Page 12 - Zone Magazine Issue 011

feature interview [uk]
Paul Oakenfold is without a doubt one of dance music's leading lights and his story is one that is littered with success after success, as he has single handedly achieved more in his career than most dance DJ/ artists could dream of.
From the get go, he was one of the pioneers of the scene and also an ambassador for the music and lifestyle that we all know and love as dance music fans and lovers of the clubbing and dance festivals. He set the trend for so many others to follow and its hard to even fathom the importance of his achievements over the last three decades of dance.
He and a handful of others are credited with creating the spark that ignited a fire that has burned so bright for so many dance music fans and all along the way he has been pivotal in the way that the dance scene progressed. He has had an uncanny knack of picking the right career path just before so many others walked that same way and he has been a worthy ambassador for the lifestyle that goes with the love of House and Dance Music.
From his early days of running one of the World's first House Music nights in London through his groundbreaking superclub residency at Cream in Liverpool in the late 1990’s and the consistency of his Perfecto Record label since the late 1980’s and his championing of Trance music before it became a global phenomenon, he has paved the way for promoters, DJs and dance fans alike.
His touring the World as support for Madonna and U2 , his 36 Essential Mixes for Radio 1, his 3 grammy nominations, his film scores, his groundbreaking 3 year residency in Las Vegas etc etc, if it is worth doing, Paul seems to have done it and often before anyone else even dreamed of it.
I was lucky enough to have Paul as a regular guest at my own club ‘Escape’ in Swansea in the Superclub boom in the late 1990’s and spent time with him on many occasions discussing the scene and the direction it was going in and even then he was predicting the future correctly, so to catch up with him albeit in the form of an interview fills me with awe as I already know that he will have a great deal to say.
And it was with trepidation that I prepared the questions that I ask as I know already that this will be an interesting and enthralling insight into the mind of a true dance music legend: