brooks, Mark Donnelly and Richard Mills (eds), Mad Dogs and Englishness: Popular Music and English Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 6 Black Echoes, 28 August 1976. 7 Hot Buttered Soul, August–September 1976. 8 Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 138. 9 For a general survey of popular music in the county, see Craig Ferguson, I’ll Go to t’Foot of Our Stage: The Story of Yorkshire Pop Music (Chatham: YFP, 2009). 10 For the working-class and socialist background of some on the scene, see Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 106–7. 11 The sheer number of clubs in the midlands and the north can be gauged through the advertisements posted in Blues and Soul and related publications throughout the 1970s. 12 Blues and Soul, 10–23 May 1977. 13 For the marginalised mining communities of North Wales, see Keith Gildart, North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945–1996 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001). Northern soul nights in the late 1970s were held in the miners’ welfare in the village of Ffynnongroyw close to the town of Prestatyn. 14 Blues and Soul, 10 May 1976. 15 Blues and Soul, 16 June 1976. 16 Black Echoes, 27 August 1977; 7 January, 4 February, 26 August 1978. 17 Black Echoes, 10 June 1978. 18 Black Echoes, 9 April 1977; 28 April, 1 September 1979; 16 February 1980. 19 Black Echoes, 30 July 1977. 20 Black Echoes, 10 February 1979; 26 January 1980. 21 Black Echoes, 1 September 1979. 22 Robert Spellman, ‘Fast Forward to the Past: An Interview with Keb Darge’, Sunday Express, 18 July 2016, https://www.express.co.uk/ entertainment/music/690692/Interview-DJ-Keb-Darge-northern-soulScotland-Manchester-Wigan-casino (accessed 19 January 2019). 23 See various references and autobiographical insights in Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels. 202

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Locating northern soul 24 Blues and Soul, No. 83, 26 April–11 May 1972. 25 Black Echoes, 27 August 1977. 26 G. Wilson, ‘When Funk Held Sway: Tales of My Early Days, Les Spaine and Terry Lenaine’, electrofunkroots, January 2005, http://www.elec​ trofunkroots.co.uk/articles/when_​funk_​held_​sway.html (accessed 1 October 2014). 27 Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place (London: Virgin, 2004), p. 111. 28 Interview with Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016; Black Echoes, 8 July 1978. 29 Black Echoes, 19 February 1977. 30 BBC Northamptonshire, ‘Shades: A Brief History’, 2004, http://www. bbc.co.uk/northamptonshire/going_​out/bars_​clubs/features/shades_​ history.shtm (accessed November 2014). 31 Black Echoes, 27 August 1977. 32 Blues and Soul, 17–27 April 1973. 33 Black Echoes, 16 and 23 October, 6 November 1976. 34 Black Echoes, 27 November 1976. 35 Black Echoes, 28 August 1976. 36 Hot Buttered Soul, No. 51, April–May 1977; Black Echoes, 8 July, 14 October, 28 October, 25 November 1978; 6 January, 2 April 1979. 37 Black Echoes, 24 September, 17 December 1977; 17 June 1978; 13 January, 24 March, 7 April, 30 June, 28 July, 6 October 1979; ‘Yate, Just a Distant Memory?’, http://www.soul-source.co.uk/soulforum/topic/32764-yatejust-a-distant-memory/ (accessed 27 June 2014). 38 Black Echoes, 10 December 1977. 39 Soul Symbol, No. 8, September 1979. 40 Blues and Soul, 21 December 1973–14 January 1974. 41 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017; interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019; Blues and Soul, 12–25 March, 23 April–6 May 1974. 42 Black Echoes, 13 January 1979. 43 Jimmy Fraser’s ‘Of Hopes, Dreams and Tombstones’ (1965) was played at Wigan Casino. 44 For the complexity of constructing a clearly definable geography of the north, see Russell, Looking North, introduction. 45 Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture, p. 2. 46 Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture, p. 195. 47 For example, see the report by Gordon Burn in the Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 48 Michael Bracewell, England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie (London: Flamingo, 1998), p. 24. 49 Bracewell, England is Mine, p. 172. The early sections of Morrissey’s autobiography are also indicative of the heavy weight of the industrial past 203

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Keeping the faith on the culture of Manchester in the 1970s. See Morrissey, Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2013). 50 For a personal discovery of the north, see Morley, The North. 51 Russell, Looking North, p. 8. 52 Pete McKenna/Ian Snowball, Nightshift/All Souled Out (Hitchin: Countdown Books, 2013), p. 69. 53 For an insightful examination of the ‘imagining of the street’, see Joe Moran, ‘Imagining the Street in Post-war Britain’, Urban History, 39.1 (2012), pp. 166–86. 54 For a recent critical biographical study of Godin, see Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’, pp. 120–41. 55 Blues and Soul, 19 June–1 July 1970. 56 Blues and Soul, 19 June–1 July 1970. 57 Blues and Soul, 19 June–1 July 1970. 58 Blues and Soul, 9–22 October 1970. 59 Blues and Soul, 4–17 December 1970. 60 For scene insider and later academic Andrew Wilson, 1973 was the year when ‘the term northern came of age’. See Wilson, ‘Searching for the Subcultural Heart of Northern Soul’, p. 188. 61 Record Mirror, 11 September 1971. 62 Record Mirror, 11 September 1971. 63 Russell, Looking North, p. 38. 64 Record Mirror, 11 September 1971. 65 Recent studies of the scene are still debating its ‘northernness’. See, for example, Tim Wall, ‘Critical Reflection’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 337–40. 66 Blues and Soul, 6–19 November 1970. 67 Blues and Soul, 5–18 August 1975. 68 Blues and Soul, 30 September–13 October 1975. 69 For the contradictory response of Godin to the penny capitalism of the soul scene, see Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’, pp. 132–6. 70 Blues and Soul, 11–24 November 1975. 71 Blues and Soul, 27 September–10 October 1977. 72 Godin quoted in John Barrett, ‘Soul Survivors’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, p. 167. 73 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 74 Blues and Soul, 2–15 June 1972. 75 Blues and Soul, 14–27 July 1972. 76 Blues and Soul, 8–21 June 1973. 77 Hot Buttered Soul, August–September 1976. 78 Hot Buttered Soul, August–September 1976. 79 Soul Time, No. 1, 1976. 204

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Locating northern soul 80 Talk of the North, 1978. 81 Blues and Soul, 21 May–3 June 1974. 82 Blues and Soul, 24 September–7 October 1974. 83 Blues and Soul, 19 November–2 December 1974. 84 Blues and Soul, 13–26 January 1976. 85 Nolan Chance’s ‘Just Like the Weather’ (1965) is another iconic early rare soul track played at many venues. 86 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 45. 87 Maconie, Pies and Prejudice. The feminist writer Beatrix Campbell had also revisited the town some years earlier and subsequently published her reflections in Wigan Pier Revisited. More recently Stephen Armstrong retraced Orwell’s footsteps in The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited. See also Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, pp. 369–87. 88 Connell and Gibson, Sound Tracks, p. 14. 89 Blues and Soul, 12–25 February 1974. 90 Blues and Soul, 23 March 1976. 91 Black Echoes, 14 August 1976. 92 Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 153. 93 Interview with Frank Elson, 19 February 2016. 94 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 95 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 96 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 97 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 98 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 99 Blues and Soul, 26 February–11 March 1974. 100 Soul Time (n.d. [January 1977?]); New Soul Time (n.d. [1977?]). 101 Black Music, June 1974. 102 Black Music, June 1974. 103 Black Music, June 1974. 104 Black Music, September 1975. Eddie Waring was a TV rugby league ­commentator. 105 Black Music, January 1975. 106 Black Music, January 1975. 107 Black Music, February 1975. 108 Black Music, August 1975. 109 Black Music, November 1975. 110 Black Music, November 1975. 111 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 112 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 113 For a retrospective discussion of the Wigan Casino film, see Tim Wall, ‘Interviews with Tony Palmer, Elaine Constantine, and Liam Quinn’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 227–48. 205

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Keeping the faith 114 For a critical appraisal of Palmer’s work, see Paul Long and Tim Wall, ‘Tony Palmer’s All You Need Is Love: Television’s First Pop History’, in Robert Edgar, Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs and Benjamin Halligan (eds), The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 25–41. 115 The ‘northern’ and ‘working-class’ aspects of the scene were later dramatised in Elaine Constantine’s feature film Northern Soul (2014). 116 Cosgrove has noted that ‘the story of pit closures parallels the high point of northern soul’: Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 150. 117 See the views of Elaine Constantine in Wall, ‘Interviews with Tony Palmer, Elaine Constantine, and Liam Quinn’, pp. 236–41. 118 Blues and Soul, 21 September–4 October 1976. 119 Wall, ‘Interviews with Tony Palmer, Elaine Constantine, and Liam Quinn’, p. 237. 120 Black Echoes, 17 December 1977. 121 Black Echoes, 13 May 1978. 122 Blues and Soul, 15 March 1976. 123 For a profile of ‘Bub’, see Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 147–53. 124 Blues and Soul, 11–24 October 1977. 125 Johny Pitts, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2020), p. 27. 126 Little Richie’s ‘Just Another Heartache’ (1966) was a popular record across a range of northern soul venues. 127 Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory Vol. 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994), p. 306. 128 Hot Buttered Soul, August–September 1976. 129 New Musical Express, 29 June 1974. 130 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 98. 131 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 196. 132 Stuart Cosgrove, ‘Long After Tonight Is All Over’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, p. 12. 133 Mark Duffett, ‘Thinking about Northern Soul Scene Participants as Music Fans’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, p. 276. 134 Jones, They Danced All Night. 135 Black Music, January 1975. 136 New Musical Express, 11 October 1975. 137 Blues and Soul, 13 April 1976. 138 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 139 Blues and Soul, 5–18 October 1976. 140 Blues and Soul, 19 October–1 November 1976. 141 Blues and Soul, 19 October–1 November 1976. 142 Talk of the North, No. 3, 1978. 206

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Locating northern soul 143 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 144 Interview with Steve Pollard, 2 April 2016. 145 New Soul Time, No. 2, 1977. 146 It’s the Beat, 1979. 147 Yet for some within the scene and beyond, a focus on the decline of the scene and the closure of the Casino has been a weakness of ‘Wigan-centric’ histories. See, for example, Sadot, ‘I’m Still Looking for Unknowns All the Time’, p. 298. 148 Raphael Samuel, Island Stories: Theatres of Memory Volume II (London: Verso, 1998), p. 166. 149 Hebdige, Subculture, p. 133. 150 Blues and Soul, 10–23 September 1974. 151 Blues and Soul, 13–26 January 1976. 152 Blues and Soul, 13–26 January 1976. 153 Blues and Soul, 4 May 1976. 154 Black Music, April 1974. 155 Black Music, July 1974. 156 Black Music, October 1974. 157 Black Music, August 1975. 158 Hot Buttered Soul, December–January 1977. 159 Black Echoes, 16 July 1977. 160 Blues and Soul, 15–28 February 1977. 161 Blues and Soul, 15–28 February 1977. 162 Blues and Soul, 15–28 February 1977. 163 Blues and Soul, 20 April 1976. 164 New Soul Time, No. 2, 1977. 165 New Soul Time, No. 2, 1977. 166 New Soul Time, No. 8, 1978. 167 It’s the Beat, 1979. 168 Blues and Soul, 13–26 August 1974. 169 Interview with Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016. 170 Interview with Paul Macdonald, 3 May 2016. 171 Blues and Soul, 21 June–4 July 1977. 172 Blues and Soul, 21 June–4 July 1977. 173 See advertisements in Blues and Soul, 2–15 August 1977. 174 Blues and Soul, 22 November–5 December 1977. 175 Blues and Soul, 15–28 February 1977. 176 Soul Source, No. 9, 1979. 177 It’s the Beat, 1979. 178 Talk of the North, No. 2, 1978. 179 Talk of the North, No. 4, 1978. 180 Black Echoes, 26 February 1977. 181 Interview with Paul Macdonald, 3 May 2016. 207

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Keeping the faith 182 Blues and Soul, 12–25 February 1980. 183 Okeh Northern Soul, 1981. 184 Black Echoes, 7 July 1979. 185 Black Echoes, 25 August 1979. 186 Les Hare recalls buying collections from striking miners during the 1984/85 strike. Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. In Stoke-onTrent, one of the heartlands of northern soul, jobs in ceramics, mining and steel also suffered a precipitous decline. For critical reflections on this, see the essays in Edensor, Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent. 187 For example, Bracewell, England is Mine; Young, Electric Eden; Brooks, Donnelly and Mills, Mad Dogs and Englishness. 188 Robert Colls, Identity of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 156. 189 Barrett, ‘Soul Survivors’, p. 169. 190 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 49.

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7

Race, gender, sexuality and the politics of northern soul

There were increasing racial tensions in Britain throughout the 1970s, with street violence, institutional racism and a popular discourse that stereotyped and stigmatised minorities. These episodes generated an organisational response through groups such as Rock Against Racism (RAR) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL).1 This chapter explores the ways in which northern soul was formed through a white British rearticulation of the discourses of black music, politics and cultural symbols. The scene never really formed part of the wider cultural response to racism nor sought to create a space in anti-racist organisations such as RAR and the ANL. Through an examination of soul publications, clubs and fan testimonies, this chapter explains how black politics was consumed, decoded and reconstructed. The perceived multiracial and anti-racist aspects of northern soul are critically assessed in order to challenge existing assumptions concerning the links between British youth culture and the wider struggle for civil rights. Critically, the chapter focuses on the transatlantic aspects of northern soul by seeking to understand the dynamics connected with the reception and interpretation of what was perceived as an essentially black musical genre by a largely white British workingclass audience.2 The northern soul scene seemingly constructed a space where young men and women shared a commitment to music and dance. In contrast to other leisure activities, women were said to have played an equal role. Moreover, many felt that clubs provided a safer environment than conventional nightspots where women were primarily viewed as sexual objects. The role of women in the scene is explored here with regard to the development of feminist politics and the myriad ways in which women engaged with soul music. The chapter concludes with some discussion of gender and sexuality and 209

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how these categories were both reinforced and challenged within the scene. A number of writers have emphasised the importance of gay subcultures in promoting dance music in the 1970s, yet this was never really a feature of northern soul.3 This raises questions regarding masculinity, femininity and sexuality, and how these concepts were dramatised on the dance floors of some of the most celebrated northern soul clubs and discussed in scene publications such as Blues and Soul, Black Music, Black Echoes and a range of related fanzines. Hang up your hang-ups: race and the northern soul scene4 Dominic Sandbrook has claimed that in 1972 ‘there was a palpable sense that the country stood at an ideological crossroads’.5 This was evident through shifts to the left and right in the Labour and Conservative parties and a rise in militant strike action by trade unions. Yet more crucially for youth culture, such ideological battles were being fought on the street, in football grounds and reframed in pulp literature.6 Casual violence was a feature of football terrace fandom and the expression of oppositional cultural identities. Young male soul fans often combined an obsession with football with the consumption of black music.7 The politics of race and racism was a distinct thread that created contradictory impulses within groups such as skinheads, suedeheads and soul fans. West Indian ska and black American soul music was consumed and celebrated alongside an inclination towards attacks on recently arrived Asian migrants.8 A discourse of racism and the iconography of skinhead identity was popularised by the Richard Allen novels, which were read and shared by thousands of working-class schoolboys across the country.9 This period also saw the rise of an indigenous black political and anti-racist culture that took inspiration from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the United States. Nonetheless, in migrant areas of the west midlands and the north-west, the white working-class consumption of black music could not mask the high levels of casual racism that were endemic in particular communities.10 This occurred in the context of the continued popularity of Enoch Powell, who according to Sandbrook ‘was comfortably the most popular politician in the country’.11 The soul press engaged with issues regarding history, migration and racism, but detailed and sustained commentary and activism remained a marginal feature of northern soul. Writers in the soul publications challenged racial stereotypes and 210

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argued that youth subcultures were more complex than journalists, politicians and commentators suggested. Dave Godin, writing in Blues and Soul in late 1969, presented a more nuanced reading of skinheads, seeking to go beyond the lurid headlines presented in the newspapers: ‘two minutes conversation with any group of “skinheads” will quickly reveal that they, like any other group, are composed of individuals often as different from one another as can be’.12 Godin was familiar with skinheads, given that large numbers of them were customers in his Soul City record shop in London. Many members of what would become the northern soul scene had been part of the skinhead milieu and ardent fans of black music.13 As noted in an earlier chapter, Godin was part curator/part critic of the northern soul scene.14 He originally coined the term and in the pages of the soul press he sought to understand its micro cultures and forms of affiliation. He also had a wider interest in spreading the gospel of black music and felt that ‘soul music is so magical it spans all cults, cliques and social groupings’.15 In a later history of the scene, Godin remained critical of the limited engagement with the politics of black music that had been a feature of the music press in the 1960s: ‘The fact that none of the cultural commentary was ever backed up with political comment, tends to show how basically cowardly it all was.’16 Readers of Blues and Soul magazine were given a detailed history of black music through Godin’s columns, starting in April 1968. His writings attempted to educate clubgoers on the rare soul scene. In a tribute to Martin Luther King he noted that ‘his senseless death shames the whole human race … his message was lost on so many. And he had soul.’17 Yet Blues and Soul peddled its own mythical version of British tolerance and liberalism. In an editorial on why there were not more appearances by black performers across the UK, it proclaimed that ‘the English way of life is held in great esteem by American citizens­– ­especially negroes, who are able to enjoy greater freedom over here’.18 Such a unreflecting and uncritical stance served to reinforce the perception that northern soul was largely bereft of politics. In an early intervention on the whitening of rock music in 1969, Godin was critical of the ways in which white performers had been accorded an elevated status: ‘the present adulation accorded to Elvis Presley and the Beatles is a mystery … R&B existed before Elvis and the Beatles’.19 In a similar attack on British blues bands such as Fleetwood Mac, he stressed that ‘I could perhaps tolerate British 211

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a­ rtists playing … soul instrumentals but the phony American-Negro accents that these people assume immediately shows where all the ideas orginate from.’20 This generated a range of readers’ views on the place of white musicians in soul. A letter from Roger St Pierre was indicative: ‘I will always argue that there is a definite place for white singers in soul music.’21 Yet Godin never lost his sense that soul music was rooted in the struggle for civil rights: ‘beneath the surface of every … soul record there is a hidden message­– a­ n unvoiced plea … and that is something that Black America is trying to convey … this … gives American soul its vitality, its confidence, and its sadness.’22 However, for much of the 1970s Godin’s plea for a political reading of soul music was largely ignored. Godin also critiqued the tendency of white entrepreneurs and artists to exploit black performers: ‘the R&B and Soul idiom … has provided more imitators and plagiarists with a good meal ticket than many of the original performers have ever had’.23 Interviews conducted for this book suggest that Godin’s politics and advocacy of the wider struggles of black America had little impact on the majority of youths involved in the scene.24 This lack of engagement with the more overt politics of black music highlights the complexities of the white consumption of soul in the 1970s. Writers on youth culture have tended to concentrate on the black and white solidarities that were forged through popular music. Yet this form of ‘whitewashing’ has led to a romantic view of the ways in which youth culture was at the forefront of anti-racist struggles in the 1970s. There is some evidence in the pages of soul publications that the relationship between northern soul and black politics was more complex. The lack of formal affiliation to anti-racist organisations does not necessarily show that thousands of youths were untouched by the political elements of soul music, yet such experiences are difficult to gauge from the sources. Moreover, retrospective reflections are often shaped by the contemporary context of improved race relations in the twenty-first century. For example, Gethro Jones recalled that in Wolverhampton in the early 1970s he had many friends who were from migrant families. Jones befriended an Asian youth who accompanied him on trips to soul clubs in the midlands and the north.25 Yet violence against minorities and casual racism were embedded in the social fabric of towns and cities across the country. Many soul fans consumed soul music stripped of its roots in the struggles of black America. Black teenagers in the midlands and the north never really 212

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embraced the rare soul scene.26 Some of the cities and towns associated with northern soul had sizeable African, Caribbean and mixed race populations, but they remained largely immune to its attractions.27 In Manchester, the Twisted Wheel was the preserve of the white soul enthusiasts, with the local African-Caribbean and mixedrace population that was concentrated in the Moss Side district of the city expressing a preference for the then contemporary sounds of funk and ska/reggae.28 In Liverpool, as Frank Elson noted in his column in Blues and Soul in 1976, ‘an unfortunate colour bar­– ­both ways­– ­tends to split soul music lovers right down the middle’.29 This lack of formal and social interaction between white working-class consumers of soul music and black youth left a void in which northern fans developed their own specific ways of decoding and using the symbols of civil rights and Black Power. Interviews with visiting black American performers in the music press informed readers of the struggle against racism. In 1970 the Motown group the Temptations toured the country, meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom ‘they discussed … racial harmony in both Britain and America’.30 For Godin, soul was the antithesis of racism: the ‘racist … who would drive away people of a different colour … is a person totally deprived of heart, soul and imagination’.31 The racial politics of the UK occasionally found their way into readers’ letters submitted to Blues and Soul. A letter from Geoffrey Hathrick from County Durham in 1970 was critical of a complaint read out on the Points of View television show that attacked the ‘black pride’ content of a performance of the Voices of East Harlem on Top of the Pops.32 Hathrick stressed that this was a ‘sad comment on the British public when, on one of the occasions that a black group is put on the programme, it is met with outcry from some of our Fascist fellow-countrymen’. He viewed such people as ‘Enoch Powells in the making’. The letter concluded with a call for ‘Soul Fans’ to be ‘100% behind all civil rights movements’.33 He attacked the publication for not presenting ‘true Black culture’. In response, the editor drafted a stinging rebuke and castigated Hathrick, labelling him ‘a so-called white Liberal’.34 Godin acknowledged that ‘in Britain the colour barrier has never operated along the lines it has in America’, but added that there was ‘no doubt that many people are scared of Black Consciousness’. He made clear to his readers that this was ‘far from being a threat to their own situation’ and that ‘Black awareness is something that 213

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will benefit everybody’. The lives of white soul fans in particular had been ‘enriched’: ‘every time you play or dance to a soul record you are participating whether you know it or not’.35 Along with espousing the virtues of black music, Godin was disdainful of the ways in which the more conventional music press continued to ignore the size, vibrancy and impact of rare soul. The scene continued to grow in the early 1970s, and for Godin, ‘soul music carries on, just as our Black brothers and sisters in the States see it all, shrug their shoulders, and carry on’.36 He attacked the BBC for restricting airtime for black artists: [T]he whole setup of the BBC is essentially a white middle-class one which is bound to be a trifle embarrassed by the rawer earthy styles of our Black brothers and sisters, and this is why so many white cover versions of Black songs make it because in covering them the artists have made them blander and more accessible to the white middle class mentality.37

Godin envisaged a collective mass movement for black music: ‘if we really want Soul music to survive in Britain we must all resolve to do our bit with a dash of missionary zeal’.38 For Godin, the British embrace of soul was ‘academic’ rather than rooted in a ‘lived through approach’.39 However, his characterisation perhaps masked the micro experiences and interventions of soul fans that took place in bedrooms, youth clubs, cafés, workplaces and on the dance floors of the multiplicity of clubs in the midlands and the north. There is no doubt that the intersections of race and class were exposed and explored in northern soul clubs, but the fact that this did not lead to any involvement in the wider politics of anti-racism suggests that the outcomes were minimal. However, the engagement of some soul fans with the broader politics of black civil rights was evident through their attempts to connect the music to the history of struggle. In 1972 Bernard Yaffe from Manchester presented his version of this process in a letter to Godin: ‘we take only the very best of the soul scene … but for the American negroes they have to get this soul in a much harder way’. In a reading of one of the canonical recordings of the rare soul scene, J. J. Barnes’s ‘Please Let Me In’, Yaffe felt that this was ‘a Black man singing to be let into society’.40 Similarly, Dave Baxter from Rossendale, Lancashire, felt that merely listening to soul was not enough: ‘Soul is loving a brother or a sister and showing it … Soul is realising the anguish and torment that American Black folk are going through to win equality … that means 214

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keeping the faith, spreading the faith and increasing your own faith.’41 Yet such voices and positions figured in only a small proportion of the features and letters published in the soul press. Maurice Edwards from Surrey felt that ‘it must not be forgotten that soul is the musical culture of “Black America”­– ­who are “traditionally” an “oppressed” people’.42 Remi Olatunbuson, an African student studying at the University of Manchester, made a distinction between blues and soul: ‘while the blues was a lamentation of the negro’s plight, soul to a large extent has been an expression of freedom’.43 John Anderson, writing in the fanzine Hot Buttered Soul in 1973, claimed that ‘to understand soul you must at least try and discover the life style of the society that created it’.44 Other contributors to soul publications rooted the music in the broader context of black liberation. Lester Molland from Bridgnorth noted that ‘the very word “SOUL” had become a vital expression to the oppressed negro community’.45 In Skipton, Adrian Smith extended his knowledge of black politics through the music of Gil Scott Heron, the comedian Richard Pryor and the black cinema of the 1970s.46 In Manchester, Les Hare felt that the politics of civil rights did not really engage the concerns of the average soul fan, but did have some traction with the more discerning record collectors and dealers who were drawn to the lyrics of Heron and others such as Curtis Mayfield.47 The lack of black involvement in the northern scene is well documented, but there were minority and mixed-race DJs such as ‘Pep’ at the Catacombs in Wolverhampton, and a few black dancers are visible on photographs and films from clubs of the period.48 In Leigh, northern soul fans experienced the DJ skills of Jimmy Connors. He was a black American from Riverside, California, based at the nearby Burtonwood US airbase.49 He lived in Warrington, ran his own mobile disco and delivered sets at the Leigh Squash Club and other venues in 1977.50 Frank Elson visited the airbase to witness one of Connors’ sets. In a report in Blues and Soul, he informed readers: ‘if you want a really up-to-date real live Soul Brother from the States playing the sounds call him’.51 For youths in Leigh, Wigan and Warrington, Connors was undoubtedly perceived to be providing an ‘exotic’ twist to dance nights. This might have given the scene in particular places a more authentic sheen, but it could do little to mask the whiteness of northern soul.

