Bill Brewster

In years to come, when we fly around on those hoverboards promised to us by Back To The Future and download iTunes directly into our brains, history students will take excursions to places like The Museum of Bill Brewster.

There they will sit cross-legged underneath Brewster's Paradise Garage poster as he regales them with stories of dance music's genesis, his brain preserved in a glass jar. Because if there's one person who is qualified to talk about dance music's history, it's him. Together with partner-in-crime Frank Broughton he co-authored the international bestseller "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life" and continues to provide a comprehensive resource for music lovers in the shape of his website DJ History.

Hailing from Grimsby and having spent many years living in London, Brewster can now be found dwelling in an innocuous suburb on the outskirts of the capital, his records and music paraphernalia interweaved with his kids' toys. We spent the afternoon with him and his hilariously neurotic dog Jarvis, learning about how his lack of formal education ultimately posed no barrier to his ambitions, and how his passion keeps him going after all these years.

Photos by Matt Piper.

DJ History looks like it takes a lot of work.

[Laughs] It does and it's just me and Frank [Broughton] doing most of it. We've been working on projects together since 1994, so that's 16 years- we've written 3 books together. When I lived in New York he used to contribute to the magazine that I edited- Mixmag USA- so that's how I originally met him. And then we've worked on various projects since then. We did a Time Out book together, we did a student guide to London together for Time Out, so we've worked on countless projects. And then between us we've been running Lowlife- it's our 15th anniversary in April.

What have you got lined up for that?

We're flying Danny Krivit and Tony Smith over from New York. Most people don't know about Tony Smith but he was a big DJ in New York in the '70s and he's never played in the UK before. So we're bringing them over and they're going to play for 8 hours together in one room. So we're really excited about that.

How would you describe your DJ History audience?

I suppose it's typically...[pauses and laughs]...bearded men, between the ages of 25 and 40. We do actually have some women viewing the site- there's quite a few women who sign up to the site, but they generally don't participate, they kind of lurk. But as I say it's still probably 85% men.

[Pointing at bearded male Work:Ethic photographer] You mean like him?

He looks very much like a typical DJ History viewer, yes! It's essentially people who are either just getting into dance music and want to know a bit more about its history I suppose, and then at the other end of it there's people who have been around for ages, maybe got into dance music through hip-hop or house and are looking for interesting music. What's good about DJ History is it's for people who've grown out of the obsession with just one genre of music and just want to hear anything that's interesting really. So it definitely does attract a certain kind of person. I'd say the people that participate are people who go out and look for music actively. We've got 12,000 members but traffic is 150,000 a month, so that means you've got around 10% of people have signed up and then the rest are essentially sucking the information out of people that have it [laughs]. But there's nothing wrong with that, I mean if I was 18 I would love site like DJ History, the amount of information in there is incredible.

You're from Grimsby originally- what were your formative musical experiences there?

Well I'm the oldest of three children, so I didn't have an older sibling to nick records off and be brainwashed by [laughs]. But in some senses it's made me as a person because it meant I've always had to go out and look for things myself- I didn't have anyone else to show me them. I started buying records when I was 10- I bought 'Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West' by Bennie Hill and then I started buying records with my pocket money and got a part time job. But we never had a proper record store in Grimsby so my musical vistas were relatively limited.

I discovered the Sex Pistols when I was at college training to be a chef and they came to play at Cleethorpes Winter Gardens and I was like, really into punk, and that's why I wanted to move to London. I got a job at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, which is now run by one of Gordon Ramsay's proteges, and I trained there for 3 years. So I moved down in 1977 to be a chef. And then my spare time was almost completely devoted to music and football- I'm a big Grimsby fan, for my sins. One week we'd do late shifts- 4 'til midnight, the next week we'd do 8 'til 4, and as soon as it got to 4 o'clock on a Friday I'd get the bus and I'd go and stand in Virgin Megastore, and loads of people would just sit on the floor and look at albums. And I'd spend two hours deciding what my meagre income was going to buy that week. Every other weekend I'd do a big tour of all the shops, looking for punk records.