Episode 60
Greg Wilson pt 1
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This week we sat with UK mix pioneer Greg Wilson to learn about his early days, key influences, and his rise to becoming one of the UK's most well respected DJs. We hear how his exposure to djing through living in the pub trade inspired him to take up DJing at 15, quickly earning 4 night a week residencies, and some of the hottest crowds in the North West.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Reissued classics from Be With Records
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Transcript
Welcome back to untodjay.
Speaker A:Excuse the background noise.
Speaker A:The window's open because it's just too warm to have it shut.
Speaker A:I just wanted to add a quick note at the start of this one.
Speaker A:You're about to listen to part one of a conversation with a bonafide legend in Mr.
Speaker A:Greg Wilson.
Speaker A:But what happened during it is we had some absolute nightmares with the tech, with my wi fi and with the software that I use kind of dropping out.
Speaker A:So it's all been stitched back together, but it just kind of ends a little bit abruptly, I think.
Speaker A:So sit back and enjoy and don't be shocked when it goes off.
Speaker A:Just to add as well, if you enjoy getting some deep knowledge and history from Greg, be sure to check out the new Record Mirror Disco Charts podcast, where Greg and Mike Atkinson look at one of James Hamilton's top 20s from the heyday of disco with a different guest every episode.
Speaker A:From Norman Cook to Morgan Khan and more.
Speaker A:From label politics to session players to the writing style used by James and even his BPM counting, there's some amazing insights to be had.
Speaker A:Just look for Record Mirror Disco charts wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker B:Okay, let's go.
Speaker A:Right, welcome back to One Two DJ, everyone.
Speaker A:We're here, episode 60 with a bona fide UK legend, Greg Wilson.
Speaker A:Greg, how are you today?
Speaker B:Hi, Adam.
Speaker B:Good to be with you.
Speaker A:Yeah, thanks very much for coming on the show today.
Speaker A:I'm really keen to get into your story.
Speaker A:I think you're the first.
Speaker A:I don't know, is New Brighton classed as being a Scouser?
Speaker B:Well, no, they wouldn't class us as Scousers.
Speaker B:They call us plazies.
Speaker B:Plazi Scousers.
Speaker B:I mean, we're not Woolies.
Speaker B:Woolies are people.
Speaker B:More like from kind of St Helens and Widnes and stuff a bit that way.
Speaker B:But we were always like plazies.
Speaker B:That's how I remember it.
Speaker A:Right, so we're still searching for our first Scouser anyway.
Speaker A:But, yeah, so from what I've got on my extensive, not necessarily accurate notes, is that you.
Speaker A:You kind of grew up in the pub.
Speaker A:Well, your parents were in the pub trade, is that right?
Speaker B: Yeah, they had a pub between: Speaker B:So I was like, between the ages of 6 and 14 and.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that was.
Speaker B:It exposed me to a whole different thing in terms of every weekend.
Speaker B:There were weddings, 21st birthday parties, events, functions, mobile discos coming in and out and in and out, you know, I mean, I must have seen, you know, every mobile disco within like a 30 mile radius that's, you know, I'd sit behind the bar with my mum as she was working and I'd have, you know, a Coke and just be listening to what was going on, taking it in.
Speaker B:So that was, yeah, that was a huge thing, but not the only thing.
Speaker B:I mean, there was music coming in from different directions when I was a kid, so I was kind of fortunate to be exposed to all this.
Speaker A:So in the pubs, when, when you were seeing those DJs at the time, were they single turntable and microphone sort of guys?
Speaker B:No, no, they were double turntable.
Speaker B:They had like a console unit and, and some lights.
Speaker B:They bring in some lighting and I mean, what was funny is that often they'd leave it set up overnight and come back the next day to, to pick the gear up and I'd get down there in the morning and switch it on and play a few tunes and stuff and probably get on the mic here and there as well.
Speaker A:Were they all right with that if they found out?
Speaker A:Or did you, Were you just meticulously careful?
Speaker B:No, they probably would have, you know, who's this kid, like getting on our equipment?
Speaker B:So no, they probably wouldn't have been, but they weren't up, they weren't out of bed and they weren't there, so.
Speaker A:Because I did wonder, because thinking about the, the sort of experience you might had in a pub at that time, I remember a few, probably a couple of years ago, I had a couple of conversations with people probably your age or maybe slightly older that were talking about when their parents used to go to the pub when they were kids.
Speaker A:They'd just been made to sit in the car, so the parents had just come out to the car, give them some pop and some crisps and then just go back in and live their life very separately.
Speaker A:So I was wondering what level of involvement you were able to have.
Speaker B:No, I understand that because I remember when my dad and his mates, they'd take, they'd go to the match and they'd take me, but I'd be with them.
Speaker B:So I'd be sat outside about five pubs before we got to the match and you know, so I remember that kind of thing.
Speaker B: use they were open only until: Speaker B: and then they reopened until: Speaker B:And because they closed so early, that meant that if people wanted a drink they, they had to find a club.
Speaker B:And so clubs were much more prevalent back Then, because they need.
Speaker B:You know, it wasn't like now, whereby you can go to a bar and you can stay there, you know, really late.
Speaker B:You don't need to go to a club back then you did.
Speaker B:But that, that, that gave clubs the opportunity, especially midweek, to try things that were different.
Speaker B:And, you know, so.
Speaker B:So it was an interesting period, you know, it was a different time and the conditions were different, of course.
Speaker A:Was there anything that really caught your attention with what those DJs were doing at that time then?
Speaker B:I mean, it was more about the music that was taken in.
Speaker B:I mean, I could kind of.
Speaker B:I could tell what I thought was a good DJ and what was not.
Speaker B:You know, I was discerning because I'd seen so many.
Speaker B:So, you know, like, when there was somebody that wasn't up to it, you could see that, you know, or hear that.
Speaker B:But it was, you know, it was all about the music, really.
Speaker B:You know, I was just kind of seeping in and I'd hear so much music because at weddings and stuff, you just heard it all, you know, like rock and roll, you know, all the kind of crooners and everything, you know, they're in the kind of drinking songs, you know, and that was alongside the amazing pop music of the time.
Speaker B:And of course, you know, the soul music, which was such a massive feature of the 60s and was basically, you know, the beginnings of dance music as we know it.
Speaker B:You know, things like Tamla, Motown and those records and.
Speaker B:And again, in the 60s, this was the period where discotheques were opening, discotheques being places where you heard recorded music played as opposed to what had previously been dance halls, where there might have been a little bit of recorded music in between, but it was bands based, so it was.
Speaker B:People were going to see bands and they were going to play the popular tracks of the time, and maybe a DJ slotted in between them.
Speaker B:But obviously the discotheque took it into, you know, a sense where now it was all about the recorded music and this is what people were coming to listen to.
Speaker A:So at that young age, did.
Speaker A:Did you kind of get an idea that that was some.
Speaker A:That DJing was something you wanted to do?
Speaker B:I never looked at it like that.
Speaker B:No, I.
Speaker B:I didn't consider that at all.
Speaker B:I mean, really, where that came into play was I had a friend at school, still a friend of mine, Derek, Derek Kay, and he was into electronics and he was also into records.
Speaker B:And that's how we become friends, because we were into records.
Speaker B:And he built his own rudimentary mobile Disco, which was basically two turntables.
Speaker B:They weren't even the same turntable in a draw with a switch between one and the other.
Speaker B:It was so basic, but it was impressive, you know, I was like, wow, he was only, I think he was only what, 13 and stuff when, wow, he kind of launched his first mobile disco.
Speaker B:So I'd go around with him and I kind of now and again get on the mic and bits and bobs.
Speaker B:But, you know, it's very much his kind of, you know.
Speaker B:And he was taking it into weddings.
Speaker B:I mean, doing weddings when he was like 15, which, I mean, I did myself, but he was, he was before me.
Speaker B:And it just seemed crazy that people were trusting, like, yeah, you know, this like kind of adolescent boy with doing their events, you know, but he was a very good dj.
Speaker B:And basically in the end what happened was that I bought his old console when he upgraded and then I started a mobile disco.
Speaker B: And that was in: Speaker B:And that's how I got into it.
Speaker B:So, you know, I hadn't like, kind of.
Speaker B:I didn't have any master plan to, oh, you know, I'll be a dj.
Speaker B: hen I started in the clubs in: Speaker B:And that wasn't bad, bad in, in those days because like, kids would come out of school and do apprenticeships where they only get like 15 pound a week for something.
Speaker B:So if I did four or five nights a week DJ and I was like, you know, earning good money.
Speaker A:So what sort of length of a set would you be doing?
Speaker B:Well, it was generally 9:00 till 2:00 with the club opening hours.
Speaker B:And so you, you did the whole night, you know, so I, I never worked with other DJs, but then in the sense of, you know, a kind of tag team type thing, I always, I mean, I can't think of anybody else who did.
Speaker B:It was only later with the more specialist scene when you kind of came across people like Colin Curtis and John Grant, you know, playing together, you know, and things like that.
Speaker B:Frenchie and Pete Haig, these would like jazz, funk, DJs but you didn't really have that.
Speaker B:I'm trying to think now and I can't think of any double acts at all about them.
Speaker A:So if you started at that kind of young age and this comes back again to your friend who was doing the weddings, how big a record collection would you have to have amassed and how quickly would you have had to, like, develop quite a mature taste to be doing this?
Speaker B:Well, again, this is like the great fortune for me was that had an elder brother and sister and they were buying basically Tamla, Motown, Stacks, Atlantic, Trojan, they were buying all the, you know, great black music labels.
Speaker B:And these were coming in the house and I was getting hold of these records and I was just absorbing them, listening, listening, you know.
Speaker B:And then they kind of went off college and stuff.
Speaker B:My sister went to.
