This is from a Stephen Allkins interview by Jim Poe, originally published for In the Mix back in 2013. The website is no longer online, sadly, so we just wanted to re-share this as it was one of our favorite chats with an icon of the Sydney music scene—and such a great interview by our good friend DJ Jim Poe. He understands music in such unique way, having seen the evolution of disco and house while living and growing up in New York City; he’s a DJ and music head who really gets music. It was great to hear him tell his story all those years ago.

Jim Poe is a New York House head, DJ, editor, film programmer who now calls Sydney home. He’s seen the evolution of the disco & house scene living & partying in New York; he lives here now, and it was great to see him tell this story through his unique understanding of the music culture.

The Birth of Sydney Clubbing as told by STEPHEN ALLKINS written

by Jim Poe for In The Mix (2013)

Stephen Allkins (Love Tattoo) is considered by those who know as dance-music royalty in Sydney. Delve a little into his long, long career and you start to understand why. He was dancing to disco before it was even called that as a teenager on the burgeoning gay scene in the Darlinghurst of the mid-’70s. Soon his passion for the music – and his growing record collection – led him to get behind the decks and take on a number of residencies. For decades afterwards, Allkins ruled as an innovator on his hometown scene – helping to break successive waves of crucial new sounds to the clubbing masses both gay and straight, from garage to electro and postpunk to house.

At the turn of the millennium, Allkins applied his long experience to finally producing his own tracks as [Love] Tattoo. Beginning with 1999’s History of Disco on Pete Tong’s Essential imprint, Allkins’ output led to a series of hit records, wider recognition on the international stage, and a 2001 AMA Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance in Australia. He’s now happily semi-retired, playing just a few times a year.

As an expat I had a lot to learn about Allkins’ 35 years of moving bodies on the dancefloors of Sydney town, and so I jumped at the chance to talk to him in person. The warm, gregarious and wryly funny Allkins sat down with me in his Darlinghurst flat one afternoon and, with hardly any prompting, proceeded to spin one fascinating tale after another about the early days. His enthusiasm for nightlife and music of all kinds is infectious – and his knowledge of classic records is encyclopaedic. But it’s not mere nostalgia – his reminiscences are filled with eerily sharp and clear glimpses of what the music meant to not only a city but a world exploding with cultural, political and sexual awareness.

Our conversation began with Allkins telling me he’s just finished selling his collection of 10,000 records in preparation for his upcoming relocation to the country.

Why did you decide to sell your records?

Well, I DJ’d for 35 years; and three and half years ago, I moved into this place, and I remember lugging 50 boxes of records into this place, setting it up yet again. And I just looked at it, and without thinking, [I said], “Man, I can’t do this again.” And you know when you mean it? … Because I’ve had music all my life, and I’m just slowing down. Vinyl’s not a viable medium anymore, no matter what anybody says, and I’ve just lugged them everywhere… And I realised it’s not about the format, it’s about the music. I’ve got a lot of it on file, one way or the other, so as long as I can hear it I don’t care.

Were there any that were more painful than others to get rid of?

No, no, because I loved them all. Like I said I’ve DJ’d for 35 years, and gone out since 1976 and clubbing has been my life. Once you decide to let go you don’t sort of pick and choose, you just go, “It’s all gone.”

So it was all or nothing.

Yeah. And it’s very cathartic… It was three tons of records… It took up three rooms… The last couple of years, just about every time I’ve done a gig, they go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got turntables!” Yeah, sitting on the floor gathering dust! And then they plug them in and they don’t work. So, I started doing two sets for any gig, because I’d do a vinyl set, and then I’d do a [digital set]. And I thought, this is just ridiculous. And vinyl is – you know, I hate to be contrary – but it’s a romantic thing. And when you lived it for 38 years – well, all my life I’ve been buying records. So it’s not format, it’s about having Patti Labelle in your collection, not how you’ve got her.

Did you mull over the decision to sell them all for a while?

