Der Putsch
A club called Der Putsch was started by Steve Beech (in London in 1983) which lead to magazines such as Skin Two, and more clubs being started, such as Submission, Torture Garden and Whiplash Club. Earlier public clubs in the UK include one running in Edinburgh in 1957, also called the Hellfire Club.
Westward Bound was an offshoot of the notorious trail blazing London Fetish Club Der Putsch, A shop emerged in 1995 and pioneering website set up in 1997.
- Scene report by Ishmael, 12 Dec 2007
According to my sources (which are not unempeachable), Der Putsch was founded by Steve and Phil in 1985. When I first heard about it in 86, it was Steve and Jane, and when I first went there in 1987 it was Steve and Sadi.
I wrote this about Der Putsch some years after it closed.
I discovered Der Putch, to my delight, in the March of '87, it was in its heyday below the Cafe des Artistes, that sleazy warren in Fulham. Great days, great days. I would sleep a few hours on Euston Station afterwards before catching the first train back to the Midlands. Only once did I consider giving it all up; at the end of 1987 I was within an ace of moving to Edinburgh and asking someone to marry me, but she chucked me on Hogmanay and within a week I was back at Der Putsch, seeking solace. I met a couple new to the club and glad of a contact, who offered bedspace in Notting Hill Gate, and after that, the die, as they say, was cast.
For we happy few, Der Putsch was our mobile Mecca and jaunting Jerusalem. Twice a month we would don our kinkiest clothes and cross London to the latest venue, sure of a cracking time. Tim Woodward was a regular then, and Ron (later of Chain Gang) was part of the staff. No-one who wanted to be anyone missed out on a boat party. I still look back on those nights of 1987 and '88 with enormous fondness. Halcyon days are finite and, in June 1989, Submission began and, to general disquiet, The Scene began to change. I watched amazed, beside the gangplank of the boat party as Steve and Sadi refused to admit their former colleagues; banning them from all future Der Putsch events unless the Chain Gang stopped running their own more open and highly-produced parties.
The pundits prophesied 'club wars'. Acrimonious papers came with respective mailouts and The Scene began slowly to divide as opinions polarised between The Chain Gang, painted as inept usurpers, and Steve and Sadi as monopolative gangsters. When Torture Garden, a bleakly industrial night out for diverse and perverse, as well as SMers, began the following year, it's organisers too were banned from Der Putsch.
One of the saddest and most senseless stories was that of a friend of mine who, having arrived at Der Putsch with two enthusiastic and pretty women, had the effrontery to leave early, telling Steve they were bored and were going to Torture Garden. Two days later my friend received a letter banning him and his guests from Der Putsch and accusing the ladies of theft.
The Scene had changed forever: With four clubs, including the bijou but brilliant Severin's Kiss, it was now an open market. Still, Steve and Sadi treated it as a monopoly, trusting that they held the loyalty of the 'serious practitioners' and that, in consequence, their rivals would eventually capitulate. However, the same policies designed to exclude the clienteles of Der Putsch 's rivals were also alienating their friends. The happy, irreverent partygoers of the '80s had long since decamped and the camaraderie along with them, leaving only bewilderment at the lack of organisational magnanimity. Whatever war there might ever have been, Steve and Sadi had shot themselves in the feet too often to fight it. The rest, like Der Putsch, is history.
The last Der Putsch took place in Hammersmith in Oct 93.
- Der Putsch invitations
1983 invite
1984 invite
1985 invite
1985 invite
See also Der Putsch p2 and/or The Firm (club)
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