Speaker B:She joined the Navy and all these records were left there and they just became my thing.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:That was the start of my record collection.
Speaker B:But at 11, I started buying records and.
Speaker B:Or acquiring records any way I could.
Speaker B:You know, it was like I just became, you know, like obsessed with records.
Speaker B:And so I built up, you know, over a period of time.
Speaker B:So you're thinking it was what, four years before I started DJing.
Speaker B:So I was building up these records.
Speaker B:I mean, not.
Speaker B:Not necessarily even buying them new.
Speaker B:We used to have things called the X jukebox singles.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And they had.
Speaker B:They were dinged out in the middle and they sold those obviously a lot cheaper because they've been in jukeboxes.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And that was another thing.
Speaker B:The pub had jukeboxes.
Speaker B:And so like, the jukebox man would come round and change the records.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:If I spotted him, I was straight there, just sat near him, you know, watching him, waiting for him to say, you want a couple?
Speaker B:Do you want to take a couple?
Speaker B:And he'd let me take a couple of records.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I remember I got Tammy Lynn, I'm going to run away from you that way, you know, so that was a little sideline, but really like my brother and sister and the music that they were into, it introduced me to soul music.
Speaker B:So that was a const.
Speaker B:Soul and funk were always there.
Speaker B:I was always after soul and funk records.
Speaker B:Although at the same time, just like all the other kids, I was into the pop music at the time.
Speaker B:I, you know, bought Slade and T.
Speaker B:Rex and Bowie was massive for me.
Speaker B:I kind of ended up with Bowie, you know, for a few years.
Speaker B:I was absolutely obsessed with Bowie until he started really doing soul music himself.
Speaker B:It Was almost like, I don't need him to be doing that because I've got that, I own that.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:I want this weird kind of alien charact.
Speaker B:I was like, Big Ziggy Star, the Spiders from Mars time.
Speaker B:So when he changed away from that and he dismantled that band, although, you know, I still appreciated him and I still bought stuff, it was never that obsession anymore, you know.
Speaker A:I suppose it was like a natural progression for him, wasn't it?
Speaker A:It was always kind of, okay, I've kind of done this.
Speaker B:No, I get it now.
Speaker B:Looking back, I mean, at the time, it was a really hard one for me to swallow.
Speaker B:For the.
Speaker B:The main reason being was that when he did the.
Speaker B:The final Ziggy Stardust tour, and I was massively into him by this point and he was playing in Liverpool and I was just too young really, for my parents to just say, yeah, go over at night on a school night to Liverpool to see this concert, you know, it wasn't going to happen.
Speaker B:And I remember some of the older boys around, you know, like, few years older who got over to that and they came back with these, like, wild eyes and everything.
Speaker B:Same with Clockwork Orange.
Speaker B:I remember some older lads got to see Clockwork and.
Speaker B:And they had this glare in their eye that they'd seen something they shouldn't have almost.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so, like, at the time, we didn't know it was going to break up.
Speaker B:So my thoughts were, oh, I'm gonna miss this.
Speaker B:I was gutted.
Speaker B:But I'll.
Speaker B:They'll be back later this year.
Speaker B:I will be there.
Speaker B:You know, it was that kind of attitude.
Speaker B:And then what does he go and do?
Speaker B:He does the famous Hammersmith gig and breaks the band up and this is it, it's finished.
Speaker B:So there was a.
Speaker B:I suppose there was a kind of.
Speaker B:A little bit of an anger about that, you know, but.
Speaker B:But also, I love that band.
Speaker B:They were a great band.
Speaker B:You know, I think people don't understand how much they contributed to that Ziggy Hunky Dory or that insane period.
Speaker B:And it was so sad because after they'd finished, they basically dismantled them.
Speaker B:I mean, Mick Ronson got a solo career, but if it was now, that band would exist in their own right, you know, it would be, yeah, be.
Speaker B:Be brilliant.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But back then, and so, yeah, you know, those guys, those four, you know, Trevor Boulder, Woody Woodmanzie, Mick Ronson and Bowie was it for me.
Speaker B:So when it changed, I mean, I also, I remember he did that David Live album and Ronson wasn't playing on it.
Speaker B:And, and he, He.
Speaker B:He had.
Speaker B:I think it was Earl Slick or someone doing Moon Age, you know, brilliant guitarist, but it wasn't Mick Ronson, you know, and I, I go back to that.
Speaker B:There was a bootleg album live in Santa Monica live album that eventually got a release years later.
Speaker B:It was always.
Speaker B:It was a.
Speaker B:You know, if you're a Bowie fan, you have to have that.
Speaker B:That album was like special stuff.
Speaker B:You know, we had this pig.
Speaker B:Pig's Head logo type thing on it and amazing performance of the Spiders.
Speaker B:You know, that was captured in America.
Speaker B:So, yeah, you know, that was my Bowie kind of period.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:We got so kind of wrapped up into.
Speaker B:Into that.
Speaker B:But always constant to this was, you know, like Bowie was recording Young Americans and stuff in Philadelphia at Sigma Sounds.
Speaker B:Now I was listening to, obviously buying all the Philly stuff that I could.
Speaker B:Could get.
Speaker B:You know, how I'm having the Blue Notes OJS Intruders.
Speaker B:You know, I was on this stuff.
Speaker B:I was aware of all this music.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of it was coming into the charts at this point.
Speaker B:But also, you know, because I was aware of the labels, I could pick out something that, you know, was.
Speaker B:Was a bit lesser if I saw it on a bargain.
Speaker B:Bargain bin and picked it out and everything.
Speaker B:I mean, it's like with Bowie, that was the big thing with me with Bowie was that in terms of records, that was.
Speaker B:Was when Starman came on Top of the Pops, that was the moment for me as well.
Speaker B:That was.
Speaker B:You know, it was.
Speaker B:It was a.
Speaker B:I mean, there's been a book written about that and everything.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:It's a eureka moment about that performance.
Speaker B:Yeah, when he first came on Top of the Pops and he kind of draped his arm around Mick Ronson and he looked at the camera and pointed and you thought you would.
Speaker B:He was talking to you.
Speaker B:You know, it was an incredible.
Speaker B:And the next day at school, everyone's talking about it and not everybody's into it.
Speaker B:A lot of people are freaked out because this is an effem, man.
Speaker B:You know, what the.
Speaker B:You know, so a lot of people had to kind of, you know, I was absolutely.
Speaker B:I just thought, wow, this is incredible.
Speaker B:So at the weekend when I.
Speaker B:I went to the shop, I said it.
Speaker B:I think, you know, they must have realized how into it said, oh, he'd done a single before this Changes and Give Me Chain and.
Speaker B:And that was the first of going backwards in that kind of way that I.
Speaker B:You know, it's like when I heard Changes, it Was like, oh my God, what an amazing record.
Speaker B:But this wasn't even in the charts.
Speaker B:Yeah, it made me understand that being in the charts was a popularity thing.
Speaker B:I get it, you know, what's the most popular, what people buying.
Speaker B:But it doesn't necessarily mean the best by any stretch of the imagination because, you know, I was seeing these records that never got anywhere near the charts, that were classic, you know, that were just incredible.
Speaker A:So when you were DJing in those sort of early days, did you have to stay commercial and was it easy to sort of move around the genres because, you know, you're into quite a lot of different stuff there.
Speaker A:Particularly at that time when I started.
Speaker B:DJing, it was basically different nights meant different things.
Speaker B:You were kind of a weekend night and, you know, like one of the clubs I worked in had a downstairs discotheque which was only open at the weekend, but I also worked in there during the week in the upstairs part where they had a bit, like I was saying, with the kind of dance bands on playing and that you were playing between them.
Speaker B:Sometimes not.
Speaker B:Sometimes you do the whole night.
Speaker B:But it was, you know, those, those kind of gigs.
Speaker B:Sometimes you could sit there for most part of the night with a dozen people in and they keep the place open because they were selling some drinks and everything.
Speaker B:So you just like.
Speaker B:It's like a bar DJ in.
Speaker B:In that sense.
Speaker B:That's why I, I've never liked that kind.
Speaker B:I, I need an audience.
Speaker B:I need a response.
Speaker B:I mean, some people love.
Speaker B:They can sit in a, a bar or, you know, like on a beach side and just play music.
Speaker B:And the, the, you know, for me, I've done enough of that.
Speaker B:I did enough of that back then of playing music on a Tuesday night, you know, when there, there and no one's dancing and.
Speaker B:But the place is open and you're still playing the music.
Speaker B:But then, you know, the weekends, you kind of.
Speaker B:Things are getting really.
Speaker B:Cooking.
Speaker B:You've been able to play all, you know, great disco records and stuff that's going on, not be as concerned about, like the chart records that people are asking you for.
Speaker B:So, you know, that's where you were with it.
Speaker B:That's how it was.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:I was in a small kind of area in a sense, you know, I wasn't a big city and everything.
Speaker B:So, you know, I mean, there were great records played as well.
Speaker B:There was like loads of funk tracks from the early 70s that were still being played in the clubs that you could put on a James Brown track or a Cool and the Gang Jungle boogie or whatever and people are still in 75 were gonna go for that even though they weren't chart records.
Speaker B:So there were discotheque records that had kind of managed to kind of infiltrate in a different type of way where it really all came to a kind of, ah, I see where I am and I see where I want to be was.
Speaker B:There was a club over in Liverpool called the Timepiece.
Speaker B:And it was a predominantly black club.
Speaker B:And the DJ there was Les Spain and a few other DJs took me over.
Speaker B:After I'd finished the club one night they did all nighters once a month there and they took me to the Timepiece.
Speaker B:And walking in there immediately I was very aware of the fact that I was as a white person in the minority.
Speaker B:It was the first time I've been in that environment.
Speaker B:It was a good lesson in life to see that, you know, because black people had to be subjected to that in every walk of life, basically.