Yeah, for three and a half years, since I moved in here… I tried to give them to institutions, because it’s the best collection in Australia. I’d been buying 12-inches [for decades]. I was buying two years before I started DJing, because I loved it so much, that’s how I got into DJing – I was actually forced into it by friends because I had so many records. 12-inches had just started – technically it was a year before disco, and the first club I ever went to was an underground gay club. I just fell into it at the age of 15. I’ve got all of that shit – and I always played underground music, so I’ve got, you know the first house records, electro, disco, funk and garage. I played all those styles when they were out – and before everybody else. I used to get pooh-poohed every time. And then five years later, the same people who would go, “Oh, why do you play garage, I don’t get it!” – they’d be all playing it.

What was the scene like in the ’70s in Sydney?

There wasn’t really a scene in the ’70s. There was really only one gay club. But it was one of the best clubs I’ve ever been to in my life. [It was called] Patches. I was 15, and I’d left school in Year 10, because I just didn’t want to learn anymore, I wanted to be in the world. And my best friend [and] cousin – we were both gay but we didn’t tell each other – he started going to a public school in 1976. So our whole lives changed because he was introduced to gay people, drugs and sex at school. And these outrageous kids… One night, one of the gay kids [said], “I’m taking you to a gay club.” And we fell into this club called Patches, which I didn’t even know existed – it was before Oxford Street was Oxford Street. And I walked in at the age of 15 and it changed my whole life, because I discovered real gay, real music, sex, everything, all in one night. And the music the DJ played was flawless. And I went, “I’m home.” And you know, the DJ that played there – his name was Lee Reiger – would play five-hour sets Friday and Saturday from 10 until 3, and he was already in the record pools in America in 1976. Never played anything on the Top 40 – nothing. And he would play one set on a Friday night, and you wouldn’t hear the same records on a Saturday.

What kind of music? What were some of the tracks?

Well, I could give you a whole lot of titles… Song of India by World War II was huge. Turn on to Love by Jumbo was huge. I just hit at such a great time, just as Giorgio [Moroder] was hitting, just as the European sound was hitting. There was the Munich sound, there was the Montreal sound, there was the New York sound – and you knew them. When you’d hear Boney M, as opposed to Giorgio Moroder, or Silver Convention as opposed to The Hustle, or as opposed to Philly. I was discovering this naturally, not as a trend, because there was no trend. And so you just loved whatever – I loved music from the time I was born more than anything. And so to fall into this place – I went, “Oh my God,” From day one I fell into it, and [Reiger] was my first big influence.

And there were import stores in Australia in ’76. They were small, but they were good, and so they had that disco/funk as well as rock and stuff like that. There was all that Philly, funk… It was all meshing in together. The thing that brought disco together – I’ll never forget – was the kick. And the first official disco record I ever heard was Come Into My Heart by the USA/European Connection, which is a Boris Midney production. And what differentiated that from any other record I’d ever heard was the kick. Because this record – it was 14 minutes long, and it started going just boom boom boom, with nothing, just a kick, and I went, “What the fuck’s that?” And that was when disco hit, for me, with that [kick].

It was all funky and Philly and this and that, and it was all leading to [disco], right at the same time… Things like Turn on to Love by Jumbo, which was another 15-minute [record], very sexy, a bit more Euro, a bit Love to Love You Baby. The length of records started it. And then Giorgio hit you with From Here to Eternity and I Feel Love. You heard so much. Chic came out in 1976, which sounded like nothing else you’d ever heard. So I’m hearing all this, and just sucking it all in.

[Reiger] left and came back a couple of years later, and he’s still playing all the bombs – but then playing Neon Lights by Kraftwerk in the middle of the night, and Miss You by the Rolling Stones… Dolly Parton had a disco record. The good stuff, they were great records – still are great records.

So you didn’t need a scene in the ’70s, you just needed one place to go to… Patches was the one great club, and when Lee went, it died.

And then you were propelled into mixing because you’d been collecting a lot of records?

