Acid flashback: Tabloid coverage of the Summer of Love was the original fake news

We're celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Summer Of Love. In this classic opinion piece from October 1989, Kirk Field took the tabloid press to task

To pick up the morning papers and read about one’s social life, garishly splashed across the tabloid sheets, is usually the reserve of politicians and pop-stars. No more. Thanks to the ever headline-hungry ‘gutter’ press (‘we always make a crisis out of a drama’), the urban young can now pop out on a Monday morning, pretty sure that if they were at a major rave at the weekend, they’ll be able to read every gory detail as seen by the Sun reporter.

The differences between a Sun reporter and a normal person are as follows:

1. Sun reporters see double; if there were around 5,000 people there, they’ll print 11,000, and so on…

2. Sun reporters can’t tell what age you are. Now if you’re in your mid-twenties this can be quite flattering, but when you’re 17 or 18 it’s not cool being taken for a 12 year old…

3. Sun reporters can’t count money. If a ticket costs £15, they’ll pay £25.

So after reading the recent Sun article about the Biology rave in Buckinghamshire (and trying to spot yourself in the ‘shocking’ photo of ‘far out’ youngsters), you tend to be a little confused. Surely this is not the same trouble-free festival you spent this weekend enjoying? Let’s look at the facts. (for any Sun reporters reading, ‘a fact’ is ‘the quality of having actual existence in the real world’).

Warehouse parties of any description can hardly be described as a cheap night out. As their popularity has soared and organisation increased to embrace the hire of state-of-the-art sound and lighting, refreshment, security and insurance cover, ticket costs have soared from 500 people paying £5 to 5,000 handing over £15. Now I don’t know about you, but when I was 12 my pocket money just about covered the cost of a Roy Of The Rovers comic and the latest Sweet single (oops, showing my age!) Once in a while I’d do some extra washing up in order to go to the pictures. Even allowing for inflation, £15–£20 is an unrealistic price for an unwaged teenager to fork out.

Furthermore, let’s consider the locations of these ‘evil acid parties’. As the Sun never tires of pointing out, convoys of cars roar through sleepy country lanes, steaming endlessly out of London in their droves. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that to drive a car in the UK, a person must be 17 years of age at least. Or is there something more sinister afoot here?

‘MOTORWAY TERROR TODDLERS JOY-RIDING TO EVIL ACID BASH!’

I think I’ve made my point. I mean, it’s embarrassing that when my ex-girlfriend asks what I’ve been up to and I tell her she raises her eyebrows and says, ‘Aren’t you a little old for that kind of thing – I thought only kids went to those parties?’. When I told her that at Sunrise I was talking to a stockbroker, a professional footballer from Ruislip and a French pop star who had flown over from Paris just to attend the party she was a little surprised.

Of course, the reasoning behind the tabloid press coverage is not a result of bad arithmetic or blindness on the part of the reporters. The clue comes in the editorial column. Not for the first time, the leader questions the low-key approach of the police! It was so low that it did not appear to exist at all.

By painting grey as black, and exaggerating the activities of some of those in attendance at Sunrise, a horrifying canvas emerges of innocent youth drifting helplessly and hopelessly into some kind of debauched Bacchanalian orgy. The ‘corruption of youth’ has long been an established theme in literature, from the lurid writings of the Marquis de Sade, through The Catcher In The Rye to bestselling paperbacks depicting the extreme cases of mass murderers like Dennis Nilsen and the ‘Moors Murderers’.

Just like the smiling girl on Page Three, the thought of his pure young daughter dancing the night away, surrounded by drug pushers in a field in the middle of nowhere, is guaranteed to raise your father’s blood pressure – which in turn will hopefully raise the circulation figures…

It is ironic that the same issue devoted half of its precious front page promoting its new bingo game, with talk of £31,000 cash fortune, just waiting to be won… but wait a minute, isn’t this the same moral guardian that is often seen crusading against the evils of the nation’s youth getting hooked and gambling their money in amusement arcades? I looked at the small print and saw no age restrictions to enter the lotto bingo game. This is the same publication that gleefully exposes obscenity cases while at the same time delights in publishing pictures of topless or naked girls.

Where is the concern of the Sun when it comes to these anomalies? Quite simple: secondary to the primary concern of ‘fortress’ Wapping-selling newspapers. There is no mileage, no controversy in people dancing, which is, let’s face it, what the majority of ravers go out for.

In conclusion: what the national press are failing to recognise is a revolution. There now exists an entire dance subculture of a proportion never seen before on this sceptered isle. Radio stations, clubs, countless one-nighters, festivals and major chart dominance of records that have been ignored by that old grandpa Radio 1,all testify to this new attitude of ‘dancethink’ – an attitude that for some includes the use of illegal substances that have been around long before the Roland TR909 or 12” single ever hit the shops.

Just as football is blamed for the violence between opposing fans, if we do not make a firm, coherent stand against the untruths that have been outlined in this article, dance music will never shake off its shady association with drug use/abuse and will be held responsible for the irresponsibilities of a minority of extreme cases.

Both football and pop music provide valuable releases for young people growing up in a complex, confused society. Don’t blame the symptoms – cure the disease.

Until then, rave on… and don’t believe the hype.

Kirk Field is a former Mixmag gunslinger, now Ibiza promoter and Threadonist.com mischief-maker

George Morton is a freelance illustrator, check his website