MARS BAR

For more than 40 years, the Mars Bar on Gouger Street was an Adelaide institution – most of them as the city’s only gay and lesbian nightclub. It opened in 1976 and traded under a range of names including Phaedra’s (nicknamed The Cactus Patch for its succulent decor) and Park Avenue at Chix Restaurant before settling on its iconic moniker. Highlight of most nights were the outrageous drag routines performed on the stage/dancefloor under the auspices of hosts Fifi LaDouche and Rochelle La Moore.

In later years, Mars Bar was expanded to include a “rooftop” bar – which was actually only just above street level, but felt much higher up once you’d climbed the rear stairs from the main basement room. Fun fact: Feast’s artistic director, Daniel Clarke, was evicted from Mars Bar in 2007 immediately after stepping off the stage, where he had been giving a speech about the queer festival. Why? Amid all the drag queens and leather cultists he was wearing thongs on his feet – and thongs were against the dress code. Sadly, Mars Bar shut its doors in 2017 and, after briefly reopening as the ill-fated Oz club, the property has been vacant since 2018.

LE ROX

Once upon a time back in the 1980s, an alternative music venue/nightclub upstairs in Light Square House turned our worlds upside down. Almost literally, in fact, because if you looked up while you were on the main room’s dancefloor there were actually chairs hanging by their legs from the ceiling!

While it was anything but mainstream, anybody and everybody played there – The Sunny Boys, Nick Cave, 1927, Faith No More, Jesus and Mary Chain ... and even Ice-T, now of Law and Order fame, back when he was a rapper. Fun fact: In the lead up to his Le Rox show, Ice-T spent some cold hard cash in Rundle Mall where he bought a leather jacket at Youthworks from the store’s owner. He just happened to be a seriously cool guy who went on to become a Lord Mayor of Adelaide, namely, Martin Haese.

But back to Le Rox, which also had a smaller Blue Room at the top of the stairs. On Saturday, it turned into the Time Tunnel and was packed with Boy George and Sigue Sigue Sputnik lookalikes dancing to tunes from The Smiths and The Cure.

Annie Leo, who now runs a rescue dog charity called Paws For Change, worked as the ‘door bitch’. “I worked with the legendary John the Beast who was scary to anyone not doing the right thing, but he was seriously such a softie when you got to know him,” Annie says of John Zisimou aka John the Beast who died in 2017. “He was such a beautiful soul. Such a gentleman. He’d always walk me to my car at the end of my shift. It was usually because I’d refused entry to some people and they weren’t too happy with me... they don’t call you door ‘bitch’ for nothing!”

By the early 1990s the gender benders and goths were gone because Le Rox had become the “techno centre” of Australia, with many raving it was just like The Hacienda in Manchester, before it became the Night Train theatre restaurant. Today, Light Square House is home to the APY Gallery Adelaide.

TOUCAN

Not everything was fluoro-coloured, cheerful and poppy in the 1980s. If you liked your nightclub culture to be more on the dark and moody, introspective side, Toucan was the place for you. This club in Hindley St, which opened in the 1970s, was immortalised in the Models’ song Two Cabs to the Toucan. The soundtrack was more likely to be The Cure and The Smiths than Bananarama or Wham!

In its mid-80s Goth heyday (there were no such thing as Emos back then) a group of Tiser colleagues and friends dressed to go there in the most ridiculous clothes they owned, with hair styles and makeup to match – including this writer, wearing a kimono-style dressing gown with purple eyeshadow and a pink-and-red curly Mohawk that was more Flaming Galah than Flock of Seagulls. No-one at the Toucan even batted an eyelid, let alone gave us a second glance. Amid all The Cure and Siouxie and the Banshees wannabes, with their haystacks of dyed black hair, matching wardrobes and post-mortem pallid complexions, we looked pretty normal.

The Toucan venue went on to be a male strip club for a period before becoming Jive, a more down-to-earth venue which hosts the live music scene.

LENNIES

Don’t pretend you didn’t go to St Leonard’s Inn, aka Lennies, at Glenelg, because you did. Who can forget that carpet on the walls – okay, velour-embossed wallpaper – in the late 1980s before Lennies had a makeover? And who wasn’t there when it was one of the only places to go on a Sunday night. Due to super-strict liquor licensing laws, everyone was required to have a meal – whether they wanted it or not. As part of the door charge you were handed a plate of cold meats and coleslaw – that everyone dumped ASAP upon entry.

