#90S PHOTO BACKDROP DRIVERS#

Of course, I always had my camera in hand.ĪSTRO ERLE AT THE LIMELIGHT, NEW YORK, 1994 © NICK WAPLINGTON There was a constant 24-hour protest outside, and I would go and lend support on a regular basis. South Africa House on Trafalgar Square stood as a monument to this oppression. There was also the apartheid in South Africa, and Thatcher had called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”. It was a time of resistance and rebellion in squats, university campuses and teenage middle class bedrooms. By 1980, when I was 15, I started going to Rock Against Racism concerts and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches (the USA had deployed Trident nuclear missiles at bases in the UK, which had re-energised the anti-nuclear movement). The fact that punk was also involved with reggae helped me to understand more deeply what was going on in the UK. By the time I was old enough for punk, anarchy was over, and punk’s rebellion had taken a left turn. The music I obsessed on was tangled up in politics. You have previously said that this period was about much more than having a “good time”… The records in the book are the 7-inch singles from my collection, all of which I still have. A few photographs still exist but luckily no music. The band was called Totally Devoid and, as my father said, we were “totally devoid” of any musical talent whatsoever. I also began working with a few local fanzines (hand drawing the covers and doing the layouts), promoting gigs by local bands and, of course, playing in a band myself. This was the beginning of independent music and labels like Rough Trade.

You became involved with the record shops, right? GLASTONBURY (THE POGUES), 1985 © NICK WAPLINGTON I loved the Lyceum on the Strand because I could skate back over Waterloo Bridge afterwards and be home super quick. Woking is 20 minutes from Waterloo on the train so I started going to the South Bank to skateboard, then off to record shops and concerts. I didn’t have any of the clothes, but I liked all the pop punk that was in the charts like Buzzcocks or our local heroes in the Woking/Guildford area, The Jam and The Stranglers. Because punk was allied with skateboarding (which I was already into), I found myself in that camp. There were three distinct groups at school: the disco kids, the heavy metal-ers and the punks. When I got to secondary school in 1977, I was quickly introduced to punk by the older kids and found it super exciting. With no older siblings, I wasn’t exposed to music in the way some kids are and my parents didn’t have an interest in pop culture. When punk started, I was 11 and liked Abba a lot. This was when punk music was sweeping across the country… How did you get exposed to that world? So I spent most of my time skateboarding and going to see bands if they were playing at venues which allowed kids my age in. We had a six-week extra holiday in the autumn term, but there was no attempt at home learning, and, of course, the internet was still 15 years away.

#90S PHOTO BACKDROP DRIVERS#

The oil tanker drivers had gone on strike and my school, which was oil heated, had to close. While I was acutely aware of the political turmoil, its manifestation in my life was only positive. That winter was a wonderful time for me as a 13-year-old child. What are your memories of the “Winter of Discontent”? ONION PALACE, WORTHING, 1984 © NICK WAPLINGTON In this revelatory interview, Nick talks punk, protest and after-hours parties in the “Big Apple”. Weaving personal snapshots, the countless records he was crazy over and the story of his deceased father, Made Glorious Summer is as much a portrait of Nick as a young man as it is a record of a time and place.įor the new Pace show, Nick has presented this work in conjunction with rare NYC clubbing shots taken in the late 80s early and early 90s - the heyday of house - to draw deeply felt connections between life and music. It’s a highly intimate work originally published in book form in 2014, taking its title from Shakespeare’s Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York / And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” Against the backdrop of the “Winter of Discontent” of 1978–79 – a turbulent time of strikes that preceded the election of Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister – the book traces Nick’s teenage years living in Surrey and West Sussex when British post- punk youth were politically active and protests would quickly turn into riots. In the performance space on the top floor, Nick Waplington is exhibiting, for the first time ever, Made Glorious Summer.

90s photo backdrop