DJ Tony De Vit - Interview

In two years, Tony De Vit has come out of the gay underground to become the biggest DJ in Britain. And he’s done it with a sound that’s harder and faster then anyone else’s.

"A few months ago". Starts Tony De Vit. "I was playing at the Hippo club in Cardiff when this couple in their early twenties came up to the DJ box for a chat. They were both really embarrassed. The girl seemed particularly nervous, but eventually her boyfriend explained that their parents didn’t like them seeing each other, so the only time they could have sex was when they drove into the woods in his Beetle. It was fucking fantastic, he said. I nodded in approval, but wondered what on earth it had to do with me. She said she couldn’t reach orgasm until be stopped in mid-shag and put a Tony De Vit mix tape on. I couldn’t fucking believe it".

Few DJs do much more than play predictable records in a mechanical fashion. Few have any real fan base, or the musical ability to generate fresh compositions. Even fewer are articulate enough to utter error-free sentences on the radio. Most, surrounded by cheap chemicals, untaxed earnings and self-importance seem to think the world owes them a living. Most display pitifully one-dimensional personalities, and resort to slothful cliché when interviewed. Many, to be frank, are utter wankers.

Not Tony De Vit. He may not quite have the power to make everybody come in the back seat of a Volkswagen, but he’ll damn well try. This is the man, pushing forty now, who’s been playing three clubs a week for something like 20 years. The bloke who took the Belgian hoover sound and made it his own at Trade. And then Toned it down again and transported it across to an astounded straight mainstream, where his hard, chunky NRG house shattered the glass cheeseboard of British clubland. This is also the man who has found time along the way to run his own record label, produce a slew of NRG classics and, most recently, win a spot on London’s Kiss FM.

But, perhaps most importantly of all, this is the man who has always, always, taken time to be personable to his fans. De Vit (the name rhymes with pee, not git, by the way) respects them, and they worship him in return. This man is loved. Whether at his gay, underground Trade residency or the mainstream of Midland’s straight nighteries like Derby’s Progress or Coalville’s Passion, Tony is the people’s DJ by popular appointment. He’s their Queen of Hearts.

"Queen of Hearts, you can’t bloody call me that!"  laughs Tone, twirling coffee-spoons in his recording suite at Birmingham’s Custard Factory. "But I do take the point. The ‘Queen’ bit comes from 20 years work in gay clubs, the sort of places which, when I started out, would let me play Funkadelic rather than Rod Stewart. And the ‘Hearts’ bit, well let’s just say I actually really like working with the public. Even though I’m quite shy, I’ve always been able to take the time to talk to people, when I’m playing my set or afterwards. You know, DJs have been given this pop-star status, but I like to think I’ve kept my feet on the ground. I’m accessible, and people can always come up to me to talk. In that way I’m exactly the same as anyone else in the club. I’m a DJ of the people, from the people and for the people. Or does that sound too much like a super-hero?!".

Perhaps, but then the ability to swing out the window on a rope of twisted spider web can be useful at times, particularly for the people’s elected Technics representative. You see, people can get just a smidgen too close at times. Like the bloke in Birmingham, for example, who re-wallpapered his bedroom with every single published photograph of De Vit, every Jump Wax and TDV 12-inch sleeve and every De Vit record review that’s ever been printed. Rumour has it there’s an alter above his pillow with a De Vit doll on a cross.

Then there was the time when Tony went back to another fan’s house in mid-Wales for a coffee at 3am. After making him sign no less than 10 copies of his TDV debit 12-inch, "Burning Up", Tony’s guest then pointed to the recently painted bedroom wall and handed him a fat, black marker. After signing his name in foot-high letters, Tony sat back in embarrassment as the bloke leaned out of his bedroom window into the high street and screamed "Wake up your boring fuckers! I’ve got Tony De Vit in here!"

Then there’s a stream of women who’ve offered to have his babies. The fact he’s gay makes no difference. He’s lost count of the number of times girls have offered to "shag him straight again", even in front of their boyfriends. And his.

"Er, yeah, it’s all true", mumbles Tony in embarrassment. "Especially the girls bit. They just won’t leave me alone, especially if you’re nice to them. I tell them I’m gay, but that just seems to make it more of a challenge for them. I reckon it’s because they’d like an older man. I mean, it can’t be my looks, can it?"

But spend an evening with De Vit, and you’ll see that the appeal of age plays only a supporting role in the De Vit phenomenon. He is the Michael Barrymore of techno, the Dale Winton of banging house. He can disarm the most hardened cynic with the wink of a perma-tanned eyelid. He’s a smoothie, a people mover, a measured talker, and he’s got the innate ability to be disgustingly pleasant all the time. But there’s even more: because coupled to his pleasant demeanour is the De Vit secret weapon. Gratt. He has always been so hard-working that other DJs nicknamed him Tory Tony.