Well, I just spent all my money on records, and I had a couple of hundred records by 1978. In the old days, it was almost a rite of passage that you would stop work and go on the dole for six months. Because you could just sign on, and it was so cheap to live in Darlinghurst – like I could pay my rent, food, bills and still have, say, $15 a week. Which was a lot, you know. Patches was free to get into, and I would go out every night. I quickly discovered I love the nightlife, as they say, so it wasn’t a hassle. It was easy to go, “Oh, I can’t do this day thing, I can’t work.” That was what a lot of people did, and it became a trend – that’s why hairdressing and [waiting tables] became huge. You would develop a lifestyle around going out. It was a serious thing – you just loved that whole environment of the night, the music… fashion, art, politics, all these things were meshing as well. For me, the famous example is the Paradise Garage. You had Larry doing music, you had Grace [Jones] and Sylvester as the icons, and then you had Keith Haring as the artist who went there. They all influenced each other very organically back then.

There was a revolution happening socially, politically, sexually, on so many [levels] – and Sydney, more than Australia [as a whole], was this epicentre of amazingness. Because we’re so far away from the rest of the world we don’t have the same… America’s very insular, and they only know what they know and they’re the best, and in some ways that is amazing. But you cut yourself off as well. And England wasn’t the clubbing capital it is now – it was very dire. But we had beaches and sun and cheap living, and we had a larrikin attitude. And so the amazingness would come together.

The next club I went to was Stranded, and that was the first club I really worked at. Now that was incredible… Get this, it was in the Strand Arcade, in the basement, where JB HiFi is now. That entire bottom floor was this fuck-off beautiful nightclub and restaurant. And the guy who owned the restaurant… had this idea he wanted to do like an anti-disco… That came around in 1979, when the ‘Disco Sucks’ thing came out. Now, all I had in my collection was disco… But back then nothing was formulated. At the same time punk, new wave, all these things were starting to bubble, but they weren’t formed yet, they were just coming – all this stuff was coming into the record stores, but you didn’t judge it all, or go “Oh, this is this, this is that.”

There were no genres.

It was Marianne Faithfull and Madness, and all these things. My friends knew somebody [at Stranded], and they said, “We’ve got to get you a job here.” But I didn’t want to DJ because I loved dancing, that’s why I bought the music – and then to find out I could play anything but disco. I had nothing but disco. So that’s when my second and probably biggest influence comes in, which is a guy named Bill Morley, who was a friend of mine, he was a guy maybe 10 years older, gay, he was an artist, he was a music person – very political, and we lived together in a house in Ann Street, Surry Hills. He’d go to Patches with me every night, we’d go dancing, and we’d be listening to Donna Summer and the Beach Boys and whatever – and then he’d be playing the first Clash single, and X-Ray Spex, and punk. And it was the first time in my life that I went, “Oh my God, you can like country and western.” [laughs] And so I formulated my own style at Stranded where [I could] play anything – I was playing the theme from Gidget, and then I’d be playing Madness, and then Roxy Music…

Eclectic.

Oh, super eclectic. But then this crowd came in that were, oh my God, they dressed like… For the first 12 months of Stranded, because it was so underground, nobody but the crowd knew about it. And musically, fashion-wise – you’d see somebody dressed in total ’50s rocker, because in the late ’70s everybody was getting rid of their ’50s and ’60s cause it was so out. But those kids, they were buying beautiful ’60s outfits.

I had this one girlfriend who was my age, she was like 17, fuck-off beautiful, huge tits, English rose skin, she was like five foot two. One night, for no other reason but she felt like it, she’d just ripped a sheet up, and just wore the sheet, and she didn’t have any underwear on underneath it. It was just a sheet up to her pussy, with a pair of stilletos, and she looked absolutely fucking gorgeous. Another night, for no reason – and this was before theatrics came into it – she got some theatrical putty, and made it look she had burn marks on her face, because she was gorgeous, and she had this great outfit on, and in the dark, you’d sort of not [know it was fake]. People were making stuff and doing stuff. It was a very vibrant time – gay rights, women’s rights, social change, the music was just exploding. Because disco didn’t die even when they wanted it to, but you just had all of that stuff coming out, other stuff coming out as well – a plethora of incredibleness.

How long did you play there?

I played there for 12 months, and then they got rid of me, and then I fell into Patches. I started there two nights a week, just filling in for the other DJ. He had a bit of a breakdown one night when I was there. Because they used to work you to death. That was the great and the bad thing about the clubs – they were all owned by dodgy people. But in that dodginess they didn’t care what the music was. And so, I go in there, and by that stage I’m loving Numbers by Kraftwerk, and funk and boogie, and I’m just throwing it all [in] – because I didn’t know how to mix.

My brother was also a bit of an influence, because he lived in New York for 30 years. He gave me tapes from Crisco Disco, and Studio 54, because he hung out at those places. That was where I first heard mixing, like real mixing. But see, of course being me, I’d hear mixing and go, how can I fuck it up? So the first thing I wanted to do was overlap two things that didn’t go together, which was like a mash-up – but this was in 1980. That was my first idea, and because it was so naïve, nobody was going to stop you. You had the dodgy management. So I was in some ways fucking it all up, but creating my style. I’m playing Yoko Ono… Prince’s Dirty Mind, Kraftwerk, The Members, and Donna Summer, and all these things just thrown in together cause it’s what I liked. And you could be so naïve to just go, “But I like it!”

And then from that point it was only a few years until the birth of house.

Yeah, so Patches was three and half years. I got the sack from there. And then that’s when my career just took off, because that’s when I started doing a night here and a night there, and I had such a name by then. That’s when the straight [clubs] – I guess you’d call it alternative clubbing – started to really take off, about 1983. I worked at a restaurant in Paddington on a Wednesday night, at a club called Commotion, and it was just a group of kids that didn’t like the straight clubs. They were more alternative, they admired the gay clubs, but they sort of wanted something of their own, so there was this sort of alternative, new wave… See, The Face had told you black music was good. [laughs]. The straight kids were trendy, the gay people weren’t so much trendy, they just liked what they liked. But straight kids, I think, formed the trendiness of music, and that was about ’83… All these little straight places in restaurants started popping up and became very cool… They were taking over all the restaurants, and just having a piss-up really.

They say the first house record was ’84, but at the same time that means house really started about ’85. I bought my first house records – it would have been early ’85. And I remember what they were: it was Donnie by The It, and Mystery of Love by Fingers, Inc. They both came out the same week, and they were the first two records on DJ International. And I’m like, “What the fucking hell is this?” It was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was like trippy and druggy and underproduced, and out-there. And I went, “I love it!” Because with me, I didn’t care if it was disco or electro, whatever it was, as long as it felt good… And so house became a huge thing for me. It was only underground… it was made in some black kid’s bedroom with a drum machine, that’s what I loved.

God, you had Larry Heard, and you had Robert Owens, and you had Chip E. There were all these other obscure labels, they might have two records on them. It was great, because I always had an audience for it… I was lucky…

You were talking about the relative isolation and how it influenced the culture. Nowadays, with the Internet, kids here can check out what they’re doing in Berlin or London. But back then, how did DJs keep tabs on what the big DJs were doing overseas – let’s say Frankie Knuckles or Larry Levan?

We didn’t. We didn’t, we were just playing music. Well, I was lucky, two friends of mine were living in New York in the late ’70s to mid-’80s. And one reason they lived in New York was so they could go to the Garage. Before the Garage was the Garage, I’d hear about this place that they were going to, and they’d be like, you know, “Larry is God!” And that was the first time you’d hear that the DJ is God. He just plays music!

But then they would explain… and then that put me another step underground, because I’d be hearing [about] what Larry was playing. And see, all those lists that you [have now] – that’s the thing about being able to go on the Internet, it’s all bullshit, because it’s the same hundred records you hear about. If you think that David Mancuso and Larry Levan and Nicky Siano all played the same hundred records… David Mancuso in particular is famous for the trippy – you know, changing moods. And he never mixed – it was all about the music. And then Larry picking up on that, and then Nicky doing something else.

