Camden (2024) s01e04 Episode Script

1
I think a lot of people
see Camden as their home.
It's just been this place
of such radical acceptance,
and I feel lucky
that I grew up around Camden.
It's really cool.
You can be anyone you wanna be.
The second you walk into Cyberdog,
it's an insane sensory overload.
And coming here as a kid was, like,
overwhelming,
but in the best way possible.
It's this real expression of freedom
and rave culture, club culture, disco,
everything merged together, that I think
is so representative of Camden
and all the tribes that have,
kind of, made a home here.
From the ravers to the punks to the goths,
everyone coming in
and just claiming a little part of it.
Really anything goes.
I've always been
into the future of music.
I was all over it from day one.
Now I have to pinch myself many times
based on what I still do today,
and then to look back on
how everything became.
Camden allowed you freedom
to be whoever you wanted to be
in that moment.
I found something. I found a community.
I found music that just excited me,
and it felt like
it was the music of the future.
It made my world a lot bigger.
It was the reflection of the zeitgeist
that was, for me, life-changing.
It's all about
wanting to belong to something,
and there was this freedom
and this kind of rawness that was like,
"Ooh, I want some of this."
Everyone was welcome.
All you had to do was bring a smile.
Bring your own drink.
Bring your own drugs.
It's just party.
That's the one word, the universal word,
that everybody understands.
So many good names
of records and bands.
Oh, here we go.
I mean, look at that. That's amazing.
Don't put your head on my shoulder ♪
Sink me in a river of tears ♪
It's all about pushing the boundary,
being gender nonconforming.
This was 40 years ago,
and it was happening right here in Camden.
These things were being, you know,
celebrated and accepted,
and he's so unapologetically himself.
- Quiet, please, next door.
- Shut up!
Camden, what a dump!
Join the National Front!
The National Front is a white man's front.
Join the National Front!
You bastards!
The '70s was just
a really nasty, weird decade.
People are getting quite appalled
at the way homosexuality is spreading
in the United Kingdom.
People just said what they wanted to say,
and people weren't shy of calling you
a faggot or a queer or a pansy,
or whatever they-- You know,
there was every name you could think of.
It's an abomination.
It's of the Devil.
I think man ought to go with a woman,
and woman ought to go with a man.
Growing up as the kid in suburbia,
even long before I got famous,
it's like, "George is a poof."
It's like, "That's what he is.
Let's not talk about it.
What do you mean
you want to be a pop star?
What do you mean you want
to work in fashion? Grow up."
You got knocked back by everyone.
But then I kinda knew that
I was interested in exotica,
the bohemian lifestyle.
So I used to get Red Bus Rovers
and go up to Camden.
So, you know, Camden Town
was just where you went to see bands.
Where you went to, you know,
pick up guys if you go to a gay pub.
Then, you know,
go to the market on a Sunday,
you know, just to kind of dress up
and show off.
You know, it was just a way of being seen.
Sometimes you didn't buy anything.
And, at that time, it was all about
what you wore was such an identity.
It was just anything
that sort of had a sense of rebellion,
and you could definitely play around
with your identity.
And it was all Camden's fault,
facilitating the madness.
It was the place where it all happens,
you know? It really was.
I've always loved Camden.
I feel lucky that I grew up around Camden.
It's busy and it's loud,
and there's a lot going on.
In Camden,
anyone can be whoever they wanna be.
I think seeing that so young,
that kind of unapologetic presentation
of who you are,
makes you believe in yourself.
Let me take you back.
When I first was gigging in England,
I was stranded because someone
had stolen my passport and all my money.
Fortunately, I had an amazing girlfriend,
and she took me out
to see her favourite band,
which was called Roxy Music.
It ain't no big thing ♪
To wait for the bell to ring ♪
It ain't no big thing ♪
I'd never heard of them
and they're amazing.
Aggravated
Spare for days ♪
I troll downtown
The red-light place ♪
They were wearing
couture-looking clothing.
I was like,
"Who goes to a show like this?"
