Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
NORMAN COOK: A letter from our Norman...
Sceptics might say of this informal gathering,
"Why the hell are you doing it again? Last year was a one-off triumph."
Well, they have a point, but the reason, of course,
is that I love to party, and the party we had on the beach last year
was so much fun, so beautiful and so right,
that it would be criminal not to try doing it again.
GARRY BLACKBURN:No, I never thought we made a mistake.
But we were a lot younger then, and inexperienced, and naive.
And of course, they're like shields really, because you don't realise
how precarious a situation is!
But that's quite nice, because it means you go to the edge
and you go a little bit further. And usually, it's at the edge
where good stuff happens.
# Right here, right now, right here, right now...
(CHEERING)
NORMAN: In 2001, we get a phone call from Channel 4 all about cricket.
They had just bought the franchise to show Test cricket in England,
and they wanted to celebrate that by playing it in parks
and outdoor venues throughout the summer, to get people into the idea
of watching Test cricket on Channel 4.
They were coming down to Brighton to show one of the Test matches,
and they had a sound system for the commentary and a big screen.
They just phoned me up and said,
"As Brighton's representative of dance music,
"do you wanna DJ an afterparty, free,
"for the people of Brighton to have a little dance on the beach?"
We lost the cricket on day two, so no-one came and watched the cricket.
But an awful lot of people came to the after party.
BLACKBURN:I think there were 40,000 people there.
It just, this thing happened. It was phenomenal.
My first thought when we finished was,
we have to do this again next year. We have to own this.
DAVID BRAMWELL:The sun was shining and it was free.
And who doesn't like a party?
And who doesn't like a party on a beach?
And who doesn't like a party on Brighton beach,
with Norman Cook DJing? I can't see...! It's a-no brainer.
JOHN SIMM:It filtered in over the years, Brighton.
I'd go down early on when I'd left drama school,
and there's just something about it. I don't know what it is.
There's some kind of calm. It's beautiful.
But it's also got that city edginess.
It's just a lovely vibe. I think maybe because there's
loads of students, loads of artists, loads of musicians,
and things like that.
DAVID:I came here because of music, I came here because of gigs.
I came here because Brighton is beautiful.
Brighton started with the whole thing of coming here for health.
You came to Brighton to drink the waters, to bathe in the waters,
and then Prince Regent came and gave the town a notoriety.
It's cabaret, it's burlesque, occasionally, it's singalongs.
And the town's always done that.
Sometimes, being a resident in Brighton, you hand over your town
to visitors, and you accept that.
You live here and you embrace all of the elements
that the town has to offer.
MAN:We welcome those visitors, too.
We want them to enjoy themselves,
to indulge in their legitimate pleasures,
however odd they may seem to us.
REPORTER:Were there a lot of them? WOMAN:Yes, whole crowd.
You couldn't move, it was jammed, about 200, I should think.
I went to lock the door and they pushed me over!
They just left you lying on the floor, did they?
NO, one of the rockers picked me up, another rocker at another table.
He was very sweet.
GLIMMERTWIN:I've been in Brighton now 22 years.
I paint things on walls for people.
Yeah, this one here, the client said they wanted something Brighton.
So, I thought, yeah,
what's more Brighton than Fatboy Slim these days?
HELEN HIETT:So, the connection with Fatboy Slim goes way back
and a lot of the artists we work with, as well as a lot of
the local people in Brighton, have a connection with him.
He's a bit of a gallery favourite.
He has collaborated with a few of our artists.
One such example would be this Mark Vessey here,
and he actually approached us and said, "I love Fatboy Slim's work
"and I want to do a project with him,"
which culminated in this series. So, this is actually
Norman Cook's own record collection.
NORMAN: There's a kind of two-way love affair
between me and the city of Brighton.
But also there's a pride, I am very proud of this city.
I think it is the best city in the world.
There's something about its relaxed attitude, its tolerant attitude,
and its eccentricity that I just really love.
Brighton is here to be invaded, for people to have fun.
REPORTER:Here at Brighton, a seaside town not far from London,
is one of Britain's most modern universities -
the University of Sussex.
I grew up in Surrey.
My sister went to university in Brighton, and I used to come down
and stay with her and I just thought, "This is the place,
"this is where I belong."
So when it came time for me to go to college,
I just wanted to go to Brighton. I didn't care what degree I did,
and stayed ever since.
ANNOUNCER:This year, it's very much The Housemartins
that have been in the news. We were proud as punch
that they're back in the city today. I'll be chatting with them
in a few moments time. Could I help you?
ALL: (HARMONISING) # Hello, hello...
We're The Housemartins! That's good...
GARRY:I first got involved with Norman
as I was the radio plugger for The Housemartins.
Norman had a nascent, alternative career as a DJ.
NORMAN: Obviously, I didn't intend to be a DJ.
I always wanted to be in pop bands, but I was a record collector.
If you're having a party and you wanted the best records there,
you had to have somebody who had a really good record collection.
So, I used to get invited to parties by people I hardly knew,
just cos they knew I'd bring my record collection.
But teenage parties being how they were,
my records started getting covered in vomit and cigarette butts.
And so, one time, this girl invited me and said,
"Would you bring your records?" And I'm like,
"Actually, I'm not to bring my records, if that's all right?"
And she went, "Oh". But then, she said,
"What if my dad hires these kind of double decks, like a DJ console,
"and you're in charge of the records, then would you bring your records?"
And it sounded like fun,
and something very, very fundamental happened.
I really, really enjoyed controlling the dancefloor and the music.
It triggered off a realisation that my love of music
is heightened by sharing it with other people.
I started thinking of it more than just a hobby.
And it was around that time when I was old enough to start
playing in licenced venues.
And so, mixing became a really big thing for me -
to learn how to mix, to afford to buy the turntables
that had varispeed on them so you could mix.
And that was about the time I moved to Brighton.
When I moved to Brighton, they had bars and clubs
that had Technics 1200s. So, I used to go and work in those places
for free, just so I could practise on their decks,
and eventually bought my own.
What I'm gonna do, grab that beat and go...
(SAMPLE REPEATS)
Finger on that, press down on the fader. It's easy!
Picture of concentration, know what I mean?
I'm sorry, Norman.Rubbish!I'll leave it to the professionals.
NORMAN: When I was in The Housemartins in the late '80s
and playing white indie pop, but all the time, that wasn't
the kind of music that I dug.
But then, they invented the sampler and the drum machine.
All of a sudden, white dudes like me could make this music
without having to pretend to be black.
And that just unleashed a whole new career for me,
and that kind of ended my relationship with The Housemartins
and that kind of music. I can't do that any more.
And so, I moved back to Brighton and went back into DJing.
DJ culture and club culture was just absolutely exploding.
It had been in this sort of ghetto,
where you had to be over 18 before you ever heard these records,
and you had to go to the cool clubs to hear the cool records.
But then things started happening, I think,
when house records started getting on Top of the Pops.
Kids started hearing them and they go, "What are these records?
"Where can I hear them?"
CARL COX:A lot of people were like, "What's happening?
"What's going on? These parties I can hear that start at 2 o'clock,
"and finish at 8 o'clock in the morning. Where are they?
"Who are the DJs that are playing this music?"
All this wonder, which was making it really exciting.
NICK FROST:When I was 16, we were all going to like Telepathy
and Sunrise and Raindance.
There wasn't hard house necessarily in the beginning.
