Golden History

March 7th 1992

Jon Hill and his friends Joe and Jason, inspired by Sasha’s performances at Shelley’s, decide to start their own club. Golden opens at a 100-capacity venue called Peppers above a heavy rock club in Stoke-On-Trent. “We thought we’d give it a go, there was no great career plan,” recalls Hill. “We did have an idea that we wanted to weld together the Balearic Network that was happening at places like Most Excellent and Venus with the big warehouse feel of The Hacienda and Shelley’s.” An unknown Nottingham DJ called Allister Whitehead headlines. Kelvin Andrews and Pete Bromley are residents.

July 1992

Golden moves to Liberty’s in Stoke. The capacity is now 700 and the club starts to make its name, pulling in big name guest DJs like Mike Pickering, Dave Seaman and Farley & Heller. Golden appears in Mixmag: “It’s a wild party atmosphere,” writes Dan Prince. “People getting drunk, football songs, rock music, water pistols, carpet kissing and indoor fireworks. The works. “The club adopts a revolutionary pose with Chė Guevara, Karl Marx and Mao Tse-Tung appearing on flyers, adverts and massive banners in the club. Design is to become a key part of the club’s success.

January 1993

For 12 months Kelvin Andrews’ last record of the night has been Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family’ and it is now the club’s anthem. (Andrews is to eventually remix it for Top five success). Sister Sledge are booked to perform at Golden’s first night at the new, purpose-built Academy. By 8pm 1,000 people are queuing outside and later Jon Hill looks out from the DJ box “at an amazing wall of people.” He say to his partner Jason Leake; “We’ve created a monster.” The club’s flyers meanwhile flirt with football imagery, coming in AC Milan, Inter Milan, St Etienne, Barcelona and Stoke strip colours.

January 19th 1994

Golden is voted ‘Club Of The Year’ at the International Dance Awards at The Apollo in London. Dan Prince writes in the show’s brochure: “The last 12 months have seen Golden rise from obscurity to one of the leading house nights in the UK. The dancefloor is a sea of hands and the cheering and bellowing are deafening to the ear. Good old friendly clubbing with a touch of class.”

January 1994

Jon Hill quits his job as part-time English lecturer to work on Golden full-time, trading in Macbeth, Seamus Heaney and Romeo & Juliet to become the club’s sole boss. The club is offered another new venue, The Cube in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Hill books Ibiza hero Josė Padilla for the Winter as back room resident, with Kelvin Andrews and Pete Bromley as main room hosts alongside guest DJs like Mark Moore, Andrew Weatherall and Justin Robertson. The club’s design now goes Pop Art crazy. For the opening night 2,500 people turn up. For Golden’s Second Birthday, Hill books Allister Whitehead, John Kelly, Danny Tenaglia and CJ Mackintosh. It is one of those very special nights; music and madness combining in hedonistic synergy. The club owners have never seen anything like it be decide inexplicably to sack Golden that night. “We had 1,500 people and the next week they had 75,” gloats Hill now. “And they put a big sign outside saying, ‘Golden Is Silenced!”

April 1994

Golden moves back to The Academy with a 1,500 capacity and three rooms. “We were the biggest club in Britain at that point,” claims Hill. Jon Pleased, Nick Warren, Jeremy Healy all turn up regularly to play in the main room with James Lavelle, Slam’s Orde and Stuart, as well as Harri in The Lounge. The musical policy is focused on house but still open-minded. “There used to be some quite jarring juxtapositions between the styles,” recalls Hill. “I remember Allister Whitehead went on after David Holmes once, which was a bit of a shock but it seemed to work. We had Andrew Weatherall DJing and D:Ream playing one night.”

July 1995

Golden is sacked by The Academy – “which I won’t go into for legal reasons,” stonewalls Hill – and thus runs out of venues in Stoke. Hello then, Sankey’s Soap in Manchester. Some, however, are cautious about the city’s ‘Gunchester’ reputation. “I’ll be honest,” concedes Hill, “we did have certain problems for the first six months convincing a lot of DJs they would be safe in Manchester. There was a massive stigma attached to it. We also lost quite a bit of the travelling contingent but by January of last year, we’d got over that and we haven’t looked back since.” By Summer 1996 the club is packed every week.

January 1997

As other Northern clubs tinker with their DJ policy at the beginning of 1997, Golden sticks to its guns with commercial house music, albeit now with harder DJs like Tall Paul, Tony de Vit and Luke Neville coming to the fore. The second room opens in November 1996, allowing DJs like Derek Dahlarge, Annie Nightingale and regulars Complete Communion to offer a different sound. Which on the club’s Fifth Birthday means Kelvin Andrews playing Beck records to arm-waving, looped out excitement. “The atmosphere now,” says Hill, “is similar to when we won Club Of The Year. We’re running at a peak.” A third room is scheduled to open in 1998.