Twisting My Melon (14 page)

Bez got in a bit of trouble because the lad who was boss had gone to jail for a little while and left us in charge of the pills. Bez was giving pills away and spending the money when it
came
in, so when the boss came out Bez owed quite a lot. Let’s just say a good few thousand. It took a bit of talking to get him out of that situation.

As we had a steady supply, we started eating the E all the time. We were getting up in the morning and having one for breakfast. Well, getting up in the afternoon and having one for breakfast. Some people would just throw an E down them, some people would just have a half or a quarter and share it. The thing is, if they just took a quarter, then by the time that quarter had come on they’d already given the rest of the pill away to somebody else because they felt so good, so they’d have to get another one, or jib a quarter or half off someone else.

I got to know Ian Brown from the Stone Roses around then, as he had moved to Fallowfield the same time as me. I was already on nodding terms with him, and knew he was the singer in the Roses, but we didn’t really talk until we both moved to Fallowfield. We got on great when we got to know each other. Ian was a really nice kid, and he always had that air of nonchalance, like he was too cool for school. The Roses had sprayed their name around Manchester one night, on walls everywhere, so you knew the name the Stone Roses before you knew who the band were. They’d stopped being a goth band by then. Ian was one of those kids who changed about – he was a mod, and then he was a goth – but he stopped changing his look around 1987, when he kind of found who he was, about the time they released ‘Sally Cinnamon’.

McDonald’s opened a drive-thru in Fallowfield in 1987, the first one to open in Manchester, and I started having my tea there, often with Ian. We didn’t arrange to meet up for tea or anything, but he would go in about the same time as I would, round about five o’clock, to get something to eat, so that’s how
we
started talking and got to know each other, over a Big Mac. I would go in there most days, if I was around, and if I got up in time. It didn’t shut until eleven o’clock at night, but if I hadn’t got in from the night before until one o’clock in the afternoon, then I sometimes didn’t get up until eleven o’clock or midnight.

We had the last few months of 1987 to ourselves really. There were still only a few pockets of people who had turned on to what was beginning to happen. It wasn’t until early 1988 that the E scene really started to kick off, and by the summer of ’88 we blew the roof off the Haçienda. Mike Pickering says he could see the E spread like a tidal wave across the Haçi, from our alcove across the club.

As people got switched on to the E, they knew to come to us for it. We were the source. We would come out of the Haçienda, which shut at 2am then, and by the time we got back to Fallowfield there would be a bigger queue outside our gaff than there was to get in the Haçi. It went right down the street. I mean, talk about bringing it on top. This was just people who had found out where we lived. When you need to buy weed or a bit of gear or something, you always find out where the people live who are selling it if you need to. At that particular time no one else really had the E in Manchester; we were the source, so people found out where we lived. I would look out the window and the queue would go right down Egerton Road. There could be a hundred people queuing up and we were selling it at £25 a pop. We weren’t paying anything like that for the pills, so we were making some serious money.

It did come on top for us though, because we were attracting so much attention. Egerton Road is in a studenty area, so most of the houses on the street were split into rented flats. It wasn’t a quiet residential area, but even so you can’t have a
hundred
people outside your gaff several times a week without the police taking an interest – although at that stage they still didn’t have a clue what was going on, so they probably just thought we were having big house parties. They didn’t realize it was drug-related because they still didn’t know what ecstasy was. But we did have a few run-ins with other gangs from round there – Asian gangs, and gangs that were dealing heroin – because we were also bringing it on top for them. We had fights and arguments with other groups because they didn’t want those queues there and the attention that it brought on the area. Neither did we actually, but they just kept coming – there was nothing we could do about it.

That’s really where the whole idea to go and break into a warehouse or somewhere and have a party started. We had a hundred people outside our gaff at two or three in the morning, all on really good E, and they’re not going home. So people started breaking into cellars or disused buildings and putting little parties on. The only places to go at that time of night really were the shebeens in Moss Side and a couple in Hulme. The shebeens had been going on for years, mostly run by Jamaicans, but a lot of local criminals would also go there and they started taking the E.

