Jeff Dexter

The modfather

Interviewed by Bill in London, February 18, 1999

All the best DJs start out as dancers. Jeff Dexter was the south London mod who was banned from the Lyceum for dancing the twist and, in the process, liberated British dancefloors from their partnered past. Alongside his mentor Ian Samwell, he became one of the leading DJs in London, playing at mod haven Tiles, a cutting-edge pill palace documented by Tom Wolfe in his story The Noonday Underground. As resident at Middle Earth, Jeff drenched London’s dancefloors in acid as the sixties turned psychedelic, as well as being the gun-for-hire at any festival worth its salt, and went on manage several successful bands, America among them. Off-record he can regale you with hilarious stories of the visiting American bands he turned on to the glories of LSD. Jeff is still the nattiest dresser in London Town.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in 1946 in Lambeth Hospital and grew up in the Newington Butts by the Elephant & Castle.

When did you start collecting records?

I’ve never really collected records. The first record I ever bought was ‘Sixteen Tons’ by Tennessee Ernie Ford. I just thought it was the coolest song. I bought it in East Street Market from the A1 Records stall and I walked home with it under my arms singing it, thinking I was this big country person digging in the mines. This was 1955 or ’56, I think. It was a 78. Not many people had record players to play 45s in those days. I had two friends who lived locally who had gramophones so I could go and play it there. We never had a record player. We had a piano.

So you had an interest in music?

I studied music. I played the piano, I played the flute, I played the trumpet, I did classical. From eight or nine I had a knack of taking off the pop stars of the day: Johnny Ray, at the local mothers’ meeting hall. I was never that interested in pop music, as such. I liked the Goons. I liked military music, as well. I’d go anywhere at that age, to see a military band. I liked the uniforms. Unlike most of my friends who were suddenly all besotted by these new images – my brother had become an Elvis fan – I wasn’t particularly interested at first, until Buddy Holly.

When did you come across the Lyceum?

I went to youth clubs when I was 13 or 14, and started meeting teenagers! down at East Street. I went to a school summer camp when I was 14 down in Godalming, Surrey, and every night the teachers would play records. And a couple of the teachers from other schools brought records that I’d never heard. And I was particularly interested in being with the girls, so I think that was my first bite at really getting into dancing.

I always had a good relationship with girls because I did dressmaking and tailoring and I was the only boy, so I’d heard about places like the Tottenham Royal, and I had a big brother as well. The girls said, ‘Oh, when you come back to London you must come to the Lyceum with us.’ ‘I can’t go to the Lyceum. I’m 14.’ And I was four foot eight at the time, and probably looked about 11. How could I go to The Lyceum? I had all the clothes; I had every piece of equipment to look like I was a grown up, but I had this tiny little face and tiny little frame. But I braved it the following Sunday and when I signed the forms I said I was 16 and born in the war in 1944.

And they bought it?

Oh yeah, I already had my front on then.

What was it like when you went in there?

It changed my life in about three minutes. The record club, or Sunday club, opened at three in the afternoon, there’d be records during the afternoon, and then records and bands during the evening. I remember walking up to the top and seeing all the cloakrooms. Huge, I’d never seen big cloakrooms like that. I walked in, up the stairs, down through the gallery and into the ballroom space. And the sound in such a big place just blew me away. It was great.

Did it look like it does now?

Yeah, except it had a level dancefloor. It had a huge, fabulous, multi-coloured dancefloor. Multi-coloured wood. Squares, and gold leaf. And there was Ian ‘Sammy’ Samwell stood on the stage with his perfect barnet and his mohair suit, who I’d already seen in the foyer with his cardboard cut-out and thought, ‘Who is this guy?’ I thought he looked really naff.

Really?

Well, he was part of the old school. He was part of what we called the rocker brigade. His hair was slicked back perfectly dark. But there was something about what he was doing on stage and the records he was playing in the afternoon.

There were only a few people who would turn up that early, a few girls, who’d get there early to get their dance steps together. Of course, because the place wasn’t full, he was playing records that were new, weren’t necessarily out-and-out dance records, until people started to fill the place up. So that first afternoon I heard records I’d never heard before. By 6 o’clock I’d heard a few things and I had to go and find out what they were.

‘What music do you call this mate?’

‘It’s rhythm and blues.’

