It’s half past five on a Sunday morning and still too early for anybody in our southwest London street to spot us as we get off the night bus and stroll home arm in arm, bedraggled but exhilarated. My wife and I, both in our fifties, are returning from a night dancing to rave and trance music in a hardcore techno club, rekindling a feeling we last had in our twenties.
Since a magical July night in Corsica Studios, southeast London, I’ve found myself rushing home most Saturdays after a day’s work as transport editor in the Sunday Times newsroom to join my wife on our late-night adventures. My colleagues, most of whom are in their twenties and thirties, tease me as they head off for a quiet pint. Friends are similarly bemused. Some are veterans of 1988’s Summer of Love, but the closest they come to revisiting those wild nights of house music is mining their past for dinner party anecdotes.
As a responsible adult I too have measured out my life with coffee spoons, living quietly — or rather living and partly living. Rediscovering raving has changed all that. On the dancefloor of a techno club life comes at you fast. Rave music at full flow is an overwhelming physical and emotional experience and it has transformed my life.
People become set in their ways — it happens — and then something gives them a jolt. In our case several triggers came in swift succession. My wife and I both encountered some of the grimmer aspects of ageing among close family members. A year ago I smashed up the left side of my body in a bike crash. After decades of self-discipline and often grinding work, my wife and I reached the point where our three sons no longer needed our financial support.
If now was not the time to live with a little more verve, then when would it be? Yet still I dithered while my wife went on jaunts around Europe with her female friends and spent evenings dancing with them in London. On one occasion she returned home in her clubbing gear just as I was leaving in my Lycra for early morning cycle training. It was pretty obvious that her life was more exciting than mine. It was time for me to step up my game.
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By any reckoning I was unlikely to set the dancefloor alight. I’ve always lived for music, but even in my twenties would nurse a drink in the shadows rather than let go of my inhibitions. I’m not alone. It cheered me when a friend admitted he was so inept that his bride had refused to let him share the first dance at their wedding — picking her best friend instead. But rave music shows you every move, it teaches you how to dance. If you allow it to wash over you, ego and anxiety are swept away, and nobody knows your name.
Captain Beefheart, the 1960s musical visionary, came to a similar conclusion in his masterpiece Frownland on Trout Mask Replica, with the lyric: “My smile is stuck… I cannot go back to your land of gloom.”
It is a fair bet that a significant proportion of those on the dancefloor have taken MDMA or Ecstasy. Not us, though. As we have found, you can enjoy a night out without drugs; the buzz of the music keeps the adrenaline and endorphins going unaided (it helps to be super-fit). There are rarely any heavy drinkers and, for all the spirit of abandonment, there’s a strict morality.
Techno — or “EDM” (electronic dance music) as my younger friends call it — is impersonal by its nature, yet delicate melodies hang in the space between the beats. There are moments when the dancefloor is suffused with a sense of spiritual cleansing. If this sounds far-fetched, listen to Enrico Sangiuliano’s Cosmic Ratio. The people you see with their bodies gyrating may be working their way through the most intense kaleidoscope of emotions.
Techno traces its roots to some of my old favourites, including Krautrock bands, with tracks such as Neu!’s seminal Hallogallo from 1971, via the spacey, effects-laden feel of the pioneers of reggae dub, such as Lee “Scratch” Perry.
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My wife comes alive on the dancefloor and, with her blonde mane whirling, has an extraordinary ability to connect with people. We began to collect friends and acquaintances as the summer progressed. Once we played Pied Piper to a crew of late-twenty and thirtysomethings who followed us on night buses from one club to a new favourite.
I was approached by young women who wanted advice on whether they should stick with their partners (to the chap with the moustache who was dumped at Phonox in Brixton, sorry, but it was your fault). Most clubbers are quick to work out that we are a long-time married couple and congratulate us for still being so in love. It’s touching, and gives us immunity from further questions. So far we’ve faced no awkwardness about the age gap. Our grown-up sons don’t seem to mind our new hobby: one appeared supremely relaxed to bump into us by chance in a club at 4am with his friends.
Shortly before Christmas we stopped over in Santiago, Chile, on the long-haul flight home after trekking in Patagonia. The sensible thing would have been an early night ahead, but where’s the fun in that?
We headed for Club Ambar in the barrio of Bellavista, a frenetic beatbox of a dancehall. In a side hall we discovered a DJ with a maestro’s command of his beats. We tore ourselves away at 3am. Ridiculous? Of course it is, but indulge us while we rediscover the lightness of being — on the dancefloor.