A lot of those people who first starting buying the E off us went off and started their own things and their own nights. People would throw parties in old empty factories in Middleton or under railway arches, all sorts of little parties here and there. Some of our pals, like Muzzer and Platty, put on some of those early events, in Hulme or in town. The Donnelly brothers, Chris and Anthony, who started the Gio-Goi clothing label, did some. Eric Barker always used to have a sneaky party going on somewhere, often right in the centre of Manchester, in the basement of an old building. This was before every old warehouse in Manchester was turned into apartments, so there were
still
some great vacant spaces to be had. At one time, there would be a party every night of the week. It wasn’t really a problem getting the word out; if anything it was a problem trying to keep it fucking secret. You didn’t have to get the word out – the word was out. The police didn’t have a clue at first, so you didn’t have to worry too much about them.

Hulme was pretty wild back then. The Crescents had been this big experiment in social housing in the early 70s, which was supposed to be a vision of the future or something; all concrete walkways and stairwells. But by the mid-80s it had failed and been taken over by squatters, scallies and drug dealers. No one paid any rent, people just broke into flats and stayed there. Half the flats were boarded up, so if the one next to you was boarded you would just knock through and give yourself a massive extension, double the size of your flat.

There were always a couple of party flats in Hulme, and the best-known one later became known as The Kitchen. A kid called Jamie had built a bit of a recording studio and a sound system in his flat and it became a great party place. The DJs would play in the actual kitchen, hence the name. It was really dark, because they’d taken all the lightbulbs out, but the music was good, because Chris and Tomlin, the resident DJs from Konspiracy, the Manchester club, who were known as the Jam MCs, used to DJ there. It became so popular they had to knock through to the flat next door. The Kitchen was great. We used to try and make sure we got down there sharpish after the Haçienda shut to grab the only table and chairs. I remember being in there one night with Barney and Hooky and a few other Manc musicians; I think Chris Goodwin, who was in the Roses early doors then in the High, was there as well. We were all E’d up, and just got up and had an impromptu jamming session.

The E affected us just like it affected everyone: it changed our mindset. There had been certain people that me and my pals had never associated with, people that we’d never spoken to because we didn’t like them, people that we stayed away from or didn’t want knowing our business. But the E broke down those barriers. These were people that we had seen around for ten years and with the E we finally ended up speaking to them and getting on with them.

I had a really fucking lucky escape from the police with the E, early doors, just before they caught on to what was happening and to what ecstasy was. I was coming out of my house on Egerton Road and I had about thirty pills on me. It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d just got up. Unbeknown to me, somebody had just robbed the fucking post office round the corner, and the description of the robber matched me – blue anorak, jeans, trainers, short hair. So I’m walking down my road and this fucking cop car screeches up next to me and pulls me. The bizzie said, ‘Who are you?’ and I said, ‘Er, I work for a record company.’

‘Who do you work for then?’

I said, ‘I work for Factory Records,’ hoping that might ring a bell, but they had never heard of Factory.

‘What do you do for them?’

‘Er, I work in the office and do this and that and find bands and stuff.’

‘Right, get in the back.’

‘What for?’

‘There’s been a robbery at the post office and you match the description of one of the people fleeing the scene.’

‘Give over.’

‘Get in the car now. You’re coming with us, and let’s see if they identify you … blah blah blah … and if they don’t identify you, then you can go.’

At the same time he’s giving it all this, I’ve got my arms out and he’s going through my pockets. He finds the bag of pills and says, ‘What’s this?’

Now, literally weeks after this, people were getting seven years for having seven E on them. So this bizzie pulls this bag of thirty pills out of my pocket, and he’s like, ‘What are these?’ and then before I could say anything he says, ‘Are they speed pills?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right … okay.’

‘What are you going do with ’em?’ I asked. ‘Can I have ’em back?’

