Ahead of his Pride set, Hacienda DJ Graeme Park talks Selectadisc, the evolution of clubbing culture and being a DJ in the 90s

From starting out as a teenager working in a Notts record shop to DJing around the world and playing to 8000 alongside a classical orchestra, Graeme Park is one of the original founders of the UK’s clubbing and rave scene. We caught up with him ahead of two new shows in the city at Nottingham Pride and Hacienda Live at Wollaton Hall…

You first moved to Nottingham in the early 80s. What brought you here?
My parents moved our family from Scotland to Lincolnshire when I was fifteen or sixteen. My dad worked for Next and drove all around the Midlands for work, so I'd jump in with him and visit Nottingham. I’d worked in a record shop in Scotland as a Saturday job and I soon discovered Selectadisc. A few years later my family moved back up to Scotland, but by that time I'd decided I wanted to stay in the midlands, so I moved to Nottingham.

When did you start working at Selectadisc?
It was the early 80s and I was 18 or 19. It just happened one day when I was in the shop and they were short-staffed. They asked if I could help out. Very quickly I was running the singles and secondhand department in the Bridlesmith Gate branch. I was also playing saxophone in a few local bands and we did quite a few gigs in Nottingham, so to me it was to me the best job in the world.

Tell us about some of the characters you worked with at that brilliant record shop?
Originally, when I first started, the singles and secondhand department was run by a guy called Melvin, but he left not long after I joined which was how I got promoted so quickly. There was Jeff who was the manager of the Bridlesmith Gate branch. He was great, I always thought he had really cool glasses and I was very envious of his thick black jet head of hair. There was Jim Cooke who was manager of the Market Street branch and was also involved in the London branch. There was a lad called Basil who worked at the Market Street branch and, like me, did a bit of DJing at the Garage. It was such a great environment to work in. Unlike HMV or Our Price, we stocked loads of rare and hard to find stuff. Working in the second hand department was particularly great for me as within eighteen months I'd built up this amazing record collection off the back of it.

In 1983 you cut your teeth as a DJ, playing opening night at The Garage nightclub.
Yes, Brian Selby who owned Selectadisc and was a great man, bought an old reggae club and rebranded it. His office was on the same floor as our bit of Selectadisc and he liked the music I played in the shop. I didn’t really want to DJ at first, but I also didn’t want to say no to him. After my first gig at the Garage I got paid £25 and it was all mine. Soon after I left behind the bands to give it a proper go. I quickly realised how much easier it was to be a DJ, you didn’t need to hire a van to cart all your gear around, you didn’t need to soundcheck and you didn’t need to pay the drummer's girlfriend to sell the merch.

In 1988 you began a ten year stint as a DJ at Manchester’s famous Hacienda club. How did that begin…
Firstly I was a big Factory Records fan. I still probably own everything they released in every format because I was working in a record shop and could get my hands on them. I met Mike Pickering (Hacienda DJ and later founder of M People) at an ID Magazine photoshoot in London. They were running an article about this new breed of underground DJs. We hit it off straight away as we were the only non-southerners who were involved in the photoshoot. We shared a taxi to the train station and exchanged numbers, but agreed to keep in touch.

Everything was so London-centric back then just because that’s where all the press were based. Certain DJs from the south later claimed to have been to Ibiza and discovered house music, conveniently ignoring that it was already widespread in the midlands and the north, as well as in parts of Scotland. So we agreed to put on a night at the Hacienda called the ‘Northern House Review’ and invited everyone up.

Did you move to Manchester at that time?
No, funnily enough I didn’t move to Manchester until a week after the Hacienda closed. I used to take the drive up every Friday from Nottingham through Chesterfield and the peak district. I still like to take that drive when I can for old times sake. When I left Nottingham I moved to London and I'd usually get the train or fly every weekend. Although I was also still sometimes DJing at the Garage, the Leadmill in Sheffield and the Fan Club in Leicester, so if I played those on a Saturday I'd take a slow drive there or back with stopovers.

By the mid to late 90s you had Ministry of Sound, Cream, Gatecrasher and Renaissance. Loads of great club nights everywhere and I was turning down lots of work, so I went monthly at the Hacienda. I wasn’t even there the night the Hacienda closed, because I was in Australia. I finally moved there as I'd agreed to host a radio show on weekday afternoons for Kiss FM, who were based there.

What was it like hanging out with Tony Wilson, New Order and the Happy Mondays etc in those days?
Tony Wilson was an absolutely amazing person, who just inspired everyone. He inspired you without telling you what to do, he let you choose the music and empowered you to get on with it. Everything gravitated around him and Rob Gretton, who was New Order's manager. The Hacienda was basically their baby, which New Order funded without even realising. If you read Peter Hook’s book How Not To Run A Club, that pretty much sums it up.

Peter Hook now owns the name and the brand of Hacienda and I worked very closely with him on Hacienda Classical. Bernard Sumner and the others were there quite a bit, but they weren’t as enthusiastic probably because it cost them loads of money, as the club just lost money. Loads of bands like The Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and the Stone Roses were all regulars. I think if you listen to their music you can tell as you can hear the rhythms of the house and techno coming through in their songs. If you talk to the Gallagher brothers they talk fondly about nights at the Hacienda. Likewise with Shaun [Ryder] and Bez, although perhaps they might not remember as much as they were so wasted. Even Mick Hucknall from Simply Red used to pop his head in. It was a very creative time and people were coming from all over the country and feeding off each other.