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Interplay: the authentic/inauthentic, Black Power, emotion and ‘my idea of soul’52 The authenticity of the music was central to Godin’s articulation of ‘real soul’, and this was something that he carried over into the scene in the 1970s. The soul music journalist Frank Elson had similar notions and argued that the ‘only people who can sing/play/record soul are negroes … Negroes are born with Soul inside them … While Caucasians (or Orientals) can appreciate Soul they can never possess it.’53 Such views coalesced with the use of African-American iconography and more specifically Black Power images and symbols on patches worn by fans. This was mostly a commercial opportunity pursued by the more business-savvy entrepreneurs who played a role in creating the scene. As Haslam has noted in his history of British nightclubs, ‘the International Soul Club (based in Staffordshire) produced cloth badges depicting Black Power’s clenched fist salute. Some of this may have been naïve, but politically … a powerful statement in an area of the country where the National Front was making electoral gains.’54 Yet for most participants on the scene such symbols of struggle were completely detached from their political meanings. Northern soul fans would also refer to each other as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’.55 This was a discourse that had been developed by Godin in Blues and Soul, along with phrases such as ‘Keep the Faith’ and ‘Right On Brother’. In Wolverhampton, Gethro Jones thought such expressions a form of self-identity and collective commitment to the scene: ‘a greeting of three words wherever we went, “Keep the Faith”’.56 As with punk in the post-1977 period, the language of politics, class and race was adopted by soul fans as a form of subcultural identification rather than indicating an affiliation to or sympathy with movements and organisations.57 At Major Lance’s performance at the Torch in 1972 the audience consisted of ‘hundreds of clenched fists, many clad in leather gloves … in a salute to black power’.58 Black gloves had also been a feature of the scene at the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester. The terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ appeared in columns, contributions and letters in magazines such as Blues and Soul, Black Music and associated fanzines/magazines. In the classified advertisements consumers could order a range of items with Black Power symbols made by firms such as Kleintex in Nottingham: trouser belts with black fists and slogans such as ‘Right on Brother’ and ‘Right on Sister’.59 Critics of the scene 216

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from within the broader soul music milieu felt that the slogans, rhetoric and inauthenticity of northern soul exploited black artists. Black businesses gained nothing from the fashion accessories, accoutrements and ephemera. Moreover, black musicians and performers were denied royalties through the practice of bootlegging recordings that had been long deleted.60 An editorial in Black Music in 1974 attacked the entrepreneurs and DJs who were gaining financially through this process: ‘As you groove to that rare Northern sound, does it make you feel good to think that the guy who poured his soul into it may be penniless and forgotten?’61 The business opportunities that were exploited by certain characters and the penny capitalism that underpinned the scene was contradictory to the perceived solidarity that was expressed through the sense of belonging and the associated mythologies that were embedded in northern soul.62 Letters to both Blues and Soul and Black Music are indicative of the ways in which the shifting interplay of race, music and identity was creating tensions, factions and splits. Hassan Abdulla from Reading, writing in the spring of 1975, was ‘fed up with white people ­adopting … music from the black man … the Northern idea of Soul … they should invent a new word for their music and leave real soul music alone, if this is the consequence of integration, to hell with it’.63 This position was met with strident responses across the soul press. Brian Fradgley from the West Midlands argued that ‘white people enjoy black music and black people enjoy white music … the majority are willing to share and come together’.64 Such tensions were never really resolved. Writers such as Godin, Elson and Cummings continued to locate northern soul in the history of the struggle for black civil rights, while the white consumers continued to ignore the political roots of the music. For music journalist Tony Cummings, black culture remained a site of political struggle in which northern soul was a potential problem rather than a solution. In contrast, Godin was critical of the ways in which writers such as Cummings and other middle-class intellectuals paraded political credentials that to him were at best naïve and at worst patronising. In a book review in Blues and Soul he was particularly scathing: ‘Middle-class white missionaries have variously found the ghetto … either fascinating … or dangerous … one gets the uneasy impression that in their innermost heart of hearts … find the ghetto and its art products so fascinating, that they’d mourn its passing.’65 The views of Godin and Cummings were outlined in Blues 217

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and Soul and Black Music and fed into factions that were defining the development of soul music in Britain. In 1976, perhaps at the peak of the popularity of northern soul, Godin claimed that it was the period ‘when the racial barriers of Soul finally fell’. Acknowledging the success of white singers such as Robert Palmer, he sensed that they ‘adopted a soul idiom … as a springboard for their own creativity, and unlike previous attempts which … were merely plagiaristic’.66 He critically reflected on the tendency to apply the label of authenticity to blackness: ‘in my view the time has long since arrived when, if we are truly dedicated to the cause of Soul music, we must no longer see it as an exclusively black phenomenon’.67 For some purists, soul remained largely black, but for others it was the beat, rhythm and the emotion of the recording that was paramount.68 The notion that northern soul was predicated exclusively on the output of black artists is a generally held view which obscures a more complex picture. Both so-called ‘blue-eyed’ soul singers and more mainstream pop performers were embraced by fans. Examples included Dean Parrish, R. Dean Taylor, Lynne Randell, Judy Street and Jacki Trent. Van Morrison’s ‘Domino’ was also a very popular record at the Leeds Central Soul Club. Some white artists have become legends of northern soul and blued-eyed soul is a subgenre of the contemporary scene. Godin retained his sense of injustice at the way some artists had been cheated of their royalties, and the trend for DJs and performers to be willing to work for no pay in order to build an audience or gain the attention of record companies: ‘I have never understood the mentality of scab labour or subscribing to that demeaning and degrading notion that it is somehow wrong to expect a financial return for service performed.’69 Here Godin was drawing on his wider revolutionary politics to critique the contradictions that were an inherent feature of northern soul. Questions of authenticity and inauthenticity were often bundled into wider criticisms of the exploitative nature of the scene. An interview with the singer Tommy Hunt in Black Echoes in 1976 noted that the ‘worst feature of Northern Soul is that all too frequently all the artists get is a mention on a £5 a time record list’.70 The scene itself remained rooted in the sound and dance potential of the record, which is why ‘in person’ and ‘live’ performances at the Twisted Wheel, Torch, Wigan Casino and other venues were sometimes met with indifference or hostility.71 However, it is clear that particular artists were held in high esteem and attempts were made by club owners, promoters and fans to ensure financial reward. Those 218

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artists who performed live, such as Major Lance, Tommy Hunt and J. J. Barnes, were revered as the living embodiments of northern soul. Others such as Edwin Starr were canonised by the scene after their deaths. Paradoxically and contrarily, many mainstream and highly successful soul acts, including those from the United States such as the Detroit Emeralds, plus those from British soul or funk stables, such as Sweet Sensation and the Real Thing, performed in the absence of the more obscure artists of northern soul, creating a rather curious amalgam of soul influences in many all-nighters. Nonetheless, it was primarily the recorded music, beat and danceability of the vinyl track and not the live performance that was ultimately paramount to devotees of northern soul. Godin remained perplexed by the transatlantic paradoxes of soul music and its consumption by whites in Britain and the USA: ‘it has more respect, love and dedication going for it in Europe than it has ever been accorded in its homeland’.72 He was acutely aware of the exploitation that formed the bedrock of the relationship between some recording companies and black artists: ‘so much of the money tied up in the American soul scene is white money’. Yet along with his editor John Abbey, he shared the view that the northern soul scene was not always beneficial to the financial well-being of black performers, given that it ‘tended to revolve around the record … rather than the artist’.73 Godin felt that there was a specific black British experience and identity that ‘felt no especial loyalty to Black America’.74 Black youths in the 1970s consumed a range of music, but it was reggae that was in the ascendancy in cities of the midlands and the north. The mid-1960s soul of the northern scene was culturally, sonically and politically a different beast to the groundbreaking work of Jamaican artists such as Bob Marley and the Wailers.75 In later interventions on the relationship between soul music and race, Godin slightly shifted position. In the spring of 1976 he presented a view that ‘instead of defining soul as the music of black America, I’m finding it more and more consistent … to define it as the music of American black people’. In the post-Civil Rights context he saw black Americans as ‘no longer a race apart on the outside looking in … it is as Americans rather than as black people that we should acknowledge their … contribution to world culture through soul music’.76 He was also less critical of ‘blue-eyed’ soul personified by artists such as Hall and Oates: ‘unlike their predecessors like the Rolling Stones … these … acts have not merely imitated … but have 219

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inserted themselves in the music, listened and learnt’.77 Blackpool Mecca DJ Ian Levine concurred, though he noted that ‘you don’t have to be black, but soul music is a black experience’.78 Such commentaries on the relationship between the black experience and northern soul remained a conundrum for consumers, commentators and curators of the scene. In the year punk arrived in 1976, Godin began to write more critical pieces regarding the direction of youth culture and groups like the Sex Pistols. He noted that the violence associated with punk was also making incursions on to the soul scene. He attacked some commentators for seemingly justifying black violence by arguing that ‘whether they are black or white is really irrelevant’.79 This was written in the context of the violence around the Notting Hill carnival of the same year.80 Godin also defended the rise of disco against the critiques posited by ‘soul purists’ on the northern scene. Reflecting his commitment to black civil rights and financial recompense for artists, he argued that ‘if this means more promotion and coverage for black American records, then it is no bad thing’. Moreover, he argued that much of this was coming from below: ‘a belated triumph … listening to the streets as opposed to dictating to them’.81 Godin remained aware that there was still a contradiction between the consumption of soul and the espousal of racist attitudes in British society: ‘it grieves me to say … there are those in this land who espouse the soul cause but who really would be more their own selves espousing the cause of the National Front’.82 In general, soul publications tended to avoid any discussion of the rise of far right politics. They also provided little coverage of anti-fascist politico-cultural organisations such as RAR and the ANL. This was completely absent from Blues and Soul, but some editorial space was given by Black Music and adverts for anti-fascist concerts appeared in Black Echoes. In October 1977 Black Music reported on the violence at the Notting Hill carnival: ‘This year … the violence was strictly racist … Black and white must unite.’83 Beyond the politics of the far left and organisations such as RAR and the ANL, the politics of youth culture was more fraught, divided and codified by race. Northern soul remained a largely white working-class scene that used the discourse and imagery of black America, but was located on the margins of major cities where ethnic minorities faced discrimination on a daily basis. By 1978 Godin had ceased to write for soul publications, but he continued with his commitment to anti-racism and was 220

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involved in the Soul Against the National Front movement.84 It was reported in Black Echoes in the same year that Godin had been ‘spotted flashing anti-Nazi league literature at Wigan’.85 As noted earlier, historians have tended to overlook the ways in which popular music was used as a coping mechanism and a soundtrack to the ebb and flow of everyday life for British youth in the 1970s.86 Soul music provided a sonic backdrop, a source of knowledge and a way of making sense of private and public relationships. In the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings carried out by the Provisional IRA in November 1974 in which 21 people were killed and 182 injured, Kevin Skidmore from Newcastle under Lyme shared his thoughts with readers of Black Music and sought solace through Motown recordings: That night I went to my bedroom … I pulled out Marvin Gaye’s greatest piece of work, ‘What’s Going On?’ and put out the light. The following 35 minutes were the most meaningful in my life … Everything I heard in that time seemed to run parallel with my thoughts … As I drifted to sleep, I thought, ‘God, what is Going On?’87

Soul here was used as a soothing balm­– ­a turn to music as opposed to seeking to understand the complex politics of violence in Northern Ireland. This consumption of black American music complemented the dominant ethos of the northern soul scene in which there was a definite sense of belonging which operated outside of the wider struggles for racial equality. The impact of soul music on thoughts, emotions, mood and wellbeing does not really leave a trace in conventional sources, but it was a crucial aspect of belonging to the northern soul scene. Personal views on music were shared in clubs, pubs and cafés between friends and lovers, but also appeared in letters and contributions to scene magazines and fanzines throughout the 1970s. In 1970 Godin wrote one of his periodic pieces seeking to answer the question, what is soul? The question reappeared throughout the decade, accompanied by readers’ contributions on ‘my idea of soul’ in Blues and Soul. In his first attempt Godin connected the emotional resonance of soul music with the historical, economic and cultural context in which it was produced. He argued that ‘you can feel it’, and then presented the reader with images of ‘plantations’, ‘churches’, ‘collective struggles’ and ‘tolerance’.88 Yet the selection of tracks he recommended included none with overtly political overtones. Instead he opted for recordings 221

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that focused on love and loss such as the Elgins’ ‘Put Yourself in my Place’ and ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’. Interestingly, ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’ was played over and over by Wolverhampton’s Gethro Jones during his conversion from football hooliganism and skinhead culture and into the northern soul scene.89 The ‘My Idea of Soul’ column published in Blues and Soul offers a fascinating insight into the impact of music on British youth. In the spring of 1973 the editors proclaimed that this section of the magazine was ‘meaning far more than we ever imagined. We are only able to print one “idea” each issue and that has to mean disappointment for a lot of readers.’90 The connection between black America, soul music and personal experience was a familiar trope articulated in the contributions. G. I. Parkinson from Widnes described soul as a ‘spiritual and immortal part of human being (black or white)’.91 Paul Forrest from Sussex was moved by viewing the film Wattstax: ‘the Rev Jesse Jackson mentioned a “black awareness” … I am not black but the atmosphere generated reached my personal innerbeing or soul.’92 Lewis Peake was ‘all for the new trend in lyrics, inspired by social conscience, but the old songs sum up the meaning of soul … Enjoying life and helping others.’93 Christine Stephen from Hereford illustrated her love of Motown and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. In a detailed description of the feelings that were generated by the song ‘Tracks of My Tears’, she wrote: ‘I could understand the song­– ­identify with the situation … soul is that something that makes me cry … or reinforce my faith’.94 Barbara Gallon from London described soul as ‘my life … my thoughts, my caring, my loving’. She was a ‘Northern Soul Sister’ originally from Carlisle.95 Nigel Horsley from Hinckley in Leicestershire shared his experiences of American life from his time as a teacher in Maryland: ‘The intensity of the relationships I formed with the people I met left a deep impression on me … It was then I decided what soul was to me … A love of soul makes philosophers of us all … Soul is feeling depth, the ability to reach someone.’96 It would be easy to critique such contributions as representing a simplistic white gaze on life in black America. Nonetheless, they do indicate that some people were making a connection between the economic, social and cultural, however problematic that might have been, in ‘reading’ soul music. Was northern soul an example of what Gilroy has referred to as a ‘historic encounter’ between young black and white teenagers through popular music?97 Was it a space ‘in which the politics of 222

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“race” could be lived out and transcended’?98 For Richard Rawlinson, this seemed to be the case: ‘I believe that men such as Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder and others are helping to merge cultures.’99 Soul was also applied to the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Peter Emery from Cheltenham felt that ‘if you look at any acknowledged soul record … you will see that it relates to real-life situations, experiences and emotions’.100 The ‘My Idea of Soul’ column and similar interventions in soul magazines and fanzines reveal the nuanced and complex interactions that fans had with the politics, emotion and sound of the music. Yet Gilroy’s perception of the ‘historic encounter’ between white and black working-class youths in the orbit of popular music was one that was always complex, contested and contingent. The racial solidarities that were contained in the iconography of northern soul owed much more to myth than to the realities of everyday life in 1970s Britain. Unsatisfied: girls are out to get you101 The shifting politics of gender also made ripples in northern soul. However, women’s voices are under-represented in the published texts relating to the then contemporary scene. When they are visible, they are often critiquing male representations or admonishing men as the exclusionary arbiters of the music, clubs and DJs. These are important interventions that not only highlight the gendered spaces of northern soul but also women’s awareness of the exclusions that they experienced. In what follows, attention is given to these issues, but the section also focuses on women’s own perspectives on the scene, through a reading of diaries, letters and oral testimony. It should be recognised that a reliance on these types of sources constructs a particular narrative of women that focuses on their personal interactions through friendships and romantic relationships, which in itself may be read as a gendered historical perspective. Yet in the 1970s young women were striving to make themselves heard in a scene that was effectively policed by male DJs, trendsetters and the editors and contributors to soul magazines and fanzines. In an issue of Blues and Soul published in December 1970, Godin claimed that ‘a good 80% of Soul record buyers are male’ and that ‘female Soul singers never seem to have the immediate impact … as their Soul brothers’.102 He offered no evidence for this, but it was perhaps based on anecdotal evidence from consumers who entered his 223

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record shop (in the 1970s they were still predominantly male spaces) and the gender balance of some of the clubs that he attended.103 This view both distorted and marginalised the roles and experiences of women in the northern soul scene.104 The voices of young women did feature in the music press and in specialist soul magazines and fanzines, albeit infrequently, throughout the period. In late 1970 the self-styled ‘Queens of the Twisted Wheel’, Karen Butterworth from Bolton, Viv from Nottingham and Lesley Brown, ‘another sister from the Wheel’, were featured in Godin’s column.105 Unlike many men, women tended to be ambivalent about collecting records and were more interested in responding to the beat of the dance floor. This has sometimes been mistakenly construed as a less serious engagement with the scene.106 Yet women were always at the forefront of northern soul, converting brothers and boyfriends, organising their own events, and shaping and sustaining its development. Growing up in Preston, Bernie Golding’s first introduction to soul music and specifically Motown came from listening to his sister’s records through his bedroom wall.107 In terms of fashion, young women were also a conduit through which men could access and develop a more individualistic image. In Stoke-on-Trent, Dave Evison would ask his girlfriend to go into Chelsea Girl to buy him a girl’s ‘skinny rib sweater’.108 In Bramhall, Cheshire, Richard Cooper heard soul music via his sister’s record collection.109 Jenny Stretton from Bridgnorth, in a letter to Blues and Soul in 1973, provided an insight into women on the rare soul scene, their consumption of the music and their relationship with their male counterparts. Trying to express the feelings of that surge of emotion during the first few bars of a favourite (or even unknown) record, is virtually impossible, but I know that all true soul followers will have experienced this unique pleasure … soul music … expels all external influences … giving the sense of security and devotion that only comes with true unity and understanding … I would be very grateful to hear from the views of male contributors … on what their reaction is to their female counterparts intruding on their stronghold in our music world. I have met with mixed reaction discussing soul, the pendulum seeming to swing towards the attitude that we females are not expected to know the true soul records.110

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an exclusionary discourse that circumscribed women’s participation as lacking depth and knowledge, indicative of the broader gender politics of the 1970s. Women’s contributions to soul media give a sense of the ‘community’ of northern soul and its lament for what had passed. As a nostalgic scene there was an in-built tendency for commemoration, canonisation and mythology. This was displayed through badges, patches, tattoos, diaries and a thousand conversations in private and public spaces. Julie Allen from Stockport wrote to Blues and Soul in 1973 on behalf of ‘a great many soul brothers and sisters to express sympathy for the death of Dave Lowe [a regular on the scene] … the last words he said were Right On!’111 Others wanted to shield their secret world from the masses. A letter to Black Music magazine in 1974, from Mashid Shoraka of Birmingham, was indicative: ‘I enjoy rare soul music so much that I have this fear that once too many people know about it this kind of music, soul would lose its great quality.’112 Young women, like their male counterparts, were torn between wanting to introduce friends to the scene, but also being fiercely protective of its secret cultures, codes and discourses. Other young women who were Motown fans remained immune to the more esoteric elements of northern soul and never really understood its attractions.113 Audrey Wilkes from Tipton worked at the Catacombs club in Wolverhampton and kept a diary of her experiences throughout the 1970s. She first attended the club in January 1969. The entries in her diary offer a fascinating insight into the music and the everyday life of the patrons. A typical entry from January 1974 reads ‘had a bath and went to the Cats. Didn’t think that bloke I fancied was going to come but he did and I served him.’114 On another occasion at the all-nighter ‘one fella was searched and taken away’.115 Wilkes attended other clubs in Wolverhampton and the west midlands, including Aquarius, ‘a lovely place and they played Cats records’.116 Yet the Catacombs was not always busy or buzzing with excitement as illustrated by a further entry: ‘went to the cats. It was hopeless, hardly anyone came in. Was really bored. Had no one to talk to I really was fed up.’117 Unlike many of the male recollections of the scene, the diary entries highlight the importance of the clubs for meeting potential partners. Wilkes had as many good times as bad. Direct references to records in the diary are minimal and where they do appear it is often in the context of private listening in the home.118 Wendy Withers from Salford was introduced to soul through 225

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e­ xposure to Motown records and as a teenager attended the Pendulum club in Manchester and the Blue Room in Sale. Her favourite venue came to be Blackpool Mecca. From home her journey involved a car ride to Bolton and then a coach to the club. She soon developed a strong network of female friends, and found her future husband through the scene. For Withers, ‘it was all about the dancing and the clothes’: ‘we dressed up as girls … we’d make pleated skirts … wore large platform shoes’. This was a far more feminine look than the one adopted by many young women at Wigan Casino. Her experiences of Wigan were largely negative: she described it as ‘seedy, rough’, and she ‘didn’t take any gear [drugs]’ and ‘never felt comfortable’. At the Mecca, girls could find a table and create a base for the night where dancing could be interspersed with conversation. This was more difficult in Wigan with its open spaces and packed dance floor. She claims that the ways in which men and women participated in the scene were different: ‘men were competitive about records’ and ‘were protective of their elite little club’. She recalls that many women ‘liked other kinds of soul … the guys were anal … we married a load of nerds’. Withers also had little interest in the artists and live performances; for her it was about the beat, rhythm and the dancing.119 As with the diary entries by Wilkes, Withers’ recollections go beyond some of the mythologies of northern soul that were created and later consolidated by men. For many women it was dance that formed the core of the scene, and unlike men they largely remained immune to the attractions of fanatical record collecting.120 In his reports from the various clubs across the north, Elson noted the expertise of female dancers. Christine Oldfield and Jackie Williams, who attended the soul nights in Whitchurch, were ‘two of the most accomplished dancers in the club’.121 At the soul night at Burscough football club near Ormskirk, he classed the standard of dancing as ‘high’ and Kate Williams and Nicola Crook as ‘two of the best’.122 The consumption of northern soul was not just confined to the spaces provided by the network of established clubs. Young women used soul as a soundscape to complete household chores, apply make-up and cement friendships. An entry from Audrey Wilkes’s diary in 1974 is illustrative: ‘Linda came at about 3.30 … it was a real full house. Had tea. I played Linda my tape recorder of some of the old cats sounds.’123 The bedroom and living room were also spaces where dance steps were practised for many hours, and long conversations led to decisions on suitable clothing for particular clubs.124 226

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The isolation of young women with regard to their access to soul nights was also a notable feature of the scene. Oldfield and Williams lived in Connah’s Quay, North Wales, and had to organise their own minibus trips to Whitchurch.125 Marilyn Hall from Cornwall was even further from the northern venues and submitted a letter to Elson entitled ‘Any Soul Fans in Cornwall?’ She was originally from Manchester and was ‘a regular at the Pendulum, Torch and Mecca’.126 Andrea, a student from Rochdale studying at Newcastle University, was pleased to ‘find some soulful friends’ at the Sombrero club in Chester-leStreet.127 Regulars at Bailey’s club in Oldham, Julie Quirke and Kath Wild were also limited in the ways in which they could engage with northern soul. To Elson, they were ‘typical soul fans in that they haven’t got money to throw around, haven’t got cars and haven’t got easy access to transport’.128 Two other girls, Annette and Lesley, wrote to Blues and Soul looking for friends who had ‘room in their cars’ so that they could get to clubs. Elson intimated that ‘they’ll help with the petrol (women’s lib y’know)’.129 Marie Cleary and Shirley Goodchild from Burnley were more mobile, with Elson reporting that ‘you see us at nearly every all-dayer and all-nighter’.130 Mandy Wootton from Wallasey wrote a letter ‘on behalf of the unfortunates (the Chosen Few?) who have to rely on public transport’. Attending Blackpool Mecca was an arduous journey for Wootton, as the ‘last bus was at 8pm, and I had to leave by then to get back to Liverpool’.131 Women were also caught up in the battles over the meaning and direction of northern soul. They were contributors to letters pages and debates within the scene that were indicative of its fragile unity. Women often had to rebut criticism from other fans who felt they were not as serious in their affiliation. Gaynor Ferguson, a 19-yearold typist, was devoted to dancing, telling Godin in 1974 that ‘soul rules my life’.132 Amy Murphy from Derby defended the multiracial dimensions of soul music: ‘I think it is wrong to generalise and say that people who listen to white singers don’t know a thing about soul.’ She pointed out that ‘black and white attend the Mecca and the Casino’ and ‘the music played in these clubs … would surely sound the same to black and white ears’.133 Murphy and others were reluctant simply to accept the views expounded in the music press by male writers such as Godin, Cummings and Elson, who tended to write about women’s clothing, dance styles and personal stories. In Blues and Soul and related publications there is a definite seriousness attached to men’s contributions, and some women were clearly 227

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determined to challenge the gendered orthodoxies of the scene and the period. When northern soul reached the pages of the national press it was usually the case that men were interviewed by reporters. For example, in the feature on Wigan Casino published in the Sunday Times Magazine in February 1976, it was male interviewees who defined the experiences of women in the club. One regular, Gary, claimed that the ‘girls here, they’re only interested in two things, music and dancing’.134 Such reporting meant that women were visible, but largely silent in articulating their own engagement with northern soul. Young women often appeared in magazines and fanzines in search of friendship, companionship and love. Janice Clark of Lancaster wrote a letter to Blues and Soul in 1975 seeking ‘to write to anyone coloured living in Britain’.135 Jackie Ingham, aged 18, was an apprentice hairdresser from Blackpool who regularly attended the Mecca and the Ritz in Manchester.136 Others accessed soul music through traditional sources such as the American Forces Network radio station, youth clubs and slots at more conventional discos and nightclubs. Louise Hollyoak from Batley, Yorkshire, told readers that a daily soul show could still be found on the medium waveband and ‘makes a good fillin until the BBC realise that soul music is commercial’.137 Others were active in the developing factionalism that was developing between the retrospective ‘oldies’ scene and those who were embracing funk and disco. Angie from Stockport presented a critical review of the Ritz alldayer event in Manchester in 1977. If I’d known it was going to be 95% funk, I too would have gone in my pyjamas and sunglasses and pranced up and down in my stiletto heels … when that was played the floor was half empty whereas it was packed when Northern Soul was played. No wonder we are told to ‘Keep the Faith’. I’m sure that it was sheer faith that kept most of us from walking out.138

Claire Baxter from Staffordshire submitted a letter to Black Echoes claiming that ‘the current singles by Boney M, Hot Chocolate and Donna Summer have very little soul’.139 Lynne Callaghan from Cranwell, Lincolnshire, attempted to strike a more consensual note regarding the apparent schisms: ‘isn’t it about time this “war” between Funk and Northern fans ended?’140 An unnamed ‘Northern Soul Sister’ argued that ‘if we join together as “one” and not into selfish groups, soul …. will expand’.141 This can be read as an attempt to challenge the 228

