Meet music fan Paul Johnson, the man who brought Take That to Bury St Edmunds and argues Rollerbury and the Reflex nightclub are as important as Manchester’s trumpeted Haçienda.
A grainy video plays quietly in Paul Johnson’s front room. It shows the Reflex nightclub in Bury St Edmunds. The energetic sound of Ride On Time, by Black Box, transports us back more than a quarter of a century. A fluid-limbed guy who’s won a dance competition on the cool TV series The Hit Man and Her is now treating Suffolk to his best moves.
Every now and again the camera catches sight of Paul Johnson, a young manager at Reflex and nearby Rollerbury, where skating and music were an intoxicating mix. It might be old technology, but the tape captures the spirit of the age: relaxed, fun, and perhaps a bit more innocent than today.
Shame that’s gone. As have Reflex and Rollerbury. Building work will soon blur forever their footprint.
The memories don’t die, though.
Did you know Take That and The Prodigy played in Bury? It was about the time Paul was bidding goodbye to the Rollerbury and Reflex leisure empire, but he was still involved.
“I’d seen Take That on (children’s TV show) Going Live one Saturday morning in ’91 when they were showing the video for Do What U Like. I didn’t normally watch it but, because we couldn’t get a signal for the radio in the club, we had the TV on when we were cleaning up from the night before.
“I was given the job, among many others, to book groups, organise events etc. I’d already booked acts like The Searchers for private parties. I also had to organise under 18s nights etc in the club. Take That was one of the bands I’d tried to get for the nightclub. Before I left Rollerbury and Reflex, I’d arranged Take That would play Rollerbury, as it was a bigger venue, and they used the nightclub as a changing room, as it opened later.” He laughs. “Robbie was caught with his trousers down by the light jock…” That’s the person in charge of the lighting.
“So it happens that for about half an hour, on Saturday, August 1, 1992, in front of a few hundred fans – under 13s £3, over 13s £4 – Take That perform their single It Only Takes A Minute, which they open with, followed by the forthcoming single A Million Love Songs, and also Once You’ve Tasted Love and I Found Heaven. The boys are dressed in classic early ’90s style – in baggy trousers, gillets,vests, bomber boots etc. Gary (Barlow) still with his blond spiky hair, says ‘See you later, everybody!’ and the lads spend some time in the club. A fortnight later their latest single is in the top 20 and the rest, as they say, is pop history.”
The following year, Braintree-spawned band The Prodigy came to town on Saturday, July 24 – nearly three years before giving British sensibilities a jolt with the number-one hit Firestarter. Paul had left, but still had his finger on the pulse.
“I kept in touch with venues and was working for St Edmundsbury Leisure Services, and although I wasn’t working at Rollerbury, Rollerbury did an all-night rave. I understand the rave ruined the rink. I went. I didn’t stay all night!”
He adds: “The Prodigy had a breakthrough hit in 1991 and reached their peak in 1996. But they weren’t huge in ’93. So neither The Prodigy nor Take That caused a storm at the time.”
It’s odd to think silence had once fallen on the town. Well, almost.
It happened, Paul tells me, after a show by punk band The Clash at Bury St Edmunds Corn Exchange in 1978. After the noise died down from that gig – part of the On Parole tour – the sound of complaints rose.
Punks were accused of being drunk, weeing in public places, and damaging property. St Edmundsbury council banned contemporary live music from its public buildings. For nearly two decades. “It was like Footloose!” That’s the 1980s film about a small American town that’s outlawed dancing and rock music. It was a big blow for young people in provincial East Anglia.
That autumn, for his 10th birthday, he got his first tape recorder.
And my auntie bought me Disco Stars, which had bands like The Dooleys and Boomtown Rats on it, early Giorgio Moroder, Showaddywaddy – a real mish-mash.” Later, Paul went to discos at places such as Southgate Community Centre and villages like Chevington.
