Stephen Brogan
An earlier essay by the author contextualising Leigh Bowery’s nightclub Taboo can be found here. It should be read before this one as it introduces some key themes that are further discussed below.
Leigh Bowery was the outrageously-dressed host who loved the limelight at his infamous club Taboo that ran from January 1985 to May 1986 in London’s Leicester Square. Each week he guzzled cocktails, held court, and dominated the dancefloor. He was regularly photographed and filmed at the club, appearing in style magazines such as The Face and i-D or newspaper Sunday supplements. His business partner Tony Gordon managed Taboo behind the scenes and was happy to leave Bowery to soak up all that attention. Indeed, the notoriety of the club and its flamboyant host became inextricably entwined.
This much is well known, at least to people interested in London’s gay nightlife during the 1980s. However, contemporaries were well aware that there was another very prominent face that also represented the club that belonged to Bowery’s close friend, Taboo’s gender-bender doorman Marc Vaultier (née Mark Golding, 1966-86). Taboo had a reputation for being very trendy, with only fashionably dressed clubbers and people with the right connections or a whiff of fame gaining entry. Consequently, its doorman, described by the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine as the ‘meeter, greeter, [and] arbiter of acceptability’ (1 June 1986) was a major player. Like Bowery, Marc dressed up in his own startlingly original way, and like Bowery, he was a strong presence in the club, drinking, gossiping, and dancing. Unlike Bowery, however, Marc has slipped beneath the historical radar, despite the important role he played in Taboo’s success.
Marc was a slim, six-foot queen in his late teens who hailed from a middle-class military family in Farnham, Surrey; he had been educated in Oxford and was a gifted pianist. He moved to London in 1983, squatting, working in shops, and going out to clubs. He soon joined Bowery’s nightlife clique. Once Taboo opened, Bowery gave his friend the job of doorman because Marc was confident, witty, and imposing — and he knew lots of people from different walks of urban life. These qualities made Marc an ideal doorman, as Bowery and Tony Gordon both appreciated.
All the post-punk cutting edge gay and gay-friendly clubs in London had a formidable character on the door, meaning that Marc fitted into an established role. This began in the late 1970s with Steve Strange at his two pioneering nights, Billy’s and The Blitz, in Soho and Covent Garden respectively. Renowned door-people of the early-to-mid 1980s included Scarlett Cannon at her Cha-Cha Club in Charing Cross and at the Camden Palace’s Slum It In Style night; Philip Sallon at his Mud Club; Frizzby Fox at the Hippodrome; and Coco (née Cornelius Brady) at The Mix parties in King’s Cross, Brixton, and Dalston.
The gay scene was very image conscious, and the appearance of the door-person was important. It helped to establish that they were the figurehead that guarded the gateway between the real world and the club’s demi-monde. Steve Strange was a New Romantic dandy. Scarlett was known for her striking peroxided, sculptured hair and her Weimar-esque appearance. One week Philip Sallon was dressed as an Indian god, the next he was naked save for a nappy, resplendent with a lion’s mane of shredded newspaper.
The sartorial bar was clearly set high for a new doorman such as Marc, but he excelled because he was a unique work of bricolage. Bowery gave Marc lots of his own designs to wear, thus usefully stamping the Bowery look on the door of Taboo – but only up to a point. Whereas Bowery liked to micro-manage the appearance of friends who wore his designs, Marc styled himself. The result was that Marc would wear Bowery’s clothes in a new way: with charity-shop platform shoes and hippy handbags, along with stripey tights, two or three different coloured wigs, and garish asymmetric make-up. The overall effect was an artful and effortless glam-rock inspired appearance. No one else looked like Marc, and the fact that he had free rein with Bowery’s clothes is indicative of the esteem in which the designer held his friend.
The door person was ‘the face of the club’, as Scarlett Cannon put it in a conversation we recently had. They stood outside and were the first person seen by clubbers on arrival. They worked closely with the bouncers, controlling the guest list and vetting the queue, excluding troublemakers and sometimes monitoring sartorial standards. They had to possess the natural authority to decide who entered the disco, which in turn shaped the character and reputation of the club. Consequently, Marc’s job was especially demanding because he stood on Leicester Square, where the heavy footfall included lots of beer boys.
Marc was a main character at Taboo. In the South of Watford documentary on Bowery we see him confidently vetting the crowd at the door. Marc is the only person at the club who is interviewed by the presenter Hugh Laurie, easily holding his own in front of the camera. Marc had a reputation for being a strict doorman who refused admission to anyone deemed too unfashionable or suburban. Legend has it that he would hold up a small mirror to such people, asking them disdainfully “Would you let yourself in?” It is telling that this is the most well-known story told about Taboo and yet it involves Marc rather than Bowery.
Prominent door people appeared in magazines and Marc was no exception and he was often featured alongside Bowery. Magazine coverage was very important because it put people and clubs on the map. Indeed, if word went round that photographers were going to be at a certain club then it would be busier than usual with people especially dressed up. At the beginning of Taboo’s lifespan, Marc was photographed with Bowery as one of his ‘All Gay Family’ for an i-D shoot, alongside friends including the artist Trojan and Taboo-DJ Rachel Auburn. To mark Taboo’s first birthday, The Face ran a large Derek Ridgers’ photograph of Marc and Trojan at the club. Towards the end of Taboo’s lifespan, Marc, Bowery, and Rachel Auburn represented the club on the cover of LAM. Marc was described in detail in the infamous Mail on Sunday’s You magazine article that reported widespread drug use at the club. The piece features five photographs: a large montage of Bowery, one of Marc and Bowery together, and three of Marc at Taboo wearing different looks.
Spelling out the central role that Marc played in Taboo’s story is important. For nearly eighteen months he was the preeminent door-person on London’s gay scene and as such he was crucial to the shaping of public perceptions of Taboo. Forty years later, people still talk about the club’s strict door policy and its hedonistic clientele. A large part of this is due to Marc’s diligence. Bowery explained in the South of Watford documentary that he was determined to protect Taboo’s vitality by ensuring it was an exclusive space for friends, artistic types, and those who appreciated them. Marc shared this vision and the two friends enjoyed collaborating to realise it. They were having their revenge on their conformist suburban upbringings, and stamping their joint mark on London’s demi-monde. No one who went to Taboo will forget the sight of Marc on Leicester Square, a flash of brazen technicolour in a sea of provincial casuals looking for the Empire Ballroom.
Marc Vaultier died from a drug overdose on 21 December 1986 at the age of twenty.
Stephen Brogan is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a History Tutor at the Mary Ward Centre. His book The Royal Touch in Early Modern England was published in 2015. Stephen performed in drag as Stella Stein in the 1990s and worked closely with Leigh Bowery. Stephen is currently writing a book on the Chevalier d’Eon (1728-1810), the French soldier and spy who lived the second half of their life as a woman, as well as a series of essays on London’s gay nightlife during the 1980s.
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