Born and raised across the river Mersey from Liverpool, England, Greg
Wilson is one of the key figures responsible for
the development of the early 80's Electro-Funk scene in clubs across the
north of England before its spread throughout the country. Borrowing from formative experiences at
an early age in England and Continental Europe, Wilson introduced British club audiences to
the revolutionary Dance music sounds coming out of New York City. Both reviled by traditionalists and
praised by those hungry for something new, Greg Wilson helped shepherd the evolution of Black Dance
music in the UK from
the Soul and Funk sounds that dominated the 70's to the emergence of House and Hip Hop in the late 80's.
He retired from DJing at an early age in 1984,
but has returned to DJ work in recent years and received the hero's welcome befitting his role in the
history of Dance music.
Although primarily identified as a DJ with the club scene in Manchester, Greg Wilson was born in Wallasey across the River Mersey from Liverpool in 1960. He grew up listening to American Soul music via both the 45's bought by his older brother and sister and the music played in the pub downstairs that his family owned and operated. By the age of 11 Wilson developed a friendship with Derek Kelsey (later known as DJ Derek Kaye) that would last to this day. The pair began DJ work in local clubs at age 15. Keeping up to date with the latest records via Blues and Soul magazine and BBC Radio Merseyside's Monday night Soul show Keep On Truckin', Greg Wilson began to immerse himself in the club scene. He saw British Funk bands like Heatwave at the Hamilton's 'Get-Togethers' and met local established DJs including Terry Lennaine and Dave Porter. Lennaine took Wilson for his first trip to Spin Inn in Manchester, the primary record store source in the north of England for Soul and Funk. In 1976, Terry Lennaine and Dave Porter took 16-year-old Greg Wilson to the Timepiece, a Black club in Liverpool to witness the spinning talents of Les Spaine. Wilson was hooked.
Greg Wilson soon became recognized as one of northern England's best DJs specializing in Black music, primarily Disco, Soul, Funk, and Jazz-Funk. A brief period of DJ work in Denmark and Norway in 1978 became a formative experience after Greg Wilson met Nicky Flavell and Paul Rae, two other experienced DJs and fans of Black music. The trio met in the small Norwegian town of Skien. Wilson would ultimately begin his residency at Wigan Pier taking over from Nicky Flavell when Flavell moved on to Legend in Manchester. Paul Rae would also take up a residency at Legend with one of the top Futurist nights in England.
In 1980 Greg Wilson headed out to DJ on the continent once again. In Germany he experienced DJ mixing with variable speed decks and club light shows controlled by a light jock. He took a new interest in utilizing live mixing in the club when returning from Germany to a residency at Wigan Pier, one of the best equipped clubs in England and one of the most consciously designed after state-of-the-art clubs in New York.
As a specialist in Black music with an ear to the innovative Dance
music scene in New York in the early 80's, Greg Wilson was an early
champion of what became known in the UK as Electro-Funk. Ground-
breaking underground club hits in New York such as the Peech Boys'
Don't Make Me Wait and
D-Train's You're the One For Me were played by Wilson but when he included the pioneering
sounds of Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock he infuriated
a number of other British DJs and musical purists due to the new music's radical departure
from traditional Soul and Funk sounds. Despite this early rejection,
Wilson's DJ nights at Manchester's Legend and Wigan Pier then later
Manchester's Exit and Huddersfield's Stars Bar began to have an impact on club audiences and break
through the hold of older Soul sounds. Radio mixes Greg Wilson created for
Piccadilly Radio became some of the region's most frequently recorded
shows. New Order would subsequently identify Klein MBO's Dirty Talk,
a favorite cut played by Greg Wilson, as a key influence on Blue Monday.
A particularly eventful early 80's night remembered by Wilson was one in which Malcolm McLaren's video for Buffalo Gals was played for the first time for the dancers at the Stars Bar. Many
of them were unprepared for the full depiction of the emerging New
York Hip Hop Nation depicted in the video including graffiti art and
the extremes of breakdancing. The audience was so transfixed that
they sat on the dancefloor and watched the video as it was played over
and over.
In 1983 Greg Wilson introduced an entirely new audience to the sounds of Electro-Funk with the first regular specialist Dance night at Tony Wilson's recently opened Hacienda in Manchester. The Hacienda initially appealed primarily to an audience for Alternative Rock, but Greg Wilson's residency helped shift the Hacienda into a venue for cutting edge Dance music that would gain it fame and notoriety later in the decade. Wilson played a key role as writer and producer on 1984's genre-defining UK Electro album released on the Street Sounds label. He also took on the role of manager of the Manchester breakdance crew Broken Glass, one of the best known in the UK. Electro had begun to take hold, but it would soon split and mutate into Hip Hop and House, going in different directions. In 1984 Greg Wilson retired from live DJ work but would continue work in the music business as a producer through the late 80's and early 90's, most notably on two albums by the Ruthless Rap Assassins. In recent years Wilson has been lured back into live DJ work. He notes that, although he would create mixes in the early 80's by literally splicing tape together, today he works on a computer. Greg Wilson is also a dedicated student of the history of the Electro-Funk scene and the revolution in Dance music that occurred on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1980's. For more details on his research and written work, please visit his site Electro-Funk Roots.