And I need to score ♪
After I saw Roxy Music,
I went down to Camden,
which somebody told me was where
all the cool record shops were,
and I looked up Roxy Music albums,
and they had high-fashion models
and Playboy bunnies on the cover.
I was like, "Wait a minute. Wow."
I called my partner.
I said, "Man,
we gotta do the Black version of this."
This all ties back to Camden.
I mean,
had that not been the cool part of town,
had I not saw Roxy Music albums,
started Chic, gone off on this path,
where-- where would my life be?
My '70s and '80s
was all about understanding
and learning the culture of music
and what it meant to other people
who basically dressed for the occasion
and lived for the occasion
at that particular time.
I mean, I was a consummate soulboy.
I would only go to events that would
basically play Black music,
because that connected with me
at the end of the day.
I mean, you can go Camden in the daytime,
as well as go Camden at night-time.
You'd get a lot of punks.
And then you had the,
you know, the mods and rockers.
And then you had the skinheads,
and you had soulboys.
It's like being on planet Mars.
And, as an individual,
you had to kind of, like,
manage through all of these types of music
to know what connects with you.
I suppose there were characters like us
that were a bit more like,
"I don't have to be loyal to
any kind of look or sound." You know?
So there were some people that were just
like, "Fuck that. I'll wear what I want,"
and took the consequences.
What is fashion?
How important
are the clothes that you wear?
Clothes should be fun
and not taken too seriously at all.
You think people
do take clothes too seriously?
- Yeah, I do. Yeah.
- Yes.
You do dress outrageously though.
Why do you dress like that?
Because I want to.
- That's it. You know?
I remember doing a lot of running
at that time.
Running across bridges, running from
people that were gonna kill me,
whether it was Teddy boys
or casuals or skinheads.
Your radar had to be so alert.
People would get on the bus
to punch you.
I think that was the general theme for,
like, us lot.
We were too much for everybody.
Too much for the punks.
Too outrageous for the straights.
And it was just, like, you ended up
being in this weird no man's land.
So, we were out for something different.
Over the past few weeks
the pop music scene and the fashion scene
have been influenced by a new youth cult,
the New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids,
whose devotees claim that their movement
will be as influential as punk
and far more positive.
They're a mixture of students,
fashion designers, musicians
and those with routine jobs
that they escape at night
by dressing up in extravagant costumes.
The architects
of this curious, optimistic movement
now spreading across the country,
are Steve Strange and Rusty Egan.
It wasn't godlike genius
that Steve Strange and I created
something from nothing.
We went looking for
alternative places to go,
because there was nowhere to go
where you could fit in.
They started the new club scene
by running nights at London clubs
like Billy's, Hell, and the Blitz,
from which the Blitz Kids took their name.
Steve hosted,
and I played the music.
The story of that song
is what the movie's about.
So that was the start
of my clubbing deejaying.
One moment.
I heard about the Blitz,
and I moved into Kentish Town,
which is sister neighbourhood of Camden.
There was a, kind of, feeling of safety
when you're with a load of other people.
You know, you were a mob.
New Romantics against everyone,
you know?
The Blitz was
an absolute hit-winner.
I mean, I didn't feel a part of that
really, but I understood it,
because people could
then be themselves, show out.
But it was something which, kind of,
spawned so much in new music.
That's what I respected
more than anything else.
They played their style of music,
but it was electronic, New Romantic sound,
and I really enjoyed that.
The music, at the time, that Rusty was
playing was lots of these weird imports,
but then you could go
into record shops in Camden
and find these characters
that would tell you what you had to hear,
on the recommendation of some mad guy
in Camden that knew everything.
All we gotta do
is put one great record on,
and another great record,
and another great record.
So, when I'd deejay,
people started discovering.
Every week, I found something new,
and not only that,
I brought them to the club.
If punk was all about rebellion,
the New Romantics are all about style.
It was just a real mixture
of these mad, creative people
that all wanted to kind of go
to the same place
and preen.
The Music Machine
in Camden Town.
A converted theatre,
once used for recordings of The Goon Show .
The Music Machine
is the sort of establishment
where the carpet tends
to stick to your shoes,
and the prevailing atmosphere
is a "punk-pourri"
of beer, smoke and disinfectant.
