Our first night in Paris was spent at Le Palace. The old theatre at 8 Rue de Faubourg Montmartre was owned by Mick Hucknall of Simply Red. Cathy and David Guetta ran it with Thierry Klemeniuk, who to our great pleasure introduced us to Christian Slater, the star of True Romance – one of our all-time favourite films. We hung out, huddled in a booth.
Mike got talking about Ibiza, Manumission and eventually about me and Renata. The young actor had his arm around Mike’s shoulder and leant forward to give me a double-take; he nodded his surprised approval and chinked my beer bottle. And gave me that perfect Christian Slater smile, taking me right back to that scene in True Romance where he has sex with Alabama in the phone booth. Chantilly Lace! Oh what a pretty face.
I daydreamed from the contrasting Monday morning whiteboard glare of David and Cathy’s daily operations, logistics and planning back office as we set about designing and programming the prestigious end-of-Fashion-Week party.
Rather than take a fee, Mike and I opted to donate Manumission’s share of the event’s profits to an AIDS charity. Cathy made some calls; if we would make the donation to an AIDS charity of Thierry Mugler’s choice, the great couturier would present the party and design a bespoke T-shirt to be given to 2,000 ticket buyers. But he had one final demand: we fly drag diva Joey Arias in from New York City to be our master of ceremonies.
The Guettas informed us that everyone had seen the Parisians so they suggested strippers from Amsterdam
We discussed musical programming, securing an international line-up: Pete Tong as headliner would broadcast his set to the UK via Radio 1’s Essential Selection with Nick Raphael from label FFRR. DJ Alfredo would represent Ibiza, Claude Monnet would represent Paris. We would have Phil Faversham from Vague, and Jaymz Nylon from Eight Ball Records playing an eight-hour set in the Fumoir after John Galliano’s DJ of choice Jeremy Healy – a request from the fashion elite.
UK dance magazine Mixmag agreed to cover the event and Rankin was commissioned to photograph a live shoot for Dazed & Confused during the party.
For performance, we wanted a squad of six strippers. The Guettas informed us that everyone had seen the Parisians, so they suggested strippers from Amsterdam. We talked about sex performer Otter – the elusive clubland legend. We had recently heard she was living in Amsterdam, and asked if the Guettas could enquire if their stripper connection – Dylan, promoter of Wasteland, Europe’s largest international fetish fantasy event – perhaps knew her. He did. We booked her ‘fire-breathing pussy act’. Por fin, Otter would be taking over the burlesque reins, providing Manumission with that certain je ne sais quoi, so we would be free to orchestrate the event.
Kate and Mike Manumission with Howard Marks
‘But you must do your show.’ David grinned to our surprise.
‘Yes, you must!’ exclaimed Cathy.
Performing was not what we did, we explained. It was something I had done with Renata because we couldn’t find Otter. Then when Renata left, Mike and I performed comical skits, where all of our clothes came off. Now we had Otter, there was absolutely no reason for us to be getting naked in Paris. But the Guettas were insistent; we locked horns.
David and Cathy took off for a holiday in Jamaica. Mike and I got stuck into six weeks of work designing, producing and promoting Manumission Paris. Pedro Winter, future label boss of Ed Banger Records and superstar manager of Daft Punk, would be our industrious right hand for the production. Pedro took us to meet his mum, who he lived with in a cosy apartment. We outlined our plan for set design, which was to transform the chic Parisian nightclub into an abstract playhouse – draw the Parisian cognoscenti away from VIP bottle-service culture, onto the dance floor and into our hands.
Pedro rented a big removal truck. Mike, Chuli and I jumped into the cabin. “Let’s go!” He smiled and set off for the outskirts of the city. We trawled vast junkyards for exercise bikes, record players, radios, sofas, chairs and a giant double bed.
The bride and groom would consummate the marriage under a sheet
Pedro also connected us with a talented young artist called Théo, who we would be working with on graphic design. One snowy Saturday morning, Mike, Chuli and I took a train to Théo’s suburban art studio in his parents’ chilly garage. Théo asked us for nude Polaroids, so he could do illustrations of our bodies tangled in all kinds of sexual positions, simple line drawings, the exact tone of my hair on a white background.
Mike studied the Union Jack flag specification and its basic geometry, working with Théo to recreate it as a dynamic Manumission ‘M’ logo to be laid upon his immaculate illustrations. The resulting advert, posters and flyers were going to look amazing, especially on the streets of Paris – they would have just the effect we wanted, we smiled. Then came the blow – we were informed by Pedro that postering in Paris was illegal. Posters were our main form of communication. Mike suggested we stencil graffiti but that too was against the law (but something Daft Punk would use to great effect in the UK when Pedro became their manager).
The advert was published in Mixmag, DJ Magazine and Dazed & Confused. We hand-distributed flyers to the fashionable shops of Les Halles and spent nights promoting in underground Paris clubs with Pedro and his amis who played très cool French House.