I’d been watching him, while he was playing and he was singing along to every song he played. He knew every word to every song; and I could barely make out the words.

‘How come you know all the words to the songs?’

‘I’m a songwriter. I know how they go.’

From that moment we became best friends. I jived my arse off all night with these girls from summer camp.

When was the first time you went?

First week of August, 1961.

Was that the night you got into trouble for obscene dancing?

No that was a couple of months later. That was the end of September when I got barred for obscenity, doing the twist with these two girls.

The twist came over here in about ’62 didn’t it?

Well, that’s when it exploded, early part of ’62.

When were you first aware of it?

I knew the song. Sammy had been playing two versions of it. Hank Ballard, which was a B-side of another song. Sammy played rhythm and blues and country; he had a great love of country rock as well. When we got the Chubby Checker version, after about three weekends and Tuesday nights (there was a record club on Tuesday nights) of hearing this ‘Twist’ I went up and talked to him. ‘Oh, it’s some new dance they say’s happening in America.’ In the mailer on the back of the picture sleeve was a diagram of how to do the twist. In three easy diagrams. Place your feet together and pretend you’re rubbing your bum with a towel, and gyrate. There was this other girl who’d come the previous week and she talked about some dance scene she’d seen in New York. New York? It’s a million miles away. She attempted to do it on the carpet with this other guy. So I put two and two together and we went and did it. Doing it very carefully at first because you didn’t want to make an arse of yourself. And we started going through it, and everybody stopped jiving around us and watched. Suddenly we were on. At the end of it the bouncers came up and removed me from the dancefloor.

Did they give a reason?

‘You might start a fight, doing silly things like that.’ Then the manager came over and said, ‘You can’t do obscene dances like that. Out you go!” And I was ejected.

Were you banned?

I think the first time I actually talked myself out of getting thrown out, till later in the evening when Sammy played ‘The Twist’ again! Of course we did it again and then I got ejected. They said, ‘You can’t come in the ballroom any more to do that sort of thing.’

How did the press get hold of this?

I tried to go back two weeks later and brave it out. I managed to blag my way in, I’d promised I wouldn’t do it again, but the funny thing is the twist had finally made it into the paper; this new dance had been picked up by the Arthur Murray School of Dancing and I think they sent people down to show us how to do it – ha ha ha! And I got captured on film and it got shown around the cinemas on Pathé newsreels. This thing, this obscenity that I’d been ejected for became popular and I got offered a job at the Lyceum. As a dancer! Of course, they didn’t know I was still at school and I’d only just turned 15.

“  I got barred for obscenity for doing the twist with these two girls. The bouncers came up and removed me from the dancefloor. ”

They found out?

Oh yeah. Well I had to tell them. But you could leave school at 15 in those days.

And that’s what you did?

Oh yeah. I dropped my tailoring. I dropped my music studies. The thought of being paid to dance with women was just phenomenal!

The twist would be very influential

The twist hadn’t really hit anywhere yet and we’d known the record for two months already. It was already a bit passé with us tight-arse mods. We always wanted the next thing. Even though it hadn’t exploded. Most people hadn’t even attempted it, because they were too busy doing their jive.

What kind of clothes were you wearing? Mod grew out modern jazz didn’t it?

It grew of out of the jazz clubs, when all the guys had started coming over in the fifties wearing their Ivy League clothes which were too small for them, and of course, there was the whole thing about the new Italian fashions, which was the box jacket, which the Americans were adopting after their ’50s look. The generation who were a little older than me were trying emulate those guys. They’d dumped the drapes and brothel creepers and jumped into this boxy jacket thing.

Were American GIs going to The Lyceum?

Yeah. Not a lot, but there were always Americans there from Ruislip and Hillingdon.

Were there many black GIs?

A few. Not many.

Where were the black kids hanging out?

There was a place near where I lived called Clubland, where there were a few black kids, but they kept a fairly low profile when they mixed with the whites. They were only just beginning to mingle with our lot. We had very few black kids who were our friends. But most of them lived in Brixton at that time.

What stuff were they listening to?

Well, down on Atlantic Road, just off the market there, there was a record stall that sold calypso. The black kids that I was meeting, were listening to the pop music of the day. At Clubland, there were black boys there and they just wanted to be part of our culture.

How long were you going to The Lyceum?

