Nightlife
The oral history of Australia’s longest-running gay club
For 45 fabulous years, Connections Nightclub has kept Perth dancing.
On paper, at least, the odds were against Connections. In 1975, in the most isolated city on earth, it first opened its doors as a gay nightclub. Homosexuality was still criminalised and would be for another 11 years. With a population of just over 750,000, Perth still felt more like a town than a metropolis.
But Connections didn’t fail — it flourished. Forty-five years on, it’s conquered a notoriously fickle industry to reign as the longest-running club in Australia. “It’s reportedly the oldest gay club in the Southern Hemisphere, but I can’t give you solid evidence of that,” laughs owner Tim Brown.
Over those 45 years, Connections has been there while Perth’s LGBTQIA scene went from being conducted in the shadows to being out, loud and proud. Inside its walls the club has welcomed legends — both Sasha and Frankie Knuckles played there in the '90s — earning a reputation for its stellar disco and house soundtrack. Boy George, Elton John, Rod Stewart and Mel Gibson have all passed through over the years, but don’t ask Brown about them: “I’m so sick of telling that story,” he says. “Everybody always wants to know about the famous people.”
Even the building has an incredible history -- before it became Connections it served as an illegal gambling den and cabaret bar. In a nod to the past, it still hosts regular cabaret shows alongside the DJ sets and drag performances.
Along the way Connections has reinvented some parts of the clubbing experience, stuck to its guns on others, endured ups and downs, and come out stronger. Not even a fire breaking out in 1981 could stop the party, or dampen its sense of humour — legend has it the DJ hit play on The Trammps’ ‘Disco Inferno’ as punters were evacuated.
Tim Brown has seen most of it unfold — he started visiting the club in the ‘80s, purchased it 1991 and is still at the helm almost three decades later. For a vital piece of Australian nightlife history, we asked Brown for his memories about Connections, the little club that could.
The early days
“The guy who owned it before us was an Aussie Rules footy player, straight guy, who had been working in hospitality. He had a really great number two who was gay and said ‘Perth needs a gay bar’, and together they set it up. The advertisement for the opening of the nightclub was half a dozen lines in the personal columns of the Sunday paper."
The personal ad announcing Connections to the world in 1975.
© Connections Nightclub
“Before it there had been pubs or bars which were known as places for the gays to go, but it was the first nightclub. [Perth’s gay scene has] an incredibly rich and varied history. But it was always very quiet; it was always on the down-low as things were in those days."
“Some of the people from the early days are still around, actually. We have one customer who’s been coming regularly — and I mean regularly, a couple of times a week — still, since 1979. He’s otherwise known as ‘Nanna’."
“When I started in 1991, there was still ostensibly a camera ban in there. The gay paper could take photographs, but you had to ask us, and you had to ask the people whose photos you were taking. Even by ‘91, being photographed in a gay nightclub — being outed in that way — could cost you your job, your relationships, your family. The world’s changed dramatically, in a way that for somebody in their 20s it’s impossible to imagine."
Social photos from Connections in gay paper the Western Gay, 1983
© Connections Nightclub
“Like any business, it’s gone through ups and downs. I think people assume it’s always been profitable or always been rammed. But when I took over, another club had opened up and was exceedingly popular. I remember a Saturday night early on in my tenure that there were 30 or 40 people in there at peak time. It was tragic. It really should have been closed — it really should have been dead and buried at that point, but it wasn’t. It had already been going for 17 years then."
“It was worth fighting for, and we’ve done that a couple of times now. We’ve had a couple of low patches, but we’ve had a lot of great patches as well.”
Sylvester at the club in the late 80s
© Connections Nightclub
On running a gay club when homosexuality was still criminalised
“Connections has always been left to its own devices. It’s an odd city, Perth. It was a very small town, but it didn’t really attract trouble as such. We’ve always had a very good relationship with the police, and it’s had a bit of a live-and-let-live vibe going on. The cops have always left the nightclub alone."
“One of the odd things about Perth is because we’re small and isolated, there weren’t many venues. And still aren’t. And as a result, Connections catered to all the community — men, women, young, old. It’s not like Sydney where you get a bar that’s full of twinks, a bar that’s full of bears, and so forth. And it always had a straight contingent, we always had allies in there. So it was a bit of a mixed bag, which plays into a lot of the story over the years."
