DJ Paulette Interview: The Other side of Midnight

Image: DJ Paulette

DJ Paulette knows a thing or two about club culture and in particular Manchester's. She started her career as a DJ in clubs like the Number One and quickly gained a residency at Flesh, Paul Cons's legendary gay night at The Hacienda. Since then she has lived and held DJ residencies in London, Paris and Ibiza.

As such Paulette, who has now returned to reside in the UK, was the perfect choice as a collaborator of a new photography exhibition that shows over 60 years of live music, clubbing and music culture that opens this week at Manchester's Old Granada Studios.

The Other Side Of Midnight, named after the Anthony Wilson helmed music show that was recorded by Granada in the studios from 1989, has been curated by Paulette and Gary McLarnan of Sparklestreet. It takes the successful Lost In Music photography exhibition that was shown in London earlier this year and adds a regional twist, capturing the artists, the sights and the sounds that all passed through the doors of Old Granada’s iconic Quay Street studios.

The exhibition will run for ten days in tandem with the Parklife festival and Stone Roses live shows occurring elsewhere in the city, with Paulette also due to perform in August for the huge Manchester Pride weekender. Ahead of this continuing celebration of much of what is great about Mancunia, we delved into the inspiration and purpose behind the exhibition.

Hi Paulette! Hope you are well and you're enjoying the sunshine and not getting frustrated by this whole Brexit debate like me.

Hi! Yeah, I used to live abroad, I've only just come back to the UK after 13 years of living overseas. I did a decade in Paris and three years in Ibiza. I came back just when the immigration issue started to kick off, now we've got the EU debate. I've been telling all my friends who are both resident and non resident in Spain that they need to vote in this referendum as all your rights as an ex pat depend on it.

It's a two way street. If we close down the barriers and not let people in then other countries can do the same, make it difficult for people who are already living there to live and work there. You have to be a little open-minded about it. The second we come out of the EU, all those people are immigrants. 

I hope people make the right decision...

So do I, but it's a scary time. We've not got to let ourselves get sucked into the politics of fear which is how both sides seem to have run their campaigns. It's counterproductive. What I would like to hear is why we should stay in, people are making the wrong case. It would be nice to hear a positive message rather than all this negative politics.

But, for me, I want to remain in the EU. I've lived overseas for long enough to know that moving around without a visa, starting to work there with the same rights as a local, that's not to be sniffed at. 

Why did you leave Ibiza in order to come back to the UK? 

Opportunities, really. I'm not just a DJ, I never have been. As nice as it was, that's all I was doing out there. I didn't get any calls to do any work outside of clubbing and that's fine if you just want to DJ for ever, but I need more stimulus to live my life.

I like to read the papers, I like to go to exhibitions, museums. These are the things that inspire me and there just isn't that culture in Ibiza. There's only one cinema and there's only one museum, it's not open all year round and it's really tiny. You could get round it in ten minutes. I love Ibiza, but it's a nice place to visit rather than a nice place to live, for me.

How did you become involved in the forthcoming Other Side Of Midnight exhibition?

When I moved back to the UK I sent an e mail to Gary (McClarnan) at Sparklestreet and told him I was looking for work, interesting work, told him my skills and asked him to let me know if anything came up.

The first job they offered me was to take care of box office and ticketing and that really wasn't my thing, but I went to see them anyway. I'm a lot more creative than administrative work, so I said thanks but I didn't think my skills went with the job. I asked that if they had anything more creative that they could keep me in mind. A few months later Gary called me and said he might have something more for me. 

He told me he wanted to put on an exhibition, the basis of which they'd already got with the Lost In Music exhibition, which I couldn't get to see for one reason or another and because it was on in London. He told me they were bringing that to Manchester but that they wanted to do something else with it, they wanted to make it bigger, link it to Granada Studios and the Manchester experience. I knew lots of photographers from my work in PR and so we pooled our contacts and I came to work on it.

I've not done it on my own, the whole Sparklestreet team has contributed. I have just curated it, with a focus on the largest part of the exhibition which is the Manchester part. Between Gary and myself we've looked through lots of photographs, decided what we want and creative the Other Side Of Manchester exhibition from Lost In Music. 

How did you go about choosing the photographs for the exhibition from all the work of the contributing photographers?

Well, it had to have some resonance with Granada Studios and Anthony Wilson. The Other Side Of Midnight was a programme he fronted and it had to reflect the bands and the sort of music he had or would have had on there or had passed through Granada Studios. So, we already knew the bands that we were looking at. We also threw it open a little to include bands that had appeared in the north.

The thing about Lost In Music was that it was very Londoncentric. Clubwise, there was no representation outside of London. So we looked at the Hacienda, music at Old Trafford and Maine Road and then Liverpool and Birmingham too. It wasn't just heavy hitters too, we were looking for the faces, quirky moments, the tiny club nights and the atmospheres that defined certain scenes, so that when people came to the exhibition they would think “I was there, I recognise that”.

The Other Side Of Midnight started in 1989 and was quite rock music based, but a lot more was happening in the city at that time...

Yes, but the exhibition is not all Hacienda raves, we've gone back further than that. We've gone back further than Lost In Music, back to the 70s. I don't think we have anything from the 60s, although we might have with the reggae and the dancehall. We've done punk, Rock Against Racism, the key moments in pop culture and music, flash points where we knew something significant had happened in the city. 

Anything on northern soul?

I think there was already in Lost In Music. I haven't with any of the photographers I dealt with, but Gary may have done with the ones he worked with. I'm not 100% sure. I think Elaine Constantine and Brian Cannon were the main photographers we worked with who might have covered that.

Jeff Barret, Nathan McHugh and Anthony H Wilson - Image credit Peter J Walsh.