Next to arrive were our crew from Warwick Davis’s agency Willow: Lil’ Kaz, superstar of the scene, and a new addition Danny, a bona fide crusty traveller; he needs scrubbing and a trip to Les Halles for styling, Mike noted to Lil’ Kaz’s amusement. “You can’t do that!” she laughed. Adidas shelltoes à la Run DMC, old school tracksuit, wifebeater, fat jewellery. Mike reworked Danny’s beard and shaved some razor stripes into his eyebrow. Voilà. Hip-hop Danny boy looked superfly.
Hellfire at Manumission
I styled Lil’ Kaz in black satin and I wore a white vintage 1950s corset, stockings, and faux fur-trimmed cardigan as we set off in the rain to the John Galliano Givenchy show with a jacket sleeve as an invite. The collection was Old Hollywood: whimsical, theatrical and romantic. In pure couture decadence, Kate Moss lit up the catwalk.
At Charles De Gaulle airport, we climbed in the back of a transit van with Joey Arias fresh from LaGuardia, dark glasses over darker circles under his huge eyes. We talked about the running order.
“They want us to do our show,” I complained. “But we already have Otter and a team of strippers. Besides, David and Cathy told us that full nudity is illegal in Paris!”
“And if what you do is nudity – what can you do if you can’t be nude?” puzzled Mike.
“Well, you have got to do it!” Joey informed us. And by the time we reached the Mugler studio, he had hatched a plan. Joey would be the priest; me and Mike the bride and groom. Lil’ Kaz the bridesmaid; Danny the best man; a condom the ring. The bride and groom would consummate the marriage under a sheet, satisfying David and Cathy’s requirements while supporting the prevention of the spread of AIDS message and protecting the club’s already shaky licence.
“We can’t do that!” I gasped.
“Just fake it, darlings,” Joey snarled.
Another quiet night
St Patrick’s Day. Sunday 17 March 1996. After six weeks working day and night, the morning of the party arrived. We arranged to meet clubland legend Otter, who to our surprise was not in her hotel but at 10am sitting outside a bar drinking beer, chain-smoking and talking in circles about the lighter fluid damaging her vaginal tissue.
“If it’s going to be dangerous, please don’t do it!” we told her.
“No, it’s why you booked me. I’ll do it one more time,” she exhaled. “Now… Apart from the girls I drove over with, who else is here?” Of course she knew Joey Arias and then there was Lil’ Kaz…
“We’ve got a new guy. His name is Danny and he is a bit of a movie star. He played an Ewok in Return of the Jedi, and Short Stack Stevens in Muppet Treasure Island.”
“A dwarf!?” she enquired in her soft Southern drawl. “I’ve got a thing for dwarves!”
“He also played a Rodent of Unusual Size in The Princess Bride,” I added helpfully.
“What I couldn’t do with that!” she sassed as Mike and I departed to decorate the club. Pedro Winter was ready with the junk decor. The party would officially open doors at 9pm. But then came another blow – the venue, we were now informed, was in the throes of a Gay Tea Dance, which would not finish until 4pm. Only then could we start the transformation. That would give us a mere five hours to dress the entire theatre.
Mike was sweating in his eveningwear arranging pieces of furniture, as I ran back and forth barefoot in the wedding dress I had procured the previous day with my best friend Jacqui from the much-loved, cut-price department store Tati. The ladies in the dressing room ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the pretty young bride-to-be. Little did they know.
Claire Manumission
The entrance of Le Palace was remodelled into a glittering disorientation tunnel, complete with all kinds of household paraphernalia, including exercise bikes and decks for Cathy Guetta’s brother Chris to play original disco vinyl. The junk playhouse was coming together. In the spirit of sculptor Marcel Duchamp, a porcelain toilet was set on a pedestal on the dance floor. An old TV completed the doll’s-house lounge. In the centre of it all, in the middle of the theatre, the bed had been made.
Curiously the urinal has played a pivotal role in the history of art. Introducing Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a porcelain urinal turned on its axis with the words ‘R. Mutt 1917’ scrawled in black paint. At Manumission, we similarly elevated the toilet into art.
We gathered our performers in the dressing room. “Come on then, we’ve done our job,” grinned Lil’ Kaz. “Let’s have fun!”
“Where’s the pills!?” Danny demanded.
Mike and I shook our heads. They were the best man and bridesmaid in Joey Arias’s idea of a wedding that we were expected to ‘consummate’ to some level on stage. As far as we were concerned, the work was just beginning.
Rankin was shooting androgynous models on the top-floor balcony
We told ‘DWA’ (‘Dwarves With Attitude’) to circulate with the newly arrived Manumission entertainers who were (busy pills-a-popping themselves) creating chaos playing mind games with guests while Mike and I started sticking fantasy name badges on attendees.
Name badges were a simple way of allowing guests to play an alter ego – sparking conversation between strangers, breaking the ice.
I swooned around playing the young bride-to-be. Mike welcomed the stunning Yasmin, supermodel and wife of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, who laughed when Mike gave her a name badge with the unlikely moniker ‘Chip Shop Girl’.
Rankin was shooting androgynous models on the top-floor balcony. The venue ballooned all around us. A few small hitches aside – including Naomi Campbell imploring that Jeremy Healy not play downstairs in the fumoir but in the main room where they were all dancing – things were building very nicely.