For girls, it was the place to dance in a group – around your handbags – to cover bands such as The Nazz and The Squids. The blokes, with beers, watched on – when they weren’t pinching bums. Think that was un PC? What about some of the entertainment such as the male stripper who blindfolded a female patron and then proceeded to pop a peeled banana in her mouth? Classy, eh?

Then at closing time in the wee hours resident DJ David “Daisy” Day – of SAFM fame – would play The Radiators’ Gimme Head. The house lights were turned up and you turned down whoever you’d shared that party pash over Passion Pop with, once you realised they weren’t so hot in the cold, hard fluorescent light of day.

Lennies is now the Watermark, which has a beach bar and buffet... where you can eat all the, you guessed it, cold meats and coleslaw you like.

JULES

No bull, Woolshed on Hindley – which has its very own mechanical bull imported from England – used to be Jules, the discotheque in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Like The Shed, it was pretty much pitch black except for the bar and its famous revolving dancefloor, which was the only one of its kind in Adelaide.

Jules was like that – sophisticated. It had indoor plants, table service by cocktail waitresses, a coffee bar and even a chill-out area with video games, along with a dancefloor that lit up like the one in Saturday Night Fever.

The staff all wore black and white and were known to line dance behind the bar way before that was a thing (maybe they could see country-themed pubs were going to be a thing?).

And while you were more likely to hear the Bee Gees than the B-52s, the B-52 shot – with its layers of Kahlua, Baileys and Grand Marnier – was the house cocktail.

Which brings us to an extraordinary tale. Our source tells us that out front of Jules stood two statues of naked men who most definitely couldn’t hold a candle to Michelangelo’s David. Word on the street is that their confidence was repeatedly chipped away (no) thanks to Hindley St revellers who chiselled off their manhoods on more than one occasion. Ouch! Which reminds us of this titbit of information: After Prince’s Purple Rain soundtrack came out, When Doves Cry was always Jules’ last song of the night.

HEAVEN

In the late ‘80s, Belinda Carlisle was singing about how we should all make sure Heaven is a Place on Earth and, a few years later, Adelaide actually did. In 1993 Heaven opened its Pearly Gates, okay, clunky wooden doors. Purpose-built, the superclub was an extension of Joplins in the Newmarket Hotel on the corner of North and West terraces. Fun fact: Joplins was also known as “Sloppy Joppys” because it had a reputation for being the place where you could always, to borrow from Janis, Get It While You Can at the end of a night out. Or even after the sun came up.

It was back in the day when there were no lockout laws, after all. But back to Heaven, where big-name acts such as Snoop Dogg, Carl Cox and Coolio played, and thousands of little angels and devils partied on Saturdays when the line to get in went around the block.

Wednesday’s retro disco, Time Warp – with the likes of Barbi, Captain Kirk, Jaki J and DJ Shogun – was fun for all ages (over 18, of course). A lot of us would come back the next night to dance to house and techno at Chemistry. Speaking of, let’s not forget the concoction that was the unofficial house cocktail, the Illusion. A mix of Midori, vodka, triple sec liqueur and pineapple juice, it was served in a shaker – and the most hideous shade of lime green imaginable.

Actually, no, you were the most hideous shade of lime green imaginable, after one too many shots of the sickly sweet stuff, and no (thanks to) Illusion you discovered you weren’t in Heaven nightclub, after all, but your own personal hell. Heaven became Heaven II before it closed in 2005 to reopen the next year as HQ Complex. In 2017 it called last drinks – to make way for a $200 million, 24-storey residential and retail tower – and moved to Hindley St before shutting its doors for good in January 2020.

PLANET

If any venue was going to bring superclub Heaven crashing down to earth, it was Planet on Pirie Street. When it opened in October 1995 it was not only out of this world, but like being on another, well, planet. Replacing a razed pub, Planet was run by lawyer Greg Griffin, his wife Sandra Griffin, tennis player Darren Cahill, cricketer Tim May and footballer Chris McDermott.