It was stuff that came over from Detroit and Chicago,
and then it started to get a London feel to it.
And then, Chime by Orbital.
That's what kind of got me in the back of my mate
Matthew Miller's car, driving to fucking Basildon
to meet some dodgy bloke!
Or driving for two hours to score, like, an eighth of hash...
Like, what?!
Honest to God, it was just fucking terrifying,
and frightening, but exhilarating, and exciting.
Seeing the weirdest fucking people.
"What the fuck is this? Where are we?"
JOHN SIMM:I think the reason it was such a big culture
at the time, clubbing, let's not beat around the bush about it.
I think a lot of it is to do with ecstasy...
I think! I think. And so, that just changed everything.
It changed football violence, that stopped overnight.
It was the end of the '80s, everything just changed.
It was suddenly, this culture of love.
It was just happy times.
AYIESHA ADDERLY:It was the best years of my life.
Even now, there's friends who I've met raving
who are some of my best friends.
Lots of the big gigs we'd go to, we'd drive for miles.
I went to a weekender called Kamikaze Do Or Die.
Quite a few free parties, you'd just drive along and wait
to find out where you're going to be going.
You meet up with a few people. There would be people that you would see
at certain gigs and you'd just go up and be chatting,
and having a really amazing time. There was never any grief.
You'd just go there and literally dance all night.
COX:For five years straight, I was doing maybe two parties
on a Thursday, two or three parties on a Friday,
two or three parties on a Saturday, two parties on a Sunday,
and possibly one party on a Monday, for five years!
In my car, going up and down as far as Cornwall,
and as far up as Scotland.
Party, party, party, party, party, party, party, party, party, party!
Back to Brighton, back out again.
I was like this, shh! Whirlwind, working my arse off the whole time.
NORMAN: Around that time, my main job was the band Freak Power.
Like, a traditional line-up band.
And it just became more and more apparent to me
that nobody really wanted to see bands any more.
I'd have 10, 12 of us on the road with Freak Power,
and X amount of people would come.
And if I didn't bring the band and I just played records,
10 times more people would come, and there was only me
and a tour manager I had to pay!
So, it became very apparent that more people wanted to see me DJ
than play bass.
We were having our time, I think.
But the problem was the government were not happy with the way,
how things were being run, they wasn't able to control
this society and what was happening.
So, they made up the Criminal Justice Bill, and basically,
they were saying if you had five people dancing around a car
with repetitive beats, you're going to jail!
And the promoters was also the same.
If you're putting on a party in this way, you're going to jail,
unless you did the events properly.
Licensed events, contracts for the artists and DJs.
The rave scene as a whole did get quashed,
but it then re-emerged into super clubs.
And then, we had the rise of the superstar DJs.
GARRY:Norman quietly became Fatboy Slim,
and then it started to become something.
This might sound strange, but I really can't put a date on it.
It was just some time in the past, but it was an exciting time.
To see Norman DJing was quite a thing.
It was quite an unbelievable thing.
BALLY AMES:It was a very exciting time.
The Tory government had gone. Blair was in, and it was...
Yeah, we can do anything. And I think the industry
was very much like that. "We can do anything".
Records were selling. Gigs were kind of selling.
Festivals were getting bigger.
You'd go to work, go to a gig, you'd go to the after show,
you'd go to bed, you'd go back to work the next day.
And it was a really exciting time.
SIMON PEGG:I just remember it being a really, really fertile time,
as well, for creativity. Spaced was our way of writing
what it was like to be a 20-something in London
at the turn of the century, and all the kind of stuff
that we felt was never represented, like casual dope smoking
or going clubbing, or whatever.
I felt like I really wanted to write an episode of the show
that reflected the true experience of going clubbing.
ADDERLY:Brighton has always been a good place to come and party.
There was amazing clubs down in the arches,
and that was something that Brighton had in such close proximity as well.
This is Fatboy Slim. You're at the Big Beat Boutique.
I'm one of the resident DJs and apparently,
we are the underground club of the year.
GARRY:What was going on at the Boutique was something
he was very much doing naturally as his own Friday night out.
There was another Gareth around at that point,
who was running the Boutique, a local promoter,
and those two cooked this whole thing up.
Really, what he was doing musically was mashing stuff up
that nobody else was even contemplating,
and creating this atmosphere where people could absolutely freak out.
When I went there, it was dazzling carnage.
NORMAN: By now, what I'm doing is just mixing the hooks from pop music,
the anarchic spirit from punk, the breakbeats from hip-hop
and the acid energy from house music.
And that became what became known as big beat.
MAN:What he did was put UK dance music on the map in the late '90s,
and exported it to the world.
And it was fun, energetic, exciting.
And that's what connected with me as a 14-year-old,
to get into dance music.
GARRY:Norman put out Better Living Through Chemistry,
which just had that natural organic connectivity.
It had a fanbase who were turning up every Friday to dance along to it.
The big challenge of any new artist is usually the second album.
RALPH MOORE:But that first album was a cool record
that tastemakers liked.
It hadn't crossed over in the way that everything after that did.
Everything basically changed with Rockafeller Skank.
# Right about now, the funk soul brother
# Check it out now, the funk soul brother...
(SINGING ALONG)# Right about now, the funk soul brother
# Check it out now, the funk soul brother! #
The previous two or three years of the club,
meeting the Chems and all my other friends who are doing similar things.
It was all coming into this, I know what I'm doing here.
And so, the second album came out really easily.
It was just kind of bottling what we'd been doing for three years,
and distilling it, and then opening it with one big pop.
# Right about now, the funk soul brother...
AMES:If you turned on Radio 1 you could hear Norman.
But then, if you turn on commercial radio, you could hear his songs
being used for adverts as well. The publishers used to send us faxes
back then, and then we slowly got onto emails,
where they would ask for permission for a certain song to be used.
So, the artist had to kind of give permission.
I remember one time, one came through and I had to phone Norman.
I said, "Norman, we just had a sync request through."
And he said, "What's it for?" I said, "It's for Friends."
And there's a scene in Friends where Ross is having a party
and you hear Rockafeller Skank.
# Right about now, the funk soul brother...
We have got to get out of this business!
We are no good at it, it does not agree with us.
GARRY:It was a particular moment where we were sitting there,
getting daily sales figures.
I remember one day, by lunchtime, we'd done 35,000 albums.
Most of the projects we were working on didn't do that
in the whole lifecycle of the album. So, to do that
in one morning was... It was quite intoxicating.
MOORE:You've Come A Long Way Baby went to No.1.
And that led to the idea that a DJ could be more than just a DJ,
and you could sell hard tickets, as we now call it.
So, he was culturally very visible.
He was dating Zoe Ball, so there was the tabloid interest.
He was basically the world's most famous and possibly ubiquitous DJ.
When a band breaks, they transition from pubs to clubs,
to theatres, to concert halls to arenas.
DJs had never done that. They'd never done that before.
And the opportunity came for us to start climbing up
that ladder of progression.
LEE CHARTERIS:I had a history in big shows for bands.
I heard a record on the radio in Los Angeles, Rockafeller Skank,
and I called a guy in London, David Levy, who's Norman's agent,
unbeknownst to me, and he said,
"Well, he's a DJ and they play in clubs".
And I said, "Well, one day, maybe if he plays bigger than clubs,
"I'd really like to be involved". And it took about six months.
The next thing you know, we're playing two nights
at Brixton Academy with Armand Van Helden, which was really
the first big venue gig for a DJ in the UK.
