15th December 2024

Fabric – 25 Years of dancefloor glory – by Joe Muggs

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Getting to dig deep into the history of fabric was obviously a pleasure and a privilege. Any
lover of the dancefloor would relish the chance to spend hours untangling 25 years’ worth
of history and rifling through the archives of photos and fliers, right? But the biggest bonus
of all was getting to chat to hundreds – and I mean hundreds – of brilliant people, and
gradually build up a picture of how history is built up from their individual stories: how it
looks from the dancefloor, from the offices, from the queues and the after-parties.
I’ve talked a fair bit in the publicity material and interviews for the book about how I got a
sense of fabric as a personality of its own: as a living, breathing part of London and part of
the culture that has an existence independently of all these individuals. However that
shouldn’t take away from the vital importance of each and every one of those single
people’s voices and stories. Because of course that’s the yin and yang of club culture: the
feeling of being part of something much much bigger, but also the importance of the
individual stories and encounters in the makeup of that bigger sweep.
Even the initial big sit-down chats as we planned out the structure of the book were full of
that kind of micro-detail. Keith Reilly, who conceptualised and pulled together the team that
opened the club, hasn’t been actively involved in its running for a few years now, so
walking into a room with him and the club’s director Cameron Leslie was like walking into a
family reunion. I mean that in the most literal sense possible: the two men both describe
their relationship, which stretches back to before the club even opened, as being like
brothers, and though the wildcard visionary Reilly and the cool-headed Leslie were chalk
and cheese it was easy to see that was true.
Likewise talking to the club’s first residents, long time BFLF friend and DJ Terry Francis
and the great Craig Richards, was emotional at times. Both of them had been there from
the planning stages of the club too, and had their lives and careers defined by their
residencies, and for Richards in particular – who I spent hours chatting to – the opportunity
to reminisce opened up all kinds of creative avenues. The untold endless Saturday nights
honing his craft, working closely on programming, working with the greatest DJs, all
continually inspire him: he may not be playing every Saturday now, but the curatorial skill
and philosphy of fabric Saturdays are woven into his Houghton festival and everything else
he does.
Then there were people I’d known for ages. Danna Takako was fabric’s head of press back
when I first started working for Mixmag back in the mid 00s, and we would speak at least
weekly back then – it was fantastic reconnecting with her, speaking to her in California
where she’s now a creative director. Her successor Kirsti Weir I had already known from
years back on London’s wonky techno warehouse party scene, and still catch up with from
time to time as she is a freelance PR – so chatting to her was a fantastic cross-wiring of
the fabric story with other parts of my dance music life.
Rob Booth, too, I’d known on the experimental music circuit for his Electronic Explorations
podcast, and after he was recruited by fabric to launch their Houndstooth label he became
a good friend, so interviewing him for the book was just like standard catching up for a
chinwag. I only wish I could have done likewise with the late Shaun Roberts who I’d got to
know well over the years in his capacity as fabric programmer and general scholar and
gentleman – but he’d passed away at the end of 2022, just months before we started the
book: his presence is felt thoughout, and the book is dedicated to him.
I spoke to other important friends of BFLF’s too. Long-suffering operations director Luke
Laws became a low-key but vital presence in the book, as in the club, reminding us that it’s

not all fun and games: someone has to make sure that the bars stay stocked and there’s
loo roll where it’s needed. And the brilliant Jacob Husley – who first got BFLF into fabric to
do our thing there – has something of a starring role, both for his role in keeping fabric’s
Sundays a vital part of London’s clubbing landscape and as one of the key flagbearers
during the #savefabric campaign, which galvanised not just London, not just the UK, but a
global support network back in 2016.
There are so many more. Of course I have to mention booker Judy Griffiths, the queen of
fabric from when she joined just months after opening to today. Just about any DJ I spoke
to would bring up apropos of nothing for the warmth of her welcome and her delight in the
music, and she provided untold help in the research and writing. There was the ebullient
Glaswegian Scott Patterson who started, like so many, as a flyer boy for fabric and is now
artist manager for the likes of Skream and Benga – the living epitome of the way fabric’s
influence feeds into the club music world. It goes on…
Many of these I wish there were more space for, too – as you can imagine, every one of
these people is a cornucopia of knowledge and a font of eye-popping stories, and way too
many of them got reduced to a couple of sentences as we tried to cram 25 years of raving
and drama in. Still, all of them and more are in there, and… yes, you know what’s
coming… you can meet them if you buy the book (Or buy two! It’s the ideal Christmas
present for the clubber who has everything!) And in fact, you might even meet one or two
of them in the flesh if you come to BFLF’s ‘Scientists vs Aliens’ spectacular at fabric next
month with Richard Norris, Nookie, DJ Trax and Neil Wyatt….