Until November ’61 when I started off working with the band there. That’s how I started off dancing in front of the band. As the twist started to explode there were all of these newspaper articles and television programmes, everyone that had a dance craze of any kind was bringing out a dance record. Any time there was a new dance I had to interpret it in front of 2,000 of my peers… and take a lot of flak.

Where were you finding out how to do them?

In some cases read Billboard, or a tip sheet from Sam Goody’s record shop in New York which Sammy used to get. And of course, the newspapers of the day and reporters on Melody Maker who lived in America and would send reports on what was happening there. If there was no clear indication, I’d just make it up! I was doing nightclubs and cabaret…

“  It was still pretty new, the idea of record hops. The ballroom scene was where most music happened in those days, so people went there to learn about the music and dances. ”

So you danced in other clubs?

Yeah. In those days it was either ballrooms or nightclubs in the West End and all the big events at the hotels. Whenever there was a party there, someone rich or something, they’d book a band, Cyril Stapleton’s Orchestra, who still had a radio show then.

Was he the Lyceum resident?

He replaced the Johnny Howard Band, who moved up to the Tottenham Royal. Every Mecca ballroom had two bands, they had a big orchestra – a swing/dance band – and a trio or quartet or quintet. The other band at the Tottenham Royal was the Dave Clark Five. We had the Mick Mortimer Quartet at the Lyceum.

How did the nights run then, between records and bands? What was the running order?

There’d be records from about three till six, then the quartet would come on and do a half set, then the stage would turn – all the places had revolving stages – the big band would come on, then there’d be half an hour of records and then another short set from the quartet and another set from the band. Then we’d close the evening with records.

I presume the bands were playing the hits of the day?

Yeah, on those nights in particular they’d only play the pop hits of the day and most of them were the real trashy ones, because they thought that’s what the kids wanted. Maaan. Of course, by that time, with all the influx of black imports and rhythm and blues it was a bit different. Cyril Stapleton, I’ll give him his due, was very keen to please the younger audience and wanted to know every new record that came out each week. As soon as anything came, that we thought was any good, he’d have the band play it.

Did they use vocalists?

Yeah, they used four vocalists and I became one of them as well. I used to do the doo wop bops, and the odd pop song.

Where did Ian Samwell fit into all of this?

The first night he started at the Lyceum was the first night I ever went, which is just one of those beautiful coincidences. I think he’d done a couple of nights replacing people before… The guy who originally played the records at the Lyceum was actually the electrician! I think Jimmy Savile might have done a couple of things before. It was still pretty new, the idea of record hops.

Was Jimmy Savile known at that point?

He had a name as a disc jockey. Maybe he’d just started on Radio Luxembourg as well, along with a guy called Tony Hall. Of course the ballroom scene was where most music happened in those days. All that swing band stuff during the war had introduced people to jives and bunny hops so people went there to learn about the music and dances.

How long did you work Mecca as a dancer?

Until ’66. After about 18 months at the Lyceum with Cyril Stapleton, the manager of the Lyceum was asked to move down to a place called the Orchid Ballroom in Purley, which had just been refurbished and was the biggest ballroom in Europe. Biggest dancefloor. Huge, huge dancefloor, four different bars, Chicken & Chicks, as they called it. Fish bar. Chicken bar. They had this big ice igloo where they sold ice cream sodas. And they had a roundabout which was another bar, a revolving bar, all in this wonderful huge, huge building. Now it’s a health club, discotheque, bowling alley. Mecca were doing very well at the time. The year preceding that they’d also opened a chain of ice rinks called the Silver Blade ice rinks all around the country. I went to the opening of every Silver Blades ice rink in the country and attempted to dance on the ice!

What DJ equipment did they have at the Mecca places?

At the Mecca clubs we had two Garrard turntables at most of the venues. They weren’t 301s. They were integrated systems – all-in-one units. It was semi-pro gear. I think they were direct drive with a volume knob for each deck.

What were the clubs that were regarded as hot?

Le Discothèque in Wardour Street, which was probably the first seedy late night club. And the Flamingo. Late nights at the Flamingo. The Flamingo had more black GIs than anyone else, it also integrated with black London and west London, because it was open late on Friday and Saturday, in fact all night. I worked every night in the ballrooms, and most closed at 11 because of licensing laws. We’d always go to a club afterwards. It might even have been a jazz club.

