John Kelly has been DJ’ing since 1985 and has been acclaimed as one of the top 30 DJ’s in the world every year since 1995. Based in Liverpool, John has played an integral role in the growth of dance scene from its early years, playing the first illegal raves and then owning his own club in 1989 with James Barton, later of Cream fame.

John has played all the major clubs of the U.K, including a weekly residency at Ministry of Sound in 1998 and bi-monthly appearances at Cream, Gods Kitchen, Slinky, The Arches in Glasgow, Gatecrasher, Temple in Dublin and just about every other club in between over the last ten years.

John has also been playing every major club in the clubbing Mecca of Ibiza for the past 7 years and was resident at the worlds biggest club night manumission and will be again in 2002. He had his own radio show on Parisian station radio F.G and has done many guest spots on BBC Radio 1 as well as many other local stations.

I bought a club called The Underground with Cream man James Barton. I learnt to DJ at the club - before I learned how to mix beats, I learnt how to put records together. If I played one record after another, it would create a certain mood or excitement and I think that taught me more about DJing than any amount of technical practise ever could. Soon I was mixing up everything from my old pop records to new house cuts, and I’d always drop one of my all-time faves in– Cameo’s “Word Up”.

Two clubs followed The Underground, the first of which was Quadrant Park in Bootle, Liverpool. This was a massive rave, which took place in a four-building warehouse complex. The sound system wasn’t the best in the world but that didn’t matter when we had 6,000 people jumping around this club like absolute lunatics. The Quad is one of my favourite memories of the time; all the early house and hardcore tracks mixed up with pop. In those days, any record that made you jump up and down was a great record! After Quadrant Park, I looked after another club called G-Love, which we put on at the Mardi Gras in Liverpool in 1991. It was a really intimate night out, with a pretty glammy crowd shaking their stuff to sexy Italian house music. Lots of DJs and industry people would come up from Manchester and London, and we even took G-Club on the road a few times, notably to The Gardening Club in London.

My DJing work increased steadily after that, and through a combination of enthusiasm and hard work, I now guest at Gatecrasher, Passion, God's Kitchen, Slinky, Hotdog, Golden and, of course, Cream every six weeks. Over the summer I live in Ibiza because of the number of bookings I get on the island makes it crazy not to! I had a residency at the Ministry Of Sound back in 1999, and I mixed for the first trance-based radio show on Radio FG in Paris. I like playing abroad – I’ve had dates throughout Europe, all across the States from New York to LA and Las Vegas to Canada, and into the southern hemisphere to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The Middle East and Pacific Rim are good fun too, with Israel, Singapore and Hong Kong all crossed off my list.

Musically, I like to think that I play a fairly indefinable and maverick blend of hard underground trance. But I like having a good time on the other side of the decks too! I recently went to play for Cream at Club Yellow in Tokyo. It should have finished at six, but they said I could play on, which I did until nine in the morning – and only then because I ran out of records! I even got on the dancefloor once or twice for a boogie. Sometimes you never want the night to end!