Man Parrish

Man Parrish born 6 May 1958

Man Parrish is considered to be a pioneering electronic music producer and performer. He became an underground music scene icon in the 1980s and 1990s and is considered to be one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music, according to The New York Times.

Although he produced only a handful of tracks of renown and disappeared into obscurity almost as quickly as he had emerged from it, Man Parrish is nonetheless one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music. Helping to lay the foundation of electro, hip-hop, freestyle, and techno, as well as the dozens of sub-genres to splinter off from those, Parrish introduced the aesthetic of European electronic pop to the American club scene by combining the plugged-in disco-funk of Giorgio Moroder and the man-machine music of Kraftwerk with the beefed-up rhythms and cut'n'mix approach of nascent hip-hop. As a result, tracks like Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don't Stop) and Boogie Down Bronx were period-defining works that provided the basic genetic material for everyone from Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys to Autechre and Andrea Parker - and they remain undisputed classics of early hip-hop and electro to this day.

A native New Yorker, Parrish was a member of the extended family of glam-chasers and freakazoids that converged nightly with Andy Warhol's at the legendary nightclub Studio 54 club. His nickname, Man, first appeared in Warhol's Interview magazine, and his early live shows at Bronx hip-hop clubs were spectacles of lights, glitter, and pyrotechnics that drew as much from the Warhol mystique as from the Cold Crush Brothers.

Influenced by the electronic experiments of his good friend and co-writer Klaus Nomi and Brian Eno as well as by Kraftwerk, Parrish together with 'Cool' Raul Rodriguez recorded their best-known work in a tiny studio sometimes shared with Afrika Baambaata, whose own sessions with Arthur Baker and John Robie produced a number of classics equal to Parrish's own.

What distinguished Hip-Hop Be Bop was its lack of vocals and the extremely wide spectrum of popularity it gained in the club scene, from ghetto breakdance halls to uptown clubs like Danceteria and the Funhouse. After he discovered a pirated copy of his music being played by a local DJ at the infamous Anvil club, Parrish found his way to the offices of the Importe label and signed his first deal. He released his self-titled LP shortly after, and the album went on to sell over 2 million copies worldwide. He was signed to Electra Records and managed by David Bowie's notorious manager Tony De Fries and the infamous Main Man Ltd management team. Tony De Fries had managed the careers of David Bowie, New York Dolls, Mott the Hoople, Mick Ronson and Dana Gillespie to name a few.

Following a period of burn-out that followed, Parrish recorded and remixed tracks for Michael Jackson, Boy George, Gloria Gaynor, and Hi-NRG group Man2Man, among others, and served as manager for the Village People and Crystal Waters and others. While Parrish's subsequent material has achieved nowhere near the success or creative pitch of his earlier work, he continues to record from his Brooklyn studio and is a frequent DJ at New York's eclectic night spots and SM clubs. He is main DJ and co founder for a circuit party called Hustlerball which has parties in many cities worldwide. He also has several adult websites and online businesses which keep him busy as a webmaster, and 'jack of all trades'.

Simon Napier-Bell

Simon Napier-Bell born 22 April 1937

London-born Simon Napier-Bell has undertaken many jobs in the music industry, including manager, producer, songwriter, journalist and author. But he is best-known as manager, particularly of The Yardbirds, John's Children, Marc Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Japan, London, Wham! and Blue Mercedes.

After becoming involved in music at school and heading off the the United States and Canada to become a professional musician, after two years Napier-Bell decided he wanted to pursue other directions.

When he returned to England he worked as an assistant film editor. With a thorough knowledge of music, he soon progressed to being a music editor and landed the job of working with Burt Bacharach on What’s New Pussycat, re-editing the score Burt had written for it. Later, he also scored, wrote and edited music for Clive Donner's Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush.

In 1966, Dusty Springfield approached Vicki Wickham and Simon Napier-Bell to write English lyrics for a song she’d heard at the Sanremo Festival. The result was You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which became Dusty’s first number one.

His friend Vicki Wickham, who booked all the acts for the TV show Ready Steady Go, persuaded him to move into the music management. He started by putting together an act of his own – Nicky Scott & Diane Ferraz – a boy from London and a girl from the West Indies. The inter-racial mix was a first for the British music business.

On the back of the publicity Napier-Bell generated for Scott and Ferraz, The Yardbirds asked him if he would manage them. Napier-Bell then co-produced the Yardbirds’ first studio album. He then oversaw the entry of Jimmy Page into the group and produced the group’s next single, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, considered one of the most avant-garde rock records of the time.

Napier-Bell went on to manage John's Children, who were known more for their ability to shock than for their music. Napier-Bell then teamed up with ex-comedian Ray Singer to produce records for various artists including the Scaffold (a group which included Paul McCartney's brother, Mike McGear), Peter Sarstedt, Forever More (who became The Average White Band) and other lesser known acts. He also spent a year in Australia where he discovered and produced John Paul Young.

