After some issues at the Pied Bull, the Movements DJ’s Berni & Martin fairly quickly managed to find another venue willing to host a group of dykes and faggots partying on down together, at the bottom of the Pentonville Rd, The Bell.
The pub called the ‘Bell’ on that site was built as early as 1835. Whilst there is some confusion now as to the exact order that things happened, as far as I can ascertain it had started a ‘women only’ night (as a way of raising regular funds for the charity Women in Prison, around early 1982. The first lesbian and gay night, (according to Peter Cat, who should know as he regularly DJ’ed, rather well, there) was actually a fundraiser for a fledgling organisation called ‘London Gay Switchboard’. Ros Hopkinson then recalls that the ‘Women’s City Disco’ begun in 1981, this being a women-only event held once a week, on a Wednesday after they were offered the pub by the landlady, Doreen and then, when it became successful, twice weekly on Saturdays too with the music provided by the ‘Sleeze Sisters’. They introduced a mixed night after that too. After that also came a night on Friday, run by what became the ‘Nightworkers’ collective, which had also moved ‘down the hill’ from having a regular Friday night too, up at the Pied Bull. ‘Movements’ really just ‘piggy backed’ onto what was quite a successful venue by then, with a further night on Sundays (Saturdays being already taken by the women only disco).
Its big advantages were that it was quite a large space and it was easy to get too, Kings Cross nearby being a major rail, tube and bus intersection. The pub was quite close to the station, in a busy well lit area, it was more or less right next door to the popular Scala Cinema too. It proved to be a very popular location: so popular in fact that it was to remain as a gay venue in one form or another until as late as 1995 (though there was a night on Saturdays after this which attracted a queercore crowd for a while). The venue has gone down in the annals of alt gay culture, in fact even now decades later it still has a Facebook group about it, dedicated to its memory, with over 1,500 members. The Sunday nights with the Movements DJs spinning the choons probably become the most iconic. By 1984 the place had morphed into what the alternative London’s listings magazine ‘City Limits’ described as ‘the steamiest night club in London’. It was hot in there!
In its initial years, I was still living in Hackney and would get the 73 bus there, usually getting the N73 night bus back. In a few years though, by 1986 and (lucky me), I was living in a flat in Phoenix Court, Somerstown, just behind what is now the new British Library and the Frances Crick Research Institute- but was just an old coal & dairy depot, when I initially moved there, in 1985, west of a decidedly untrendy and very dirty Kings Cross at the time, so the Bell was a short 5 minute walk away through Kings Cross. Equally, Housmans bookshop with Switchboard above it, was also two minutes away at 5, Caledonian Rd, and so it was entirely feasible to do an evening shift on Switchboard, finishing at ten and be in the Bell, quaffing a well earned beer just five minutes later.
There are so many stories about the Bell, it’s hard to know quite where to start with it. It became a ‘legend’ in its own lifespan, such was its effect and reach. I’ve rarely seen any actual video footage of the Bell in full swing: there is a minute or so, from an LWT documentary someone in the facebook group recently shared and a few other grainy videos about on facebook and youtube, with no mobiles about then, (bricks yes but not mobiles) but I had taken some interior footage there, in early 1985 as part of the ‘Nightshift‘ video we had made about Switchboard.
Looking at it again, quite recently, after many years, the thing that struck me most was how ‘camp’ most of the men were and I noticed this in the LWT footage too).
Though I’m really not sure that’s quite the right word.. there is something I noticed about the kind of identity we all carried: was it a softness perhaps? It was a surprise, as it wasn’t something I felt I saw anymore in most gay men today and I certainly don’t recall thinking at that time that we were coming over as being particularly ‘camp’ or ‘soft’ then. Perhaps part of it was something about being able to be unguarded, at one, completely amongst ‘our own’? I want to be quite clear that this remark is in no way any kind of criticism: in fact, retrospectively, I find it quite lovely: kind of retrospectively, achingly beautiful.
One of only a couple of filmed pieces in existence, of live ´´Bell´´ footage in the Movements era https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9_2jeYb3
There was a lot of beauty on display, both male and female and often, inbetween. It was, on the whole, a scene that was pretty image conscious, more so I think than the ‘Carved Red Lion’ initially.