Only a month ago, a 20-year-old youth
was fatally stabbed through the heart.
The Music Machine was a tired,
falling-apart disco concept that was sad.
Sticky floors and, uh, plastic palm trees.
You know, it was like
Carry on that way for me.
Security starts at the front door
with a top-and-toe examination
of prospective patrons.
Cropped heads
and steel-capped shoes are out.
- Get outside, mate. Will you?
- Away you go. 'Way you go.
Getting in the premises was one problem,
but then dealing with who was in there
was another.
I just used to think,
"What's your problem?"
You know, "I look great.
Leave me alone."
"Sleep with me. Buy me a drink.
I don't know. Just--
Why you want to fight with me?"
Can you take your drinks upstairs?
Can you make a move now, please?
The Music Machine
came to us and said,
"Yeah, we wanna, like,
refurbish this place and try a new idea."
And I went, "Oh, well."
"I'm not interested."
And then they came back and said,
"Well, what do you want?"
I said, "I tell you what I want.
I want you to go on holiday to New York."
New York, to me,
was way ahead of English clubbing.
Everything that we dreamed of
was in New York.
It's three in the morning
in Manhattan,
and still at Studio 54,
people crowd the doors hoping to get in.
The rewards for the lucky ones
are a frenetic night of dancing in
a setting like something out of Star Wars .
Now,
Studio 54 was before the Blitz Club,
and they had this massive deejay booth
with, you know,
three decks and cassette machines
and tape machines and lighting engineers.
And the smoke and the strobes
and the music that you've never heard of.
And then you go,
"Something happening here."
Disco, in America, was,
in a strange way,
the purest form of protest music.
We were celebrating women's lib.
We were celebrating gay lib.
We were celebrating Black Power.
So we felt like one unified force,
and we talked about it through our music.
"Studio 54ism"
became a thing all around the world.
Every club started to do
what people were rumoured
to be doing in Studio 54,
and the rumours were not rumours.
It was ridiculously outta control.
This is exactly what you imagine
when you see those iconic pictures of
everybody just dancing and being so free.
All the debaucherous stuff that happened
and the theatrics of music and theatre
and the nightclub and dancing and disco--
Everything just came together
in one place.
It has that euphoria.
You just were enthralled
by the party, hedonistic,
open and protective atmosphere
of Studio 54.
Once you got beyond that velvet rope,
you were safe,
and that was powerful.
Six months later, and he came back.
He said, "We got it.
We know exactly what you wanna do."
The in place in London
at the moment
is a converted music hall
called the Camden Palace.
The man behind the phenomenal success
of the Camden Palace
is Steve Strange of Visage.
All of a sudden,
it's just, like, packed full.
When Steve Strange opens up
Club for Heroes at Camden Palace
- Hi, Haley.
- Hello.
it was a kind of natural follow-on
from what Rusty was doing at the Blitz.
You know, it was like suddenly this
movement is becoming worthy of a big club,
'cause the Camden Palace
wasn't a small club.
Right, so
You know, when you walked in,
it was like a ballroom going in there.
They really turned it into something
very special.
The clothes and the fashion
and the energy and bravado.
It was kind of, like, mind-blowing.
People went outta their way
to get in there. They dressed up.
It was, like,
take some of that New York vibe,
make people feel like
they were really lucky to be in the space,
turn people away if they weren't
looking right, which is kind of horrible.
But then, I suppose, if you were someone
that had been chased out of clubs
and turned away for being a weirdo,
it was suddenly interesting
to be in a space where it was like,
"No, you're too normal."
I don't feel I'm part of
the normal run-of-the-mill rat race.
I just feel superior to everyone,
all the little sheep
that are running around out there.
Steve Strange
brought a kind of glamour to Camden.
Okay, so this one. Visage. "Fade to Grey".
This is like the anthem
for the New Romantics.
What's really cool listening to it now,
you hear all, like,
the drumbeats and the synths.
I think it just really shows that kind of
beginning of house and electronic music
and where it's all kind of stemming from.
