Ian Levine

Early and personal life

Born into a Jewish family, his parents owned and ran the "Lemon Tree" complex in Blackpool, including its casino and nightclub. Levine is openly gay. He suffered a major stroke in July 2014, leaving him with severely limited movement on the left side of his body.

Disc jockey

Levine began collecting Motown records from the age of 13, building a collection sourced from both UK record shops and those that his visited on family holidays to Miami and New Orleans. This later extended to him becoming an avid collector of soul, R&B, and Northern soul. After his parents emigrated to the Caribbean in 1979, Levine sold the bulk of his record collection to fund the purchase of a home in London.

Having attended some of the early Northern soul all-nighters at "The Twisted Wheel" nightclub in Manchester with DJ Stuart Bremner, on leaving school in 1971 he became a disc jockey at the Blackpool Mecca. Levine joined other DJ's 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 opened. 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.

In 1979, Levine began advising London's gay disco Heaven on its set-up. He subsequently became the club's first resident DJ, remaining through most of the 1980s.

Writer/producer

In 1974 Levine compiled his first album "Solid Soul Sensations", which released on Pye Records got to No. 11 in the UK Albums Charts, gaining a silver disc. With the proceeds he travelled to New York City and co-produced Reaching For The Best with girl band The Exciters, which reached No.31 on the UK Singles Charts selling 80,000 records. This allowed Levine to then travel to Chicago, where he signed postman L.J. Johnson, Barbara Pennington (who both after appearing on Top of the Pops reached the UK Singles Charts), as well as Evelyn Thomas. Although Thomas's 1976 record Weak Spot was not a big success reaching No. 26 in the UK, Levine's later 1984 produced record High Energy sold seven million copies.

Hi-NRG

In 1983, the London-based record shop Record Shack offered Levine £2,000 to set up a new joint-veture record label, Record Shack Records. Through friend Jean-Philippe Iliesco he used his Trident Studios, and formed a songwriting partnership with Fiachra Trench.

The first record from the label was So Many Men, So Little Time by Miquel Brown (step-sister of Amii Stewart and Sinitta's mother), which sold two million copies and topped the American Billboard charts. This was quickly followed by High Energy by Evelyn Thomas. The partnership with Record Shack ended in 1985, but by that time the label had sold 12 million records.

Afterward his return to the UK following the financial failure of Motorcity Records, Levine wrote and produced Hi-NRG-derived singles for various bands, including Take That (he produced their first three singles), and The Pasadenas. During the 1980s and 1990s he co-wrote and mixed a number of dance-pop hits for a variety of artists, including: Pet Shop Boys; Erasure; Kim Wilde; Bronski Beat; Amanda Lear; Bananarama; Tiffany; Dollar; and Hazell Dean. He has also latterly written and produced several TV themes including "Discomania", "Gypsy Girl", "ITV Celebrity Awards Show", "Christmasmania" and "Abbamania".

Manager

Levine founded bands, including: Seventh Avenue, which featured two members of Big Fun; Optimystic; and Bad Boys Inc. During this period, Levine also maintained a friendship and rivalry with Simon Cowell. In 2010 Levine formed a new boy band called "Inju5tice". After the commercial failure of debut "A Long Long Way From Home" the band and Levine split, and the band relaunched itself as ELi'Prime.

Record labels

In 1987, Levine began recording some former artists from Motown. After a reunion of 60 Motown stars, including Edwin Starr and Levi Stubbs on top of a hotel opposite the original Hitsville USA building, Motorcity Records was launched as a record label. Initially distributed by PRT, then Pacific, Charly and finally Total/BMG, by the time that the label ended in the 1990s due to severe financial losses, 850 songs had been recorded by 108 artists.

Doctor Who

Levine is well known as a fan of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Levine was, in part, responsible for the return of a number of missing episodes of the show to the BBC's archives. He also retained many off-air recordings. Levine was consulted by members of the production team about continuity for a while during the mid-1980s.

In 1985, when the BBC announced that the series would be placed on an eighteen-month hiatus, and the show's cancellation was widely rumoured, Levine was heavily involved with the media protest covertly organised by series producer John Nathan-Turner. He appeared on the ITN's News at One arguing against the decision, and together with the series' production manager Gary Downie gathered a group of actors from the series to record Doctor in Distress. The single was universally panned.

Levine also financed a private project to recreate the incomplete 1979 Doctor Who story Shada with animation and newly recorded dialogue from many surviving cast members. Levine had hoped that the project would be released on DVD, but the commissioning editor of the Doctor Who DVD range did not use Levine's animation on the DVD release of the story. The completed Levine version appeared on torrent sites almost two years later, on 12 October 2013.

Levine has been responsible for producing a number of extras on the Doctor Who DVD releases: the documentaries "Over the Edge" and "Inside the Spaceship" were included on the 3-disc set "The Beginning", while "Genesis of a Classic" appeared on the release for Genesis of the Daleks. He also composed the theme music for K-9 and Company, an unsuccessful pilot for a proposed Doctor Who spin-off series featuring the robotic dog and Sarah Jane Smith.

American comic books

Levine claims to have the only complete set of DC Comics in the world, with at least one copy of each DC comic book sold at retail from the 1930s to present. The writer and comic book expert Paul Sassienie began cataloging, grading and certificating 'The Ian Levine' collection in May 2011.