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ARTICLE
I was about six years old when my parents latched onto my love of music. They bought me an acoustic guitar, which I obsessively mimed with, often using one of my Dad’s golf clubs (a driver) as a makeshift-mic stand! I always felt like a performer and was passionate about music but had neither the patience nor aptitude for learning an instrument.
Having dabbled with the idea of starting a band with friends that got no further than calling ourselves ‘The Runaways’ and using Del Shannon’s iconic song as our theme, I had no idea how I would realise my musical dreams. So instead I just got on with being an annoying teen as per the Inbetweeners. For those who know the characters of that show, I was 100% Simon and had a mate who was the absolute personification of Jay (he shall not be named in this piece to avoid a stroppy call!).
In April 1983 when my best friend was asked to DJ a retirement party simply because he was a teenager and they couldn’t afford a real DJ, I prayed secretly he would ask me to join him. As his nerves kicked in approaching the big day, he did ask for my help, and I sheepishly replied: “Yeah, okay then. If you’re sure you want me to help mate?” On the night we played a selection of the classics, which were largely drawn from two albums: Black Lace’s ‘Party Party’ and Russ Abbot’s ‘I Love A Party’. I know, I should be ashamed, but I’m not! Haha. He would change the vinyl on his Dad’s HiFi while I talked on the mic in between songs. We both danced all night (he far more competently than I) behind the system, and it was an amazing experience. When the pint pot was handed to us from the impromptu whip-round containing £26.83 we decided this was a bit of us!
The next week we took our earnings to Step Up Sound Records in Burscough where we spent every penny, and a little more, on as many top 40 records as we could. We also got to know the store owner, Bryan Sewell, who took us under his wing to train us with his mobile disco. He would take the door money at under-18 discos while we did the gig with his Citronic Thames II console. We decided we would dress identically and call ourselves Double Vision Discos.
This partnership lasted until we turned 16 and I received a set of Fal Phoenix decks and a Linear light arch rig as my present, while my mate got his own rig, so Double Vision Discos was dissolved. The other half of that duo remains one of my closest friends, Graham Soutar. Paying tribute to those early years, he now owns and operates One Vision Discos covering the Northamptonshire area out of Kettering. Our early days together moulded every major part of my life since, and I am eternally grateful to Graham for our teenage collaboration.
After school finished, I was in college and playing football for the local team while the DJing was taking off with a Southport agency providing a lot of the work on top of my direct bookings. Unfortunately, my college work soon began to suffer, so I was told I needed to drop one thing. I chose football, but the college was still unimpressed with my lack of application (largely because the languages I loved were being taught boringly!). Eventually, this led to my mother once more suggesting one thing needed to be dropped so I could fully focus. She was convinced it would be DJing but promised to back me whatever I chose and, reluctantly, did so when the turntables won!
In spring 1987, I quit college to take the offer of a summer residency in North Wales at the Ty Mawr Haven Holiday Park, Towyn. Being seventeen years of age and the resident DJ in an over 21s nightclub was the sort of thing you could get away with back then without causing a stir! The children’s entertainer on site was a bloke called Benson, although he is now better known by his full moniker: Dave Benson Phillips! He was a great mate and covered my solitary night off in those six months, which was to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. He was teetotal and told me the next day he’d never drunk so much Appletize in his life! It was around then I realised where my early drink problem had come from, boredom! When the venue was quiet, or you had a couple of minutes until the track ended, you’d pick up a drink and have a swig!
This came to a head one Saturday afternoon when I fell asleep on the sofa and woke ten minutes late for the early evening children’s disco. As I sat up, I noticed the bottle of Bells I’d bought with the weekly shopping was already two thirds empty. I felt fine after my nap and was about to go to work and get through another seven or eight pints of snakebite & black, as I did every night of the week. However, realising how big an issue this could become, I challenged myself to drink no alcohol at all for two weeks to see whether I craved it or whether it was simply a habit I had picked up. Fortunately, I didn’t miss it at all, but at eighteen, that was the shock to the system I needed. Without that kick up the backside my life could have been so very different - and a lot shorter!
I learned so much in 1987. In fact, it was only when the season was over, and I thought back to what I’d been like at the start of summer, that I realised how much I had improved as a performer. When I started my residency I had thought I was great, but with hindsight, I think I was pretty awful. That was my first and most important lesson: in much the same way as a professional sportsperson, if you believe you are at the top of your game at any given moment, you most likely never will be. We should always search for how to improve and always remember that every day is a school day!
My parents had swapped roses, from Lancashire to Yorkshire, during that summer, so I had a choice to make. Return to my home town, get a place of my own, pay my own bills and restart where I wasn’t well known as a DJ anyway or move to Yorkshire for free accommodation with the parents and start again in a new place. It was an easy decision… hello Huddersfield!
I quickly discovered the main DJ agent in the area was a bloke called John Simms, and he supplied most of the town’s bars and clubs. I soon became one of John’s main DJs along with much-respected and well-established local jocks such as Tim ‘James’ Garbutt and the sadly recently passed local legend, Carl ‘Carlton’ Butterworth. This was in an era when licensing was 11am to 11pm in pubs and bars. Saturdays were amazing back then, as a handful of us would do three-hour sets rotating with each other at The Pen & Cob, Shoehorn, Crown and Piggy’s Notion. We would grab our records and rush to the next pub in the town centre to tag-team the DJ for the following three-hour shift. That town really knew how to party back then as they were all packed, except for the 5-8pm slot when customers would go home for tea and to change before heading back out that night.
