Dave Beer | |
---|---|
Birth name | David Michael Beer |
Born |
Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England |
24 January 1965
Genres | Punk, house, funk, electro, new wave |
Occupation(s) | DJ, record producer, club promoter |
Years active | 1983–present |
Labels | Back To Basics Recordings |
Website | www |
Dave Beer (born David Michael Beer on 24 January 1965) is a Yorkshire music mogul who achieved notoriety in the 1990s as the promoter of the UK’s longest running club night Back To Basics. In the early days, his passport occupation read "purveyor of good times" and he went on to be nicknamed by music Mixmag as the "King Of Clubs". With his Leeds based club night Back To Basics, Dave features as one of the youngest men in Leeds City Museum’s exhibition chronicling the popular culture of Leeds.
Dave Beer was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and grew up in a single parent family on a council estate in Pontefract. He attended Carlton High School as a teenager but left at the age of 16 looking for a new challenge.
He found solace in art and went on to study at Wakefield Arts College where he met his best friend and, later, fellow Back To Basics promoter, Alistair Cooke. The pair wanted to make films and be in a band and went on to study multi-media, film and TV at Sheffield University.
As a youth, Dave was a rebellious punk; he dyed his hear red, wore a kilt and listened to punk anthems like White Riot and God Save the Queen. He followed bands like The Clash and The Cure across the country and once got into a gig, climbing in through a dressing room window, too young to get past the bouncers on the door.
Dave’s obsession with the punk-music scene saw him become a groupie, hitching up with punk band The Clash. As a keen photographer, he captured many exclusive shots of the bands he followed incorporating them into art projects at college. His persistence on the tour circuit led to his first proper role as a roadie and later as tour manager for bands including That Petrol Emotion, The Ramones, Ghost Dance, The Utah Saints, and The Sisters of Mercy who he lived with at the time.