“Then Rollerbury came along and it was a game-changer.” This was early 1982 – the brainchild of Roger Williams, well known for his Willhire vehicle hire firm. Rollerbury was a rink on Bury’s Station Hill where folk could skate to pop music pumped through the speakers. Nearly 35 years ago, its arrival was A Big Thing.
“The queues under the bridge, down the road, were just phenomenal on a Sunday afternoon,” remembers Paul, Bury born and bred.
Taps disco opened in the town in 1984, and the following year Roger Williams’s empire launched Reflex nightclub – a sister for Rollerbury.
Paul started going to Taps’ under-16s night, and had his 18th birthday party there in 1986.
After leaving school in 1985 he’d taken a full-time job at Leo’s supermarket in Bury, having already been working there part-time. “I wasn’t a good butcher – I hated it – but you could always have the radio on! I remember listening to Live Aid. Everything stopped… I say everything stopped; it was mainly me who stopped!”
The year 1987 was a turning point.
That summer, Paul and friends endured a terrible rainy caravan holiday in Great Yarmouth. They vowed to book somewhere else for the following year – with sunshine and a livelier nightlife.
At the end of 1987 he took up a friend’s suggestion to get a part-time job at Reflex as a “potboy” –clearing used glasses, mopping up any sick and so forth. It put more money in his pocket, and of course there was the music to enjoy.
By the following spring he was there full-time. Paul became a manager and loved it. He’d found his niche? “It found me.” He’d taught himself to spin records, and now could also DJ at both Reflex and Rollerbury.
“At the butcher’s I’d been earning 88 quid a week, maximum, in about 1988. At Reflex I was earning £100 a week. I was working for it, but I was doing something I liked.”
Then there was that holiday in the sun – a trip to the Balearic Islands off Spain, including Ibiza.
While most people think of the big nightclubs, like Pacha, the scene hadn’t peaked at that stage, he remembers. But it was inspiring.
“I didn’t chase the music, but I knew there was music. What I didn’t expect was the vastness of the open-air parties.” He liked them, though.
“It was a light-bulb moment, really, and you think to yourself ‘I’m actually in the right place at the right time. I’m working in a club and, suddenly, this is the next big thing.’ You could see it happening.”
There had already been some beach parties at Reflex; now, things moved up a notch. Paul brought some music back from holiday. “The Balearic sound was a mix of sounds from other countries, including the UK but with a lot of eurostuff coming in.
“They’d play a lot of everything. You’d hear Chris Rea out there; you’d hear The Cure. It was the opening up of ‘being outside’; it was the opening up of different genres of music. That’s really where rave was born. It was born overseas, but we (Brits) brought it here.”
For those of us nudging our 30s by the end of the decade, the music scene appeared baffling in the late 1980s and into the ’90s. House, acid, rave… the trends appeared to change almost by the week, and it was hard to tell where one ended and another began… particularly when people started talking about sub-genres. What many people found worrying were the youthful crowds that packed old warehouses, and other “underground” venues, to dance through the night. Often, too, they’d descend on an unsuspecting farmer’s field, to great dismay.
Bury St Edmunds embraced the new sounds, while steering clear of the negative associations.
“Provincial clubs, they have to be given more credit,” says Paul. “I remember, a little bit later, when D. Mob’s We Call It Acieed came on. They loved it. We didn’t have drugs in the club, but the music was the drug, they used to say. Bury people can party with the best of them!”
It was all fun while it lasted; but, like many golden periods, it burned bright but brief.
Paul left the Rollerbury/Reflex family in 1991, and worked in various places. He found it a much less exuberant decade, bringing as it did high interest rates, falling house prices, recession and Black Wednesday, when the Government withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
“I can see why people love the ’80s. The ’90s became very serious. Hard times. The music became a lot harder, too. I was 23 and I felt old. I didn’t really want to work in clubs, with this derng-derng-derng-derng. I wanted to do other things.”
