Dave Haslam: The Importance of Fanzines

Dave Haslam has basically seen it all, or, at least, he's seen enough to have written three books on matters of music and culture, stemming from his experiences right at the heart of the 'Madchester' scene in the 1980s as resident DJ at the Hacienda.

Nowadays he is still very busy as a DJ and cultural commentator - this weekend (Saturday September 6th) he is hooking up with his old Hac mucker Mike Pickering to DJ at Morecambe Winter Gardens for the Vintage by the Sea Festival, and also for a 'conversation in creativity' seminar at The Hothouse beforehand.

Beyond all that, what a lot of people might not know is that Dave had his own fanzine in eighties Manchester, documenting some of the most culturally significant events this country has seen. So we sent Mike Boorman to talk to him about fanzine culture back then, and where fanzines sit now in the public psyche. Are they going to make a retro comeback like we've seen with vinyl? 

Before you became associated with the Hacienda and what was to become the club culture that keeps us all in a job now, you had your own fanzine in Manchester called Debris. Because of the time you started this...was it '83?... I assume it would have been too early for it to be featuring anything like an electronic music, DJ-led culture.

No doubt some early DJ movements like Northern Soul would have had their own documentation back in the day, but at what point in the eighties did fanzines like yours start to recognise and champion the concept of people dancing in a club to a DJ who was playing someone else's music? And how influential do you think the alternative press was in spreading the word about the scene?

Most fanzines in the early and eighties were born out of punk and post punk music and didn't really have much interest in what went on in discotheques.

My fanzine Debris tried to break the mould in various ways, mainly by not just being about music, but also by writing about jazz - I remember something about Roland Kirk actually. But really, Debris, as with all fanzines, was a reflection of me, my thoughts, passions.

I started the fanzine in 1983 and I started DJing regularly in 1985 so I would include playlists from various clubs; I did a big interview with the Cookie Crew and one with Mantronix. My friend Jon Dasilva, who also DJd at the Hacienda, he interviewed A Guy Called Gerald. And we all liked New Order; wouldn't you say 'Blue Monday' (hear below) was electronic dance music?

Once I got immersed in acid house and there was a cultural shift towards dance clubs, then Debris tailed off. Maybe it was also to do with the new way we were connecting, as music lovers.

The typical fanzine reader was I guess more likely to be a Smiths fan or the only Sonic Youth fan in their town, relishing that personal connection, being in a bedroom somewhere listening to John Peel and my fanzine dropping through the letter box was part of that more intimate way of being part of things.

The acid house scene though, was a communal experience, and, at least to begin with, it was more about being out on the dancefloor enjoying the moment rather than thinking too deeply about it all. Related to this was that for most people on the Hacienda dancefloor there wasn't the same curiosity about who made the records and the background to it all.

Again, a Smiths fan might want to know all about the band and Morrissey's favourite books and his opinions about things, but we were playing white label records, a lot of unknown producers, some of them from America or Belgium. To be honest I didn't know or much care if they were records made by white people or black people or whether they had albums out, let alone whether they were, say, vegetarian.

Dave Beer who went on to establish the Leeds club Back to Basics used to come over to the Hacienda and he said that the "facelessness" of it was part of the appeal. He also said the "offyourfaceness" of it was too!

I can remember around the time that the internet basically overtook fanzines, and everything else documented, and became people's number one source of written information, Greg Wilson came out of retirement on the grounds that he wanted to dispel some of the myths that people were cooking up from reading unfiltered accounts of DJ history online

Some were that A Guy Called Gerald started it all, or indeed the very notion that any one man or club or city could possibly have started 'it' all. At this time, let's say the early 2000s, did you share some of Greg's grievances? And generally, did you think that the written word in the context of our scene was becoming more or less believable?

Myths and partial accounts are what history is all about. I don't think anyone should be surprised that not everything has a perfect angle or lack of spin or water-tight narrative. Greg's work is great, particularly on the soul, electro and funk story that pre-dates the received idea of acid house. But there are other areas that he and others could explore.

One of them is how there were a number of people, including Andy Weatherall, and also me, and others, who saw and developed something in acid house that linked it to antecedents like New Order and industrial music, eg. Cabaret Voltaire, Ministry and also to things like Mark Stewart & the Maffia. After all, a lot of music the Detroit originators listened to was white European alternative bands. They weren't listening to jazz funk!