One man on a lonely platform ♪
Steve became famous.
Steve had that song "Fade to Grey",
which was amazing and seminal,
and I hated it at the time,
but now I look at that record
and think it's so brilliant
'cause it really still stands up.
It's like, "Oh, I wanna do that."
We fade to grey ♪
Fade to grey ♪
Because we'd had
the worldwide success of Visage,
so I was now really involved
in the record business,
and the music of the Camden Palace
was the same music
they were playing in New York now.
- Who is it?
The Danceteria deejay Mark Kamins
- One moment.
called me, 'cause we had things
like landlines in those days.
He said,
"You have to meet my girlfriend, Madonna.
She's a singer,
and I've done this track with her.
You're gonna love it."
- Okay.
Okay.
The Camden Palace on a Thursday
night was a sell-out no matter who was on.
It could be Bowie. We don't know.
Prince.
You know,
people show up at the Camden Palace.
Madonna didn't know anyone.
She was just there with three dancers,
and I was in the deejay booth.
She came out,
and they just immediately loved her.
I think club culture
was just such a big part of who she is,
and she really just
came out on the scene blazing.
You can imagine this going off
at Camden Palace.
London was now in the throng
of great, talented people,
and nightclubbing and fashion
was all a part of it.
In those days,
London had become caught up in itself,
up its arse.
The suburbs were able to come into London
and have a big night out and spend money.
Which, if you were urban, a Black kid,
you know, I never had a job.
Most of the people I knew never had a job.
From my perspective, as a inner-city,
Black, working-class kid,
as far as clubs went, apartheid was rife.
A lot of London clubs
wouldn't admit Black kids, Asian kids.
That kind of racism was there.
And I thought, you know,
that's completely wrong.
And the West End weren't having us
as Black deejays
because they thought
we'd bring a Black crowd there.
You know, "You play our music.
You want the Black without the Blackness."
And that got me thinking, you know,
I need to do something
where all my friends,
you know, from disparate racial groups
or sexuality groups, can come.
Camden became the centre of that.
Goods Yard, where all the old steam trains
used to be kept,
it was virtually derelict for years.
One day,
I thought I'd come down and investigate,
and I was petrified
'cause I know those sort of places.
Even though the gate's open,
suddenly there could be attack dogs,
you know, from out of the blue.
And I wandered down, wandered in,
had a look around.
I thought, "Wow. This is incredible."
My vision was completely set out.
I knew exactly what I needed to do
and had to do.
I'd love to do a party here.
And I used to give the postcode,
"just east of the west side".
Konk! ♪
If you could suss that out
you were there.
Konk! ♪
Everyone was welcome.
All you had to do was bring a smile.
It's just party.
That's the one word, the universal word,
that everybody understands.
We attracted over 2,000 people, you know,
and these parties would go on every
weekend through the whole of that summer.
If you really want free, you know,
liberating party, we're your people.
It was a fantastic time
to be around such great, creative people,
you know, who treated you
and saw you as an equal.
Playing in that environment
gave me the licence and the courage
to play whatever I liked.
Fantastic nights
listening to Norman Jay play,
and the music he played was just exactly
what I wanted to listen to and hear.
Um, and he is still primarily
a funk and soul guy,
but he used to dip his toe in the water
with house music.
I love my soul.
I love my jazz and my funk,
but I was always open to new things.
We were playing dubs.
Dubs of house music that no one
in the country had got or even heard,
which I thought was really exciting.
It was like a revolution.
I went to America to look at the latest
sound to make an impact on the charts
which has its origins
in Chicago's Black gay scene
and has come to be known as house music.
Jack, jack, jack ♪
Chicago house
happens in the middle of the AIDS crisis.
It is gay. It is trans.
It is all of these things,
but it's also homophobes.
It's extremely religious people.
It's dudes on the down-low.
It happens in a period
where people would wait outside the clubs
to try to gay-bash people.
Right from the beginning,
Chicago and London were connected.
You saw Chicago deejays coming to play
in the UK immediately,
before they went anywhere.
