Dave Haslam talks to Mike Shaft about Mike’s career as a key figure on the Manchester soul scene. In this exclusive interview, Mike tells us about being on the DJ decks back in the 1970s at Manchester clubs like Placemate 7, Rafters, and Rufus; widely regarded as some of the best black music nights in Manchester’s history. Mike’s not 100% sure of some of the dates and so-on, so you’ll find [brackets] where a little bit more information has been added by Dave.
In the mid-1970s, despite his club DJing working well, Mike hadn’t broken into radio presenting (although he’d done some work on Radio Merseyside where a DJ called Brian Smart had invited Mike over to play reggae once a fortnight; but Terry Lennaine became the soul music presenter on the station with his ‘Keep on Truckin’’ show). Eventually Mike’s show ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ show on Piccadilly Radio (78-86) would become Manchester’s best loved dance music show. The conversation starts with Mike talking about the beginnings of his days at Piccadilly Radio…
“When you first went to Piccadilly did you have a show lined-up?”
“I remember opening the paper and seeing an item about Andy Peebles going to Radio One. Andy Peebles at the time was doing the soul show on Piccadilly Radio – it was called ‘Soul Train’ and it was an excellent show, although for me personally I don’t think he played enough dance music, but that’s the only possible criticism of the show because it really was quality and I knew I could never work at Piccadilly while Andy Peebles was there.
When I opened the paper and read that I went straight down to Piccadilly and asked to see the Programme Controller, Colin Walters. Colin wasn’t there they said, so they asked his PA to come out and I harangued her for about forty five minutes about me doing ‘Soul Train’ and told her I was the only person in Manchester who could do this show because for years I’d been doing clubs in Manchester and I just felt it was a natural progression for me to go on the radio because I had a decent name in Manchester at that time.
I made three copies of a demo, and sent one to Piccadilly and one to Radio One and one to Radio Merseyside. Radio Merseyside said thanks but we’re not interested, but for the next few weeks one day I’d be at Piccadilly with a tape and then next day I’d be down at Radio One with a tape and there were meetings and more tapes and then one day Piccadilly stopped calling but Radio One told me they were going to start a new show in Manchester called ‘Discovatin’’ and they wanted me to present it.”
“Discovating?”
“Discovatin’ – no ‘g’ at the end; it’s very important that! And the show was going to come from the BBC building in Hulme on a Saturday night. This was a time when Radio One and Radio Two shared programming in the evening and the BBC had decided to split Radio One from Radio Two and they were going to do a series of new shows all through Saturday evening on Radio One and I was actually going to follow Andy Peebles with his slot with this new disco show.
It was all going well but on the Thursday before I was at work – at this point I was working at the Post Office in Wythenshawe – and I got a call from Radio One and they told me that it wasn’t going to happen; there wasn’t a problem with me or the show but there was some union problem; the union weren’t happy with the number of people who were or weren’t going to be working on the shows that Radio One had planned, the usual nonsense. And that was that; I was devastated. But then a few hours later I get a call from Colin Walters and he said he was still interested and invited me in the next day.
On the Friday I walked into the reception at Piccadilly and Colin Walters came out to meet me and as we were walking to his office just out of the blue he said “When do you want to start? This Sunday OK?” I said, yes. And I did the first show that weekend, and I have to say I was awesome!
A week later, the second show I did I was terrible because I thought I’d arrived, but it was awful and when I listened back to it I was embarrassed at how bad it was. Eventually, though, I found my own pace and groove over the coming months and years.”
“That was 1978?”
“Yes, it was 1978, I did my first show at Piccadilly and a while after that I got offered a full-time contract for six months; the thing was, only a day or so later I got a call from Radio One saying the problems had been resolved. But by that time I’d signed on a contract, I was on Piccadilly.”
“You said that you’d positioned yourself to be the man for that job at Piccadilly through your club experience. Where were those club gigs you were doing in the mid-1970s? And can you remember what you were playing at the time?”
“I’ll say this, I don’t remember any of this clearly. What I thing I do remember, one gig, when you talk about positioning; I don’t know if people will remember a place called Oasis which was an underground market in Manchester city centre.” [It was just off Market Street, near where Fopp is now; Noel Gallagher says that’s where the band got their name from; in the mid-1980s, ten years after the period Mike is talking about, he used to go there to buy brown cord flares and Adidas trainers].
