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‘It was wonderfully innocent’: Boy’s Own, the fanzine that defined the acid house generation

A new book collects every single issue of the mag that started as an in-joke among friends and became a subcultural behemoth. Its creators recall the parties, the music, the fashion, and being ‘right on one, matey’

Two to three thousand copies of each issue were printed and the publication quickly became something of a scene bible, complete with its own in-jokes, digs and unique lexicon, so much so that by 1989 Weatherall even wrote a handy guide to the definitions of commonly used slang, such as “Log: If you don’t know what one is, you are one.” Its tagline – “The only fanzine that gets right on one, matey” – soon became a staple saying for those in the know around drug culture. Boy George could be heard singing a cappella in the early hours as the sun rose and when the police arrived at about 8am – to find a group of smiling, dancing young people in smiley face-covered bright clothes and bandanas listening to squelchy electronic sounds – they didn’t have a clue. Such was their growing reputation for spinning killer records and having their finger on the pulse that Weatherall and Farley started to be hired as producers and remixers for the likes of Happy Mondays, New Order, the Farm and Primal Scream.

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