ANNOUNCER:From Brighton, England.
Right here, right now, Fatboy Slim!
(CHEERING)
GARRY:This is where it's great working with Norman,
he's always up for trying something different.
We built a boxing ring that rotated and we set it up as a boxing match.
So, it's Norman versus Armand Van Helden.
We sold it out, it was amazing.
CHARTERIS:Norman was very conscious within the experience of a show
that with a lot of DJs, with all due respect, it was a bit like
going to see someone do the washing up.
And we went for lights and sound and video screens.
To fill those big spaces, you have to overegg the pudding,
and that's how it escalated.
MAN:Red Rocks seats about 8,000, 9,000, and it's gonna sell out.
WOMAN:It's gonna be packed. I think this techno scene
is more popular than anybody gives it credit for.
I think it's gonna go till the city shuts it down.
AMES:The shows got bigger and bigger,
then more production came onboard. So we got a production team onboard,
the visuals got bigger and we're doing shows in Europe.
We did snowboarding up on a mountain, a mountain show.
We've done Red Rocks, that was like a massive show.
BECKY STEVENS:In the summer of 2001, we had a large number
of really good events in the city. And one of those was
Channel 4 on the beach, it was the summer tour for the cricket.
So, it was beautiful. It was four days of cricket.
The Ashes being shown on Brighton beach, just near the West Pier.
CHARTERIS:It was very much a Brighton thing.
It was very family-oriented. And then, there was this offer
for Norman to play on the stage that was already built there.
And I think the numbers were like 40,000 people.
NORMAN: Everybody came out. Kids and old people,
just united around our love of Brighton and music.
It was mainly local people.
The council absolutely loved it and said, "This is what Brighton's
"all about, doing things like this". The police loved it,
because they thought it was hilarious and everyone was really well behaved.
All the local traders loved it because people spent tonnes of money.
But I do remember, when I came off-stage so elated,
I just hugged my manager and said,
"My God, it just doesn't get any better.
"How can we ever top this?"
Careful what you wish for, kids.
# A's for the anchor that swings at our bow
# B for the bowsprit through the wild seas do plough
# C for the capstan we merrily around
# D are the davits we lower our boats down
# Sing high, sing low, wherever you go
# Give a sailor his tot and there's nothing goes wrong. #
KEVIN CLAXTON:Brighton is a seaside town; it had recently become
a city at that time. It's a vibrant, colourful place.
From a policing point of view, anything that you might expect
the police to become involved with across the country
would happen in Brighton & Hove.
It's a good place to be involved in policing,
because there's a lot going on.
BECKY STEVENS:I think Brighton was unique at the time.
Post-millennium, there was a lot of investment from the council
into events, so it was a really creative city.
I was the assistant events officer
at Brighton & Hove City Council from 2001 to 2004.
We had a really vibrant art scene and culture scene.
Loads and loads of DJs, loads of different club nights.
It wasn't a mainstream city.
We used to have very regular meetings
with the council's events planning team.
They used to give us a list of the events that were coming up,
but sometimes, events would come up at short notice.
And I can't remember exactly when I first heard about the event.
That was possibly a couple of months beforehand.
ALEX BRIAULT:There was whisperings that it was going to happen again,
and then you heard it publicly announced.
So there was a buzz, there was excitement around it.
But I'm sure there was also some doubts as to whether
it should be happening. At the time, there was
a Seafront Traders Association, where all the shop owners
and bar owners would get together maybe two or three times a year,
have a discussion about what should and shouldn't happen
on the seafront. And I remember some rumblings about the effects
it might have on the town.
GARRY:The relationship with the local council was pretty good.
These people universally loved their city.
They understood it represented a different ethos
from perhaps other parts of the country.
STEVENS:It had gone so well in 2001, that everyone was behind it -
the police, the council, and the emergency services.
It was very different in 2001 and 2002 to how it is now, 20 years on.
There were... Whilst Brighton & Hove Council had a really good example
of multi-agency planning, I don't think the people working on it
were necessarily as experienced of major events
as people necessarily are now.
So, not always knowing what we were looking out for.
So during those planning meetings, we'd often discuss things
like medical provision, security provision, making sure
that we had the correct numbers in place.
We were estimating 60,000 people were going to come
and we were planning for 80,000.
CLAXTON:The first multi-agency meeting for this event
was on either the 30th or the 31st of May that year.
So, it was only a few weeks before the event.
That already started alarm bells ringing not just with myself,
but with people from health and safety
and the council and various others.
This was a large event. It was going to be on the beach.
Therefore, there was work to be done and time was short.
RAJU WATTS:We wanted it to be a free event because you can't expect
people to pay on a beach. As E4, or Channel 4,
had paid for it previously, we had no concept of what it would cost
to put on an event for effectively 60,000 people on a beach. Um..
It was quite a lot!
So, this is what it's going to be. We had to put book police,
we had to book security... Oh! Stewards, toilets,
sound arrays, crowd control, merchandise.
So, we all sat down, tried to work out how we were going to pay for it.
Norman's quite popular in America, isn't he?
So, Garry spoke to his live agent and said,
"Norman is willing to do a corporate gig."
Not the sort of thing he does. "What can we get for it?"
And he managed to get a gig,
and it was approximately, like, half a million dollars.
And the money for that gig was going to pay for
all the infrastructure that we needed to be able to put on
a show for free in Brighton.
So he flew out, did the gig.
I remember the feedback at the time...
I think there might have been 150 people there at this corporate gig.
It was dead. I mean, it's a corporate gig.
A massive DJ playing for people in suits.
It has been a journey in 2002.
This is a general synopsis of what's going on.
Show down in Seoul, England v Sweden...
AMES:Building up to that show was just like any other show.
It's in the cycle of gigs that we were doing.
It was just another show.
Before Norman did the show in Brighton,
he was gallivanting around Japan
as the official DJ for England at the World Cup.
So, leading up to it was a really, really busy time.
No gig today, so we can have a wander around.
And right now, we're off to Adidas to go and meet David Beckham's boots.
Joy! Joy!
OK... If you ask anyone who was
the biggest DJ or dance music producer,
you would I reckon nine times out of 10, people would say Fatboy Slim.
Fatboy Slim. Fatboy Slim.
What? (THEY CHEER)
MOORE:What Norman did, he laid the foundations for stadium dance music.
It was proving that a DJ could sell out a venue
rather than, say, a rock act. That was an important thing.
I really like this idea that you could have a job in dance music.
It could be serious, you can take your career seriously,
but you didn't have to take yourself too seriously.
The USP was, let's be serious about our fun.
STEVENS:In the last multi-agency planning meeting
in the run-up to the event, I realised from the network
that I was plugged into, in terms of the clubbing and dance scene
in Brighton, that we were getting an awful lot of coverage.
So, I kind of tentatively raised my hand and I said,
"Look, I think we're going to have a lot more people coming
"than we're planning for, because it's getting
"a huge amount of coverage". And I just so clearly remember
a senior council officer turning to me and saying,
"Don't be silly, Becky. This isn't The Beatles. It's just a DJ."
KAY:T4 was the show that talked about the music.
We were the ones that gave our opinions and we rode that wave.
If the NME was talking about it, we would talk about it.
So, Norman and that kind of music was always on our playlist.
And then it was like, "Oh, we're going to do Big Beach Boutique.
"Do you fancy it?" Yeah! Two-footed challenge into that, please.
