A relatively non-musical upbringing, apart from brief flirtations with the piano and trombone at school, saw Lee discovering music for himself. With no direction from parents or older siblings, he had no pre-conceived ideas of music as a whole; he had to discover his own musical tastes and preferences. Remembering the first record he asked to be bought for him, Art Garfunkel's ‘Bright Eyes’ was a good start, considering the only medium he was able to listen to music was the T.V. and Radio.

The first port of call for Lee’s musical journey was the early eighties phenomenon of ‘Breakdancing’. Admittedly, he was more attracted initially to the ‘culture’ as opposed to the music i.e. Graffiti, the dancing, the fashion, the forming of a Crew and the competition that went with it. Being a less than average Breaker to say the least, Lee started playing to his strengths. Very much an organiser from an early age, he organised a place for them to practice (his garage!) and sorted out the music. Armed with a decent Ghettoblaster, and a few primitive Electro mix tapes that he’d copied off some local graffiti artists, Lee and co would venture out to meet other like-minded kids. Lee’s local youth club ‘Carmountside’ was a place where a few other local ‘breakers’ would hang out and practice and this is where Lee would see his first role model. A local ‘B-Boy’ ‘Dizzy Dee’ was not only the areas premier breakdancer, but he was also starting to branch out from just ‘dancing’, now adding rhymes and raps over the top of Electro tracks which Lee found mesmerising, something that he wouldn’t forget in a hurry…

Lee’s first experiences of clubs was much the same as most others of a similar age. Saturday afternoons at the Roxy Roller Rink (now the Void- Home of Golden) was a place where Lee would initially go to roller-skate. He discovered, by accident, that Breakdancers were meeting there in a smaller room as there were a couple of DJ’s there also playing the kind of music that Lee recognised from his ‘breakdancing’ tapes. All this culminated in a visit to the Place under 12’s night on a Sunday. Very different from youth clubs and Roller discos, it was a real eye-opener for Lee seeing a large gathering of people all there for the same reason he was; again something that was to have a more long-term effect.

Fast forward a few years - at school, most of the kids in Lee’s year were getting heavily into ‘bands’ such as Joy Division, The Smiths and Echo & the Bunnymen. Finding this type of music ‘a bit moody’ Lee sought to look elsewhere, alone, for music that was more his thing. A business studies` project where students had a small amount of money to run a short term business gave Lee and a friend the idea to put on a disco one evening at school which was a success in its own right. Apart from the profits being minimised by overstocking of ‘soft drinks’ this was yet another event that would have a longer lasting impact on Lee. Not wanting to pay a DJ, Lee put himself forward to DJ on the night also. This was something he enjoyed immensely and promised himself he would continue at a later date…

A record that he saw as a real turning point was when Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s “Jack Your Body” sailed in the National Charts and reached Number 1. House music had now established itself and had started to become accessible. In the summer holidays of 1988, Lee took a glass-collecting job at a venue in Hanley called Harper’s. The DJ there was a friend of a friend of Lee's and would let him warm up for an hour or so at the beginning of some of the nights. This is when Lee started to get a real taste for music. Not wanting to play the records that he would constantly hear later on in the night Lee would root through the resident DJ’s boxes and dig out the stuff that he preferred. From hereon in, Lee would spend his nights off in Harper’s, even to the extent of finishing his job there but still continuing to go there socially for even though he was underage, the doorstaff knew him and would allow him in. Phase 2 in Regimes amongst other clubs would follow, as Lee’s interest in clubs and dance music would grow naturally.

Lee's self compiled tapes would now start to be less chart orientated and more Hip Hop & house based, although still keeping a broad minded and healthy attitude to all types of music. In the winter of 1989, while at the city's sixth form college, Lee met a girl who had moved up to the Potteries from London, whose experience of raves, drugs and underground clubs was somewhat more than most provincial teenagers. She introduced him to a Friday night club in Longton called `Introspective` at the Leisure Bowl. Different from other clubs he had been to, the emphasis was on the music. Lee only recognised two or three tracks all night but very much enjoyed how the whole night was a soundtrack that didn't rely on individual records. From hereon in, Lee never looked back. The acquisition of a car and driving licence meant that going to clubs was a much easier prospect than before as Lee's thirst for dance music increased every weekend. At college there was a rota for different styles of music to be played in the common room and Lee put himself forward with a friend to play their collection of `rave` tapes and limited collection of 12” singles. Apart from a few like minded students, this went down like a lead balloon as the common room was jam packed with crusty Goths dressed in black!

Regular haunts included Introspective, Central Park, Schizophrenia and of course Shelley's Lazerdome. One Saturday night, in Shelleys, would see Lee and a friend hook up with a couple of other lads they recognised from college and together they would regularly hang out at one or other of the burgeoning club nights. Through this new circle of friends, Lee was introduced to local Stoke DJ, Daz Willott, who in turn introduced him to his employers at local dance music stockists Kaos Records where Lee began to help out on Saturdays and afternoons off. On one particular night, in need of a lift, Daz asked Lee to drive him to a new night, which was starting at the Leisurebowl, called Entropy. After a few weeks of this becoming a regular occurrence and fed up with twiddling his fingers in the DJ box, Lee was encouraged to pick up the mic and MC for Daz. This was received by both Daz and the promoters as a good idea which then escalated into them being a bit of a double act and Lee being dubbed with the name MC Lethal.

The next couple of years would see Lee and Daz establish Entropy as the Midlands and North West's premier rave night and their own profiles grew simultaneously as their Friday night sets at Entropy and Saturday night sets at Shelleys eventually grew to legendary status. Gradually they began to drift apart as Daz had various other new commitments and Lee began to MC for the guests at Entropy such as Carl Cox, Grooverider, DJ Rap, Stu Allen and Mickey Finn and work in a new record shop briefly that Entropy had opened. Both of them started to get work further a field at clubs such as Quest in Wolverhampton and New Dawn in Manchester amongst others and numerous one off rave events such as Amnesia’s raves at Donnington Park, Fantasia in Telford, Dance Nation in Warrington and Revenge in Wigan. Lee started to become a little disillusioned with the rave scene as the music was starting to move in a direction that Lee was unhappy with. This, combined with the fact that both Entropy and Shelleys had had their heyday, Lee started to look around for something a little more secure.

Quite a few of the scene's leading DJs had started to venture into the recording studio to make their own tracks and having some ideas and an interest in making a record, the thought of being the first rave MC to move into production was appealing. In the spring of 1992, with money saved from his gigs plus a small loan, Lee booked into the local recording studio, The Room (shortly to be re-named Baseroom), in Shelton. Unfortunately the session had to be cancelled but was re-scheduled for the following week. In the meantime, Lee was contacted by local band the Rhythm System and it was suggested that he did the pre-production with the engineer/producer of the outfit, Nic Britton. After several intensive hours in Nic's studio, Lee's first track 'Ravedigger' was born. It was finished off at The Room studio and with a finished DAT, Lee was off to London to get the record cut and pressed onto white labels. A very small, successful DJ mailout was done and Lee did his own distribution with a thousand white labels in the boot of his car. A couple of distribution companies caught wind of the track and bought the remainder of the records from Lee and sold them all within a week.

It was then that the telephone began to ring. Record deals were offered as the track was starting to blow up in the clubs and on radio. Labels such as Shut Up and Dance, Production House, Big Life, Perfecto and Network Records all called to sign the track. Mark Archer from Altern 8, who had become friendly with Lee through working together at Shelleys, suggested that Lee sign to Network as they were Midlands based and they'd done a great job for him. Lee, duly signed to Network and was advanced enough money from a couple of singles (Ravedigger & The Phantom) to buy some essential studio equipment as he was now very much considering record production as a serious option. Due to packaging and bar code errors it only managed to get to number 66 in the national charts but at eighteen years of age the exposure and income overrode it. 1993 was a transitional period as Lee started to move away from the music he had recorded as MC Lethal. He began to record house tracks under various pseudonyms with different session players, programmers and engineers and started up a couple of labels as output for his music. One of the promoters he had worked for in Manchester had obtained a slot, on a Sunday evening, on Signal Radio. This combined with their night being moved from Manchester to Newcastle under Lyme, would see New Dawn at the Gallery (now Metropolis). Lee dropped off some promos for the New Dawn DJs at Signal Radio and they asked him to go on air to advertise their club night and read some shout-outs. This would become a regular weekly instalment combined with an MCing/DJ slot at their club night. It was during this time that Lee moved away from the MC Lethal tag and started to DJ under the name of Lee Fredericks.

Baseroom in Shelton was in financial difficulties and because of Lee's contacts with Network Records negotiations began to take place for Network to use Baseroom as an in house studio which would eventually see them buy into it. Lee`s money through his own recordings was sporadic and needed remix work to provide a more stable income. His remix of 'This Time Baby' by Pandella really started to make things happen for him. Number 1 in numerous Club Charts saw it become a big record in clubland and spawned a steady stream of other remixes. This meant spending more and more time in the studio. Nic Britton had now moved his home based studio onto the middle floor of Baseroom under the name of MidiRoom. Standing in for Mike Bell, the head engineer at Baseroom for a session, Nic and Lee started working together again on a remix for Network and a long term partnership began.

Through a meeting of producer Grant Nelson via Lee's recordings and association with Network's ‘Dansa’ imprint he was introduced to Grant's label partner in ‘Nice ‘n’ Ripe’, George Power. Lee would start up the ‘Ruff Def’ label with him. An outlet for Lee's more underground U.S. styled tracks would see this label run for about 18 months with the inclusion of releases from some of Lee’s producer friends at the time, in particular Scott Latham who Lee saw as a real fresh and exciting producer to work with.

Lee who started to manage MidiRoom and a new label, Freebass Records, saw that Network were starting to have financial difficulties of their own and suggested that they move MidiRoom to new premises. At the end of 1995 MidiRoom relocated and Baseroom and Network Records folded. Lee and Nic concentrated on turning MidiRoom into the Midlands and North’s leading studio for trance and progressive house which was a speciality of Nic`s. Regular clients included Parks & Wilson, Tilt and Quivver. As the reputation of the studio grew, Sasha enthusiasts wanted to get into making tracks and desperate for that MidiRoom seal of quality, the opportunity was given and outfits such as Breeder and Tarrentella made their very first records at Midiroom. Various other big names to come to the studio included artists such as Paul Van Dyk and Grace. Lee and Nic`s own productions would be in many different styles under as many guises ranging from Killahurtz, Fred & Ginger, Outdare, The Son and Dirk Diggler to name a few. Remixing and producing for labels as diverse as Ministry of Sound, Fantazia (F1) Hooj Choons, Perfecto, BMG, Estereo, Loaded and Duty Free and their own in house label, Freebass Records, have seen Lee and Nic put out over a hundred records and remixes between them.

Part 2 of MC Lethal Profile......