As soon as I realized he thought they were just whizz-bomb pills, I started trying it on. Even if he had caught me with whizz, with powder, he would have thought it was more serious, but as soon as he thought they were just speed pills I started being a bit cheeky and giving it all: ‘Come on, give us ’em back. I need them ’cos I work mad hours. Come on, give us ’em back.’

He went, ‘Right, if this works out and it’s not you who’s done the post office, then we’ll see.’

So I got in the back, we went round to this post office that’s just been robbed and they say, ‘No, it wasn’t him.’

So they stuck me back in the car, drove round the corner and stopped on Wilmslow Road, the main drag in Fallowfield, and went ‘Go on, get off.’

‘What about me pills?’

The bizzie got out and went, ‘Come here …’, walked over to a grid and threw all the pills down it.

I just got off then. I was a bit pissed off at losing my pills but at least he hadn’t nicked me. Literally weeks after that, the E exploded and suddenly everyone knew what it was. The police clamped down and everyone started getting mad sentences for
only
having a few E. If that incident had happened to me a few weeks later I would have gone down for ten years, for sure. I was really, really lucky on that score.

Not long after that, Jeff the Chef, who worked as a chef (obviously) but also sold a few pills, got pulled when he was serving up people in the Haçienda queue. There was a big queue as normal, and Jeff the Chef was just off his nut, walking up and down the queue going, ‘Anyone want any E?’ and he got pulled. He had less on him than I had, because what he would do is have a stash over the road and just run across and get some more when he’d sold out. So he only had a few on him, but he got five years. Everyone knew people who were getting locked up with these mad sentences. Seven years for seven E – it was madness.

James Anderton, the chief of Greater Manchester Police, had started to get pressure from the club owners and licensees, because they realized they were losing money because everyone was on the E and hardly anyone was drinking. When the E first came in, a lot of people would just drink water, because you would sweat a lot so you would get dehydrated, and those early Es made you feel like you wanted to be clean and fresh. I still drank, but I would drink large brandies, not beer. That seemed to keep us hydrated. All the clubs had to shut at 2am back then and people were beginning to run little illegal after-hours gaffs, so the club owners were losing loads of dough. Anderton was often in the news, because he was always coming out with ridiculous statements proclaiming God was speaking to him. This is the police chief. God’s Cop.

When the scene began to take off in 1988, the press started getting wind of this new thing called ecstasy and all the parties started getting in the papers. Anderton and the courts really cracked down on it and people were literally getting banged up for longer for having E than for having crack.

The mad thing about it is that when you were right in the middle of the E thing, you knew how ridiculous the reaction to it was, because it calmed down all the mad fuckers. I knew idiots who would go out and fight and stab people, people whose whole night was about going out and kicking off in a bar and having a fight, or going to the match and kicking off. That’s what it was all about for them, but once they started taking the E, that fucking shit stopped. It’s a cliché, but it’s absolutely true.

There was all this bad press about E, but if you were right in the middle of it you could see all the football violence stopping, and this gang going for a drink with that gang, meeting up and talking with no mither. You could see everyone really loved up, and yet at the same time you’re reading in the press about this killer drug being the downfall of society. It was complete bullshit and it just makes you wonder about what other bullshit they are feeding you.

By this time we had our workers all round the Haçienda selling E. We probably had a dozen workers in the club. I would also often pop round to Stuffed Olives, a gay club on South King Street, to sell a bit of E there. Paul Cons, the promoter of the Haçienda, ended up buying that club a few years later and called it South. It’s still open and Clint Boon from the Inspiral Carpets DJs on Saturday nights there.

There was quite a lot of heavy petting in the Haçienda when the E came in. Not necessarily shagging, although that did happen. The E was not like crack, which just turns people into deranged crack-sex motherfuckers. It just made people more lovey and more touchy, so people would be stroking each other and shit. There was a bit of shagging going on, and I got shagged in the corner of the Haçienda, but it wasn’t like a big orgy.