Mixing it with a giant of the music scene

MARK XTC: music is his passion

MARTYN TORR meets international DJ MARK McKINLEY

While I was in the company of super-DJ Mark XTC, the words of an old song kept running through my thoughts...

You know the one: “Music was my first love, and it will be my last, Music of the future and music of the past...”

If ever a man has immersed his entire 43 years in music, it’s Failsworth’s Mark McKinley.

Who? I hear you ask.

Mark is a DJ - and not the sort who plays local pubs. This DJ is flown out to supergigs in exotic places like Ibiza and Seville, who has done summer seasons at clubs on the Greek island of Crete, who mixed his stuff for audiences in America.

He’s one cool dude, and he’s one of us. His mum lives in Failsworth and so does he. Well, with his mum actually, which might not be all that cool in a 43-year-old tornado of the turntable, but he’s just between homes and it’s temporary.

Which is why — despite his fame and fortune, about which he remains tight-lipped — he still has a 9-5 day job at the Manchester College in Chorlton Street, where he helps teens to forge their own careers in the music industry.

It’s a job he has done for 10 years and has no plans to leave anytime soon: “I love this job, I love working with the kids, it’s a dream job for me,” he says in a dark recording studio in the depths of the monstrous red-brick building next to Chorlton Street bus station.

We chatted at the end of a long day. The students had long-since departed but Mark was just getting going. After chatting for 90 minutes he was planning to spend a few hours on music for his live weekly radio show (on Unity 92.8FM), then spending an hour with his family in Failsworth before getting back to the Unity studios in Ancoats for his broadcast, from 11pm-1am.

“And I’m back here at 8am prepping for lectures,” he said.

Mark is clearly at home with this magical mix of teaching and music, comfortable with his life and growing family - three children with lifetime friend Averal, another daughter who spends four nights a week with her dad, and another child on the way.

Mark is comfortable confiding that Averal and he have a mutually supportive relationship: “She was very pushy when I was younger and helped me massively. We will be friends forever - not because we have children together, but because that’s the way we are.”

Averal’s help came when they were together at school in Clarksfield and Breezehill.

Mark was always into music and spent hours working his mother’s record collection on his twin turntables in his early teens.

His cousin Paul Higgins was a huge influence, encouraging and supporting young Mark and entering the turntable talent into a Disco Mix Club competition at Manchester’s Hacienda. Against tough competition from hundreds of wannabes, young Mark won.

Mark the DJ was up and running and Xtra Tough Cutter — as he was known to Paul and other members of the Mix Factory collection of DJs — became Mark XTC.

He finished runner up in the regional finals — “I was better than the guy who won” he told me without a hint of malice.

He played all the Oldham hot-spots and has never looked back since those heady teenage days.

He won the competition the following year and was soon going to gigs with his cousin and mentor Paul, being allowed to mix his own music for sessions.

Those days with the Mix Factory were a tough learning curve for Mark. When the time came to leave school he joined a business course at Oldham College, determined to forge a music business of his own.

Fate took a hand: he was offered a chance to work in the BPM record shop in Union Street, and he didn’t go unnoticed by the big shops in Manchester. At 19, Mark was offered a chance to manage Spin Inn in the city centre. “The shop had a massive reputation and was flying. I spent seven happy years there,” he recalls with pride.

Then he was head-hunted by Eastern Bloc, another city record shop, to manage his own department and pick his own staff for double his then-salary

So he moved again, while continuing to work for The Mix Factory on big gigs around the country.

“I kept asking myself what the heck was going on in my life, but I loved it,” he says. “The videos of some of the gigs I did are still on YouTube today.”

He was also by then working all the big clubs in Manchester, including the Haciedna and Sankeys, with residencies at Banshee in Oxford Road and the Paradise Factory. “I was constantly knackered,” he admits.

Producer Pete Waterman had bought the Eastern Bloc chain of shops and as the scene ran its course, Mark was made redundant and he was forced to think his life through.

He returned to his studies and gained a degree in professional sound and video technology at Salford before earning a teaching degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. He supplemented his income as a DJ across the region and on radio.

On gaining his teaching qualification he was invited to apply for a job at the Manchester College. That was a decade ago, and turned out to be the job of his dreams. “I had dreamed of being a teacher when I was at school and to achieve that was all I ever wanted,” he said.

Alongside his teaching and weekly radio show with Unity FM his DJ career has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance.

Mark XTC is in huge demand once again. He has worked at massive events in Ibiza this summer, and carries around his music - well over 100 CDs and the same number of records - to every gig.

He must be doing it well: take a look at his Facebook page.

Mark is also now back to producing his own dance music and has signed up with two labels.

Despite his resurgent fame, he remains rooted in Oldham - Failsworth especially.

“My job is here at the college. I’ll do this forever. The other stuff is just great and I love it, but my day job pays the bills.”