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individualism and conservatism of many men who continued to police the scene and to define what was and was not northern soul. There is little evidence of women taking DJ spots in the major clubs in the 1970s, but Elson reported that on a visit to Wigan Casino in 1973 he met Gillian Derbyshire from Southport, who was set on becoming ‘the first girl soul DJ’.142 He asked readers if they knew any others, but no such information was forthcoming. However, female influence was evident in the conversion stories of some who went on to become major DJs on the scene. Bolton’s Richard Searling was introduced to soul music in 1970 through his relationship with Judith, a regular at the Twisted Wheel.143 The absence of female voices from soul publications such as Blues and Soul did not go unchallenged. In early 1974 Ann Murphy from Ince near Wigan wrote a critical letter to the editors entitled ‘LADIES SOUL’. I suppose you don’t have many girls writing to you but I can assure you that we are still here. In every issue of B&S, there are letters and ‘My Idea of Soul’ written by males. Is it that there aren’t many girls interested in your fabulous magazine­– e­ xcept for myself? Or is it that you would rather hear it from one of your own kind? Also, I don’t see any articles or interviews with women behind the scene. If you can print my letter in a tiny corner of one page, perhaps we females won’t feel so neglected.144

The editor responded positively to this critique with the call, ‘girls, let’s hear from you, we’ll devote the whole of “pen and paper” and “my idea of soul” to your thoughts … let’s have your feelings on the direction of soul’.145 Nonetheless, the contribution of women to the pages of Blues and Soul and other fanzines remained sporadic. Young women were instrumental in creating their own events and developing local scenes. Marie Nolan established a soul night at the Accrington British Legion as she was ‘fed up with not having a local club’.146 Male contributors to Blues and Soul also noticed the changing conventions of dance and courtship between men and women. Barrie Reader from London was illustrative: ‘I gather that asking a girl for a dance … became very unfashionable … quite some time ago … remember that happiness is ultimately and always derived, not from detachment but from attachment … not from the devilish illusion of independence’.147 In 1974 Godin completed a survey of fans attending Tiffany’s in Stoke-on-Trent and Blackpool Mecca for Black Music magazine. Gaynor Ferguson told him that ‘no one person 229

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makes the Northern Scene. It is a collective thing which makes every person as important as the next.’148 Yet women generally continued to be patronised by males. Nigel Hopwood from Mansfield was of the opinion there were not ‘enough female followers of Northern Soul … if they took a little time off from screaming their heads off at Roller concerts … they would suddenly realise the quality of the music’.149 Such rhetoric continued to be a particular trope in marginalising the musical tastes of young women in the 1970s and 1980s on the part of journalists, cultural commentators and academics.150 Writings about women on the scene in the soul press were often couched in the sexist and objectifying language of the 1970s. Elson’s portraits of the clubs often homed in on women’s appearance, clothing and character, with descriptions such as ‘large bosomed Jill Andrews from Hartlepool’.151 Women were attuned to the different types of clubs, with many preferring the glamour and perceived sophistication of Blackpool Mecca over the grittier Wigan Casino. In one of his many visits to the Mecca, Elson felt that ‘some of the outfits the girls were wearing would be ruined in half an hour at a normal all-nighter’.152 DJ Ian Levine promoted the Mecca as being ‘closer in atmosphere and ambience to a New York Disco than any other location in the whole of Britain’.153 Women were often compelled to defend the popular aspect of soul and the number of successful female performers. One letter from Robin in Southport, entitled ‘Soul Sex Equality’, was indicative: ‘For all those who still feel males are the best, look at the charts; us females are holding our own thanks to Candi Staton, Dorothy Moore, Diana Ross … I am proud to be a female Soul fan.’154 Others were strident in their criticism of the playlists of particular DJs. Suzanne from Staffordshire wrote a letter to Black Echoes in 1976 expressing frustration with the arguments between Soul Sam and Ian Levine, and asking ‘isn’t there enough conflict within the Northern Scene?’155 Similarly, Heather Dann felt that it ‘would be really nice for people to get on … who is it that decides what is soul music and what is not, and who gives them the right!’156 Wendy Withers echoed such sentiments and felt that some of the men were ‘very political’ about policing the scene and protecting established definitions.157 Women of all ages formed the backbone of the various clubs as fans and workers. On the third anniversary of the opening of Wigan Casino in 1976, Blues and Soul published an extensive feature on the club. It profiled the women who worked front of house and behind the scenes. Hilda Woods collected money on the door and Evelyn 230

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Edwards worked in the coffee bar. Emily Edge collected the coats in the cloakroom while Mary Connolly, Gladys Glover and other women served drinks at the bar. Pat Edwards, Eunice Lowe and Betty Owens prepared food in the café. Sheila McDermot processed memberships, ensuring the smooth running of the operation.158 As with the Wilkes diary on the Catacombs club, the Blues and Soul article sheds light on an aspect of the scene that is absent from the popular depictions that have been a feature of retrospective accounts. For many women, northern soul was an escape from the drudgery of the factory, office and shop, but also a means of employment.159 These intergenerational encounters between women in Wigan would have informed conversations and understandings of the continuities and changes in Lancastrian working-class culture. Soul publications were instrumental in extending communities of soul fans, with regular pen pal requests linking young women to likeminded people in the UK and overseas. The pages of Blues and Soul and Black Music offer a rich database of women on the scene, their ages, localities and occupations. Maria Lypnys from Lincoln was 18, a hairdresser, and a northern fan. Julie Varley from Leeds, 17, wanted to write to ‘a male soul fan American or British’.160 Lesley Tipples from Cardiff requested pals from New York; Lynsey Shuttleworth from Stockport was in search of a ‘black female’. Louise Hollyoak ‘liked to gossip in letters about the general Northern scene’.161 Women could also forge friendships with black Americans in states such as California, Georgia and Florida. The pen pal requests in Blues and Soul opened up a new world where music and culture could be discussed in print across continents.162 Similarly, the ‘Friendship Train’ pages in Black Music contained requests for pen pals in Britain and the United States. The service was also used by women moving to different parts of the country and looking to hook up with other soul aficionados. Pauline and Margaret were ‘two … 19-year-old soul sisters newly arrived in [Stoke-on-Trent]’ and looking to hear from ‘genuine soul brothers, any colour or creed’.163 The slow decline of northern soul in the late 1970s was covered in great detail by contributors to soul publications. Jackie Green from Burnley, a regular at the Casino from 1974, illustrated the tension between punks and soul fans in Wigan in 1977: These ‘punks’ come along for a few weeks and what happened? Two blokes end up in hospital … 100s more injured … Being a lady stomper 231

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Keeping the faith … I decided to shift rapid … I was helped into the road by a helping punk who threw my ‘allnighter’ case behind me … This was followed by scores of scuffles and running battles.

An editorial in New Soul Time warned that ‘if your local club is not supported don’t underestimate the size of the local punk following … they can move in’.164 Lynne Richardson, writing in the fanzine Talk of the North, noted that ‘it becomes increasingly apparent that the “Northern Soul Scene” … is in desperate need of immediate injection of impetus … new drive and enthusiasm to counteract the apparent feelings of sadness and resentment at the loss of the “old” scene’.165 In early 1977 a group of women (Julie, Dawn, Vanessa, Allyson and Gill) told Black Echoes that ‘soul still lives in Cleethorpes’.166 Yet in the east midlands, Sally, Karen, Gail and Deb proclaimed that ‘Nottingham was once a city of soul … But that was in the past … it’s only the last 18 months that the crowds have not been pulled, and atmosphere has dropped.’ They called on all northern soul fans to ‘do something about it’.167 By the late 1970s women were far less visible in soul publications than they were on the dance floor. Many were also ignored by predominantly male documenters of the scene. In 1979 a northern soul fan attended Mr M’s in Wigan and noted such silences: ‘The only girl that would speak to me was Judy.’ Judy ‘liked the older crowd’, claiming that ‘most of the younger ones have no manners, knocking and pushing, not like people used to be­– ­friendly’. She said that ‘if Mr Ms closed then I wouldn’t come again to Wigan’.168 Others were critical of the generational tensions that were appearing at the Casino. Lynne Stott told Black Echoes: ‘I used to be a regular … but the last two years have seen the place going down the drain … raise the age level from 13 to 17 years which is the age group that should be attending the oldies night.’169 Yet women still travelled in groups, criss-crossing the north over the weekend to attend multiple venues. In 1979 Elaine and Kay from Farnworth in Bolton would start the night in Hilton Community Centre in Horwich, and then move on to Wigan with groups from ‘as far afield as Halifax, Bradford … Preston, Blackpool, and Burnley’.170 Young women were also tasked with articulating the thoughts of male partners and siblings. On Wigan Casino’s fifth anniversary in September 1978, Rita Horsman wrote a letter to Blues and Soul on behalf of her younger brother Ernie: ‘Wigan Casino stands for escape 232

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to fantasy when every boy and girl imagine they are kings of the dancefloor.’171 Shop worker Ann Walker was chided by friends and family for attending the Casino and labelled ‘a nutter’: ‘They say either I’m crazy or that there’s something else going on … they reckon it’s an orgy or something.’172 With the fragmentation and decline of the northern soul scene during 1978–81, women were keeping the flame burning in bedrooms and on dance floors. Karen Toplis reflected on the closure of the all-nighters in Leicestershire: ‘I only pity those who never visited Coalville, they definitely missed one of the greatest nighters around.’173 A letter by Tina from Leeds in autumn 1980 was also indicative: I am (don’t scream in agitation) a 100% dedicated Northern Soul fan, and would just like to point out that ‘up here’ in cold, foggy backward Leeds, Northern Soul never once was forgotten by the faithful followers­ – ­jazz funkies eat your heart out! Just as many people from the Leeds/ Bradford/Halifax areas go to all-dayers, not to mention Wigan as ever before. So, don’t put Northern Soul down­– ­even though, oh heck­– ­the beat is becoming funkier.174

Women were more consensual in embracing elements of the funk and disco that became a feature of British nightlife in the 1970s. Northern soul lacked the sophistication and overt sexuality of disco, and its retrospective image and sound were seen as archaic in terms of its lack of engagement with the progressive politics of feminism and gay liberation. Can we share it? Sexuality, relationships and the many worlds of northern soul175 As Jon Savage has argued, ‘pop’s relationship to different ideas of sexuality and gender is … deep and intricate; although it frequently denies it, it is from the milieu and sensibilities of the sexually divergent that pop culture draws much of its sustenance’.176 One of the many tributaries of mod in the 1960s came through gay subculture and its incursions into the consumption of soul music. The gay activist Peter Burton claimed in his autobiography that ‘early Motown was “gay music”’ that ‘spoke directly to us’.177 A narrow and surface reading of northern soul, its consumers, clubs, discourses and imagery suggests clearly demarcated notions and presentations of what were in the 1970s conventional ideas of masculinity and 233

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femininity. Surviving photographs and documentary footage reveal young working-class men displaying their masculinity and athletic prowess on the dance floor.178 Similarly, young women are dressed in tops and skirts, dancing alone or in groups with an emphasis on the music rather than using the dance floor to attract potential partners. However, a deeper reading of the letters and contributions to soul magazines and fanzines suggests a more complex engagement with gender identities, the politics of gay liberation and sexuality. The rise of northern soul in the early 1970s complemented a more strident politics of gender and sexuality epitomised by the organisational mobilisation of feminist and gay liberation groups.179 For a short period such campaigns and debates left a small but important footprint on the scene.180 In a letter to Blues and Soul in 1973, Gary from London illustrated the connection between gay culture and soul. Gay people­– ­much better than using the word ‘queer’­– ­are very much soul fans and a trip to any gay club will prove this … I think it is fair to say that Gays have deeper feelings about what is going on around them and what is happening to them. For them, a soul record is ‘they’ experiencing their feelings … I am Gay and proud of it … I personally don’t know what I would do without Soul music as no other music could express my feelings better.181

Two years later Paul Delaney of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality submitted a critical letter to Blues and Soul attacking Elson and others for their use of particular tropes, jokes and stereotypes when referring to gay politics and soul music. Delaney felt that this was a form of ‘queer bashing’ and that ‘several great soul artists’ were gay but it was ‘difficult for them to openly declare themselves’. He went on to thank ‘those intelligent and thoughtful heterosexuals who do not regard us as other than human beings, and who see in the music we all love a deeper meaning of tolerance and understanding’. Elson and Godin responded on behalf of the magazine, apologising for ‘flippant remarks’ but defending ‘free speech’.182 In 1978 David Reeks from London wrote a letter to Black Echoes advising them not to ‘use the words “Queer” and “poof” when referring to gay men’, and stating that there ‘are many gay readers who love soul music’.183 Within the northern soul scene the presence of gay men who were open about their sexuality was negligible. Ian Levine, Les Cockell and Dave Godin were all gay but said little about their own sexual preferences. Working-class gay men would also no doubt have been 234

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reluctant to express their sexuality in what was a hostile and homophobic environment.184 Yet after the publication of a small number of letters in the soul press, more detailed articles appeared. In 1975 Black Music included an extensive feature on ‘gay soul’. The article by Tony Cummings was a reflection of the recent commercial success of the Valentino single ‘I Was Born this Way’. A letter from ‘Paul’ in response to the article was illustrative: ‘it’s about time we were open about homosexuality. I am myself gay and not ashamed of it. I wonder how many soul lovers like myself who are homosexuals would be prepared to admit it in public.’185 This call to arms generated little response from other readers, but those who did reply were largely positive. Dave Ruddell argued that while the magazine’s stance on gay rights was admirable, it had to go further than a plea for tolerance: ‘what is this tolerance? Gay people don’t want to be tolerated any more than black people do … of all publications, a black oriented one should know about liberation and pride, and not talk about “tolerance”.’186 Cummings quoted the manager of a gay disco in London who claimed that ‘soul music is definitely THE MUSIC of the gay scene, black and white. You go to any club, any party where there are gays, and that’s what you’ll hear.’187 The overt masculinity of the northern soul scene is somewhat challenged by the centrality of dance.188 The fact that men danced alone or in groups posed a subversive image that would have seemed feminine in the wider culture of the working-class communities from which many fans were drawn. For working-class men outside of the scene, attendance at a conventional disco was largely a means to consume alcohol after the pubs had closed at 11 p.m. and/or to meet members of the opposite sex. On these dance floors the act of moving to the music was a bridge to spatial and physical contact that reinforced normative characterisations of masculinity and femininity. The uniqueness of the northern soul scene and the perceived equal role of men and women were noted by New Musical Express in 1974. A regular at Manchester’s Pendulum club told Roger St Pierre that ‘the girls here are dead easy to talk to, very friendly. You think you’re gonna pull ’em, but the truth is they just want to rap about records.’189 The practice of men spending hours perfecting their dance steps in bedrooms could also be read as an incursion into disrupting the gendered identities of the domestic sphere. At the Torch, Elson recalls that ‘we would dance in a circle and the best one would take a turn in the middle’.190 Growing up in Liverpool, Steve Pollard was immersed in 235

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soul music and wanted to be one of Gladys Knight’s Pips. He practised dance moves in his bedroom mirror before gracing the dance floors of Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino.191 With the increasing popularity of disco in 1976 the relationship between soul and the politics of gay liberation continued to be discussed in Blues and Soul. A letter from ‘Mitch’ of Blackpool was indicative: I am growing more and more dismayed about the constant reference to gay people … I have always understood that if a person was gay, that meant they were attached to people of their own sex­– ­sex being the key word not Soul! … I myself (and I am sure that I speak for most other heterosexual people reading this) do not want soul music to have to carry a gay tag too … keep the word ‘gay’ in sex, not in Soul.

In response, the editor drafted a reply: ‘How great … if soul music has helped contribute to the lessening of moral and puritanical censures against gay people.’192 Robin from Southport agreed in part with Mitch that ‘soul should be kept in a class of its own’, but felt that ‘one of the best produced records … was “I Was Born This Way” by Valentino who is a known gay person as well as a soul singer’.193 Paul White from Hexthorpe, a village close to Doncaster, in a letter ­entitled ‘Gay Gold in Them Thar Hills’ predicted that ‘the next musical ­novelty … will be Gay Soul’. He stressed that this was not an attack ‘on the homosexual element of this world … as the man says “different strokes for different folks”’. Godin pitched in, doubting whether ‘society is yet tolerant enough to buy “gayness”’, but expressing ­support for ‘our friends in Gay Liberation’.194 At the height of the disco boom in the United States and Britain in 1977, Godin felt that ‘in the eyes of “straight society”, soul music always has … seemed “dirty”’.195 The image of northern soul as a relatively eccentric and esoteric subculture chimed with Godin’s view, and to outsiders it was seen as a closed world that middle-class journalists denigrated or ignored. The fact that many venues were in unfashionable locales in buildings with relatively poor facilities added to this metropolitan critique. In contrast to the glitter and spandex of the inner-city disco, northern soul clubs were perhaps seen as spaces where transgression and sexual experimentation was limited. Nonetheless, venues provided opportunities for love, romance and courtship. Such opportunities and intimacies have left a trace in the soul magazines and fanzines. While many young men collected records, made lists 236

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and traded rare singles, young women placed dance, friendship and love at the centre of their experiences. Some girls sent in letters to Blues and Soul listing their favourite dance records, and others such as Lynda Saxon, a Twisted Wheel regular, presented details of her romantic relationship with ‘Steve’; ‘this boy from New York City, he’s wild, he’s mine’. Godin advised them to ‘stay close to each other’ and sent them ‘Soul blessings’.196 Plat Newtown, an 18-year-old coal miner from Mansfield, was with a girl ‘very involved in soul’ and ‘couldn’t imagine going out with a girl who didn’t like soul’. Steve Jones from Lancashire and his girlfriend claimed to have ‘contemplated adopting a black baby’, highlighting how racialised commodification even spilled into the personal relationships of northern soul fans. Soul music was also used as a means of flirtation and affirmation of love and romance. In Audrey Wilkes’s diary from 1974 she noted that at the Aquarius club, ‘Shane was here, dancing around like a mad man and showing off for my benefit’.197 In the previous year she noted ‘working on the coats in the Cats … Kevin there, but I didn’t hardly speak to him, when I did he winked, he’s gorgeous.’198 Wendy Withers and her girlfriends met partners and husbands at Blackpool Mecca. Groups of couples would travel together for the all-dayers and nighters, holiday together and consolidate friendship networks throughout the 1970s and 1980s.199 Johny Pitts’s mother, a white, working-class soul fan from Sheffield, met his father, Ritchie, through the northern soul scene. He was a member of the Fantastics, a group that had been popular at the Mojo club. For her, ‘the music provided a flash of colour to … life in a grotty industrial city’.200 There are examples in the soul press of conventional images being challenged, particularly in relation to the depiction of female performers in the advertising sections. A letter to Blues and Soul in 1973 from Fanny Brown of Ellesmere Port was a reflection of the way some women on the scene were constructing critiques of the presentation of sex and soul: ‘pictures of nude women to sell records … remember a lot of girls read this fantastic magazine’.201 In contrast, in 1975 a letter was published in Black Music calling for more glossy pin-ups of black women that could be hung on the bedroom walls of young men. Caroline Griffiths, a reader from London, provided a critical response. I was surprised to see you printing such a blatantly sexist letter from ‘Brother Phil’. To stick a poster of a naked woman on a wall is not to 237

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Keeping the faith glorify her beauty as an individual person, but to offer her as an object … to be judged, possessed and used by the male … Your magazine has done a fine job in giving black music the attention and recognition it deserves. How about consistently granting women the same kind of respect.202

Young working-class men also fantasised about the sexuality of black females through the consumption of soul music and its attendant ephemera. Graham Carlon, a 17-year-old diesel fitter, told Godin that he was attracted to black girls and that ‘black was beautiful’ and it was ‘about time the whole world realised it’.203 Godin was also critical of the ways in which record companies conveyed racial stereotypes to sell product and reduced ‘black womanhood to the level of a sex object’.204 After the high point of northern soul in 1976–77 the political content of the letters pages of fanzines and magazines reveals a lack of engagement with the politics of gender and sexuality. The conventional imagery of masculinity and femininity on the northern soul scene might have seemed like an anachronism when set against the liberating mythologies of disco and punk, yet small battles no doubt continued to be waged in bedrooms, kitchens and on dance floors. Adrian Smith’s diaries from 1976–78 list the records that were indicative of the sonic shifts that were taking place at Blackpool Mecca, where disco and gay liberation posed a challenge to the purists and those who were reluctant to move on from the nostalgic culture of northern soul.205 * * * This chapter has explored the complexity of race, gender and sexuality on the northern soul scene in a decade when a new politics of liberation was making incursions into a range of cultural spaces, including film, literature and music. The use of Black Power imagery and slogans was at one level superficial, but it also found some resonance in the writings of proselytisers of the scene and underscored some of the ways in which a minority of young men and women felt and understood soul. Yet northern soul remained largely defined by its whiteness. Similarly, the rise of second wave feminism and challenges to conventional characterisations of masculinity and femininity did not take the overt forms that were celebrated in other subcultures, notably punk rock. Yet men and women had different priorities in terms of what they gave and took from the scene, and through contributions 238

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to the soul press they found a space to critically reflect on gendered identities. Nonetheless, men remained the arbiters of taste and the high priests of defining what was and what was not northern soul. The overt sexuality and transgressions of the disco scene were also largely marginal in northern soul. Ultimately the scene consisted of many worlds in which notions of gender and sexuality were subject to both affirmations and challenges through dance, relationships and forming connections to the broader parameters of popular music and youth culture. Notes 1 For the origins and development of Rock Against Racism and the AntiNazi League, see Ian Goodyer, Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2-Tone and Red Wedge (London: Picador, 2016); and David Renton, When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League 1977–1981 (Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2006). For a recent analysis of the rise of fascist organisations and their rivals in this period, see Ryan Shaffer, Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), chs 1 and 2. 2 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 2002). 3 See Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around, part 2. 4 Bobby Lester’s ‘Hang Up Your Hang Ups’ (1970) was played at Blackpool Mecca. 5 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 132. 6 Notably popular were the skinhead novels of Richard Allen. For a critical analysis of these books, see Bill Osgerby, ‘Bovver Books of the 1970s: Subcultures, Crisis and Youth-Sploitation Novels’, Contemporary British History, 26.3 (2012), pp. 299–332. 7 For a detailed reconstruction of this relationship in Wolverhampton, see Jones, They Danced All Night. The link between the consumption of soul music and fanatical support for Manchester United was expressed by Phil Saxe in his interview with the author, 23 August 2017. 8 For numerous examples of racist attacks on minorities, see Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1994). 9 For aspects of skinhead culture, see M. Brake, ‘The Skinheads: An English Working Class Subculture’, Youth and Society, 6.2 (1974), pp. 179–200; Nick Knight, Skinhead (London: Omnibus, 1982); 239

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Keeping the faith G.  Marshall, Spirit of 69: A Skinhead Bible (Dunoon: S.T. Publishing, 1991); G. Watson, Skins (London: Music Press Books, 2007). 10 For a recent analysis of how this played out in the West Midlands, see Shirin Hirsch, In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018). 11 Sandbrook, State of Emergency, p. 261. 12 Blues and Soul, November 1969. 13 For example, see the memoirs of McKenna/Snowball, Nightshift, and Jones, They Danced All Night. 14 For a short critical biography of Godin, see Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’, pp. 120–41. 15 Blues and Soul, November 1969. 16 Dave Godin, foreword in Ritson and Russell, The In Crowd, p. 19. 17 Blues and Soul, May 1968. 18 Blues and Soul, March 1968. 19 Blues and Soul, September 1969. 20 Blues and Soul, May 1969. 21 Blues and Soul, September 1969. 22 Blues and Soul, March 1969. 23 Blues and Soul, October 1968. 24 For a very small minority on the scene, the music did lead to a deeper interest in racism in the United States. Stuart Cosgrove is a good example. See Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels. 25 See Jones, They Danced All Night, ch. 23. 26 For a historical overview of the impact of black music in Britain, see Marks, ‘Young, Gifted and Black’. For a more detailed survey of reggae, see Michael de Koningh and Marc Griffiths, Tighten Up! The History of Reggae in the UK (London: Sanctuary, 2003). 27 However, as noted by Cosgrove, Steve Caesar, a black youth from Leeds, won the first dance contest at Wigan Casino in 1974. Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, pp. 101–2. Some black artists also settled in Britain because of their popularity on the northern soul scene, such as Edwin Starr in the east midlands and Richard Pitts in Sheffield. 28 For the clubs of Moss Side, see Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, p. 65. For a contemporary snapshot of Moss Side and its ‘othering’, see Derek Humphrey and Gus John, Because They’re Black (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), pp. 34–6. Black and minority groups in Stoke-on-Trent were similarly distant from the soul scene at the Torch in Tunstall. See Ebrey, ‘The Golden Torch Revisited’, p. 152. 29 Blues and Soul, 30 March 1976. For the post-Beatles rhythm and blues scene in Liverpool, see Michael Brocken, Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s–1970s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 144–57. For a contemporary feature on the black 240

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Race, gender and sexuality history of the city through popular music, see Black Echoes, 30 October 1976. 30 Blues and Soul, 13–26 February 1970. 31 Blues and Soul, 17–30 July 1970. 32 For the music and politics of the Voices of East Harlem, see Stuart Cosgrove, Harlem 69: The Future of Soul (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2018), pp. 50–64. 33 Blues and Soul, 9–22 October 1970. 34 Blues and Soul, 21 January–3 February 1972. 35 Blues and Soul, 6–19 November 1970. 36 Blues and Soul, 4–17 December 1970. 37 Blues and Soul, 13–26 March 1970. 38 Blues and Soul, 28 August–10 September 1970. 39 Blues and Soul, 6 July 1976. 40 Blues and Soul, 17 December–6 January 1972. 41 Blues and Soul, 7–20 January 1972. 42 Blues and Soul, 2–15 March 1973. 43 Blues and Soul, 6–19 July 1973. 44 Hot Buttered Soul, September 1973. 45 Blues and Soul, 8–21 June 1973. 46 Interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016. 47 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 48 For the recollections of one of the key DJs of northern soul, see Searling, Setting the Record Straight. 49 For the link between Burtonwood and music in north-west England, see Gildart, Images of England, pp. 69–71. 50 Blues and Soul, 24 May–6 June 1977. 51 Blues and Soul, 26 April–9 May 1977. 52 Derek and Ray’s ‘Interplay’ (1967) was one of many ‘controversial’ instrumentals played at Wigan Casino. 53 Blues and Soul, 17–30 August 1973. 54 Haslam, Life After Dark, p. 224. 55 Dave Haslam, Not Abba: The Real Story of the 1970s (London: Fourth Estate, 2005), p. 78. 56 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 172. 57 For a detailed reading of punk and politics, see Worley, No Future. 58 Black Echoes, 6 January 1978. 59 Blues and Soul, 21 September–4 October 1976. 60 For a detailed history of ‘bootlegs’ in popular music, see Heylin, Bootleg! The Rise and Fall of the Secret Recording History. 61 Black Music, April 1974. 62 For the tension between DJs and bootleggers, see Searling, Setting the Record Straight, pp. 13–21. 241