We thought in Kings Cross that we were a world away from the glitzy new romantics of the West End, of Blitz and the Mud Club, but now, well I’m not quite as sure as I was then. There were crossovers anyway, George O Dowd did come to ‘The Bell’ a number of times (and was let in this time..), a number of people who frequented the Bell had artistic and cultural & personal connections with the New Romantics and went to their clubs too. Various bands that became very well known cut their teeth at the Bell.
There was even a copycat venue called the ‘New Depression’, an antidote to the Romantics, off the Balls Pond Rd for a while and a string of other infamous venues which had a similar vibe that someone could easily write a book about (in fact to some extent Dylan Jones did so, in his weighty tome about the New Romantics ‘Sweet Dreams’ (2020, Faber & Faber) although this is a somewhat disappointingly heterosexual affair, though to be fair it does only cover the ten year period from 1975-1985.
The writer Robert Elms, heavily involved in that particular scene, sums things up quite well though I think, when he described ‘The Blitz’ as being:
..a place that was both simultaneously bitchy and individualistic and also a support group, because often people couldn’t walk down the street on their own without getting beaten up. London back in the seventies was a homophobic place and you could get chased down the street for wearing the wrong trousers, let alone looking like how we looked. Blitz was one place you could go looking like that and feel safe, so therefore we sort of stuck together. ‘The Bell’ was undoubtedly similar.
I think people would agree that there are similarities here to the role ‘The Bell’ & other alternative places in that period were playing for those who went there regularly. I might be wrong but I don’t think the Bell was ever particularly ‘bitchy’ though.
We kind of thought that was something we had left behind us in the ‘normal’ gay clubs (and indeed clubs like The Blitz et al), as some had ‘come over’ from that side of the tracks too, but not too many I would think. I do think the Bell slowly became more mixed (diverse, if you like) in terms of its style, its discreet cultural resonance diluted perhaps after a few years. If this made it less elite, well perhaps that’s a good thing.
For, in retrospect, I wonder now if there was just an element of eliteness to the Bell (others may disagree and I probably would have sworn blind then, that there wasn’t) but probably never in the way that there was in the New Romantic movement, with its various movers and shakers. Also, of course, any venue that lasts that long has it regulars, who perhaps feel so at home there that they use it more like a living room. People used it to ‘hold court’ as well: there were some extremely witty, inventive people who went regularly, who could banter on and on. Banter is not bitchiness but still has a sullied reputation now (personally I blame Dave) but there were some friends (Joe, Mark, Andy: you know who you are..) who often had me and others in stitches. Mark Simpson in particular was adept at exceptionally good banter and of course he went on to use that skill in his own writing later.
Banter, nevertheless in a relatively politically correct venue like the Bell, had a very fine edge: the art was to remain just on the acceptable side of what was permissible, whilst both hinting at the unacceptable and remaining acceptable by being clear just how unacceptable it was. But it often made the evening incredibly stimulating and exciting. There were also the huge opportunities that presented themselves for flirting, sometime outrageously so, and to some extent, it being a mixed venue, there was always an edge of latent bisexuality to be explored.
It felt perhaps a little like that thirties Bloomsbury literary scene must have seemed sometimes. Actually, Neil Tennant alludes to this, in his achingly beautiful song ‘Being Boring‘, of which more later. Explicit sex on the premises was limited and generally frowned upon by the management and the clientele possibly too, though I’m not so sure of that (but this restriction often added to the compound element of desire and tension and it certainly did happen sometimes, in the slightly skanky cubicles.
The tunes spun of course, it perhaps goes without saying, were great: bang on the counter culture of the day. You could dance however you wanted, nobody gave a flying fuck what you did, as long as you didn’t drunkenly flail about too much and throw up on the dancefloor. Which in my experience is never a good look. And it always ended too early, leaving you wanting more (a trick that the DJs at Duckie, in the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, if anything the Bell’s most famous reincarnation, now a grand dame on the scene itself, learnt so well to exploit: right, you fuckers..!) One of my personal favourites was dancing to ‘Fascist Groove Thang‘ by Heaven 17, which starts by injecting a huge amount of energy into the song and then manages to sustain it all the way through. And any song that manages to contain the line ´hot your ass, I feel your power´can´t be bad. But of course that era really wasn’t short of tunes: Panic, Temptation, almost anything by Bowie, anything by Depeche Mode, the Eurythmics and Annie Lennox. Dancing was a hugely important and enjoyable part of the whole Bell experience.