Licensed for 1800, it boasted a bar, disco, nightclub, coffee shop, pokies lounge... and four bistro restaurants, Planet Thai, Planet Italy, Planet Oz and Planet Earth. But Planet was universally loved for Greed, its ‘80s night. The brainchild of masterminds Sean Craig Murphy, Craig Bruce and Paul Totthill, Greed was so good we did our blocks over it – with no less than 5000 of us lining up around the block to get in on a Friday.

And proving Adelaide was by no means the poor cousin, the Greed concept was snapped up by The Empire nightclub in Melbourne and sold to other clubs around Australia. In recent years, Greed reunion nights, staged at The Arkaba, have been on the money. The Top of the Ark is guaranteed to be a sea of (smartphone torch) lights as everyone sways and sings along to Daryl Braithwaite’s The Horses at the end of the night. While Planet’s been a ghost nightclub since it closed its doors in 2004, Cbus Property will soon start work on the site to build a $300 million 20-storey office tower. It is expected to create up to 2000 jobs during its construction. Nice work!

McMAHON’S

Fun didn’t stop at the city limits. If you lived in the ‘burbs south or north during the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was always McMahons Tavern. McMahons Tonsley was the place uni students went on Thursday nights for cheap drinks (Strongbow cider being a popular favourite), plenty of pashing on the dancefloor and hooking up in the carpark afterwards. You didn’t even need fake ID. Prince’s Cream was a DJ favourite in the mid-90s, while coloured jeans worn with bodysuits and Doc Martens were the ladies’ outfit of choice.

Add in some sticky carpet and an even stickier dancefloor, with just a few strobe lights to penetrate the darkness. Celebrity guests were a big drawcard at the Salisbury McMahons – from pop stars to footballers like Hawthorn’s Dermott Brereton. Even though Culture Club had never performed in Adelaide – until it reformed for a tour in 2016 – its outrageous singer Boy George was booked just to play a few numbers at McMahons Salisbury to open its new Cybatron night in 1989, with resident DJ James Ingram. The former McMahon’s premises are now the Tonsley Hotel, and a House of Schnitzel at the Eureka Tavern.

REGINES

Regines – which shared its name with a famous French nightclub impresaria – dominated Light Square for decades and even rose phoenix-like from its own ashes in 1987, 18 months after the venue was gutted by fire. It drew back much of the same singles pick-up crowd, aged in their 30s to 50s, who must have been snap-frozen while the $2m renovations were carried out.

The churchlike bluestone facade, with its marbled glass windows, made patrons feel like they were entering somewhere special. A second set of entrance doors required that you paid your entrance money before you could see whether anyone else was even inside. The classy fit-out was solidly grounded in the 1980s art deco revival, with bold black, white and grey structures and brass and glass decorations featuring its trademark “R” logo everywhere.

Its ground floor had the main bar, with a sunken dance floor, surrounding tables and large, comfortable lounge chairs. Behind them was the DJ’s box – with a safe Top 40 disco playlist and overhead video screens – and a separate bistro area which offered a supper menu after 11pm. Upstairs, a balcony overlooked the dance floor and another giant video screen, with an adjoining cocktail bar. By the early ’90s, the venue had become “Club 69” – named after it’s street number, of course – and then was called Rise as techno music took over at the turn of the millennium. The site is now being redeveloped as the Palladium on Light luxury apartment complex.

METRO

As the ’80s gave way to the ’90s, so the New Romantic and Stock Aitken Waterman sounds gave way to House Music and Techno. Rave parties were the order of the day, popping up everywhere from city warehouses to the Masonic Hall, but the music and ravers found a more permanent home on the first floor of the Richmond Hotel in Rundle Mall. Star attraction on the turntables at Metro was GT, the Groove Terminator, alias the now internationally in-demand electronic music artist Simon Lewicki, closely followed by DJ HMC, aka Cam Bianchetti.

The music ranged from early hip-hop and groups like Soul II Soul to the latest import dance mixes. As the night went on and the dancing and music became more frenetic, the smoke from the dry ice machine also became so thick that you could barely see the person in front of you, let alone find your way to the bar or the bathrooms out back. The venue is now First bar, lounge and restaurant at the Hotel Richmond.

Enjoy this? Check out Legendary Nightclubs Part 2: The Hangover for more reader disco hits and memories.

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