WATTS:We'd hired all the front suites of The Grand
for family, friends, DJs. We drove up on the Friday morning,
so parked the car, went up to see the room,
had a heart attack because of course, I organised the rooms.
And oh, my God, the view!
NORMAN: We'd hired a room so that my parents and my son Woody,
who would have been one, had somewhere safe to watch.
This is probably just about the best view of Brighton,
but one that locals seldom get to see.
Everything was all in place. So, we went out for dinner
with Garry and family, as far as I remember.
Then we went over to Norman's house and Zoe's in Hove.
First time I'd actually properly met him.
We're all in there, it got to about midnight and he said,
"Oh, everyone, I want to play the song that I've remixed
"for the end song."
(REMIX PLAYS) There's just something a lot more,
like, hands in the air, beautiful.
'I'd done a version of Pure Shores, which we got pressed up
'on an acetate, which cost me like 80 quid,
'so I was definitely going to play that.'
Probably edit their version down, because it's a bit long.
There's too many gaps in the middle.
Edit it down, and then just overlay that...
(BEAT PLAYING) Overlay that all over it.
So definitely, it needs a bit more thump.
So, I've got it going now at 100 BPM.
I get out the 100 BPM disc, and then we just got
a whole load of different beats.
(BEATS PLAYING)
You could just end up like that.
Just start with the drum beat and slowly bring it in.
Yeah, that's doable.
GARRY:I remember going to bed on the Friday night,
really in a state of high anxiety, praying enough people would come.
Because we'd risked a lot to set this up,
on the assumption it would be bigger than the previous year in 2001.
And of course, the next morning was a beautiful day.
But you never know it's going to work until it's happening.
ELLA SADIE GUTHRIE: Sunrise or sunset, you ask me.
As you get pebble dust between your toes.
I don't know. Both, I lie.
I have never been an early riser.
To let my body wake with the dawn would be a betrayal
of the dreams that hold me down until at least 10am.
The sunset is deeper.
The last showdown of sky.
Clint Eastwood firing the last round from a revolver
before the credits roll.
A wrap party, a swan song.
Do you feel lucky?
WATTS:I'll never forget it. I opened the window,
looked outside, and I turned around to my wife and I said, "Fuck.
"Fuck!" She said, "What's wrong?"
I went, "There's no cloud in the sky, and there's 30,000 people
"on the beach, and it's not 9 o'clock".
Come on! The weekend has landed.
Just, it was just party time. (LAUGHS) It was just party time!
Car full of people. Loads of tunes, windows down.
Banging, weather was great. Off we went.
ADAM VAUGHAN:Our friends had been to the first Big Beach.
Some of them turned around to us saying, "Oh, he's doing another one.
"Do you wanna come along?" Yeah, why not?
Yeah! We'll see what this is about.
Got nothing else to do. What's the worst that can happen?
Exactly. So we ended up tagging along with them,
and heading over to Brighton.
SIMON PEGG:Neither Nick or I had a car, so we borrowed
this knackered old Ford Sierra to get down to Brighton!
I don't even know if we were supposed to drive it, really.
I mean, I'm pretty sure we sorted out the insurance, etcetera...
GARRY:I got a call from my wife at about half 10, 11 o'clock.
She was driving down and she rang to say that there must be some accident
on the M23, because there was a traffic jam.
So I said, "Look, don't worry Gill, just go.
"We know the back roads, just come off and go the back roads".
Anyway, I got on with preparing the show,
not realising that the traffic jam was people coming to the show.
The closer we got, the more people we could see that were going
and we were passing people on the motorway and waving.
And there was a lot of music coming out of different cars.
There's a lot of, "Oi! Oi!" There was a lot of that.
AYIESHA ADDERLY: All ready for our weekend.
I woke up in the morning, getting all this stuff together
and for some reason, I just thought I'd do a pregnancy test.
And the pregnancy test was positive.
I phoned my mom and she's like, "You're meant to be going out
"this weekend, you're going to have to change your plans!"
I was like, "Yeah, shit! Yeah, I'm meant to be going out."
So, that was a massive, amazing, amazing find,
because I would have been drinking alcohol.
So, I had to make sure I didn't do that.
NICK STEVENSON:I'd just started working at Mixmag.
So, this was like the first month that I was literally in the office,
and left uni about a month before that.
So, I've moved from Bournemouth up to London for my big new job
and I got sent down to Brighton to cover the beach party.
I got the train down on my own from London to meet my mates in Brighton.
HELEN HOWELL:It was me, my boyfriend at the time Sam,
my best friend there Louise, and maybe three other folks.
And we're on the train.
And it just felt like this giant party on the train.
You felt like you were making friends immediately.
Everybody's sharing their food and their drinks, and other things.
Lots of music going on the train, people are dancing on the train,
just riding high, huge expectation for the day.
KAY:It felt like Southern Railway had got every train in the UK
to just pick people up wherever they were and drop them off in Brighton.
Honest, I think we did a couple of links for T4
outside Brighton Station, and we just couldn't move
for people coming at us. Not going that way towards the station,
just coming off. It was insane.
DANCE SYSTEM:We all lived a little bit outside of Brighton.
So on the day of the party, we had no idea how big it was.
So, I drove my car with four of my mates.
Basically, there was queues going all along the Downs,
and we couldn't get through, there was traffic.
It was like, "Fuck this."
We drove on the other side of the road, all the way through!
I was like, "Fuck it, no cars are coming the other way.
"We've got to get there. We have to get there."
HOWELL:We got there early enough to where we could find
everything we needed. We actually got food.
We had sunscreen, we had enough water,
and we just chilled on the beach.
But quickly, that changed.
Within the course of an hour or two of us arriving there
in the late afternoon, it's like,
"Oh, shit, I'm having trouble moving through the street.
"We're going to have to hunt for a bathroom."
FROST:There was so much fucking traffic.
There was nowhere to park. And then we went right up
toward Hove, just keeping on driving.
But everywhere was just fucking cars,
like abandoned cars everywhere.
People had just parked anywhere they could.
PEGG:We just thought, "Fuck it, let's just get a ticket!"
So, I think we just left it.
(LAUGHS) We abandoned it!
We might as well have just torched it there,
although we needed it to get back. But we put it on a kerb,
got out of the car and headed down to the beach.
STEVENS:I remember getting a call from a friend
who was driving down from London, saying,
"Becky, you need to shut the road, you need to shut Brighton.
"We're in a traffic jam. It's going all the way back past Gatwick,
"and it's crazy". (LAUGHS)
I was like, "Yeah, I'm not sure I've got that authority,
"but I'll pass that on!"
SIMM:I remember arriving into Brighton and just thinking, wow!
It's like the whole city had been closed down.
Everybody was hiding in their houses and it was just a huge rave.
So, it was quite mind blowing, actually.
It was quite a sight to behold.
# The weekend starts here. #
KEVIN CLAXTON:Lots of police officers in Brighton & Hove,
as I did, didn't live in the city at the time,
and we had to travel into the city.
We were all told to come in at 4 o'clock for a briefing
by the command team. Straight away, it was apparent
just driving into the city, that the estimates of 50,000 people
were going, were not right.
This is not the day we planned for.
It's gone wrong.
Right, you're happy? Yeah, more than happy.
'During the day, we'd done some vox pops,
which is the voice of the people. With vox pops, you always try and be
quite cheeky or irreverent, and just ask stupid questions.