"I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of necessarily", says the teetotal, though perhaps not-quite puritanical, De Vit. "The work ethic is important to me. I’ve been working hard since I left school at 16 and I find that quite natural. Anyway, I’m old enough to remember the last Labour government in Downing Street, and what that was like. Ugh! Yes, I’ve always worked full-time and had weekend jobs. In the early days of DJing I collected glasses after playing a set for my 50 quid.

"For six years people have been telling me that I was going to be able to make a living as a full-time professional DJ, but I didn’t believe them until very recently. My Mum told me I would never make a living playing records, and, to be honest, I tended to agree with her. I’m Mr Safe, really. I’m a DJ who broke through onto the scene aged 35, and I only stopped working as a stock control manager in a factory making thermal insulation tiles for the Space Shuttle, three and a half years ago. I’d worked there for 17 years."

Now, Mr Safe charges up to a grand for a two hour set, depending on the size of the club and its ability to pay. Both are assessed by his agents before any invoice is raised. Most of the proceeds are pumped back into TDV Enterprises, which now employs four staff, although Tony has recently splashed out on a top-of-the range Volvo. It is, admits the self confessed - jeans and T-shirt man - who still lives in Handsworth Wood, Birmingham, his only luxury. And, not surprisingly, reliability is key in a motor for Mr Safe. Gone are the days when he had to piss in the water tank of a Renault estate with Ian M to get to Trade on time. Gone, too, are the five gigs in a night and another give in midweek schedules. A bout of Ibizan flu which crippled him from last summer to Christmas has put paid to that, and following Doctor’s orders, he’s cutting right back on DJ dates.

Less physically taxing interest than relentless gigging, though, are beginning to make their mark on the TDV balance sheet. Radio work is one which has seized the De Vit imagination most recently, because in true People’s DJ form, it enables him to communicate to hundreds of thousands of NRG acolytes rather than just a few hundred at a time. Though Tony is the kind of DJ who might have spun a little hospital radio out of good will in the past, it’s never something he’s paid much attention to. For years he didn’t even listen to UK radio, much preferring instead tapes of the New York - segue style - airwaves of Shep Pettibone and Tony Humphries on WBLS and the original Kiss FM: pioneering radio from the early Eighties where DJs actually mixed three or four dance tracks together, then explained briefly afterwards what they were. Give or take a few obligatory name-checks, this is the style he still prefers today.

"The radio experience has come out of nowhere to be one of the most important things I do no," he explains.  "I always hated radio in this country for being full of DJs who just couldn’t wait to talk shit all over records and if you cast your mind back just five years to the Radio One of Bruno Brookes and Gary Davies, you’ll see what I mean. One night I was playing down at Trade, though, and Simon Sadler from Kiss FM, a bit of a regular, came up to me to ask if I’d like to do the ‘Givin’ It Up’ slot, where they try new DJs out. There was a great response, so for 18 months I was given the midweek graveyard shift from one to 4am mid-week. I drove back to Birmingham after every show absolutely knackered, but I loved it. My big chance eventually came when (Carl) Cov and (Judge) Jules left for Radio One, and I was given the 11pm to 1m Saturday night slot."

True to form, Tony displays all of his customary niceness on air. Though understandably hesitant at first, he had developed into one of the warmest DJs at the station, and sacks of letters prove the point in their own, physical way. So successful has he been at this that he has fast developed a new urban fan base outside of his traditional Midlands and gay underground strongholds, one which will only serve him well should the next stage of his ambition be realised.

"My ultimate ambition, probably like most people on Kiss, is to one day make it to Radio One," he grins. "Imagine playing music to all those people across the country in one go. Fantastic." Tong and Jules, consider yourselves warned.

Things aren’t exactly sitting still on the production side of TDB enterprises, either. It’s now three and a half years since a producer called Simon Parkes dropped De Vit a cassette off at Trade. They both went back to his flat for a session and knocked out tracks like "Feel My Love", and, eventually, "Burning Up." When Tony played an acetate down at Trade it was signed on the spot by PWL. It charted at 25 and gave Mr Safe the extra confidence to embark on his blooming career outside the world of ceramic hobs.

Tony’s first label, Jump Wax, was successful in terms of releases issued and product shifted, but not, it appears, on a personal level. He has now split from his original manager and formed a new imprint, TDV, based in Birmingham. And while TDV is performing well, there’s another flavour to the De Vit/Parkes production output: the pop remix.