How late was the Flamingo open?

Well it was usually closed at 12 except on a Friday and Saturday, when they ran all nighters. I think they started running them in 1962.

Were they unlicensed?

They were coca cola bars. But upstairs from the Flamingo, was the Whiskey-A-Go-Go which was licensed.

Is that where the Wag was later, on Wardour Street?

Exactly. The Whiskey was very chic. You’d rather go into the dive below it than the Whiskey, but obviously people who drank would try and go to the Whiskey. There were two other dodgy late night bars in basements in Wardour Street, where you could get a drink if you ordered a steak sandwich for a ridiculous amount of money, like four shillings.

Sammy and I started to do shows at the Flamingo, from ’62. Also February ’62 we opened a weekly record hop at Greenwich Town Hall, on a Wednesday or Thursday. There was a lack of places to go. Tuesdays and Sundays the place was packed at the Lyceum, and it held 2,000.

The name discotheque never really got used until ’62 or ’63, really. The only place that used it was Le Discothèque, that’s because it had poncey French people running it. It was a great place. It had mattresses all over the floor. So you could go and get sweaty on the dancefloor and come off and flop out on a smelly mattress. And who knows what went on in there?

What did they play?

The pops of the day and a good selection of black records.

What did you think was the best club, in terms of the cutting edge?

Originally, the Flamingo because it was dark and dingy and it had a great cultural mix; it was filled up with a great cultural cross section. You had the Americans, George Fame and people like him. There were a few hot French clubs in town, too. It’s really strange because there was this sort of underground set of Frenchies who had properties in London. There was this place called La Poubelle on Poland Street.

The dustbin!

And the French became obsessed with the twist, in fact, they even called it the French twist. And I made a record written by Sammy in early ’62 called ‘Twistin’ Like The French Kids Do’!

What about Le Kilt?

That was very polite French. More middle class. It was where all the au pairs would go to meet rich London men.

What about coffee bars and jukeboxes?

I think every coffee bar I went to in those days had a jukebox.

A good one?

Yeah, fairly good.

Who selected the records that went in them?

There were about two or three guys that ran the jukebox syndicate and went around with the records and punched them out to go into the jukeboxes. I think there was only one major company that supplied the jukeboxes with records in those days. Of course, the Soho ones chose exactly what they wanted though. People like Tom Littlewood, who ran the 2i’s, who was in there well early.

Was that so influential?

It was the birthplace of British rock’n’roll. Everybody used to go there and take their bongos. Sammy talked in his memoirs of going to the 2i’s with his bongos!

Were you buying records during this period?

I didn’t buy records. We had an account at Imhoff’s in New Oxford Street, a Mecca account. And every week, from my befriending Sammy, because he lived in south London at the time, we would go up twice a week to Imhoff’s and on the release date, read the broadsheet of what was available, take all the records into the booth and listen to one after another. But Sammy also had lots of friends in America sending him records. And there was one little guy that had a basement in Lisle Street, just off Leicester Square. In those days there were a few Chinese restaurants and all the electrical shops were in that street. All the places like in Tottenham Court Road these days. In the basement of one of these shops, every Friday a guy would open up in the morning with a box full of freshly imported records.

What kind of records was he selling?

He was into rhythm and blues in a big way, that was his passion. He would rent this basement on a Friday

So it was only open on a Friday?

Yeah. He’d open up on Friday morning. It wasn’t like a shop where you could go in and select, it’s just be a big box full of fresh imports. He’d tell you what he had and you’d leave with a handful of records. These were the only records we paid for. All the rest Mecca paid for.

So imports were limited?

Yeah.

Did Imhoff’s sell imports?

No.

If you weren’t collecting records, did you pool them with Sammy?

We carried four of those old wire racks with the hot selection of that time. Twice a week we’d sit and edit them. Work out which ones we thought were hot, which ones we thought were dead. Plus the ones we would take to the Flamingo, which was always a harder edge, of course. By then bluebeat had just started to happen as well. By ’63 or even ’62 we started doing a Wednesday record night, then we started doing an all-nighter in the midweek too. We were also doing the late, late shift after Georgie Fame and the other bands had finished playing. Georgie became really popular about ’64 when he cut that record Rhythm And Blues At The Flamingo, which was produced by Ian Samwell. Sammy was at the cutting edge of all of it.