Did you, did you have any dealings with Nottingham’s infamous DIY Soundsystem crew?

I went to some of their parties. The Garage finished at two o'clock and you always wanted to find the afterparty. I didn’t go to DJ, I went just to listen, hang out, take it all in and indulge myself. I was aware of what they were doing, but I never really got to know them as they started up at around the same time as I left Nottingham and I was DJing around four or five different cities every week. I may have played at the odd illegal warehouse party in Manchester or the midlands though.

In 2002, you were a consultant on the film 24 Hour Party People - tell us a bit about that film.
If you watch any film, whether it's a big Hollywood blockbuster or an independent film, they never get the club scenes right. For example the 1998 film 54 (about Studio 54) is a great film, but those club scenes look rubbish. However when Michael Winterbottom decided he wanted to make a film about Factory Records he took on board how important it was.

Ironically the Hacienda got demolished not long before filming started. Channel 4 invited Tony Wilson, Peter Hook and I to watch the interior being demolished. I can still remember a JCB clawing down the proscenium arch above the stage. It was so sad, I wish I'd never gone.

However, the architect Ben Kelly, had the original plans. So they found an abandoned warehouse in the Northern Quarter of Manchester and very faithfully rebuilt it. It was freaky how real it seemed. The lighting was the same, the smoke was the same and the DJ box was the same. The attention to detail was really incredible. Once the punters (extras) came in it really was like it used to be. The only difference is that we’d get someone popping into the DJ box telling us to stop the music, so they could do a scene.

When we watched the final film we loved it. People I know were surprised by how accurate and real it seemed to what we’d lived through. Steve Coogan was brilliant, although he was like an exaggerated version of the real thing. I’m in there somewhere, but if you blink you’ll miss me. For some reason Dave Haslam got all the screen time as the DJ in the film.

So you’re now in your fifth decade of DJing in clubs. How have you seen the experience change over the years?
Things go in waves don’t they? When I first started clubbing was so underground that you had to be really invested in it to know about it. Then in the late 80s clubs like the Garage and the Hacienda came along, as well as ecstasy, and the underground started to become more mainstream. Then there was a steady rise through the 90s where superstar DJs became a thing. That idea still does my head in, because when I started it was all about the music you played, but with Ministry of Sound and Gatecrasher, etc, everything just exploded.

In the late 90s the scene started to fragment and scenes like jungle, drum and bass and happy hardcore, which is an oxymoron if you ask me, started to appear and take bits of it back underground. By millennium eve you’d reached peak raving culture. I did about six gigs that evening and they were all disappointing. Things then bubbled along in the 00s, but in 2008 you had the big financial crash. That really messed everyone up. Clubs closed, promoters went out of business. We were all in our forties and started to wonder if we needed to get other jobs. The press weren’t writing about it anymore and people thought we’d retired. We hadn’t, but we were just playing to smaller crowds. Then social media came along and it started to rise again. I was quite an early adopter and we came up with the idea of the Hacienda Classical.

Tell us about Hacienda Classical. It’s something of a return to your days of being in a band, right? Minus the saxophone…
Yes, although thankfully it’s much better as we don’t have to cart our own gear around and set it all up. The idea came up because people wanted Hacienda nights, but were always asking us to just play the same tunes and we were getting sick of it. So if we had to play them we wanted to do them in a different way. So we got a live orchestra to work with us. Now, when we play at The Warehouse Project in Manchester, You've got 8,000 people there and 80% of them weren’t even born when the Hacienda closed.

You’ve got a couple of gigs coming up in Nottingham, firstly Nottingham Pride. What does Pride mean to you?
The club scene in the late 80s brought everybody together and it just didn’t matter if you were gay, straight, bi or whatever. I think British clubbing culture has always been very, very inclusive. Nowadays even Pride is becoming a bit corporate with big companies putting out their rainbow logos, but at its heart there’s a really important message there about unity. I’ve played Pride in Manchester before and I'm really looking forward to Nottingham. I’m also playing that with Alistair Whitehead, who’s also a local lad as he’s from Derby.

Then you’ve got the Hacienda Live gig at Wollaton Park?
That’s going to be really special! Firstly because what a great venue. Secondly, because there’s live bands on, as well as us DJs, so you’ll get to see Soul II Soul, 808 State, Ultra Nate, Cece Rogers and Rowetta too. I also hear there might be an afterparty too. Returning to Nottingham is always special to me. Although I'm originally from Aberdeen, I lived in Nottingham at such a pivotal time in my life between the ages of eighteen to my mid twenties. I didn’t go to university, but Nottingham is like those years to me. My late brother moved there as well and I just feel a strong connection. So I’m looking forward to seeing many old faces from thirty years ago of people I know, remember and used to share houses with.

Listen to a longer version of our interview with Graeme via podcast below or via Spotify at this link.


Graeme Park plays at the Hidden Warehouse for Nottingham Pride on Saturday 27 July and Hacienda Live at Wollaton Hall on Saturday 31 August. Head to the LeftLion website to read an extended interview with Graeme.

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