Of course Movements was not just about Martin and Bernie and the music, but also about the team that worked on the door and behind the bar and looked after everyone, people like Keran, Pom, Trill, Andy, Corrine, Jeff to name just a few in its time, who did the honours.
It is difficult to explain exactly what made the venue so good, simply, in words. I’ve tried in this narrative to do so about a number of ‘special’ venues that were very dear to my heart. And still are. Perhaps you knew these places yourself. If so, like me you’ll perhaps find yourself thinking what you wouldn’t do to have just one more night in such a venue. Is it possible to be in love with a venue? Probably. If so, then I must declare my love for ‘The Bell’. If the current facebook group is anything to go by, there are at least 1,000 people out there who may still feel the same way too.
The Bell is duly listed in the June 1983 edition of ‘Him Magazine’ , which was by then the key monthly gay publication (squarely aimed at gay men) in the UK then from the Millivres stable (especially since the demise of Gay News). It was described as
‘a large comfortable mixed club’ with ‘Friday: disco by Icebreakers & Gay CND 8.30-12am 90p (40p UB40s),’ ‘Sundays: Movements alternative disco 8-11.30 80p’.
On the front cover though, its key story was headed in a lurid large red banner AIDS: ‘Gay Death- Plot Panic’: Fact or Science Fiction? Accompanying it was an image: a large glass flask with heat and flames being applied to the bottom and young gay men swimming around inside it, some being burnt by the boiling water (drawn by the then popular cartoonist, Oliver Frey). It is a very strange image now and although you feel they were simply trying to satirise the red top papers of the day, I’m not sure it wouldn’t in fact have served to alarm gay people yet further.
Perhaps however that is what they were trying to do? Inside, on p3 the editorial, written by Roger Kean reads:
If anyone considers our cover this month to be sensationalist nonsense, then he should pause to reflect: today America is alive with rumours and counter rumours , gay extermination plots by the government etc. These may be true or fanciful but what is certain is the indication that even is if AIDS is not some mad homophobic plot, the effects of the disease could well lead to one. Even the gay press has done little but cause confusion. The American paper, the Advocate(the key American gay monthly magazine then) has waffled in alarmist terms whilst the income from dubious medical cure all ads (in its advertising pages) rolls in. Whether their own front page really helped matters is also questionable I’d suggest. However on p33 (with the same whole page image of the flask, in black & white) there is a fairly comprehensive seven page article about what was known then and the then current developments. Generally, in retrospect it does it quite well, with a lot of frank information given in the seven pages about what was then known and ways of decreasing the risk of contracting the disease:
Number 1.Cut down on the amount of anonymous casual sex; ie: avoid promiscuity. Particularly avoid partners who are known to be promiscuous. Avoid group sex.
This was very strong stuff then. No mention of the term safer sex, it had not yet been coined or indeed the advice added about using a condom for anal sex, which was later to become the key message. Up until April 1983 it tells us, there had been 14 cases in the UK BUT (my emphasis) only 5 of those were homosexuals, reported the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC) in Colindale, North London. New York in comparison had had 450 cases by then. A paragraph on the penultimate page also mentions the new Terrence Higgins Trust, an organisation set up by the friends of Terry Higgins, who had collapsed in Heaven and later died, an early victim of AIDS; to fundraise, offer a helpline service, write a leaflet for gay men about the facts and co-ordinate information and knowledge with the also relatively newly set up Gay Men’s Health Crisis organisation (GMHC) in New York.
It is I suppose a credible effort to try and provide non sensationalist information to its audience, despite its sensationalist front cover. From now onwards HIV/AIDS would continue to always be close to the top of the agenda for gay men (and of course in theory at least, other men having sex with men). There was no doubt, agendas were changing.
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