Terry Farley: before jack had a groove

We, like everyone else, love reading about NY club culture in the 70s. Those mad nights at the Loft or the Garage… And who doesn’t like a dance around to some rare disco record that the bearded 30 something Dalston DJ who will tell you ‘it’s a Paradise Garage classic ‘. However, that’s all well and good but while NY was HOT, things in London were equally innovative. The fashions were certainly better and the music played in underground clubs in London just as good, if not in many cases, far more eclectic. So why has no one told that story – our story… If it’s your London, then it’s also your story. 

So we have tried our best to trace the roots of today’s clubs and warehouses. We have got stories from those that made things happen and those that were just there to dance.  ‘Before Jack Had A Groove’  traces London club culture from the early 70s to the big bang of 1988 and the foundations that were laid down by many who went before us. Read the below exclusive foreword from Terry Farley and then head over to the wonderful Test Press site to download a chapter of the forthcoming book ‘Before Jack Had A Groove’….

“The tall blonde skinny lad pretended he did not see us all gawping at him, well he pretended to pretend but you could see he was lapping up our mix of admiration and jealousy. I had seen the boys haircut on the sax player in Roxy music on a edition of The old Grey Whistle test the previous week, but the look he sported – of 1950’s vintage Bowling shirts, straight jeans and slip on boating plimsoles – was all new and exciting to our little crew.

We looked fucking great though even if I say it myself. Satin bowling shirts from Kenny market mixed with big baggy pleated elephant cords with a 2″ turn up and beaten up DM’s , the year before the boots had been paint sprayed with silver stars stuck on, a mix of Boot Boy and Glam, but ,while we looked Boss, the tall skinny kid looked like the future.

We not only wanted to look like him but also dance to his music and in the style he danced, although we never had a clue what either was . The term Soul Boy never meant much more than our older siblings Motown chartbusters LP’s and watching unobtainable older girls dance in lines to ‘Nutbush city limits’ at our local disco come scout hut ‘the Witch’ although personally I swerved that place as it was also a haunt of the older lads off the estate who enjoyed bullying younger kids far more than anything else, a lesson i had learnt a few years earlier.

The next months were spent reading the bible of the day ‘ Blues and Soul ‘ from cover to cover to crack the code of soul boy , where to actually buy the records you heard emperor roscoe play on the radio ( the only radio 1 DJ I ever heard play Funk ) , where to go dancing up west and in the outer london boroughs for their specialist soul / funk nights (although in truth we never had transport and were so young looking a KB was almost a cert) . So we concentrated on our local ‘soul ‘ night that had sprung up in a Slough pub with a dancehall next to the greyhound stadium called The Dolphin. The DJ was a mobile jock who wore a soppy sergeants peppers jacket and talked in between every track but things were catching on. Boys were actually dancing, a real step-up from the days when ‘ only girls and poofs danced ‘.K ids all wore bowling shirts (a great trade was done by a local lads mum who made them to order far cheaper than the vintage ones sold in the great gear market down the kings rd where i guess ‘ HE ‘ shopped ) and the dj played BT Express ‘ Do it till your satisfied ‘ and we all did a funny little dance that some older lad had said he had seen at some west end club none of us had heard of, and he said we all had no chance of getting into anyway . 

Sadly and inevitably the Dolphin would normally end up in a shirt ripping brawl that evoked memories of inter estate gang violence that soul music had promised to end. It was time to step up and move on, we needed to be where ‘ He’ was, and that seemed to be The Kings Road . I think it took us at least half a dozen bus rides up and down that iconic street to find the holy grails such as A.C.M.E. attractions or (for the very brave) Vivienne Westwood’s SEX. For the Soul Boy foot soldier it was Stanley Adams with its sophisticated styles, and the many stalls selling second-hand Americana, most of it flea-ridden and pretty smelly. In 1974 / 75 the idea of wearing other peoples old clothes seemed strange and only for people really in dire poverty. The word Vintage had not even been thought of as a way of selling second-hand clothes, and i can remember my old man laughing his head off at my ‘ Happy Days ‘ TV show look – complete with countless moth-holes in much-loved shirts that sported names of long lost Ohio bowling alleys or Car repair shops in Texas towns no one had ever heard of. 

The Kings rd on a saturday afternoon however was a sanctuary from such ridicule. Victoria coach station from mid morning saw cinches arrive from all over the country , kids dressed in clobber that would get them a kicking in Cardiff or Derby would march down towards the Kings rd and join the countless others from the home counties and london itself. It was as if every town had a handful of kids who knew something new and special was up, and, from ’75 onwards, every saturday afternoon was spent simply walking up and down, shopping and more importantly checking other boys out, all of whom were looking to dress like that skinny blonde kid…”

Read further excerpts from Terry Farley and Roaul Galloway’s excellent book ‘Before Jack Had A Groove’ over at the equally great Test Pressing Site.