Come In Spinner

Some DJs are bigger than any scene, even transcending dance music. Greg Wilson is one of them. Then 15, he was spinning in 1975 – long before the arrival of the superstar DJ. The Merseyside native went on to become the inaugural resident 'dance' DJ at the feted Manchester nightclub The Haçienda. In 2013 Wilson is DJing ever further afield, but he's also emerged as a credible chronicler of an ephemeral culture.

Wilson, who started his blog Being A DJ three years ago, recently posted the courageous Jimmy Savile – DJ Originator Or More Smoke And Mirrors? Wilson asks if the knighted dance hall manager's widely accepted claim to be the earliest DJ, using two turntables in the late 1940s, wasn't “another deception”. But he also examines the music culture the sex predator exploited. The response to his piece, Wilson says, has been “incredible”. “It was a tricky one for me because I had to try to write a female perspective into that – and you know that you're treading on shaky ground as a bloke if you get something like that wrong. So it was really nice when women either I knew or didn't know were saying, 'That was great – 'cause I was trying to put a context to the whole thing'.”

Wilson pioneered beat-mixing in the UK. The 'disc jockey' began spinning soul, funk and disco, only to embrace the new electro-funk from New York – and he did much to popularise this in northern England. Wilson's most famous residency was at The Haçienda, New Order and Tony Wilson its co-directors, pre-acid house. In 1983 he asked New Order's Peter Hook if he might remix Blue Monday. “Peter Hook was, like, disgusted,” Wilson recalls. “He was like, 'What?'” These days Hook, who DJs himself, is contrite – to Wilson's amusement. “I didn't know whether he'd remembered that. It'd always been a part of me because he really was like, 'Fuck off – what are you talking about?' But when he put his book [The Haçienda: How Not To Run A Club] out, he wrote about it. He basically said, 'I was wrong – I was just anti remix and stuff and the idea of somebody touching our stuff at the time'. So he was really positive and respectful!”

In 1983 Wilson was the first DJ to mix live on British TV – appearing on The Tube. Yet at the end of that year Wilson quit DJing to focus on production and artist management. However, he did teach Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) to scratch. Later, spurred on by a growing interest in dance music history, he conceived the website electrofunkroots.co.uk. Wilson was determined to challenge orthodox accounts of British dance music originating in Ibiza, his concern that the domestic black underground scene had been “negated”. This documental activity, coupled with a hipster-led revival in (disco) re-edits, culminated in Wilson's return to professional DJing in 2003 – after nearly two decades away. For the first time, he played internationally. To this day, Wilson uniquely combines a reel-to-reel tape machine with the laptop.

Wilson, who dusted off his old re-edits for two Credit To The Edit comps, is in demand as a remixer – his take on Grace Jones's Williams' Blood among his finest efforts. He likewise lent his production skills to Groove Armada's Soundboy Rock. Now Wilson is releasing music of his own – and launching a label. In the past he's struggled to find time between his gigs, blogging and commitment to answering fan emails. “It's the first small steps. Initially, I'm just putting out groove-based kinda tracks that I put together to play at my gigs.” His next goal is to record with singers.

While Wilson has remixed The xx's Night Time, he admits to not being up on the UK's cool contemporary pop – again due to time constraints. “I'm in my own bubble, in a sense.” Still, the DJ enjoys exchanging notes with his teenage son, who, oddly enough, digs vintage rock. “He's in bands himself – he's 14. He just did his first gig over a week ago at The Cavern in Liverpool... They were great! It excites me.”

Greg Wilson will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 2 March – The Soda Factory, Sydney NSW
Sunday 3 March – Coniston Lane, Brisbane QLD
Thursday 7 March – Metro City, Perth WA
Sunday 10 March – New Guernica, Melbourne VIC