Music Therapy column: Remember Sasha at Bugsy's?

Neil Summers talks to DJ, producer, artist and soon-to-be published novelist Justin Robertson as Michael Taylor considers the rise and rise of the DJ...

Neil’s done an interview that’s gone live this week with one of real fascinating characters of music in Manchester over the last for decades, Justin Robertson - DJ, producer, artist and soon to be published literary novelist. 

It’s been published on the website of Manchester clothing brand Good Measure and gives a fascinating insight into the life and creative times of this most curious of hybrid creative skills.

I knew Justin vaguely at university in the 80s and then around and about Manchester when I’d pop back. 

He worked in Eastern Bloc records in what we now know of as the Northern Quarter, which gave him access to amazing immediate music and helped him shape what was being heard in the clubs of Britain’s foremost musical city.

Justin Robertson

The transition to DJs as influencers goes back as long as people have gathered to share musical experiences in public spaces. 

As technology gave DJs the tools to manipulate, fade, mix and scratch live on their decks, it elevated them beyond the role of curator of a set list - yet that’s still, for me, their greatest skill. It wasn’t always a smooth passage to their high levels of esteem. I remember vividly my own clash on this particular culture war. 

When I lived in Australia in 1988-1989 the celebrity club DJ was a very recent phenomena. 

My bit part in the emerging dance music scene was as a promoter and as a journalist for a city rock paper talking up DJs, but not the types who’d host wet t-shirt competitions at clubs called Gobbles and F Scotts.

Towards the end of my time there I worked for a bar/club called The Freezer in downtown Perth, doing the PR, working the door and even appearing in an advert. They were great times. 

But my best memory of working front of house was a couple of old Aussie rockers bowling up and asking what time the band were on. When told that the ‘Wayne Lewis’ on the poster was a DJ they said they weren’t paying five bucks to listen to some guy playing records and could do that in their living room. 

Incidentally one of the other Poms passing through and hitting the decks back then was a lad from London called Guy Ornadel, now renowned as one of the premier DJs on the UK circuit and a regular at super clubs on the international circuit.

Everyone had to start somewhere and he played tough crowds back then, ‘got any Jimmy Barnes, mate?’

But who in these parts went to Bugsy’s in Ashton in the early 1990s? Resident DJ back then, and building his skill and reputation, was Sasha, probably the world’s first superstar DJ to achieve rock star status and to earn megabucks playing all over the world. So revered was he that in 1993 Mixmag magazine asked on its front cover: “Sasha: son of God?” 

Recordings of those nights are held like religious artefacts and memories of the time he dropped Why? By Carly Simon then unleashed the smoke machine are the stuff of legend and where reputations are built.

But back to Neil’s encounter with Justin Robertson. Lockdown can’t have been easy for people who thrive on electrifying crowds with their music and their ability to read a room and sense a vibe. 

It’s heartening to discover Justin’s been painting, mixing new music and written a book. Not a confession of a 90s’ DJ, but something quite spiritual and sensory. If that’s not an example of deep talents of this breed of creator then I don’t know what is.

You can listen to Michael Taylor and Neil Summers on Music Therapy on Tameside Radio 103.6FM on Sunday evenings from 9pm to 11pm. Click here to subscribe and catch up on previous shows.

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