By Simon Morrison
He's been at the helm of the music scene for a quarter of a century. Inspired by Northern Soul, Simon Morrison puts the spotlight on Paul Taylor who has been instrumental in the evolution of dance music.

I don't want to educate, I want to entertain…

Not many DJs can claim to have been around at the origins of dance music and actually mean it.

Forget pre-house… Paul Taylor is pre-disco. And that's no PR spin - Paul Taylor will forget more about music before breakfast than most folk will know in their lifetime.

The mastermind of the massive Retro nights, Paul eats, sleeps and breaths music and after 25 years in clubland, he knows what makes a dancefloor tick.

If there's one man who knows how to whip a crowd into a disco frenzy, it's our Paul. Just ask any one of the 8000 people who head for the dancefloor of Retro at Tall Trees every month.

But take my hand as the screen goes wobbly and we go back, way back, to the northern town of Burnley in the 70s.

"I was into the Northern Soul scene before I started DJing," says Paul, his eyes glistening with the memory, "so that's how I got my love of music really - I was a punter at Northern Soul gigs and in 1974 I got offered a job as a DJ in a club that had just opened in Burnley called Angels."

Small time? Northern nonsense? Think again.

"We used to get people from London coming up for it", he continues. "The Twisted Wheel in Manchester was the only club I knew apart from the Wigan Casino that served the underground, so I knew there was a market for it.

We ended up getting a thousand people every Wednesday at one point, and it ran for three or four years until disco arrived in 1978."

The house music that tidal wave crossed the Atlantic in the mid 80s and crashed over the UK swept up Paul in its wake.

In 1989, along with business partner/promoter/top pal Steve Farkas he took ownership of Angels, and throughout the early nineties began booking DJs who have since rocketed into the clubland supernova.

Carl Cox was a monthly resident, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Tall Paul and Boy George all played Saturday nights for Paul.

In 1991 Paul and Steve decided that too much music was too quickly discarded and dedicated the final hour on Friday nights to tunes released in the previous three to four years. And lo… Retro was born, emerging from a music policy to become a party in its own right, with gigs all over the country and hundreds locked out every week.