ABSTRACT
The other thing is a lot of the records that took off had drug references in them. That was another peculiar side to the Northern Soul Scene. Records like ‘Blowing My Mind To Pieces’, ‘Blowing Up My Mind’, ‘Cracking Up Over You’, ‘Ten Miles High’… ‘Gotta get my gear out, ready for winter’s near’. When I’d be going to these places with Rod and Sid and Smithy and Scotty, that’s all they’d talk about. They’d be as high as kites. Those were the parts of the records they’d sing: ‘Gotta get my gear out!’ It was all part of the journey there. It was the song itself that was getting me off, but they were getting off to someone else. It’s like that with acid house I suppose …
The term ‘Northern Soul’ was first used in 970 by Dave Godin, a journalist at the niche market magazine Blues & Soul, providing comment that blended musical knowledge with social awareness of the roots of black American music. His enthusiasm for the many excellent soul records released in the mid-960s that had failed to sell to a British market dominated by the success of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others, but were finding a new audience at clubs like the Twisted Wheel, led to a difference of opinion with another soul journalist, Tony Cummings, then at Record Mirror. Godin later recalled how Cummings had criticised his enthusiastic article about music played at the Twisted Wheel for championing ‘black hits with no soul.’ In June 970, Godin responded by saying that the soul scene was totally split and in doing so named what would become the Northern Soul Scene. Frank Elson’s Blues & Soul column, and
club advertisements, in early 973 showed that the ‘northern’ term had not become common currency. In October 973, Elson apologised for using it, adding that ‘there really is no better way of putting it’ (B&S ).
