Ian Levine
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Ian Levine is an English songwriter, producer, and DJ. He is also a well-known (and often controversial) fan of the long-running television show Doctor Who. He was born on 22 June 1953 in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Music career
Levine is most noted for his work in the music genres of pop, soul, disco, and Hi-NRG. He and songwriting partner Fiachra Trench were among the main figures in the development of the Hi-NRG style and its moderate success in North America, writing and producing "So Many Men So Little Time" by Miquel Brown (two million sales), and "High Energy" by Evelyn Thomas (seven million sales). During the 1980s and 1990s he mixed a number of dance-pop hits for artists, including Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Kim Wilde, Bronski Beat, Amanda Lear, Bananarama, Tiffany, Dollar, Hazell Dean and founded his own groups: Seventh Avenue which featured two members of Big Fun, Optimystic and Bad Boys Inc. He also wrote and produced for the successful UK boy band Take That, and for The Pasadenas. He has written and produced several TV themes including "Discomania", "Gypsy Girl", "ITV Celebrity Awards Show", "Christmasmania", and "Abbamania".
Earlier in his career he was a disc jockey at the Blackpool Mecca, and became an avid collector of soul, R&B, and Northern Soul records. In the mid-1970s he also produced for disco, leading into the genre's evolution into Hi-NRG.
Levine was also a resident DJ at the legendary gay disco Heaven, which was considered London's answer to the New York nightclub The Saint.
In 1987, Levine began recording some former artists from Motown. By 1989 the project had grown in size and a reunion of 60 Motown stars in Detroit, outside the original Hitsville USA building, attracted attention from several media outlets. Motorcity Records was launched as a record label, initially distributed by PRT and later Pacific, then Charly and finally Total/BMG. By the time the project ended in the mid 1990s, over 850 songs had been recorded by 108 artists who had all been formerly signed to Motown. As an album range, the project continues to be released to this day, but the most successful single was by an artist who hadn't recorded for twenty three years, Frances Nero, with "Footsteps Following Me", co-written with Levine and Ivy Jo Hunter, the man who wrote "Dancing in the Street". According to her website "Her dream was short-lived - after recording constantly and receiving no royalties from Ian Levine, she severed her relationship and pursued other ventures." Other than that, the project was not successful commercially.
In 2007, Levine formed the label Centre City Records, on which he has released four albums: Northern Soul 2007, Disco 2008, Yesterday and Tomorrow (a collection of his 30 greatest hits, re-interpreted by his current roster of artists) and Northern Soul 2008.