The main room of Connections in the late 90s.
© Connections Nightclub
“But I also think the police always saw it as very self-regulating. It’s always been a very safe space on every level — as in, ‘safe space’ as we use the term now, but safe in that there was never any trouble in there. It still has very, very low levels of trouble. Because in a small town, everybody knew each other. And it was such a mixed bag of people, you kind of just had to roll with it. It was a subculture but it was a whole bunch of subcultures within a subculture, chucked into the one room. That made it a very tolerant space and I think that’s actually its greatest strength. Still is."
“I think that if you then feed that back to how the cops saw us, they were like ‘okay, you guys look after your own, and we’ll just leave you be’. And, in fact, talking to an older policeman a few years back, he told me that way back in the day, Connections was where the cops would come to compare notes and debrief at night. Because it was the one spot where they could have a conversation and nobody would bat an eyelid at two men having a D&M.”
House, disco and beyond
“It’s always had a reputation for being a really fun place and a place for really good music. That’s the other cornerstone of what we do — it’s always had a very strong, forward-looking music policy, rather than playing it safe. It’s quite a mixed bag but if there’s a line that runs through it, it’s disco and house. So if you were into your music, you would come for that. A lot of people came just for the music, not necessarily because of their sexuality."
The main room of Connections in the 70s
© Connections Nightclub
“In the 90s, house music had really hit its straps and we were known for being a really, really strong house club. We had great ties to that music and we had great DJs. Interestingly, I started employing straight DJs at that point and came in for a lot of flak for that. It’s really funny to think you had to fight to put a straight DJ in a gay club. I hired a couple of guys who were brilliant DJs, who I got to know, but when they came on board people did not want to know them.”
A lot of people came just for the music, not necessarily because of their sexuality
The night Frankie Knuckles came to town
“Frankie Knuckles played in the mid-90s. It was possibly one of my favourite gigs ever. In fact, it didn’t sell very well. It lost us money."
“He was one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever met. I still have my diary from back then and I’ve got his New York address in there because he said ‘if you’re ever in New York, look me up’. He was probably one of the most loved-up DJs I’ve ever met, who just really cared about what he did and loved what he did."
Resident DJ Amanda Reynolds, Frankie Knuckles and owner Tim Brown
© Connections Nightclub
“He played a blinding set. He played all over the shop, all different sorts of things. Right to the point of at 4am, he dropped everything out and played Cher’s ‘Take Me Home’. After playing big club house tracks, he went ‘I’m going to play a disco song now. A big gay disco song.’ I went racing up to the DJ booth and said ‘What are you doing!’ And he said ‘Oh, sometimes you’ve just got to go with it, girl’. And everybody just danced. Fabulous.”
How things have changed
“As a customer, the first time I went might have been 1984. I remember it then. Things were, in many ways, a lot freer. But it’s that thing about when people are forced to hide — when they get a space to express themselves, they go at it a little harder [laughs] and it was much looser. Which is an interesting paradox."
“Today, it’s vastly different and yet it’s vastly the same. The world is very different. The music’s different, people behave differently, but really at its core it’s a bunch of people out having a good time and that hasn’t changed, really."
“Tama Sumo played this month with her wife on Valentine’s Day. From Berghain to little old Perth. That in itself is quite telling — about gay clubs, and gay people, and their place in clubland. I think that’s pretty marvellous, to think that two women could be touring the world openly, outwardly, doing what they love. That felt like a really important milestone in the history of the nightclub and the community.”
Boy George at the club in the 2000s.
© Connections Nightclub
The trick to keeping a club open for 45 years
“I think it’s about knowing your core values but also being willing to move with the times."
“There were lots of things that were great about it in the '70s and lots of things that were great about it in the '90s, but just because they were great then doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to work now. They might still be great, but they might not work. It’s about trying to sift through the bits that were good then, the bits that are good now, and what makes us relevant today."
“Because it’s all about relevance. It’s not a museum. We always said it’s about keeping one eye on the future and one on our rich and storied past.”
A drag show at Connections today
© Connections Nightclub
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