“  2i’s was the birthplace of British rock’n’roll. Everybody used to go there and take their bongos. ”

Were there any American GIs that brought their records?

They brought records from the bases. There was a good influx of records coming in from all over by that time. There was also another import shop that had opened by that time, on a Saturday morning, in the Haymarket in the basement of a bookshop.

From 1962 we did three and a half years at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley, which was our biggest show. Sammy was the main DJ, I was working with him and still singing and dancing with the band. Every record show was completely packed solid. People would come from all over London. There were shows at Streatham Locarno. We also played records above the Silver Blades ice rink in Streatham. There was a club called the Bali Hai which was for the late night license to get people in who had money, an after hours clubs.

There were other clubs like that opening in London, a place called the Crazy Elephant in Jermyn Street, where all bootmakers used to be. Of course, by that time we had the Scotch and the Ad Lib I guess, by 1964. Those sort of places weren’t open to ordinary punters, they were more clubs where you had to be a member.

Were they music industry hangouts?

Music industry, media.

Not as street as the Flamingo?

No, the Flamingo was well street. Great mixing pot. As was the Scene.

Tell me what you know about the Scene?

I don’t know when it started exactly, probably ’63 or ’64. I’d met Guy Stevens [DJ there] a few times buying records. Guy was a collector. He was an obsessive. He was obsessed with the label and everything. He’d been an obsessive before, he’d been a rock’n’roller, he was Jerry Lee Lewis mad as well. He was crazy about Jerry Lee, Little Richard. He already had a collection. They were what I loved, but they were my working tools, I was never a collector.

What was he like?

He was totally enthusiastic about everything, especially about music and clothes. Most of our conversations were spent talking about clothes and music.

Was he a mod at that stage?

Yeah, he was a bit more unusual than everybody else. He had a certain artistic flamboyant air about him. He wasn’t that tight-arse mod. Most mods were so into posing around, whereas Guy was a bit more rock’n’roll, a bit looser. But he was totally obsessed with his music. There were a few other people around like Guy, too, like Peter Meaden and Tony Calder and Andrew Oldham. Tony Calder was also a Mecca DJ from ’62. He managed to take the job at the Lyceum off of Sammy. A dodgy move. Even if you filled the place with punters, your job wasn’t safe in those days and you were probably only being paid nine shillings a set anyway.

But then no-one had any sense of what a DJ was worth in those days though.

Well, everyone thought that anyone can play records…

Was Guy at The Scene from the off?

As far as I remember, yeah. It was a right dodgy place. Seedy. Low ceiling. Bad decoration. Coca Cola bar. That was it. But you could actually get a hit in your Coca Cola. For some reason, it attracted a lot of the lower elements of musicians. It was on the corner of Archer Street, and in those days Archer Street was where all the musicians from the union would meet every Monday and Friday, and all the pluggers and fixers would also meet there and hand out their tickets for the recording jobs. That pub on the corner was where they all met. And when all those pop hits were happening, every musician would go there hoping to get a session.

“  You could go and get a pill off someone, but you could also get a shot of whisky as well. If you were a cool face you would never stand in a pub with a pint of beer in your hand. ”

You said Coca Cola with a hit. Do you mean they were dropping pills in the Coke?

You could go and get a pill off someone, but you could also get a shot of whisky as well, if you knew how to get a shot of whisky in it. The preferred drink of the day was whisky and coke. If you were a cool face you would never stand in a pub with a pint of beer in your hand. You’d have a coke bottle with a shot of whisky. I think that partly grew out of the fact that Mecca DJs and musicians weren’t allowed to drink. Of course, everyone did.

How prevalent were drugs in places like the Scene and the Flamingo?

That’s where I first came across marijuana, yeah. It wasn’t as obvious as 1964 when the whole thing started to explode.

What sort of drugs were available?

Mainly purple hearts and black bombers. Another favoured drug amongst a certain bunch was amyl nitrate, which you could buy over the counter in those days. If you had a bit of speed and a quick sniff of amyl you could really have a great time dancing. And get higher than a kite. That was before it became a gay drug.

The gay scene must’ve been very underground back then.

