S’Express Mastermind Mark Moore on Unsung Heroes of the UK’s Early House Scene

And were you playing anywhere else?

The Mud Club and then loads of warehouse parties.

Were you playing the off-the-wall stuff at Mud Club, and then more orthodox stuff elsewhere?

Yeah, exactly. But even the Mud Club, it started to get more of the electronic stuff. I’d come on after Jay Strongman, who’d do the funk and hip-hop, but I started incorporating the electro. The Mud Club went through so many changes. I remember after a while it became known as a hip-hop and go-go club.

How long did you play at Pyramid?

I left in ’88 because of S’Express, but it was still going then.

Did it turn into a fully fledged house club then?

It must’ve.

I remember seeing you play at the Fridge in September 1987, and you were the guest and it was the first time I’d ever heard anyone play only house music. It was very confrontational, like you were on a mission. Did you feel that way?

I did. Because most people hated house music and it was all rare groove and hip-hop. I was known as a hip-hop DJ in those days, and I was hammering early Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C., stuff like that – I’d be invited to LL Cool J parties when they were in town. The whole of London was into rare groove and hip-hop. I remember when S’Express took off, in my first interview, they asked me why I thought house hadn’t taken off in London, and I said it was because the drugs were all wrong. And sure enough…

Yeah, so people hated it. All my friends at the Mud Club were like, “Why do you have to keep playing this house music?” They didn’t get it, and it took ecstasy for them to get it. I was on a mission, I thought, “I’m not gonna give in.” I’d play “Strings Of Life” at the Mud Club and clear the floor. Three weeks later, you could see pockets of people come on to the floor when I played it and dance to it and going crazy to it. And this was without ecstasy. And they turned out to be people like DJ Harvey and guys like that. I remember at the Fridge many times thinking, “This is hard work, I hope no one shoots me!”

I’m not surprised. I just couldn’t understand it, either.

Loads of my hip-hop friends were like that. Took them to a club, gave them an E… “We get it, this is amazing.”

When you were playing at Pyramid, that must’ve been before E arrived. There were advanced E parties at the Hug Club, weren’t there?

And Taboo as well! I took my first ecstasy at Taboo.

What was the crowd composition of Pyramid? Gay, straight?

It was 70% gay. A lot of straight people who wanted somewhere to go where they weren’t hassled. Racially it was mixed, a lot of black gay guys went, they loved the house music and they also loved the soulful electronic stuff like Janet Jackson’s “Control.” I also had a big hip-hop following from the Mud Club. A lot of the main homeboys and breakdancers went there because they were bored.

First time they came, they were terrified and then one of them would go to their mates, “It’s alright, it’s safe.” And then more of them would come along. And they’d be breakdancing to the house music. They even asked LL Cool J to come down one time, and he came. He loved it, thought it was freaky.

Drugs weren’t that important. Maybe a bit of speed or LSD, but not huge amounts. But it was more a case of have a beer and drink. Not a lot of people would do cocaine. It was still considered a great luxury in those days, although Pyramid was very Euro-jetset – people would fly in from Italy, very rich people. It was a mixture of rich types, rent boys, debutantes and strange axe murderers! The Pet Shop Boys would always go there, Jimmy Somerville, and one time Liza Minnelli came down, so it was a strange mixture of high life and low life.

Tell me about Taboo, then.

Well, I had to finish my set at Pyramid and run over to Taboo. Taboo was great. It was really fantastic. I didn’t realize at the time it was so crazy because of the ecstasy, but in hindsight that makes sense. People would come back from New York – again, a mixture of high life and low life – loaded with ecstasy, and give them out to people.

Who were the high-life element? Was it pop stars like George?

Yeah, Boy George; Janet Street-Porter spending quite a while in the cubicles. I think she was going out with Tony James [of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik], then? Then there were up-and-coming designers like John Galliano, and ABC would be there fresh from their success with How To Be A Zillionaire in their freaky cartoon phase. And Fiona Russell Powell, the writer from The Face – everyone remembers her appearance on [British music and culture TV show] The Tube with ABC, where she took off her coat and she had this belt which had dildos stuck all around it, but it was live so it was too late to do anything. Yeah, she’d be there.

And the ecstasy would be dished out and everybody would end up… Somebody would just fall on the floor and someone else would go, “Yeah, good idea,” and fall on the floor as well, and then the whole place would fall down in unison [and there would be] this mass bundle of writhing bodies on the floor. And that would happen every week at Taboo. It was a lame night if that didn’t happen.

At that time, you had great people. Unfortunately a lot of them are gone now because of AIDS, but great people like Space Princess, who was this lovely guy… Mark Lawrence, who started DJing as well, an amazing six-foot black guy, model, came from the north, used to go to northern soul clubs, decided he was gay and came to London. There’d be him and Space Princess and Jeffrey Hinton, who was the DJ, along with Rachel Auburn, and I think Princess Julia did the cloakroom.

With Malcolm Duffy.

Yeah! Anyway, Space Princess, Mark Lawrence, Mark Time (who used to be in [the TV dance group] Hot Gossip) and Jeffrey would do these dance routines at home. They’d practice these dance routines and teach them to a few friends, so once they got into the club they’d take over the dancefloor and do this formation dancing to anyone willing to join in. So, suddenly the floor would be taken over by people doing formation dancing. And of course, they’d do this move with a kick and a turn, and everyone would fall over in unison as part of the routine.

At the time, the people were just as important as the club, as the DJs, as the music. They were the stars as much as anyone else. The week after Pyramid, there’d be a fashion show and people would be chosen out of the crowd to appear, or people would be asked if they wanted to do an act, a drag act, a mime or weird performance art, which they’d do next week at Pyramid, so it was very inclusive. I totally missed that in the ’90s.

It was that performer-consumer dynamic, wasn’t it?

Yeah. I think it’s back now, with the small electro clubs.

Do you remember what music they played at Taboo?

It was totally cheesy, Hi-NRG, Italo, some of it great, some of it atrocious, but once you’d been in there and you were drunk or on ecstasy, it was fucking amazing! I heard Taffy played to death there by Jeffrey. When I started signing things for Rhythm King Records, I said, “Look, you’ve got to sign Taffy.” And of course it went top ten.