I've got some very tedious Fatboy Slim questions to ask you now.
OK. What's Norman Cook's...?
Might want to do that again. What's Norman Cook's real name?
'The beachfront was packed and everyone was up for it.
'Everyone just couldn't wait, because they all knew the music
and there was a huge air of anticipation for him just dropping,
"Check it out now, the funk soul brother!"
Yes! I'm checking it out on the beach!
It was just nuts.
There was a real energy, a real momentum for people
to have a good time. And I won't lie.
There was a couple of points when we were recording
and you get the odd idiot jump in and grab the mic.
And I'm thinking, there's a possibility
this could get out of hand.
BECKY STEVENS:People just kept coming and coming and coming.
And things started to already get quite tense
and stressful down there. People couldn't get to the toilets.
People couldn't move. The beach was really, really full
directly in front of the stage, and it narrows slightly in places.
So, people were spreading to the east,
but lots of people were coming from the west
or still coming off the trains from London and coming straight down,
directly into the main footprint of the event site.
ADDERLY:We were late, as per usual, I'm always running late.
And it was just mayhem.
But I didn't think it in a bad way. I really liked it,
I really enjoyed how it felt. I really loved that
kind of like excitement.
There was an edge, but it didn't feel dangerous.
We got to the bottom of West Street just by where the cinema is,
and it was just rammed.
It was chocka all the way down to the seafront.
There was no way that we could've got onto the beach.
NICK STEVENSON:It was so packed when we got down there.
Trying to find someone, and this is pre-smartphones,
you couldn't drop a pin back then. This was literally me being
on the beach, counting how many windows across on one of the hotels
I was to say, "Look, I'm six windows across on the blue building,
"underneath the stones."
I think a lot of people were doing that around me as well.
So, it was quite a well-trodden path to not finding your mates.
KAREN BATEMAN:I had friends living down here at the time.
So I was looking for them, and of course, no chance of finding them.
So, we just found a little spot going down towards the West Pier,
and that was it. Got ourselves settled,
a few beers, ready for the evening.
When I first arrived in this room, I was looking out going,
"This is brilliant, there's so many people!"
And then it went from, it's so many people to there's SO many people.
And then, the first...
Every hour, I'd be chatting to people and they're like,
"There's so many people."
15? Right, cool.
(CHEERING)
'I remember, I was waiting and him walking in.
'And he looked really agitated,
'Which made me a little nervous because I'd only been doing telly
'for maybe two or three years.
We both turned around at the same time,
and I said something along the lines of, "Wow, look at this."
And we're both kind of like...
We are going to dance tonight. It's Mr Norman, Fatboy Slim, Cook!
Good evening. How are you doing, Norman?
I actually feel am scared.Can I just say, look at what you've created!
I know, it's a monster that's gone out of control.
CHRIS COCKING:I remember absolutely shitting myself
walking out of the briefing. The briefing was in a small cafe
in arches on the bottom of the seafront,
and I basically had to fight my way through to get into the briefing.
On the briefing on the way out they basically went,
"Right, you're on this point. Get to it."
Pretty much having to fight my way through the crowd
to get to the point. And that was four-and-a-half hours
before the gig was even due to start.
So I knew at that point, it was going to be massive.
And it was the first big gig I'd worked at,
so for me, it was a real baptism by fire.
CLAXTON:We were probably deployed out into the city in the event area
some time around 6pm.
Almost immediately, our team's officers were lost.
You couldn't see anyone.
It was difficult to get hold of people on the radio.
I realised and I spoke to my sergeants and made sure
they understood that regardless of the orders we've been given earlier,
it was now about keeping people safe and keeping ourselves safe.
They had loads of stewards positioned on the high tide line
of the beach to stop people going beyond that point,
because we knew the tide was due to come in.
And I understand that around up to 80 stewards resigned on the spot
who were supposed to be maintaining the high tide mark.
And I remember control going, "Where are all the stewards?"
And asking me, "Where have the stewards gone?" And I'm going,
"I don't know," because he was asking me to look and spot them,
and I had a bird's eye view and I couldn't see a single steward
on the high tide mark. STEVENS:We went and stood on
the groyne with Kevin Claxton, who was the bronze police officer.
And I remember us looking down the beach
and it was absolutely full of people.
And we looked at each other and we were like,
"What are we going to do?"
GARRY:We had a sort of emergency meeting with the chief of police,
who was considering cancelling the event.
Norman was very concerned about anyone being hurt
or anything going wrong.
He was very conscious of that.
But we were also thinking, we've spent our whole lives
building up to this moment. We can't not deliver.
NORMAN: I could see from the police's faces, they're like,
we are overwhelmed here. So, I was like, OK.
I've prepared myself mentally that it's going to be snatched away!
I think they took me into one of the porta-cabins and they sat me down
and said, "Right, we're going to go ahead with it, but only..."
And I said, "Only cos it's more dangerous not to do it?"
Because you've got all those people there,
and they've all been drinking all day, and they're happy!
And if you shut the place down, they'll be unhappy
and it could be ugly. And they said, "Yeah".
ANNOUNCER:This is a public safety announcement.
(CROWD JEERING) We're sorry to disrupt
your enjoyment of the evening, but we are endangering the lives
of people at the top of the groyne.
STEVENSON:I remember there were announcements, something like,
"Please relieve the groyne," which if you don't know what a groyne is,
it's like a thing that separates the sand on the beach,
everyone's looking at each other like, "What?"
"Who's groin are we relieving again?"
ANNOUNCER:..of the police and the stewards,
and start to pull away from that groyne area.
CLAXTON:We were trying to stop people getting backstage,
and so we were stood on this slippery, green, covered-in-seaweed
groyne as the tide went out.
All along the beach, there were people urinating in the sea,
mostly men, but not all. And then a yard in front of them,
there were people swimming in the sea.
And you just think, "This can't be going on.
"It's not real. It can't be happening."
COCKING:They had to get police in to stand on the groyne
to stop people getting to the edge and falling off.
And they put on riot gear for their own safety and protection.
And I was reporting through things that were going on.
Then suddenly, I turned around and they'd all disappeared.
I remember going through to control, "Where have the riot police gone?
"What's happened?" And after a bit of going on different frequencies,
he came back and said, apparently they've been told
to withdraw for their own safety.
VERNON KAY:I'm having one of them Ibiza moments.
The sun's setting behind us, everyone's enjoying the atmosphere,
and I've bumped into John Simm, star of Human Traffic.
Are we having it large, John, or what?
We're having it big stylee, aren't we?Oh, yes. Or what, aren't we?
Or what? What do you think of the whole event and the whole
atmosphere at the moment? it's pretty mad, innit?Unbelievable.
I've never seen so many people in my life, folks.
Unbelievable! There's more people than pebbles.
And what's happening is that I've not seen any violence
and no trouble. Everyone is up for it
and everyone's here for the music. That's how it should be. Absolutely.
I have no recollection of that whatsoever!
ANNOUNCER:This is a public safety announcement.
The gentlemen climbing lampposts must return to the ground.
The show will stop until all the people...
NORMAN: I read various riot acts about what I could or couldn't do.
And if they told me to switch off the music, they said,
"You don't argue with us, you just switch off the music."
Which is not the best frame of mind to be in!
LEE CHARTERIS:I sat with Norman a little bit and we knew
everything was ready to go. When he wanted to play,
we could go over the street and play.
I came to the hotel, I took Norman's record bag.
