‘It was wonderfully innocent': Boy's Own, the fanzine that defined the acid house generation

The Guardian

14-02-2025

When Andrew Weatherall suddenly died in February 2020, the outpouring of grief was monumental. The DJ and producer was a revered figure, known for producing and remixing indie-dance crossover acts such as Primal Scream, as well as being a curatorial guru on everything from thumping techno to deep dub via obscure rockabilly. His status as an influential and beloved music figure even garnered him the nickname the Guv'nor. But prior to this he went under another name: the Outsider.
This was his nom de plume as a writer for the fanzine Boy's Own, which launched back in 1986. In the first issue Weatherall set out its intentions: 'We are aiming at the boy (or girl) who one day stands on the terraces, the next stands in a sweaty club, and the day after stays in bed and reads Brendan Behan while listening to Run-DMC.'
Founded by Weatherall, Terry Farley, Steve Mayes, Steve Hall, and Cymon Eckel, the intention was to document their own world, a predominantly working-class one, in a way that they didn't see being covered by the music weeklies or glossy monthlies. It was a boisterous and scrappy mixture of football, fashion, music, clubbing, politics and biting humour. Almost 40 years on from that first issue, and five since the sad passing of Weatherall, the collective have reprinted a hardback collection of all the fanzines, as well as launching a new line of Boy's Own clothing.
Initially, Boy's Own was sold in pubs, clubs, warehouse parties and football terraces but 'nobody bought it', recalls Farley. 'It was very niche – just us talking about our mates.' The gang had all bonded growing up on the outskirts of London, in Slough and Windsor, as a hodgepodge suburban crew of soul boys, football casuals, clothes obsessives and ardent clubbers. Every Friday they took acid at 9pm and hit London – a tradition known as 'the nine o'clock drop'; years later this would also be the name of a compilation album Weatherall released.
It would take a widespread youth culture phenomenon for things to really blow up for Boy's Own. 'A few people identified with it but it didn't kick in until acid house happened,' recalls Eckel. 'Then it went fucking wild.' By their spring 1988 issue – featuring a front cover of a bunch of young kids, one in a Boy's Own T-shirt, in front of a brick wall with graffiti reading 'drop acid not bombs' – they were publishing articles such as Bermondsey Goes Balearic by Paul Oakenfold, exploring the burgeoning scene in London around clubs like Shoom and Future, as well as chronicling his adventures in Ibiza.
Two to three thousand copies of each issue were printed and the publication quickly became something of a scene bible, complete with its own in-jokes, digs and unique lexicon, so much so that by 1989 Weatherall even wrote a handy guide to the definitions of commonly used slang, such as 'Log: If you don't know what one is, you are one.' Its tagline – 'The only fanzine that gets right on one, matey' – soon became a staple saying for those in the know around drug culture. The message even spread overseas, with German outfit the Beat Pirate releasing the acid house track Are You on 1 Matey? 'It was just a bit of humour and fun,' says Hall. 'But it became the language that kids were using to explain this new experience.'
In 1988, with the second summer of love around the corner for a new generation, Boy's Own was about to graduate from making DIY magazines to throwing legendary parties. That spring Eckel was working as a carpenter on a video shoot for George Michael when he had an industrial accident and lost a finger. While he was in a specialist reconstructive surgery ward he became friends with another young person there who had trapped his fingers in a credit card machine. They bonded 'over music and drugs' and would sneak a spliff every Friday at the back door of the hospital. Through this connection, Eckel learned of a guy who owned a studio in a barn that he also threw parties in.
Soon enough the Boy's Own crew, operating as the Karma Collective 'because we didn't do branding then', were throwing their own. They landed in the Berkshire countryside and laid out hay bales, blew up a bouncy castle and set up a pumping sound system. The end result they describe as 'part-rave, part-punk gig and part-garden party', which brought together 'football lads, punks, fashionistas and the wide-eyed ravers who were discovering ecstasy for the first time'.
It was a combination that few had experienced before. 'It was definitely the first time I'd been to an acid house party that was outdoors,' recalls Hall. Boy George could be heard singing a cappella in the early hours as the sun rose and when the police arrived at about 8am – to find a group of smiling, dancing young people in smiley face-covered bright clothes and bandanas listening to squelchy electronic sounds – they didn't have a clue. 'They just told us to keep it down and be careful when driving home,' recalls Farley. 'It all looked quite innocuous to their eyes – no alcohol and just people lounging about in a beatific sort of way.'
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The parties continued and the crew was soon in huge demand. Such was their growing reputation for spinning killer records and having their finger on the pulse that Weatherall and Farley started to be hired as producers and remixers for the likes of Happy Mondays, New Order, the Farm and Primal Scream. Between 1990 and 1993 London Records gave them their own label to play with, on which they released music by Bocca Juniors, Jah Wobble, DSK and Denim, but the success didn't match up to the work the crew had done for other labels and they became fed up with one another. They wrapped up the fanzine in 1992, the same year that Hall and Farley started their own independent label, Junior Boy's Own, which signed the Chemical Brothers and Underworld before the label was split into two in the late 1990s, before things wound down in the mid-2000s.
In hindsight, Boy's Own was something of an all-encompassing lifestyle brand before such a thing was commonplace: a magazine spanning music, politics, fashion and their own subculture, that released records, signed artists and threw parties. But all they wanted to do at the time was be creative and have fun. 'I'm proud that we did it for the sake of doing it, as opposed to for commercial ends,' says Eckel. 'It was wonderfully innocent. We could have been Cream or Ministry of Sound, but we just did things we believed in.'
It still takes Farley by surprise how a bunch of working-class lads, made up of gas fitters and carpenters, created something that connected on such a profound cultural level. 'This guy recently pulled his sleeve down and he had a Boy's Own tattoo,' he recalls. 'And he's like: 'I love you guys'. I didn't know what to say. I smiled, it made me laugh, but it also made me kind of go: 'Fuck! This was important to people. A lot of people. And if we in any way influenced other people to do better things in their lives then it was more than worth it.'
When Weatherall wrote the introduction to the final ever issue of Boy's Own, he was able to write his own obituary. 'It's with sadness (and a slight smirk) that I must announce the death of The Outsider,' he began, before painting a scenario of a body discovered around a pile of King Tubby records and Boy's Own back issues. Sadly, Weatherall didn't get to plan out his own ending in such detail, but being surrounded by music, words and his own creative output feels like a fitting, and symbolic, closing chapter. 'We miss him,' says Hall. 'But I think he'd be proud to this day of what Boy's Own achieved.'
Boy's Own clothing and fanzines are available from boysownproductions.com