Speaker B:And so it gave me a kind of an understanding in a sense because I'm watching like this dancing that's going on that is on a different level to what I see in the clubs I work in or the clubs I've been to the movement, almost a bob on the dance floor.
Speaker B:There's a groove going on.
Speaker B:The music that is playing is just everything I'm about, you know.
Speaker B:And we walk over to the DJ booth and there's a number of DJs because it's an all nighter.
Speaker B:They've come from their clubs and they're basically taking notes of what Les is playing.
Speaker B:And Les is so accommodating.
Speaker B:He's telling them he's.
Speaker B:He's got no, you know, he's not kind of covering up labels or anything.
Speaker B:He knows next week I'm gonna have more stuff for you.
Speaker B:So the self and he was a larger than life figure black DJ and probably the most successful black DJ of the 70s.
Speaker B:He ended up like going to work for Motown and Capitol Records, still in the music business now, you know, today.
Speaker B:Manny Stars world great guy, great character and had this scene in the Timepiece.
Speaker B:Now seeing that I saw the promised land and it was like, it's not that I wanted his club because I could.
Speaker B:I was aware enough to see how what magnet it was at some time somewhere.
Speaker B:This is what I want, this is my aspiration.
Speaker B:So my aspiration is to be a black music specialist.
Speaker B:He's just playing black.
Speaker B:There's no pop music, there's no charm.
Speaker B:It's not this.
Speaker B:This is for real.
Speaker B:And so that was where I was with it now.
Speaker B:Over the next few years I worked at a club called the golden guinea in, in New Brighton.
Speaker B:And the golden guinea was.
Speaker B:I'd previously worked next door at a club called the Penny Farthing.
Speaker B:And the Penny Farthing was the kind of club that would let in the people that couldn't get in the Golden Guinea.
Speaker B:So it was.
Speaker B:It was a downgrade.
Speaker B:So the.
Speaker B:I go to the guinea sometimes after I'd, you know, when I had a night off.
Speaker B:And I loved the place, love what was being played in the.
Speaker B:The vibe of it was great.
Speaker B:It was another.
Speaker B:It was a kind of notch up, it felt, to.
Speaker B:To the other local clubs.
Speaker B:And then they offered me the job.
Speaker B:They kind of headhunted me almost.
Speaker B:And I ended up in there for three years.
Speaker B:And what I was able to do there was to develop a little local scene that.
Speaker B:Whereby I became known for playing the music first.
Speaker B:So that was the big thing, playing what you will hear played in the, you know, the guinea is what you're going to be hearing played in three, four weeks, in a month, two months, maybe never elsewhere.
Speaker B:You know that.
Speaker B:Yeah, we're ahead of the curve.
Speaker B:And how I got ahead of the, the curve was the.
Speaker B:Soon after I'd kind of started in the clubs when I was.
Speaker B:I was still 15, I bought a book and it was called the Emperor Roscoe DJ book.
Speaker B:And Emperor Roscoe was on Radio 1.
Speaker B:He was this American DJ with a Wolfman Jack.
Speaker B:I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
Speaker B:There's a famous film called American Graffiti where.
Speaker B:And he speaks like that Wolfman Jack.
Speaker B:And he's right down on the mic like that.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And Roscoe had this style and he played a lot of funk and soul and rock music, but mainly he did a few great Atlantic Roscoe show albums that were just great, you know, kind of 60s soul and early 70s and stuff.
Speaker B:So I bought this book and it was really, you know, it was a DJ handbook, but it was more about radio, more about mobile DJs.
Speaker B:It wasn't so much.
Speaker B:There was a little bit discotech, disco DJs, as they call them, but.
Speaker B:But within the.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I read this thing that really astounded me that record companies sent records to DJs for free for them to play in the clubs.
Speaker B:You know, there was promotional lists and okay, turn to the back of the book.
Speaker B:And he's listed every record company in the country.
Speaker B:They're all down there.
Speaker B:So for the next like few days, I rung every Record company, have you got a DJ mailing list?
Speaker B:And they're saying, yeah.
Speaker B:And so some of them said, oh no, the list is closed.
Speaker B:Or there's, you know, we'll send you an application form.
Speaker B:Bit by bit over the next few months, I got on all the labels and so I was now getting the music ahead.
Speaker B:Often, you know, it'd be four to six weeks ahead of them going in the shops here on UK release.
Speaker B:We were.
Speaker B:We were getting the them in advance, advanced promotion copies.
Speaker B:And that enabled me now, with the money that I was saving from Brian UK Records, to buy more imports.
Speaker B:And so I was supplementing it with imports just on that.
Speaker A:Was it a really good place in the country to be for imports, given that you were on the sort of dock, sort of Atlantic dock side.
Speaker A:Was there a lot coming into Liverpool?
Speaker B:Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker B:So, I mean, that was a previous time.
Speaker B:That whole kind of Cunard Yanks the docks.
Speaker B:And they talk about it with the Beatles a lot.
Speaker B:And, you know, I've spoken a lot of people from that time.
Speaker B:I've read things about that time and there were other sources.
Speaker B:I mean, it wasn't that these records were just.
Speaker B:I mean, that might have happened in the early 50s and stuff, but by the 60s, you know, a lot of American records were being released in the uk.
Speaker B:And one of the big reasons for that, and I'll tell you a story here, like the DJ from the cabin, from the actual cabin where Beatles played many times, was called Bob Waller.
Speaker B:And before he died, I got to know him and I kind of kick myself now because I should have asked him more specifically about DJing about, you know, it's little things that, you know, I want to know, but I might never know.
Speaker B:But one of the things that he told me, and it really kind of made me think what he said he was talking about, you know, like there's a track called the Hippie Hippie Shake and American Record.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And he.
Speaker B:He said he picked up his copy in.
Speaker B:What did he say?
Speaker B:Newton Lee Willows, which is in Lancashire, near Wigan, in a shop in Newton Willows, which I thought was.
Speaker B:And there's a famous story behind that because he took it back.
Speaker B:He thought it worked with Paul McCartney's voice.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:The Beatles performed it lived many, many times.
Speaker B:You know, they.
Speaker B:But they never.
Speaker B:They didn't record it.
Speaker B:Swinging Blue Jeans ended up recording having the hit, but it was very much.
Speaker B:And it was through Bob Wool.
Speaker B:But what the penny dropped for me when I realized Newtonly Willows, the location of it was near to Burton Wood Air Base where the American GIs were.
Speaker B:Ah, so that's why they were having American records in a small kind of town, Is because the GIs will come into town and they buy records, you know, and.
Speaker B:And so most record companies were at least the big kind of American rhythm and blues records were getting released here.
Speaker B:You know, the, the, the.
Speaker B:What's that?
Speaker B:Then again, the import channels had opened up initially in the 50s through the kind of blues and rhythm of blues obsessives who just wanted to track.
Speaker B:And they were writing to Chess Records, do we.
Speaker B:You know, and opening these.
Speaker B:And then, you know, like kind of wholesalers were emerging and then shops were kind of opening up.
Speaker B:And so there were like a smattering of kind of import specialist shops in 75 when I started off.
Speaker B:And fortunately one of.
Speaker B:One of the places, I mean the main place was spinning in Manchester, which obviously later down the line was where I got most of my stuff.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But at that point in time they were kind of selling on to other shops.
Speaker B:And there was a shop in Birkenhead, which was near where I was called Rocks.
Speaker B:And I remember the first time I bought an import.
Speaker B:And this is Les Spain, the dj.
Speaker B:I'm saying from the timepiece, this is before.
Speaker B:I've been there about six months before and I remember seeing on the wall a chart and it was Les Spain from the timepiece.
Speaker B:And on that chart was Brass Construction.
Speaker B:The first album was.
Speaker B:It was new on import and also a single that I bought, which was P Funk by Parliament, which I saw again on that list.
Speaker B:And so, you know, like that they were my kind of first.
Speaker B:Obviously imports were a lot more expensive than the UK release.
Speaker B:But, you know, the awareness that certain imports needed to be bought, you know, you had to have certain things, you know, I.
Speaker B:What later down the line I, you know, I buy, you know, buying for fun.
Speaker B:You know, you go in the shop and you, you know, back then I had to be a lot more cautious and picky over what meager money I had to spend on.
Speaker B:On everything.
Speaker B:But as I say, once the record companies were sending me all the records, it opened it up so that I could kind of buy inputs.
Speaker B:And it was a situation where the way I see it was it like took about nine months before it really kind of clicked into place.
Speaker B:And what happened and what made it happen, now I look back on it was I kind of developed a group of people who came down early nights and, you know, when I got in there, so when the club was still quiet in the first hour where I just play all the new stuff and they'd be listening and they'd be, oh, wow, wow, what's this?
Speaker B:So when it came to the night and I dropped in something new.
Speaker B:And back then there was always a risk with dropping something new in because, yeah, I always saw a dance floor like, you know, kind of leaders and sheep that people follow other people.
Speaker B:And if those people walk off the dance floor, the dance floor might just go in in a second.
Speaker B:That was the way it did.
Speaker B:And now that wasn't a sin for a DJ back then.
Speaker B:The sin was not being able to reclaim the dance floor, not having the next record ready.
Speaker B:Because you've got to take a risk now and again.
Speaker B:And sometimes it might not work, but if you can't get the dance floor back, you know, you toast.
Speaker B:And so, you know, this crew of kids who came down when the night started.
Speaker B:And I put on something that was new that, you know, most of the people had never heard before, but these kids had because they come down early.
Speaker B:Well, they were like really into it.
Speaker B:And I think that kind of caused us.
Speaker B:Oh, right.
Speaker B:You know, people, we should know this and people stay.
Speaker B:So I learned how to kind of keep the dance floor and bring in more and more new music into that until, you know, at the conclusion of that, Blues and Soul magazine came to.