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Keeping the faith 63 Black Music, May 1975. 64 Black Music, June 1975. 65 Blues and Soul, 14–27 October 1975. 66 Blues and Soul, 18–31 January 1977. 67 Blues and Soul, 19 July–1 August 1977. 68 Frank Elson interview, 19 February 2016. 69 Blues and Soul, 10 February 1976. 70 Black Echoes, 14 August 1976. 71 Russ Taylor interview, 21 April 2016. 72 Blues and Soul, 23 March 1976. 73 Blues and Soul, 30 March 1976. 74 Blues and Soul, 6 April 1976. 75 For reggae in Britain, see de Koningh and Griffiths, Tighten Up! 76 Blues and Soul, 4 May 1976. 77 Blues and Soul, 22 June 1976. 78 Blues and Soul, 20 July 1976. 79 Blues and Soul, 14–27 December 1976. 80 The events and the political fallout of the Notting Hill violence in 1976 and 1977 were absent from the pages of Blues and Soul, but were covered in editions of Black Echoes. 81 Blues and Soul, 1–14 February 1977. 82 Blues and Soul, 29 March–11 April 1977. 83 Black Music, October 1977. 84 Blues and Soul, 7–20 November 1978. 85 Black Echoes, 7 October 1978. 86 For some specific examples, see Gildart, Images of England. 87 Black Music, January 1975. 88 Blues and Soul, 17–30 July 1970. 89 Jones, They Danced All Night, p. 61. 90 Blues and Soul, 22 April–10 May 1973. Yet even sources such as the ‘My Idea of Soul’ columns still convey Pitts’s view that ‘it’s hard to work out how or if the cultural transactions taking place in Northern soul had any kind of truly transformative effect on how white Europeans saw black people’. Pitts, Afropean, p. 29. 91 Blues and Soul, 21 September–7 October 1974. 92 Blues and Soul, 21 September–7 October 1976. 93 Blues and Soul, 27 April–10 May 1973. 94 Blues and Soul, 22 October–4 November 1974. 95 Blues and Soul, 19 November–2 December 1974. 96 Blues and Soul, 17 December 1975–6 January 1976. 97 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, p. 215. 98 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, p. 222. 99 Blues and Soul, 16 February–1 March 1973. 242

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Race, gender and sexuality 100 Blues and Soul, 16–29 March 1973. 101 Lou Johnson’s ‘Unsatisfied’ (1965) was regularly played at the Golden Torch along with the Fascinations’ ‘Girls Are Out To Get You’ (1966). 102 Blues and Soul, 20 November–3 December 1970. 103 The interviews conducted with women for this book suggest that they bought soul singles from outlets where they could also purchase other goods such make-up. Woolworths and other department stores proved to be more welcoming places than the male-dominated specialist record shops. 104 For a recent critical appraisal of women on the scene from a sociological perspective, see Katie Milestone, ‘Soul Boy, Soul Girl: Reflections on Gender and Northern Soul’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 197–214. 105 Blues and Soul, 4–17 December 1970. 106 For a critical of reading of women and subcultural theory and history, see Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), esp. ch. 2. 107 Interview with Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017. 108 Interview with Dave Evison, 21 March 2019. 109 Interview with Richard Cooper, 10 April 2016. 110 Blues and Soul, 13–26 April 1973. 111 Blues and Soul, 17–30 August 1973. 112 Black Music, June 1974. 113 Beverley Calvert, a Motown fan from Leigh, conveyed this view in discussion with author, 23 December 2017. 114 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 13 January 1974. 115 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 26 January 1974. 116 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 10 February 1974. 117 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 23 February 1974. 118 The importance of the private consumption of music in the lives of teenagers is explored in Lincoln, Youth Culture and Private Space. 119 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. 120 A point also noted in Milestone, ‘Soul Boy, Soul Girl’. 121 Blues and Soul, 31 August–13 September 1973. 122 Blues and Soul, 14–27 September 1973. 123 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 15 September 1974. 124 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. 125 Blues and Soul, 31 August–13 September 1973. 126 Blues and Soul, 23 November–6 December 1973. 127 Blues and Soul, 21 December 1973–14 January 1974. 128 Blues and Soul, 12–25 March 1974. 129 Blues and Soul, 2–15 July 1974. 130 Blues and Soul, 29 January–11 February 1974. 243

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Keeping the faith 131 Blues and Soul, 10 May 1976. 132 Black Music, June 1974. 133 Black Music, April 1975. 134 Sunday Times Magazine, 29 February 1976. 135 Blues and Soul, 30 September–13 October 1975. 136 Blues and Soul, 15–28 February 1977. 137 Blues and Soul, 15–28 March 1977. 138 Blues and Soul, 10–23 May 1977. 139 Black Echoes, 13 August 1977. 140 Blues and Soul, 21 June–4 July 1977. 141 Blues and Soul, 26 October–8 November 1973. 142 Blues and Soul, 26 October–8 November 1973. 143 Blues and Soul, 26 February–11 March 1974. 144 Blues and Soul, 15–28 January 1974. 145 Blues and Soul, 15–28 January 1974. 146 Blues and Soul, 21 May–3 June 1974. 147 Blues and Soul, 9 March 1976. 148 Black Music, June 1974. 149 Black Music, November 1975. 150 The exception being McRobbie and the scholars who took inspiration from her book, Feminism and Youth Culture. 151 Blues and Soul, 13–26 February 1979. 152 Blues and Soul, 25 May 1976. 153 Blues and Soul, 20 July 1976. 154 Blues and Soul, 11 August 1976. 155 Black Echoes, 18 December 1976. 156 Black Echoes, 23 September 1978. 157 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. 158 Blues and Soul, 21 September–4 October 1976. 159 For a detailed exploration of the lives of women in the 1970s, see Todd, The People. 160 Blues and Soul, 18–28 March 1977. 161 Blues and Soul, 13–26 September 1977. 162 For an example of the range of US requests for British pen pals, see Blues and Soul, 4–17 December 1979. 163 Black Music, April 1975. 164 New Soultime, No. 4, 1977. 165 Talk of the North, 1978. 166 Black Echoes, 9 July 1977. 167 Black Echoes, 13 August 1977. 168 Soul Source, No. 7, 1979. 169 Black Echoes, 5 May 1979. 170 Soul Source, No. 9, 1979. 244

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Race, gender and sexuality 171 Blues and Soul, 26 September–9 October 1978. 172 Blues and Soul, 25 September–8 October 1979. 173 Black Echoes, 25 November 1978. 174 Blues and Soul, 21 October–3 November 1980. 175 Rick Shephard’s ‘Can We Share It?’ (1975) was played at Wigan Casino. 176 Jon Savage, ‘Tainted Love. The Influence of Male Homosexuality and Sexual Divergence on Pop Music and Culture since the War’, in Alan Tomlinson (ed.), Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of Pleasure (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 155. See also Richard Smith, Seduced and Abandoned: Essays on Gay Men and Popular Music (London: Continuum, 1995). 177 Peter Burton, Parallel Lives (London: GMP, 1985), p. 31. 178 For example in Palmer’s film The Wigan Casino. 179 For a recent analysis of such politics, see Natalie Thomlinson, Race, Ethnicity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1968–1993 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). For the politics of gay liberation, see Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), chs 3 and 4. 180 The three major histories of disco contain no discussion of the UK scene and there is no reference to northern soul. See Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture 1970–1979 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around; and Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010). 181 Blues and Soul, 13–26 April 1973. 182 Blues and Soul, 14–27 October 1975. 183 Black Echoes, 14 January 1978. 184 Cosgrove claims that Levine was subject to some homophobic abuse. Cosgrove, Young Soul Rebels, p. 125. 185 Black Music, September 1975. 186 Black Music, September 1975. 187 Black Music, August 1975. 188 For an analytical discussion of northern soul dancing, see Wall, ‘Out on the Floor’. 189 New Musical Express, 29 June 1974. 190 Interview with Frank Elson, 16 February 2016. 191 Interview with Steve Pollard, 2 April 2016. 192 Blues and Soul, 20 April 1976. 193 Blues and Soul, 1 June 1976. 194 Blues and Soul, 18 June 1976. 195 Blues and Soul, 11–24 October 1977. 196 Blues and Soul, 18–30 December 1970. 197 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 10 September 1974. 245

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Keeping the faith 198 Diary of Audrey Wilkes, 8 September 1973. 199 Interview with Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016. 200 Pitts, Afropean, p. 272. 201 Blues and Soul, 2–18 February 1973. 202 Black Music, July 1975. 203 Black Music, June 1974. 204 Blues and Soul, 15 December 1972–4 January 1973. 205 Diaries of Adrian Smith, 1976–78; interview with Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016.

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8

Going back and checking it out: myth, legacy, history and nostalgia

With the closure of Wigan Casino in 1981, the mythology, legacy curation and internationalisation of the northern soul scene became a contested site of debate for enthusiasts, journalists, documentary film-makers, and authors of autobiographies and popular histories. Myth has been a consistent source of identity, affirmation and solidarity on the scene. From the iconic clubs of Manchester, Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Wigan depicted on thousands of patches through to the creation and curation of histories of northern soul, the foundation myths retain their symbolic power. The size of crowds, the intensity of atmosphere, and the consumption of both sounds and stimulants have underpinned conversations, reminiscences and memories. The prominence and reach of Wigan Casino has been at the centre of such legends. One myth that appears in general histories and is often repeated in television features and documentaries is that in 1978 the Casino was voted best disco in the world by Billboard magazine. However, in that year there was no award in this category and throughout the 1970s there was no mention of northern soul, save for some short notices relating to the Casino Classics record label. Yet myths, controversies and nostalgia remain as points of both unity and division in the memories of soul fans. They have underpinned and continue to generate the many histories of northern soul. Such histories began to appear in the wake of the relative decline of the scene in the 1980s, and then after its remarkable resurgence in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

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I’ll keep holding on: legacy and revival in the 1980s and beyond1 The story of northern soul since 1981 is best begun with reference to developments that occurred during the dying embers of the golden age and featured one of its long-serving DJs­– S ­ oul Sam­– a­ nd his musings on the direction he felt the scene should take into the 1980s. He thought that northern soul would have to undergo radical change in order to survive and that ‘it was time to set up a new underground scene without the mass publicity and stale oldies’.2 Sam made a visit to a Wigan all-nighter in 1979. This was part of a highly personal review of the Casino and what the scene had become, as a precursor to him guesting as a DJ. This was a short-lived affair, as Sam ‘left under a cloud’. In 1980 he had already attempted to introduce his ‘new type of Northern Soul’. One record he touted was Love Committee’s ‘I Made a Mistake’, which was ironic, as it was Sam who had made an error in pushing too quickly for radical change­– ­seen by supporters as ‘an air of freshness’, but fundamentally resisted by the core of ‘traditionalists’. Sam saw the brief resurrection of Saturday night soul sessions at Blackpool Mecca as another opportunity, which also proved ephemeral. Moreover, what Dave Shaw describes as Sam’s intervention, ‘galvanising the 70s crew at Wigan’, which saw one supportive DJ ‘stand in the aisle near the stage at Wigan and shout “Shit!” or “Total crap” after every 60s record that Richard [Searling] played’, unsurprisingly served only to reinforce entrenchment on the scene.3 As part of his campaign Sam became involved in one of the regular spats between DJs, in this case with Pat Brady concerning Sam’s intervention and his criticism of Brady’s adherence to a largely ‘oldies’ music policy. Brady retorted in the Midnite Express fanzine: until recently I had the utmost respect for Martin’s [Soul Sam] unceasing dedication to the Rare Soul Scene … I myself feel that the gap in musical ideals is far less extreme than some people would have us believe … The people who fill the soul clubs will decide the fate of the scene and a united scene has got to be better than splintered rival factions. I hope 1982 sees a bit more give and take … because without togetherness to quote Lenny Curtis: ‘Nothing Can Help Us Now’!4

These were highly symbolic and prophetic words, as this notion of ‘togetherness’ came to epitomise what the scene hoped to achieve in its post-golden age. What was significant about these developments was that Sam, who had hitherto given his support to the scene’s ‘tradi248

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tionalists’, now joined the ranks of the ‘progressives’ who demanded an exclusively post-1970 northern soul format, thus denying the prominence of ‘oldies’. Importantly, this volte-face acknowledged that Sam now agreed with a central tenet of progressivism that ‘there were no longer any 60s records left to be discovered in America that were worth playing’.5 He accepted that the scene in the early 1980s was in a state of flux, observing that even venues that had included more modern sounds in their programmes were closing. It appeared that the 1980s would be very much business as usual for the faction-riven and declining scene. It was clear that togetherness was a hope rather than a reality. However, smouldering beneath the dying embers of northern soul’s golden era were signs of a new beginning. Against the odds, a sense of unity was maintained by survivalist sentiments as the scene once again went underground. The relative success of northern soul’s return to the underground was primarily underpinned by the opening of several new venues, the sounds they uncovered and the music policy they pursued. It was clear by the early 1980s that the Top of the World in Stafford would be one of the scene’s strongest legacy venues. The club was an established venue during the 1970s, holding all-dayers. By the turn of the decade the Top of the World, or simply ‘Stafford’ as it was known, would become important in the post-Wigan era, with a balance of ‘Northern and Funk …with an emphasis on quality and superlatives’.6 Stafford was regarded as a superior venue in terms of the facilities it offered, well above the average semi-derelict dens beloved by soul fans. The instruction to punters to avoid bringing drugs on to the premises­– ­a minor issue it seemed­ –w ­ as joined by a request not to bring food, drink or chewing gum­– ­a habit for northern dancers­– a­ s it might ruin the expensive carpets.7 As Stafford began its famed all-nighters in 1982, it, like Blackpool Mecca earlier, developed an avant-garde reputation. A younger element at Stafford was eager to embrace what was dubbed a ‘new era’ for northern soul, including R’n’B, sixties ballads and mid-tempo sounds that 1970s DJs shied away from. It also quashed golden-era claims that new soul discoveries from the 1960s had dried up.8 The club became important for what were described as ‘Stafford newies’, records new to the scene that were first played or released in the 1960s, but only recently discovered and played at the Top of the World, including many on the Motown label. Stafford adopted the ‘Top Dog’ motif, featuring a bulldog wearing a top hat, to reinforce its claims. The biggest challenge facing Stafford was 249

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e­ xpectation. Coming so soon after the demise of Wigan, with the scene under real threat and with fans seeking a new direction, the level of expectation was great, as one fan recalls: I remember being there thinking, God this is Wigan all over again, same DJs, same records, until the first night that Dave (Withers) played a spot. And I knew, well, we all knew, that at last Stafford had an identity, new sounds that were a million miles better than everything else being played elsewhere.9

However, in 1983 familiar arguments resurfaced over music policy, focused on the marginalisation of sixties sounds. Despite what was ostensibly a new and radical direction for northern soul, factionalist issues were reignited. Aside from a well-attended second anniversary all-nighter, 1984 saw a downturn in interest; attendances generally took a hit, while the second anniversary was described by some as ‘disappointing’.10 In the same year the miners’ strike decimated working-class communities. As noted earlier, record dealer Les Hare recalls miners from Yorkshire appearing at venues and record fairs selling their prized collections in order to survive through the economic hardships of the dispute.11 Stafford continued with a reduced, but nonetheless enthusiastic, support until 1986 as the most important post-golden age northern soul venue. Other important venues which emerged during the early 1980s included yet another resurrection for Cleethorpes, as well as Rotherham’s Clifton Hall. Cleethorpes held all-nighters at the Winter Gardens from 1982, which ran for eighteen months until the venue succumbed to declining attendances. It was a similar story at Rotherham’s Clifton Hall, which held all-nighters that unabashedly proclaimed a new era through a fresh approach to music policy.12 Again, high hopes of the venue having longevity as a regular all-nighter never materialised as attendances hovered around the 200 mark.13 Another location was Morecambe, which represented a more successful, but similarly short-lived venture. Like Stafford, Morecambe was no stranger to northern soul. During 1976 and 1977 all-dayers were held at the Pier Ballroom, and more regular soul sessions at the Winter Gardens.14 In 1983 Shaun Gibbons resurrected the allnighters, featuring golden-era DJs Richard Searling, Pat Brady, John Vincent and Brian Rae. Attendances, at over 400, were healthy and the music discernibly northern, with some ‘oldies’ nights.15 Though an important venue during this period, Morecambe fell foul of safety 250

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concerns over the state of the pier. In any case, despite its relative success there remains doubt as to whether it could have survived in the longer term given the wider decline of the scene. Rare soul also made a symbolic return to London at the iconic 100 Club in 1979 with the mod revival. This initiated a regular sixties night, and the club celebrated its seventh anniversary in 1986. The music policy was quite eclectic, but DJs Brian Rae and Ian Clark ensured that northern was a big part of proceedings.16 The 100 Club was important in keeping the scene alive during the 1980s. One of the organisers, Ady Croasdell, set up Kent Records and from the mid1980s produced compilations of many unreleased soul tracks from the studios’ archives, which gave a boost to sales of northern recordings.17 The 100 Club in some ways represented a geographical return for the rare soul scene from the industrial north to the birthplace of the iconic Flamingo club in the capital city. Attendees at the 100 Club included veterans of the original scene, mod revivalists and a contingent of converts who were attracted to the authenticity, originality and exclusivity of northern soul. The factional differences of the 1980s took on a different hue. In the 1970s there were ‘traditionalist’ and ‘progressive’ elements, even though many fans claimed to be neither. In the 1980s hegemony was with the ‘progressives’, and the ‘traditionalists’ were often kept at a distance or patronised, increasingly seen as a sect by many because of their constant desire ‘for a club to carry the scene [back] to its past glory days’ following Wigan’s demise.18 Modern soul was now in the ascendant and events were often established as both ‘modern’ and ‘northern’. The term modern soul was now in general parlance and was a major part of the scene, describing an updated version of 1970s releases and newer influences, to the extent that anything that was not deemed modern was an ‘oldie’. However, northern ‘oldies’ fans had not gone away; an all-nighter with an ‘oldies’ bias at Hinckley Leisure Centre in May 1982 attracted 1,000 people. In contrast, many venues with a modern soul bias were struggling to attract more than 200.19 Overall though, ‘oldies’ fans were becoming relatively fewer in number. Survivalist instincts prevailed, however, as the majority recognised that the scene, unlike in the 1970s, was no longer big enough for a serious factionalist turn. As one ‘oldies’ fan writing to the fanzine New Blackbeat noted in 1983: ‘the rare soul scene is not big enough or strong enough … So we all have to stick together as “soul brothers and sisters” to make it survive.’20 251

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The numbers participating in northern soul events during the 1980s did not exceed 5,000 per week according to one estimate, and the figure was somewhat less by the late 1980s­– ­down from an optimistic and probably exaggerated figure of 100,000 at the scene’s height in 1975–77.21 Five thousand would have amounted to two wellattended nighters at Wigan during the 1970s, such had been the scale of decline in less than ten years. The collapse in numbers on the scene prefigured its quietest period during the late 1980s and was exacerbated by Stafford’s closure in 1986. Nevertheless, in the same year an all-nighter was established at the student union at Keele University, with attendances as high as 800, ensuring that even at its lowest point northern soul’s well-established Staffordshire connection remained.22 Other noteworthy venues at this time included the Princess Suite in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Loughborough Town Hall, and the Dixieland Suite in Blackpool.23 Another was Blackburn’s Empress Ballroom, which ran all-nighters until its closure in 1990.24 While the number of venues and participants reached a low, northern soul had not vanished, and these venues provided the springboard for what was best described as a ‘word-of-mouth’ revival during the 1990s, coupled with rekindled media interest, the return of the older crowd, as well as an incursion of younger fans. One feature of the revival period of the 1990s and early 2000s was the increased popularity of the soul weekender, for which soulies would decamp to a seaside resort for a jamboree. The weekenders had already been popular with jazz funk fans in the south of England. Weekenders were held in Berwick in 1987 and from the late 1980s in Great Yarmouth, while the Southport weekender had become a regular feature as these events increased in number, though the accent was often on modern soul rather than northern soul.25 One popular weekender was held at Cleethorpes.26 Channel Four television made a documentary on the event in 1996. This is an excellent portrayal of the scene in its revival period, complete with all the ingredients, including dancing, the record bar and big name northern artists from yesteryear.27 Another major weekender was at Blackpool­– ­a huge three-day extravaganza with six arenas held at the Norbreck Castle and Hilton hotels.28 There were similar events at the Cala Gran caravan park in Fleetwood, where Dave Godin made a guest appearance in 1999; there were events at Whitby and Torquay, and an all-dayer on the Isle of Man.29 There were also attempts to resurrect the concept of the soul weekender abroad in a variety of locations, including Ibiza, 252

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Sweden and Germany, developing a concept first initiated during the 1970s.30 One of the best-attended all-nighters during the early 2000s, in operation from 1997, was at Lowton Civic Hall near Leigh, with attendances of well over 400 on a regular basis. Lowton epitomised the revival scene of the late 1990s and beyond.31 Another venue from the revival period was Blackburn’s King George’s Hall, which on its seventh anniversary nighter in 2001 attracted around 1,500 fans.32 The turn of the millennium saw a new momentum in the revived scene with the first serious expansion in participants and venues for years. By 2002 new all-nighter events were established and scores of new venues had opened, stretching from Burnley to Worcester. King George’s Hall was able to boast that it had seen attendances of 12,000 at its eight mixed northern, jazz funk and modern events­– ­numbers not seen since the golden era.33 The attraction of the scene for many of those returning is evidenced by the fact that, during the ten or so years of absence, they rarely developed other interests, either musically or otherwise. One northern revivalist’s typical response to the question, ‘What did you do in the 1980s?’, was ‘I spent most of the 1980s sat in the vault of a pub playing cards’; most were certainly not attracted to any other music until the revival of northern soul during the 1990s. As another revivalist put it, ‘Northern Soul is like a virus which may lie dormant but never goes away.’34 In terms of music policy, aside from the modern and northern ‘oldies’ monikers, two preoccupations dominated the revival phase. First, there was a continuation, post-Stafford, of the sixties ‘newies’ scene­– ­records from the original period which had only recently been discovered. Secondly, there was what became known as the ‘crossovers’.35 ‘Crossover’ in this context has been defined in a number of ways. However, one accepted view was that these were recordings which DJs eschewed during northern soul’s golden era because they did not fit the required template for a sound from the sixties or seventies, mainly because their production was ‘too modern’ or they were too slow.36 It was thus claimed that crossover was a sound that bridged the gap between modern soulies who were able ‘to appreciate and enjoy some sixties soul … and the Northern scene which was able to embrace … more modern sounding tunes’.37 One venue that typified this sound was the Canal Tavern pub in Thorne near Doncaster.38 This became highly popular and well regarded as an innovative soul venue. The back room of this pub in a small former mining town was 253

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the setting for one of northern soul’s more groundbreaking moments since its golden period in terms of music policy.39 The venue carried the banner: ‘this is a soul club, NOT a dance club’.40 This was a significant northern soul moment­– ­not only was the setting ideally aligned with northern soul’s underground past, but its patrons found in these modest surroundings the congeniality of a soul club which harkened back to northern’s roots. The range of sounds from the 1980s and 1990s had come a considerable distance from the narrowly defined characterisations of the 1970s. This led some commentators and fans to claim that northern soul’s legacy was the scene’s finest hour as it returned to a more ecumenical policy of accepting sonic diversity rather than the sectarianism and commercialism which had been a prominent feature of its recent past. Despite northern soul’s continual schisms, by 2006­– ­over ten years into the scene’s revival­– ­new orientations in music policy, the rediscovery of interest and the expansion in numbers of venues was such that it seemed that it had never been away. Northern soul thus entered the new millennium with some confidence in a future that few would have predicted when it had virtually been written off during the early 1990s. The scene was unquestionably never going to turn back the hands of time to 1976, but it was still very much around and possessed a new-found vibrancy. The revival led to a slew of autobiographies, television documentaries, feature films, plays and academic articles. The characterisation of northern soul by film-makers, novelists and dramatists continued to draw on what were perceived to be emblematic markers of the scene, such as class, region and industrialisation/deindustrialisation. Better use your head: screening northern soul41 The screening of Tony Palmer’s Wigan Casino on British television in 1977 set a template for a visual representation of northern soul that continued to deploy particular tropes, anchoring the scene in a specific time, place and social context. As discussed in Chapter 6, class and geography were used as framing devices by Palmer and as a methodology for understanding and decoding elements of the scene. Subsequent directors, documentary film-makers and writers used Palmer’s work as a historical source and an entry point into what some participants in the scene later referred to as ‘the strange world of northern soul’. A number of documentaries on northern soul were 254