What are your personal memories of Anthony Wilson?

I presented a TV show with Anthony for two years on the trot. I did the Manchester Festival programme with him for Granada and aside from that I worked at The Hacienda for four or five years and as many times as I went there I would always bump into him. He was always a perfect gentleman, just one of the loveliest guys. One of the few real people who worked in music. 

Your first residency was at Flesh at The Hacienda. By the time that night started I think it would be fair to say that some of the better Friday and Saturday nights of the club's house music era had passed. Would you agree?

It hadn't passed its best in 91/92 when I started to DJ. It was after 95/96 that it was past its best, after Gunchester. It was still buzzing for me. Maybe the experience was different for you? I don't think it was past its best until at least 94/95. The atmosphere changed around 94 when the gangs started going in and asking for protection. 

In Manchester in the mid 90s the mantle of clubbing seemed to pass from older nights and places and suddenly gay clubs and gay nights, like Flesh, were some of the best parties that were happening in the city. Why do you think that happened?

Well, because everyone wants something new. Certainly people didn't stop going to The Hacienda til 94/95. The particular event was when the gangs went in and someone shot near to where David Morales was playing. I remember seeing the bullet hole in the wall for ages afterwards when I was Djing there. That was a turning point. I don't think it was as negative perhaps as you're making it out to be. 

When Mantos moved into Canal Street that's what kicked off the whole regeneration of an area that had been quite cheesy and tacky. Up until that point all you had in The Village was The Thompsons Arms, The Rembrant, The New Union, then Foo Foos Palace and Oscars. As nice as they were, they weren't cool places for cool young gay people to go and hang out.

When Peter Dalton set up Mantos, he had the foresight to see there was legs in establishing some sort of social area where cool young gay people could go. Once he'd done that and taken Paradise Factory the whole area started to change. People could see that the experience could be moved on.

Many of the people who were clubbing were gay anyway, by that time the Gunchester thing had really turned straight people off clubbing and they were going to gigs at The international or travelling outside of Manchester to go clubbing at places like Shelleys or Venus, the Music Factory in Leeds or Southport Weekender. The people who stayed in Manchester were happy to go to Paradise Factory or The Village.

The girls liked it because there was no agenda with the guys that were hanging round in the clubs and guys liked to go just to listen to great music, it wasn't about chasing girls all the time. And gay people had their own clubs at last. Manumission was down there, then you had Most Excellent, so it was really vibrant at that time. I think that's what made the difference, people seeing that there was this segment of society that wasn't being catered for and that The Village was where that could be. 

Do you think the rave revolution in any way paved the way for a wider social acceptance of gay people and their lifestyle?

Hahahahaha! I don't think it was just gay people. I think ecstasy hit everyone. 

If you think back to your youth and how you've seen society change through the 70s and 80s, through periods of seeing National Front and skinheads on the streets, movements like Rock Against Racism to where we are today in terms of less sexism, less racism and less homophobia, maybe it's naïve of me but I'd wondered if it wasn't possible that the rave revolution had been some slight catalyst in making that happen?

Well, I would agree with that. Certainly I would say that the rave revolution made people more open and accepting of everybody. You can be partying alongside black kids, white kids, Chinese kids, gay kids, straight kids, girls, boys, lesbians, whichever. Yes, it did make people a lot more accepting.

The people going to gay clubs in that era were attuned to a completely different aesthetic than the ravers at places like The Hacienda had been. It was really dressy in comparison.

Yes, but not dressy in that cheesy way, because there were already clubs in Manchester where people would go out in a shirt or a tie, but it wasn't like that. It was edgy. They just got fashion. It was the upsurge in labels like Boy, John Richmond, Destroy, Gaultier, Stussy, Fred Perry, Vivienne Westwood, the Anglomania stuff.

I think people just became more stylish, but not in that expected way where guys go out in a two piece suit. You could really push the envelope, express what you liked, everything from the more casual stuff to more dressy stuff.

And those efforts were sometimes turned up to 11 by the people who went to Flesh.

Yes and you could also make your own clothes there, they weren't snobby in a way where you couldn't make your own costume. You could go how you wanted to be. You didn't have to go to Geese or any of the new boutiques that were opening, you could make your own, you could go looking like (outlandish fashion icon) Leigh Bowery if you wanted.

In terms of the way they look in the exhibition's photographs, which era do you think exhibition attendees, who were too young to actually be there, would be most keen to revisit if they were able to do so?

All of them! Because I think people will look at the photos and go “I wish it was like that now”. When I looked at them I was reminded of that energy, where you would go out and just let rip. I don't think people are that free and easy with themselves anymore. I think people go out because they think it's cool to go to a certain party or listen to a certain music, there's not that discovery.

Image credit: Peter J Walsh

What really became clear from looking at the pictures is that the last 40 years have been a massive discovery of everything – music, style, sexuality, gender. Even in terms of the jobs that you do becoming more open and accepted. Looking at pictures of Mike Pickering (above) with long hair and being shocked at how these people have gone from being the outsiders to becoming part of the establishment. It's incredible to look at. 

Some will look and want to go back to the reggae/dancehall era because it just looks so cool in black and white. Others will want to go back and see b boys and breakers in the middle of Market Street, the most amazing pictures from Kevin Cummings. Then Lee Baxter's pictures of the drag scene too. I think if people could go back in a time machine they'd probably want to make 4 or 5 stops.

The Other Side of Midnight exhibition runs from Friday 10th to Sunday 19th June at Old Granada Studios in Manchester.

Paulette also performs at Manchester Pride which takes place in the city across August Bank Holiday Weekend 26th-29th August. Find Manchester Pride tickets via the box below.

Tickets are no longer available for this event