Speaker B:To my club and they recommended it, you know, my little backwater club.
Speaker B:So that was like a.
Speaker B:A really proud moment.
Speaker B:I'd evolved something enough for blues, which I was, you know, reading blues and soul and hearing about all the kind of the Premier League type side of the scene that was going on with jazz, funk and with the All Dayers and everything, I wasn't a part of that yet, but I was like very aware of it.
Speaker B:So for blues and soul to come down and recommend my club, it was a big moment and.
Speaker B:Yeah, but, you know, it wasn't that long before I ended up in.
Speaker B:In Wigan, at Wigan Pier.
Speaker B:And, you know, that did take me up the divisions.
Speaker B:You know, it probably took me from, you know, like kind of league one to the premier, you know, it was like.
Speaker B:It was that kind of jump.
Speaker A:And at Wigan you were doing.
Speaker A:Is it right?
Speaker A:You were doing four nights a week?
Speaker B:Yeah, I was the resident there.
Speaker B:Four nights.
Speaker A:Was that doing all night?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:That was again, nine till two.
Speaker A:Did that.
Speaker A:Were all the nights still quite different then or was the expectation very, very similar each night?
Speaker B:No, they were different.
Speaker B:The weekend, I mean, start with the Tuesday because that was the one that I stayed with when, When I Stopped being the residents of Wigan Pier.
Speaker B:I still continued the Tuesday.
Speaker B:Now that was the jazz funk night.
Speaker B:That was the specialist night.
Speaker B:And so when I got the.
Speaker B:It had been going for 12 months.
Speaker B:There'd been two DJs, a guy called Kelly and then Nikki Flavell.
Speaker B:And they'd done a great job in, you know, like setting a kind of whole base for this.
Speaker B:The music was really on point.
Speaker B:It was all import.
Speaker B:There's a lot of jazz being played at the time, a lot of jazz, you know, Japanese jazz was coming into play and things like that.
Speaker B:And it was a great night.
Speaker B:I mean, how it was at the time was.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:It was predominantly white kids.
Speaker B:There was a, you know, black presence there.
Speaker B:There were people coming up from Liverpool a little bit, but it was a much more closer radius that the crowd was being drawn from.
Speaker B:Later down the line, that same night, the Tuesday night, which is where, you know, alongside legend in Manchester, I'd introduce the electro.
Speaker B:The electro funk.
Speaker B:And the music would change.
Speaker B:Now Wickham Pier would change on the Tuesday to being certainly 50, 50, black, white.
Speaker B:But sometimes, you know, and, you know, we'd have like maybe, you know, 4, 500, 600 people in there, of which half were black.
Speaker B:And we're gonna have no black population.
Speaker B:So these were from Manchester and Birmingham and Leeds and Sheffield, Huddersfield, Bradford.
Speaker B:And that's where what it became.
Speaker B:But as I say, at the moment I went in there, people were coming from Warrington and St Helens and Lee and maybe Liverpool, you know, so it was a much closer, but it was still, you know, like really impressive and a really top night.
Speaker B:Now on the Friday and the Saturday, the weekend nights, how it worked was that again, you know, there was obviously a chart aspect to that.
Speaker B:But what made it really good with Wigan was that the two sides came into play, which was the.
Speaker B:The bigger jazz funk tracks were played at the weekend.
Speaker B:And also the tracks at the time on the futurist scene, or what became known New Romantic, you know, the kind of white electronic, Human League, you know, landscape, Depeche Mode.
Speaker B:All these kind of acts again were played.
Speaker B:So at the weekend I was playing a wide spectrum of music.
Speaker B:Thursday night, you know, the different things had happened.
Speaker B:There was, you know, Thursday night never really was a top night.
Speaker B:The Tuesday was the one and the weekend, of course.
Speaker B:And yeah, you know, so was basically, as I say, the specialist.
Speaker B:I mean, they had a.
Speaker B:A Wednesday.
Speaker B:They had a Wednesday night futurist night as well, which the DJs who were at Legend on the Thursday do it.
Speaker B:They had a Huge futurist night legend at this time.
Speaker B:And so that.
Speaker B:So they did that.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:I was able to draw from these two sides at the weekend and play that along with some of the, you know, when I say kind of like.
Speaker B:Like on a Tuesday, to give you an example, on Tuesday, it's a black music night under the term of jazz fun.
Speaker B:But we're playing funk, soul, disco, out and out fusion.
Speaker B:You know, it was a real, quite kind of wide black music remit.
Speaker B:But what we wouldn't be playing on a Tuesday night is we wouldn't be playing Michael Jackson, we wouldn't be playing Imagination.
Speaker B:I mean, the first Imagination track broke on the jazz funk scene.
Speaker B:But once these bands became Char Shalimar, once they became big, they no longer.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:They were a part of a kind of pop side.
Speaker B:So those things you would never hear on a Tuesday, but you would certainly hear on a Friday and Saturday, you know, and that's how it worked.
Speaker B:So the Tuesday was, as I say, it was an upfront night.
Speaker B:And an upfront meant, like I said, on a smaller level before when I was in a local club.
Speaker B:I'm going to be the DJ locally where you hear first.
Speaker B:This is now we're on a bigger scale and it's going into that realm that you're now the want to be the DJ that where they hear this music.
Speaker B:And that's why people travel, because there were very few of us, very few DJs on that scene that, you know, were dedicated enough to it in that sense.
Speaker B:You know, it had to.
Speaker B:It demanded, you know, a dedicate.
Speaker B:You needed to know your tunes inside out.
Speaker B:You needed to spend a lot of money on records to get all these imports and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, yeah, so you just.
Speaker A:Said about that there's the things that you wouldn't play on a Tuesday.
Speaker A:Was there anything from the sort of jazz, funk and disco side where it could suit a Saturday, but you would only play it on a Tuesday to kind of keep it for that audience?
Speaker B:No, no, I mean, it was once.
Speaker B:It kind of was functional to play on a Saturday.
Speaker B:You wanted to play it.
Speaker B:I mean, that's what gave me a big kick, was records that were once underground that now were breaking through into a commercial sense.
Speaker B:Because like what I was saying with Les Spain, when the DJs were asking for his records, it was like you knew that next week you walked back into spinning and there'd be about another dozen records that you could take away from there, you know, of which probably six would now be still Considered like classics or cult classics.
Speaker B:The stuff that was coming out week by week and the quality of it as well, you know, and, and so there was a confidence in that, that, yeah, you were.
Speaker B:If you could play, you know, something that had blown up on your Tuesday night and all of a sudden you're seeing more mainstream kids getting into that.
Speaker B:You've done your work there, you know.
Speaker B:That's how I saw it, you know, that we were, we were trying to kind of push this music.
Speaker B:So I want it.
Speaker B:I mean, some people have this attitude, they want to keep it to themselves.
Speaker B:Some, you know.
Speaker B:No, no, no, no, we want it because it just makes music better all, all over.
Speaker B:If you're getting that stuff in there, it just improves it across the board.
Speaker B:You know, it brings the, brings the cultural level up that little bit.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So are we getting to the point now where you're kind of starting to discover electro?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker B:Once I come to Legend, really.
Speaker B:So basically I start in Wigan.
Speaker B: Back end of: Speaker B:That's the reason I'm at Wigan, Pierre, because the DJ who was the resident before me, Nikki Flavell, who was a friend who I've met In Europe, I DJed out in Europe on monthly contracts here and there.
Speaker B:And I've met Nikki out there and that he, he'd come to work at Wigan Pier and when he, he told me basically when, when I went to Wigan Pier the first time just as a punter and I got blown away by this, you know, it was just like mind blowing.
Speaker B:It's like, my God, it was everything.
Speaker B:It was just the lighting and you know, taking the sound seriously.
Speaker B:You know, clubs didn't do it back then.
Speaker B:I mean, the DJ was in a 15 foot high fiberglass frog.
Speaker B:I didn't even face frontwards, I faced side on because we had a light controller with like this kind of space age panel, you know.
Speaker B:And so Wigan Pier was just like this, a dream gig for me, absolute dream gig.
Speaker B:And so Nikki had gone to open Legend in Manchester, which was the same owners had it and it was their new club, smaller club, about half the size, compact, but oh my God, took it up another notch again, you know, it was first place that I'd ever heard sub bass.
Speaker B: system in there installed in: Speaker B:They had laser system.
Speaker B:I mean the pier did as well.
Speaker B:The lighting in Legend was just space age, as I say it was.
Speaker B:You don't see it now you don't see that level.
Speaker B:It was just so unique and you know, the sound.
Speaker A:Well, just on the lighting, I mean.
Speaker A:But my old boss used to work at one of the.
Speaker A:The big clubs down here in Derby and he was saying they had quite a progress, quite a modern lighting system and they used the Blue Note and the Pink Coconut.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:And he was saying they used to do sort of lighting competitions there because it was such a good level.
Speaker A:So, you know, lighting was a really kind of important part of it, I guess, back then.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, it was like clubs were decking themselves out with kind of lights, they were back then, you know, like if you're from Manchester and it nearly happened to the pier, you know, if you from that region, you go to a company called Roger Squires that fitted out a lot of the clubs and where mobile DJs went to buy equipment.
Speaker B:And so a lot of clubs were going there and that was.
Speaker B:But the P.
Speaker B:I don't know how it happened, but they got persuaded to just spend a fortune on this incredible system and it was like the closest thing to New York.
Speaker B:It really was, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, it was a.
Speaker B:The P was even advertised as an American disco.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The logo was a frog with an American flag and it's a wig and peer American disco, you know, like Legend, though, is this incredible space, as I say.
Speaker B:And by the time I.
Speaker B:I get to Legend, Wigan Piers, the Tuesday nights doing really well, I think, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's seen as one of the top kind of nights in.
