How old is stu allan

It was a really high profile night, but once Legend got to around about people it was almost like everyone made the decision to change nights. So, when it got to about people at Legend people switched, and it seemed almost like an overnight thing, with the night doubling its attendance, hitting full capacity.

It was really odd from our point of view, building it up so slowly, so slowly, and then, when that switch came, what happened was so swift, with the Main Event literally dying off within a matter of weeks. We had people coming in from all over the Midlands and the North. But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, Legend was the hub of it, you know what I mean? SA: Yeah, and not just that, I think it is the one that everybody remembers, more than Wigan Pier, you know, much more.

Wigan Pier was harder work for us because we struggled without transport. Even though there was a coach, you still had to get to Manchester and then get home again. SA: And stuff like that and then I ended up with a Saturday night, which shows you how times had changed then and that was about 87 I think.

It was 87 into 88, I did a couple of years and, again, it was just fantastic, but it all started back with you. GW: Obviously, around this period of time, you were trying to make ends meet. You were still doing your bar work I presume? It got to the point where I was just working the decks and someone else would give it all the bollocks on the microphone, which suited me.

Yeah, just getting experience and trying to make a few quid. SA: I used to try and request tunes over at the front instead of going round the side, you know, like a dickhead. So I was just being a typical punter. I was a great believer in announcing and back announcing what I was playing. Now I was mixing, how did I do that? SA: Right. I remember that happening to great effect with The Webboes. But we always used to go in and grab one of those sheets before they all disappeared or got covered with coca-cola or something, because beer was non-existent really.

It was like a little Bible each week. SA: Absolutely, but it was fantastic, and it was so appreciated you know, that it was there, that somebody had written these things down.

I never really saw the point of that. You know girls would go out and go to Spin Inn, even if it was only to buy the one 12 inch. It was a surprise when I spoke to you and you told me that you were there at Legend pretty much every week.

GW: It was only when you filled me in about your move to Manchester that it became clear. It was a similar thing with Gerald. He was playing electroey things, but there was more kind of scratching going on and Chad really loved to do that, but it was becoming a little too scratchy and probably a little too anoraky. You know, he was brilliant at what he did and it was quite impressive to hear it, but it was just different, it was kind of a different scene coming along you know.

It was probably late 84 because I seem to remember Chad. Yes it would have been 84 because I remember Chad towards the end of the year, being in the place all night long doing his mix.

You know, having to come in and use their tape machines and stuff. So I used to practice editing on quarter inch tape. You know, all this sort of thing, and it was just learning that craft of edits and mixing, cutting, scratching and whatever. Eventually there were little jobs going where you were called a broadcast assistant and got paid for being there.

I must have done that for over a year, and then I had the chance to do the Sunday night Soul show. You know, choosing the wrong album tracks, things like that. Then he had a chance of compering a Motown tour, with Edwin Starr and all that sort of thing, and he got the job. But, you know, it was such a life changing thing that I just went ahead and did it anyway. I was fucking unbelievably bad at talking on the radio, you know, just having to write my lines, write things down, what to say and all this kind of thing, and absolutely crapping it all the way through, but I did mix and I did a bit of cutting and scratching, and this and that.

It was a big mixture of things that I knew were just good tunes. SA: Yeah, as soon as Mike left that was it. It was July 86 when I did my first show. So anything for that year, at the end, if there was going to be a megamix it was going to be down to me. Within 6 months they had their highest ratings for that type of show ever. It was just immense it was just a huge, huge listening audience, and that just secured me there for years on end.

I did a Best Of 86 mix, and then an 87, and it went on. So, in the end, because I was playing everything, it just became extremely hard not to do a Best of Hip Hop, Best of Soul and then it became Best of House.

Do you know what I mean? In the end, I just got all the punters to vote for their favourite tunes or something and did it that way. GW: Well that had taken over from Legend by then. SA: Yeah, it was a seriously underground black club, The Gallery, you know it was a proper, proper place.

No mainstream people ever knew it existed, even though it was a big pub on the corner of Deansgate. To do their All-Nighters was brilliant, cos the only All-Nighters we used to get back then were starting at midnight on Sunday nights into the Bank Holiday Monday. They were the only ones. But it was unheard of in them days. So they opened up a big trap door. Went down into the cellar where all the beer barrels were, and bottles of Thunderbird and whatever, you know, and go through the cellar.

So I just had to plough through to get to the DJ box and once you were there, there was no escape. SA: I always remember Hewan, he was a veteran at these sort of things. He was so brilliant with the tunes he played and he took me under his wing a little bit knowing that I was new to this, you know. He was great. He was the early resident there and they had the DJ box downstairs to the side of the stage.

I worked in the same environment myself and it was a nightmare. I think he was a fish out of water in a sense, but The Gallery was much more his type of environment.

SA: Yeah, he was totally at home in The Gallery, totally. Dead calm and stuff. A really, really good bloke. GW: So who else was there? SA: I think Leaky might have been knocking about as a punter but as a DJ it would have been late 87 into 88 really. Much later Manchester scene.