When we were starting
to get into Chicago jackin' house,
for me, it was the foundations of
everything to be able to play this music.
It was in the same warehouse,
but you would see the crossover
of what was happening,
and all the people that was basically
into the funk and groove
then started to kinda crossover into
the culture of electronic dance music.
I was all over it from day one.
We were really just getting started.
We are the masters of the hybrid.
We experiment.
Nothing's too sacred for us.
We will play around.
We'll meddle with anything.
We were real trailblazers.
It was very exciting
for me discovering house music.
I first heard it
in actual warehouses in Camden.
And suddenly there'd be
this, sort of, jacking, weird track
with TB-303 noises in it
and drum machines
that come out of Chicago.
You think, "What is this sound?"
It felt like it had landed
from another planet.
When I first started going to raves,
I would say at least 20% of the thrill
was not getting beat up in high school.
Every form of dress, every political idea,
it's all here at once.
I was completely smitten.
And within a year,
I had dropped out of school.
I was working at raves.
I was selling mixtapes.
I was helping throw parties.
It felt like if you did really well,
then you could go to London.
And I did.
I still live
in North London. I still go to Camden.
I walk around these streets,
and they're just soaked with the memories.
Up there was a really cool little studio.
They gave me free studio time,
and that's where I made my first record.
And from that became Faithless,
and the rest is history.
I think we really flew the flag
for dance music.
That was such an underground scene
that you couldn't find beyond pirate radio
and these very underground
warehouse parties.
It is amazing
how it's become a global force.
I definitely feel pride.
That's my scene.
I was there when it was born.
I saw what it did to people,
how it changed people's lives.
From these, I would say,
fairly humble beginnings.
I can't get no sleep ♪
Good morning, London.
You're listening to Studio FM on 92.7,
and I'm waking you up with a bit of house.
We know it came from Chicago
about two-and-a-half years ago.
We know the music is good
and that we all enjoy it.
London is pumping at the moment.
Where do you think you're going to?
Mystery Tour.
- We don't know.
- That's why it's a mystery.
That's the mystery about it.
Most of the time,
my parents don't really know
that I'm going to
an illegal warehouse party.
I just say it's a warehouse party,
and they don't ask me
whether it's illegal or not,
'cause they don't really know
about those sort of things.
Okay then. See you later. Bye.
Dance music wasn't overground.
I felt I was there
for the birth of a movement.
I just understood this music,
and I was just hungry for it.
I can't describe it in any other way.
I was just-- Couldn't get enough of it.
And so I went on a sort of pilgrimage,
a personal pilgrimage, to find it.
Every weekend,
I used to go to Camden Market.
Camden was one of the first places
that sort of seemed plugged in to,
you know, what people were doing.
So people would congregate at the shops
because it was like a,
sort of, social centre.
It's where you'd find out
about these underground parties.
We'd have all the flyers for them.
It was like this secret cult of people
who knew about this magical thing.
There were record stores within
Camden Market also selling this new music
that I just couldn't get enough of.
I sold more tapes in Camden Market
than anything else.
And everyone was like, you know, thinking,
"What are you gonna wear tonight?
What are you gonna listen to?"
It was really exciting.
Camden was one
of the only places in London
you could buy rave clothing.
This baggy sensibility, the sense
that you weren't going to a club to pull,
so you get lots of people rocking up
in baggy trousers,
but with a kaftan
and with some Converse baseball boots.
These clothes are really cheap.
They're like throwaway clothes.
I go out raving
and then throw it away the next day.
Because the style was so specific,
you would spot them walking
down the street, and you would know.
You would clock them,
and you'd think, "They know.
They found this thing, this acid house."
I mean, it's so crazy to think
that this massive place
all started from a small stall
in Camden Market back in the '90s.
Nothing makes more sense than Cyberdog
in the middle of Camden Market.
Raves got bigger and bigger,
and the growth
of the use of Ecstasy in clubs
hit this moment, this musical moment.
You were absolutely inside the music,
inside this experience
that just rolled and rolled and rolled.
It was about living your moment
based on how hard you worked in the week.
When Friday and Saturday came,
you're going out.