Speaker B:In the north, you know, and.
Speaker B:And Nikki had gone to Legend, Nikki Flavell.
Speaker B:But it hadn't worked out for one reason or another with him.
Speaker B:And I mean, he'd loved.
Speaker B:He'd loved the Wednesdays.
Speaker B:He started them off the.
Speaker B:But a DJ called John Grant, who I mentioned with Colin Curtis before.
Speaker B:Yeah, but John Grant came in to take that night and he was a big, big DJ at the time on.
Speaker B:On the kind of soul, funk, jazz, funk scene in the north.
Speaker B:And it did really well.
Speaker B:You know, he got good numbers in for it.
Speaker B:It was really strong.
Speaker B:And then he left and they opened up a rival night.
Speaker B:It wasn't the same night was a Tuesday, which also kind of was rivaling what we were doing at Wigan Pier because we were pulling quite a few kids from Manchester by this point called the Main Event.
Speaker B:And it was promoted by Blues and Soul magazine, which was the most important magazine on our scene, you know, and Piccadilly Radio, which was huge radio station In Manchester, so.
Speaker B:And they were doing full page ads in blues and soul and legend just couldn't compete.
Speaker B:And so the numbers were dwindling at Legend, dropping, dropping, and they'd gone below a hundred.
Speaker B:And at that point the management at Wigan Pier, whose club was legend as well, said, how do you fancy.
Speaker B:See, you know, you know, it was almost like a salvi, you know, it was dying.
Speaker B:Can you revive it?
Speaker B:I don't think they much.
Speaker B:I don't think anyone really held out much hope.
Speaker B:I, I, obviously it was another dream come true.
Speaker B:But there was a lot of work to be done to get the crowd in there.
Speaker B:So I got there the first night.
Speaker B:What was great was this, this crew of black kids who came really early, who had dancers, I know them now and they just dance, dance, danced.
Speaker B:They saved my life in the early days because there was probably about 80 people who went at first.
Speaker B:But that crew I knew, were they.
Speaker A:Coming based on your rep?
Speaker B:They, I think they just like were, they were kind of jazz.
Speaker B:They go somewhere where they wanted to dance.
Speaker B:These often, these kind of kids, they weren't even bothered at the club.
Speaker B:They weren't looking for a busy club often they were looking for a dance floor that could be theirs and they could.
Speaker B:That's why they come down early to have the dance floor and they just be doing their thing and they're amazing dancers, you know, like on a kind of jazz tip.
Speaker B:And so they were like, definitely like my little crew in, in, in Wigan, I'm sorry, in, in the Golden Guinea, New Brighton.
Speaker B:Who, who.
Speaker B:I could kind of play the music too early.
Speaker B:These, you know, I felt safe with them.
Speaker B:They were there to dance.
Speaker B:And then, you know, even though the club wasn't busy in those early months, bit by bit we started improving.
Speaker B:And I had this thing with the manager where at the end of the night, you know, he'd go like 96 into nine.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, we only had 93 last week.
Speaker B:You know, we were literally counting on for what seemed like a few months, counting on fives and six and we were coming up above 100.
Speaker B:And then we talked about the electro.
Speaker B: So during this kind of early: Speaker B:Even though now in hindsight it doesn't sound that wildly innovative.
Speaker B:And I think the reason why is because so many things copied it subsequently.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But if you realize at the start of that, and it's Francois Kavorkian mixing, it's got a dub wise attitude.
Speaker B:It's got these kind of choppy synths.
Speaker B:I mean, we always played the instrumental version.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, there was a lot of the tracks that we played in Legend were the dubs or the instrumentals.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And this track like really sounded different.
Speaker B:But then things that sounded even more different.
Speaker B:I mean, the follow up, not the follow up.
Speaker B:Another track on Prelude soon after was Electric Funk on a Journey moving definitely more into this electronic area.
Speaker B:Things like Feels Good by Electro, which was an Italian track.
Speaker B:Don't Make Me Wait by the Peach Boys.
Speaker B:When that happened, it just sounded unlike anything ever before.
Speaker B:Now, I'm not the only DJ playing these tracks at this point.
Speaker B:There are other DJs obviously playing this stuff as well.
Speaker B:But come May June, things like Planet Rock come out.
Speaker B:Rockers, Revenge Walking On Sunshine.
Speaker B:It starts widening.
Speaker B:You know, there's more and more of these electronic sounding tracks.
Speaker B:And I saw my audience responding.
Speaker B:It was exciting me and I went, I went with these kind of tracks.
Speaker B:The purists on the scene didn't like it.
Speaker B:It was just computerized.
Speaker B:It had nothing to do with black music or soul music or whatever.
Speaker B:They thought it was going to pollute the scene.
Speaker B:It was, you know.
Speaker B:And so I, as Legend is pulling up like this.
Speaker B:I'm kind of, you know, on the back of this kind of electro wave that's coming through.
Speaker B:It hasn't got to the point that there's been the backlash at this point that hasn't come.
Speaker B:So I was also mixing as well.
Speaker B:I'd seen mixing in the past.
Speaker B: I'd seen it in the UK in: Speaker B:Not up close.
Speaker B:I'd heard the DJ guy called Greg James, American guy, first kind of Proper Mixing DJ in this call 1.
Speaker B:One of the first.
Speaker B:I've been to Germany just before I went to Wigan Pier and I'd heard a DJing in a club in Essen who I now think was Peter Romer.
Speaker B:I didn't know who it was at the time, but I researched and I think it's.
Speaker B:And he was a German pioneer of mixing and he was mixing dance and alternative.
Speaker B:It was really interesting what he was playing.
Speaker B:It was right, kind of.
Speaker B:And I remember thinking that night, in the right context, this is the way to go.
Speaker B:And you know, making that decision in my head that, yeah.
Speaker B: And I'd worked with: Speaker B: SL: Speaker B:Never seen them before.
Speaker B: o Wigan, they didn't have the: Speaker B:So they have very speed, the ones with the LED readout.
Speaker B: But Legend had three: Speaker B: There are very few: Speaker B:And I've got three here at this club.
Speaker B:So it all, it was the.
Speaker B:Everything was right, especially when this electronic drum machine based music came through that was much more akin to mixing than, you know, like kind of previous type type of stuff where it's live drummers and stuff like that.
Speaker B:So it was a kind of perfect storm in a way.
Speaker B:The venue, what I was playing, the mixing, the crowd.
Speaker B:And bit by bit it just, it pulled up and this bigger main event started dropping numbers.
Speaker B:And what was, what was fascinating about it was when it happened, it happened quickly.
Speaker B:So like Legend kind of pulled up, pulled up.
Speaker B:Main event kind of came down and when it got to Parity, it just went like that.
Speaker B:So within weeks, within weeks, just Legend was queues up the road.
Speaker B:And it remained like that for the 18 months that I was there.
Speaker B:It was just a phenomenal night.
Speaker B:It was the cusp of the scene.
Speaker B:You know, you have to get down early to get in there.
Speaker B:It was, it was one of those things and.
Speaker A:And you were getting some pretty serious plaudits in the DJ world at the time, weren't you?
Speaker B:Well, yes and no.
Speaker B:As I say, you know, I was.
Speaker B:And then there was a backlash that kind of painted me as like a heretic and.
Speaker B:And it was tough.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:You know, it really was tough for me because I respected a lot of the people who were criticizing me because they were part of the.
Speaker B:Be them writers or people who worked in record shops and.
Speaker B:Or fellow DJs and just, you know, you're young, you know, I was what, 22?
Speaker B:I have my ego, you know, waiting for a pat on the back and I gotta kick up the ass, you know, it was like, you know, and that kind of intensified and certain tracks were picked out and picked upon and, you know, it was a tough time, but club was packed solid.
Speaker B:I was now on the radio doing mixes for Piccadilly Radio Mike Shaft show that started just at the moment the club took, you know, the legend went through the roof.
Speaker B:So I was in the position in terms of the scene in the North.
Speaker B:I had the two main clubs, I had a massive power base.
Speaker B:Just to a lot of people, it had seemingly happened overnight.
Speaker B:Who's this new kid who's Coming in, playing this shite.
Speaker B:And that was probably seen by certain people in that respect.
Speaker B:You know, they thought it just kind of happened out of nowhere.
Speaker B:But, you know, as we've discussed, you know, this background and a way of seeing legend was my opportunity in my moment.
Speaker B:And the one thing that was said around that time when I was getting the criticism that changed my mindset a bit was somebody said, you're leading them astray.
Speaker B:And I kind of thought about that and I thought, what do you mean you're leading them astray?
Speaker B:These kids are the leaders.
Speaker B:If, if they don't like what you're playing, you're gone.
Speaker B:You know, you're not leading them.
Speaker B:You, it's.
Speaker B:This is a reciprocal thing.
Speaker B:You're with them, you're responding to them, they're responding to you, you know.
Speaker B:You know, and so, and then it made me think, who are these people who are criticizing me?
Speaker B:And I kind of thought probably only in the 30s, you know, middle aged white guys, they're all middle aged white guys.
Speaker B:Who are they to say what black music is?
Speaker B:You know, if black kids are saying that this is what they're into, who are they to say you're wrong?
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:And so that enabled me to maybe not necessarily go on the offensive, but certainly bolster my position and feel more confident within that because, you know, the people that were kind of set, you know, the soul music of the time, to me, the way I saw it, there were people like Luther Vandross, Alexander, I mean, amazing artists, brilliantly produced, but it was like aspirational.
Speaker B:It was kind of not, wasn't raw.
Speaker B:It was so perfect.
Speaker B:Whereas this new electro and electronic music, it had that rawness of those 60s soul tracks when it was raw funk, when it was, you know, it was this, it was coming from the same place.