Well, we didn’t have that, but luckily I had friends that would [tell me] that Larry would stop the music and literally do a rainstorm in the middle of the night. One of his tricks was playing Miss You, and [he would manipulate] the sound system – he had a little joystick, and could make the sound go from [one speaker to the other]. Miss You was a joystick track. And [with] Weekend by Phreek, he’d play a big ambulance siren – and as soon as you’d hear that, you’d know Weekend was coming. So [that], without having it here, prompted me… You could have mood, and you could have melody, and you could have trippiness. So I started just naturally doing, not that, but similar. And then other people – anybody that liked my music, if [they weren’t] copying’ it, [would] go, “Oh my God what’s he doing?” Because I was using two copies of stuff, and three turntables, in like ’81.

And just because I loved what I was doing – I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d play Yoko Ono’s Walking on Thin Ice – two copies of the 7-inch, mixing it up. Where she goes, “Ice, ice, ice,” I would make that go for two minutes, three minutes at a time, because it was a big record, and you know, the vomiting… and you’d bring that in over other tracks, and you’d do all this stuff, because you were having fun, you didn’t have to judge it or be influenced… It really came from the heart. You wanted to make people happy; that was the whole point of clubbing. It really was a totally positive experience – there was no negativity. Now there is. But back then, the music was so positive and joyful, and trippy, and druggy – or it could be political. You could have politics in music. You could have human rights in music, you could have that sexiness – like hearing that Larry played porn over stuff. And that became my thing.

So when you started producing you had all those decades of experience to draw on.

Well, see my friend Robert Racic started producing in 1984…. He’s the most legendary DJ ever in Australia. He and I were best friends. But he later became a big producer, so he produced all the Severed Heads 12s, which really took them over the top. [When I first met him], he walked up to me in a café – he used to listen to me in Patches – and went, “Oh excuse me, but I just bought a reel-to-reel tape deck, and I was just wondering if you’d like to come over and have a look one day.” And that was it. I went over one day. We were best friends until the day he died, in 1995.

We did edits together in the ’80s, tape edits, that I’ve still got, and they used to get played on Triple J’s dance show – when they were still Double J. So the production thing started in the ’80s, but I let it go because Robert was so proficient. He was proficient and technical… but I was more a “feel” person. My proficiency was with three turntables and two copies of things, and cutting things – you know, whatever – but the technology [like samplers], I didn’t get that, my head was not logical like that. So I thought, if I can’t use it, I shouldn’t do it. So I let go of it, but we did a lot of great edits together in the ’80s, and then I let it go for a while.

Are those the edits on your SoundCloud page?

Yeah.

Any thought of going back in that direction – doing edits and releasing them?

Well, I could, because I did it 30 years ago, so I know the technique. But I think in the last 10 years I’ve just… I’m moving to the country in six weeks, so that’s when I want to get my mojo back, because I’ve never lost that thing. But I’m analogue, so by the time I started to slow down, say five years ago, that was when digital was really coming in, so I didn’t embrace it. I didn’t reject it, I just didn’t embrace it. I was sort of letting go in general… I just didn’t like the scene anymore… But I love what people like Todd Terje do [with edits]. He always does the tracks justice, and picks good tracks.

But sometimes I like the people that just give you a good intro and outro, because disco is fucking hard to mix!

What’s your perspective on this generation of young people who are going out, getting into the old records, and who show a lot of respect for the old days?

Well, that’s why I love Soul of Sydney. It just restored my faith. Because I’ve been going out since ’76, and this is the first period in my life where something that’s 35 years old is trendier than modern music. That just shows that what I liked for 35 years wasn’t bullshit and I’m not romanticising it – it fucking is great. But I feel sorry for kids, because they don’t have anything of their own. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

Darling, it’s my music! And not just disco, but any of it – all of those styles are really the bomb, all of them. But there’s only two styles that the kids really [get into] – there’s the disco, particularly the boogie, and there’s the old-school house. And as long as it has a cowbell, you know. [laughs] And they’re great styles, but there was 35 years of, you know, Talking Heads’ Remain in Light album, and Byrne and Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts – I used to play that stuff. Tom Tom Club.

