Sean McClusky - Promoter of Merry England & Love Ranch

If London’s square mile of clubland has a king at the moment, he’s a punk king and his name’s Sean McClusky. Hyped as the Rupert Murdoch of London nightlife and the Joseph Stalin of capital clubbing, Sean smiles wryly at such compliments. The reason, of course, is the phenomenally successful Merry England at the revamped Cafe De Paris. This together with the long-standing success of Love Ranch, just down the road at Maxims, makes Sean a prospect not to be trifled with.

Sean McClusky is a name which has been regularly appearing in club columns since the early 80s, although the venues he worked then were nothing to write home about; obscure Caribbean clubs like The Palm Tree in Edmonton and Paddocks Snooker Club over at Holborn. The first thing he did was Whiskey A-Go-Go, a small jazz, funk and soul bar in 1982 at the place they call the Wag Club. Some may even remember him as the ginger haired one in near-seminal 80s pop band jobbers.

We're sitting on stools by the door of Love Ranch Grimesby, part-time doorman, part-time DJ, has his hands full keeping out the riff rafff although it’s cold outside and the crowd's nothing like it normally is. Across the square at Merry England, it‘s a different proposition altogether. The queue snakes past McDonald's and into the back of beyond, occasionally it collectively shivers, dressed (or rather undressed) as it is for the occasion.

Merry England opened its doors only last New Year’s Eve. ln choosing the name, Sean was influenced by Peter Gatian's new USA club, which had just got off to a riotous start in New York. "I thought that was quite a good name, originally it was going to be called England. But l wanted to make it a bit more comical, light-hearted."

The Cafe, home of Josephine Baker and the Charleston, suits it nicely. 20 foot banners of Elizabeth l, Walter Raleigh and Henry Vlll adorn the dance-floor, the slightly shabby interior gives it a comfortable air. But the place hasn't seen anything yet. Sean wants to work his way through history.

“Weʼre probably going to go into a British Empire phase soon, wear kilts and turbans," he says. "Carry On Up The Cyber - that sort of thing. It's ludicrous, really. What a stupid name for a club!"

But it works. With 15 years of experience going out in London behind him, Djing, remixing, working in and with bands (most recently If?), Sean's in a position to know.

Prior to Love Ranch there was, of course, the very successful Brain. Number 11 Wardour Street was originally a rent boy bar, until Sean and his present day partner, Mark Wigan, redesigned the interior and invited all their friends along for a party which lasted one and a half years. But the owners got greedy and wanted it all for themselves. Universal story. Sean isn't sad, reckoning that the life expectancy of a place is fairly limited anyway. "Two years maximum and then your crowd's moved on to another venue."

Four years on, to what does he attribute his long-term (by London’s fickle club scene standards) success? "l'm just on a roll at the moment," he shrugs. "After a while, you can analyze it but when we first started the Brain Club, it was more instinctive. We just put on a party that you'd want to be invited to yourself and make it expensive. Spend don’t skimp."

Spend to Sean means the best DJs - "Danny Ramping, Justin Robertson, Andy Weather and Mark More, the top batch," playing a selection of progressive British House, with Rad Rice resident at Love Ranch and Dominic Moire and Lisa Loud at Merry England. It also means an extensive guest list comprising, not so much celebrities as regulars, characters and “people who are great to have around." That, in his opinion, is what’s kept Love Ranch going. That and his anarchic tendencies.

"I just like shoving things together, which don‘t go. At Love Ranch, we coupled punk rock with acid house. Where everyone else was all hippy trippy computer generated images on flyers, we were going for pop art, punk rock, Andy Warhol, death and destruction - things that didn't go with that peace and love thing. I think I'm just a bit more honest or maybe that was just an illusion created by the drugs."

A new idea is the creation of a club with two contrasting rooms, a house room and a rock room. Having recently acquired a couple of bands, The Disco Assassins and Trafalgar, Sean is keen on incorporating a rock element into the clubs believing that there's simply not enough energy given off by keyboard acts. This already works well at Merry England, although it keeps him running across Leicester Square, between the two clubs, when the PA blows up. "That queue for Equinox, in the middle, that really pisses me off."

Such Equinox straights would surely have a heart attack were they to wander into Love Ranch. Although not as raunchy as it once was, bikini clad models are still to be seen. This is thanks to the idiot-free door policy which keeps the girlies from getting groped. “Unless, of course," adds Sean, “they want to be."

Getting into Love Ranch was at one time harder than getting into Gam in a Joe Bloods shell-suit. Although it's not so intense now, Grimsby still operates a mean door. Sean answers accusations of elitism philosophically. "In Leicester Square, you've got every sort of person in the world passing through, a lot of them have never heard of Love Ranch. l just think people have Mohave the right attitude, it’s all in the eyes.” Got out of that one then.

Having conquered this corner of Leicester Square (apart from the pesky Equinox), the question is can he keep it up? Seemingly so. Coinciding with the New Music Seminar, there's a Merry England trip to New York's USA club in the offing, complete with silly costumes and The Disco Assassins. There are the bands, a possible record label and all the other parties.

"I like the intensity of nightlife, it's what keeps me young," says Sean. "I just want to be a teenager. The only way to make things go forward is to destroy things that've been there already." A true anarcho.