Norman and the record bags stayed apart from each other
absolutely the minimal amount of time. So I came to the hotel,
did one trip with the records, and then came back.
(CHATTER)
The walking over the street came later, because ultimately,
we were like, "How the hell are we going to get from here to there?"
And it was decided that the element of surprise
is what would get us across the road.
But as soon as we walked down the steps of the hotel,
it was just a mob! And it took us 15 minutes
to get to the backstage, which is a two-minute walk.
NORMAN: Looking back, I don't remember much about the actual gig.
I must have been completely on autopilot.
But it wasn't the most relaxed I'd been, because I was aware
that we were potentially, if anything went wrong,
we could be in a lot of trouble, safety-wise.
But what I do remember is just feeding off the energy of the crowd.
(CROWD CHANTING) Fatboy Slim! Fatboy Slim!
There's one shot where you can see I'm just looking at the stage,
looking around, and you can see like the muscles in my neck,
and my cheek twitching with the stress of it all.
Then, you suddenly see my eyes light up as I see a friendly face.
This old friend of mine called Al, and I just go and give him a big kiss
and everything's alright again.
KAY:People screaming and whooping and hollering,
the odd cheeky comment, which you give a bit of banter,
which is all good fun. And I just remember thinking,
I can't wait for this to start.
(CHEERING)
WATTS:Atmosphere was electric. It was buzzing.
I don't think I've ever experienced something like that at all.
It was just, "Fuck, we're going to do this.
"We're going to do it." (BEAT PLAYING)
VAUGHAN:I remember getting our spot on the beach.
And there'd been a buzz with anticipation as well,
because being 19 and not really venturing
too far out of our comfort zone as well.
Really, I think it was the first gig we'd really gone to.
And Rich had made a flag.
I'm pretty sure he unveiled it when we got down there.
Said, "I've just brought this." He just unveiled this Union Jack
with "Normstock II" written on it.
SYSTEM:Tim Deluxe It Just Won't Do
was the song of the summer at that point.
And for him to open with that was just like,
"OK, he's not fucking around here. This is just going to be a party."
# My eyes, they can look see
# Other guys, that are cuter
# And my ears, they can look hear
# My friends say I should walk away
# But my heart, it won't do, babe
# It won't do, without you
# My doggone heart, it won't do, babe
# It just won't do without you
# My knees, they don't go weak
# They don't go giddy-up When you don't call me
# And my head It doesn't spin
# So don't try me, with your sweet nothings
# But my heart, it won't do, babe
# It won't do, without you
# My doggone heart, it won't do, babe
# It just won't do, without you...
STEVENSON:I remember just being caught up in it all a lot,
and trying to enjoy myself as well as trying to remember
what was happening. This was a very important moment, and I had
a very important job to do to try and capture it all,
and remember it all.
# My mind is buggin' out When you think you're it
# See me run, lickety-split And my toes, watch them curl
# So don't call me babe, cos I ain't your little girl
# But my heart, it won't do, babe
# It won't do, without you
# My doggone heart, it won't do, babe
# It just won't do, without you
# La, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la... #
STEVENS:The toilets that we had on the Kings Road,
they had people in front of them. It was probably about 10, 20 deep.
And I saw, there was a guy dancing on top of the toilet.
One of the senior council officers said,
"Oh, you need to tell him to get down!" And at that point,
he just dropped into the loo! (LAUGHS)
And they said to me, "You need to go and get him out."
I was like, "That's not happening!" (LAUGHS)
So, I think that man must've spent the whole gig in the toilet,
because there was no way those 20 people in front
were going to get out the way.
ALEX BRIAULT:We had a boat donated by a guy called Jack Stewart,
and it was a lovely big fishing boat and it was put out on the beach.
And he rang me at about 6 or 7 o'clock, saying,
"You've got to get down here and do something to protect this boat".
I was at the far end of town. There was billions of people in the way.
I couldn't possibly have got there. And I spoke to him the next day,
and he said he'd spent the whole night on the boat
trying to encourage people not to get on it.
But of course, everyone was trying to get a view.
And sadly, it did get, sort of, smashed to bits.
It got really stressful. There were people who had obviously
consumed lots of alcohol and drugs, and they were not in a good way.
It was relentless. The medics, there was nothing they could do
and there were just people coming at them all the time saying,
"Help me, help me!" And we had nowhere to put them,
because our medics tent had basically been taken over.
SYSTEM:It felt like something really special was happening.
My friend got punched, because some guy was like,
"Oi, which way you going?" And he was like, "Calm it, mate".
The he got punched. He was like, "All right."
# Oh, I'm wicked and I'm lazy
# Oh, oh, don't you want to save me? #
EATS EVERYTHING:To watch a bloke commanding, like that...
It was monumental. We couldn't even get...
I was like, a thousand people at least back.
You couldn't get anywhere near it.
CHRIS COCKING:At one point, we nearly lost the sound desk
because just the weight of people meant the Heras fencing broke down,
and the people on the sound desk were coming up to me,
because there were just people dancing right next to it,
going, "Get them away!" Because if the sound goes down,
that's it, the gig's over. And I was frantically radioing through
going, "I need security here, I need security here.
"We're going to lose the sound desk".
And control going, "I'm completely sympathetic to you,
"but we can't get in through the crowd. The crowd is just too big".
KAREN BATEMAN:I had quite a low waist pair of trousers on,
as my G-string... (LAUGHS) Popped out the back,
and Graham's brother Neil lent over and did a little ping!
So I turned around and went, "Oi, cheeky!" And that was it.
We just started talking.
GRAHAM PEARSON:I'm a shy person and Karen is very easy to talk to.
And yeah, I was pretty much grabbed from the start really.
I didn't come down with very high hopes for the day,
and then I found myself having this fantastic experience.
WATTS:Oh. It was magical. That's all I can say.
And some of the setlist he played, he plays It Just Won't Do.
He plays 77 Strings, Sexiest Man in Jamaica, Mint Royale.
But then, he plays Camisra.
(CROWD CHEERING)
PEGG:defining moment in that set for Nick and I
was that he played Camisra, Let Me Show You.
And that was the track we used in Spaced.
We and Nick, "We love this" blah, blah, blah,
and we started jumping up and down and dancing, and whoever was with us
turned and said, "He's playing this for you".
I mean, Nick and I couldn't have been more wreathed in giant smiles.
It was this perfect night.
And everything was perfect, the vibe and the music.
And then, the superstar DJ on the stage was playing a track
just for me and Nick as we were there.
It just doesn't get much better than that.
FROST:Wow, it was amazing. We were just fucking thrilled.
And then, that kicked off just the best night, you know?
HOWELL:I had no way of conceiving how massive the crowd was
at that point. You're just in your little space in your little moment.
Sam was over six feet tall, so I'm like, "Let me get on your shoulders,
"I wanna see what's going on!"
And getting up there, I couldn't see the end of people.
It's hard to put it into words, but it felt like you were part of
this giant organism that is just beyond you,
and you're just this one little part, you know?
I remember feeling overwhelmed with joy,
in being able to share this moment with other people.
CLAXTON:The decision was taken with the event organisers
to finish the event early.
I believe it finished some time after 10pm.
(CHEERING)
STEVENS:I was very, very grateful when I heard Pure Shores coming on.
And I still get goosebumps when I hear it.
And I just thought, "Oh, thank God, it's gonna be over now."