“One Saturday I went to the management and I said that although it was cool in there everyone was playing different music as you walk around, and I suggested that they got a system in and a DJ. They had a meeting and they asked me to do it and I set up on a Saturday morning at 9 o’clock and played there til 5 o’clock, all the cool tunes, including soft rock; and we had a great time there and I was getting great experience. ”
“And you were getting on the microphone?”
“Yeah, all day long. In a way, doing that, I was getting great radio experience.
But one of the major clubs for me was Rafters. I remember Rafters really clearly, although I don’t remember what year I started work there.” [Rafters was where the Music Box now is, on Oxford Street in Manchester, although the layout has changed. The DJ used to be near where the end of the bar is; more like the middle of the club, and also there was a lot of seating down the right hand side.]
“It was before Piccadilly though.”
“Yes, it was. I saw an advert that they were looking a DJ and I went down and they asked me to do half an hour in Fagin’s [Fagin’s was the sister club to Rafters, above Rafters on Oxford Road]. I did a set there and then they asked me to go to Rafters one Saturday a few weeks later and they asked me to try out. They had other people lined-up too – they did the other Saturdays – and I went down there a few weeks later and it was awesome, absolutely fantastic. The biggest tune at that time was ‘Rock Your Baby’ by George McCrae.” [released 1974.]
“At the end of the night the manager came up to me and said he liked what I’d done and gave me the job. He said “We need a theme tune for you” and he came back with Isaac Hayes ‘(Theme from) Shaft’ on the Stax label and said “That’s your theme tune and from now on we’re going to call you Mike Shaft!”. I ended-up doing months and months in there, Saturday nights and Fridays.”
“Are you going to reveal to us your real name?”
“Oh, I never tell anyone my real name! That’s private business, a different life.”
“Apart from George McCrae, what were the other big tunes you remember from that era at Rafters?”
“I was playing soul and funk – lots of James Brown – and Brass Construction. BT Express; they were a massive band around that time [BT Express had a huge hit in 1974 with ‘Do It (Til You’re Satisfied)’]. And I remember playing the Commodores ‘Machine Gun’ [1974]. It was that kind of era and that kind of stuff; the music was all very black, and it attracted a massive black crowd and a great amount of non-black people too, usually white women, a sprinkling of white guys, lots of black women, and lots of black guys. It was just magnificent, that era at Rafters. It’s where I think I made my name in Manchester really.”
“Roughly you did a couple of years there?”
I’m not sure. I know I had moved on from there well before Piccadilly. Leaving there was really sad. I came down one Saturday night and there were all these black people outside, on both sides of Oxford Road and as I’m going past the queue someone says “They’re not letting us in”. So I go down into the club and the manager says some nonsense about “trying to change the crowd”, all that kinda stuff. I thought this is outrageous, and I was upstairs again looking at all these people outside who weren’t getting in.
Rafters used to have two great big glass doors at the entrance with metal handles and a bouncer would hold the handle and open the door to let in people, and suddenly this brick came from nowhere and hit one of the doors and the door shattered completely and the bouncer was left standing there holding the metal handle with no door. And at that point it was enough for me, I went and told the manager I wasn’t going to work there anymore and I left, it was terrible; but it happens, you know, it happens everywhere.”
“In that era, Rafters was one of the few clubs in town where a black crowd welcome. I mean, it wasn’t everywhere…”
“It wasn’t anywhere! Unless it was in Moss Side; if you went down to the Nile club and places like that you’d hear that type of music. This was the first time that I know of that this kind of music was being played in the centre of Manchester. It was great.”
“People got dressed-up…”
“People got dressed-up, yeah, these were nights out, man, nights out! It was great, and there was the odd fight every now – but show me a club that doesn’t have that – but there were no huge amounts of trouble.
After I left Rafters I think from there I went to Pips. Pips was a massive club in Manchester.”
“Down near the Cathedral.”
“That’s right. ”
“And there was a thread of rooms…”
“Correct, it was an unbelievable club, coaches would come from everywhere to come to Pips, I remember from Newcastle coaches coming down. I got the job working in the soul room. They had a variety of rooms; they had a heavy funk room downstairs, there was a soul room, and there was the Roxy room which was the legendary room in that building, and then there was another room which was playing just general pop stuff. I was there for years…”
“What were the big tunes in your soul room?”
“I can’t remember to be honest.”
