When my wife and I go to raves, we’re usually the oldest people there – I’m 60 and Tonia is 58. There is one chap in his mid-70s who we see at events on a regular basis – and it’s not Mick Jagger, who was spotted partying at south London spot Horse Meat Disco last month.
We are not alone. A poll of 2,000 adults by the ticket platform Eventbrite found that 2.6 million Britons over the age of 45 go clubbing at least once a week and 40% say they have more stamina than ravers half their age. Part of it is that the clubbing population has aged and they are continuing to go to the events.
I started raving in the late 80s, when you’d turn up at a service station, follow the leader around the motorway and end up at an abandoned barn somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I stopped going in my late 40s, about the time I met Tonia and moved in with her and her four-year-old son. She was also caring for her father, so we didn’t do a lot of the going out together that most couples do at the start of a relationship.
One of the events I used to go to was the Gatecrasher night in Sheffield. In 2016, they had a 23rd anniversary event, and Tonia agreed to come. She had done a lot of clubbing, so she wasn’t averse to the idea of going out dancing all night.
For me, it was like coming home. It’s a very welcoming, warm atmosphere and I didn’t feel awkward being one of the oldest people there. People usually ask me how old I am, then tell me that I’m inspirational and that they hope they’re still enjoying partying when they’re my age. It’s lovely, but it can be a bit of a nuisance when what would be a three-minute walk between rooms takes 20 minutes because so many people want to talk to us.
A night out is also exhausting. A typical event will last eight or nine hours. We pace ourselves and we’ll dip in and out and drink plenty of water. But the music and atmosphere energises me. I couldn’t run a mile, but this gives me loads of exercise. Since I’ve been going, I’m sure it’s contributed to me losing more than five stone.
I love the music – trance in particular tends to be quite melodic. There will be a point in the tune where it gets a little bit floaty, then it builds up and there’s a great big wallop, and it’s very hard for me to stand still for it. But mostly I love it because of the people – we’ve made friends from all over the world through it. When we got married last year, we hosted a trance event in a local club.
When I was younger, as long as the music was reasonably fast and I could jump up and down to it, I wasn’t that picky. Nowadays, I tend to go more to the trance nights because I think a whole event of hardcore – which has a really fast tempo – would actually kill me.