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broadcast on television, while others were available on DVD. All of them chart its development from the mod scene of the 1960s through to the rise, fall and rise again of the scene in the twenty-first century. The most exhaustive and complete appraisal, involving many of the major DJs, dancers, collectors and performers, is compiled in the multi-volume DVD collection The Strange World of Northern Soul (2003).42 This represented an extensive project in which participants on the scene attempted to curate their own history through their own voices, experiences and expertise. For the DJ Ian Levine the project was a major undertaking to ensure that the unmediated voices of both the performers and scene participants were clearly articulated, forming a definitive history of northern soul. Recollections of particular clubs are interspersed with contemporary performances of songs by the original artists; some are filmed in studios and others are seen lipsynching in public spaces in the United States. The collection clearly articulates the ‘you had to be there’ form of authenticity that participants on the northern soul scene view as the bedrock for serious histories of what they see as ‘their scene’. This is both a strength and a weakness of the collection, and yet for the historian its completeness ensures that a multiplicity of voices (albeit generally male) offer detailed insights and experiences. The shorter Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (2012) and Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (2014), broadcast on BBC Four, present concise overviews of the scene, drawing on Palmer’s footage and contemporary interviews with fans and DJs.43 A subjective but insightful autobiographical account of the scene was provided by the left-wing activist and author Paul Mason in Northern Soul: Keeping the Faith (2013), a Culture Show special broadcast on BBC World.44 Mason grew up in Leigh in Lancashire, a locality that had and continues to have a close affinity with northern soul and the broader culture that grew out of the economy of coal and cotton.45 He ‘reads’ northern soul as being part of a wider working-class culture that owed much to a solidaristic past and an aversion to the metropolitan trends and fashions that were directed from London via screen and print media. This narrative and analysis of the scene was also deployed by others when making short pieces on the history of northern soul for prime-time magazine programmes such as the BBC’s One Show.46 The oral testimonies collected for this study suggest that academic, popular and dramatic explorations of northern soul remain problematic for those who were embedded in the scene. Again, the notion that ‘you had 255

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to be there’ is a familiar refrain from those who claim that outsiders could never really understand what northern soul was all about. Such views have coloured the reception of cinematic representations, in particular the feature films Soul Boy (2010) and Northern Soul (2014). In cinema, northern soul gets a cursory first mention in Blue Juice (1995), a drama directed by Carl Prechezer that explores the relationship between young friends who are part of the surfing scene in Cornwall.47 In contrast to Palmer’s documentary, this film shows another England defined by a Cornish landscape of former tin mining, rural villages, small fishing ports and a surfing culture that draws heavily on the US and Australia for its fascination with the sea and surf. One scene features a mixed-race female DJ, Tiger, playing a northern soul record, ‘Lonely For You Baby’ by Sam Dees, who is told by the hotel manager that ‘it’s not what the kids are into any more’.48 She then has a conversation with one of the main characters, Josh Tambini, a record producer and veteran of Wigan Casino with whom she debates the running order of the three records played before 8 at the all-nighters. The soundtrack later shifts when there is a scene of an open-air rave accompanied by the then popular and contemporary sounds of acid house. The film features cameos from the soul singer Edwin Starr and the northern soul DJ Keb Darge. Starr plays Ossie Sands, a black performer who has been exploited by unscrupulous producers and samplers of his music. In one of the film’s final scenes he is seen recording a track with Tambini, who expresses a preference for the original sound of 1960s soul. The inclusion of references to northern soul adds little to the plot and narrative of the film, yet it highlights the continuities in British dance cultures in the 1980s and 1990s in which contemporary DJs mined northern soul samples to consolidate the beat and drive of particular pieces of music. Three years after the release of Blue Juice, the musician and DJ Fatboy Slim would find commercial success with his single ‘The Rockafella Skank’, which drew heavily on ‘Sliced Tomatoes’, an instrumental by the Just Brothers that had been a staple on the northern soul circuit. In 2010 northern soul was given the full cinematic treatment in Soul Boy, directed by Shimmy Marcus.49 The first image presented on screen is a map of Stoke-on-Trent, locating the subsequent narrative in one of the perceived centres of northern soul and the location of the Torch in Tunstall. As with Palmer’s Wigan Casino the viewer is presented with images of smoke, coal and the ceramics industry­– a­ n overview of a wider working-class culture. This draws 256

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on original documentary footage from the 1970s and Palmer’s footage of the dance floor of Wigan Casino. The focus then switches to the interior of a local pub in which people dance to Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’, which was a popular hit in 1974. Economic and political contextualisation comes through a radio broadcast that mentions recent bombings carried out by the Provisional IRA, strikes by the National Union of Mineworkers and subsequent energy shortages and power cuts. Further aspects of working-class culture are presented through public spaces such as the typical terraced street, the workplace and the fish and chip shop. The first northern soul fan to appear on screen is a young hairdresser who frequents a record shop, attends local soul events and travels to Wigan Casino. The narrative then centres on Joe McCain and his subsequent immersion in the scene. Filmed on location in Stoke-on-Trent, the images of canals and industry open a window on to the geography and topography of the midlands, which has been neglected in cinematic representations of Britain. Similar images were used earlier in Flame (1975), which featured members of the then popular band Slade offering an unromantic version of the swinging sixties.50 The authenticity of Soul Boy is rooted in its use of an extensive northern soul soundtrack and the way in which footage of Wigan Casino drawn from Palmer’s film is interspersed with a reconstruction of the club, with actors accurately presenting the styles and dance moves of the period. The lead character and his peers read Blues and Soul magazine, consume amphetamines and use northern soul as way of dealing with the alienation of place, occupation and the broader working-class culture of the region. The film generated mixed but generally favourable reviews from outside and inside the scene. The critic Peter Bradshaw commented that it was ‘too formulaic’ and ‘a little too derivative’.51 Anthony Quinn thought that the lead character was constructed as an ‘heir to the kitchen-sink realists of the 1960s’.52 In contrast, David Grittens felt that the film was ‘oddly detached from the compelling genre of music it claims to advocate’.53 Some of the participants interviewed for this book thought that the film lacked authenticity and that its use of class was simplistic and one dimensional. Following the release of Soul Boy there was a further spate of magazine articles, documentary news features and a renewed interest in the history of northern soul and its revival that saw a new generation of young people attending events and all-nighters. This was consolidated with the release of Northern Soul (2014), directed 257

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by Elaine Constantine. Unlike Soul Boy, this film was made by someone connected to the scene who aimed to present an insight into northern soul that was realistic, authentic and empathetic. Like Soul Boy, the film was also set in 1974 in the fictional northern town of Burnsworth.54 The opening shots similarly situate the narrative in a specific working-class milieu of terraced streets, factories and alienated youth. The classroom scene owes much to an earlier depiction of working-class schooling in Ken Loach’s cinematic treatment of Barry Hines’s novel Kes (1969).55 The experiences of the main characters mirror those of the working-class youths examined by sociologist Paul Willis in Learning to Labour (1977).56 The transition from youth club to soul club to northern subculture adds realism to the portrayal of the scene, as does the suggestion of a fascination with Bruce Lee and martial arts, which was a core component of working-class youth culture in the 1970s. Both John and Matt dream of travelling to America as a means of escape and of financial gain through buying, selling and trading rare records. As with Soul Boy, Wigan Casino is a symbolic space and a rite of passage into full immersion into the world of northern soul. Constantine’s construction and depiction of the scene is more gritty, realistic and empathetic than Marcus’s Soul Boy. Yet both films retain the centrality of class, place and periodisation in conveying the development, fragmentation and meaning of northern soul. The closing scenes of Northern Soul show lyrics daubed on to the bridges and factory walls of the industrial and increasingly post-industrial north. In general, critics and veterans of the scene found more authenticity in Constantine’s film than they had seen in Soul Boy. Mike McCahill noted that the film ‘looks, feels and crucially sounds true’.57 A review in New Musical Express pointed to the redemptive nature of the scene, which had a particular attraction for young people living in the squalor of 1970s Britain.58 American critics also found much to celebrate in the film, with Stephen Dalton in the Hollywood Reporter seeing it as ‘a low budget English cousin of Saturday Night Fever (1977)’.59 Some, including Jeanette Catsoulis in the New York Times, were critical of the way in which there was a ‘tendency to elbow women out of the frame’.60 The film was accompanied by a book of the same title in which the director gives space to participants to voice their experiences, and which offers a detailed visual record of the scene and its history.61 258

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Just a little misunderstanding: northern soul literature62 As with the films and documentaries, some on the scene have argued that those who have written about northern soul from the outside ‘don’t really understand it’.63 This view is often accompanied by a general disdain for anyone who writes about the scene whether from within or without. The grittiness of the Manchester ‘all-nighter’ scene was first depicted in fiction in Vivien Tenny’s pulp novel Just Ask the Lonely, published in 1971.64 According to the publisher, Tenny started writing the novel when she was 16, and it was ‘a true record of permissiveness’.65 This was one of many New English Library (NEL) books that featured youth culture, horror and exploitation, and that were widely read by the working-class youth of the 1970s.66 Subtitled ‘A teenager’s story of sex and love in a permissive society’, it charts the experiences of the main character, Tammie, and like much of the NEL output it is shot through with misogyny, rape and racism, though this particular example of the oeuvre is lacking the usual admixture of casual violence. It is unclear whether the text is autobiographical, but it does suggest personal knowledge of the soul and all-night club scene of north-west England. The specific clubs of Manchester are not named, but there are references to places that are close to descriptions of the Twisted Wheel and the types of records that were prominent on the rare soul scene. In one section, Tammie mentions watching the soul singer Ben E. King in the Midnight City.67 This could be a reference to the Twisted Wheel, where King performed on ten occasions between 1965 and 1970.68 In the opening chapter, Tammie contrasts the soul clubs with the more elegant and sophisticated premises that she now frequents, remembering ‘the cold, leaking cellars, where I had once spent my weekends. Listening to the soul sounds of the American artists echoing around the smelly, stagnant rooms.’69 She references amphetamine use at the clubs, where ‘they were as easy to buy as cigarettes’.70 When relaxing with her boyfriend Brian, Tammie listens to the ‘faint drone of coloured music’ that ‘throbbed out of the record player’.71 Later when she is hospitalised with mental health issues, she forges a bond with Gloria, a ‘black girl’ from Moss Side in Manchester, over soul records. They would ‘talk about groups we’d seen’ and would ‘dance when “Green Onions” or “Hip Hug Her” came on’.72 Gloria has used drugs since she was 15, including ‘dex, blues, green and clears’, and eventually she dies from a heroin overdose.73 For Tammie, 259

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the northern soul crowds were very different, and in Manchester ‘noone else moves with a singer like they do. They become part of the act, blending in with the singer’s voice, breaking in on his thing so it becomes everyone’s thing … There’s no giving up with them.’74 In another flashback passage later in the book, Tammie has vivid memories of ‘going out for the nighters, going from them to the morning sessions … then the morning-afternoon sessions out of town. Never getting tired. Just dancing ’n’ dancing all night long. Being a part of it all, a thread to the web woven by the Clubbies.’75 Two of the characters in the book are nostalgic for the soul scene of the north and highlight its retrospective association with the music of the period 1966–68. There is also a clear demarcation between the youth and musical cultures of the north and the south. Tammie’s boyfriend Ritchie retains an affinity with the working-class culture of the rare soul scene: ‘Give me a good all-nighter with a group of kids anytime. That’s atmosphere for you. A dark, stagnant cellar, not a plush, carpeted club.’ His typical weekend had consisted of following Manchester United and then attending soul clubs. For Tammie and her friends, Manchester was a city where the ‘weekends were lived for the entire forty-eight hours’.76 Later while living in the south, Ritchie danced to ‘oldies’, and it was like ‘he was back in Manchester at some all-nighter where only these sounds could be heard’.77 As with other pulp novels of the New English Library, Just Ask the Lonely is thin on detail, character and context and relies on sex and exploitation to engage its target audience of teenage readers. Nonetheless, it was devised and written before the rare soul scene had been defined and codified by music journalists such as Dave Godin and Tony Cummings, and thus it is useful for the historian in depicting aspects of this culture in Manchester. It also provides a contrast to the ‘swinging sixties’ experiences of youth that have tended to focus on the mythical aspects of London and the counter-culture.78 Rather surprisingly there was very little fiction or non-fiction written from within the northern soul scene in the 1970s, nor in the immediate period after the closure of Wigan Casino in 1981. This might be down to the fact that those involved in the scene could find an outlet for their writings and reminiscences in soul magazines such as Blues and Soul, Black Music and Black Echoes, and in the wide range of magazines and fanzines that were self-published throughout the period. From the 1990s and into the 2000s, however, there was a spate of autobiographies, personal histories and even a successful 260

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stage play. All of these accounts came with a seal of ‘knowingness’, ‘authenticity’, and a sense that, since they were written by people (men) who were there, they were thus authoritative. Pete McKenna’s Nightshift (1995) is an autobiographical account of a northern soul fan from Blackpool. The text reads like a non-fiction version of the pulp novels of the NEL. That said, there is some detailed insight into the social and cultural contours of Blackpool in the 1970s. McKenna’s account moves rapidly through style, music, sex, football hooliganism, dance, drugs and the heady days of Wigan Casino. The book was later reissued in an expanded edition, the second half being a novel by Ian Snowball, All Souled Out (2013). As with Just Ask the Lonely, the soul scene is reconstructed through the experiences of a young woman, Natalie, and associated male characters who populated various clubs. The narrative charts the impact of many years subsumed in the scene at Wigan Casino, and the subsequent sense of loss. The portraits of the characters and the descriptions of particular episodes are like the NEL books that it references, and are similarly shot through with sex, misogyny and hypermasculine braggadocio.79 The most insightful text in this genre is The Manchester Wheelers: A Northern Quadrophenia (2008) by Dave. It is an autobiographical, ‘factional’ romp through 1960s Manchester, with rich detail on the architecture, culture, fashion and music of the city, and specifically the Twisted Wheel.80 The author convincingly reconstructs the social context of Manchester in the 1960s, with images of football at Old Trafford and the collective trauma of the Moors Murders in 1963–65. Paul McDonald’s Do I Love You, published in the same year, is a novel that explores the lives of northern soul fans in the aftermath of Wigan, and their subsequent return to the scene two decades later. The northernness and mythology of the scene are woven into the recollections of the main characters: at Wigan ‘the queue was a hundred yards long and every one had Coronation Street accents’.81 Another character remained perplexed by the scene’s attractions: ‘every record was the same: like Tamla Motown but not as catchy … at Wigan … everyone talked the same rubbish but with Lancashire accents’.82 In 2003 a stage play that centred on the northern soul scene opened in Manchester. Written by Mick Martin, but based on the recollections of Paul Sadot who directed it, Once Upon a Time in Wigan charted the relationship of friends from Bolton and Burnley who attended the Casino.83 The styles, music and discourses of the scene form a backdrop to romantic relationships, travails, career 261

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c­ onversions and i­ dentification with place, culture and soundscape. As with the cinematic representations of northern soul, the play opened to generally positive reviews. Kevin Berry writing in The Stage felt that it ‘reeked of authenticity’.84 Reviewing its revival in 2012, the critic Alfred Hickling asked, Is it northern? The answer was ‘no question’.85 The play anchored northern soul to its foundation myths, legends and perceptions of northernness. The play, along with the writings on northern soul that followed its debut, drew on personal experience, memory, autobiography and an elegiac feeling that something had been lost. The music and the scene shape the identities of the characters, forming an important part of their memories as they follow divergent paths into relationships and careers. Dave Nowell’s Too Darn Soulful: The Story of Northern Soul (1995) does not deploy an autobiographical approach, but is a detailed general history of the scene written by a journalist who was an active participant.86 Dave Shaw’s Casino, published in 2003, is a more firmly autobiographical account of his engagement with northern soul and Wigan Casino, and is dedicated to his hero, the soul singer Edwin Starr.87 As with other autobiographers and insider chroniclers of the scene, Shaw was ‘still keeping the faith’. The narrative reflects on the key sounds and friendships and the eventual closure of the Casino. The networks of personal relationships, DJs, clubs and a momentum that drove northern soul at its mid-1970s peak cements the scene to a specific geographical region, as is apparent in all the autobiographies. Shaw’s contribution to the genre of northern soul memoirs dispenses with the sensationalism of McKenna’s Blackpool focus, yet shares the elegiac sense of something lost and never to be recovered with the demise and closure of Wigan. Another contribution from a Wolverhampton soul fan was Gethro Jones’s They Danced All Night (2016). This text is firmly autobiographical and has a very detailed contextual narrative, situating Jones’s conversion to soul music in a personal and cultural journey through working-class Wolverhampton that involved violence, subcultural affiliation and finding an identity and status in the world of northern soul.88 Jones’s book deploys similar tropes to that of McKenna, and there is a mythologising process that both consolidates and weakens the claims that the author makes for the importance of northern soul as a subculture that was underpinned by a sense of togetherness and solidarity. All the non-academic writings on the scene emphasise the locali262

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ties, class experiences and whiteness of northern soul. As with the soul-specific magazines of the 1970s, they tend not to venture into questions relating to race, identity and engagement with wider black politics. One autobiographical exploration of the scene that forms a bridge between the general histories and the more explicitly academic studies is Stuart Cosgrove’s Young Soul Rebels. Cosgrove is a university graduate, journalist, television producer and long-time participant in the scene. As a historian of popular music he also drew on a wide knowledge of the transatlantic links between British and American youth cultures and soul music. Complementing the publication of his ‘personal history’ of northern soul, Cosgrove also gained critical acclaim for his soul-centric trilogy Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul (1967), Memphis 68: The Tragedy of Southern Soul (2018) and Harlem 69: The Future of Southern Soul (2018). Cosgrove’s book is perhaps the strongest text, either academic and general. The author weaves his personal experiences into a keen reading of the history of the scene by locating its rise, fall and subsequent revival in the context of the economic, social and cultural changes that started to transform cities and towns in the north in the period of deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s. I’m still loving you: nostalgia and ‘keeping the faith’89 The historical importance and legacy of Wigan Casino was recognised by the town, its councillors and businesses when a shopping arcade and car park was built on the former site of the iconic club.90 In July 2006 the local press announced that ‘shoppers … are to be treated to a taste of Wigan Casino’. This would take the form of the Casino café. The eatery would ‘be close to the site where the famous Casino Club once stood’. Artwork depicting the northern soul scene was provided by local artist Dave Barrow, along with memorabilia and records displayed in cabinets and on the walls. The livery of the café was styled to mimic the original Casino signage.91 Unlike the Casino, which had a snack bar selling ‘Wigan pies’, the new café offered a broader array of dishes. The response of soul fans on various websites was decidedly mixed, with many being critical of the commercialisation of a club and a scene that in its pomp in the 1970s was one of the less celebrated aspects of Wigan’s night-time economy. Yet northern soul was now firmly utilised as part of the working-class cultural heritage of the north-west in general and Wigan in particular. Criticism 263

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of such initiatives from within the scene mirrors more general critiques of the heritage and tourism industry that, to some, exploits and sanitises particular histories.92 Yet it could be argued that for the mixed generations of consumers who take a break from shopping and are exposed to glimpses of a youth subculture from the recent past, the café offers a portrait of Wigan that was industrial, working-class and had a soundscape that was nostalgic, but also vibrant, dynamic and resistant to changes that were being directed and mediated by the south. In two further initiatives, soul fans were instrumental in getting plaques erected on the former sites of the Torch in Tunstall and Wigan Casino. In 2008 John O’Brien funded and designed a plaque that was erected on Hose Street in Tunstall, on what is now the wall of a building contractor. To confuse matters for the unenlightened and for future historians, the plaque reads ‘The Golden Torch 1964–1972: World Famous Soul Club’. O’Brien was suffering from a serious illness and made a mistake with the dates, though the correct dates­ – ­1965–1973­– ­were tattooed on his arm. With much more fanfare and media exposure, a plaque funded by soul fans celebrating Wigan Casino was erected in 2014. The opening ceremony was attended by the journalist and political activist Paul Mason, along with two original DJs Russ Winstanley and Dave Evison.93 Again, these initiatives were met with mixed responses on online soul forums. The reaction to both the Casino café and the historic plaques of recognition points to tensions among long-time and more recent soul fans around the question of the curation of the scene. In Blackpool, northern soul is enmeshed in the soundscape of the Golden Mile and the dozens of pubs, clubs and cafés that at weekends still draw significant numbers of working-class pleasureseekers to the resort in coach parties from the towns and cities of the north for stag and hen nights and birthdays. The fairground rides on the south pier still pulsate to soul and disco records from the 1970s, and the town remains a major venue for northern soul events held in its iconic Tower Ballroom. The Soul Suite, a club, bar and eatery which opened in 2005, is located in a prime position on the promenade and both visually and sonically it is steeped in 1960s mod culture, Motown and the more esoteric dimensions of northern soul.94 This venue represents northern soul as mass tourism, with a scooter on display, walls adorned with soul memorabilia and portraits of legendary performers. DJs and live acts fill the dance floors, cater264

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ing to regulars and the groups that blow in for specific nights and more general weekend ‘pub crawls’. The menu offers a smorgasbord of soul-themed food including ‘the Four Tops Bangers and Mash’, ‘Edwin Starr’s Battered Fish and Chips’, ‘Supremes Scampi’ and the ‘Ben E. King Full English Breakfast’. In 2018 the venue hosted a performance by the Wigan and northern soul stalwart Tommy Hunt. For purists, the Soul Suite is crass, exploitative and generic, yet it is a site that for many revives memories, confirms musical affiliations and represents a small corner of escapism from the more commercial aspects of Blackpool. The myths, the blue plaques and the contemporary spaces where northern soul is heard, celebrated and critiqued are reminders of the contested nature of history, its creation, curation and consumption. Following its revival, northern soul established itself as an important scene both in terms of nostalgic interest and attraction to its sounds and lifestyle for both returnees and newcomers. Younger people coming on to the scene were frequently the children or grandchildren of original fans. It is the scene that would not die, to use a common cliché, with a longevity extending to nearly half a century. Linked to this was the almost endless quest for northern soul memorabilia. In 2009 when the Mecca building in Blackpool was being demolished to make way for a new campus for Blackpool and Fylde College, fans paid £10 to Blackpool council for planks of wood from the old Highland Room dance floor. As the bulldozers moved in one council official reported a ‘mad dash … of fans desperate to get their own souvenirs. Within hours all the 100 or so branded pieces of wood from the famous venue had been sold.’95 Today, Blackpool has its share of social problems, and it has always had its rougher edges, despite valiant efforts by the local authority and business to improve it. Many would recognise the negative connotations of a seaside resort in absolute decline, as opposed to the relative decline of the Mecca days. Blackpool shares some of the tawdry characteristics of other decayed seaside resorts dotted around Britain’s coastline, many of which have strong northern soul associations. One aspect of efforts to improve these locales is through the establishment of cultural capital. Many resorts around the UK have taken this route­– ­Morecambe with its punk festival, Whitby with its goths and Southport with its jazz festival. Following on from its successful weekenders, Blackpool hosts an International Soul Festival over three days in six rooms in the Winter Gardens and Opera House, with live 265

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artists and several rosters of DJs, including a number from northern soul’s golden era. The festival encompasses ska, reggae, ‘mod music’ and mainstream sixties and seventies soul, but it is essentially a northern soul, jazz funk and modern soul happening. It has proved highly popular, prompting Richard Searling to describe Blackpool as the ‘UK’s number one soul city’.96 Blackpool’s claim rests on its association with northern soul in both a historical and contemporary sense. This pre-eminence has been disputed by others in relation to Wigan and Stoke-on-Trent. Stoke was recently claimed to be the location where the black clenched fist symbol of the scene was created, and claims for the Stoke area as the epicentre of northern soul remain strong.97 Clearly, several locations could make such claims, but the point is that local authorities, media and local business all want to strongly attach themselves to the northern soul identity and the cultural capital this creates. The trade in records continues unabated, though now via the internet as opposed to the mail order basis of the business in the 1970s. Rare recordings continue to command high prices. The most highly prized, Frank Wilson’s 1965 stomper ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’, was valued at £15,000 in 2005, its value inflated because there are thought to be only two extant copies. Three years later it was sold for nearly £26,000.98 Even a run-of-the-mill rarity such as Arin Demain’s ‘Silent Treatment’, recorded in 1966 and only discovered in Pittsburgh in 1977, and first played by Soul Sam under its covered-up attribution­ – ­‘Not Another Day’ by Lenny Curtis­– ­set a purchaser back £1,500 in 2017.99 The commodification and exploitation of predominantly black artists continues to highlight the contradictions within northern soul relating to its mythologies of ‘togetherness’, ‘faith’ and ‘purity’, while many performers see little of the profits generated from the trade in rare singles. The buying and selling of records on the scene also remains heavily gendered. Events and venues have continued to flourish. In August 2017, Wigan saw a major all-nighter at the town’s roller rink which the local press acclaimed as an ‘all-night-long Northern Soul gig … as the … scene returns to its glory days with a 10-hour musical marathon … likely to see 1,000 fans who have kept the faith travelling from far and wide to dance all night to rare, vinyl only soul records’.100 Cleethorpes has featured regularly during recent years as a centre of the revival; thus it was in 2007 that northern soul returned to its ‘spiritual home’ at Cleethorpes pier.101 A measure of the strength of the scene today is 266

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the number of events, anniversaries and revivals on what were considered northern soul’s peripheries. Peterborough’s Wirrana Stadium has held reunions, while one of northern soul’s most celebrated outposts, the Howard Mallett in Cambridge, is still going strong, dancing the night away at a reunion in 2011.102 In Scotland in the same year, the Marryat Hall, Dundee, held its 35th anniversary ‘bash’. The St Ivo Centre in St Ives offered an annual reunion under the auspices of the Cambridgeshire Soul Collective, headlined as ‘Evolution not Revolution’, with the objective of creating ‘a music to complement the progressive style of the old St Ives some thirty years ago’.103 Locations where northern soul had a place in recent history have been the sites of celebration events or festivals of one sort or another, such as the North Lancs Soul Festival held in Morecambe and the subsequent ‘Soul Casino all-dayer’ in the town, which set in train a nostalgic discussion on the back of Elaine Constantine’s film.104 Some of the 1960s clubs have held revival nights, such as the iconic Chateau Impney in Droitwich with a paean to its famous ‘3 to 7’ club.105 On the scene’s soul weekender circuit, northern soul’s number one talisman Tommy Hunt continues ‘socking it to ’em’ as a sprightly octogenarian at the Skegness weekender, along with Dean Parrish, another permanent fixture. Northern soul has been appropriated in other ways too. In 2015 a new venue­– ­the Night Owl­– ­was opened in Digbeth in Birmingham, a specialist nightclub devoted to northern soul.106 In terms of nostalgia, media interest and the attention given to it by a wider public as well as attendance at venues and events across the country through reunions, weekenders and more regular sessions, the scene continues to demonstrate its durability. One of the more curious aspects of the northern soul scene has been its adoption in other parts of the world. Its export to Englishspeaking nations around the globe is perhaps unsurprising, as emigration to countries such as Australia and New Zealand ensured that northern soul had a significant presence.107 Despite northern soul’s strong American connection it was not taken up there, largely due to its leaning towards retrospective sounds. However, in more recent years northern soul has been embraced mainly by expats, particularly on the west coast, in New York and Chicago, and in Toronto, Canada.108 Perhaps more surprising was the growth of northern soul in Europe. In Germany, mods were looking for something new after the revival of the late 1970s. The first all-nighters were held in 267

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Germany in 1984–85 in Bamberg in Bavaria­– w ­ ith fans attending from all over southern Germany­– a­ nd then in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Nuremburg and Munich. Germany’s first major all-nighter was held in Munich in 1988 and attended by over 500 fans.109 During the mid1980s the level of interest led to talk of a ‘south German all-nighter scene’ which extended over the frontier into Austria, where the scene was particularly strong in the city of Linz from where it extended to Vienna during the early twenty-first century. The involvement of Neil Rushton in supplying sounds and the ability to access Kent Record compilations during the 1980s ensured that the scene was sustained internationally. Disillusionment with disco and pop led to German soul fans searching for a different sound, which northern fulfilled.110 Interest in northern soul in the Irish Republic initially grew out of the habit of taking up British sixties and mod culture following on from the revival of the late 1970s, with Irish mods looking for a new direction after the resurgence had faded. During the 1980s the This is It soul club in Dublin held events which were eclectic in both music and style, with coaches laid on from across the country. The scene was described as a ‘mixture of skins, scooterists, mods and trendies’, though since the late 1980s there have been attempts to introduce a specifically northern soul scene in Ireland beyond a general interest in sixties music and styles.111 A Swedish all-nighter scene also developed in Stockholm. The music leaned towards modern soul, but with an admixture of northern soul, with attendances averaging up to 600 on a good night at the Lydmar Hotel.112 In Italy an all-nighter scene developed in Genoa, though it was more a British sixties scene than purely northern.113 One feature of European interest in northern soul has been the development of the weekender in Europe, which has attracted an interesting mix of British soul fans on jollies, expats searching out a taste of northern and local soul aficionados.114 In Benidorm, working-class tourists in search of the sounds of Wigan Casino relive its glory days in the 3B48 Soul Bar. In fact, the resort now offers a cornucopia of venues that pay homage to the history of British youth culture in the form of mod revival spots, discos and specialist karaoke bars, complementing the sonic nostalgia of the traditional working-class northern club scene with its comedians, singers and eccentric ‘turns’. Japan has emerged as the most striking exponent of the scene and the one that has held most closely to a genuine interest in northern soul from its very beginnings in Britain, in terms of music, dance 268

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and lifestyle. There was a well-established and expanding soul underground scene during the late 1970s said to run parallel to the northern soul scene in the UK, with ‘around 8,000 hard core fans’ and a thriving record-dealing trade in which top prices were paid for rarities. This was a genuine attempt to replicate northern soul as it was in Britain, with the sounds and fashions to match.115 Interest in Japan has remained consistent and deep rooted. There is a strong scene especially in the Kansai region based around the city of Osaka, and also in Kobe.116 Japan continues to have the strongest northern soul scene outside of the English-speaking world.117 Explanations for this phenomenon have focused on the strong work ethic and pressures associated with Japanese society, so that northern soul, as in Britain in the 1970s, allows a degree of escapism through what is regarded as ‘good time’ music.118 More than anything else, the replication of the scene overseas challenges the notion that it retains specificity to an English northernness. However, wherever northern soul has left a mark across the globe, it has been imbued with the imagery, discourse and identity of a very British scene that attracted thousands of working-class teenagers into its orbit in the 1970s. Notes 1 The Marvelettes, ‘I’ll Keep Holding On’ (1964). 2 Okeh Northern Soul (n.d. [1980?]). 3 Shaw, Casino, pp. 71–2. 4 Midnite Express, No. 3 (n.d. [1981?]); Lenny Curtis, ‘Nothing Can Help You Now (1965). 5 Shaw, Casino, p. 71. 6 Black Echoes, 8 March 1980. 7 Black Echoes, 1 September, 13 October 1979. 8 Interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017. 9 Soulful Kinda Music, No. 30, June 1997. 10 Shades of Soul, No. 5, August 1985. 11 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016. 12 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 13 The Sound of Soul, No. 3 (n.d. [1982?]). 14 Black Echoes, 16 October 1976. 15 Blackbeat, No. 8, February 1983; New Blackbeat, No. 6, December 1983. 16 Shades of Soul, No. 9, December 1986. 269

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Keeping the faith 17 D. Herranz, ‘Northern Soul: Life with Soul is Better, Much Better’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 218–19. 18 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 19 The Sound of Soul, No. 4, 1982. 20 New Blackbeat, No. 6, October 1983. 21 The Way of the Crowd (Northern Soul Productions, 2004), video; the Sunday Times Magazine in February 1976 estimated that there were around 25,000 participants. 22 Shades of Soul, No. 18, January 1990. 23 Soul Renaissance, No. 4, June 2000. 24 Shades of Soul, No. 2, April 1987; Soul Renaissance, No. 4, June 2000. 25 Shades of Soul, No. 19, May 1990; Togetherness, No. 5, winter 2000. 26 Soul View, No. 15, autumn 2000. 27 Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender (Channel 4, 1996). 28 The Guardian, 28 December 2002. 29 Togetherness, No. 12, summer 2003. 30 Blues and Soul, No. 140, 30 July–12 August; No. 141, 13–26 August 1974; Togetherness, No. 11, spring 2003. 31 Togetherness, No. 8, spring 2002. 32 Soulful Kinda Music, No. 48, December 2001. 33 Togetherness, No. 9, summer 2002. 34 Interview with Les Hare, 1 April 2016; interview with Dave Rimmer, 17 April 2017. 35 Soul Renaissance, No. 4, June 2000. 36 Soul Renaissance, No. 4, June 2000; Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 37 Soul Renaissance, No. 4, June 2000. 38 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 39 n. soul northern and modern soul togetherness, No. 16, autumn 2004. 40 Shades of Soul, No. 29, October 2000. 41 Little Anthony and the Imperials’ ‘Better Use Your Head’ (1966) remains a staple on the northern soul scene. 42 The Strange World of Northern Soul (DVD, Winerworld Studio, 2003). 43 Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (dir. Joe Boy, DVD, Odeon Entertainment, 2012); Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (BBC, 2004). 44 Northern Soul: Keeping the Faith (The Culture Show, BBC, 2013). 45 For Mason’s recollections of the scene in Leigh and Wigan, see ‘My Life as a Northern Soul Boy: Rebellion on the Dancefloor in the 1970s’, The Guardian, 11 October 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/ oct/11/northern-soul-rebellion-dance-floor-paul-mason (accessed 29 April 2020). 270

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Going back and checking it out 46 ‘Northern Soul and Wigan Casino’, The One Show (BBC, broadcast 2 May 2011). 47 Blue Juice (dir. Carl Prechezer, 1995). 48 Sam Dees, ‘Lonely For You Baby’ (1968). 49 Soul Boy (dir. Shimmy Marcus, 2010). 50 See Gildart, Images of England, p. 173. For the marginalisation of Stokeon-Trent in the post-war history of Britain, see T. Edensor, ‘Introduction’, in Edensor (ed.), Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent. 51 The Guardian, 2 September 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2010/sep/02/soulboy-film-review (accessed 29 April 2020). 52 The Independent, 3 September 2010, https://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/films/reviews/soulboy-15-2068817.html (accessed 29 April 2020). 53 The Telegraph, 2 September 2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ film/filmreviews/7977437/SoulBoy-review.html (accessed 29 April 2020). 54 Burnsworth could have been Bury or an amalgam of the former coal and cottons towns that were located to the north, east and west of the city of Manchester. 55 Kes (dir. Ken Loach, 1969). 56 Willis, Learning to Labour. 57 The Guardian, 16 October 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2014/oct/16/northern-soul-elaine-constantine-review-drama (accessed 29 April 2020). 58 New Musical Express, 15 October 2014. 59 With regard to Saturday Night Fever, Nik Cohn had drawn heavily on his experiences of mod subculture for his article that the film was based on. 60 New York Times, 1 October 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/ movies/review-northern-soul-shows-70s-england-through-a-musiclens.html (accessed 29 April 2020). 61 Constantine and Sweeney, Northern Soul. 62 The Contours’ ‘Just A Little Misunderstanding’ (1962) is one of the foundation tracks of northern soul. 63 Interview with Russ Taylor, 21 April 2016. 64 For British youth pulp fiction, see Leon Hunt, British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London: Routledge, 1998), ch. 5. 65 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, cover blurb. 66 For examples of the lurid covers of such books and their attractiveness to Britain’s youth, see Justin Marriott (ed.), A Visual Guide to New English Library Volume 1 (Paperback Fanatic, 2010). 67 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 61. 68 For accounts of King’s performances, see sections in Rylatt and Scott, CENtral 1179, pp. 130, 135, 141, 144, 151, 168, 170, 182, 194, 200. 271

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Keeping the faith 69 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 12. 70 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 32. 71 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 12. 72 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 31. 73 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 32. 74 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 61. 75 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, pp. 61–2. 76 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 67. 77 Tenny, Just Ask the Lonely, p. 78. 78 For a personal view of Manchester’s clubland in the 1960s and 1970s, see Jimmy Donnelly, Jimmy the Weed: Inside the Quality Street Gang. My Life in the Manchester Underworld (Lancashire: Milo Books, 2011), ch. 5. 79 McKenna, Nightshift, p. 197. 80 Dave, The Manchester Wheelers. 81 Paul McDonald, Do I Love You? (Birmingham: Tindal Street Press, 2008), p. 34. 82 McDonald, Do I Love You?, p. 55. 83 For text, see Mick Martin, Once Upon a Time in Wigan (London: Joseph Weinberg, 2003). 84 The Stage, 15 April 2005. 85 The Guardian, 25 January 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/ stage/2012/jan/25/once-upon-time-wigan-review (accessed 29 April 2020). 86 Nowell, Too Darn Soulful. 87 Shaw, Casino. 88 Jones, They Danced All Night. 89 Kim Weston’s ‘I’m Still Loving You’ (1965) was popular on the early rare soul and northern soul scene. For a penetrating critique of the relationship between nostalgia and northern soul, see Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its own Past (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), pp. 214–23. 90 For the ways in which Wigan later used the history and legacy of the Casino, see Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’ 91 Wigan Today, 3 July 2006. 92 For an early discussion of this process, see Samuel, Theatres of Memory, parts 2 and 3. 93 Wigan Today, 12 September 2014. 94 Blackpool Gazette, 2 September 2011. 95 Blackpool Gazette, 29 January 2009. 96 Chorley Guardian, 8 September 2016; the Blackpool International Soul Festival, Winter Gardens Blackpool, 16–18 June 2017, leaflet, flyer 2. 97 Stephanie Barnard, ‘Soul-on-Trent: 50 Years since The Golden Torch Opening’, BBC News online, 29 December 2015, https://www.bbc. 272

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Going back and checking it out co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-35174596 (accessed 9 Jan­ uary 2019). 98 ‘Record Price for Rare Motown Disc’, BBC News Scotland online, 1 May 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8028719.stm (accessed 30 May 2019). 99 Black Echoes, 27 October 1979; https://www.facebook.com/John​Man​ ship​Records/posts/1918994535039934:0 (accessed 1 April 2020). 100 Wigan Observer, 22 August 2017; Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, p. 379. 101 Grimsby Telegraph, 12 July 2007. 102 Peterborough Telegraph, 14 June 2006. 103 Post by Veteran Member, ‘St Ives: not arf guv’nor!!!’, posted 13 April 2008, Northern Soul Proboards, http://northernsoul.proboards.com/ thread/1245 (accessed 31 March 2015). 104 Morecambe Visitor, 17 October 2014. 105 Droitwich Spa Advertiser, 16 February 2014. 106 Birmingham Mail, 10 July 2015. 107 See P. Mercieca, A. Chapman and M. O’Neil, To the Ends of the Earth: Northern Soul and Southern Nights in Western Australia (Lanham, MD: University of Maryland Press, 2013). 108 Togetherness, No. 2, March 1999; No. 8, spring 2002; Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (BBC documentary film, broadcast 25 July 2014). 109 Shades of Soul, No. 15, December 1988. 110 Shades of Soul, No. 15, December 1988; Togetherness, No. 2, March 1999; No. 6, spring 2001. 111 Shades of Soul, No. 14, August 1988. 112 Togetherness, No. 4, spring 2000. 113 Togetherness, No. 8, spring 2002. 114 Herranz, ‘Northern Soul: Life with Soul is Better’, p. 219. 115 Deeper and Deeper, July 1977. 116 The Way of the Crowd (video, Northern Soul Productions, 2004). 117 Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (BBC documentary film, broadcast 25 July 2014). 118 Annie Nightingale, ‘Shine Like Tokyo: Northern Soul Goes East’, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 21 September 2013.

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Northern soul was a scene and culture that existed at the margins. In contemporary British youth culture and popular music it generated only cursory analysis at the height of its popularity in the mid1970s.1 Such marginality reflected the geographical areas in which northern soul was created, consumed and practised. Places such as Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton and Wigan did not have the cachet of the swinging metropolis of London or the ‘beat cities’ of Liverpool and Manchester. Yet in these former industrial towns, thousands of youths created their own scene that was lived away from the spotlight of both the national media and the conventional music press. Unlike the scenes and musical genres associated with the counter-culture of the late 1960s and the punk and post-punk milieu of the late 1970s, northern soul had no obvious political theories, discourses and rhetoric that could be attached to its artists, clubs, sounds and consumers.2 However, northern soul was the music of the north and the midlands that provided a soundtrack to the lives of many working-class youths who were experiencing the social and domestic churn of deindustrialisation. It provided a sonic accompaniment to the last years of a social democratic Britain that within a decade would be largely swept away by the defeat of organised labour, the privatisation of industry and the broader march of Thatcherism in the 1980s and 1990s. For consumers of northern soul the everyday practices of the scene, encompassing fanatical record collecting, frenetic dancing and extensive travel, were a source of identity and belonging. Keeping the faith was built on particular mythologies, discourses and invented traditions. Nonetheless, the many individual voices uncovered in this study from letters, diaries and oral testimonies show that the experiences of northern soul fans were a core component of their everyday lives. In the bedroom, soul music soundtracked private reflections on 274

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the sense of self, personal relationships and society. In the kitchen and the living room it was the backdrop to impromptu dance sessions and the forging and reaffirmation of friendships and romantic entanglements.3 In the hundreds of northern soul nights in venues ranging from the plush nightclubs of the Mecca chain through to the historic halls of miners’ institutes and working-men’s clubs it formed part of a wider working-class culture that had across the twentieth century danced to the sounds of black America. This was an exciting scene to be part of, whether waiting in anticipation for the doors of Wigan Casino to open, ascending the escalator to the Highland Room at Blackpool Mecca, or watching Cleethorpes Pier seemingly about to take off into the night sky over the North Sea, such was the energy and sound it generated. It was a vibrant culture that has been described as the ‘revenge of the small town’.4 Yet its impact and reach went way beyond its parochial foundations, having an influence on subsequent youth subcultures, scenes and musical genres. Northern soul was in some respects a reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s and the musical trends of the 1970s. Its regional specificity, retrospection and class affiliations meant that it didn’t attract the attention of journalists, writers, artists and cultural influencers. Unlike the much more critically acclaimed punk rock it did not easily cross over into literature, art and politics. Yet it was perhaps more in tune with a notion of Britishness that celebrated conservatism, nostalgia, collectivism and the resilience of regional identities. By the time of the closure of Wigan Casino in 1981, northern soul had secured its place in the pantheon of British youth culture. A key sound of the scene, Gloria Jones’s ‘Tainted Love’ (1964), was reimagined through electronic synthesisers to become an international hit for Soft Cell in 1981. Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’, the lodestone of northern soul, was used to advertise the culinary delights of Kentucky Fried Chicken. More significantly, northern soul had a direct impact on the ‘rave’ and ‘acid house’ culture of the 1990s, with its secret venues, clubs, drugs, symbols and discourses. Northern soul has been described as ‘the nice old grandfather of all these sub-cults’.5 From its beginnings as an underground scene in the midlands and the north it is now firmly embedded in the DNA of British music. This history of northern soul has attempted to reconstruct its spaces, sounds, emblems, identities and practices from the contemporary sources of the period, primarily through the many ­specialist 275

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publications that were devoted to the scene in the 1970s. Oral history has also provided a useful addition in filling in some of the gaps and uncovering some of the more esoteric aspects of northern soul. Nonetheless, it remains ‘a’ history and not ‘the’ history of northern soul. Future research will no doubt uncover more stories, giving voice those whose lives remain hidden in the undergrowth of youth culture, long-forgotten clubs and the micro-factionalisms of the scene. Methodologically, there remains a gap to be bridged between the approaches of the historian and the sociologist to understanding the creation, performance, consumption and impact of popular music and youth culture on the individual, collective and society more generally.6 This task will be a challenge for others in the future engaging with the intellectual dimensions of the ‘strange world of northern soul’. There will be many more histories of the scene, reconstructing the experiences of those who danced to the music in village halls, or laughed and cried in their suburban bedrooms to the declarations of love and multiple heartbreaks recounted by the legends of Motown, Ric-Tic and Okeh. American popular music in general and black American soul music in particular has held a fascination for British youth in the twentieth century. Yet there was something in soul music that had an especially lasting resonance in the north and the midlands. The northern soul scene had many tributaries. Importantly, in the late 1960s Dave Godin noticed northern football fans eager to purchase the more ‘up-tempo’ soul in his record shop in London. In 1970 he travelled to Manchester for Blues and Soul to report on the ‘land of a thousand dances’ at the Twisted Wheel.7 Within months of the publication of Godin’s article, a scene that had been in existence since the mid-1960s became known as northern soul. In the twenty-first century what was once an esoteric music scene has become enmeshed in popular conceptions of northernness. It shares an imagined mental landscape with coal mines, cotton mills, pubs, fish and chips, rugby league and kiss-me-quick hats.8 Northern soul has its own heroes, villains and martyrs. For every superstar DJ in the 1970s there were dozens of others whose playlists and expertise extended no further than the bedroom, youth club or community centre. For every dancer who graced the floors of the Torch, Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino there were thousands more who never got beyond the miners’ institute or the local British Legion. But all played a role in sustaining the scene in the 1970s. The 276

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clubs have now been replaced by shopping centres, housing estates and car parks, with some gaining recognition through blue plaques, while others leave traces only on specialist websites and in personal memories. Many of the icons of northern soul have long gone, their voices preserved forever in the grooves of the rare vinyl and the specialist CDs and downloads that still form the crux of the scene. In the Southern Cemetery in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, a headstone reading ‘Keep the Faith’ marks the burial place of Charles Edwin Hatcher (1942–2003). Better known as Edwin Starr, he was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but will be forever associated with Detroit, a shining beacon of the Ric-Tic and Motown labels. Living in his later years in Bramcote in Nottinghamshire, Starr was a stalwart of the northern soul scene in the 1970s and 1980s.9 Described by fans as ‘Our Agent 00 Soul’, like them he kept the faith with the scene, which guaranteed his canonisation. His records continue to be played in the towns of the north and the midlands and the coastal resorts of Prestatyn and Blackpool. History, memory, eternal sounds and mythologies continue to spark emotions within the northern soul scene. In many ways, northern soul was and still is a quintessentially British form of post-war youth culture. Coda One late summer evening a few years ago, a rugby league supporter who was also a northern soul fan was leaving the DW Stadium in Wigan, home of Wigan Warriors. As the stadium lights dimmed in the distance and darkness began to fall he could hear the iconic and moving northern soul anthem ‘Long After Tonight Is All Over’ by Jimmy Radcliffe coming from the public address system. He reflected that northern soul had now become an integral part of ‘northernness’. Thinking of the other fans leaving the stadium that evening, he ruminated on whether the departing throng was aware of the history of northern soul. Turning into Wigan town centre he gazed at the spot where the now demolished Wigan Casino once stood. A picture emerged in his mind. It was the 1960s and a young man on an Enfield motorbike was making his way from Oxford to Manchester.10 On the motorbike was a box of R’n’B and rare soul records destined for the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. The young man was Roger Eagle. He came north as a proselytiser and innovator and sowed the seeds of a rare soul scene at the Twisted Wheel that 277

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would remain a feature of the soundscape of northern soul’s heartlands for years to come. A question arose in the mind of the fan: would Roger Eagle have had any awareness then that the journey he was making would lead to the creation of a music scene that would still be around over half a century later, and would involve thousands of followers in Britain and across the world? One thing was certain: Eagle was astute enough to have understood that the contents of that box, and many records like them since, would ensure that northern soul fans would, and did, keep the faith. Notes  1 Surprisingly, given the connection of northern soul to working-class signifiers, it was never the focus of a study by the Birmingham School of subcultural analysis in the 1970s.  2 For recent interventions in the history of punk and post punk, see Worley, No Future, and David Wilkinson, Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).  3 The letters pages of Blues and Soul, Black Echoes, Black Music and the multiplicity of fanzines published in the 1970s and 1980s attest to this form of consuming and experiencing the sounds of northern soul.  4 Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, p. 103.  5 Derek Mooney Show, ‘Dublin Northern Soul: Northern Soul Head Joe Moran Chats about the Dublin Northern Soul Scene’, Raidió Teilefis Éireann (RTE) Radio 1, broadcast 28 March 2013, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=rXdERM1A5nM (accessed 28 November 2018).  6 For some critical reflection on the difficulties of writing about youth subcultures in general and northern soul in particular, see Tim Wall, Sarah Raine and Nicola Watchman Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene, pp. 1–9.  7 For brief survey of Godin’s writings, see Street, ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’.  8 See Catterall and Gildart, ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’  9 For brief career profile, see Edwin Starr’s obituary in The Guardian, 4 April 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/04/guardi​ anobituaries.politics (accessed 29 April 2020). 10 See Roger Eagle’s obituary, The Guardian, 15 May 1999, https://www. theguardian.com/news/1999/may/15/guardianobituaries (accessed 29 April 2020), and Sykes, Sit Down! Listen to This!

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Bibliography

Archival sources Blackpool Central Library (Cyril Critchlow Collection) Bolton Library and Museum Services, Archives and Local Studies (Bolton Council Minutes) Museum of Wigan Life, Wigan (files and scrapbooks on Wigan Casino) The National Archives, London (‘Working Party on Juvenile Jazz and Dance Clubs in the West End of London’, HO 300/​8) Police Museum, Manchester (box files on Manchester Clubs and Coffee Bars) Wigan and Leigh College (special collections) Government publications Lancashire and Merseyside Development Association (LAMIDA) Report: The Decline of the Cotton and Coal Industries of Lancashire, Manchester, April 1967 Strategy for Tourism in the North West, North West Tourist Board, 1982 Private collections/ephemera Barry Band, ‘Blackpool Opera House 1939–1989’ (1989, pamphlet) Barry Band, ‘Blackpool: Century of Stars: The Theatre including Concert Greats’ (1999, pamphlet) Richard Cooper (Black Echoes, Black Music and Blues and Soul, music and soul magazines, fanzines, artefacts) Dave Evison (assorted artefacts, club advertisements, flyers, handbills) Peter Kennedy, Drumbeat Records, Chorley, Lancashire (Blues and Soul) Steve Pollard (early editions of Home of the Blues and Blues and Soul) Dave Rimmer (complete run of northern soul fanzines) Adrian Smith (original copies of ‘Levine Must Go’ petition and associated materials) Russ Taylor (early editions of Blues and Soul and assorted ephemera) 279

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Bibliography Flyer, The Blackpool International Soul Festival, Winter Gardens, Blackpool, 16–18 June 2017 Flyer, West Midlands Soul Club, All-Dayer, Nottingham Palais, Sunday 29 February 1976 Scanned handwritten letter and petition, signed D. Reardon, in the possession of the authors (n.d. [1977?]) Unpublished diaries 1970s Adrian Smith Audrey Wilkes Interviews Joanne Bennett, 15 November 2017 Beverly Calvert, 23 December 2017 (telephone conversation) Stephen Charlson, 1 April 2017 Richard Cooper, 10 April 2016 Tony Davidson, 14 March 2019 Frank Elson, 21 August 2015 and 19 February 2016 Dave Evison, 21 March 2019 Stan Finney, 3 February 2017 Bernie Golding, 17 June 2017 Pete Haigh, 14 July 2017 Les Hare, 1 April 2016 Paul McDonald, 3 May 2016 Dave Nowell, 5 August 2016 (emailed questionnaire) Vince Price, 5 June 2016 (telephone conversation) Steve Pollard, 2 April 2016 Dave Rimmer, 17 October 2017 Kev Roberts, 6 May 2016 Alf Robinson, 18 July 2016 (telephone conversation) Phil Saxe, 23 August 2017 Richard Searling, 10 May 2016 (emailed questionnaire) Adrian Smith, 29 April 2016 Southport Group Interview: Steve Armitage, Rod Clegg, Rob Fletcher and Andy Kagan, 19 August 2017 Russ Taylor, 21 April 2016 Harry Thomas, 28 September 2018 Wendy Withers, 28 April 2016 Transcript of interview between Jon Savage (aka Jonathan Sage) and Dave Godin, 11 February 1995, kindly supplied to the authors by Jon Savage

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Bibliography Northern soul fanzines There were a variety of fanzines/magazines dedicated to the northern soul scene. Some of these had national distribution, while others were more regional/local. In the 1970s some magazines disappeared after the publication of a small number of issues, while others were more long-standing. One of the problems for the historian is that many of them had no specific date of publication or in some cases not even an issue number. In the references accompanying each chapter, we have estimated the year and month from the context of the features and letters in particular issues. In some places this has proved to be difficult, so we have listed the details given on the cover of the particular issue, which was just the title of the fanzine/magazine. Blues and Soul, listed in the newspapers and magazines section below, was first published monthly and then fortnightly. However, due to industrial unrest in the period 1972–74 it appeared with varying frequency. Blackbeat Deeper and Deeper Hot Buttered Soul It’s the Beat Midnite Express n. soul northern and modern soul togetherness New Blackbeat New Soul Time Northern Essence Northern Noise Okeh Northern Soul R ‘n’ B Scene Shades of Soul Soul Cargo Soul Renaissance Soul Source Soul Symbol Soul Time Soul View Soulful Kinda Music Sound of Soul Talk of the North Togetherness Newspapers, magazines and periodicals Billboard Birmingham Mail 281

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Bibliography Black Echoes Black Music Blackpool Gazette Blackpool Herald Blues and Soul Monthly Music Review (later Blues and Soul) Blues and Soul Bolton News Chorley Guardian Droitwich Spa Advertiser Freemasonry Today: The Official Journal of the United Grand Lodge of England The Guardian Grimsby Telegraph Home of the Blues The Independent Lancashire Life Liverpool Echo Local Life (Wigan Edition) Melody Maker Morecambe Visitor New Musical Express New York Times The Observer Past Forward: Newsletter of Wigan Heritage Service Peterborough Telegraph Post and Chronicle Rave Record Mirror The Scotsman The Stage The Stage and Television Today Stoke Evening Sentinel Street Life Sunday Times Sunday Times Magazine The Telegraph West Lancashire Evening Gazette Wigan Observer Wigan Today Theses Catterall, S., ‘The Lancashire Coalfield, 1945–1972: The Politics of Industrial Change’, DPhil thesis, University of York, 2001 282

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Bibliography Gibson, L., ‘Popular Music and the Life Course: Cultural Commitment, Lifestyles and Identities’, PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2009 Smith, N. J., ‘Performing Fandom on the British Northern Soul Scene: Competition, Identity and the Post-subcultural Self’, PhD thesis, University of Salford, 2009 Articles and book chapters Barrett, J., ‘Soul Survivors’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Bennett, T., ‘Hegemony, Ideology, Pleasure: Blackpool’, in T. Bennett, C.  Mercer and J. Woollacott (eds), Popular Culture and Social Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986) Brake, M., ‘The Skinheads: An English Working Class Subculture’, Youth and Society, 6.2 (1974), pp. 179–200 Catterall, S., ‘Otherness Plus the 3Cs Minus Orwell: The Wigan Pier Experience’, Labour History Review, 70.1 (2005), pp. 103–12 Catterall, S., and Gildart, K., ‘Did Wigan Have a Northern Soul?’, in B. Lashua, S. Wagg, K. Spracklen and M. S. Yavuz (eds), Sounds and the City Volume 2 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 369–87 Cosgrove, S., ‘Long After Tonight Is All Over’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N.  Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Cummings, T., ‘The Northern Discos’, in C. Gillett and S. Frith (eds), Rock File 3 (London: Granada, 1975) Doyle, B., ‘“More than a dance hall, more a way of life”: Northern Soul, Masculinity and Working-Class Culture in 1970s Britain’, in A. Schildt and D. Siegfried (eds), In Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Culture in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980 (New York: Berg, 2007) Duffett, M., ‘Thinking about Northern Soul Scene Participants as Music Fans’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Ebrey, J., ‘The Golden Torch Revisited: A Less Respectable Potteries History’, in T. Edensor (ed.), Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent: Leisure, Space and Identity in the Potteries (Stoke: Staffordshire University Press, 2000) Edensor T., ‘Introduction’, in T. Edensor (ed.), Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent: Leisure, Space and Identity in the Potteries (Stoke: Staffordshire University Press, 2000) Flory, A., ‘Tamla Motown in the UK: Transatlantic Reception of American Rhythm and Blues’, in B. Lashua, K. Spracklen and S. Wagg (eds), Sounds and the City: Popular Music, Place and Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2014) Fowler, D., ‘Review of Gildart, K., Images of England through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock ’n’ Roll 1955–1976’, History, 100.341 (July 2015) 283

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Bibliography Gibson, L., ‘Nostalgia, Symbolic Knowledge and Generational Conflict’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Haslam, D., ‘DJ Culture’, in S. Redhead, D. Wynne and J. O’Connor (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) Herranz, D., ‘Northern Soul: Life with Soul is Better, Much Better’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Hollows, J., and Milestone, K., ‘Welcome to Dreamsville: A History and Geography of Northern Soul’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Long, P., and Wall, T., ‘Tony Palmer’s All You Need Is Love: Television’s First Pop History’, in R. Edgar, K. Fairclough-Isaacs and B. Halligan (eds), The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (London: Routledge, 2013) Marks, A., ‘Young, Gifted and Black: Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean Music in Britain 1963–88’, in P. Oliver (ed.), Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990) Milestone, K., ‘Love Factory: The Sites, Practices and Media Relationships of Northern Soul’, in S. Redhead, D. Wynne and J. O’Connor (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) Milestone, K., ‘Soul Boy, Soul Girl: Reflections on Gender and Northern Soul’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Moran, J., ‘Imagining the Street in Post-war Britain’, Urban History, 39.1 (2012), pp. 166–86 Osgerby, B., ‘Bovver Books of the 1970s: Subcultures, Crisis and YouthSploitation Novels’, Contemporary British History, 26.3 (2012), pp. 299–332 Prest, W., ‘The Problems of the Lancashire Coalfield’, The Economic Journal, XLVII (1937) Raine, S., and Wall, T., ‘Myths on/​of the Northern Soul Scene’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Robinson, L., ‘Zines and History: Zines as History’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Ripped, Torn and Cut: Pop, Politics and Punk Fanzines from 1976 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018) Sadot, P., ‘I’m Still Looking for Unknowns All the Time: The Forward (E) motion of Northern Soul Dancing’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Sanjek, D. ‘Groove Me: Dancing to the Discs of Northern Soul’, in J. Terry and N. A. Wynn (eds), Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National 284

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Bibliography Identities (Jackson, MI: University of Mississippi Press, 2012) Savage, J., ‘Tainted Love. The Influence of Male Homosexuality and Sexual Divergence on Pop Music and Culture since the War’, in A. Tomlinson (ed.), Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of Pleasure (London: Routledge, 1990) Stratton, J., and Zuberi, N., ‘Black Popular Music in Britain Since 1945: An Introduction’, in J. Stratton and N. Zuberi (eds), Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2014). Street, J., ‘Dave Godin and the Politics of the British Soul Community’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Street, J., ‘The Stax/​Volt Revue and Soul Music Fandom in 1960s Britain’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014) Wall, T., ‘Critical Reflection’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Wall, T., ‘Interviews with Tony Palmer, Elaine Constantine, and Liam Quinn’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Wall, T., ‘Out on the Floor: The Politics of Dancing on the Northern Soul Scene’, Popular Music, 25.3 (2006), pp. 431–45 Wall, T., Raine, S., and Watchman-Smith, N., ‘Introduction’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Wall, T., Raine, S., and Watchman-Smith, N., ‘Profiles of John Manship and Kev Roberts’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Watkiss Singleton, R., ‘“(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”: Romantic Expectations of Teenage Girls in the 1960s West Midlands’, in The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Wilson, A., ‘Mixing the Medicine: The Unintended Consequence of Amphetamine Control on the Northern Soul Scene’, Internet Journal of Criminology, 2008, http://​irep.ntu.ac.uk/​id/​eprint/​12394/​1/​200321_​67​ 20%​20Wilson%​20Publisher.pdf (accessed 9 May 2019) Wilson, A., ‘Searching for the Subcultural Heart of Northern Soul: From Pillheads to Shredded Wheat’, in S. Raine, T. Wall and N. Watchman Smith (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Worley, M., ‘Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976–1984: “While the world was dying, did you wonder why?”’, History Workshop Journal, 79.1 (2015), pp. 76–106

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Bibliography Books Abrams, M., The Teenage Consumer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959) Anderson, P., Mods, the New Religion: The Style and Music of the 1960s Mods (London: Omnibus, 2013) Armstrong, S., The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited (Constable: London, 2012) Baker, S., Street Photographs: Manchester and Salford (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2007) Beckett, A., When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (London: Faber and Faber, 2009) Bennett, P., Blackpool Pleasure Beach: A Hundred Years of Fun (Blackpool: Blackpool Pleasure Beach, 1996) Bennett, T., Mercer, C., and Woollacott, J. (eds), Popular Culture and Social Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986) Benson, R., The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Yorkshire Family (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) Black, L., Pemberton, H., and Thane, P., Reassessing 1970s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) Bracewell, M., England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie (London: Flamingo, 1998) Bradley, L., Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2013) Brewster, B., and Boughton, F., Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (London: Headline, 1999) Brewster, B., and Broughton, F., The Record Players: The Story of Dance Music Told By History’s Greatest DJs (London: Virgin, 2010) Brocken, M., Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s–1970s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010) Brooks, L., Donnelly, M., and Mills, R. (eds), Mad Dogs and Englishness: Popular  Music and English Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Brown, T., The Wigan Casino Years: Northern Soul, the Essential Story 1973–81 (Great Britain: Outta Sight, 2010) Burton, P., Parallel Lives (London: GMP, 1985) Bushell, G., Time for Action: Essays on the Mod Revival from the ’79 Frontline (London: Countdown Books, 2012) Campbell, B., Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 1980s (London: Virago, 1984) Challinor, R., The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners (London: Frank Graham, 1972) Cohen, S., Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003) Colls, R., Identity of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 286

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Bibliography Connell, J., and Gibson, C., Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place (London: Routledge, 2003) Constantine, E., and Sweeney, G., Northern Soul: An Illustrated History (London: Virgin, 2013) Cosgrove, S., Detroit 67: The Year that Changed Soul (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2015) Cosgrove, S., Harlem 69: The Future of Soul (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2018) Cosgrove, S., Memphis 68: The Tragedy of Southern Soul (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2018) Cosgrove, S., Young Soul Rebels: A Personal History of Northern Soul (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016) Cotgrove, M., From Jazz Funk to Acid Jazz: The History of the UK Jazz Dance Scene (London: Author House, 2009) Cowie, J. R., and Heathcott, J. (eds), Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003) Dave, The Manchester Wheelers: A Northern Quadrophenia (Soul Publications, 2008) Davies, A., Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992) de Koningh, M., and Griffiths, M., Tighten Up! The History of Reggae in the UK (London: Sanctuary, 2003) Donnelly, J., Jimmy the Weed: Inside the Quality Street Gang. My Life in the Manchester Underworld (Lancashire: Milo Books, 2011) Du Noyer, P., Liverpool: Wondrous Place. Music from the Cavern to the Coral (London: Virgin, 2004) Dunphy, E., A Strange Kind of Glory: Sir Matt Busby and Manchester United (London: Quarto, 1991) Echols, A., Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010) Edensor, T. (ed.), Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent: Leisure, Space and Identity in the Potteries (Stoke: Staffordshire University Press, 2000) Eley, G., A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005) Farley, K., They Rocked, We Rolled! A Personal and Oral Account of Rock ‘n’ Roll in and around Wolverhampton and the West Midlands, 1956–1969 (Wolverhampton: Keith Farley, 2010) Ferguson, C., I’ll Go to t’Foot of Our Stage: The Story of Yorkshire Pop Music (Chatham: YFP, 2009) Fewtrell, E., and Thompson, S., King of the Clubs: The Eddie Fewtrell Story (Studley: Brewin Books, 2007) Foot, P., The Rise of Enoch Powell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) Fowler, D., Youth Culture in Modern Britain c.1920–c.1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement­– ­A New History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) 287

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Bibliography Fryer, P., Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1994) George, N., Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985) Gibson, F. A., Statistical Summaries of Tables on behalf of the Mining Association of Great Britain to the Commission of Inquiry re: Minimum Wages and Hours (Presentation Copy, Western Mail, Cardiff, 1919) Gildart, K., Images of England through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock ’n’ Roll 1955–1976 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Gildart, K., North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945–1996 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001) Gillett, C., and Frith, S. (eds), Rock File 3 (London: Granada, 1975) Gilroy, P., There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 2002) Glen, P., Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967– 1983 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Goodyer, I., Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock against Racism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) Grant, P., National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Hall, S., and Jefferson, T., Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Routledge, 1976) Haslam, D., Adventures on the Wheels of Steel: The Rise of the Superstar DJs (London: Fourth Estate, 2001) Haslam, D., Life after Dark: A History of British Nightclubs and Music Venues (London: Simon and Schuster, 2015) Haslam, D., Manchester, England: The Story of a Pop Cult City (London: Fourth Estate, 1999) Haslam, D., Not Abba: The Real Story of the 1970s (London: Fourth Estate, 2005) Hebdige, D., Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979) Hennessey, P., Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006) Hewitt, P., The Soul Stylists: Six Decades of Modernism­– ­From Mods to Casuals (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2000) Heylin, C., Bootleg! The Rise and Fall of the Secret Recording History (London: Omnibus, 2003) High, S., Mackinnon, L., and Perchard, A. (eds), The Deindustrialised World: Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017) Hill, D., So Here It Is: The Autobiography (London: Unbound, 2017) Hirsch, S., In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018) 288

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Bibliography Hodkinson, P., and Deicke, W. (eds), Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes (London; Routledge, 2009) Holder, N., Who’s Crazee Now? My Autobiography (London: Ebury, 1999) Hough, I., Perry Boys: The Casual Gangs of Manchester and Salford (Reading: Milo Books, 2007) Howell, D., The Politics of the NUM: A Lancashire View (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989) Humphrey, D., and John, G., Because They’re Black (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) Hunt, L., British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London: Routledge, 1998) Hunt, T., Only Human: My Soulful Life (New Romney: Bank House Books, 2008) Jones, G., They Danced All Night (Gethro Jones, 2016) Jones, O., Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (London: Verso, 2012) Kelly, P., The Last Pit in the Valley (Manchester : Unity Publishing, 2014) Kidd, A., Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) Kirk, N. (ed.), Northern Identities: Historical Interpretations of ‘The North’ and ‘Northernness’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) Knight, N., Skinhead (London: Omnibus, 1982) Langhamer, C., The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Lashua, B., Spracklen, K., and Wagg, S. (eds), Sounds and the City: Popular Music, Place and Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2014) Lashua, B., Wagg, S., Spracklen, K., and Yavuz, M. S. (eds), Sounds and the City Volume 2 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Lawrence, J., Me Me Me? The Search for Community in Post-war England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) Lawrence, T., Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture 1970–1979 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003) Lee, C. P., Shake, Rattle and Rain: Popular Music Making in Manchester 1955– 1995 (Hardinge Simpole, 2002) Lincoln, S., Youth Culture and Private Space (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Lyons, J. F., America in the British Imagination: 1945 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Maconie, S., Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North (London: Ebury, 2007) Mannin, E., England My Adventure (London: Hutchinson, 1972) Manvell, D., and Firminger, J., Memories of Sheffield’s King Mojo Club (Sheffield: ALD Design and Print, 2003) Marriott, J. (ed.), A Visual Guide to New English Library Volume 1 (Paperback Fantastic, 2010) 289

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Bibliography Marshall, G., Spirit of 69: A Skinhead Bible (Dunoon: S.T. Publishing, 1991) Martin, M., Once Upon a Time in Wigan (London: Joseph Weinberg, 2003) McDonald, P., Do I Love You? (Birmingham: Tindal Street Press, 2008) McKeever, R., On the Right Track with Northern Soul DJ Ginger Taylor (Furness: Peninsula Press, 2009) McKenna, P./​Snowball, I., Nightshift/​All Souled Out (Hitchin: Countdown Books, 2013) McMichael, J., and Lyons, J., The Who: Concert File (London: Omnibus, 2004) McRobbie, A., Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991) Mercieca, P., Chapman, A., and O’Neil, M., To the Ends of the Earth: Northern Soul and Southern Nights in Western Australia (Lanham, MD: University of Maryland Press, 2013) Moorhouse, G., Britain in the Sixties. The Other England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964) Morley, P., The North (and almost everything in it) (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) Morrissey, Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2013) Nott, J., Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Nowell, D., The Story of Northern Soul: A Definitive History of the Dance Scene that Refuses to Die (London: Pavilion, 2015) Nowell, D., Too Darn Soulful: The Story of Northern Soul (London: Robson Books, 1999) Oliver, P. (ed.), Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990) Orwell, G., The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) Osgerby, B., Youth in Britain since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 1998) Phillips, C. B., and Smith, J. H., Lancashire and Cheshire from AD 1540 (London: Longman, 1994) Pitts, J., Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2020) Portelli, A., They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Powell, D., The Power Game: The Struggle for Coal (London: Duckworth, 1993) Priestley, J. B., English Journey (1934) (Ilkley: Great Northern Books, 2009) Prince, M., God’s Cop: The Biography of James Anderton (London; Frederick Muller, 1988) Rachel, D., Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2-Tone and Red Wedge (London: Picador, 2016) Raine, S., Wall, T., and Watchman Smith, N. (eds), The Northern Soul Scene (Bristol: Equinox, 2019) Redhead, S., Wynne, D., and O’Connor, J. (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) 290

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Bibliography Renton, D., When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League 1977–1981 (Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2006) Reynolds, S., Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its own Past (London: Faber and Faber, 2011) Ritson, M., and Russell, S., The In Crowd: The Story of the Northern and Rare Soul Scene Volume One (London: Bee Cool Publishing, 1999) Robb, J., Punk Rock: An Oral History (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012) Roberts, R., The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) Robinson, L., Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) Routledge, W., Northern Monkeys (Marple: Think More, 2013) Rushton, N., Northern Soul Stories (Great Britain: Soulvation, 2009) Russell, D., Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) Rylatt, K., and Scott, P., CENtral 1179. The Story of Manchester’s Twisted Wheel Club (London: Bee Cool Publishing 2001) Samuel, R., Island Stories: Theatres of Memory Volume II (London: Verso, 1998) Samuel, R., Theatres of Memory Vol. 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994) Sandbrook, D., Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–79 (London: Allen Lane, 2012) Sandbrook, D., State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–74 (London: Allen Lane, 2010) Sandbrook, D., White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London: Allen Lane, 2006) Savage, J., 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (London: Faber and Faber, 2015) Searling, R., Setting the Record Straight: Music and Memories from Wigan Casino 1973–1981 (Plymouth: Go Ahead, 2018) Shaffer, R., Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Shapiro, P., Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (London: Faber and Faber, 2005) Shaw, D., Casino (London: Bee Cool Publishing, 2003) Shelton, P., Rock-n-Roll Fever: Blackpool in the 1960s (Houston: Martin Powers Publishing, 2014) Simonelli, D., Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013) Smith, R., Seduced and Abandoned: Essays on Gay Men and Popular Music (London: Continuum, 1995) Smith, S. E., Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) 291

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Bibliography Stratton, J., and Zuberi, N. (eds), Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) The Subcultures Network (ed.), Ripped, Torn and Cut: Pop, Politics and Punk Fanzines from 1976 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018) The Subcultures Network (ed.), Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014) The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) The Subcultures Network (ed.), Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of ‘Consensus’ (London: Routledge, 2015) Sykes, B., Sit Down! Listen To This! The Roger Eagle Story (Manchester: Empire Publications, 2012) Taylor, I., Evans, K., and Fraser, P., A Tale of Two Cities: A Study in Manchester and Sheffield (London: Routledge, 1996) Tebbutt, M., Being Boys: Youth, Leisure and Identity in the Inter-War Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) Tenny, V., Just Ask the Lonely (London: New English Library, 1970) Terry, J., and Wynn, N. A. (eds), Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities (Jackson, MI: University of Mississippi Press, 2012) Thomlinson, N., Race, Ethnicity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1968– 1993 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) Thurschwell, P. (ed.), Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Todd, S., The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910–2010 (London: John Murray, 2014) Tomlinson, A. (ed.), Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of Pleasure (London: Routledge, 1990) Turner, A., Crisis? What Crisis? Britain the 1970s (London: Aurum, 2008) Urry, J., The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002) Walton, J., The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) Walton, J., Wonderlands by the Waves: A History of the Seaside Resorts of Lancashire (Preston, 1992) Ward, B., Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (London: UCL Press, 1998) Waterman, P., I Wish I Was Me: The Autobiography (London: Ebury, 2000) Watson, G., Skins (London: Music Press Books, 2007) Weight, R., Mod! A Very British Style (London: Bodley Head, 2013) Wilkinson, D., Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 292

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Bibliography Willis, P., Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Aldershot: Saxon House, 1988) Wilson, A., Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2007) Winstanley, R., and Nowell, D., Soul Survivors: The Wigan Casino Story (London: Robson Books, 1996) Worley, M., No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Young, R., Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (London: Faber and Faber, 2010) Internet sources and websites http://​www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/​ https://​www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​uk http://​www.bbc.co.uk/​lancashire/​ http://​www.bbc.co.uk/​northamptonshire https://​www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​scotland https://​www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​uk-england-stoke-staffordshire http://​www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/​ https://​www.theboltonnews.co.uk/​ https://​blog.gregwilson.co.uk/​ http://​www.bluesandsoul.com/​ http://​www.djhistory.com/​ http://​www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/​ https://​www.express.co.uk/​entertainment/​music https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/ https://​www.facebook.com/​JohnManshipRecords/​ https://​www.facebook.com/​NorthernSoulOfficial/​ http://​johnvincent.info/​ http://​northernsoul.proboards.com/​ http://​raresoul.org.uk/​ https://www.scotsman.com/ www.screenonline.org.uk http://​www.sixmillionsteps.com/​ www.soul-source.co.uk https://​soulie.weebly.com/​ https://​www.youtube.com/​ Walton, J., and Wood, J., ‘Reputation and Regeneration: History and the Heritage of the Recent Past in the Re-making of Blackpool’ (2008), paper, https://​semioticon.com/​virtuals/​blackpool/​walton_​wood_​2.pdf (accessed 25 November 2015)

293

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Bibliography Films, television dramas and documentaries All My Loving (1968) All You Need is Love (1977) Blue Juice (1995) Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender (Channel 4, 1996) Days of Hope (1975) Early to Bed (1974) Hell is a City (1960) Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (Odeon Entertainment, 2012) Kes (1969) The Lovers! (1973) Northern Soul (2014) Northern Soul: Keeping the Faith (Culture Show Special, BBC, 2013) Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (BBC, 2004) Northern Soul and Wigan Casino (The One Show, BBC, 2011) On the Road: Jimmy, Cakey and Enrico (Granada Television, 1975) Sam (1973–75) Saturday Night Fever (1977) Soul Boy (2010) The Strange World of Northern Soul (Winerworld Studio, 2003) This England: The Wigan Casino (Granada Television, 1977) The Way of the Crowd (Northern Soul Productions, 2004) Sound broadcasts BBC, Radio 4 (2019), Annie Nightingale, ‘Shine Like Tokyo: Northern Soul Goes East’, first broadcast 21 September 2013 BBC Radio Manchester, Richard Searling, ‘Northern Soul’, broadcast 28 October 2016; ‘Northern Soul: Wigan Casino’, broadcast 2 March 2018 Discography Major Lance’s Greatest Hits Recorded Live at the Torch (vinyl, Contempo, 1973) The Northern Soul Story Vol. 1: The Twisted Wheel (CD, Sony, 2007) The Northern Soul Story Vol. 2: The Golden Torch (CD, Sony, 2007) The Northern Soul Story Vol. 3: Blackpool Mecca (CD, Sony, 2007) The Northern Soul Story Vol. 4: Wigan Casino (CD, Sony, 2007) Double Cookin’: Classic Northern Soul Instrumentals (CD, Kent Records, 2010) The Cleethorpes Story (CD, Goldmine Soul Supply, 1997) Club Soul Vol. 3: The Catacombs 1968–74 (CD, Clarity, 2013) The Stafford Story: On Top of the World (CD, Goldmine Supply, 2000)

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Index

Index

100 Club, London 251 Abbey, John 161, 219 ABC Theatre, Blackpool 66, 67 Aberdeen 178 academic literature 1–2 Accrington 176, 187, 200 Accrington British Legion 229 African-American identity 177 age 147–8 alcohol 150–1 all-dayers 128, 147 Cleethorpes 125, 126, 250 Isle of Man 252 Manchester Belle Vue 150 Manchester Ritz 128–9, 162 ‘monster’ dayers 130–1, 150 Nottingham Palais 130 Oldham 98, 99 Portcullis club, Barnsley 74 Scotland 178 Soul Casino, Morecambe 267 Tiffany’s, Newcastle under Lyme 132 West Riding Soul Club 129 Wigan Casino 101 All Night Band 94 all-nighters Cleethorpes 125–6, 250 Clifton Hall, Rotherham 250 East Anglia 180

Empress Ballroom, Blackburn 252 Flamingo club, London 19–20 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 60, 61 Hinckley Leisure Centre 251 Keele University 252 Lowton Civic Hall 253 Pendulum club, Manchester 43 Samantha’s, Sheffield 74 Scotland 178 Steam Machine, Hanley 111 Top of the World, Stafford 249 Troggs, Bolton 164–5 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 34, 36 Up the Junction club, Crewe 54 Va Va, Bolton 75 Wigan Casino 86–7, 89, 90, 100, 101–2, 233 American soul artists 18, 94, 112 see also black American performers American soul music 17, 18, 28 American soul singers 34 see also black American performers amphetamines 35–6, 36–7, 64, 165 Angels nightclub, Burnley 118 Antemes, Eddie 142 Arnold, P. P. 94 Australia 267 295

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Index Austria 268 authenticity/inauthenticity 216–23 autobiographies 261, 262, 263 Ayr 178 ‘Baby Reconsider’ (Haywood) 41 Bachelors, The 67 Baileys, Sheffield 147 Baker, Shirley 32 Barnes, J. J. 112, 219 Barnfather, Martin see Soul Sam Barnsley 74 BBC 73, 92, 214 Beatles, The 66–7, 85, 211 Bedford 142, 180 Bedfordshire 179 Belle Vue, Manchester 150 Benidorm 268 Bennett, Andy 181 Bennett, Joanne 26–7, 31, 33, 34–5, 36, 42 Berwick 252 Bickershaw Festival 24 ‘big bash’ dayers see ‘monster’ dayers Billboard magazine 91, 93, 247 Birmingham 179 Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies 10, 53 Birmingham City FC 56 Birmingham Locarno 128, 129 Birmingham pub bombings 221 black American music 28 black American performers 58, 62, 212, 213 see also American soul artists; black artists black artists 20–1, 217, 219, 240n27, 266 see also black American performers black awareness 213–14 black culture 217