He went to college to study leisure and tourism… and in 1999 made a shortish return to Rollerbury and the (now) nightspot Club Brazilia, working as a manager and DJ. Paul had left again before Rollerbury closed in June, 2001. He worked in other venues and now does a fair bit of DJ-ing – largely weddings.
To be frank, he doesn’t much care for the way of the modern world, with music digital and played from a computer, and the way people nowadays don’t chance upon something great while searching the stock at places like Andys Records.
Paul, who lives near Bury St Edmunds, has thousands of traditional discs. “I love everything about vinyl, apart from the storage!”
The memorabilia adorning the walls of the home he shares with his wife, teenage daughter and son are testament to his love of pop and concerts attended: posters, pictures and record covers signed by luminaries such as Debbie Harry, Human League and Spandau Ballet.
Paul’s just appeared on the BBC4 series The People’s History of Pop, in the All Together Now episode covering 1986 to 1996. He showed some of his ephemera and talked about that eye-opening trip to the Balearics.
“I filled a gap. I was like the bridge between the commercial club scene and the rave era,” he smiles.
Much of the programme focused on the acid house and rave cultures, and that temple of cool, Manchester’s Haçienda club. By that stage, truth be told, the halcyon days were effectively over for Paul.
He has eclectic tastes, “but, if pushed, it’s anything up to about 1990. After 1990, things started getting more manufactured and more ‘serious’. The boyband thing… not for me. Nor the real heavy rave stuff. The music you hear on the radio, the stuff you can hear anywhere, is the stuff that really makes up the soundtrack to your life”.
Looking back, he sees 1985’s Live Aid as a watershed. After that, much of music changed.
“A number of the key bands split up – Duran Duran lost a couple of members, for instance; Spandau Ballet would soon peak; Human League wasn’t doing so much – and there was a big gap. Hip-hop came in, and house music. Much of it was imported, rather than home-grown.
“You listen to Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham!, Ultravox – you can dance to it! That’s why it’s lasted and why people still have affection for it. It’s the decade people liked to dress up and go out; whereas, in the 1990s, people wanted to wear scruffy clothes, be grungy, and dress down.”
So, here we are. The businesses have moved away from Station Hill and the land where Rollerbury and Reflex added to the rhythm of Bury life will have apartments built on it, if all goes to plan.
He’d love it if the council put something on Station Hill, to mark the Rollerbury legacy. “You’d come in on the train and that neon sign was the first thing you’d see. It was like a light in a window on a cold, dark night, telling you you were home.”
He says of that BBC4 show (still available on iPlayer) “For me, the important thing wasn’t that I was on the telly. The important things are the stories, the memories – the sharing. That’s what music’s for.
“It wasn’t really about places like the Haçienda. It’s places like Taps, Reflex – clubs like that all over the country – and towns like Bury. It’s these places that made the history. It’s our story.
“It’s a horrible phrase, but I’d like this article to be a shoutout to the people of the area who made it happen. Be proud. We’re part of music history. We’re in the programme before the Haçienda; before the London scene. We were there! And we’ve finally taken our rightful place!”
Remember Rollerbury?
We’d love to hear your memories of Rollerbury and Reflex – and see any pictures you’ve got. Please email them to us.
Paul has run some Rollerbury reunion nights. He said: “That tells me there is a spirit about the place. They can take the place down, but they ain’t going to take the spirit away. People still love it. If they’d loved it a bit more, it might still be there!”
My first buy
Paul’s first record: Showaddywaddy’s (1978) Pretty Little Angel Eyes. Bought for 50p at Stamford News, opposite Westgate primary school in Bury St Edmunds. ‘After that I got serious and bought them from Boots… when they used to sell records.’
‘No boa constrictors’
Paul’s still got a copy of the Rollerbury entry code “that says ‘no leather jackets’ or ‘scruffy clothing’. The original sign outside the venue also said ‘no drunks, no punks... no boa constrictors’!”
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