# ..searching places to find
# A piece of something to call mine
# A piece of something to call mine...
ADDERLY:I thought it was just amazing.
Had a good dance. I didn't dance as much as I would have liked to,
because there wasn't enough space. But it was just
one of the best evenings.
# ..is the place I can call mine
# Is the place I can call mine
# Coming closer to you
# I'm moving, I'm coming Can you hear what I hear?
# It's calling you, my dear Out of reach
# Take me to my beach
# I can hear it calling you I'm coming, not drowning
# Swimming closer to you
# I'm moving, I'm coming Can you hear what I hear?
# It's calling you, my dear Out of reach
# Take me to my beach
# I can hear it calling you
# I'm coming, not drowning
# Swimming closer to you... #
COCKING:There was a general consensus that the vibe of the gig
was Fatboy Slim, it was more chilled out,
meant that a norm developed where people were more tolerant
and more accepting, and it was a kind of more convivial atmosphere.
I remember talking to a senior security person afterwards
and he did say to me, "If that had been an Oasis gig,
"we would have been fucked."
SIMM:I remember it being kind of chaotic, looking out, thinking,
"Wow, where are all these people gonna go now?
"How are you getting home?" Jesus!
And thinking, "I'm so glad I don't have to try and get back to London."
HELEN HOWELL:I know someone in the group had a plan.
We rushed through the crowd and ran to the train station.
We were able to get on a train.
When we were waiting for the train to take off,
there were these hordes of people that just climbed
on top of the train, because there was no more space.
And they were prying at the doors, and they were shaking the train.
And it took forever for staff to get them off of the train.
It was definitely one of those scenarios where the potential
for danger was very much present. But that whole day
just feels like a dream to me. Like, everything went so well
that I was like, "Oh, we got on the train and we're safe and we're here.
"We're going to get home! Ha ha, there's people on the train."
And not really being aware of, "Oh, shit, this is a shit show!"
ANNOUNCER:Ladies and gentlemen, fantastic evening.
And now, we want you to go home safely.
Fantastic evening.
Please leave Brighton safe with good memories.
Please do not push, please do not push.
Listen to the police and the stewards.
KEVIN CLAXTON:By this time, we were already tired.
It had been a hot, sticky, difficult evening.
We'd run out of drinking water a long time ago,
and there's no time to refresh or whatever.
We had real trouble getting people safely off the beach.
I saw people slipping and falling underneath people
and getting trodden on.
ANNOUNCER:..start making your way home.
But please don't push.
Listen to the police and the stewards.
ADAM VAUGHAN:Remember having to walk through the crowd,
holding hands in a chain, so we didn't lose each other.
Buzzing still!Yeah. Such a great day.
Yeah, with a suntan as well.
Been on the beach so long! Yeah, some tan lines.
Just the sea of people... Trying to get home!
ANNOUNCER:Please take their advice.
CLAXTON:There were tens of thousands of people
moving off the beach into the town.
Lots had come by rail, and we knew that there weren't
a lot of trains laid on to take people away afterwards.
And very quickly, the gates to the railway station
were shut by the railway company.
We tried to get a few trains in and we did get some trains in.
We had buses laid on to take people I think at least as far as London.
There was a huge operation that went on
to try and get people safely out of the city.
ROB CARRON:At that point, the last buses were in the garage by 12:30.
That particular night, there were no night buses as such.
I think we invented 'em that night to get them through,
due to the number of people that were still around.
We got calls out to the drivers to say, "Those of you that want
"to do extra for us tonight, if you want to do an extra round trip,
"you'll be paid accordingly and it'll all be moved on."
From there, we had to make sure we can get as many people on
as what we could, and try to ensure that those more vulnerable
were getting on to get home.
KAREN BATEMAN:I was meant to go back to London and it was a bit like,
"Wow, I don't think I'm going to get a train at the moment,
"so we'll just hang out on the beach."
Damien disappeared off somewhere, I hung out with Graham and Neil.
We had a couple of beers on the beach, and then we had
a bit of a wander around.
You couldn't move, but the buzz was unreal.
The amount of people that were there, the conversations
taking place, the happiness and the madness of people.
It was just absolutely mental!
The last time I saw anything like that was when I went to Wembley
for the Brighton-Man United cup final. And that's the only time
I've seen that amount of people. Some drivers had never driven
certain routes before, because they'd just now appeared
because we got some drivers to stay on and do extra services.
And we almost came to a decision that if you don't know
where you're going, effectively you know your end goal,
get yourself there, and get back as soon as you can!
Cos I can't see the pavement yet. There's still that many people!
Thankfully, it was a brilliant, a peaceful party.
There was no aggravation, no argument, no trouble.
It was great fun. It was a massive challenge.
And it still ranks as one of my highest memories in my job.
(HUMMING) Oh, is that a video camera?
BATEMAN:It was time, it was starting to get a little bit lighter.
We walked back up towards the train station.
Graham and Neil walked back up with me and, as I was going,
Neil said, "Oh, can I take your number?"
(LAUGHS)
I owe my brother a lot!
More than I can say.So I quickly scribbled it down and was like,
"Yeah, be great to hear from you," looking at Graham!
(LAUGHS) And that was it.
I went off into the night, into the early morning,
got back to West London, showered, straight back into Central London
and did a day's work at my desk, going, "Oh, my God, what a night!"
Can't believe you did that.
CLAXTON:All of us who started that evening at sort of four o'clock
the previous afternoon, didn't generally get off
until five, six, seven o'clock in the morning.
I decided to try and drive along the seafront,
which I did with some difficulty,
because of the rubbish and everything.
The whole beach between the piers
just looked like some huge refugee camp.
BECKY STEVENS:There were just cars abandoned everywhere.
There were just clothes, there were shoes.
It was like people had just disappeared and left everything.
There were bodies of people lying, just sleeping on the ground.
I ended up not going home, because I realised my housemates
were having a party and I went to my mum's instead and hid there,
while trying to work out what on earth...
I just felt like I'd destroyed my hometown.
It felt so awful what happened to the city.
And that was so sad, because it should have been
such a good thing to celebrate.
I drove along there, and then ended up back at home.
And I remember standing there, and then looking down
and realising that I still had my full uniform on.
I had all my kit on...
Kit that I should have left at the police station.
And just thinking...
"I don't know what's gone on,
"I just don't know how we've got through that."
GARRY:The following morning, I had my kids with me.
The tidy-up was going on.
We jumped on our bus and we headed down on holiday for two weeks.
So, the thing I remember most about that was getting a phone call
from Zoe saying, "Why aren't you here?
"Why aren't you dealing with this?"
We had no crisis management strategy.
So, there was an aftermath.
ALEX BRIAULT:I also had another job, where I worked out of town
and had to get up early. I had a pick-up truck at the time,
and I remember driving through the rubbish along the seafront.
And the rubbish being as high as the wheels of my truck.
BECKY STEVENS: So, woke up the next morning.
I spoke to my boss, and he told me that a clean-up was starting,
but he told me to stay at home.
So, I didn't need to come down to work on it.
But I felt incredibly guilty,
because I felt like I had done this to my town.
So, I did go down later on and I went and helped pick up rubbish.
Of course, what happened was that then, the sun didn't stop shining.
So, we could have done with some rain to wash away
the lovely smell of urine that was over the whole beach.
So, it absolutely stunk for about two weeks.
NORMAN: I was mortified. I thought everyone was going to love me
for what we'd done. And the idea they would all hate me...