Black Echoes magazine 6 anti-fascist concerts 220 Cleethorpes 127 cover-ups 156 Hunt, Tommy 218 mod music 98 ‘North East Blast’ column 180 ‘oldies’ v. ‘newies’ 123 pressings 154, 155 readers’ letters 102, 131, 147, 164–5, 200, 228, 230, 232, 234 Samantha’s, Sheffield 112 Scotland 178, 201 Soul Sam 121 top five locations 175 Wigan’s Ovation 92 black and ethnic minority population 61–2 Black Music magazine 6 collectivism v. capitalism 197 far right politics 220 ‘gay soul’ 235 instrumentals 92 northern culture 188 pen pals 231 readers’ letters 189, 221, 225, 237–8 royalties 217 black participation 118, 212–13, 215 black politics 211–12, 214–15, 216 Black Power 216 ‘Black Pudding Bertha’ (The Goodies) 189 black teenagers 212–13 black women 237–8 Blackpool 24, 65–7, 68, 182, 189, 252, 264–6 Blackpool Mecca 67–73 closing time 88 demolition 265 DJs 111, 115, 117 Highland Suite/Highland Room 69–70, 110, 132 296

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Index New Soul Time review 196 rivalry with Wigan Casino 118, 120–5, 150 two-dayers 265 women 230 Blackpool Soul Festival 131 Blackpool Wheel 38–9 Bloor, Chris 175, 194 Blue Juice (Prechezer) 256 Blue Room, Sale 74, 147 blues 56, 215 Blues and Soul magazine 6, 27–8 black involvement 215 black music 211 Blackpool Mecca 71 disco funk 117 drugs 159–60, 161, 165 gay culture 234 gay liberation 236 gender 223 geographical divide 51–2 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 61, 62–4, 65 miners’ strikes 60 northern identity 184 Payne’s Café Royale, Llandudno 54 readers’ letters 73, 178, 184–5, 196, 197, 198, 213, 222–3, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 237 social class 183 soul networks and clubs 40 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 41–3 white writers 217 Wigan Casino 88, 101, 230–1 Bolton 75, 147, 161, 163, 164–5, 176 boom years 110–13 bootlegging 153–6, 217 Bracewell, Michael 181 Brackenbridge, Stuart and Neil 90 Brady, Pat 124, 129, 130, 142, 145, 150, 198, 248, 250 Bristol 30

Brit (Britannia) club, Nottingham 74, 132, 147 Brown, James 18 Brown, T. 101, 126, 157 Bub 144–5, 193 Burnley 118, 176, 187, 201 Burns, Gordon 190 Burton, Chris 59, 62, 63, 75, 159 Burton, Malc 127 Burton, Peter 233 Buttle, Dave see Bub ‘California Montage’ (Young-Holt Unlimited) 121 Calvert, Beverley 243n113 Cambridge 179, 180, 267 Cambridgeshire Soul Collective 267 Canada 267 Canal Tavern pub, Thorne 253–4 capitalism 197 see also micro-capitalism Carlisle 98–9 Carlton club, Warrington 113, 132 Carr, Ronnie 30 Casinellis, Standish, Wigan 117, 118 Casino (Shaw) 262 Casino Café 263 Casino Classics record label 93, 94, 97 Casino club see Wigan Casino Catacombs club, Wolverhampton 56–8, 64, 117, 225 ‘Cat’s Whiskers’ soul night, Burnley 201 Centre City Soul Club, Aberdeen 178 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS, University of Birmingham) 10, 53 Cesar, Steve 116 Chapman, Colin and Mary 125 Charles, Ray 18 Chateau Impney, Droitwich 41, 56, 64, 267 297

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Index Cheshire 112 Chester-le-Street 180 Chosen Few, The 92 cinema 256–8 Clark, Ian 142, 251 class see middle class; social class; working class class bias 165 Clay, Judy 94 Cleethorpes 125–7, 147, 250, 252, 266 Clifton Hall, Rotherham 250 Cliff Richard and the Shadows 66 clothing 187–8, 224, 226 Clouds, Edinburgh 178 club culture 51 clubs 53, 61, 146–7 see also individual clubs Clwyd Soul Club 193 coal industry 22–3, 32, 45n31, 59, 83, 86, 191–3 see also miners’ strikes; miners’ unions Cochrane, Tony 178 Cockell, Les 73, 142, 190, 234 collectivism 197 Colls, Robert 201 commercialisation 91–6, 102, 197 commodification 266 Connors, Jimmy 215 Constantine, Elaine 2, 88, 193, 257–8 Cooke, Sam 18 Coronation Street (TV series) 182, 190–1 Cooper, Rick 194 Cosgrove, Stuart 37, 263 cover-ups 155 jazz funk 116 music policy 39 Pendulum club, Manchester 43 stompers 89–90 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 42

Va Va, Bolton 163 Wigan Casino 144 Wigan’s Ovation 92 cotton towns 21–2, 187 counter-culture 24, 59, 179 courtship 236–7 Coventry 177 cover-ups 155–6 Cox, Ken 179 Croasdell, Ady 251 ‘crossovers’ 253 Cummings, Tony black culture 217 gay soul 235 northern scene 103, 167, 183, 195 northern soul 51, 118–19 and northern culture 188, 189, 190 Curtis, Colin 64, 142, 144 jazz funk 117, 118, 121–2 mixed events 128 Mr M’s (M’s) 103 partnership with Ian Levine 111, 121, 143 dance 67, 226, 235–6 dancing styles 39, 57 Darge, Keb 142, 178 Days of Hope (Ken Loach) 191 ‘Dearly Beloved’ (Jack Montgomery) 146 Deeper and Deeper fanzine 114 deindustrialisation 5, 24, 176, 194, 201 Delaney, Paul 234 Dene, Carl 41, 64 Dewhirst, Ian 61, 88, 117, 126, 127, 130, 142, 144 Dimond, Colin see Curtis, Colin disco see New York disco Disco Demand 95 disco funk 113, 116, 117, 131 disco soul 183 298

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Index ‘divs’ 149–50 DJs 19, 37, 140–5 Catacombs club, Wolverhampton 57 cover-ups 156 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 64–5 pressings 154–5 Wigan Casino 88–9, 97 women as 229 see also individual DJs ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’ (Frank Wilson) 101–2, 266, 275 documentaries 96, 186–7, 191, 254–6 drugs 75, 157–66, 167–8, 198 see also amphetamines Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 165 Druffies at Dukinfield Rugby Club 146 Duffett, Mark 194 Dundee 178, 267 Eagle, Roger 19, 30, 37, 39, 158, 277–8 Early to Bed (TV play) 191 East Anglian Soul Club 179 economic decline 133 Edinburgh 178 Edwards, Alan ‘Iggy’ 57 elitism 114, 144, 148, 149–50 Ellis, Martyn 62, 64 Elson, Frank 1960s 148 black involvement 215 Catacombs club, Wolverhampton 57, 58 Cleethorpes 126 conversion to northern soul 146 Curtis, Colin 144 disco funk 117 fragmentation 131–2, 197–8

gay politics 234 geographical divide 185–6 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 59, 60, 62–3, 64, 161, 235 industrialisation 195 media 199 northernness 185 Pendulum club, Manchester 73 Portcullis club, Barnsley 193 racial divisions 213 Scotland 74 Soussan, Simon 157 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 42 Wigan Casino 89, 100, 101, 192–3, 200 women 226, 228, 229, 230 working class 187 EMI discs 153 Empress Ballroom, Blackburn 252 Empress Ballroom, Wigan 84–5 Evison, Dave commercialisation 102 fashion 224 fragmentation 131 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 60, 65 Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle 180 Mr M’s (M’s) 90 northern scene 189, 199–200 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 39 Wigan Casino 143, 184 factionalism 73, 120–5, 197, 251 Fame, Georgie 19–20, 30, 34 fans 141, 145–52, 154–5 fanzines 6, 15n32, 198 see also individual fanzines fashion 224 see also clothing femininity 234 Fenn, Arthur 142 fiction 259–60 film 256–8

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Index Flame 257 Flamingo club, London 19, 20, 35 Fleetwood 252 Flory, Andrew 29, 31–2 football 56, 150, 210 ‘Footsee’ (Chosen Few) 92, 96 Foster, Eddie 188–9 fragmentation 131–2, 197–8 Frank see Dewhirst, Ian Franklin, Erma 111 Freeman, Stuart 70 freemasonry 151–2 funk 113, 122 see also jazz funk Ffynnongroyw 193 gay culture 233, 234 gay liberation 236 gay men 234–5 gender 223–33 and sexuality 233–8 see also women generational change 133 generational conflict 148, 232 geographical divide 51–2, 181–6, 189–90 geography of northern soul 175–80 Germany 253, 267–8 Gibbons, Shaun 250 Ginger Taylor 142, 198 Glasgow 178 Godin, Dave 28 authenticity 217, 218 black artists 219–22 black politics 211–12, 213–14 Blackpool Mecca 71, 111, 121 Blackpool–Wigan conflict 126 commercialisation 102 decline of northern soul 196–7 drugs 165, 166 football 276 gay culture 234, 236 gender 223–33

Jebb, Tony 70 northernness 182–3, 183–4 northern soul 41–2, 42–3 ‘oldies’ 123 Payne’s Café Royale, Llandudno 54 sexuality 234 soul 27 Tamla Motown Appreciation Society 31, 32 Wigan Casino 89 young fans 148 Golden Torch, Stoke-on-Trent 35, 43, 58–65, 147 decline 110–11 DJs 72, 87 drugs 159, 160–1 nostalgia 264 Golding, Bernie 149, 188, 224 Goldman, Vivien 195 Goodies, The 189 Grant, John 117 Great Yarmouth 252 Haigh, Pete 146 Hamilton, Roy 187 Hanley, Andy 72, 111, 113 Hare, Les 33, 39, 215 Haslam, Dave 101, 124, 162, 216 Hatcher, Charles Edwin see Starr, Edwin Heart of England Soul Club 128, 130 Heavy Steam Machine, Hanley 60 Hennigan, Guy 142 Hertfordshire 179 Heyden, Blair (Poke) 142 High Numbers, The (The Who) 67 Hill, Dave 55–6 hippies 24, 59, 165 Hippodrome Theatre, Blackpool 66 Holder, Noddy 55 300

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Index Keele University 59, 252 Keep on Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (Odeon Entertainment) 255 Kempston 180 Kent Records 251, 268 Kettering 180 KGB Club, Sheffield 148 King, Martin Luther 211 King George’s Hall, Blackburn 253 King Mojo club, Sheffield 112 Kings Lynn 179 Kinks, The 67

Hollywood Reporter 258 Home of Blues see Blues and Soul magazine homosexuality 233, 234–5, 236 Hot Buttered Soul 103, 153, 161, 162, 175, 185, 194, 197, 215 ‘How Long’ (J. J. Barnes) 97 Howard Mallett Soul Club, Cambridge 179, 267 Hunt, Tommy 89, 187, 218, 219, 265, 267 ‘I Walked Away’ (Bobby Paris) 155 identity 53, 151, 176, 216 African-American 177 northern 4–5, 181–6, 195–6, 200 working-class 4, 5, 23–4, 177, 187–90, 194–5 ‘I’m Gonna’ Run Away from You’ (Tami Lynn) 73 individualism 20, 229 instrumentals 91–2 Intercom disco, Kings Lynn 179 International Soul Club 63, 74, 75, 216 International Soul Festival 265–6 IRA 221 Irish Republic 268 ‘It Really Hurts My Girl’ (Carstairs) 120 Italy 268 It’s the Beat fanzine 196, 198, 200

Lafayette club, Wolverhampton 58 Lancashire 20, 21–5, 176, 187 Lance, Major 63, 74, 111, 112, 216, 219 Leeds Central Soul Club 130 Legend, Tobi 95 Leicestershire 177 Leigh 19, 20, 22, 24, 29, 30, 176, 187, 188, 191, 192, 215, 253, 255 Leigh Miners Gala 22 Levine, Ian 70–1 black experience 220 Blackpool Mecca 114, 230 Cleethorpes 126 disco funk 115, 117, 122 elitism 149 Manchester Ritz 128 partnership with Colin Curtis 111, 121, 143 ‘progressives’ 141 record curatorship 152 sexuality 234 The Strange World of Northern Soul 255 Leyland Trades Hall 147 Lincolnshire 179 literature 1–3, 259–63 Liverpool 120, 179, 213

Japan 268–9 jazz funk 113–14, 115–18, 128, 131, 132 Jebb, Tony 65, 70, 72 ‘The Joker’ (All Night Band) 94 Jones, Gethro 54–5, 57–8, 64, 194–5, 212, 216, 262 Just Ask the Lonely (Tenny) 40, 259–60 301

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Index Locarno New World Ballroom and Highland Suite, Blackpool 68 London 19, 20, 25–6, 35, 182, 251 Lowton Civic Hall 253 Lyons, J. F. 116 Maconie, Stuart 187 magazines 6, 15n32 see also fanzines; specific magazines Maison Royale, Bournemouth 178–9 Major Lance 63, 74, 216 Making of the English Working Class, The (Thompson, 1963) 7 Manchester 21, 32, 176 mods 25, 33, 34–5 Pendulum club 43, 52, 73, 74, 235 Placemate club 60 Rafters 117 R’n’B Scene magazine 19 Tamla Motown tour 30 Twisted Wheel club 19, 33–8, 39–43, 71, 157–8, 160, 199, 213 Manchester Belle Vue 150 Manchester City football club 33 Manchester Corporation Act 1965 33 Manchester Ritz 122, 128–9, 162, 228 Manchester United football club 33 Manchester Wheelers, The (Dave) 261 Mannin, Ethel 82–3 Marryat Hall, Dundee 178, 267 masculinity 198, 233, 234, 235 Marshall, Gerry 87, 89 Mason, Paul 255, 264 Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle 180 McAleer, David 95, 156 McCadden, Dave 185, 195–6, 197 McKenna, Pete 182, 261 Mecca see Blackpool Mecca Melody Maker 7, 29, 30 micro-capitalism 20

middle class 25, 29, 84, 165, 194, 217 Midnite Express 248 Mimms, Garnett 115 miners’ strikes 24, 46n35, 60, 86, 250 miners’ unions 83–4 Minshull, Keith 64, 89, 111 mixed events 128, 129–30, 131, 132 mobility 199, 227 modern soul 120, 122, 251 ‘Modrophenia’ 98 mods 5, 15n28, 18, 19–20, 59 Blackpool 24 Manchester 25, 33, 34–5 revival 98 ‘monster’ dayers 130–1, 150 Mooney, Paul 180 moral panic 165–6 Morecambe 250–1, 267 Morrison, Van 218 Motown 26, 28–32, 56, 221, 233 Motown Revue Tour 17 Mr M’s (M’s) 84, 89, 90, 99–100, 103, 188, 232 music magazines see magazines music press 7, 29 see also magazines; New Musical Express ‘My Idea of Soul’ column 222–3 myth 247 New Blackbeat fanzine 251 New Musical Express 7, 29, 30, 120–1, 194, 195, 235, 258 New Soul Time fanzine 75, 96, 103, 122, 128–9, 143, 196, 198, 232 New York disco 113–15, 116, 122 New York Times 258 New Zealand 267 Newcastle under Lyme 60, 112, 132, 147, 161

302

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Index Newcastle upon Tyne 179, 180 ‘newies’ 89, 99, 123–4, 253 Newton Aycliffe 180 ‘The Night’ (Frankie Valli) 94 Night Mail (documentary) 83 Night Owl, Digbeth, Birmingham 267 Nightshift (McKenna) 261 noise issues 64 North Lancs Soul Festival, Morecambe 267 north/south divide see geographical divide North Wales 74, 177, 202n13 Northamptonshire 179 Northern Essence fanzine 157–8 northern identity 4–5, 181–6, 195–6, 200 Northern Ireland 221 northern soul boom years 110–13 chronology 5 critique 118–20, 167, 216–17 decline 132–3, 196–8, 199, 200, 231–2, 233 gatekeepers 3 geography 175–80 growth 73–5 legacy and revival 248–54 and northern identity 4–5, 181–6, 195–6, 200 nostalgia 263–9 origins 1 political background 12, 23–4, 60–1 transition from rare soul 41 unity 134 Northern Soul (Constantine) 257–8 Northern Soul: An Illustrated History (Constantine) 2 Northern Soul: Keeping the Faith (Culture Show Special) 255–6

Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend (BBC) 255 Northern Soul: Music, Drugs and Subcultural Identity (Wilson) 2 Northern Soul Scene, The (eds. Raine, Wall and Watchman Smith) 2–3, 13n12 Norwich 179 nostalgia 263–9 ‘Not Another Day’ (Curtis) 266 Notting Hill carnival 220 Nottingham Palais 130, 146 Nottinghamshire 177 novels 259–60 Nowell, Dave 70, 151 O’Brien, John 264 Okeh Northern Soul fanzine 131, 200 Okeh record label 152 Oldham 99 ‘oldies’ 82, 89, 93, 99, 100, 123–4, 129, 198, 251 On the Road: Jimmy, Cakey and Enrico (Granada Television) 191 Once Upon a Time in Wigan (Martin) 261–2 opiates 165 oral history 7 Orwell, George 82, 84 othering 150, 181, 190 Palace Theatre, Blackpool 66 paranoia 163–4 Parrish, Dean 95 Payne’s Café Royale, Llandudno 52, 54 pen pals 231 Pendulum club, Manchester 43, 52, 73, 74, 235 Pep (Ian Periera) 64, 88, 215 Peterborough 179–80, 267 303

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Index Pitts, Johny 193, 237 Placemate club, Manchester 60 Placemate club, Newcastle under Lyme 60 playlists 154, 171n96 plays 261–2 Poke (Blair Heyden) 142 police 35–6, 64, 158, 159, 161, 163 politics 211–12, 213–14, 214–15, 216 Pollard, Steve 196, 235–6 Portcullis club, Barnsley 74 Preludin 157 pressings 153–5 Preston 111 Price, Vince 61, 62 ‘progressives’ 120, 148, 249, 251 Pun club, Liverpool 120 punk 220 punk rockers 150, 151, 231–2 Queen Mary Ballroom at Dudley Zoo, Dudley 58 Queens Hall, Leeds 112–13 race 11, 31, 210–15, 216–23, 227 racial divisions 55, 74, 212–13 racial politics 213–14 see also black politics racial tensions 209 racism 210, 212, 220 Radcliffe, Jimmy 95, 187 radio 38, 117–18 Rae, Brian 25–6, 38, 141, 250, 251 Rafters, Manchester 117 rare soul 41, 152 rare soul clubs 5, 17, 37, 71, 72 rare soul nights 52–3 rare soul scene 18–19, 24, 56, 61, 86 Rave magazine 34 record curatorship 152–7 record labels/record companies 39, 91, 95, 219 see also individual labels

Record Mirror 51, 59, 75, 183, 185 record shops 64, 179 recordings 167, 266 Redditch 179 regional identity see northern identity relationships 237 respect 149–50 revival 97–8, 249–54 rhythm and blues 19–20 Richard, Cliff 66 RK Records 95 R’n’B Scene magazine 19, 37 Road to Wigan Pier, The (Orwell) 84 Roberts, Kev 38, 87–8, 141, 142, 144, 166, 187, 196, 199 Robinson, Alf 61–2 rock music 211–12 Rolling Stones, The 28, 85 romance 236–7 Rooney, Heb 153 Roundup club, Aldershot 179 Rushton, Neil 56, 128, 129, 130, 268 Russell, Dave 181, 183 Rylatt, Keith 34, 35, 36 Sam (TV drama) 191 Samantha’s, Sheffield 112, 141, 198 Samuel, Raphael 194, 196 Sandbrook, Dominic 3, 53, 59, 194, 210 Savage, Jon 29, 233 Savory, Chris 154 Saxe, Phil 25, 26, 32–3, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39 Scene club, London 19, 35 Scotland 177–8, 200–1, 267 Scott, Phil 34, 35, 36 Searling, Richard all-nighters 250 background 143, 144 Blackpool 266 cover-ups 155–6 304

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Index drugs 162–3 fans 141 female influence 229 fragmentation 131 jazz funk 117–18 ‘oldies’ v. ‘newies’ 123–4 record curatorship 152 Wigan Casino 87, 90, 97 Sex Pistols 220 sexuality 233–8 Shades of Green club, Northampton 178, 179 Shades of Soul fanzine 152, 155 Shaw, Dave 141, 150 Sheffield 74, 112, 141, 147, 148, 198 Shropshire 112 ‘Silent Treatment’ (Demain) 266 ‘Skiing in the Snow’ (Wigan’s Ovation/Initiations) 92 skinheads 210, 211 Slade 55 Smith, Adrian 6, 35, 152, 187, 215, 238 social class 31, 32–3, 165, 183, 184, 186, 193 see also middle class; working class solidarity 197 Sombrero club, Chester-le-Street 74, 180 ‘SOS’ (Starr, 1966) 34 soul 215 Soul Bowl 179 Soul Boy (Marcus) 256–7 Soul Cargo fanzine 129, 155 ‘Soul Casino all-dayer’ 267 soul clubs see clubs soul dancers 65 see also dancing styles ‘soul disco scene’ 52 Soul Sam 141, 143–4, 185, 248–9 fragmentation 75 Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle 180

mixed events 131 mod revival 98 St Ivo Centre, St Ives 179 stompers 121 Wigan Casino 93 Soul Satisfaction Society, Burnley 187 Soul Source fanzine 131, 199–200 Soul Suite, Blackpool 264–5 Soul Symbol fanzine 148, 151, 158 Soul Time 115, 188 Sound of Soul, The 146 Soussan, Simon 88, 156–7 ‘southern counter-culture’ 24 Southern Soul Club, Chichester 178 Southport 252 Spaine, Les 120, 167 Sparkle 92 Speakman, Mark 193 Spence, Kenny 90 Spinning Jenny club, Accrington 200 St Ivo Centre, St Ives 179, 267 ‘Stafford newies’ 249 stage plays 261–2 Starr, Edwin 34, 40, 53, 60, 97, 219, 256, 277 Stars and Stripes club, Yate 180 Steam Machine, Hanley 111 stereotyping 189 Stevens, Guy 19 Stirling 178 Stoke Evening Sentinel 159, 160 Stoke-on-Trent 59, 111, 177, 187, 266 see also Golden Torch, Stoke-onTrent ‘stompers’ 89–90, 121 Strange World of Northern Soul, The 255 subculture 10, 196 Subcultures Network 3–4 305

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Index Sunday Times Magazine 11, 72, 190, 195, 228 Sweden 253, 268 Taboo club, Cambridge 180 ‘Tainted Love’ (Gloria Jones) 275 Talk of the North fanzine 124, 144, 185, 200, 232 Tamla Motown Appreciation Society 31–2 Tamla Motown tour 30–1 Taylor, John Raymond see Ginger Taylor technology 153 teenage culture see youth culture television comedians 189 television documentaries 96, 186–7, 191, 254–6 Temptations, The 213 Tenny, Vivien 259–60 Thatcher, Margaret 133 ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’ (Taylor) 94 They Danced All Night (Jones) 262 This England series 186 This is It soul club, Dublin 268 ‘Three Before Eight’ (RK Records) 95 Tiffany’s, Edinburgh 178 Tiffany’s, Halifax 129 Tiffany’s, Newcastle under Lyme 60, 112, 132, 147, 161 Tiffany’s, Stoke 189 Tiffany’s Ballroom, Blackpool 68 see also Blackpool Mecca ‘Time Will Pass You By’ (Tobi Legend) 95 Too Darn Soulful: The Story of Northern Soul (Nowell) 262 Top of the Pops (TV show) 92, 213 Top of the World, Stafford 249–50 Top Rank Suite, Hanley 63, 72, 111 Top Rank Suite, Preston 74

Torch see Golden Torch, Stoke-onTrent Tower Ballroom, Blackpool 67 ‘traditionalists’ 120, 121, 122, 148, 248–9, 251 Trafford Park 32 Trentham Gardens Ballroom 130 Troggs, Bolton 164 Twisted Wheel, Manchester 19, 33–8, 39–43, 71, 157–8, 160, 199, 213 ‘Under My Thumb’ (Gibson) 94 ‘Up-North Soul Grove, The’ (Godin) 182 Up the Junction club, Crewe 54 USA 267 US airforce bases 179 Va Va, Bolton 75, 147, 161, 163 Valentino 235 venues see clubs Vincent, John 88, 112, 141, 145, 250 violence 150–1, 164, 210, 212, 220 V.I.P. label 94 Wakefield Unity Club 129 Wales 53–4, 74, 177, 202n13 Walker, Mike 87, 91, 93, 98–9, 100, 147–8, 188 Walters, Idris 119–20 ‘warm-up’ clubs 147 Warr, Graham 57, 117 Warrington 113, 132, 176 Warwickshire 179 Waterman, Pete 56, 74 Wattstax (film) 222 weekenders 252, 268 West Riding Soul Club 129 Wheatsheaf pub, Fulham 178 Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club (TV series) 144, 168n25, 189

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Index Wherry, Nev 142 Whitchurch 73, 112, 128, 150, 226, 227 white performers 211–12, 218 Wigan 82–6, 176, 266 Wigan Casino 82, 85, 86–90, 144, 195 closure 3, 5 commercialisation 91–6, 102 decline 96–104, 143, 200 DJs 117 drugs 161–3, 166 locality 188 myth 247 northernness 184 Northern Soul (Constantine) 258 nostalgia 263–4 opening 75 police 158 rivalry with Blackpool Mecca 118, 120–5, 150 Soul Sam 248 women 230–1 working class 190 young fans 147–8, 232–3 see also Mr M’s (M’s) Wigan Casino (Palmer) 186–7, 191–3, 254 ‘Wigan Joker’ (All Night Band) 94 Wigan Pier club 118 Wigan’s Ovation 92 Wilkes, Audrey 6, 225, 226, 237 Wilson, Frank 101–2, 187, 266, 275 Wilson, Greg 94, 118, 132–3, 179

Winstanley, Russ 87, 141, 142–3, 185, 189 critics 103 fragmentation 132 mod revival 98 ‘Six by Six’ 94 ‘Skiing in the Snow’ (Wigan’s Ovation/Initiations) 92 Soul Sam 121 Wigan Casino 90, 96–7, 102 Winters, Mike and Bernie 67 Wirrina Stadium, Peterborough 179–80, 267 Withers, Dave 114–15, 122 Withers, Wendy 225–6, 230, 237 Wolverhampton 54–8, 64, 177, 225 women 18, 19, 209, 223–33, 243n103 Worcestershire 179 working class 7, 190–3 boys 55 culture 11–12, 92, 196, 198–9 holidays 24 identity 4, 5, 23–4, 177, 187–90, 194–5 kids 165 Yardbirds, The 28 Yate 180 Yorkshire 176 Young Soul Rebels: A Personal History of Northern Soul (Cosgrove) 2, 37, 263 youth culture 21–5, 84, 194, 210, 220, 221–2

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