So you feel like they’re missing out on some of the subtleties, or some of the weird stuff.

No, no – what I mean is they don’t have a style of their own. They’re starting 35 years ago. And, what I find with all that nu-disco stuff is just really stripped-back versions of great music. So it’s stripped-back, that doesn’t make it great, it just means you can’t play it as well. And it’s nice, but would you play a lot of that stuff in five years? Let alone in 35 years?

I think it’s great they’re getting into the old music, because it makes you feel. And in this day and age, with the Internet, and with house prices being so expensive, and life being… It’s stressful in Australia, but I don’t know why. We don’t have war, we don’t have poverty like other people, we keep being told that we have this great economy. But we’re all stressed; I can see it. And that’s the sad thing. And at least some people are going back to disco and those styles, because it makes your heart sing, makes your feet move. And not because it’s kitsch, and not because your parents liked it – but the only sad thing about the going back is, what are you going to like in 30 years time? When these kids are 50 they’re still going to be liking Harvey Mason – not as much Todd Terje as Harvey Mason. And that’s the only thing I find sad for them… I feel blessed to have had that.

Are you content to be semi-retired now?

Oh, absolutely. I don’t like it out there. And I also don’t want to play my history all the time. And there is nice music, but I’ve never played nice music. To go to record stores three and four and five times a week your whole life, and pick up the first Tom Tom Club album, or Show Me Love by Robin S, or Plastic Dreams – every week. All the classics, you play them now, they work. And I love how the kids don’t know them. You + Me = Love by The Undisputed Truth, that’s the one, that’s my bomb, I played that at the first Soul of Sydney. Amazingly some people knew it. I always start it at the beginning and it’s just that bassline, and so within a minute, you’re sold, you’re hooked, you’re there for the 12 minutes it goes for. Cause it does not let up once. [laughs]. So that’s fantastic, but I just don’t want to be playing [my history] – beccause it is my history, I danced to that when it came out. I danced to Chic when they came out, I danced to early house when it came – and played it, I played them all. So it’s great to do it every now and then, but I don’t I don’t want to be that, because I’ve always been progressive. And after 35 years of nightlife, I’m tired!

So you don’t want to be a legacy act?

Yeah, you know, like a retro DJ. Well, I don’t mind, I do it well. And what I love is, I don’t have to dig. I don’t have to read Larry’s top 100 – I am Larry’s top 100! Again, it’s about me being happy, and so when I project it onto people – like Soul of Sydney is just that perfect example. Oh my God, I had to film them, it was so good.

The way they do the Hustle!

The Bus Stop? Yeah – but even when they’re dancing, they’re actually dancing. They’re not just shuffling or looking at who’s looking at them, or –

– or looking at their phones while drinking beer –

 – they’re dancing old school! And that was what got me. One of the boys from Soul of Sydney was saying that when I played You’re the One for Me by D Train, this 18-year-old boy who didn’t know it was going off. See, you don’t have to tick boxes, you have to feel it. Then you can tick boxes and find out who it is and what it is. But if you don’t like it, who cares? And who cares who played it?

That feeling is a bit lost. So many people who came through for the [record] sale, as an example, it was all about, “Oh, it was on this list, and it’s on that list, and it’s on the Discogs list…” Like all of them had Discogs lists. And it just felt a bit sad really.

It’s another thing to become a geek about, and classify.

And the reason they play music is like, really? You don’t just play it for the joy of it? That’s what music is. It’s like sex, you don’t think about it. You just do it. Well, hopefully. [laughs]

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We recently rediscovered one of our all-time favorite write-ups — an interview where Jim Poe, a DJ and music aficionado from New York, chats with one of Sydney’s disco and house icons, Stephen Allkins. The original feature from In the Mix is no longer online and couldn’t be found in any archives, so we’re thrilled to share it again.

Don’t miss Stephen Allkins at the Soul of Sydney: Frankie Knuckles Tribute this Sunday, February 15, 2026.

More info: http://www.soulofsydney.org/events