“Had jazz funk arrived by this time?”
“No, no it hadn’t. And don’t forget, the heavy funk type stuff was being played downstairs, so I wasn’t covering that territory. I was playing good quality light soul, that’s how I would describe it, a nice collection of dance music.”
“And you’d be on the microphone.”
“I’ve always worked on the mic’. You’re always going to hear my voice when I’m in a nightclub and people like that. For me, I’ve always had the voice, and it’s one of the things that makes me stand out.”
“You moved on from there after a couple of years; how did it end?”
“A friend of mine came in to Pips one night and told me he was going to open a black club just down the road, and asked me to move there from Pips, and I told him I’d work for him if I liked the place, but I’d have to see it before I could decide. Took a look at the place and loved it. But no-one knew what to call it, and eventually came up with Rufus, which was a big band at the time.
Those nights at Rufus were astonishing. It’s hard to explain what those clubs meant to the people who came to them. I’ll give you an example;
Colin Curtis – who I have great respect for as a DJ – he has great musical sense and great musical taste. One Friday he came up from Nottingham or Stoke or somewhere, two car loads of people. Colin got in about ten to eleven, and at about ten past eleven he came up to me and the second car had just arrived and they couldn’t get in; already the place was full. But I had to say to him “There’s nothing I can do Colin, I’m sorry. You can see, you can’t turn in here.” And it was like that Fridays and Saturdays.
It was amazing, and I was playing stuff like ‘You’re Gonna Get Next To Me’ [Bo Kirkland & Ruth Davis, 1977]. And, again, the Commodores, the live version of ‘Zoom’ [1977]; really high quality soul.”
“And you’ve always been into your P-Funk haven’t you?”
“Oh, yeah! ‘Flashlight’ was a big tune and the early Funkadelic stuff, Bootsy Collins. It was a great time in Manchester.”
“With Rufus, are we now talking early 1980s?”
“I think we are, yes, very early 1980s.”
“When you talk about how important those clubs were to the people who went to them, how do we explain that? For me, that’s the greatest thing about being involved in clubland, originating your nights, seeing things grow, building a community of people, and the friendship, and it all creates an experience which you can’t replicate anywhere else in your life.”
“You’re absolutely right. What happened with the clubs I used to work at was that they gave black people a kind of identity in Manchester that they’d never had before. If you were black in Manchester you went to places in Moss Side; that was expected. Suddenly along comes a DJ and a variety of clubs where you were respected, dressed nice, came down, there was no hassle – up until that final night at Rafters – and people were treated with respect. And there is a networking that goes on in the black community that has to be seen to be believed, so within hours of first doing a successful night coaches would be arriving from Nottingham, coaches would be coming from Huddersfield, and it was just fantastic. The other thing was the number of relationships that grew out of that; people married people from Nottingham or Birmingham that they’d met in my nightclub in Manchester.
It’s just unbelievable when you get that; those were true communities in those days, but it got fragmented in the end and the police, it has to be said, forced that scene out of the centre of Manchester.”
“You’re convinced of that?”
“Absolutely convinced. They wanted the trouble out of the city centre…”
“Why did they see it as trouble?”
“Well, because later on it became trouble. Eventually the police had had enough of it and decided to squeeze this scene out of the city centre.”
“Do you think there was a race issue?”
“Well, I have to say “Yes”, although that’s not to criticise it because some of the stuff that was being attempted by some of these villains was appalling; they wanted to run the doors of these nightclubs so they could sell their drugs, they let in people with guns and to be honest if I had been in the police I probably would have taken the same decision because you just don’t need it. But the thing is, when exactly the same thing happened in other nightclubs that weren’t black, they didn’t sweep those out of town. The Salford gangs who weren’t black were just as active getting their clubs, and getting their doors.
But none of that is going to ruin my memory of that time. We had a great scene going and if anybody is to blame it’s the people who tried to sell drugs and tried to muscle in on doors.
Well, I suppose what always happens is that a club gets busy and then the people, the second or third generation who start coming to that club have got that original feeling and they’re not there to hear good music, they’re coming to cause trouble or leech off the scene in some way. So you move on.
You move on. But eventually I stopped moving; I just packed it in.”
“So when did you pack it in? Early 90’s?”
“I remember the last few gigs that I did were at the Wiggly Worm which was a club behind Lewis’s that had been called Millionaire’s. That’s one of the last places I worked on a regular basis.”
