Member Since: 2/14/2007
Band Website: www.retroevents.com
Influences: Not many DJs can claim to have been around at the origins of dance music and actually mean it. Forget pre-house… Paul Taylor is pre-disco. And that's no PR spin -Paul Taylor will forget more about music before breakfast than most folk will know in their lifetime. The mastermind of the massive Retro nights, Paul eats, sleeps and breaths music and after 28 years in club land, he knows what makes a dance floor tick. If there's one man who knows how to whip a crowd into a disco frenzy, it's our Paul. Just ask any one of the 14,000 people who head for the dance floors of Retro at various venues every month.
But take my hand as the screen goes wobbly and we go back, way back, to the northern town of Burnley in the 70s. "I was into the Northern Soul scene before I started DJ'ing," says Paul, a smile erupting with the memory, "So that's how I got my love of music really -I was a punter at Northern Soul gigs and in 1974 I got offered a job as a DJ in a club that had just opened in Burnley called Angels." Small time? Northern nonsense? Think again. "We used to get people from London coming up for this event", he continues. "The Twisted Wheel in Manchester was the only club I knew apart from the Wigan Casino that served the underground, so I knew there was a market for it. We ended up getting a thousand people every Wednesday at one point, and it ran for three or four years until disco arrived in 1978."The house music tidal wave that crossed the Atlantic in the mid 80s and crashed over the UK swept up Paul in its wake. In 1989, he took ownership of Angels, and throughout the early nineties began booking DJs who have since rocketed into the club land supernova. Carl Cox was a monthly resident, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong , Sasha, Tall Paul and Boy George all played Saturday nights for Paul.
In 1991 Paul decided that too much music was too being quickly discarded, and dedicated the final hour on Friday nights to tunes released in the previous three to four years. And lo…Retro was born, emerging from a music policy to become a party in its own right, with gigs all over the country and hundreds locked out every week. Since then, Retro has single-handedly given credibility to the club classics concept. The club took Ibiza by storm, becoming the success story of 2000 and the focal point of many a clubber's time on the island, earning the best newcomer award from Mixmag. The same mag has since asked the nation "Is Retro the UK's busiest club?" As if Paul's diary wasn't already straining at the hinges, he continues to gig around the UK and Europe.
Aside from DJing, promoting and actually owning nightclubs, Paul has also been instrumental in the development of dance music. He has always produced music, notably as part of the Loveland team who scored several top 40 hits throughout the 90s and scores of big dance anthem remixes. He established the label Eastern Bloc with Pete Waterman and when Ministry Of Sound needed a good A&R with their finger on the pulse, they turned to Paul. After a break he put out three Retro albums through Neo records and he's now back in the studio because, as well as enjoying the history of dance culture, he's equally interested in creating the classics of the future. See, the original acid face had a smile. Somewhere along the way it was wiped off but Paul has made it his disco mission to put the smile back on the face of club land. "After 28 years, I'm still here doing it because I love it,"he smiles. "I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when I finally hang up my headphones. But I enjoy myself, I smile at people, I always have time to talk to punters - I always greet them when they're coming into a club and I always say goodnight, because they're the people that make this industry what it is. It's not the magazines or the media, it's not the big name DJs, it's the paying punters". Count yourself lucky to be one of them.
Record Label: Unsigned