In early 1989 the son of Piggy’s Notion’s owner
Having dabbled with the idea of starting a band with friends that got no further than calling ourselves ‘The Runaways’ and using Del Shannon’s iconic song as our theme, I had no idea how I would realise my musical dreams. So instead I just got on with being an annoying teen as per the Inbetweeners. For those who know the characters of that show, I was 100% Simon and had a mate who was the absolute personification of Jay (he shall not be named in this piece to avoid a stroppy call!).
In April 1983 when my best friend was asked to DJ a retirement party simply because he was a teenager and they couldn’t afford a real DJ, I prayed secretly he would ask me to join him. As his nerves kicked in approaching the big day, he did ask for my help, and I sheepishly replied: “Yeah, okay then. If you’re sure you want me to help mate?” On the night we played a selection of the classics, which were largely drawn from two albums: Black Lace’s ‘Party Party’ and Russ Abbot’s ‘I Love A Party’. I know, I should be ashamed, but I’m not! Haha. He would change the vinyl on his Dad’s HiFi while I talked on the mic in between songs. We both danced all night (he far more competently than I) behind the system, and it was an amazing experience. When the pint pot was handed to us from the impromptu whip-round containing £26.83 we decided this was a bit of us!
The next week we took our earnings to Step Up Sound Records in Burscough where we spent every penny, and a little more, on as many top 40 records as we could. We also got to know the store owner, Bryan Sewell, who took us under his wing to train us with his mobile disco. He would take the door money at under-18 discos while we did the gig with his Citronic Thames II console. We decided we would dress identically and call ourselves Double Vision Discos.
This partnership lasted until we turned 16 and I received a set of Fal Phoenix decks and a Linear light arch rig as my present, while my mate got his own rig, so Double Vision Discos was dissolved. The other half of that duo remains one of my closest friends, Graham Soutar. Paying tribute to those early years, he now owns and operates One Vision Discos covering the Northamptonshire area out of Kettering. Our early days together moulded every major part of my life since, and I am eternally grateful to Graham for our teenage collaboration.
After school finished, I was in college and playing football for the local team while the DJing was taking off with a Southport agency providing a lot of the work on top of my direct bookings. Unfortunately, my college work soon began to suffer, so I was told I needed to drop one thing. I chose football, but the college was still unimpressed with my lack of application (largely because the languages I loved were being taught boringly!). Eventually, this led to my mother once more suggesting one thing needed to be dropped so I could fully focus. She was convinced it would be DJing but promised to back me whatever I chose and, reluctantly, did so when the turntables won!
In spring 1987, I quit college to take the offer of a summer residency in North Wales at the Ty Mawr Haven Holiday Park, Towyn. Being seventeen years of age and the resident DJ in an over 21s nightclub was the sort of thing you could get away with back then without causing a stir! The children’s entertainer on site was a bloke called Benson, although he is now better known by his full moniker: Dave Benson Phillips! He was a great mate and covered my solitary night off in those six months, which was to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. He was teetotal and told me the next day he’d never drunk so much Appletize in his life! It was around then I realised where my early drink problem had come from, boredom! When the venue was quiet, or you had a couple of minutes until the track ended, you’d pick up a drink and have a swig!
This came to a head one Saturday afternoon when I fell asleep on the sofa and woke ten minutes late for the early evening children’s disco. As I sat up, I noticed the bottle of Bells I’d bought with the weekly shopping was already two thirds empty. I felt fine after my nap and was about to go to work and get through another seven or eight pints of snakebite & black, as I did every night of the week. However, realising how big an issue this could become, I challenged myself to drink no alcohol at all for two weeks to see whether I craved it or whether it was simply a habit I had picked up. Fortunately, I didn’t miss it at all, but at eighteen, that was the shock to the system I needed. Without that kick up the backside my life could have been so very different - and a lot shorter!
I learned so much in 1987. In fact, it was only when the season was over, and I thought back to what I’d been like at the start of summer, that I realised how much I had improved as a performer. When I started my residency I had thought I was great, but with hindsight, I think I was pretty awful. That was my first and most important lesson: in much the same way as a professional sportsperson, if you believe you are at the top of your game at any given moment, you most likely never will be. We should always search for how to improve and always remember that every day is a school day!
My parents had swapped roses, from Lancashire to Yorkshire, during that summer, so I had a choice to make. Return to my home town, get a place of my own, pay my own bills and restart where I wasn’t well known as a DJ anyway or move to Yorkshire for free accommodation with the parents and start again in a new place. It was an easy decision… hello Huddersfield!
I quickly discovered the main DJ agent in the area was a bloke called John Simms, and he supplied most of the town’s bars and clubs. I soon became one of John’s main DJs along with much-respected and well-established local jocks such as Tim ‘James’ Garbutt and the sadly recently passed local legend, Carl ‘Carlton’ Butterworth. This was in an era when licensing was 11am to 11pm in pubs and bars. Saturdays were amazing back then, as a handful of us would do three-hour sets rotating with each other at The Pen & Cob, Shoehorn, Crown and Piggy’s Notion. We would grab our records and rush to the next pub in the town centre to tag-team the DJ for the following three-hour shift. That town really knew how to party back then as they were all packed, except for the 5-8pm slot when customers would go home for tea and to change before heading back out that night.
In early 1989 the son of Piggy’s Notion’s owner
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 99, Pages 15-22.
