You Had to Be There

Jodie Harsh arrived in London aged 15, in 2002, heading straight off the train from Canterbury to her first club night at the Astoria. Intoxicated by this initial taste, she didn’t leave the party for years, falling in with the right wrong people and exploring the sides of London best experienced under cover of darkness.

Throughout the noughties, from Camden and Soho to Mayfair, stretching from Notting Hill to the Hackney Road and Primrose Hill, the city was a messy, beating, slick and sordid melting pot. New music, new fashion, new art, all coming together in a mad heady rush before – and during – the financial crash of 2008. Scenes collided, exploded, were reborn and shaped, all across the city, at rapid speed.

Harsh grabs us by the hand and leads us back to those decadent times, from the Astoria to The Cross, the Soho Revue Bar to Mahiki, Boombox to The End and her famous friends’ houses; to a time before social media and cameraphones were ubiquitous, and a life without their perpetual scrutiny allowed for a more liberated, hedonistic and creative existence. You had to be there, and Jodie Harsh was. Every single night.