Speaker B:And, and so, you know, I, I never had any doubt that that direction was correct and would be proved correct, you know, in the end.
Speaker B:But as I say, when you have these times of change, you always have the, the old school, they resist the change.
Speaker B:Some of that's got to do with just like personal taste.
Speaker B:Other times it's, it's, it's business.
Speaker B:Maybe their clubs are doing brilliantly and all of a sudden this kid's here and these, they've got customers asking them for these records that they don't want to play and it's causing a problem.
Speaker B:And that's, that was the position that I found myself in.
Speaker B:Really.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Even though it's being booked for all the.
Speaker B:All day is.
Speaker B:And Everything I was, you know.
Speaker B:You know, one of my biggest critics was booking me for his all day as he had to book me because I brought coaches.
Speaker B:If he didn't book me, he's gonna lose a hell of a lot of people.
Speaker B:That was the way it worked.
Speaker B:But at the same time he was a critic of, of mine.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Did you, when you started mixing or when mixing kind of came about.
Speaker A:I was thinking about this earlier on because production changed and everything.
Speaker A:When you were DJing in the 70s, could you think more?
Speaker A:Well, that was sort of harmony and melody and that sort of feel more important compared to the kind of dynamics and the.
Speaker A:In the rhythm.
Speaker A:I don't know if I'm wording that very well.
Speaker B:Yeah, not necessarily.
Speaker B:I mean, it's like when you DJ back then it was microphone based and I suppose it was more, more akin to radio, how it is on radio, the technical side then like you know, kind of, you know, crashing a mix and messing it up.
Speaker B:The, the, the, the equivalent for the microphone DJ was crashing the vocal, which was.
Speaker B:There was a technique, a radio technique called voice into vocal.
Speaker B:So you heard there's an intro of a year, the intro of the record.
Speaker B:The vocal comes in at a certain point and you're talking, but your last word is said just before the vocal starts.
Speaker B:That's how it works.
Speaker B:I always remember like seeing a dj, I had a lot of respect for a guy called Dave Porter.
Speaker B:He worked for Radio Mercy.
Speaker B:I worked in Newcastle, in the end on Metro, I think.
Speaker B:And I saw him in the studio as he was queuing up the record, stopwatch timing to the vocal.
Speaker B:I'm watching the stopwatch to do that and that made me realize either sense of rhythm because I didn't need the stopwatch.
Speaker B:I knew where, once I'd heard the intro, once I knew where it was going to be.
Speaker B:And that, that was the first time that, you know, I, I understood that, you know, I had a kind of a deeper sense of rhythm than maybe, you know, I'd imagined.
Speaker B:You know, I, I didn't even thought about that.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, you know, like, so as it worked on and if you were kind of play, you playing a record, you back announcing that record, that was, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, right now we're going to play now you've already switched the records under yourself while you're talking on the mic.
Speaker B:So there is a kind of flow as it's not stop start, it's not as stop start.
Speaker B:You'd imagine a really good DJ could flow that between It.
Speaker B:The next record's now playing voices of the vocals.
Speaker B:There it is.
Speaker B:It's in there and it's done.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that's so.
Speaker B:So it was rhythmic.
Speaker B:It was still rhythmic, you know, but you were kind of approaching it in a different way.
Speaker B:You know, I don't think there was any kind of necessarily any consideration.
Speaker B:You were thinking.
Speaker B:You were thinking melody and those kind of.
Speaker B:You just.
Speaker B:The record moved you and you just wanted to play it for people and see if it moved them.
Speaker A:So where did the reel to reel come into DJing for you?
Speaker B:Okay, so in.
Speaker B: In May of: Speaker B:You know, it's like when Legend went through the roof, when Planet Rock came on.
Speaker B:An input Hassi Ender opened.
Speaker B:And when I started my radio mixes for Mike Shaft and that again, it was like the latest imports.
Speaker B:I was in my mixes.
Speaker B:That was the whole point.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:I was showcasing this elect, more electronic direction.
Speaker B:I mean, Shafty was a great in.
Speaker B:In terms of.
Speaker B:He was one of the DJs at the main event and I spoke to him years later and it was just like, you know, really signed his knight's own death warrant by putting me on the radio by doing that.
Speaker B:That put the final nail in the coffin because those mixes went off.
Speaker B:He gave me that platform.
Speaker B:But he was wise enough and he was.
Speaker B:I mean, he was particularly radio.
Speaker B:He's like, massively important.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The imports went straight to him.
Speaker B:So he played them on the radio because he could shift hundreds of copies if he got.
Speaker B:If.
Speaker B:If it got across.
Speaker B:So, like.
Speaker B:But he saw the radio show as being an inclusive thing and he knew that he didn't necessarily like the type of music that I.
Speaker B:I was becoming known for.
Speaker B:But nevertheless, he thought, well, you know, I can get you in to play that.
Speaker B:You can do your mixes.
Speaker B:And he.
Speaker B:And that's what he did, you know.
Speaker B:So Mike was great, you know, because he was always open, honest.
Speaker B:He wasn't an electro guy.
Speaker B:But the show, you know, he opened the show for me to be able to do what.
Speaker B:What I do now.
Speaker B:We recorded the original mixes in Legend in the daytime when it was closed.
Speaker B:So we do it as live.
Speaker B:And there'd be a reel to reel brought in a Reebox B77 reel to reel from the station.
Speaker B:We would record the mix, we would go back to the station.
Speaker B:He would get a technician in, particularly radio, to what you call top and tail it, which is to put leader tape at the beginning and finishing tape at the end.
Speaker B:So you knew what was the front and what was the back.
Speaker B:It was then broadcast ready and when he did his show next it will be played.
Speaker B:So that's how it went initially until one day that you know now and again maybe something's louse up a bit and you'd say, oh, we'll have to do an edit.
Speaker B:And we did an edit back in the studio.
Speaker B:I've been taught editing years before by guy I mentioned from radio, Dave Porter, who, who had the stopwatch thing.
Speaker B:He taught me how to edit because back then, and the reason for editing back then was to make a demonstration tape for radio.
Speaker B:So like I said in the first instance, the objective initially was you get on the radio, you have to make a demonstration tape.
Speaker B:Couldn't send them a cassette, they wouldn't listen to it.
Speaker B:They wanted a demonstration tape properly top and tailed with green leader tape and with.
Speaker B:Honestly they wouldn't play, they wouldn't even listen if it wasn't to the specification.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so he told me all this and he showed me how to wed it.
Speaker B: This was probably in about: Speaker B:We get back one day, we've done a mix.
Speaker B:There's no technician to top and tail it.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm aware of Edison boobs now.
Speaker B:Go in there, put it on.
Speaker B:I just lose myself.
Speaker B:Next thing I'm kind of reversing beats and do, you know.
Speaker B:And so I, I just realized in that moment, oh wow, I'm really into this Edison thing, you know.
Speaker B:This is great.
Speaker B: Technicle: Speaker B:I bought a Reeboks B77 reel to reel.
Speaker B:I had a Matamp Supernova mixer which was amazing.
Speaker B:Which Froggy from the funk mafia, the southern dj, he, he'd been one of the people who helped design that mixer Crossfade every, I mean was, you know, there's nothing like.
Speaker B:That's what I used on the tube.
Speaker B:You can see it when I do the TV thing.
Speaker B:And so that was my home setup and I started doing my mixes then.
Speaker B:And so now rather than it being like a mix in real time, pretty much I was wanting to do edits and I was wanting to kind of.
Speaker B:And I became more creative in that process.
Speaker B:So by the time I did my end of the year mix which was called the best of 82, you know, it was totally.
Speaker B:I think it took me, I said Something I took me 14 hours or something to do.
Speaker B:So that was like some vast amount of time, you know, like, you know, like.
Speaker B:But, but it was at the time.
Speaker A:I wanted to ask you on that about the gear that you'd use for it, because I was listening to it the other day and it sounds really warm.
Speaker B:But that was just recorded down to the B77.
Speaker B:I mean, it was very basic.
Speaker B:Two turntables, B77.
Speaker B:Sometimes I did some kind of dobby effects on that.
Speaker B:I actually run kind of rudimentary samples just off cassettes, you know, kind of put things in like that here and there now and again.
Speaker B:So yeah, it was, it was all very basic, you know, just kind of hand edited together, you know, and you just make it up bit by bit as you go along.
Speaker B:And, and that's.
Speaker B:But I got really into that process.
Speaker B:It was quite meditative for me.
Speaker B:I, I, the editing, I, I got so into it and, and it became a mainstay of what I did.
Speaker B:And when I stopped DJing, you know, one of the kind of.
Speaker B:This is the end of 83 and I stopped DJing.
Speaker B:And one of the reasons, maybe not, you know, there's different factors to why I kind of stopped, but I'd realized by that point breakdancing had come through in 83.
Speaker B:Hip hop culture was now starting to become visible.
Speaker B:We understood what these guys were doing on the decks.
Speaker B:We've, we now had that information.
Speaker B:We hadn't had it before.
Speaker B:So this idea of the turntableist and, you know, and I did my little bits of kind of scratching and stuff and you know, listen back.
Speaker B:Oh, I'm embarrassed.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:But, you know, that's the way it was, you know, I was like very early with that, you know, I was scratching on that tube thing with David, the David Joseph track, just at the beginning, you know.
Speaker A:Well, I only saw that recently, but it blew me away.
Speaker A:Like the techniques, you know, because you're doing like the chasing and stuff like that.
Speaker A:And that's something I thought hadn't come round until sort of five or six years later.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, that has different names in different places.
Speaker B:We called it doubling up.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And you know, that, that came about again because playing the records in the clubs, I'm so, I'm playing mainly imports.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I also have relationships with all the UK promo people who are licensing some of these stuff that we're playing or who, you know, the parent company in the States have got those records and they're putting them out as UK releases and so sometimes to give a track a few more weeks lifespan, I'd say to them, send me two copies of it.
