" I think I was just a bit of a clown and a chancer..."

Were you writing by this point?

No, at this stage I was just a chef and had no ambitions beyond that, really. In 1980 I moved to Switzerland to work in a hotel in Geneva, still interested in music, but after a couple of years I moved back to the UK and was disillusioned with doing it, 'cos it's just a really hard job to do [being a chef]. It's hard work and I just thought 'I don't want to do this for the rest of my life'. So I moved back into my mum's house and while I was deciding what I wanted to do some people I knew in Grimsby were forming a band and they asked me if I wanted to get involved. So I was in this band for a couple of years in Grimsby, signing on the dole, we got signed to a label in London, did a few little tours, we played some prestigious gigs, put out a couple of singles and then split up. And while that was happening I was getting more interested in writing and stuff like that. I did one issue of a fanzine in Grimsby and then went back to working as a chef for a few years [laughs] while I decided what the hell I was going to do. And then I moved down to London in '87 to do a degree in French and Economics as a mature student. Almost as soon as I started I saw an ad in a magazine called 'When Saturday Comes' asking for a slave. So I called them up and said 'I'll be your slave'. So I started coming into 'When Saturday Comes' and that turned into a job.

Your books and your website are all well written, but it sounds like you haven't had any formal training in journalism?

I don't even have an O Level in English, slightly embarrassingly. It's not something I'm proud of really but I didn't have a very good education, I went to a comprehensive on a council estate in Grimsby...and [pauses]....I mean, it's really easy to blame your background and the environment that you lived in, but to be honest I think I was just a bit of a clown and a chancer. I was bored by it and I never worked. I remember in the 5th year I really started to try and knuckle down and work, but it was too late because I'd had 5 years of fucking around. I would look at things and I would be like 'I'm just completely out of my depth here, I don't understand anything that's going on around me'. I don't think I can blame the education system, I think I was just a bit of a dick and I wasted whatever opportunities came my way, not that there were many. So really it was because of punk that I became educated. I was so obsessed with all these people who were my new heroes. I'd never voluntarily read a book 'til I was 17, I never saw it as something you did for pleasure. It was really amazing to discover literature- between the ages of 18 and 24 I kind of read every major modern classic going- Sartre, Orwell, Kafka- all of these guys, obsessively going through every great novel I could find. So I taught myself, because I was motivated, and when I was at school I wasn't.

And somehow you ended up being editor of Mixmag USA?

When I was working at 'When Saturday Comes' I had a call from a guy called Nick Gordon Brown who was the assistant editor of Mixmag and Dave Seaman, the DJ, was the editor of Mixmag. They were both big football fans and read 'When Saturday Comes'. So Nick called up to try and get us to do some football-y bits for Mixmag and we got talking, he found out I was going to clubs, buying 12 inch singles, had decks, that sort of stuff. So he was like 'Okay, do you want to write some Mixmag stuff?'. So I started writing freelance stuff for them, and when I left 'When Saturday Comes' in '93 I was offered a job by DMC, the company that owns Mixmag, running Mixmag Update, which was their trade weekly aimed at DJs and stuff. I edited that for a year and then they wanted to move out to America to run their US office. I ran their office, running the magazine, organising remixes and mixing championships. I met Frank 2 weeks after I moved there, started hanging out with him all the time. We were both big fans of the Sound Factory, we used to go there every week together. And when the Sound Factory closed in 1995 we decided to throw a party, and that was the start of Lowlife. We did a party in Frank's house. He lived in a big brownstone in Harlem. So we threw this massive party in Harlem and all kinds of people came up to it- Vanessa Daou, Danny Tenaglia....people don't realise that the dance community in New York is tiny. People think of all these big superstars, but they're all hanging out together, it's really little.

Is that still the case?

Yeah, it's even smaller now. At least there was a dance music community when I was there, I'm not even sure if there is one now.

Have you been back recently?

Yeah, a year ago.

And what was it like?

A bit sad really. It's a bit depressing. I know it'll change at some stage, but y'know, it was such an inspiration to me, I hate to see it in such a calcified state.

Is that because something else has taken over or because of the state of music generally?

I think it's because the era in which New York was most creative was an era when creative people could afford to live there. And now it's being overrun by the cast of 'Dawson's Creek'. You walk around the East Village and it just looks like loads of people from 'Dawson's Creek' have landed in pods...and even when I lived there it was changing but it was still very multicultural and loads of weirdos and eccentrics- the sort of people who you can tell didn't fit in anywhere else in America and had come to New York to find their identity. I don't feel there are as many of those people around as there were, they've been forced about by finance, really, and that's kind of a bit sad. I know that those things are going on on a smaller scale in Brooklyn and places like that but it isn't how it was in the '70s and '80s. It was in a decline even when I lived there but it was nowhere near as bad as it is now.