You had ravers in dungarees,
and they'd be, like, you know, wide-eyed,
and, like-- They want that drive.
The whole rave scene, really,
that I kind of became more known for,
countrywide and then worldwide,
was incredible.
There's definitely a mark
of British history and electronic music
and style and culture
of which no other country,
basically, can come anywhere near
close to understanding.
People were really loving each other.
They really felt
this deep empathy with each other.
Dance music is utopian.
It is about freedom and acceptance.
To have people
that you never met embracing you
Black, white, gay, straight,
all these different people that were not
meant to care about each other,
suddenly being tolerant and accepting.
It was a really powerful thing.
I mean, it really was an ecstatic
and communal experience,
so, of course,
why wouldn't you hunger for that
in the difficulties of Thatcher's Britain?
There's no such thing as society.
Well, yeah, come to a rave,
and suddenly there is a society.
There is kinship.
There's love and acceptance.
I found a community.
I found music that just excited me,
and it felt like
it was the music of the future.
People talk about joy
and togetherness and whatever.
Also it's about risk.
In any scene, there's a moment
where the inmates take over the asylum,
and that's the great part.
And usually it involves
running from police and law-breaking
and all of the fun things.
- I'm coming there.
For ravers across the country,
this was the fifth Summer of Love.
For the rest of us, it was a summer
of increasing media controversy
over illegal parties.
Castlemorton was the climax,
where the police failed to stop 20,000
people gathering for a five-day festival.
Oi, I want to ask you a question!
I want to ask you a question
in front of everybody.
You're meant to give a warning
before you use CS gas.
Why didn't you give a warning?
I want my fucking geezer back!
I want him back!
I want him fucking back!
What did you start it tonight for?
Warehouse parties are now
regularly being raided by the police.
- We're all enjoying ourselves.
- Yeah, we can see that.
Police say one major venue
has been in this disused warehouse
in North London.
Earlier today, they closed it down
despite claims from organisers
that they actively discourage drug-taking.
Some newspapers
have called acid house music
a sinister and evil cult
which lures young people into drug-taking.
The message is certainly getting across.
It must affect the brain
in some way or another.
Unless it's just the music that does it.
All them lights flashing
don't do you any good either.
The Sun printed
this massive piece that said,
"Ravers bite the heads off pigeons."
All right, it couldn't be further
from what actually happened.
Probably out of control,
not behaving like normal.
That also brought home
to me how little the Establishment knew.
It was being misrepresented.
They didn't like people feeling unified.
If we all act as one,
you could overthrow the government.
So they're seeing
the power of the revolution.
It doesn't matter
if you are Black, white, Jew or Gentile,
you can go to one of these parties,
and you can enjoy yourself.
There's something with the music
that just makes you wanna do
what you want to do.
You know,
you don't have to conform to anything.
There's no way of dancing.
There's no formal dress or anything.
You just go,
and you're happy for eight, nine hours.
From the age of about 13,
I was making my own little songs
and sequencing them.
And I started making my own tunes.
I'd just bought an Atari computer
off a guy I'd met browsing through records
in a stall in Camden Market.
And I had this in my mum's bedroom
with one keyboard that I had,
and I started making my own tunes.
This one. Faithless.
Reverence.
I love this song.
This is that iconic riff.
The stadium house moment.
It doesn't get
much more euphoric than that.
If you go back to "Insomnia",
it was just a moment where it's like,
"Oh, this is fucking interesting.
What the fuck is this?"
It's simplicity,
but it's the space in that record
that makes it go through the stratosphere.
And, of course, Maxi,
what he brought to it.
He was a Buddhist, Maxi,
so, you know, he brought that kind of
real spiritual thinking to the music.
I only smoke weed when I need to ♪
And I need to get some rest
Yo, where's the cess? ♪
I confess
I burned a hole in the mattress ♪
Yes, yes, yes, yes
It was me ♪
"Insomnia" started
to gather traction in the clubs.
They started playing it on Radio 1.
They got rid of all the old guard.
It was actually Pete Tong, he said,
"You've got to release this record.