It was very underground. There were two or three little pubs where they would go. There were a few who would come into the bars. No-one wanted to be openly gay, apart from a few musicians and actors.

I imagine the Scene and Flamingo had very primitive DJing equipment?

Very primitive. Guy had two Garrard SP-25s. It was an integrated arm and deck.

How did the mod thing move into psychedelia?

1965, ’66, there’d be a new records arriving from America. People like Donovan, who’d gone from this folky thing, were writing strange things, coming back from America wearing different clothes. The Beatles of course. Certain places you could get LSD. There were all kinds of people in pop culture who hadn’t been mixing before.

Which clubs captured this interaction best?

UFO [pronounced Yoofo] grew out of the London Free School over in Notting Hill Gate, and they were actually community based projects like the black housing project, after the riots. It actually grew out of them trying to do good things for the local community over there. Unusually arty things.

Who set up UFO?

Hoppy was a photographer, and he’d been out photographing demonstrations and protests. He worked for the Melody Maker at that time, as well, and was seeing other things; other bands. Who else was around then? Andrew King, Peter Jenner, he managed the Pink Floyd. Hoppy, Jim Hayes, Joe Boyd had come into the frame by that time.

What was the template they used for it, because it was obviously different?

They didn’t try and copy anything. They were just making their own little thing. Of course, the Acid Tests were coming over. All the underground poets were arriving. There’d also been a couple of alternate shows at the Marquee: mixed-media stuff.

Who performed?

People like the Floyd, poets, lights. Things also happening in Central London Poly in Regent Street, there’d been a couple of alternate events.

When did UFO start?

Christmas ’66.

And you played from the start?

There was no DJ as such. There was a guy called Jack Henry Moore who was an American electronics whiz. They had the record player, the amplifiers, the lighting equipment, generators and stuff, and he was a sort of mad boffin and he had TV screens with fuzzy images on them. And he played the records. Just records they had around at the time. I started to go that winter and I was doing all my shows at Tiles then. When I started to go I was well received by Mick Farren who was the doorperson, along with Richard Vickers. And I befriended Jack and I used to bring along all the new records I got every week and tell him which ones were hot for me. And he introduced me to things I was totally unaware of. Really weird American stuff.

So what was the difference between UFO and elsewhere?

It was totally unstructured. It was a free-for-all. There was no presentation as such, it just happened. For me, coming out of the straight world of ballroom showbiz, this was a brave new world. It was just built around the people who were there.

Did people dance?

People did dance, yeah. It wasn’t like a ballroom or a club where everyone just rushed in and took their coats off. They spent more time talking to each other and dropping acid, reading books. There was a head shop in UFO where you could buy… strange things! Little sparklers, sparky wheels, defraction gradings, funny glasses that made everything look strange.

I would imagine it looked pretty strange anyway…

It did because there were the light shows. So everything was bathed in a wash of colours.

When did you start DJing there?

I wasn’t part of the original set up at all. Lots of people think I was. There was no-one who would announce records. Jack had this sort of scaffolding area where he kept all the electronics and stuff and records would just be popped on to the deck. There was no thought of mixing. He also had loads of stuff on tape: electronic music, stuff like the Grateful Dead. It wasn’t just a question of records. And there were bands: Arthur Brown, Soft Machine. It wasn’t really a record club.

And you were DJing at Tiles?

From ’66 I had a thing Wednesdays at Tiles called the Jeff Dexter Record And Light Show, which was a good crossover of soul, rhythm and blues and bluebeat. And new records of the day, the new psychedelic records.

Where was Tiles?

Opposite the 100 Club. Corner of Chapel Street or Dean Street and Oxford Street. It was turned into an aquarium after Tiles. The entrance was further along, but Tiles had its own Tiles Street, which was like a mini Carnaby Street. You’d go in the club, it was a huge open space, and one end was a big coffee bar and off to the side was Tiles Street, where they sold clothes and paraphernalia. And also a tiny little record shop. It was an incredible place, Tiles. It was the only place that had its own real PA system. One of the backers of the club was a guy called Jim Marshall who owned Marshall PA and there were something like 40 columns of speakers that ran all along the dancefloor. And they had a proper sound system and proper amplifiers.

So it was pretty impressive sound wise?