“Although we’ve missed out Placemate 7 where you did ‘The Main Event’.”
“We’ve missed out loads! Placement 7 is a classic one; ‘The Main Event’. I was working at Piccadilly and they got in touch with ‘Blue & Soul’ and did a deal with them, launched a night in Manchester in association with ‘Blues & Soul’, loads of advertising in the magazine and on the radio and it was a Tuesday night and we went in there and flattened it! It was magnificent. And some of the music we played in there, wow! Colin Curtis used to guest on some of those nights…
“The Main Event was 1983?”
“Well, I remember playing D-Train ‘You’re the One For Me’ [1982]…”
“That’s a tune!”
“That record just lit up the place. And it was either there or Legend when I remember playing Jocelyn Brown’s ‘Somebody Else’s Guy’ when it came out [1984].”
“The girls love that record.”
“Everyone loves that record!
There was another place we worked; I can’t remember the name of this place, just off Deansgate, near the police station, it was upstairs [Mike possibly means the Playpen, now called 42nd Street]. Thursday nights, Colin playing there as well, with me.
And during all this time, we were doing the nightclubs but we were also doing the all-dayers and the all-nighters. We did some great all-nighters at the Gallery with me and Colin. Of all the all-dayers my favourite must have been Clouds in Preston which was run by Kev Edwards which was magnificent. I remember once playing a big reggae record, ‘Police Officer’, and the place just rocked, people were just screaming. [Smiley Culture ‘Police Officer’, 1984]. A great venue was Angels in Burnley; I think that was Wednesday nights with Richard Searling which was a great series of nights. At that point in time, Angels was one of the collest venues around in terms of lighting and sound. A lot of places didn’t have that high spec; Legend in Manchester was another. Anyway, Richard got the gig at Angels and brought me in and we had a lot of good times.”
“All this time you were doing ‘Takin’ Care of Business’; was it known as that from the start?”
“The show had been called ‘Soul Train’ and I can’t remember what we called it when it started but then I came across this phrase ‘Takin’ Care of Business’…”
“No ‘g’ again!”
“No ‘g’ again. I remember going into see the programme controller and he was happy with the name – he told me to call it whatever I liked I think! – and then I went to see the guy who made the jingles, a great guy called Steve England, and he got them done and when they came back – [sings] “Takin’ care of business – 261” – they were awesome and everytime they were played your radio lit up!
And we kept that going all the way through my time at Piccadilly, 78-86, and then I went BBC Radio Manchester on the Saturday night soul show which I called ‘Back in Business’ and I was there for three years and then I left there and set up Sunset.
It’s hard to explain to younger people what it was like back then, there was no MTV, no MTV Base, there weren’t hundreds of channels playing music, so with a show like mine you had an opportunity to play stuff you literally wouldn’t hear anywhere else. I’d play a song on a Sunday and you’d hear it in the club over next few weeks and demand would build. I really don’t know how many records I sold for Spin Inn in those years! The songs just take off, they take off.”
“I remember hearing ‘Outstanding’ by the Gap Band on your show and going out that week and getting the 12 inch.”
“It’s difficult to explain to people the impact shows like ‘Takin’ Care of Business’.”
“And your’s was what you might call a ‘destination’ show. I think by the mid-1980s I would have also tuned-in to hear Tony Michaelides on Piccadilly, but that was about it. A specialist show like your’s had a real value; people would make ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ part of their weekly ritual, and of course Sunday was a great day for it…”
“It was fascinating, the whole thing.”
“In a lot of peoples’ minds, there was a golden age of soul, and although there are plenty of examples of great soul performers around now, that golden age – in terms of music and significance – goes back to the early 1960s, then was very big in the late 1960s into the mid-1970s, thrived into the early 1980s, but then drew to a close first when rap started coming from one direction, and then, a little later in the 1980s, house started coming from another direction. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?”
“I think electro was the beginning of the end for straight-up soul but you can’t stop the music from going where it goes. ”
“And this is where Greg Wilson comes into the story.”
“I have to say thanks to Greg because whenever he talks about his history he always talks about my show. Greg was doing these mixes and I heard about them and got in touch with him and asked him to let me listen to them, and I listened to them and then I asked him to come in and do some of this on the radio. Now, I didn’t like electro – I have to be honest – but the show wasn’t about me, the show was about the listeners. And I’d always made time for stuff; we’d had these jazz breaks when I’d ask Colin Curtis or Hewan Clarke to come in and play some jazz tunes.
