Exclusive Interview with Greg Wilson about "John Hamilton's Disco Pages"

In an exclusive interview, Greg Wilson explains the hows, the whys and the importance of the new reference book "John Hamilton's Disco Pages" he worked on with Mike Atkinson and Norman Cook.

https://superweirdsubstance.com/product/james-hamiltons-disco-pages/

1) Dear Greg, thank you so much for joining us here on the blog! I spent quite some time flipping through the pages of your book, and I found it is a very practical and directly useful book! Can you tell us how, and why, with the editor's help, you expanded Jame's original work in this first volume?

  Thanks for having me on the blog Artur. I’d been exchanging emails with Mike Atkinson, the book’s editor, for a number of years. He knew that I felt that James had been lost to history, and he obviously shared the same sentiment (Mike got to know James when he married his step-mother, Sally, just a few years before his death). After I’d successfully published my own book, Discotheque Archives, in which James was one of the featured DJs, we discussed the possibility of a book compiling James’ columns. The initial plan was to cover 1975 to 1989, but it became clear that a lot of detail would be lost if Mike had to fit everything into the one book, so the decision was made to split it into two volumes, Disco Pages covering 1975-1982, with Dance Pages to follow, taking it through from 1983-1989.

It works really well this way, Disco Pages concluding as the dance music scene was going through major changes, when drum machines, sequencers and samplers replaced the live musicians of the disco and jazz-funk eras, with New York electro-funk (or electrophonic phunk, as James referred to it) the catalyst for hip-hop, house and techno, which would emerge during the following years, and provide the main thrust of Dance Pages. Disco Pages also documents the rise of gay disco, leading to hi-NRG, and the influence of the futurist/new romantic movement and its music.

2) All in all, if I'm being correct, the book took 7 years to complete (a few of the editorial steps are presented in the book's introduction). Can you tell us, working hand in hand with Mike and Norman, which part of the project was the hardest?

I think that may have been the time its taken for Mike to complete transcribing all the columns. Once we made the decision to publish the book, it came together relatively quickly, there were no bumps as such along the way. 

Norman had bought a copy of Discotheque Archives, which led to an interview I did with him in 2023 at the Big Beach Café in Hove, which he owns. Norman was particularly happy to see James included, having followed the column in his younger years, so when we were thinking of the introductory section I asked him if he’d write a few words.

Given all the groundwork Mike had already put in, it all came together pretty painlessly. Slim Smith, who also designed Discotheque Archives, was invaluable to the process, for, apart from the content, the aesthetic of the book was really important, needing to reflect its encyclopedic nature – there was no thought of it being anything but hardback, given these considerations.

3)   As a renowned and an experienced DJ you were also on the front line when Disco Music exploded and when it faded due to the events we all know. Still, even though we can feel your professional, and "historical" approach, we can't put aside the passion for music that runs through your veins and your soul. Enhanced by James own passion, which one can feel oh so very much in these 400+ pages) this book shines bright as being an absolutely thriving piece of musical literature! Was it part of the project to put out a "reference" book about James' Legacy or do you feel it should be first seen, and thus experienced, as a "professionally fan made book" set out to share a piece of Music's Story?

I’m interested in these events you mention that we all know about, for if this refers to Comiskey Park and the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement, you might be interested to know that there was no mention of this in James’ columns – it wasn’t something that most people here learned about until well after the event, thanks to books like ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ and ‘Love Saves The Day’. US lineage has been so well documented in the past thirty years, but there are still missing chunks in the UK story, which people often fill in via stuff they know about the US, but in reality, they were two separate paths (which began to converge in the late-‘70s). I think many DJs will be surprised by the differences in what was being played in the US and the UK during this period – there was obviously a sizeable crossover, but, despite it being largely black American music everyone was drawing from, the British DJs approached it with a different personality, and sometimes a different groove to their US counterparts.

  There was a disco backlash of sorts in the UK, but no record bonfires or suchlike - it was more to do with DJs who’d previously supported the music feeling it had become commercialised following the juggernaut success of ‘Saturday Night Fever’, leading them to move towards jazz-funk, which was really beginning to establish itself and would dominate the underground for the coming years.

Back to the question, it was always approached as a reference book, for that’s what it essentially is – our job was to facilitate that as best we could. I’m almost as passionate about books as I am about music, and I know what I want out of a reference book, which is the ability to pull it off the shelf and quickly access the information I’m looking for. To aid this process we put together a multi-source index for easy navigation. As soon as I received a proof copy, some months ago, I began to use as a reference for other stuff I’m writing, so I’m more than happy with how it all works.