Literally, don't shit on your own doorstep.
So, I immediately said, "Just whatever it takes,
"I'll pay for the clean-up." Broken glass and piss...
The two things you don't want in your life when you go to the seaside.
NICK STEVENSON:This was written 20 years ago this week, I think.
I know we held the magazine back because we wanted to get this in.
Cos print magazines, the deadlines are really tight.
And to get something in that's new is really difficult.
So, we held back this double page spread to get the story in.
Well, first of all, the headline, Fatboy Slim Is Fucking In Trouble.
When this was happening, all the papers, the kind of buzz
and the media around it was a sort of negative reaction
to what had happened, in a way. People weren't necessarily
celebrating what had happened positively.
They were talking about how Fatboy Slim has to leave the country,
they've caused such a massive mess, or people have been injured.
WATTS:We got into the office on Monday and had a sort of debrief,
and that's when the press had started to come out
that someone had died of a heart attack.
There was lots of aggro.
A lot of false reporting, but we didn't feel euphoric.
We felt broken.
Most people had a good time. There was a few injuries.
But considering that amount of people - there were six arrests,
which is apparently less than there normally is
on a Saturday night in Brighton.
GARRY:There was a lot of distress amongst the services,
amongst the police and amongst the ambulance services,
because they had no control over the situation.
There was a lot of anxiety there, and that fed into the media a bit.
They were available to comment on the event.
They weren't commenting upon it as a musical experience,
a cultural experience. They were commenting on it
as an averted disaster, like a Hillsborough that nearly happened.
An Australian nurse died. She fell off the escarpment.
She'd been at a party after the event,
and had an accident falling off the scarp.
NORMAN: It was a horrible thing, that someone had to die that night.
And the poor girl, Karen, the nurse.
I managed to get in touch with her parents, and I spoke to her mum
and I just said, "Look, I'm so sorry." And she said, "Don't worry.
"It was going to happen. She phoned me earlier that night
"and said, I'm having the best night of my life."
And she said, "Thanks for making the last night of her life
"the best night of her life," which really got me.
But yeah...
I still feel, because I was the reason she was in Brighton
that night, I feel somewhat responsible for her death,
and that will always haunt me.
CLAXTON:The city had to learn from the events of that evening
that had things gone more wrong, it might have been that
several people could have been put more in harm's way.
My own organisation, the police, we had a big debriefing
where events were openly discussed.
There was a council enquiry which I went to and spoke at.
The city as a whole, collectively, came to the view
that an event of that size needed better planning,
and at that scale, shouldn't be allowed to happen on the beach.
What happened on that night was a brilliant event for lots of people,
but it wasn't a great event for everybody.
And it was a traumatic time.
And I think history shouldn't lose sight of that.
NICK STEVENSON:This kind of thing of having a big free party
used to be the norm in the UK. This was part and parcel
of going out at the weekend. This was the late '80s
and early '90s was about. A lot of my generation grew up
when we hadn't ever got to experience the free party scene.
So, we don't know what it's like to turn up to a free party,
and just dance. So it's kind of weird in a way, that suddenly,
out of nowhere, there's this massive free event
that everyone can turn up to, and it's just liberating
and everyone's having a great time. And then immediately,
the morning after, you're like, actually, we're never
going to get to do that ever again.
COCKING:The problems that there were on the day,
and there were massive problems, were to do with infrastructure.
Myself and other people who work in the field of crowd psychology
use this as an example to show, yes, this was a near catastrophe,
but the catastrophe was to do with the infrastructure collapsing.
It was absolutely nothing to do with crowd behaviour,
and it's a very good example, I would say, of the crowd
actually preventing disaster, because there were times
when we had to work with the crowd.
STEVENS:One of the things that came out
after the Big Beach Boutique concert was that there were going to be
no more free, unticketed events in the UK.
We were incredibly lucky that day,
but it was only a short amount of time that there would have been
another free ticketed event, where something
could have gone really wrong. So, I think without Big Beach Boutique
kind of setting the line and making sure that we...
It really helped the industry improve dramatically,
and it has meant that we've gone on in the UK
to have some of the best and safest events in the world.
GARRY:I think one of the nice things I remember was...
Well, the phone didn't stop ringing from all over the planet.
We started to play beaches all around the world.
So, Big Beach Boutique happened in Rio on an even bigger scale.
It happened in Japan. By then, it was selling tickets
and it was a different kind of model.
It wasn't the kind of free spirited, spontaneous, acid house spirit.
It was a bit more organised.
And it just took Norman to another level internationally.
STEVENSON:This party in Brighton was a milestone in dance music.
It was a change in how people perceived DJs
and what they could do. It was not just a turning point
for dance music and DJs, but also for music culture in general.
I think an acceptance that dance music is more than just
sweaty nightclubs or underground raves.
It was something for everybody.
NORMAN: For me, it opened more doors,
just in my relationship with the city.
I kind of thought there might be sections of the community
down here who would hate me, after we almost destroyed the city.
But everyone seemed to love me.
And from then on, everybody I meet walking down the street,
the first thing they'll say is, "When are you going to have
"another beach party?"
Fatboy Slim! (WHOOPING)
Thank you so much, Fatboy Slim!
Fatboy Slim! Yes, man!
# I have to celebrate you, baby
# I have to praise you like I should
# I have to praise you like I should...
NORMAN: I'm still doing this because I genuinely love it.
I love hearing tunes, and just instantly
wanting to share them with other people.
And something very, very powerful happens at raves,
and at parties, where it becomes stronger than the music,
becomes stronger than the sum of the people who are there.
Something happens where the room just becomes this one mass of energy,
and that's what gives me my energy. I kind of feed off that.
It's something that drives me along and something that I am very grateful
that I've been allowed to do for so long.
STEVENS:So, I teach event safety and crowd management at universities.
I often use Big Beach Boutique as an example of an event
that obviously, where things kind of did go wrong,
but what we can learn from it and what we take away from it.
Some of them have never heard of Big Beach Boutique before.
I tell them about it and they are always blown away
by the scale of what happened and the size of it.
# ..I have to praise you like I should
# I have to praise you...
When you're there in the moment, you don't always think about it.
But it's only looking back on it now, you kind of think,
"Wow, that was a huge cultural milestone in our country,
"in our country's history," and I was there.
That for me was the point in my life where I was like,
"I want to do this, I've got to get into this.
Goosebumps already, just thinking about that day, and thinking...
This is just some guy playing records, you know?
But look how happy. I could do that... How hard can it be?
I was 30 years of age and I'd been quite unhappy
for 10 years, really.
Fighting... I was shy, lonely, and I had depression.
This day has completely changed my life.
Completely turned it around from a very, very bad place.
It's hard to put into words. It's just like pure elation, you know?
It's this full spread of me on Sam's shoulders.
It was such a beautiful day, and I felt like that picture
really captured my time that day,
and how a lot of people must have felt.
From a little thing this big.
Grown up to be this fantastic, amazing, kind,
generous rugby player.
Yes, he's doing really well now. He's my little miracle.
NORMAN: I think it's apt that it took 20 years for the council
to allow us back on the pebbles.
The first rule was it can't be free any more.
I would love to do this for free, I don't do this to make money.
I do this because I love this city and I get so much pride in doing it.
But in order to control it, you have to fence it in
and have a certain amount of people. You can't just invite the world.
That was one lesson we learnt.
(CHEERING)
# I have to praise you
# I have to praise you...
AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk