Ian Levine
Ian Geoffrey Levine, is a British songwriter, producer, and DJ. A moderniser of Northern soul music in the UK, and a developer of the style of Hi-NRG, he has written and produced records with sales totalling over 40 million. Levine is also a fan of the long-running television show Doctor Who.
Early and personal life
Levine was born into a Jewish family; his parents owned and ran the "Lemon Tree" complex in Blackpool, including its casino and nightclub. Levine is openly gay. He suffered a major stroke in July 2014, leaving him with severely limited movement on the left side of his body.Career
Disc jockey
Levine began collecting Motown records from the age of 13, building a collection sourced from both UK record shops and those that his family visited on holidays to Miami and New Orleans. This later extended to him becoming an avid collector of soul, R&B, and Northern soul. After his parents emigrated to the Caribbean in 1979, Levine sold the bulk of his record collection to fund the purchase of a home in London.Having attended some of the early Northern soul all-nighters at "The Twisted Wheel" nightclub in Manchester with DJ Stuart Bremner, on leaving school in 1971 he became a disc jockey at the Blackpool Mecca. Levine joined other DJs in travelling to Stoke on Trent to join the Northern soul all-nighter "Torch", which was quickly shut down but was the fore runner of the Wigan Casino events, which Levine opened. Working with fellow DJ Colin Curtis, the pair was responsible for guiding the Northern Soul scene away from its oldies-only policy and towards modern soul and disco. This resulted in BBC Radio 1's DJ John Peel travelling to Blackpool to interview Levine.
In 1979, Levine began advising London's gay disco Heaven on its set-up. He subsequently became the club's first resident DJ, remaining through most of the 1980s. Ian was also one of the first DJs to mix records in the UK.
Writer/producer
In 1974 Levine assisted Dave McAleer with in compiling "Solid Soul Sensations", which was released on the British Disco Demand label and got to No. 30 in the UK Albums Charts. With the proceeds he travelled to New York City and co-produced Reaching for the Best with girl band The Exciters, which reached No.31 on the UK Singles Charts selling 80,000 records. This allowed Levine to then travel to Chicago, where he signed postman L.J. Johnson, Barbara Pennington, as well as Evelyn Thomas. Although Thomas's 1976 record Weak Spot was not a big success reaching No. 26 in the UK, Levine's later 1984 co-produced record High Energy sold seven million copies.Hi-NRG and Pop
In 1983, the London-based record shop Record Shack offered Levine £2,000 to set up a new joint-veture record label, Record Shack Records. Through friend Jean-Philippe Iliesco he used his Trident Studios, and formed a songwriting partnership with Fiachra Trench.The first record from the label was So Many Men, So Little Time by Miquel Brown, which sold two million copies and got to number 2 on the American Dance Club Songs charts. This was quickly followed by High Energy by Evelyn Thomas. The partnership with Record Shack ended in 1985, but by that time the label had sold 12 million records.
Afterward his return to the UK following the financial failure of Motorcity Records, Levine wrote and produced Hi-NRG-derived singles for various bands, including Take That, and The Pasadenas. During the 1980s and 1990s he co-wrote and mixed a number of dance-pop hits for a variety of artists, including: Pet Shop Boys; Bucks Fizz; Erasure; Kim Wilde; Bronski Beat; Amanda Lear; Bananarama; Tiffany; Dollar; and Hazell Dean. He has also latterly written and produced several TV themes including "Discomania", "Gypsy Girl", "ITV Celebrity Awards Show", "Christmasmania" and "Abbamania".
Manager
Levine founded bands, including: Seventh Avenue, which featured two members of Big Fun; Optimystic; and Bad Boys Inc. In 2010 Levine formed a new boy band called "Inju5tice". After the commercial failure of debut "A Long Long Way From Home" the band and Levine split, and the band relaunched itself as ELi'Prime.Record labels
In 1987, Levine began recording some former artists from Motown. After a reunion of 60 Motown stars, including Edwin Starr and Levi Stubbs on top of a hotel opposite the original Hitsville USA building, Motorcity Records was launched as a record label. Initially distributed by PRT, then Pacific, Charly and finally Total/BMG, by the time that the label ended in the 1990s due to severe financial losses, 850 songs had been recorded by 108 artists.''Doctor Who''
Levine is well known as a fan of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Levine was, in part, responsible for the return of a number of missing episodes of the show to the BBC's archives. He also retained many off-air recordings. Levine was consulted by members of the production team about continuity for a while during the mid-1980s.In 1985, when the BBC announced that the series would be placed on an eighteen-month hiatus, and the show's cancellation was widely rumoured, Levine was heavily involved with the media protest covertly organised by series producer John Nathan-Turner. He appeared on the ITN's News at One arguing against the decision, and together with the series' production manager Gary Downie gathered a group of actors from the series to record Doctor in Distress. The single was universally panned.
Levine also organised a private project to recreate the incomplete 1979 Doctor Who story Shada with animation and newly recorded dialogue from many surviving cast members. Levine had hoped that the project would be released on DVD, but the commissioning editor of the Doctor Who DVD range did not use Levine's animation on the DVD release of the story. The completed Levine version appeared on torrent sites almost two years later, on 12 October 2013.
Levine has been responsible for producing a number of extras on the Doctor Who DVD releases: the documentaries "Over the Edge" and "Inside the Spaceship" were included on the 3-disc set "The Beginning", while "Genesis of a Classic" appeared on the release for Genesis of the Daleks. He also co-wrote the theme music for K-9 and Company, a pilot for a proposed Doctor Who spin-off series featuring the robotic dog and Sarah Jane Smith.