4) With the (almost) insane amount of music being released today, one may feel lost, not knowing what listen to. My feeling is that James's legacy should be shared and valorised as it might encourage musical journalists to share useful thoughts on certain musical genres, that are, again it's my subjective point of view, underrepresented, like the Balearic musical scene for which it's hard to find a cohesive presentation of what's new. How do you feel about the way music is introduced to djs and to the public today? Do you feel it's optimal?

Back in the days of James’ column, he provided a central hub for the DJ/club community throughout the country, which afforded him a lot of power. There’s no equivalent now, all the information dispersed, rather than available in one place – not that it could be, for the sheer amount of music recorded nowadays dwarfs what happened in the past, when to make a record you had to go through the expensive process of booking a recording studio and hiring equipment/musicians. Nowadays the studio is in the computer, so it’s easy for people to make music with little outlay, but, given the overload of tracks/edits/mixes, this is part of the devaluation of music – as Syndrome once said, "when everyone is super, no one will be". 

Once there was a whole process before you could even think about getting your music to other people. You had to find a way to record demos, and then look to place them with a record company, hoping they’d give you a budget to get back into the studio and record them properly. You had to sign contracts and hire a lawyer. There were a lot of hoops to jump through before you finally reached the holy grail – an actual record on sale. The payback, of course, would be all the avenues a record company could open up to you – press, radio, tv, video, tour support. You only had a foot on the ladder, there was still nothing guaranteed, but your music was finally available and you could call yourself a recording artist. This filtering was done via the A&R departments, where people were hired on their ability to spot and help develop future hitmakers – there was constant risk, but the rewards were significant when it all came off.

It's changed with the digital age, when it became possible for someone to record and mix their tracks within their own computer and upload them to various online platforms, whilst sharing/selling digitally. A much more democratic system that, on the surface, bypasses the need for a record company, but given the sheer deluge of tracks appearing, everybody’s feeding off scraps to one degree or another – hence the current disgruntlement with the miserly royalty rates for streaming.

Nowadays, to a large degree, artists need to be their own A&R, developing themselves before the record company gets involved. The risk aspect has been seriously negated, as the record companies can see the amount of social media followers their prospective signings have, knowing whether there’s already a solid fanbase for them to market towards – the development already in place. The harsh reality is that your social media following is an indicator of your worth, be it to record companies, or venues and promoters in the DJ realm. It’s very difficult for DJs who are starting out in this climate – the role more a glorified hobby than a profession for many, because the gigs are rare and the fees small to non-existent. Some DJs have benefitted hugely from their social media presence, and excel in their use of the medium to attract people to their gigs, whereas others feel awkward creating content to help put themselves in the marketplace.

Outside of the mainstream, its more about micro-scenes, not necessarily connecting to each other as yet. When something like Northern soul or jazz-funk started off, there was no ready-made scene, as such, just a small amount of outlier DJs and clubs, which eventually got bigger as further connections were made with the likeminded, eventually constituting ‘a scene’, and finally garnering mainstream attention. That was the natural flow of things back then. You can’t return to the past, but things do go around in cycles, and sometimes you need to adopt an old ethos to a new time.

Mike Atkinson on the left, Greg and Norman Cook on the right.

5) When listening to the podcast you did with Mike, we can understand how James, through the columns he wrote, was able to reach out to his fellow DJ friends, creating a community and communicate in an effective and useful way about the scene, their activity (including his own of course) and, at the same time, be historically right in the spot. Back then, beat mixing was a new trend and, dare I say, James' "breadcrumbs". With the evolution of technology and mentalities, some readers might think "well, it's nice and all but it's a thing of the past". As a professional DJ, why do you think James Hamilton Disco Pages are still relevant in 2024?

The tagline for Discotheque Archives was ‘to know the future, first you must know the past’. Patterns emerge within the course of history, be it world affairs or music culture, and although the methods and conditions may change, history does have a habit of repeating itself. Besides, knowing your roots is something I’m sure most DJs would, at least, be intrigued about.

Then, of course, there’s the trainspotter aspect. Many DJs playing nowadays draw from the mid-‘70s-early-‘80s, so this provides a mine of information given the huge amount of reviews and all the chart detail. The fact that this era of music is still alive in clubs and festivals, be it via the originals or re-edits/reworks/samples, is testament to its impact and enduring influence, so I’d figure that anyone playing stuff from this timescale would be inclined to investigate, to see what other gems might be uncovered.

Throughout the past 20 years and more, ‘disco’ has become a key part of the contemporary dance music soundscape, played by DJs throughout the world. Walk through many festivals these days and it won’t take long to hear some of the tunes that were first unveiled here in James’ columns. So it’s not as though we’re asking people to engage in some remote history, but a history that is still, all these decades on, continuing to write itself.