Ian Geoffrey Levine was born 22 June 1953 in Blackpool and went to Arnold School. He is a 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. He is openly gay and known as a fan of the long-running television show Doctor Who. His parents owned and ran the “Lemon Tree” complex in Blackpool, including its casino and nightclub. He suffered a major stroke in July 2014, leaving him with severely limited movement on the left side of his body. Levine spent decades tracking down 3,000 of his relatives. He has organised several meetings with hundreds of family members over the years, which have been covered by media outlets. Levine has written books about his genealogy search.
Levine began collecting Motown records from the age of 13, building a collection from UK record shops and those his family visited on holidays to Miami and New Orleans. He later became an avid collector of soul, R&B, and Northern soul. After his parents emigrated to the Caribbean in 1979, Levine sold most of his records to fund a house purchase in London. Having attended some early Northern soul all-nighters at “The Twisted Wheel” nightclub in Manchester with DJ Les Cokell, after leaving school in 1971 he became a disc jockey at the Blackpool Mecca with Tony Jebb. 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 DJ’ed on the 3rd all-nighter. 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.
Opening on Dec 6, 1979, Levine became the club’s first resident DJ at London’s gay disco Heaven on its set-up, and remained there through almost all of the 1980s. He finally left in 1989. Levine was also the first UK-born DJs to mix records. In 1973, Levine caught notice when he turned Robert Knight’s “Love on a Mountain Top” into a UK Top 10 hit, leading to him assisting Dave McAleer in compiling Solid Soul Sensations the following year, which was released on the British Disco Demand label and reached No. 30 on the UK Albums Chart. With his father’s investment, he travelled to New York City and co-produced Reaching for the Best with girl group the Exciters, which reached No. 31 on the UK Singles Chart selling 80,000 records. This allowed Levine to then travel to Chicago, where he auditioned and signed three unknown singers: Postman L.J. Johnson, Barbara Pennington, and Evelyn Thomas. Thomas and Johnson’s debut records would both chart in the UK Top 30, ensuring them both an appearance on Top Of The Pops on Feb 19, 1976. Barbara Pennington would enjoy a big disco hit in the U.S.A. the following year with “24 Hours a Day” (No. 4 Billboard Disco Charts) as would James Wells whose “My Claim to Fame” reached the same position in 1978. Following a string of albums on artists such as Evelyn Thomas, Barbara Pennington, L. J. Johnson, Doris Jones, Tyrone Ashley, Eastbound Expressway, and Seventh Avenue, towards the end of 1979, Levine’s record productions came to a halt when he had 4 album deals fall through due to demise of disco, leaving him indebted due to the high production costs.
By 1998, Levine tracked down 179 former Northern Soul singers in the USA for his 4-hour documentary “The Strange World of Northern Soul”. Following the various artists album “Solid Ground” in 2006 (named after his collaboration with Sidney Barnes in 2001 which had become a favourite on the Northern Soul scene), Levine formed Centre City Records in 2007 especially to record a series of albums of tailor-made Northern Soul music, and released 9 albums of 24 tracks each between 2007 and 2012. After a hiatus of 12 years, Levine released his 10th album on the label, “Northern Soul 2024” in March 2024 which saw him reform a songwriting partnership with his previous collaborator from the 1970s and 80s, Fiachra Trench.
Levine wrote and produced hi-NRG-derived singles for various bands, including Take That (he co-produced three tracks on their debut album, incl. a cover version of “Could It Be Magic” which won the Best British Single at the Brit Awards 1993, and co-wrote their Top 20-hit “I Found Heaven” with Billy Griffin), and the Pasadenas (he co-produced three tracks on their Yours Sincerely album of 1992 with Billy Griffin, including the No. 4 UK hit “I’m Doing Fine Now”). After Levine’s falling out with Take That’s Management, he formed Bad Boys Inc in 1993 and enjoyed 6 UK singles and a Top 20 album followed by further Top 40-hits with boy band Upside Down UPSIDE DOWN, Gemini, and mixed group Optimystic. Miami-based label Hot Productions reissued Levine’s entire catalogue of the 1970s and 80s on CD from 1993 onwards as well as a big part of his Motorcity catalogue before folding in 1998. He also co-wrote and co-produced the theme music for the 2004 Donna Summer television special “Discomania”None. In 2010, Levine formed a new boy band called Inju5tice. After the commercial failure of debut “A Long Long Way from Home”, the album release was cancelled, and the group and Levine split.
There’s a lot more to say about Levine’s colourful history and his remarkable accomplishments, but too much to squeeze in here.
Background Image © Robin StottCC BY-SA 2.0
Text source: from hisFacebook page
