Originally Published in The Sunday Times Magazine on 29th February 1976, Red Saunders’ photographs of Wigan Casino record the dancers, records, clothes and physical demands of a Northern Soul all-nighter.
In 1976, Red Saunders travelled to Wigan Casino on assignment for The Sunday Times Magazine. The resulting feature, written by Gordon Burn and published under the headline “A Hard Week’s Night”, ran across six pages with ten of Red’s photographs.
The commission took him inside the home of Northern Soul during its active life. Wigan Casino was already attracting dancers from across the UK, but it was still a working weekly club. Red photographed the dance floor, the record collecting scene surrounding it and the small hours, when the effects of the all nighter night started to kick-in.
“It was a priceless assignment – a story about Northern Soul and, specifically, the Wigan Casino. It was written by one of my favourite writers on the magazine at that time, Gordon Burn. ‘Keep the Faith’ was the manifesto here, R&B lovers and multi-racial dancing all weekend.” — Red Saunders
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Wigan Casino’s weekly Northern Soul all-nighters began on 23rd September 1973. The building had opened in 1915 as the Empress Ballroom and retained the scale of a large dance hall, with a sprung maple dance floor, balconies and a domed ceiling. By the time Red arrived, it had become a national meeting place for dancers, DJs and record collectors.
The night began long before anyone reached the dance floor. People travelled by train, coach, car and whatever lift they could get, arriving from towns across the North, the Midlands and farther afield.
Sports bags were part of the casino goers assemble. Decorated with club badges and patches and used for spare clothes, shoes and towels. Oxford bags, vests and lightweight shirts allowed room to move, while talcum powder reduced friction on the floor.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Northern Soul centred on records that had often garnered little attention when first released in the States. DJs and collectors searched for scarce 45s by Black American artists, including records pressed on independent labels in small numbers.
The DJ booth was therefore central to the Casino. A newly discovered 45 could fill the floor and send collectors in search for a title or artist. Labels were sometimes covered to prevent rivals from identifying a track. Wigan was the focal point of a national scene held together by the love of the music, all night dancing and records. That culture appears throughout Red’s photographs.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Red did not arrive in Wigan without experience of all-night club culture. As a young Mod in London, he had attended the Flamingo, the Scene Club and the Whisky a Go Go. The Flamingo’s Wardour Street basement brought together modern jazz, rhythm and blues and soul, drawing a mixed audience that included young Mods, Black Londoners and American servicemen. Clothes, records and close attention to detail were as important to the early Mod scene as the desire to dance through the night.
The Soho clubs were physically very different from Wigan Casino, but Red understood the basic structure of an all-nighter: the volume, the heat, the stimulants, the periods of intense activity and the come down that followed. He knew that the chairs, bottles, clothes and tired faces belonged to the story as much as the dance floor.
“I’d been a mod in the early ’60s — pilled-up at all-nighters at the Flamingo Club, the Scene Club, and Whisky a Go Go in Soho. So when I walked into this loud, garish scene, I felt perfectly at home. The girl in the photograph is the very embodiment of the night and the era: just look at her eyes — that’s amphetamine, orange in a Coke bottle. Look at the clothes, the hair, the battered school chair, and the tacky flock wallpaper. It’s all there, perfectly of its time.” — Red Saunders.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Wigan Casino was a demanding place to photograph. Much of the room was dark, broken by ultraviolet lighting and the brief illumination of Red’s flash. The volume made conversation difficult, while the constant movement of the crowd left little time to arrange a picture.
His use of flash brings faces, clothes and immediate surroundings sharply forward while the larger room falls away. The result is a series that feels close to the people in it without losing sight of the scale and intensity of the night.
“Halfway through the night, I had lost my voice – I had been screaming at people all night to be heard above the music. It was quite disorientating, pitch dark and lit only by ultraviolet disco lights, loud, loud music and now and again, my flash popping off, freezing everyone in the darkness. Outside, young lads were still dancing bare-chested in the falling snow. We stumbled into Wigan station around 5 a.m. — post-amphetamine, totally dehydrated, and collapsed.” — Red Saunders.
In one of the best known photographs from the series, a young woman looks directly towards him, her face held in the flash against the darker room with a Coca-Cola bottle strangely containing an orange liquid. Elsewhere, people sit or lie down as the night catches up with them.
“Early morning, the sun is rising outside, and the amphetamine has taken its toll. There is no alcohol, only empty soft drink bottles and cans that the pills get mixed in.”— Red Saunders
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Northern Soul grew through sustained participation in a culture that received limited attention from the national media. Its geography was shaped by industrial towns and a circuit of clubs rather than the London music business. The music was predominantly Black American soul, given a new audience within a British scene that was largely white and working class. Red’s photographs and recollections also record Black participants and a multiracial dance floor. American recordings were being heard and valued within a culture formed by the particular social and economic conditions of 1970s Britain.
Red photographed the Casino five years before it closed in 1981. The pictures are important because they show the venue in use, before its history became fixed around retrospective accounts and familiar symbols. Clothes are creased and damp, bottles collect around the chairs and people alternate between movement and complete exhaustion. The series records what it took to be there.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
The original negatives from the assignment were among the material lost when Red’s studio and much of his archive were destroyed by fire. The Wigan Casino photographs survive through publication material and later copies, which accounts for variations in colour, grain and surface across the series.
British Culture Archive has worked with Red Saunders to digitise, preserve and publish the surviving material. The complete BCA gallery brings the photographs together.
Gordon Burn, “A Hard Week’s Night”, The Sunday Times Magazine, 29th February 1976. Photographs by Red Saunders.
Wigan Casino: The Heart of Northern Soul, Past Forward, Wigan Council.
Wigan Casino Blue Plaque, Wigan Council.
Photo © Red Saunders, all rights reserved.