SA: The Gallery was very, very black, you know. There was some good Soul tunes, kind of mid-tempo that sort of thing, plus Hip Hop. But there was House, I went in and played very early House and very dubby, you know, what was out-and-out black music, there was no whiteness about it at all. So long as it was black music, you know, they were into it. What are your memories of what was then a totally new form?

SA: I always remember that the production of it was so basic and that we were so into it. It was a drum machine and a bassline, and some were only that throughout, but you could still feel it, it was still black music. That would be Another great thing about being so upfront and having, you know, the only tunes, was that London, at this point was so into their Rare Grooves. Obviously you had people like Jazzy M and all them.

So they use to put them all in a bag, without listening to them ready for when you wanna go in, you know, and pick them up. You knew something really good was happening here. I used to do the odd guest thing if a PA was on, but only from a Hip Hop thing. If you play something different, I mean, you played Electro, you get known for that, even though you do other things.

That was the only time I did it really. Apart from much, much, much later. SA: Absolutely, it became just a tourist place really. I found it was the only club the magazines ever bloody wrote about. Of course, people read these things and travel from all over, but suddenly it was the only club in Manchester. How did you feel about the fact that you were left out of this history, even though you were playing these tracks? SA: Yeah, it is a bit strange.

I think people who are genuinely into it would always remember hearing me on the radio playing these things. They always used to tune in.

Who knows? GW: I put it down to the fact that it was black thing and at the time the whole thing about being black in the UK was that you were kind of shoved into the background in some sense. There was less media attention being played. I mean, you were talking about The Gallery, what was going on there, the All-Nighters and things. SA: No, that was what I was saying before.

You knew as soon as you walked in there that this was an underground club, and from the music they were playing as well. It was a great, great night. You know that was a proper dancing place, but The Gallery, there was too many people, not enough room to dance! But it was slightly more relaxing. A different scene, yet just as important really as anything else.

GW: I just think Acid House, when it happened, it was so big. It was such an explosion and, obviously, it was all the E that came with it as well. What was really interesting with Laurent Garnier was that he said that he had to go back to do his National Service in France and he missed the start of the whole Rave thing. You were a white kid who came onto the scene, but, back then, you were very much part of the black scene. Whereas now there were legions of young white kids coming along, taking E and doing their Acid dance.

Can you imagine what the reaction from the black kids would have been at the time? SA: Well it was almost that way for me, for DJing. I can totally understand the black crowd.

SA: Well it stems from the Rave thing, which again is white, I mean there were black people there, but it was predominantly white. When I first played Acid House, it was made by black people in Chicago, you know, young black kids like Adonis. GW: You were still kind of involved in a black scene but not the Rave scene as such?

SA: I only got involved about This club in Coventry, called The Eclipse, asked me to play, and then things were getting a bit ravey really. Like just way back from the Electro days, it was all noisy. So this just had different noises in them. It was still synths and drum machines just done slightly differently, you know. GW: At what point would you say that your association with a black scene at club level came to an end? I mean you were doing your Legend night, where you hope a few more come the next week and then the next week, and in the end it goes massive.

SA: Yeah, Legend came later, but still going together. Legend was actually owned by the Wigan Pier crowd at this point. Playpen was owned by a guy called Nigel. That was the problem. All the doormen and the bar staff left at the same time. So that was the end of that really. SA: Yeah, I mean I did do other nights. It moved to another club. We had a nice black scene going but I think the music was changing as well though. The Soul side of things, where you could get people dancing, was changing an awful lot.

The whole thing had changed. All the best Soul was becoming very ballady. The danceable stuff was just that same Soul II Soul beat over everything, and that was another reason. The rap was becoming more gangstery, whereas before people liked to dance to all the Hip Hop tunes you know, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, it was all danceable stuff even though it was quite rugged.

The rap was getting too gangsta style, the Soul was getting a bit, you know, not as it was. SA: Yeah, they used to do a Monday and I just poked me head through the door one night to have a look and see what they were doing and that was just so weird to see.

It was the start really, it was all the start of the Rave scene, or what became the Rave scene. Very scruffy looking people, you know, not that you dressed up too much to come to Legend, but you would never go out looking like that, put it that way. They were there waving there arms in the air and playing pretty strange music. Danny Rampling had something to do with it, very strange, very not us, you know.

I felt more at home then. Saturday 11th December. Underground Bar And Nightclub in Bolton. Friday 17th December. The Charlestown in Manchester. Sunday 26th December. Truth Nightclub Bolton in Bolton. Telford Centre Hotel in Telford. North Shore Troubadour in Liverpool. Saturday 19th February. View events from the last 12 months ». In Stu took up DJing. More Stu Allan news ». Playlist samples powered by the awesome Soundcloud. Videos provided by YouTube. Not a Facebook user? Login Here. We use cookies to make sure we give you the best experience possible.

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