Edinburgh Fringe: Lemon Jelly DJ Fred Deakin Celebrates ‘90s Club Culture

DJ Fred Deakin of Lemon Jelly fame celebrates ‘90s club culture in his immersive Fringe debut. Words by Fiona Shepherd.

Fred Deakin's Club Life

You’ve heard of gig theatre – probably, if you’ve spent any time at the Fringe. Band on stage, part of the plot, rocking out during scenes, more devil horns than jazz hands. Now brace for a new hybrid - club theatre. Club Life, taking over Summerhall’s Tech Cube Zero space nightly during the Fringe, is a two-and-a-half hour immersive celebration of clubbing hosted by Fred Deakin, a man of many musical enterprises, though probably still best known as one half of Noughties electronic duo Lemon Jelly.

“A lot of my traditional fanbase are asking, ‘is it a club? Is it a show?’ It’s definitely a show,” says Deakin. “To be doing my Fringe debut in my fifties is really cool.”

Club Life is a personal - and communal - celebration of Deakin’s pre-Lemon Jelly career as a DJ and club-runner in London but especially in Edinburgh where he studied and stayed for ten years from 1984 – “a seminal time,” he says. “I stepped off the train and it just hit me, I knew. I was a real culture vulture and, musically, it was exploding so there was a lot I had my eye on. But I just fell in love with the city, it was as simple as that.”

Deakin made his own idiosyncratic contribution to the culture of Edinburgh, running a succession of club nights which stood against the prevailing winds and developed a distinct, witty, often downright perverse identity, bolstered by his colourful poster designs which plastered the city centre’s hoardings.

There was Blue (“very groovy acid jazz club, very moody”), Thunderball (“probably the best club I’ve ever run – we just hit a very joyful wave”) and Wild Life (“determinedly funky – hip-hop and soul and jazz – while rave was exploding”).

For a time Deakin’s signature was to present an alternative to the burgeoning revolution that was house music. Eventually, he caved in and played Crystal Waters’ classic Gypsy Woman – twice an evening.

“You couldn’t resist the tsunami,” he says. “It was very welcoming and a lot of what I’ve been about in clubs is demolishing elitism. I don’t think I’ve ever been too cool for school in my career and house was really democratic. It blew up any notion of London being dominant in culture - it’s national now and everyone’s into it.”

Arguably Deakin’s least cool club was also his most celebrated. Misery was an early Nineties club night built on bad records and dubious style. He and his wingman Murray McKean doubled down with ridiculous themes such as Metal Night (self-explanatory), or The Greatest Love, an evening of slow dances. “When I moved out of the slow dance phase, it was like the end of the war – we lived through three hours of The Lady In Red and Move Closer…”

The desperado duo smoked out the Venue on Vietnam night – decorated with old tyres, half price entry for veterans, Ride of the Valkyries on the playlist and McKean intoning “the horror the horror” at regular intervals. But there was better/worse to come…

“Accident & Emergency night was the peak,” reckons Deakin. “Murray was dismantling a fridge in the middle of the dancefloor and he cut open his stomach and actually had to go to A&E. He came back after he was treated and bandaged up and got a hero’s welcome because he committed to finish off the night, so dedicated was he to his craft. I loved running clubs in Edinburgh.”

Deakin describes his experience over those ten years in the city as “a lovely virtuous circle.” He loved it so much, he returned periodically in the late Nineties to marshal Going Places, an easy listening heaven in the ABC cinema on Lothian Road with hundreds of punters dressed up in their best retro threads. “It felt very Edinburgh,” he says. “It was very friendly and generous and the music was very emotional. I used to get lot of gems from the car boot sale opposite John Lewis.”

Deakin freely admits his club running days are behind him. In recent years, he has lectured in digital arts and runs a studio specialising in creative technologies. Lemon Jelly were retired in 2008 but, in 2019, Deakin released a solo ambient soul sci-fi concept album called The Lasters with accompanying animation.

Like so many other ventures, the project’s prospects were scuppered by the pandemic. But like so many other creatives, Deakin was determined that some good should come out of lockdown, particularly for the beleaguered nightclub sector. “It was such a miserable time and clubs got such a pasting,” he says. “They were the artform that got no bailout and they were the most affected – no one was going to go to a club until everything was sorted.”

Clubbing represents much of what was restricted during the lockdowns – community, family, euphoria, escapism and the liberating pleasure of expressing yourself on the dancefloor. Club Life knows you want to, even – or perhaps especially – if you feel you are too old to go clubbing. “The audience are living it because they are sitting there thinking ‘am I supposed to dance?’ That journey is part of what everyone goes through when they grew into themselves in those spaces.”

“I’ve always treasured that time running clubs,” says Deakin. “It taught me everything I knew, though I didn’t realise I was learning anything, I was just having a great time doing what I loved. But looking back, it established some basic principles about joy and community and collaboration and all of that came out of the clubbing. I thought it was right to honour those times and all that creativity and the partnership I got from all the people who came to the clubs.

“Because clubs are not a solo artform – you can’t put a club on on your own. If half a dozen people come to your theatre show, your gig even, you can still have a pretty good show. But half a dozen people in a club is a shit club.”

Club Life is at Summerhall, 9pm, 2-27 August.