I think one of the points of a fanzine is to spur people to action, rather than just to document things. Sometimes I think online material is much more keen to pin everything down.

But a fanzine is saying "I made this out of love", take me home, sit down and let's compare notes and plot. A fanzine is very personal like that, it's not about telling the whole story, it's more individual than that. I quite like that fanzines are a bit insular, I think that's like clubs are, or record shops... niche is OK. You don't need to know what other people are thinking, just do your thing.

I remember picking up Boy's Own fanzine, at the end of 1986 I think. I have the first two issues. I didn't know much about the people behind it all, but obviously it was based in the South East. One thing is that two of the people I know involved with it came from different music worlds - Terry Farley and Andy Weatherall.

Farley was a soul boy, Weatherall was into rockabilly and the alternative weirdo NME side of things, but that didn't seem to matter because Boy's Own was clearly not just about music, so the connections between Farley and Weatherall were about other things, like an interest in fashion, and a sardonic humour (hear Weatherall still being very much on point below in his side project The Asphodells).

But the other thing was that it seemed to be from a different world to mine; but that was good, it was a nice discovery. In the eighties we didn't have the chance to share stuff nationally, and actually this had benefits.

DJs wouldn't all be playing the same stuff. Idiosyncrasy was praised over homogeneity. DJ playlists, and fashions could exist independent and a bit isolated from each other. Jive Turkey in Sheffield is an example of that. Clubs developing on their own terms.

Anyway, in 1986 a couple of the Boys Own people came up to a big gig in Manchester at G-Mex. New Order were headlining. Looking back now, it's all a bit innocent but also reflects our lives then; it really seems like it was a journey and a half for them, taking a trip all the way up to Manchester where everything seemed different to London and people talked funny and dressed differently.

I remember reading their review of the gig and it was the first time I'd realised how insular our scene was. What I liked, though, was that the review made special mention of the electronic dance music those of us who DJd at the gig were playing. That was one thing that impressed the Southerners!

Where do you think the printed fanzine sits now on the curve of creative evolution? It is my view that it is at the point of where vinyl was three or four years ago - that there is a big void there waiting to be filled by a load of printed fanzines, as people hark back to the good old days of tangible objects in order to oppose the more digital take on things… do you agree?

Definitely. The last four or five years have seen a real resurgence in zines, home-made and bespoke booklets, limited edition prints, and, vinyl, as you say. Music doesn't feature so much in a lot of zines; but I've seen dozens of them recently and they're made by illustrators and poets and cartoons.

The tangibility is prized. And I think it's a reaction against the notion that what you see on your computer screen is somehow the pinnacle of human experience, but it isn't; the primary experience, living in the physical world, is. The physical world where people make things, where they meet, and share a physical space.

I think this resurgence is also because we like the idea that people might have lots of Twitter followers, or that 150,000 people are at Glastonbury, but we also see cultural value in things that are enjoyed by small numbers, tiny audiences.

So a limited edition vinyl issue, or a fanzine with a hundred copies, or a club night in a venue that holds two hundred people; all these things can be deep and meaningful, even more deep and meaningful than something popular.

And forgetting about the tangible object of a fanzine for a moment… just simply within the online music media, have you noticed any kind of conscious reaction to the above threat of, for want of a less cliched phrase, 'information overload'?

The existence of this interview at all would suggest that this website has decided to favour journalistic detail over something more disposable... although being an old-fashioned print journo who needs to justify his wage in the current era, I'm bound to say that!... but what is your wider opinion of how music sites, blogs and zines are moving with the times?

A DJ used to be called a "selector". At least when Jamaican soundsystems in the 1950s and 1960s were operating - and they were some of the first disc-only events ever.

The DJ was the one who talked on the microphone. The DJ was the selector. And that's such an important role. A selector, or, you might say, "curator". Someone who sifts through the music and makes a selection and presents it to the people hoping to turn people on. And that task is even more important now, because of that overload.

I like that challenge, of being the selector. And I think I've had a similar attitude when it comes to writing; going with my instincts, looking for things that are a bit different maybe, trusting the material I select and shape and presenting it to people. Like a guide almost. It's a public service isn't it? I'll spend my week searching for tunes to light up your weekend, to light up your life.

Tickets to catch Dave in an intellectual capacity on September 6th can be bought here, and to party on afterwards with the Vintage Festival crew, here.

Interview: Mike Boorman (follow him on twitter here)

Tickets are no longer available for this event