Memories Of The Blitz. ( The nightclub ). Part One.

I wish I could remember the month. But I can’t. All I can remember was that it was sometime in 1979. I was twenty one.

My girlfriend told me that there was a club close to where she worked in Holborn, called The Blitz. She said that a girl in her office went there and it was bizarre.

Three years earlier, club music was all about disco. The two clubs that set the standard were The Lacey Lady in Ilford and the Goldmine on Canvey Island. The resident DJ at these clubs was Chris Hill. To us eighteen year olds he was a legend. He played great music, not mainstream, but not just soul and funk either. Clothes were just as important as the music. It didn’t matter what you wore as long as you looked “cool”.

Sometimes the clothes dictated the music.

One of the fashions for us in 1976 was to dress as though you were from the 1940’s. Boys dressed as American G.I’s and the girls looked like Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”. Chris decided to work this new fashion into his music. He started to play swing. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and the Andrew Sisters. We loved it. Not only did we look like we were from the forties, we now danced to the music as well. It lasted in the clubs for six months or so and then gradually faded away. Punk came along and took over. Not the music, but the clothes.

A few of us started to go down the Kings Road on a Saturday and visit the Punk shops that had suddenly sprung up. I wore blue and white striped “painters” trousers, plastic sandals, plastic cap sleeve T shirt and a large feather ear ring. But I still danced to soul, funk and jazz.

But that fashion came and went as well and suddenly by 1979 nothing seemed to shock people anymore. So when my girlfriend mentioned a club where you HAD to be different to get in, I couldn’t wait to get dressed up and get in there. I suppose I wanted to be eighteen again.

I still adored the fashion of the 1940’s. I had a poster of Clarke Gable on my wall at home, not because I was gay, but because he just looked so immaculate and cool. He wore an enormous raglan sleeve tweed overcoat. Underneath he had on a dark suit with a one inch lapel, white shirt, thin tie and a pair of brown and white spats on his feet.

I managed to get the same style overcoat and a similar pair of spats at a charity shop near Covent Garden. I already had the same suit, shirt and tie at home, so was good to go. My girlfriend didn’t let me down. When I met her at her parent house she looked like something out of a fifties Doris Day film.

We got the train to Holborn and got stared at by just about everyone on the tube. Great, it was the reaction we’d both hoped for. We got to The Blitz around nine thirty. There was a queue. I recognised one of the guys on the door. I didn’t know his real name. We all called him “toothbrush”. He was a regular at The Lacey and the Goldmine. He was a real dude. He went through a period in 1976 where he always wore an old school blazer. In the top outside pocket he had a toothbrush. It was blue and the bristles stuck out over the top. I stood next to him once in the toilets. While we were having a piss, I asked him.

“Why the toothbrush?”

His answer was as good as it gets.

“Cos I never know where I’m gonna wake up in the morning.”

He didn’t laugh. He was serious.

Back in the queue, I caught his eye. He called me and my girlfriend over.

“Looking good mate, liking the style. Welcome to The Blitz.”

We walked in. Wow!