Following this, Napier-Bell worked in Spain and South America for two years, managing one of Spain’s biggest stars, Junior, with whom he co-wrote several Spanish hits, in particular one of the biggest selling Spanish language singles of the seventies, Perdoname.

In 1976, Napier-Bell came back to London and returned to management with two new groups, London, a group in the then-current punk vein, and Japan [pictured]. London was a short lived project but Japan involved him for the next seven years. Napier-Bell persevered with them through five lean years to eventually help make them one of the most influential groups of the early eighties, both musically and fashion-wise.

He then teamed up with manager Jazz Summers and together they took on the management of Wham!. The group had already had three hit singles in the UK but wanted to terminate their contract with their record company. Napier-Bell and Summers led them through four months of legal complications (during which they were unable to record), and finally settled the case by signing a new contact with CBS.

Napier-Bell spent eighteen months travelling backwards and forwards to China negotiating for Wham! to become the first ever Western pop artist to play in communist China. They eventually played a concert there in April 1985 at the Worker's Stadium in Beijing.

At the end of 1985, Wham! ended its relationship with Napier-Bell and Summers when George Michael left Wham! for a solo career. Napier-Bell went on to manage the duo Blue Mercedes, who had one worldwide hit, I Want To Be Your Property (1987). Napier-Bell also arranged for the defunct pop group Boney M to reform and had all their old tracks remixed by Stock Aitken Waterman. The result was an album that stayed at number one in the French charts for four months but sold little elsewhere.

Following this, Napier-Bell teamed up with another manager, Sir Harry Cowell, and they took on the management of two once major groups looking to revive their careers – Asia and Ultravox. Asia fared better than Ultravox but eventually Napier-Bell gave up on both of them. After taking time out to write Napier-Bell chose to go back to management, this time working in Russia. Initial success in Russia was not followed up with success in the rest of the world.

When Japan broke up, Napier-Bell wrote his first book, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, about his experiences in the music business in the 1960s. When he ceased managing Asia and Ultravox he wrote another book, Black Vinyl White Powder, about the British music business which was received with favourable reviews. In March 2005 he published another book, I’m Coming To Take You To Lunch, the story of how he took Wham! to China.

Simon Napier-Bell - official website

Joe Meek

Joe Meek born 5 April 1929 (d. 1967)

Joe Meek (born Robert George Meek in Newent, Gloucestershire) was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter acknowledged as one of the world's first and most imaginative independent producers. His most famous work was The Tornados' hit Telstar (1962), which became the first record by a British group to hit #1 in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks atop the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the Best-Selling single of 1962.

Meek's innovative sonic concept album I Hear A New World (1960) is regarded as a watershed in modern music, although it was shelved for decades.

A stint in the Royal Air Force as a radar operator, spurred a life-long interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of his company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc-cutter and producing his first record.

He left the electricity board to work as a sound engineer at Radio Luxembourg. He made his breakthrough with his work on Ivy Benson's Music for Lonely Lovers. His technical ingenuity was first shown on the Humphrey Lyttelton jazz single Bad Penny Blues (1956).

Despite not being able to play a musical instrument or write notation, Meek displayed a remarkable facility for producing successful commercial recordings. To compose, he was dependent on musicians, who would transcribe his (or: recordings of his) singing. He worked on 245 singles, of which 45 were major hits (top fifty or better).

He pioneered studio tools such as artificial multi-tracking on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the compressor, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique 'sonic signature' for every record he produced.

At a time when studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek was producing everything on the three floors of his 'home' studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking. For John Leyton's hit song Johnny Remember Me he placed the violins on the stairs, the drummer almost in the bathroom, and the brass section on a different floor entirely.

Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques - physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately-recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording - comprised a major breakthrough in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop, jazz and classical recordings alike was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time, a legacy of the days before magnetic tape, when performances were literally cut live, directly onto disc.

Meek was obsessed with the occult and the idea of 'the other side'. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in a vain attempt to record voices from beyond the grave. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly and other dead rock and roll musicians.

His efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper in order to steal his ideas), drug use and attacks of rage or depression. His then-illegal homosexuality put him under further pressure; he had been charged with 'importuning for immoral purposes' in 1963 and was consequently subjected to blackmail.

In January of 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered a suitcase containing the mutilated body of Bernard Oliver, an alleged rent boy who had previously associated with Meek. According to some accounts, Joe became concerned that he would be involved in the investigation when the London police stated that they would be interviewing all known homosexuals in the city.

On February 3, 1967, the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protegé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt at his Holloway Road home/studio (Meek had flown into a rage and taken it from him when he informed Meek that he used it while on tour to shoot animals). Meek had kept it under his bed, along with the shells. As the gun had been registered to Burt, he was questioned intensively by police, before being eliminated from their enquiries.

