This is an interview we've been waiting for since our humble beginnings, a man busier then the bees themselves is Greg Wilson. He was a DJ before you're parents were even thinking about your accidental birth. This is an inspiring read for aspiring and well established DJ's alike.

When you started DJing at the mere age of fifteen, was it ever your plan to make a career from it?

By the time I left school at 16 it was my career. I wasn’t just doing it as a sideline to a day job, as many people did, but professionally, working between 4-6 nights per week until I stopped at the end of ’83.

You've said that you only make your edits so that you can play them out in the club, did you ever expect them to be held at such high accord?

My original ‘re-edits’ were done for radio in 1984. I called them ‘turntable edits’ because, apart from the actual tape splicing, I used two copies of the same record for repeat effects (running a copy one, two, or four beats behind the other – or playing them at the same time for phasing effects). I did a series of these edits, including the ones by Chaka Khan and Scritti Politti, which appeared on Credit To The Edit Vol One. Only a few people seemed to appreciate them at the time, so yes, it was a big surprise two decades on when they began to receive acclaim from other DJ’s and dance music enthusiasts. Funny how things work out.

A younger Greg Wilson was the first DJ to ever mix on live British television, what was that like for you?

Probably the most scary thing I’ve ever done. I knew that if I messed up I was going to look stupid before my peers. All eyes were on me and when I heard the countdown begin, ten seconds before we went on air, I was almost paralysed with fear. But, thankfully, all went well, even though the cameraman bumped into my decks (the needles fortunately held firm in the grooves, otherwise I’d have been in big trouble).

The legendary Credit To The Edit Volume One would still be a vital tool in many DJ's sets, were you planning on releasing a compilation of your edits or was it just your best bits and pieces that you had lying around at the time?

It was Sav Remzi from Tirk (formerly Nuphonic) who approached me with the idea. It was a dream project! Some stuff was already done, whilst I’d thought about most of the others and this gave me the opportunity to get them done.

What was it about DJing that got you hooked at an early age?

It was a natural progression from being passionate about records, and in particular black music, which generated the majority of tracks played in the clubs. My best friend, Derek Kaye (then Derek Kelsey) had built his own mobile disco at a very young age, so that was a definite inspiration, as were the many mobile discos that used to be booked for functions where I lived between 1966-1974 (above a pub, which included two large rooms that were used for weddings, 21^st’s etc).

It seems as though a lot of young DJ's mindset these days are quite different to the young Greg Wilson, what are your thoughts on the current state of nu skool DJ's and producers?

Our apprenticeship was different. Starting off doing mobile discos you had to work with a cross-section of age and musical taste, watching the room closely and learning to keep a proper balance. That sort of grounding holds you in good stead. It’s different now, of course, and although DJ’s have come on in leaps and bounds on a technical level, I think that programming skills have suffered overall. I could see this change most clearly in the 90’s when DJ’s were picking up bookings via mixtapes, which they’d put together at home – technically impressive, but by people who had no idea what it was like to work with an audience. This led to DJ’s separating from the crowd in many respects – they were pretty much putting themselves above the audience, rather than it being reciprocal in the way it had previously been, and if people didn’t like what they were playing they would blame the crowd for being ignorant to good music. In our day the DJ would have been looking at an empty dancefloor and it would have been clear to see who got it wrong, but with ecstasy making such a big impact people were determined to dance all night, regardless of how good the DJ might be, so the lines were blurred.

There’s certainly been a shift back towards programming skills during more recent times and a re-connection with the pre-rave way of approaching things. DJ’s, generally speaking, were selecting their records not because they were the best ones, but because they mixed the best out of the previous record. This was very much putting the cart before the horse from my perspective.

Retiring as a DJ once and moving to a career behind the desk, was this something you'd been wanting to do quite some time or was it a matter of an impulse decision to change pace?

I’d increasingly taken note of the remix credits on the records I was playing in the early 80’s – names like Tee Scott, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Francois Kevorkian etc. I thought that this was a direction I’d like to follow, but there were no other UK DJ’s doing this at the time, and I found myself banging my head against a brick wall as the record company people told me ‘British DJ’s don’t remix, American DJ’s remix’. It was as a consequence of these knock-backs that I took a lateral step and began making my own music, collaborating with musicians. There was a certain amount of impulse involved, but I’d achieved what I’d set out to do as a club DJ, so it was time for a change of direction.

