Although he was worked in the
music business for 20 years, and hit the
number 1 spot in the charts in 13 different countries, Paul Hardcastle
is still generally
unknown. Born and brought up in East London, his
musical career started after he began playing around with a
synthesiser back in
1981 -- the very early days of
electronic music.
Sticking to a soulful style of music he put out a couple of records
which did moderately well but never set the world alight. Then in
1984, deciding to return to the electronic sounds he'd experimented
with earlier, he formed his own record label and produced "Rainforest",
a melodic, haunting track which was a massive club success.
Not just a success in Britain and Europe,
"Rainforest" became a massive hit in the USA, even knocking Madonna's
"Like A Virgin" from the number one position in the 12" charts.
Very much
ahead of its time, Rainforest was pretty much what today would be
called a trance style of music: but this was '84 and house had yet to
break out of the dance clubs and into the mainstream, let alone its
myriad derivatives.
Nevertheless Rainforest's dancefloor success gave Paul the
encouragement he needed to do more experimentation with attempting to
create electronic/dance crossover music. His next single, which shot
to the number one slot around the world, was the instantly-memorable
"19". The title, which refers to "the average age of a
combat soldier in Vietnam" was picked up after Paul watched a TV
documentary about that war. Again showing himself to be five to ten
years ahead of his time, 19 was pure electronic dance music, mixing
synth sounds, sampling (at that time still a fairly new
technology) with a great dance floor beat.
Following on from 19, Paul had one more major success in the charts with
"The Wizard" which was immortalised for Brits as the
Top of The Pops theme tune for many years. After this he moved into
production and remixing, working with Barry White and Ian Dury
amongst others. In the 1990s he's worked on a number of projects,
including signing to Motown for a while where he released a number of
soul-influenced tracks, and releasing two albums as
Paul Hardcastle and the Jazzmasters, with a jazz/dance crossover
style. In the mid-80s he correctly predicted the coming dominance of
electronic music: could jazz-derived dance music be the sound of the
early 21st Century?