DJ Daz Willott

There are DJs and then there are DJs. Some are remembered `cause they’re the first, some are remembered `cause they’re the best and others are remembered because well,  they’re associated with everything’s that good about dance music; good times, good music and the ability to bring people together. The DJ in the Spotlight has been at one time, the biggest and most popular DJ that Stoke-on-Trent has had. Known one time just simply as The Homeboy, we’re talking about Stoke's own Peter Pan of dance music: Daz Willott.

In the same way that most local DJs cut their teeth, Daz Willott's first clubbing experiences were at the under 18`s night at the Place in Hanley. Daz remembers many a night hanging around waiting to stand in for an absent DJ. He had one particular skill in his armoury that the others didn’t. He had a new outlook on DJing that relied heavily on turntable skills as opposed to just playing records.

It was around this time in the mid 80`s that Daz decided to open a record shop.

Based in Hope Street, Hanley, Wildstyle Records was not necessarily the first record store in Stoke to stock cutting edge dance music but it was certainly the first that aimed it at the youth market. This operated for a couple of years stocking mainly hip hop and electro. Daz remembers one of his young customers who used to come in and spend hours in the shop listening to almost every record in stock. He was a young up and coming DJ who very much looked up to Daz at the time. This was of course Pete Bromley.

The demise of the shop came about 1988 when Daz’s increasing absence from the shop due to his new found romance with the Hacienda and all night raves in London combined with the owners of the premises wanting him to purchase the building as opposed to continuing the lease. This saw the end of Wildstyle.

As dance music started to explode in the UK Daz’s career started to take off as he was very much one of the country’s first house DJs. A big fan of Graeme Park,  Daz always looked up to him as it was his dream to one day play the Hacienda. Daz promoted the occasional night in Stoke, one of these being the famous Frenzy, Stoke’s very first acid house night along with Colin Curtis. While still DJing out of the area and the odd party in Stoke, Daz’s reputation was continually growing. In 1989, Introspective began and Daz was one of the resident DJs.

After the night got off to a great start, Daz’s residency at Introspective ended for a few reasons; the main one being, he wanted to continue with his gigs outside of Stoke as opposed to concentrating purely on his own town. Just before the demise of Introspective in 1990, Daz got involved with Logical Promotions, who put on the Sindrome on Saturday night at Shelleys. Here, he was to be one of the MCs. It never quite got fully off the ground and Logical Promotions retreated back to Birmingham. Due to a couple of hundred loyal Stoke followers, Daz approached promoters Amnesia House in Coventry, who had put him on at some of their events, to take over the promoting of the Saturday night. On the opening night, with a DJ line up of Grooverider, Stu Allen, Doc Scott and Daz himself and a live PA from rave superstars of the moment, N-Joi, there was a queue of a thousand people, with TV cameras documenting the event and an air of excitement that was to see the Saturday night at Shelleys become the biggest hard core night in the Midlands and the North under Amnesia’s reign.

With the gap that Wildstyle had left for a dance music store in Stoke, local lad, Mark Warrender had the idea of opening a record shop calling it Kaos Records and installing Daz as the shop manager/buyer.

This was a great platform for Daz to sell his mix tapes and publicize his gigs as well as being able to put his hands on the latest promos and white labels. Daz offered one of the part time assistants in Kaos, twenty quid a night to drive him to and from his gigs as he couldn’t drive himself. Shortly after, Daz encouraged his driver, to pick up the mic while he was DJing which would eventually see this evolve into a regular occurrence to the extent that he would become his MC. With the partnership in place, the next eighteen months would see Daz Willott and MC Lethal make Entropy one of the most popular nights in the North of England. This spawned many bookings for Daz and would see them play some of the biggest raves when it was at its peak in `92 such as The Amnesia House raves at Donnington Park, Fantasia’s big events and many other one offs, spanning the length and breadth of the country. This would see Daz Willott become Stoke’s biggest DJ and one of the best known in the Midlands.

In 1993, as the final flames of the rave scene flickered, the bottom started to fall out of the rave market. This was the year that saw the birth of quite a few super clubs and the death of rave for the generation that had embraced it including the demise of both Entropy and Shelleys Laserdome. As Daz’s MC went off to pursue a career in recording, Daz started to find the majority of his gigs in the north of England based around a new residency at Maxims in Wigan playing Euro House which, at the time, was huge in the north of England. This was to last for about three years, then Daz had the opportunity to go to Australia.

On his return in 1999 he attempted to launch a new night at the Void in Hanley which didn’t work out. Feeling restricted in Stoke, Daz decided to move to Bolton in the hope of reviving the night at Maxims again which never came to fruition.

Dance music will always be around in various formats and will be enjoyed by many different people on many different levels but it is safe to say that the excitement, euphoria and fanaticism of the early `90`s that Daz Willott created in Stoke will never be seen again. When the history books of dance are written people won’t really care who was the best or who was the coolest, they’ll just be interested on who was biggest and more importantly on who was first so next time you hear some old rave tape from Shelleys or Entropy, spare a thought for the Homeboy, DJ Daz Willott.

Article taken from Move Magazine C/O oldskoolhomeland.ukf.net