Greg was very skillful, the mixes were great and he came in to ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ and that’s when he got his first break, and whenever he writes about it on the internet he gives me a namecheck.
But, for me, the electro began to split the scene. And also the jazz scene started to branch off, DJs like Colin and Hewan and John Grant; that began to go down one way.
So the scene had already started to fragment and then when rap came along it just blew everything else away.”
“Sunset was launched in 1989. You had been on a personal mission to get station on air weren’t you?”
“For me, it’s always been about natural progression. All week I’d be doing my radio shows, doing my club gigs, but I was listening to radio stations in the day that still weren’t reflecting the black music scene. Piccadilly put together a re-application for their licence and I read about what they’d put about my soul show and how they held it in high regard and all this stuff, and I thought, well if it’s that important why can’t we have a radio station that does this for the community at 9 o’clock in the morning? So I started agitating for this and in the end it took the best part of ten years.”
Again, I wanted the station to reflect all the genres, so we had Hewan and Anif Cousins who used to present a jazz show – ‘the Brotherhood’ it was called – and they played killer tunes from late Saturday right through to Sunday morning. Leaky Fresh and Owen D did the hip hop show on Thursdays. Tuesday nights; 808 State, and their show was fantastic and on Monday nights we had Dawn Payne who did an arts programme; cool music and great guests”
“The Sunset story didn’t really go to plan did it, and your relationship with the station fell apart and for you in ended quite unhappily?”
“It ended horrendously unhappily! Basically, the station ran out of money and I’ll make it absolutely clear here that if you listen to other people you get different stories so you can believe what I say or not to believe it; it doesn’t really matter to me.
There was a board meeting. Pressure had been building. We were very close to securing a bank loan that would see us through but unfortunately just as that was going through the news broke that we were in trouble and the bank said that they wouldn’t now be able to loan the money. At the board meeting one of the major shareholders said they would invest the money needed to make the radio station continue but only if Mike Shaft is no longer involved in the radio station. All the other directors agreed with them. I was asked to leave the board meeting; I was sacked. I have to tell you that the way it was put to them; I’d have voted against me! So I left. I cried my eyes out.”
“But Sunset continued…”
“But what they wanted to do was to turn it into a pop music station and that’s what they did and it failed miserably. After a few weeks they asked me to go back and I was in charge of gigs and outside broadcasts and all that kind of stuff. We did some great nights, and I remember them like they were yesterday because they were so fantastic. And wherever I go people hear my voice and they say “You’re Mike Shaft aren’t you? Remember that night we did at such-and-such a place?”. They remember them.
But I don’t want people to think I’m just bragging here about Mike Shaft because I’ll tell you what, there was one club I never worked in in Manchesterand that was Berlin [a basement club just along from where Mojo now is; the Bridge Street end of King Street]. I used to go there every Tuesday night when it was on [1982-85?] because it was such a cool club. John Grant and Colin Curtis did the night; we all used to work in pairs in those days, and you’d hook up with whoever best suited the music you were doing. Those two didn’t need me! It was the coolest venue on a Tuesday, and, again, guys would dress up and dance stylishly and it was brilliant; Manchester was just awesome.”
“The Jazz Defektors would be there [a dance troupe who performed formally and informally and various jazz venues in Manchester, and also recorded for Factory Records]…”
“That’s right, and Foot Patrol who did a lot of their dancing with Greg Wilson when he was at Legend and Chad Jackson who followed him in there. Those were great days.”
“Talking of those days and everything else we’ve touched on ; how do you feel that the music we’re talking about, the clubs, the DJs; it’s almost like a forgotten scene, certainly when you compare it to the high profile of Wigan Casino or the Hacienda?”
“It disappoints, but I’m not going to lose my cool over it. History is written by the winners, as they say; but it doesn’t means that’s the definitive history.”
“It’s also disappointing for the people who went to those clubs who dressed-up, queued-up, danced, loved it, for them it’s like; your history doesn’t matter.”
“It shows them no respect, you’re absolutely right; one day someone will write the definitive story of Mike Shaft and Colin Curtis and Hewan Clarke, and Chad Jackson and Greg Wilson, all these guys.”
