Paul Oakenfold interviews Nicky Holloway… [July 1993]
The dance scene was barely of school-going age when Paul Oakenfold approached long-time friend (and colleague for the infamous 1987 trip to Ibiza) Nicky Holloway, for an interview for Generator magazine in July 1993.
Holloway was a long-established DJ and promoter by the time acid house broke, and this interview finds him in somewhat contemplative mood about how the scene has changed in the years since.
“This was now a scene; a fashion, a drug and a music all fallen into place,” Holloway says of the arrival of acid house in the UK, via Shoom, Spectrum and his own nights at London’s Astoria. “That takes place every ten years, it’s what everyone is always trying to find, but it doesn’t always happen like that.
“Then you started getting the Energys, the Sunrises, the Biologys, the bigger things, and then fusing out of that came the hardcore thing. But I lost interest in that half way through when it started getting too scummy. People were going for the wrong reasons.”
Noting that there is a “bad attitude all over clubland”, Holloway goes on to talk of having his “fingers burnt” in Ibiza – to the tune of £40,000 in one night (while also observing that the numbers are down on the White Isle, year on year) – as well as planning for a forthcoming party at Euro Disney.
“It’s not a rave, though, and we carefully select the people going by asking them which clubs and DJs they like,” he says. “We don’t want the type of people who get off their tits all night and are still off them at 11am, talking cosmic crap. We want a more mature, experienced crowd.”
As to whether Messrs Holloway or Oakenfold ever believed the scene they helped form would still be a force to be reckoned with some 26 years later is sadly not covered in the interview. 🙂
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