Speaker B:And they'd send me two.
Speaker B:And I'd start to.
Speaker B:To double up and play things like Beat the Street, Sham Red, you're the One For Me.
Speaker B:You know, I.
Speaker B:You know, I.
Speaker B:I double up with them so that people weren't hearing the version, you know, that they'd hear elsewhere.
Speaker B:They were hearing something.
Speaker B:It was like a live edit, in a way.
Speaker B:Now I look back, but.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And the David Joseph thing came about because the Tube, the TV show, which was based in Newcastle, they were going to do an outside broadcast from Camden palace with David Joseph appearing.
Speaker B:And he was doing personal appearances at the time and came to legend.
Speaker B:I mean, we didn't pay for them.
Speaker B:The record companies just brought their artists to be in our clubs, come up and say hello and sign a few autographs and stuff.
Speaker B:And that was like really strong promotion for them.
Speaker B:They did it in the right clubs.
Speaker B:So David Joseph had come up and again they performed.
Speaker B:They kind of do playback on the song and go on the dance floor and sing.
Speaker B:So he goes on the dance floor and does that.
Speaker B:That's what they wanted to see, just to kind of.
Speaker B:But I played you Can't Hide.
Speaker B:You love that.
Speaker B:But two copies, and they spotted it and they came over and said, oh, it's interesting.
Speaker B:How do you fancy doing that on the Tube?
Speaker B:To which I said, yeah.
Speaker B:And then about three or four hours later, sat probably in bed, kind of frozen.
Speaker B:The panic, the fear, you know, it's like, I've got to go on live tv.
Speaker B:What if it goes wrong?
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:The record?
Speaker B:What if this.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:You know, it.
Speaker B:It was just like, you know, although it was a.
Speaker B:This is amazing opportunity on one level, it was also this.
Speaker B:It was a horror show for me, you know, like, what could go wrong?
Speaker B:And when I actually got there to do, Nearly did, because the cameraman was like getting so close to everything.
Speaker B:And Jules Holland actually says at one point, the cameraman's actually jogged the deck.
Speaker B:I hope it's all right.
Speaker B:And it didn't jump.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It stuck.
Speaker B:He actually banged the deck, but the record and.
Speaker B:And I got through it.
Speaker B:Did it.
Speaker B:Everything went fine.
Speaker B:And, you know, there it was, you know, I kind of got that.
Speaker B:But, yeah, you know, Wendy said to me, like, 10 seconds before live, you know, I just felt sick.
Speaker B:You know, it was like they were cat 10, nine.
Speaker B:You know, he's like, jesus.
Speaker B:And you know, you've got to.
Speaker B:And I'm Just looking at the deck because it's all queued up and this bloody cameraman's just, just doesn't seem to be taking care, you know, he's just like, yeah, cavalier about everything.
Speaker B:So that was the Tube, but.
Speaker B:But, yeah, you know, it was a great thing to do.
Speaker B:And as I said, I doubled up those copies of David Joseph, which is what I'd done at Legend, and, And I even did a few kind of dub effects off the Reeboks and things, you know.
Speaker A:Did you get people at any point coming up to you like, oh, are you that guy off the tube?
Speaker A:Or anything like that?
Speaker B:Well, yeah, immediately.
Speaker B:I mean, I remember getting back that night and I, I.
Speaker B:It was a Friday night and I did a night in Manchester at a club called the Exit.
Speaker B:By this point I was a black music specialist, so it was kind of music.
Speaker B:I was playing Legend of Wing and Pier.
Speaker B:Same kind of crowd were coming in.
Speaker B:I was just, I'm just patting me on the back and, you know, it's like, you know, everyone was like kind of buzzing, congratulating me and everything.
Speaker B:So it was a, you know, felt nice.
Speaker B:It was a lovely little moment, but, you know, you just move on from that.
Speaker B:People along the way tell you, yeah, I saw that and that kind of had an influence on me or effect on me.
Speaker B:And, you know, so, yeah, you know, it was, it was good, it's good to do.
Speaker B:It was like for about a period of nine months, I had this kind of curly perm.
Speaker B:It was like called a bubble perm.
Speaker B:And it would have had.
Speaker B:It had to be when I was on the Tube.
Speaker B:So, yeah, you know, I'm forever kind of immortalized with a bubble perm.
Speaker A:And you.
Speaker A:And you taught Fat Boy Slim to scratch as well, didn't you?
Speaker B:Yes, I actually did.
Speaker B: stopped DJing in December of: Speaker B:And I was part of a Hacienda package because by this point I was doing the Fridays at Hacienda and with Broken Glass, the Breakdancers from Manchester, I managed then and Quando Cuango, which was Mike Pickering's band.
Speaker B:Mike Pickering at this point wasn't DJing, so I was the DJ on the tour and we did.
Speaker B:It was only a short tour, about three or four dates did around the south coast, but we went to Brighton and after the gig a lad who was the young guy called Quentin said, do you want to come to an after party?
Speaker B:And so I, we all went back, the whole Breakdance crew.
Speaker B:You know, there's about 12.
Speaker B:I was driving the minibus for them and.
Speaker B:And stuff.
Speaker B:And so, like, Quentin had this party and after party, and then the next day he just came along with us.
Speaker B:He just jumped on the mini bus, came to the next gig and it was at the sound check now, obviously now with Norman.
Speaker B:I mean, it was Quentin then.
Speaker B:It's obviously it's Norman Cook now.
Speaker B:I know who it is.
Speaker B:But at that point, he.
Speaker B:He'd seen Grandmaster Flash, he'd seen him Grandma Splash, came to the UK and supported the Clash, right?
Speaker B:He could hit, he could hear what he was doing, but he couldn't see it from his vantage point.
Speaker B:So although he heard it, he didn't see it.
Speaker B:So I was able.
Speaker B:Although, as I say, I was never any great shakes, you know, on turntableism, but basically show him just the.
Speaker B:The basics of, yeah, you.
Speaker B:You do.
Speaker B:You did it.
Speaker B:You do that and pull that.
Speaker B:You know, it was just showed in the little bit.
Speaker B:And apparently, you know, he ended up.
Speaker B:When he got back to Brighton, he just locked himself in a room for weeks and just really got like, seriously into kind of learning his.
Speaker B:His kind of turntable techniques and everything.
Speaker B:And it only came up years later.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I later managed crew called the Ruthless Rap Assassins.
Speaker B:They did a couple of the albums for emi and I was in London about to go to a meeting when I picked up a copy of either NME or Melody Maker and there was a new act called Beats International, who had a number one at the time, Don't Be Good To Me, which fascinated me because Just Be Good To Me was one of the tracks I'd originally played as an import, you know, brought that into places like the Hacienda and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And so I'm reading it and, yeah, House Martin's comes into play, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I know them.
Speaker B:They're from Hall.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then this guy says that his influences.
Speaker B:He mentions Grandmaster Flash and my name's there and I'm like, what?
Speaker B:I don't know anyone from Hull, you know, I was like.
Speaker B:So I asked, like, Kermit, who was in the Rap Assassins, and he was also in Broken Glass, I said.
Speaker B:And he said, oh, yeah, that's Quentin from Brighton, and that was Norman Cook.
Speaker B:And then he ended up remixing a couple of Rap Assassins tracks.
Speaker B:And, you know, on the back of that.
Speaker B:So, yeah, you know, obviously, I had no idea it was Fat Boy Slim at the time.
Speaker B:It was just this young bloke who was hanging around with us and everything, and amazing to see what he went on to do, you know.
Speaker B:And I love what he did with his Fat Boy Slim album.
Speaker B:That, that album, you know, the kind of work with the sampling, everything is just like, yeah, incredible, brilliant.
Speaker A:So I know we've just gone forward a little bit with sort of rap Assassins and we can come back to that.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:So we've kind of touched on you quitting DJing.
Speaker A:That's a big decision to make when you're.
Speaker A:You've got such a strong career in it.
Speaker A:Did it take long to make that decision?
Speaker B:Oh, I think it was quite a snap decision in lots of ways.
Speaker B:It wasn't something that I.
Speaker B:I seemed to dwell on for a long time once it had come, it was.
Speaker B:And it.
Speaker B:The reverberations of it were huge in my life, you know, I mean, I kind of pretty much 20 years before I came back to it, and a lot of, you know, ups and downs in that period.
Speaker B:It was a big struggle, you know, and.
Speaker B:And as I said before, there were different factors to this that, you know, and.
Speaker B:And other things that I never even thought at the time that looking back, you know, I think.
Speaker B:I think I.
Speaker B:A lot of the pressure from the time when I was taking the stick for playing the electro, I think, yeah, that kind of weighed on me and that.
Speaker B:That took its toll in.
Speaker B:In a sense, I think the knowledge that the scene was going to change again because hip hop was emerging.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:As I said with.
Speaker B:I'd looked at, There was a young DJ called Chad Jackson, and he was one of the kids used to go to my nights at Wigan.
Speaker B:And I realized he was a dj and I kind of, you know, took him under my wing a bit.
Speaker B:He caught.
Speaker B:Come back and practice on my decks.
Speaker B:You know, I go to work and I come back five hours, six hours later, and he'd still be practicing.
Speaker B:And I knew that if you were gonna go down that avenue, you have to put the time and you couldn't just think it.
Speaker B:You'd, you know, get it together by, like doing a little bit here and there because I could see how dedicated he was.
Speaker B:And he went on to win the world DJ mixing channel championship and stuff, you know, about four or five years on.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I kind of was aware that it was a big if I was going to make that move that.
Speaker B:That involved a lot of time.
Speaker B:But at the same time as I was doing the radio mixes and the editing I loved, so I was almost wanting to slow down with my approach to music, and that was kind of moving me more towards production.
