Little Old Me From Feltham (Famous For It's Borstal !!!!)
Managing To Blag My Way To Getting A No.4 UK Chart Hit (Lisa Stansfield Vs Dirty Rotten Socundrels) And Working On No Less Than 4 UK No.1's.
Below I Have Added Some Photos Of Interest (2 Me At Least ..) And Also The Covers Of Some Of The Records That I have Produced Or Had My Music Included On. Some Good - Some Not So Good......... Read On If You Want To Know More About Me..........And The Hugely Talented People I Have Had The Pleasure Of Working With
FIRST - HERE IS MY CLIP OF THE WEEK
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Growing up in West London, Music had a huge influence on me from an early Age. Wether walking round Feltham / Houslow / Chiswick or Shepherds Bush you were always guaranteed to hear some wonderful music blasting out of people's houses and shops. In the lates 70's and early 80's my youth was spent listening to the great Soul / Rare Groove / Boogie / Disco sounds that just made you want to move your bones and smile. Walton Hop was my first experience of a nightclub, and was infact the first one that ever opened in Britian !!!!
The Walton Hop was Britains first discotheque. It was the brainchild of Deniz Corday, now 72, who came to England from Bermuda in 1956, hoping to realise a life-long ambition to become a film director. After being involved with some film projects, the work dried up and he took a job at Waltons only record shop Birkheads, in Church Street. The shop attracted teenagers from across the town who queued up to hear the latest rock n roll records. It was this that inspired Mr Corday to launch the Walton Hop. He said: The shop was a great success. The BBC didnt play rock n roll so teenagers would crowd into the shop to hear the music. I used to tease them and say I will hire a hall and play all the latest releases and you wont have an excuse to hang around here anymore. The idea was so popular that he held the first disco at The Playhouse, in Hurst Road, in June 1958 and charged 1s 6d (7.5p) to get in. He said: It was so successful that we had queues right into the centre of Walton. We had to close the doors within half an hour because it was getting so crowded.
The Hop was definately the place to be (IF you could get in !!!!) My friends and myself would regualry go down on a Friday & Saturday night from the age of 13 and try to get in, but seeing as the queue went for miles we had little luck. It was only when a local guy started dating my friends sister that our luck changed (It's funny what effect a FEMALE has on a MALE !!!!)He agreed to open up one of the back Fire Exits to let us in so we could expericnce it for real, back in those days there were no padlocks or alarms on the fire exit doors ;-) The first night completely blew my mind seeing the DJ behind the lights and decks playing the wonderful music I LOVED to 600 odd sweaty people, who were dancing to HIS beat and the amazing sounds coming out of the HUGE speakers (As we were only 13 everything and everybody looked HUGE). Back then the DJ didn't bother mixing the records, he just played one after the other, after the other, after the other..........
I KNEW FROM THAT NIGHT THAT MUSIC AND DJing WOULD CONTROL & BE MY WHOLE LIFE AND I WANTED TO FIND OUT HOW TO BE THE GUY BEHIND THE DECKS AND HOW TO MAKE MUSIC LIKE I WAS HEARING
An Interview With Jimmy Pursey (Lead Singer Of SHAM 69) For The Guardian Newspaper in 2001 confired the legendary status of Walton Hop !!!!
"The Walton Hop closed down in 1990, but the Hop's home, the Walton Playhouse, still stands. Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69, was one of the Hop's most regular teenage attendees. He went dancing there every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday night throughout the 1970s. "It's so hard to explain to people who see in black and white the colour that existed in this club," he said. "The Playhouse was a theatre for fringe plays and amateur dramatics. But on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays it would become paradise." "It was inspirational," said Jimmy. “This wasn't table tennis. This was dancing. This was testing out your own sexuality. Normal people would become very unnormal. It was Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. It was everything." He leapt up on to the stage, and took me to the wings, stage right. We stood behind the curtains. "This is where the inner sanctum was," said Jimmy. "From here, Deniz Corday [the manager of the Walton Hop] would have the best view of the teenagers who were a little bit bolder, a little bit more interesting." "Bolder and interesting in what way?" I asked. "People like me," said Jimmy. "If Deniz liked you, you'd be invited backstage and get a little bit of whisky added to your Coca-Cola. Backstage, you see. And you'd go, 'Oh, I'm in with the big crowd now'. The Beatles lived on St George's Hill, in nearby Weybridge, and were often seen driving around Walton in their Rolls-Royces. The Walton area, in the 1970s & 80’s, was London's playpen, full of pop moguls and pop stars, letting their hair down, doing just what Jimmy said the teenagers at the Walton Hop did - being "unnormal".
I started DJing @ 16 in the Local pubs round Feltham / Richmond / Twickenham. I would turn up in my van and get the deks, speakers and lights out and set it all up. At the end of the night 11.30pm, it would be a mad rush for my mates & I to get all the gear back in the van, then back to my parents house to quickly unload and then off to London to dance the night away. We would head for a variety of nights including the imfamous Special Branch @ Royal Oak that Nicky Holloway conducted (It's Funny How Things Happen!!!! Little Did I Know That 15 Years After 1st Meeting Nicky We Would Be Sat In My Studio In Chiswick Making A Track Together, That Got Signed To Sony Records) We would also head to The Wag for 'The Raid' 'Across The Tracks' @ Dingwalls, Shake & Fingerpop with the Legend that is Norman Jay MBE (Probably the nicest man in the music industry, who I have had the pleasure to DJ with on numerous occasions) Plus numerous other dark and dingy haunts. The big turning point for my life to really take a musical route was in 1992 when I got a job working at Troublesome Records, which was based in Kingston, Surrey. The shop was a magnet for all the best DJ's and had a fantastic import department, which at the time was getting hold of the hard to find US / European tracks including some fantastic early US House. This was the time when Vinyl Ruled and the shop would be packed from 10am till close @ 7pm everyday. It was like being in a club mixing behind the counter with, at the time, your luminaries listening and checking out the latest HOT TRACKS. I started to get invited to alot ofthe Major clubs and was getting up close with the Big DJ's watching and listening to them at work. To be honest there were only a couple who I thought could really rock a crowd whislt the others seemed to be surviving on reputation alone. I read in Mixmag about a new club that had opened in Derby. It was called Progress and all the major DJ's were cancelling other gigs for a chance to play there, such was it's reputation. It was hard for the best DJs to get a set there. I thought to myself, "This is the place to get started, at the Best the scene had to offer !!!!" I got a mix tape recorded in the shop and posted it off to Pete & Russell the promoters of Progress. To be honest I wasn't expecting a reply, such was the clamour to get on the dekcs, but to my amazement Russel called me the shop and asked if I was avaiable to play in 2 weeks time. Bugger me sideways with a large vegetable I thought, my first real DJ gig in a club and it was to eb Progress in Derby, at the time the HOLY GRAIL of the Club World !!!!
Here Are Some Pictures From STANLEY HOUSE RECORDING STUDIOS Where I Used To Have A Studio With Dan Bewick. We Produced Under DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Here Are A Few Of The Covers From The Singles & Albums My productions have Been Included On. There Are Some Great Ones, And A Few Not So Great Ones ;-)