The sound was low-fi, it wasn’t hi-fi, but it worked incredibly well. It was the only place where things didn’t break down as well. Marquee never invested in a proper PA system. In Tiles, everything was laid on, all the equipment was installed by Imhoff’s. You had a switch and a volume pot for each deck. And they were vari-speed. That was the last of the Garrard 301 decks. After that same year, ’66, they introduced the 401. Tiles was the only club I worked in that invested in it and took it totally seriously and made it work for the DJ. All the other clubs, they had baby hi-fi equipment. A few of them had 301s or 401s, but most of them had smaller Garrard units.

Tiles did an all-nighter on Saturdays. I did the midnight to 6am shift. There were a selection of DJs and styles. Clem Dalton, Mike Quinn, and Sammy as well. Tiles was raided regularly on its all-night sessions. Hundreds of police would come, because it was supposed to be a drug den.

Was it?

Yeah! Well, kids always took pills to dance on didn’t they? They came up to London to have a good time, so there were always plenty of pills.

I was still working at Mecca ballrooms. I was doing Hammersmith Palais, Empire Leicester Square. Prior and simultaneously. I got the sack from Mecca, my main gig was still Orchid Ballroom up to the summer of ’66, Sammy had gone the year before and I was doing all the shows there. Sammy had gone back into writing and producing. He’d fallen out with the Mecca.

The lunchtime thing at Tiles. What was that all about?

It was a coffee and sandwich bar at Tiles. The doors opened at 12. Taped music would play until 12.25 and then I’d put on my intro record. 12.30 the curtains would open and there I’d be playing to almost a full lunchtime crowd. And of course there were a bunch of kids who never went to work anyway. And we’d spend the next three hours doing this.

What were you playing?

Dance records. Bluebeat, ska, because we had plenty of ska by then. I played all the new records of the day. Bit of psychedelic, but very little at Tiles, because the audience was mainly tight-arse, pill-chewing mod kids. The late-on mods.

What do you mean?

Well, the ones that came to it very late. To me mods died in ’62, but obviously there was still that funny culture of Carnaby Street and, of course, there were all those new dandy fashions from the end of ’64 that had now crept into the mainstream.

You mean the regency look?

Yeah, it had been around for a few years before but it had gone more mainstream. In fact, by that time, there was a chain of shops called Dandy Fashion.

What was the timescale at Tiles?

1966 to ’67. I went on holiday to Majorca in the summer of ’66. The Brits had started opening discotheques there. They’d taken this old mill in the centre of town. I was asked to come and open a club called Snoopy’s. There was a whole new set of Brits going to do what was happening in London, in the sun. I sent a guy called Pete Sanders in my place. There was too much going on here to spend a summer in Spain. In some ways I wish I’d done it because when I arrived there it was just incredible, because I took with me a bunch of acid. The Animals were there, Tom Jones was there, and in those days Tom was quite acceptable.

What did you find when you got over there?

There was a whole new generation of people who there in Spain at that time. Not only the club entrepreneurs, and the bands, but there was this great influx of British going there for their summer holidays. You could go for a week all-inclusive for £35.

So this was the beginnings of the package holiday?

Yeah.

Were there other nationalities there, too?

Scandinavians in particular. A few Germans, not so many. Mainly Brits and Scandinavians, a few Spanish.

You played at Middle Earth didn’t you?

Towards the end of UFO. My main gig at that time was Tiles. I was doing five lunchtimes a week, and three nights. In 1968 UFO got closed down at Tottenham Court Road and moved to the Roundhouse by early summer. Then moved out to a bingo hall just off Ladbroke Grove, which is where it came to an end at the end of ’68.

Then Middle Earth started in Covent Garden. It was originally called the Electric Garden, and tried to do more or less what UFO was doing: bands, poetry… Middle Earth jumped on the back of that. So we set up this thing called Implosion, which would do what UFO intended. Anyone who played there would have to play for the community, they would not get a cut of the door no matter who they were. And they’d all get a fixed fee, which was £20. Of the money we made, half went into keeping the Roundhouse alive, and the other half was donated to needy causes like the Release charity.

“  Thanks to LSD, people were wandering off in different directions. They were seeing the colours coming out of the speakers! ”

In Middle Earth, what was being played?

