The Man from Mo'Wax

The thing that I've learnt most, and I would...

I would always recommend to anybody starting out in this business

is total and utter control.

And to be able to retain as much control as you humanly can

is the... the... the greatest power that you have.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Good Evening citizens of Earth,

or any other planet in the Solar System..

Tonight on your telescreen, we will see and hear, first-hand,

one of man's most momentous space adventures...

ma boy will go to the moon..

I got everything you could ever dream of.

Probably made a million by the time I was 21.

You don't ever think it's gonna end.

I'd love to sell a hundred million records.

I was always a pushy motherfucker.

"Return Of The Original Art Form" by Major Force

"The Planets, Op. 32, Venus, The Bringer Of Peace" by Gustav Holst

I grew up in Oxford, and I've always been surrounded by music.

My grandfather was a singer on Radio Two.

My father played with The Dubliners,

which are a very influential Irish folk band.

My grandmother was the first woman to be in the Irish Philharmonic.

She taught me to play the Cello...

and then I broke her heart by getting into Kung Fu.

The friends that he went to primary school with

didn't seem to carry on as the friends that he had in secondary school.

He was too...

He was too sort of unusual.

He was very unusual.

I think that happens.

They got in an educational psychologist to do tests on him.

On the imaginative artistic score, he was actually off the chart

because he was so high.

Reasoning and logic, he wasn't doing very well on that.

I mean REALLY wasn't doing very well on that,

but this complete imbalance.

His dad went off.

James probably saw it as very abrupt.

They... They got divorced and it was horrific.

It was like a war.

He was absolutely distraught.

I remember seeing this mad other universe.

"Check Yo Self" remix by The Message

The first record I bought was The M essage.

Seeing hip hop,

it was like seeing something alien, you know.

It was science fiction.

I was bunking off school to go and hang out,

to play tapes with my friends.

It was trying to find a family identity because your family had broken.

Grandmaster Flash, Why do they call you Flash?

What it is, is the way that I mix, I mix a little faster than the average DJ.

Hip hop is poetry to the beat of music.

We used to isolate the particular section, for example, the drummer's solo.

That's been the template, turntable science,

what I came up with in the early seventies.

Said yeah.

Alright! Yeah!

The whole sound system thing was what I was really into.

The Wild Bunch...

They were my idols.

3D the graffiti artist, the collaborations, the design.

They were just the coolest motherfuckers.

The Wild Bunch, which then became Massive Attack.

Massive Attack,

it was so influential for me they way that they were as a band.

I wanted to be like that.

Telling your Mum that you wanted to be a DJ...

Was, "DJ? No".

He asked me if he could have all of his... his pocket money for a year.

Don't ask me why I said OK, but he went to buy these turn tables,

then he started having gigs in pubs.

He was 14.

How did he get to work in pubs at that age? I mean...

At 15, 16, basically just spent most of the time

skiving off school to just go into London to get records, you know.

All your life was about was buying tunes, that was it.

He'd had enough.

He left and finished, and said to me "I'm going to London".

I attempted to study some business studies

but just left college to work in a record store.

I started getting a reputation for selling certain DJs' records.

I'm hearing about this amazing record shop,

and then I'm hearing, like, there's a guy in there called James.

He's into hip hop, jazz...

He's collecting records.

He's into obscure, kind of, Japanese hip hop.

So I'm gonna go to this place and I'm gonna see who this dude is.

As I walk in, there's this kid there with the glasses on,

and I'm just like, yo. This is James Lavelle, yeah?

I was just like, this is the kid? Of course it's him!

You know, and so, you know, we bonded over music,

and we just kind of developed this relationship from buying records.

There was a scene going on and I gotta infiltrate that,

trying to get in there somehow, trying to make your own mark.

- Give me a word. - A word.

Straight No Chaser was a magazine of world jazz and jive,

and what was emerging out of the underground.

It provided a hub around which a global community evolved.

James came in and had a chat,

and he was this 17-year-old kid who was hip hop "style-y."

He said, "You need me".

And Swifty, who was sat working next to me,

turned round after he'd gone and said "Get him in".

And so James came in to say you need me

because you need a column with new music,

and you could tell he wasn't, you know... He... He wasn't a fly-by.

We just chucked him in at the deep end basically,

and gave him a column, which was Mo' W ax.

The column was really good for him, actually

because, basically, it was a vehicle

which was gonna go out to a lot of different DJs around the world.

"Talkin' Loud" by Incognito

I was getting a little bit of a name for myself

as a sort of, you know, musical, kind of, archaeologist,

pulling out the tunes for that new generation.

I DJ at a place called Dingwalls,

doing a club, Talkin' Loud,

which included everybody who was into house music

and had been raving the night before or who was just into jazz tunes.

The greatest thing about that club, it really brought everybody together.

There was people like James Lavelle,

coming through with a new spirit.

I really wanted to kind of hook up with him

and to start something fresh and new,

and that's really how the club, That's How It Is, appeared.

James sharing the turntables with Gilles,

that was quite a big step for him.

It was a barometer of how things would change,

finding what were the links between different genres of music.

You know, joining the dots, connecting things.

You know, everyone used to go. It was a real mad mix of people.

That was a test for him, and he came through it really well,

and it was an amazing time.

You know, all these records were getting their first rinse in that club,

anywhere in the world.

I spent a lot of time travelling up and down the motorway

and playing the UK and playing other countries, DJing abroad.

He was just relentless.

In those days, only very few people had these vast record collections,

comprehensive discographies of labels, where it's like all of it.

He was obviously a very good hustler,

being the first person to hear whatever people are doing,

making contacts, building a community with all his heroes.

I suddenly just started realising there was this crew of people

that wanted to change things, you know.

Maybe the best thing to do was to try and set up my own label.

DJs had their labels.

If you were a cool DJ, you had your own record label.

He'd heard this track by Repercussions.

He went over to New York on a mission:

to get a license for it.

I borrowed a thousand pounds.

I went to New York.

I gave a thousand pounds to the manager.

I got the DATs.

Came back with the license and the master tapes.

He'd asked me to design the logo.

I got a deal with a distributor

and pressed the record.

My name's James Lavelle,

and I run a record label in the UK called Mo'Wax recordings.

Um, and that's kind of what I do,

is my "styl-o".

That is my shit, Mo'Wax, baby.

At that time,

the music industry and DJ culture was locked down by the old guards.

It was just like a closed door, you know.

I always really admired his kind of, "I'm gonna get this done

regardless of how many obstacles are in my way",

and he's given me the opportunity to make records.

I literally had a conversation, got signed to Mo'Wax,

made a record, it came out.

I never made demos.

The Psychonauts, we were just DJ kids.

We had got signed to Mo'Wax.

You know, I was this kid that grew up being into Star W ars,

then started scratching records and collecting hip hop.

You know, I was a dreamer, where I came from,

looking at James, like... James was God, you know.

James turned everything into gold.

You know, going through your teenage years is hard enough.

Trying to run a business? Must have been really hard for him.

I mean, you've got to always remind yourself he was a teenager.

It was very hypothetical. It was a bit of a mad dream.

It wasn't even like work. It was just like non-stop mucking about.

I don't even know what work we did.

I can't even remember.

James did make it up as he went along because he was really young.

You know, none of us had done it before.

If anything went wrong, it was always down to you being young.