Speaker B:The idea being the studios listening slowly to things over and over.
Speaker B:Again, you know, this kind, not this direct, live here and now thing of the club, it's a whole different set of circumstances.
Speaker A:So more artisan.
Speaker A:Artisanal.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, it was like, you know, people kind of expect DJs now to be producers.
Speaker B:They almost think it's hand in hand if you DJ a produce.
Speaker B:But God, no.
Speaker B:You know, the.
Speaker B:I knew people that, when I used to.
Speaker B:To, you know, be in the studio and, you know, they come in, I come.
Speaker B:Come from the studio one day.
Speaker B:Hated it.
Speaker B:Ah, it's pouring.
Speaker B:Listening to the same old thing over and over and over and over, you know, it's like.
Speaker B:So a lot of people don't have the aptitude.
Speaker B:People like David Mancuse never remixed a record.
Speaker B:You know, it doesn't naturally follow.
Speaker B:But, you know, different people have different aptitude for different things.
Speaker B:And at that point, you know, I felt like, yeah, you know, I wanted to make music.
Speaker B:I wanted really to be a remixer.
Speaker B:You know, I'd identified that, like during my time at Legend, you know, these records that was playing, I was seeing the names Francois Kevorkin, Larry Levan, Tony Humphries, Shep Pettibone, Jelly Bean Benitez, you know, John Morales, all, you know, all sorts of names were there.
Speaker B:And then you start realizing these DJs, it's American DJs who are doing this.
Speaker B:I want to do this.
Speaker B:I'm a British dj, but I want to do this.
Speaker B:So I go to all my record company contacts.
Speaker B:I need to.
Speaker B:I want to remix something.
Speaker B:They come out so well, you know, up.
Speaker B:The bosses are saying, you know, they need an American DJ for a remix.
Speaker B:A remix is an American thing, You know, it's not.
Speaker B:It was like.
Speaker B:And I was really banging my head against the brick wall because I couldn't get, you know, I couldn't get, like, what I wanted, which was somebody to really, you know, I was, you know, I can't blame them in a way.
Speaker B:I had no experience in that way, you know, but what I wanted to.
Speaker B:Want to put me in a studio and let it happen.
Speaker B:But that wasn't kind of coming that direction.
Speaker B:So one of the other things, soon before I stopped DJing, I'd started to work on, you know, tracks with a couple of Manchester musicians, and that would evolve into the UK electro album, which we did for Street Sounds in 84.
Speaker A:Because that's.
Speaker A:That's all you, isn't it?
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:All your production.
Speaker B:All of the tracks but one.
Speaker B:The Rap Ologist hip hop beat is a London crew.
Speaker B:Everything else is Us, it's just me and two other musicians making it up as we went along pretty much but.
Speaker B:And the Broken Glass track which features Kermit and guy called Fitz who were rapping his first track Kermit ever wrapped on.
Speaker B:So like.
Speaker B:And that went great initially, you know, I mean it.
Speaker B:It got to like number 60 on the chart.
Speaker B:There was a nice vibe about it, although was difficult, you know, it was a little bit too kind of, you know, electro E for the kind of alternative popular bits too experimental for the Black Crow.
Speaker B:It didn't kind of.
Speaker B:But again, you know, years later, the amount of people.
Speaker B: d Electro Empire in the early: Speaker B:People telling me how, how this album, how much it meant much the literally, you know, and these were like probably kids who were like 13, 14 at the time buying the Street Sounds albums and you know, like they were later the rave scene.
Speaker B:They were the ones that came into rave and everything.
Speaker B:So yeah, so yeah, you know, everything was going well and then it didn't work out with UK electro.
Speaker B:I split, split off with those guys.
Speaker B:I found myself in a position now where I was.
Speaker B:I had no income and I had a mortgage.
Speaker B:I had a car on HP and so within the next six, eight months I lost it all.
Speaker B:I just lost the lot.
Speaker B:I was too proud to really go back to DJing again for a little period.
Speaker B:I went back to legend for a few.
Speaker B:A few months.
Speaker B: t start till the beginning of: Speaker B:And so there was a few months and I just needed the money and I went back and I hated was it had all changed in the meantime.
Speaker B:It wasn't this.
Speaker B:You know, I always remember like listen, I was being asked for records that were three months old, which I wouldn't.
Speaker B:Would never have happened.
Speaker B:You know, it was.
Speaker B:Yeah, we didn't play three month old records.
Speaker B:We were always playing what was new and.
Speaker B:And it, it had lost its kind of.
Speaker B:It lost numbers for sure, but it just lost its vibe.
Speaker B:And so it was hard work.
Speaker B:I did a professional job of stabilizing that, making sure, you know, I'm ready for my.
Speaker B:Although we did have the very last night I did a legend.
Speaker B:We did an all nighter and apparently it was the.
Speaker B:It was the busiest night in legends history.
Speaker B:Numbers through the door because obviously with.
Speaker B:With Something all night.
Speaker B:People leave, people come in, people, you know, and it was, yeah, a brilliant night.
Speaker B:So we did have that, that final, the final night.
Speaker B:And I remember I was playing just like classics from the 82, 83 period of that on that night.
Speaker B:And it was great, but that was it.
Speaker B:You know, I didn't want to be at Legend at that point.
Speaker B:I didn't want to be back in DJing.
Speaker B:Maybe felt a bit embarrassed that I'd kind of made this grand gesture and stopped and then, you know, and when I say I made a grand gesture, it was, it wasn't a grand gesture.
Speaker B:And I, I, I just stopped.
Speaker B:I didn't even let anybody know almost.
Speaker B:I didn't do a press release.
Speaker B:I'm nothing.
Speaker B:I just stopped and yeah, and, and I mentioned a DJ called John Grant before a couple of times now, John Grant, when he stopped DJing, he went to work in, I think Southampton as a Harbor Master.
Speaker B:You know, like, it was like.
Speaker B:And that, you know, that was a better career choice for him than to remain a dj.
Speaker B:And I, But I remembered that when he left, he left at the top of his tree.
Speaker B:It felt like a little bit like an undefeated boxer and that.
Speaker B:And there was a, in my kind of ego that appealed.
Speaker B:Go out at the top, you're at the top now.
Speaker B:Your clubs are number one and two in the North.
Speaker B:You won the North's top dj.
Speaker B:You know, it hadn't worked at the Hacienda.
Speaker B:Maybe I was reading the piece I wrote about the Hacienda and maybe it could have been different if the Hacienda would have been the right place at that time.
Speaker B:But it was so wrong because of the, where the DJ booth was positioned, the mix that they had, the membership policy they had, the fact that they were struggling to get all the things were, were kind of difficult.
Speaker B:We had great one off nights, but to get something going regular.
Speaker B:So maybe if the Hacienda was a, you know, it would have worked out differently.
Speaker B:That might have opened up a new avenue for me.
Speaker B:I was certainly kind of.
Speaker B:Because I remember being aware around that time that there were certain records I would have loved to have played in Legend that I didn't play.
Speaker B:Situation Yazoo, the dub mix by Francois.
Speaker B:I remember being one of them and a couple of Yellow truck.
Speaker B:I did actually play one of the yellow tracks in Legend, but I, I was kind of, I got so much stick for playing Planet Rock, for playing Buffalo girls, Malcolm McCann, these kind of things.
Speaker B:The, it was just a little step too far.
Speaker B:Whereas the Hacienda, what they were looking for, really, which was.
Speaker B:They wanted to kind of.
Speaker B:There was a club in New York called Danceateria that they particularly were into and they talked about a lot.
Speaker B:They also knew the Loft and Paradise Garage, Funhouse, all these places.
Speaker B:Dance Iteria, I think, was the kind of mix of music that they had in Dancer, that.
Speaker B:The Hacienda, at that point where they thought.
Speaker B:But it was wrong at the time because the different crowds didn't fit together at that point.
Speaker B:It wasn't a point where you could have put like a black funk crowd with an indie crowd, you know, of Raincoated Students and.
Speaker B:Or rockabillies or, you know, the.
Speaker B:These.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:It wasn't the right timing.
Speaker B:And Britain was very kind of.
Speaker B:It was tribal then.
Speaker B:You're into your music scene, you're into your thing.
Speaker B:So to try and.
Speaker B:Yeah, they were trying to do something very noble, the Hacienda, pull it all together.
Speaker B:But it was later down the line, through different circumstances, it did all kind of pull together, but at that point it wasn't ready.
Speaker A:And I suppose, although it was quite a young age to quit DJing, to walk away from something like that in.
Speaker A:In my mind where it is now, if you'd been doing sort of four or five nights a week from being around 15, you'd put in a lot of time by that age.
Speaker B:I mean, that was one of the kind of retrospective things that I kind of thought that I'd never had a teenage life in a normal sense.
Speaker B:You know, I'd never gone to college or I stopped, come out of school as quickly as I could.
Speaker B:You know, I was DJing, as I say, five, six nights a week when I was still at school.
Speaker B:So I've lived in an adult world of nightclubs.
Speaker B:And so I think that I needed a break in a sense, you know, I needed something else.
Speaker B:You know, there was.
Speaker B:I mean, interestingly, after I stopped DJing, the thing that I became obsessed with next was.
Speaker B:Was the Beatles.
Speaker B:You know, I went backwards.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I kind of absorbed myself in that.
Speaker B:Just wanted to understand it inside out, you know, read so much, you know, bought everything that they ever done.
Speaker A:So this was a point at which we had a glitch and it seemed like a pretty good place to stop.
Speaker A:Quite a nice bookmark.
Speaker A:So I hope you enjoyed that and took a lot from it, because there was a lot I learned from it.
Speaker A:And make sure to tune in for the next episode where we'll pick up from that point.
Speaker A:Cheers, guys.
Speaker A:Speak soon.