A blue plaque has since been placed at the location of the studio to commemorate Meek's life and work.

Although he turned down opportunities to work with David Bowie, The Beatles and Rod Stewart, Meek did work with a host of other artists including Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, Tommy Steele and many more.

Ian Levine

Ian Levine born 22 June 1953

Ian Levine is an English songwriter, producer, and DJ. He's also a well-known (and sometimes controversial) fan of the long-running television show Doctor Who. He was born in Blackpool, England.

Levine is most noted for his work in the music genres of pop, soul, disco, and Hi-NRG. He and songwriting partner Fiachra Trench were among the main figures in the development of the Hi-NRG style, writing and producing So Many Men So Little Time by Miquel Brown, and High Energy by Evelyn Thomas. During the 1980s and 1990s he mixed a huge amount of dance-pop hits including the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Kim Wilde, Bronski Beat, Bananarama, Tiffany, Dollar, Hazell Dean and founded his own groups: Seventh Avenue and Bad Boys Inc. He also wrote and produced for the highly successful UK boy band Take That and The Pasadenas. He has written and produced many TV themes.

Earlier in his career he was an influential disc jockey at the Blackpool Mecca, and became an avid collector of soul, R&B, and Northern Soul records. In the mid-1970s he also embraced disco, and would ultimately be influential as a producer in the genre's evolution into Hi-NRG.

Levine was also a resident DJ at the legendary London gay disco Heaven.

He is also a serious comic book collector and a committed Doctor Who obssessive. Sad.

Dan Hartman

Dan Hartman born 8 December 1950 (d. 1994)

Dan Hartman was an American singer, songwriter and record producer.

Born Dan Earl Hartman in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Hartman joined his first band, The Legends, at the age of 13, with his brother David. Hartman played keyboards and wrote much of the band's music. The band released several records but none were hits. He joined the Edgar Winter Group and played on three of their albums; Dan wrote the band's second biggest pop hit Free Ride in 1972. He launched a solo career in 1976. A re-recorded version Free Ride was used in the Movie Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in 1995

In 1978 Hartman reached number-one in the US with the single Instant Replay. This was followed by his second US chart topper Relight My Fire (1979). Both tracks, which are considered by many to be anthems of the disco era, were worldwide hits.

He was back in the charts again with the top-10 single I Can Dream About You from the Streets of Fire soundtrack in 1984. Hartman was featured as a bartender in the video, which received heavy rotation on MTV; in the video, his vocals were convincingly lip-synched by Stoney Jackson, an African-American actor. Hartman then scored a third US number-one single, We Are The Young.

During the next decade he worked as a songwriter and producer, and collaborated with such artists as Tina Turner, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Tyler, Paul Young, James Brown, Nona Hendryx and Steve Winwood.

He died at age 43 in Westport, Connecticut from a brain tumour caused by AIDS. Only after Hartman's death did his homosexuality become public knowledge. At the time of his death, his music was enjoying a revival; a cover version of his song Relight My Fire became a British number-one hit for Take That and Lulu. Sales of Hartman's solo recordings, group efforts, production, songwriting and compilation inclusions exceed 50 million records worldwide.

Patrick Cowley

Patrick Cowley born 19 October 1950 (d. 1982)

Patrick Joseph Cowley was a Disco and Hi-NRG dance music composer and recording artist. He recorded in a similar style to Giorgio Moroder, and is often credited with pioneering electronic dance music.

Born in Buffalo, Cowley moved to San Francisco in 1971, beginning an intensive study of the synthesiser. Working at the City Disco as a light technician, he met Sylvester (originally of the Cockettes, a gay theatre group), who was there performing. They began to collaborate, and Cowley's aggressive synthesiser style became associated with Sylvester. Their club-dancing fan base responded enthusiastically to hits like You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), Dance (Disco Heat), and their most successful single, Do You Wanna Funk.

Cowley's own hits included Menergy in 1981, a frank celebration of the gay club sex scene, and Megatron Man. In 1982, Patrick Cowley became the DJ at the 'Menergy' parties at The EndUp in San Francisco. He also wrote and produced the dance single Right on Target for San Francisco artist Paul Parker, which reached #1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. Cowley also did a 15+ minute long remix of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, which is now a collector's item.

His final album, Mind Warp, was composed as he felt the increasing effects of HIV infection - although at that time the disease was newly emerging, barely identified and doctors had no real idea why he and so many others were becoming so ill - and its songs reflect his increasing detachment from conventional reality as the disease progressed. He finished the album from a wheelchair between hospital stays.

Cowley only released three solo albums, but groups including the Pet Shop Boys and New Order cite Cowley's style as a major influence.

Patrick Cowley died from complications of AIDS on November 12, 1982.