DJ memoirs are telling a different version of dance music history

For a generation that spent more time learning to mix than learning the correct use of a past participle, it’s been a surprise that a whole bunch of old skool DJs have become more interested in dropping books rather than beats. With Moby’s forthcoming memoir being advertised on billboard posters around London with the kind of fanfare normally reserved for a rare new album from the bald one, and every other head from the 90s – from Laurent Garnier to Billy ‘Daniel’ Bunter – jumping in with their own hardback recollections of scandals and white labels, it’s clear that the DJ tell-all is big business.

Perhaps the main reason that DJ autobiographies are doing so well is because they’re finally offering an alternative side of the rave story, and it’s not always pretty. We’ve heard the starry-eyed, magical narrative time and again. You know the one: a bunch of gay black and Latin Americans start dancing to Kraftwerk and messing around with drum machines. Their music gradually makes it to the sunny climes of Ibiza, where it’s discovered by a generation of holidaying Brits off their nut on grade A dingers. These Brits, a chirpy bunch of chancers straight out of Carry On Raving, bring pills and house back to London, and open clubs like Shoom. Hooligans hug, black and white unite, and English clubs become the pride of a nation and the envy of the world. It’s a compelling, simple story that’s been told countless times – and as with most stories it’s far neater than history itself.

Take Laurent Garnier’s exhaustive memoir Electrochoc. Already a huge seller in France, it was finally updated and translated into English last year and it pulls apart ‘accepted’ dance history left, right and centre. As Garnier tells it, the rave scenes in the North of England happened far earlier and with far greater intensity than any of the much discussed London ‘acid house’ explosion. He notes that the first raves in the UK bumping the futuristic machine music from Chicago and Detroit weren’t the much hyped parties put on by Tong, Rampling and Oakenfold (which, to be fair, Garnier rates), but Mike Pickering’s mid 80s ‘Nude’ night at the Hacienda – a night almost entirely populated by a much less media-friendly crowd of Mancunian Anglo Jamaicans.

Once he’s done with setting this record straight, Garnier then goes on to detail the pirate tactics of both the police and the promoters in the 90s rave scene, from the police’s ‘Pay Party Unit’ making fake flyers designed to lure ravers to non-existent parties in the middle of nowhere, where coppers would shout at them through megaphones, to rival promoters kidnapping each other, brandishing guns, and extorting funds. Following this he devotes some time railing against the agents who rushed into the scene and leeched all the money they could during the late 90s rise of the ‘superstar’ DJ. For a scene supposedly built on love, the book is shot through with greed, violence, and darkness.

Moby’s book has similar insights that go against any sort of cohesive ‘one big happy rave family’ nonsense. Moby being Moby, they mostly centre around his own crippling self-obsession, and it’s pretty odd to read his tales of playing his exuberant hit 'Go' on Top Of The Pops; while the footage shows the New York producer bouncing behind his keyboards, a ball of energy and enthusiasm, the way he tells it, he left stage and slumped in a post-show shower; a miserable ball of anxiety and loneliness. This story of manic highs and crashing lows is repeated throughout the book, and if anything it offers a fairly accurate manual on why the life of a superstar DJ is crap – Moby is constantly alone in a scene where there are thousands, he’s constantly battling booze and drug problems, and for a fair portion of the book, he hates his girlfriend, hates his life, and has a sneaking suspicion he hates his music. We Are Your Friends it ain’t.

But lest this sound like DJs’ books are just the moan-oirs of grumpy sods who spent the last of their serotonin some 20 years back, every single one of ‘em comes with a fair whack of hi-jinx, from Moby’s tales of getting hammered and pinching an irate Keith ‘Prodigy’ Flint’s girlfriend (possibly not a man you’d want to piss off), to Garnier’s stories of driving across continents between gigs, his car loaded up with any nutters he picked up on the way. Some of the craziest tales of excess can be found in Billy Bunter’s book, The Love Dove Generation. Bunter tells the well-worn story of E and rave uniting all walks of life, but from his vantage point as something of a wrong ‘un himself, he also points out that while the inside of Labyrinth, the legendary club he was resident at from teenage years, was what we’d now call a welcoming venue, it was only so because there were guys on the door willing to break the legs of any of the local gangsters trying to rinse the scene. At one point Bunter takes a serious beating to the back of his head, and it seems the love is in very short supply. Perhaps it’s this beating that contributed to his recollection of one of the books weirder moments – the time Bunter and his old man are abducted by aliens as they drive to a rave in Milton Keynes.

Uniquely, Bunter’s book also has passages written by his wife and long standing business partner Sonya, and here the curtain is pulled back revealing the realities behind rave’s fantasies. Sonya writes about having to worry about the kids, the finances, and the state of their marriage while Bunter disappears up his arse in an early noughties coke haze. It’s a cold shot of truth amongst all the freewheeling happy hardcore nuttiness, and gives the book a surprising tenderness – it turns out that these people who spend their weekends worshipped by thousands are just as frail, stupid, fallible and excellent as the rest of us. They’ve just got better tunes.

Ian McQuaid is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow him on Twitter

Alex Jenkins is a freelance illustrator and regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow him on Instagram