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‘Everyone knew who he was’: James Hamilton, the ‘eccentric aristo’ who catalysed British club culture

He outed Norman Cook as Fatboy Slim, imported turntablism and made BPM a staple of dance journalism. Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold remember a pivotal figure

Quite aside from his writing career and the various innovations it spawned, he’d spent the 60s alternately working with the Beatles in America, and DJing at legendary London mod nightclub the Scene under the name Doctor Soul; he then built Britain’s first custom-made mobile DJ console, and took to playing at aristocratic country house balls, where requests tended more to the Blue Danube and Scottish jigs and reels than the latest US imports. The new collection offers an endlessly intriguing glimpse into a forgotten world of 70s and 80s nightlife, filled with unexpected details – the sudden surge of interest in 40s swing music among soul fans in the mid-70s, which led to not one, but two versions of Glen Miller’s In the Mood making the Top 40; the fact that the first mixed DJ set in Britain was played not in a hip nightclub, but at a roller-skating event at glamorous-sounding Pickett’s Lock Sports Centre in Edmonton – the writing testament to Hamilton’s surprisingly catholic tastes. He was quick to pick up on the importance of gay clubs in the development of dance music, running charts from their DJs from the mid-70s onwards and was, a little surprisingly, a huge fan of punk, approvingly – and characteristically – referring to the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK as a “noisy bubblegum chugger”.

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