Well there were the hot bands of the day. John Peel was also DJ. And John hated ska and bluebeat and most of those records that I’d lived on. He thought they were awful. I was totally into what he was doing, but he didn’t understand what I was doing. The thing is, people still loved to dance and you really couldn’t dance to a lot of the new psychedelic records that were around. They were horrible to dance to. So to keep people moving I had to mix it up a bit.

You came from a club background and he was a radio person.

Yeah. John’s records were strictly for listening to. I played to the audience. Any DJ worth his salt knows how put one record on after another so they seem seamless and, although that was becoming less important, and it was something I didn’t want to do so much any more, because I wanted people to listen, to me it was still important that, once the place was full, I wanted those people to have a good time. I mixed the two together.

What sort of people were there?

All the bands of the day, various media people. Middle Earth actually attracted more of the younger punters, people from the suburbs who would have normally gone to other clubs. UFO wasn’t really for the punters so much.

What bands played?

They were the mainstay of the business. Dantalion’s Chariot, The Byrds, Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, the Move, who’d become a psychedelic band by this time. They were brilliant.

How did the Byrds fit into all of that?

They were very psychedelic. Incredibly so. They really psychedelicised the whole folk thing.

Was it more media-oriented?

Not so much media. Alternative.

Early hippies. Heads.

Yeah, but a lot of them didn’t want to call themselves hippies. I definitely became a hippie. Peace and love was the most important thing to come out of my mouth. And be nice to each other.

That must have affected the music you played.

Yeah. It became much more gentle. Much more open. And not so restricted to having the beats in the right place at the right time.

Do you think that was because LSD was replacing speed?

Yeah. People were wandering off in different directions. They were seeing the colours coming out of the speakers! It was also the birth of what became known as idiot dancing.

Which is basically middle class flopping about.

That’s right. Waving your arms around. There wasn’t enough space on the dancefloor to have a real good dance, so you just sort of shake yourself and wave yourself about.

The whole thing had exploded by the late ’60s. I ended up running all the shows at the Roundhouse. DJing at all the shows. Doing all the festivals. The summer of ’67 was the Festival of the Flower Children at Woburn Abbey. Similar set up to Knebworth. They had a wildlife park there. The following year there was another festival at Woburn.

I presume by that stage, you weren’t really playing dance records?

Head music, but there were records that crossed right over. Canned Heat who played boogie. The Lemon Pipers! They had a big hit called ‘Green Tambourine’, it was bubblegum psychedelic.

What do you mean by bubblegum psychedelic?

Well the pop market had tried to creep in: the Lemon Pipers were one. People danced to the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival. There were records that you could dance to and I still mixed the two together, although I was becoming less fond of the black records that were creeping up, on Motown and Stax. To me they’d become plastic. They didn’t hold that element of magic and soul that they’d done before.

© DJhistory.com

TILES SOUND & LIGHT 30

THE SOFT MACHINE – Feelin’ Reelin’ Squeelin’

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – Stone Free

THE SMOKE – My Friend Jack

BOB DYLAN – Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 & 35

THE PURPLE GANG – Granny Takes a Trip

THE PINK FLOYD – Arnold Layne

TRAFFIC – Hole In My Shoe

THE BEATLES – Tomorrow Never Knows

TOMORROW – My White Bicycle

THE MOVE – I Can Hear The Grass Grow

CREAM – I Feel Free

REX GARVIN & THE MIGHTY CRAVERS – Sock It To ’Em JB

ALVIN ROBINSON – Searchin’

THE WAILERS – Put It On

ROLANO AL AND THE SOUL BROTHERS – Phoenix City

THE GAYLORDS – Lady With The Red Dress On

PRINCE BUSTER AND THE ALL STARS – Al Capone

DESMOND DEKKER AND THE ACES – 007

FOUR TOPS – Reach Out I’ll Be There

WILSON PICKETT – Mustang Sally

DYKE & THE BLAZERS – Funky Broadway

ALVIN CASH & THE REGISTERS – Twine Time

KOKO TAYLOR – Wang Dang Doodle

ROY C – Shotgun Wedding

THE TEMPTATIONS – Get Ready

EDDIE FLOYD – Knock On Wood

SAM & DAVE – You Got Me Hummin’

THE BAR-KAYS – Soul Finger

JOE TEX – You Better Believe It Baby

Compiled by Jeff Dexter

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

VARIOUS – The In Crowd (4-CD boxed set)