You've got to put it out."
And it went to number three in the charts.
When the light above my head went bam! ♪
And our radio plugger said,
"Please do a gig to let the world know
you've got an album out.
We'll get the press along."
And the first gig was
at the Jazz Cafe in Camden.
This iconic venue
that I'd visited loads growing up.
The gig itself became a real buzz.
I can't get no sleep ♪
When we saw the reaction of people
in a live scenario, drinking it up,
yeah, it definitely set off
a chain reaction of excitement.
Come on!
Now dance music,
it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
I can't get no sleep ♪
There was some sort of
confluence that Maxi and I came together,
and he actively tapped into that feeling
that I'd had in that moment
where we come one.
At a gig. At a rave.
To commemorate our very first gig,
we were offered quite a lovely accolade,
which was a plaque outside the Jazz Cafe.
It was really lovely walking past
and seeing it up there every day thinking,
"God. We did that?"
And if, you know, we hadn't had
that chance to start at the Jazz Cafe,
all of those subsequent years of success
would never have happened.
Camden put me
into London music production world.
It changed the course of my life forever.
You know,
Dua really loves real dance music.
I was contacted by her team,
and they said,
"This album's coming out,
but we have this crazy idea.
We wanna make a club version of it.
And will you do it?"
I knew I wanted
to completely imagine the album
as if it lived in a club
that I wanted to be in.
It was such a beautiful crash course
in how to make a record.
I did not think at all
about what the reception would be.
It was this insane
fever dream of an album.
London is a place
that you can make a life in dance music.
If you're from London,
you innately know
that Camden is a musical place.
It's a melting pot of cultures
and club spaces.
Can everyone
please give it up for Eliza Rose?
Growing up,
we'd go to Camden quite a lot.
Some of the first songs I ever wrote
would've been in the Roundhouse.
They had this scheme,
and you could go and use the spaces
for really, really cheap.
Who knows?
Maybe I wouldn't have got into music
if the Roundhouse didn't exist.
- Hello.
- How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
She's the baddest of them all ♪
The baddest of them all ♪
B.O.T.A. started off
from the underground for sure.
I never, in any way, shape or form,
had intention of it going to the charts,
let alone going to number one.
Do you wanna dance, baby? ♪
I know you see me
Looking at you on the daily ♪
My perception, growing up,
of electronic music was definitely
that electronic music was, like,
for white people.
And so,
as a working-class woman of colour,
I didn't see that as something
that I necessarily connected to.
And, like, it's so amazing to see that,
actually, warehouse raving started
with this funk and soul and boogie
and disco by Norman Jay
in these warehouses around London,
and that was actually the blueprint
for then what was to come.
I didn't know my own history.
This music coming from Black heritage.
Then I kinda was like,
"I am going to reclaim it back."
We were real trailblazers.
We were bringing the root of our music,
the history of our music,
like you've never heard it.
Getting rid of the gatekeepers.
We were sweeping 'em aside.
The thing about dance music
was it created a space
to be a part of something.
It's all about wanting
to belong to something.
And I think, in a way, all of those people
that came from that time,
we're so lucky, in a way,
that we experienced things
in the way that we did.
And music was
the kind of full-on narrative
of everything that was happening.
Without music, there's no Camden.
The music is
the thing that prevails.
It comes from all of
what we went through to begin with.
The idea of me being a deejay is
to still spread the love of music.
Camden as a area has spawned
so many spaces of freedom.
And the dance floor is
where you can find that freedom.
This music speaks to our souls.
It makes us want to move.
It makes us wanna dance.
The lights move
the right way, and the song comes on,
and this thing happens.
And it is real, and it is magic.
Dance is incredibly important,
because it is the antimatter
to everything that
is wrong.
It is.
The more spaces
that we are able to create,
the more environments where people
feel like this is a safe space,
and a place where they can come together
and celebrate who they are.
You know,
we need so much of that in the world.
And Camden has that power.
It's that sense of community
that's incredibly important,
'cause it just shows
that you can be who you wanna be,
and you should be proud of that.
This is the world I dream of,
where everybody is cool.