More About Me

As a Teenager,” The Druid says. I was angry as I had quit a hard upbringing, one minute I was sitting with family and the next moment I’m being beaten up and put out on to the street to fend for myself. I was 14 years old and I had grown up with violence in my life which I never really dealt with properly. I thought I had. That’s something that’s been coming up over the last few years, which I started to realise. Maybe I wasn’t angry, I was cynical, and felt a bit betrayed in life,”  “You know, when you lose touch with reality and your whole world just crumbles that, it can make you feel a bit...”pausing, looking away. “It does something to you.”

It was a dark time in my life. Growing up in Portsmouth, I wound up with the wrong crowd and I drifted from town to town and city to city not knowing where I belonged or where I was really heading and knowing I was drifting from city to city I ended up in London when I was just 15 years of age. I stayed with what I thought was a friend, but I soon got kicked out after a couple of weeks.

I ended up living on the streets, in doorways with nothing but cardboard to shield me from the cold & wet conditions and yes, I ended up in cardboard city - where the IMAX cinema is by Waterloo station. I spent around 18 months homeless in London.'

The only thing I had to keep me going was the music that I knew I had in me and I knew musically where I wanted to be. “There was quite a lot of shit going on,” pardon the pun. “but I was out a lot on the streets and there was so much going on around me and there wasn't a lot I could do about it.

My Father being a hard and violent bastard and whom had a cold life himself turned on me when I was 14 years of age. It started with the looks, then the odd slap and then the violence really started. I ended up being beaten which went on for most of my young life. My mother couldn't do anything to stop it. So here I was stuck in London, often cold, dirty and very hungry. I knew deep down I had to survive and the only way to do that was to beg. Being on the street wore me down. I slept in car parks, where boy racers threw rubbish at me. You wake up freezing, with no public toilets open. I lost weight; I lost all communication with my friends. I had a nervous breakdown and the only thing that kept me going was the music that burnt like a shining light in my heart.

Eventually I somehow, I got myself back to Portsmouth by train, though I had to keep jumping on and off at different stations to evade the guard as I didn't have any money to pay the extortionate fare. I eventually got back, and I headed for Southsea, to the pier at south parade where I knew I thought I could at least get my head down and sleep for a few days or until I could think of what to do next.

I found my way over to Gosport after a few days and it went through my head that I would go home?? I couldn't go back and I certainly couldn't go through the violence all over again after being kicked out of the family home at such a young age, so I returned back to Portsmouth intimidated by the thought of having to face a parent who I felt should be protecting me!!.

Eventually a very special lady came into my life, she picked me up, spent time getting me the real help that I needed, and she got me housed, even though she knew I was messed up and needed counselling. I want to say that without her? I would probably have never got off the streets. YB, saved my life and I want to thank her for being there when the world had shut me out.

Now I knew that in my solace, the music that I kept within me made me yearn harder for the music and those artists that had Influenced me from watching the likes of Farley Jack Master Funk, Darryl Pandy and Steve Silk Hurley gave me the passion to learn the process of Dj'ing.  I would try to scratch and mix with hip-hop records on a small turntable that my parents had given me “You know, the whole routine,” I was enthralled. “It’s never been any question since then. I told my mum, ‘I’m going to be a DJ’.”

While today that’s a normal teenage aspiration, in the late ’80s things were different. But my mother saw music as a positive influence in my life and used a portion of the small inheritance she received to buy me turntables. I think this saved me! “Some of my friends from back then have passed away, which for me was way too early, but it hit home how music had thrown me a lifeline. “It definitely saved me but it didn't stop me from doing a lot of stupid shit, which stopped me finding my place in life until I was 17 or 18. I was pretty crap in school up, but then I just didn’t care so much. Also, because I got obsessed with music.”

I was able to channel the anger of my youth into a strong and serious identity built around the genre I remain deeply loyal to today. I was politically drawn to Moving Shadow Records. After discovering Jeff Mills after listening to Radio 1 Love Parade in 1993, I understood I could combine his style and skills with bass-line house — playing hard and fast and cutting the mixes — and his genre purism further hardened. Mills’ style also brought out the bombast in my spirit, which remains a key component of his music. “I was always a Jeff guy,”. “Some people were more down tone, but I always liked it bigger.”