Listening to your mixes and reading the Electrofunk website it strikes me that you aren't constrained by a single genre when you mix both now and back in the earlier days. It seems as though a genre free style of DJing is back in "fashion", did that have any bearing for you when returning?

Although I really made my name as a black music specialist back in the early 80’s, I was playing a wide spectrum of styles, with tempo ranging from under 100bpm to over 130bpm. I covered Electro, Funk, Disco (or Boogie as it’s now called), Soul and Jazz. DJ’s weren’t restricted to one narrow little area back then, that all happened post-rave. I could never have returned to deejaying without being able to play a wide range of stuff – variety is the spice of life in my book and, thankfully, people are now, once again, into a more ‘eclectic’ approach (although, for me, this is simply the norm).

It appears that you've always been an early adopter of technology in your career, whether it be the technics turntable for more control of records, or the revox tape deck for effects. It feels that recently there has been a "Back to Basics" movement with many DJs believing that to be done properly, DJing should be a vinyl only industry. As a user of a computer when you are playing, I was wondering how you feel about the "purist" mindset?

I’ve never been a purist. To me, that’s a road to stagnation. You need to be open-minded, otherwise there’ll be no true progression. If you want to DJ with vinyl, great, but if you want to use Ableton Live, that’s great too – it’s all about people enjoying what’s being played, not the format it’s being played from. People have always resisted change – the same thing would have happened when 78’s were phased out in favour of 45’s back in the 50’s. There were many DJ’s who couldn’t see the point of the 12” when it began to make an impact, sticking with the 7” until the wave of change engulfed them. I started out during the time when the 12” didn’t exist and British DJ’s used the microphone (this continued for the majority of DJ’s here until the House explosion of the late 80’s), but people would think I was crazy if I suggested that this was how it was ‘done properly’, at least as far as this country was concerned.

Your recent remixes of Groove Armada and Simian Mobile Disco are amongst favourites of mine, have you changed your approach to remixing for more popular contemporary artists compared to your earlier edits?

No, I just go off feel. There’s no difference in my approach if I’m mixing a track by a well known act or an unknown one – in essence, my concern is with providing myself with a version that will work with the type of crowd I play to.

After reading Peter Hook's "The Hacienda : How Not To Run A Club" it seems that your days at The Hacienda are a side note compared to Wigan Pier and Legend, What was your time like as a DJ at The Hacienda?

When I was at The Hacienda in 1983 it was very much a club struggling to find its identity. As you’ll know from the book, it simply wouldn’t have survived without New Order’s success keeping it afloat financially. People will often ask me about The Hacienda, given the fact it became one of the best known clubs in the world, thinking that this was the highlight of my career, but it didn’t rate alongside my nights at Legend and Wigan Pier, which were acknowledged as the leading specialist black music nights in the North back then (that’s why The Hacienda had approached me in the first place). I had some good individual nights at The Hacienda, but you have to remember that every Wednesday, between May ’82 and when I stopped deejaying at the end of ’83, Legend was packed to the rafters, with queues of people, from all over the North and Midlands, waiting outside to get it on a one in one out basis. Add to this the fact that the sound and lighting at Legend was arguably the best in the country, and the audience was as upfront as they come, and you can understand why The Hacienda was something of an anti-climax for me on a personal level.

Are you having more fun DJing the second time around? And what would you place as your all time favourite gig?

As I’ve just said, every week at Legend circa 82/83. I just couldn’t wait for Wednesday to come around.

However, it’s not really fair to compare then to now – I’m coming in from a completely different angle and it’s very rewarding nowadays to connect with people of another generation, who share a similar passion for music, helping link the past to the present (without falling into the nostalgia trap). What’s more is that when I was at Legend, Wigan Pier and The Hacienda, the furthest away I got to play was cities like Birmingham and Nottingham, whereas this time around I’ve been fortunate to literally travel the world. Had I not returned to deejaying I doubt that people like yourselves, on the other side of the world, would have heard about clubs like Legend, so it’s been pivotal in enabling me to shine a light on aspects on UK club culture that might otherwise have remained obscured.

There you have it.

VINTAGE WAREHOUSE FINALE 15.08.10 (greg wilson live mix) by gregwilson