Otter was going ahead with the fire-breathing pussy performance, but she had decided to drink her way through it, she informed us as she knocked back another beer before filling her flame-tattooed vagina with lighter fluid. She descended three flights of backstairs, passing through ravers and Fashion Week glitterati to arrive at the stage at the far end of the theatre in front of the plush velvet curtains.
Otter from behind
Franck Sauvaire
Otter expertly revealed her splendid nudity, reclined and began. We had waited a year for this moment and had told half of Paris about it. She held a flame high, spreading her pale legs wide apart as she drew the lighter down. A lone spark in a concert hall full of eager eyes. But to our horror, the stairs and the Dutch courage had gotten the better of her and the majority of the fuel had all but escaped en route to the stage.
The six-foot flames that Gay Paree was expecting to fly from the flame-tattooed vagina quickly dissipated in an underwhelming flutter. Otter skulked back to the dressing room and was last seen leaving the club via the back door with Danny. Otter would later tell us they flew to the UK, got engaged and began a life together in a caravan as part of the traveller community.
At the beginning, Danny loved the stories of Otter’s sexual endeavours, but as sometimes happens with men, now that she was to become his wife, the stories that once excited him, enraged him. As Otter would later explain, their relationship splintered in a ‘Heeere’s Johnny!’ moment from The Shining. The wedding was off.
Otter came back to the relative civilisation of clubland, but she had left her mark: Danny the innocent went on to perform under a new alias. He would from then on be referred to as ‘The Pain Proof Sex Dwarf ’.
“Claire, please, you must stop or they will close down the club…” David Guetta begged
Back in Paris, Charlie Thornley popped another pill, pulled his Spider-Man costume down around his ankles and settled in to read the Sun, sitting on his junkyard toilet in the centre of the dance floor, now surrounded by a flight of supermodels. The statuesque Dutch strippers framed the scene.
Pete Tong took to the decks, the Girls – first-generation supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Kate Moss and Yasmin Le Bon – started dancing on the tables. It was time to take things up a notch.
Joey Arias, in a Mugler PVC pencil skirt and corset, crisp white blouse, dog collar, black Bettie Page fringe, with a pale face and shocking red mouth, announced to his congregation: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and woman in unholy matrimony and celebrate this thing called life.”
David and Cathy were very excited. Everybody was asking about le spectacle, but they had no idea what we were going to do. That was our surprise.
The lights went down and the bold and beautiful drew in. The ‘ring’ was delivered, the blessing given. Mike was down to his Calvins, the wedding gown had been removed, I was in my sheer white frou frou. We imagined ourselves in our honeymoon suite with the rest of the club closed off as I slipped under our nuptial sheet. Apart from Joey constantly trying to peek, there was another, unexpected tugging.
Backstage at Manumission
“Claire, Claire…” It was the unmistakable voice of David Guetta. Shunning stage etiquette and the 360-degree surrounding crowd he had approached the bed and was tapping at the sheet.
“David, go away…” I told him.
“Claire, please, you must stop or they will close down the club…” David begged.
“You want me to stop under the sheet, David?” I asked.
“Yes, please, Claire, you understand!”
“Oh yes, David, I understand.” I replied. It was his fault we were in this predicament. Considering we were the number-one promoters in Ibiza, the Guettas’ request had seemed a bit much to us in the first place. ‘Fuck you,’ I thought, as I drew up on top of the sheet, straddling Mike.
I used the sheet to cover my modesty, as I rode on top of him for just about as long as I thought he would be able to take it. Then I dropped down onto his chest, turned and took a cigarette from a cute French boy with a crew cut, drew on it and triumphantly exhaled.
We were the story. And the word spread through dance music culture and beyond
“Of course, the crowd went wild,” entertainer Kim Chandler remembered. Pete Tong, playing at that very moment live to his millions of listeners in the UK, gasped, “I might as well give up DJing now. I will never see a party to top this one,” before stepping backwards in shock, into a hole in the floor.
It was an anomaly. The fact that it was the couple who curated the party, who were in love and ‘making love’ in front of them, touched the imagination of the Parisians. It was a very French thing to do. If only Otter hadn’t started drinking 12 hours before the club opened, then she would have been the talk of Paris. She would have been the scandal that went floating back to London on the bus with the Mixmag journalist, Spider-Man and the cobalt blue-haired Manumission entertainers.
But we were the story. And the word spread through dance music culture and beyond. We were the story that the French press went crazy for, that the French fashion crowd adored that night at the decadent party in the plush Parisian theatre. It was in Paris that we would catch the world’s attention. This emboldened revolution in nightlife, this was Manumission.
Curiously, just like how the King of Rock and Roll – Elvis – died on the same day that the Queen of Pop – Madonna – had her birthday, legendary New York club promoter Michael Alig committed the act of felony manslaughter that would lead to his demise on the exact same date as Manumission in Paris. Both events shifted world nightlife. As Michael Alig began his descent, overnight, Mike and I became the most famous club promoters in the world.
The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza by Claire Manumission
The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza by Claire Manumission is out now from £9.99, velocitypress.uk
