Gay
It seems odd, though, that after vocally championing the cause of 'real' disco music for fifteen years, Levine should have ended up producing the likes of Take That, or involving himself with the soul-by numbers game-plan of The Pasadenas remember them?). It only begins to make sense when you realise that, for lan, house music now has no connection at all with disco, or with British gay culture. It wasn't always so: "I remember being told off for playing house at Heaven in 1986. A few hip people were into it, but the majority didn't understand it. I'd just come back from the US, and had seen Darryl Pandy performing 'Love Can't Turn Around'. It was amazing: he stood there like a male Patti Labelle - an outrageous diva and a wonderful soulful vocalist." To lan, this meeting of performance, soaring vocals and a song that was saying something gave the early house records a hook into the disco past. And the song itself, like so many others of that era, was somewhere between a cover and a rip off of a cult disco track here, Isaac Hayes' 'I Can't Turn Around'. "But by 1988 it had become all beat and no song; it lost it all." So what did house bring to the British gay scene? Ian shakes his head and speaks v-e-r-y slowly. ""Look, house in Britain was never a gay thing; it was a straight white thing." --Dave Lubitch
Gospel
A gigantic college trained vocalist, Darryl Pandy was boasting about his new record. He had left the choir a few weeks before to sing lead vocals on Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around", which against all odds was racing to the number 1 spot on British charts. House had its roots in gospel and its future mapped out. -- Stuart Cosgrove [...]
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