"Just like with DJing, there are two distinct sides to my production work," explains Tony. "There’s the chunky, hard stuff and there’s the remix work. The pop remix stuff is brilliant because it means we get to work with really big names like Louise, E17, Michelle Gayle and, hopefully, one day Boy

George, Erasure and The Pet Shop Boys. Those are my idols!"

If there’s one idol out among the crowds at Derby’s Progress and Coalville’s Passion tonight, it’s the man on the decks. To prove this hypothesis, we randomly select a slew of clubbers for a vox pop, and out of 20 people asked, not one failed to point out that the one-time Kidderminster Kid, the king of three flashing lights and the Blondie remix, Mr Tony De Vit, was playing. And what did people think of him? The worst answer we got back was "fucking blinding!"

It’s easy to see why he has this effect. The crowd is half his age and open to new sounds. They’re here to dance and wave their glitter-sprinkled arses, not to pose. They don’t necessarily recognise the latest Tripoli Trax cut or Prolekult release. Half of them wouldn’t know a gay club if someone pulled them into a backroom on a dog-chain. That’s not the point. The point is, the Tony De Vit sound is here tonight, and these people are lapping it up.

As the night sweats to a toilet-flooded close at Passion and De Vit drops his last mix to a huge collective gurning whoop, we find him, true to form, leaning over the box making conversation to a wild-eyed youth in a fake Armani T-shirt and too much CK One. What, if anything, could give him more pleasure than this?

"Easy," Tony fires back. "Playing cool music to the people is what I do for a living, but for fun, I’d love to get spaced out in a completely different way. Let’s just say if Jean-Luc Picard came down from the Enterprise and asked me to be his first mate, I’m afraid I’d have to say yes, I’m a huge fan. I’ve got the CD Rom, a book on Klingon, everything!."

In the name of the music lovers of Planet Earth, don’t beam him up, Scotty!

Tony De Vit - the years in a life

1972: Teenage Tony get five O’levels, including music and woodwork. His parents are very proud.

1973: Tony takes his first job as a trainee surveyor and is immediately assigned to a local sewerage farm. Forced to climb over industrial septic tanks, his best suit and shoes get covered in shit. Tony quits within a week.

1974 : He moves to Wigan, where he builds bikes for speedway and grass-track racing. He races them himself at weekends, until, a year later, the business folds.

1975: Tony goes down to the local Job Centre, where he gets a general interview with Ceramspeed, a local company making thermal insulation units for cookers. He’s offered a job as a cleaner and walks out of the interview in disgust. The next day, the company call him back and offer him a position as trainee manager. Tony works there full-time for 17 years until 1995.

1976: He starts mixing on the local gay DJ circuit.

1986: He takes a weekend job demonstrating Panasonic audio equipment in a Birmingham department store.

1990: Tony becomes the resident DJ at Trade.

1993: At last, Tony becomes a full-time professional DJ

Tonys all Time Top 10

• Gat Décor "Passion"
• Marmion "Schoeneberg"
• Doc Scott "The Surgery EP"
• Tony De Vit "Burning Up"
• E-Trax "Let’s Rock"
• Felix "Don’t You Want Me"
• Die Witness "Observing the Earth"
• Commander Tom "Are Am Eye"
• Age of Love "Age of Love"
• DJ Misjah & Tim "Access"

Tony De Vit’s upfront 10

• Sandy B "Make the World Go Round"  Tony: The TDV sound meets Sandy’s vocal for a classic mix
• Barabas "Deeper" - "eep, hard house with a Todd Terry sample. Tuff
• Tony De Vit "Don’t Ever Stop/Bring The Beat Back"  - Two comments often shouted at me when playing.
• All Nighters "Black is Black" - Check out the 1998 mixes from Ian M
• SJ "I Feel Divine" - Fierce remixes from Baby Doc, Kitty Lips and Steve ‘Janet’ Thomas
• F1 "Cuz I’m Rockin" - Are we talking Trade classic here, or what?
• 99 All Stars "Soakin’ Wet"  - A stomping remix to a classic Trade anthem
• Untidy Dubs "Volume Two" - New mixes with a much more underground feel
• Perpetual Motion "Keep On Dancing" - Limited coloured vinyl with banging mixes and classic samples. Superb!
• Mark NRG "Brain Is The Weapon"  - Something for everyone

Links to Fantazia

Tony appeared on the Fantazia albums:

House Collection 2 and The Remixers Tony De Vit
as well as the Live in Leeds Mix tape from 1994.

Copies of which are available here