PETE TONG

Knowing how to spin a few discs – and plates – aside, what does this industry kingpin know of production? Turns out, quite a lot

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For almost 40 years, Pete Tong has been a figure stood right at the forefront of the British dance music industry. But, as he points out to us when we ask about his first musical years, things could have turned out very differently. As a teenager, Tong was listening to rock bands like Deep Purple, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

Fearing for their best pots and pans, his parents bought him a drum kit and he would play along to classic headbanging tunes like Stairway to Heaven, Won’t Get Fooled Again and Smoke on the Water.

“I fancied myself as the new John Bonham or Keith Moon,” remembers Tong. “Whacking the hell out of the drum kit. Me and my mates were big fans of a band called the Heavy Metal Kids. We went to see them live a few times and noticed that they always wore these long black trench coats. So, we all bought trench coats.

“You’re right,” he adds, laughing. “Life could have been very different!”

Around the same time, Tong noticed the DJ at a local disco near his home on the Kent/London border. Watching the crowd dance to James Brown and The O’Jays, he quickly realised he could make a much better noise by playing other people’s records. Overnight, he became his school’s resident DJ.

Via those early school gigs, the south east-based sound system, Soul Mafia, an A&R job at London Records, Capital Radio and Radio 1, Tong eventually earned his place at dance music’s top table. While working at London Records, he introduced British record buyers to something called ‘house’ music with the 1987 album, The House Sound of Chicago, Vol. 1. Its impressive track listing included now-legendary tunes like Jack Your Body by Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, Love Can’t Turn Around by Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk, Jesse Saunders and Darryl Pandy, and