Paul Oakenfold

Paul Mark Oakenfold (born 30 August 1963), formerly known mononymously as Oakenfold, is an English record producer, remixer and trance DJ.

He has provided over 100 remixes for over 100 artists including U2, Moby, Madonna, Britney Spears, Massive Attack, the Cure, New Order, the Rolling Stones, the Stone Roses and Michael Jackson.

Oakenfold was born on 30 August 1963 at Mile End Hospital.

His father delivered the London Evening News.

He lived in Highbury, Greenhithe, then Croydon, attending Archbishop Lanfranc School, then studied to be a chef for four years and worked at the Army and Navy Club.

Paul Oakenfold describes his early life as a "bedroom DJ" in a podcasted interview with Vancouver's 24 Hours, stating he grew up listening to the Beatles.

Oakenfold's musical career began in the late 1970s, when he met Trevor Fung and began helping him DJ soul music in a Covent Garden wine bar.

Here in London, he also met Rumours where he played Earth, Wind and Fire and popular British bands.

The remixes of "Rave On" and "Hallelujah" were released on the Madchester Rave On EP, as well as "Step On", a cover version adapted from John Kongos' 1971 hit "He's Gonna Step on You".

The song reached the top 5 position in the UK.

He was invited as a guest DJ to Spike Island, a gig with the Stone Roses.

Pleased with the last single, the Happy Mondays gave Oakenfold and Osborne the opportunity to produce their third studio album, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches.

The album entered the UK charts at number one with pre-sales of 150,000.

In 1981, 18-year-old Oakenfold and his friend Ian Paul moved to New York City.

Oakenfold worked as a courier in West Harlem.

During this time, hip-hop was overtaking dance music as the most popular sound in the area (see 1984 in music).

Oakenfold and Fung used fake identification to sneak into various dance clubs, like Studio 54, where they met members of the band Maze, Bobby Womack and Bob Marley, whom they also interviewed, claiming to be NME and Melody Maker journalists.

Returning to London, Oakenfold began breaking into the mainstream, as an A&R man for Champion Records.

At that time, he signed DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, as well as Salt-n-Pepa.

Oakenfold appeared on the Blue Peter BBC programme for children with a breakdancing crew.

He became a promoter and British agent for the Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C. Since then, he appeared at The Project in Streatham playing soul and jazz music.

In 1987, Oakenfold travelled to the island of Ibiza for a week to celebrate his birthday.

Trevor Fung, Nicky Holloway, Ian Saint Paul, Danny Rampling and Johnny Walker accompanied him.

Oakenfold convinced the owner of a venue in England to host an "Ibiza Reunion" party after-hours.

He had previously made an attempt, but it failed as the crowd was not prepared for the acid house style until 1987 when the party was successful.

After that, the night became a classic and became one of the UK's major acid house nights, known as Spectrum at Heaven in Charing Cross.

The party was best known for the "Theatre of Madness", as more than 1,500 people were present on Monday nights, until it went down; with the financial issues it changed its name to the "Land of Oz".

Artists like Alex Paterson DJ'd in the VIP chillout area known as the "White Room", which gave Oakenfold more free time, and then he began producing music under the alias "Electra" in 1988.

Members included Nick Divaris, John "Johnny" Rocca and Micky.

As they continued releasing only four singles as the Balearic beat band Electra, in Full Frequency Range Recordings (FFRR Records) founded and run by Radio 1's Pete Tong, the duo created a new alias under the name Perfecto.

Also in 1988 he decided to create a place where new artists could develop their careers.

At that moment, Perfecto Records was born.

He collaborated with his friend Steve Osborne on various projects.

In 1990, he worked with Terry Farley, Andrew Weatherall and Osborne on two remixes for Happy Mondays.

The album was named NME's 1990 Album of the Year, and both Oakenfold and Osborne won the 1991 Brit Award for Best Producer.

This is a tremendous record and a gauntlet chucked at all the other would-be legends in town... Wild, brash, corrosive funk rock, grimly northern and yet pan-cultural in a Tesco shoplifter kind of way.

In 1991, they remixed Massive Attack's "Safe from Harm" as well as many others.

In 1992, when U2 released their song "Even Better Than the Real Thing", the Perfecto remix reached a higher charted position than the original song.

In 1993 with the success of his last remix as Perfecto, he was hired by U2 to provide the warm-up sonics to their Zoo TV world tour, and replaced BP Fallon in the 1993 legs of Europe and Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, with more than fifty shows in Zooropa '93 and Zoomerang from 7 May to 10 December of the same year.

Oakenfold was voted the No. 1 DJ in the World twice in 1998 and 1999 by DJ Magazine.